Year: 2020

Advertiser momentum against Facebook’s content and moentization policies continues to grow.

Last night, Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) said it will be pausing advertising on Facebook and Instagram “until Facebook can create an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable and is consistent with what we’ve done with YouTube and other partners.”

Then today, it was joined by consumer goods giant Unilever, which said it will halt all U.S. advertising on Facebook, Instagram (owned by Facebook) and even Twitter, at least until the end of the year.

“Based on the current polarization and the election that we are having in the U.S., there needs to be much more enforcement in the area of hate speech,” Unilever’s executive vice president of global media Luis Di Como told the Wall Street Journal.

The bring to bring advertiser pressure to bear on Facebook began with a campaign called #StopHateforProfit, which is coordinated by the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Color of Change, Free Press and Sleeping Giants. The campaign is calling for changes that are supposed to improve support for victims of racism, antisemitism and hate, and to end ad monetization on misinformation and hateful content.

The list of companies who have agreed to pull their advertising from Facebook also includes outdoor brands like REI, The North Face and Patagonia.

Facebook provided the following statement in response to Unilever’s announcement:

We invest billions of dollars each year to keep our community safe and continuously work with outside experts to review and update our policies. We’ve opened ourselves up to a civil rights audit, and we have banned 250 white supremacist organizations from Facebook and Instagram. The investments we have made in AI mean that we find nearly 90% of Hate Speech we action before users report it to us, while a recent EU report found Facebook assessed more hate speech reports in 24 hours than Twitter and YouTube. We know we have more work to do, and we’ll continue to work with civil rights groups, GARM, and other experts to develop even more tools, technology and policies to continue this fight.

And Twitter provided a statement from Sarah Personette, vice president of global client solutions:

Our mission is to serve the public conversation and ensure Twitter is a place where people can make human connections, seek and receive authentic and credible information, and express themselves freely and safely. We have developed policies and platform capabilities designed to protect and serve the public conversation, and as always, are committed to amplifying voices from underrepresented communities and marginalized groups. We are respectful of our partners’ decisions and will continue to work and communicate closely with them during this time.

As of 1:57pm Eastern, Facebook stock was down more than 7% from the start of trading. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he will also be addressing these issues at a town hall starting at 2pm Eastern today. (So … now.)

 

Tim O’Reilly has a financial incentive to pooh-pooh the traditional VC model, wherein investors gamble on nascent startups in hopes of seeing many times their money back. Bryce Roberts, who is O’Reilly’s longtime investing partner at the early-stage venture firm O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), now actively steers the partnership away from these riskier investments and into companies around the country that are already generating revenue and don’t necessarily want to be blitzcaled.

Yet in an interview with O’Reilly last week, he nonetheless argued persuasively for why venture capital, in its current iteration, has begun to make less sense for more founders who genuinely want to build sustainable businesses. The way he sees it, the venture industry is no longer as focused on finding small companies that might one day change the world but more on creating financial instruments for the wealthy — and that shift has real consequences.

Below, we’re pulling out parts of that conversation that may be of interest to readers who are either debating raising venture capital, debating raising more venture capital, and even those who have been turned away from VCs and perhaps dodged a bullet in the process. At a minimum, O’Reilly — who bootstrapped his own company, O’Reilly Media, 42 years ago and says it now produces “couple hundred million dollars in revenue” yearly — provides a lot of food for thought.

TechCrunch: A lot of companies celebrated Juneteenth this year, which is a big deal. There’s been a lot of talk about making the venture industry more inclusive. How far — or not — do you think we’ve come in the venture industry on this front?

Tim O’Reilly: The thing that I would say about VC and about really everything in tech is, this concept of structural racism [is really the problem]. People think that all it matters is, ‘Well, my values are good, my heart’s in the right place, I donate to charities,’ and we don’t actually fix the systems that cause the problems.

With VCs, the networks from which they’re drawing entrepreneurs are not that different [than they have been historically]. But more importantly, the goals of the VC model are not that different. The industry sets a goal, and it has a certain kind of financial shape, which is inherently exclusionary.

How so?

The typical VC model is looking for this high-growth company with exit potential, because it’s looking for this big financial
return from an IPO or acquisition, and that selects for a certain type of founder. My partner Bryce decided two funds ago [to] look for companies that are kind of disparaged as lifestyle companies that are trying to build sustainable businesses with cash flow and profits. They’re the kind of small businesses, and small business entrepreneurs, that have banished from America, partly because of the VC myth, which is really about creating financial instruments for the wealthy.

He came up with a version of a SAFE note that allows the founders to buy out the VC at a predetermined amount if they ever become sufficiently profitable but also gives them the optionality, because periodically, some of them do end up becoming a rocket ship. But the founder is not on the treadmill of: you have to get out.

How does that relate to Juneteenth?

When you start saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to look for sustainable businesses,’ you look all over the country, and Bryce ended up [with a portfolio] that’s made up of more than 50% women founders and 30% people of color, and it has been an incredible investment strategy.

That’s not to say that people who are African-American or women can’t also lead companies that are part of the high-growth VC model that’s typical of Silicon Valley.

No, of course not. Of course, they could lead. The talent pool is just much greater [when you look outside of Silicon Valley]. There’s a certain kind of bro culture in Silicon Valley and if you don’t fit in, sure [you could find a way], but there are a lot of impediments. That’s what we mean by structural racism.

To your point about insular networks, a prominent Black VC, Charles Hudson, has noted that a lot of [traditional VCs] just don’t know have regular or professional associations with Black people, which hampers how they find companies. How has Bryce fostered some of these connections, because it does feel like traditional VCs are right now trying to figure out how to better do this.

It’s breaking the geographic isolationism of Silicon Valley. It’s breaking the business model isolationism of Silicon Valley that says: only things that fit this particular profile are worth investing in. Bryce didn’t go out there and say, ‘I want to go find people of color to invest in.’ What he said was, ‘I want to have a different kind of investment in different places in the United States.’ And when he did that, he naturally found entrepreneurs who reflect the diversity of America.

That’s what we have to really think about. It’s not: how do we get more Black and brown founders into this broken Silicon Valley model. It’s: how do we go figure out what the opportunities are helping them to grow businesses in their communities?

Are LPs interested in this kind of model? Does it have the kind of growth potential that they need to service their endowments?

It was a bit of a struggle when we did fund four, which was focused on [this newer model]. It was about a third of the size of fund three. But for fund five, the fundraising is [going] like gangbusters. Everybody wants in because the model has proven itself.

I don’t want to name names, but there are two companies [in the portfolio] that are kind of in similar businesses. One was in third fund and was sort of a traditional Silicon Valley-style investment. And the other was an investment in Idaho of all places. The first company, which involved a more traditional seed round, we’ve ended up putting in $2.5 million for a 25% stake. The one in Idaho we put in 500,000 for a 25% stake, and the one in Idaho is now twice the size of the Silicon Valley one and growing much faster.

So from what you’re seeing, the returns are actually going to be better than with a traditional Silicon Valley venture [approach].

As I said, I’ve been really disillusioned with Silicon Valley investing for a long time. It reminds me of Wall Street going up to 2008. the idea was, ‘As long as someone wants to buy this [collateralized debt obligation], we’re good.’ Nobody is thinking about: is this a a good product?

So many things that what VCs have created are really financial instruments like those CDOs. They aren’t really think about whether this is a company that could survive on revenue from its customers. Deals are designed entirely around an exit. As long as you can get some sucker to take them, [you’re good]. So many acquisitions fail, for example, but the VCs are happy because — guess what? — they got their exit.

But now, because funds are raised so quickly, VCs have to show much more traction, which is where things like blitzscaling come in.

Just the way you’re describing it. Can’t you hear what’s wrong with that? It’s for the benefit of the VCs, the VCs have to show, not the entrepreneurs have to show.

Aren’t the LPs addicted to that crack? Don’t they want to see that quick financial traction?

Yeah, but you know that VC returns have actually lagged public markets for four decades now. It’s a little bit like the lottery. The only sure winners are the VCs because the VCs that don’t return their fund get their management fees every year.

A huge amount of the VC capital doesn’t return. Everybody just sees the really big wins. And I know when they happen, it’s really wonderful. But I think [those rare wins] have gotten an outsize place, and they’ve displaced other kinds of investment. It’s part of structural inequality in our society, where we’re building businesses that are optimized for their financial return rather than their return to society.

The events of the past few months have shaken the lives of everyone, but especially Black people in the U.S. COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted members of the Black community while police violence has recently claimed the lives of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and others. 

Two weeks ago, two Black transgender women, Riah Milton and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells were murdered. In light of their deaths, activists took to the streets to protest the violence Black trans women face. Two days after Floyd’s killing, McDade, a Black trans man was shot and killed by police in Tallahassee, Florida. 

In light of Pride month coinciding with one of the biggest racial justice movements of the century amid a pandemic, TechCrunch caught up with Robyn Exton, founder of queer dating app Her, to see how her company is navigating this unprecedented moment. 

Exton and I had a wide-ranging conversation including navigating COVID-19 as a dating startup, how sheltering in place has affected product development, shifting the focus of what is historically a month centered around LGBTQ people to include racial justice work and putting purpose back into Pride month.

“Pride exists because there is inequality within our world and within our community and still there is no clear focus on what it is we should be fighting for as a community,” Exton says. “It almost feels like since equal marriage was passed, there’s a range of topics but no clear voice saying this is what everyone should focus on right now. And then obviously everything changed after George Floyd’s murder. Over the course of the following weekend, we canceled pretty much everything that was going out that talked still about Pride as a celebration. Especially for Black people within our community, in that moment of so much trauma, it felt completely wrong to talk about Pride just in general.”

Worldwide, Pride events have been canceled as a result of the pandemic. But it gives people and corporations time to reflect on what kind of presence they want to have in next year’s Pride celebrations.

It’s time to put on our thinking caps so we can discuss an esoteric but important policy change and how it is going to impact the VC world.

The 2008 financial crisis devastated the global economy. One of the reforms that came from the detritus of that situation was a policy known as the Volcker Rule.

The rule, proposed by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker and passed into law with the Dodd-Frank reform bill, was designed to limit the ways that banks could invest their balance sheets to avoid the kind of cataclysmic systemic risks that the world witnessed during the crisis. Many banks faced a liquidity crunch after investing in mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and other even more arcane speculative financial instruments (like POGs, or Piles Of Garbage) in seeking profits.

One of the unintended consequences of the Rule is that it limited banks from investing in certain “covered funds,” which was written broadly enough that it, well, covered VC firms as well as hedge funds and other private equity vehicles. Reforms to that policy (and to the Rule in general) have been proposed for a decade with little traction until recently.

Now, a number of reforms are underway to the Volcker Rule, which has been a domestic regulatory priority for the Trump administration since Inauguration Day.

First, a a simplification to some of the Rule’s regulations was passed late last year and went into effect in January. Now, a final rule to reform the Volcker Rule’s applications to VC firms among other issues was agreed to by a group of U.S. regulatory agencies, and will go into effect later this year.

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has had a number of unexpected impacts on global economic activity – most of them negative. But the pandemic has also highlighted the need for alternative solutions to challenges where traditional solutions now prove either too costly, or too difficult to do while maintaining good health and safety practices. Near Space Labs, a startup focused on providing timely, location-specific, high resolution Earth imaging from balloons in the stratosphere, is one company that has found its model remarkably well-suited to the conditions that have arisen due to the coronavirus crisis.

Near Space Labs is in the process of expanding its offering to Texas, with some imagery already collected, and the team in active conversations with a number of potential customers about subscribing to its imaging services ahead of launching the first full batch of collected imagery by early next month. Adding a new geography in the middle of a pandemic required Near Space Labs to move up the development of a way for it to easily ship and deploy its balloon-lofted imaging equipment using remote instruction with local technical talent, which now means it’s ready to effectively spin up an imaging operation very quickly, on-demand basically anywhere in the world, with simple, minimal training to onboard and equip local operators on-demand.

“With travel restrictions, we had to figure out how to deploy hardware in a fully remote way,” explained Near Space Labs’ CEO Rema Matevosyan. “That had been a challenge that we wanted to tackle at some point, for our scalability – but instead we had to tackle that ASAP. Today, I’m really proud to say that the Swift, our robotic vehicles are able to be shipped anywhere on the globe in a small suitcase. And with a few videos, and a manual, it’s super easy to train new people to launch.”

Swift is basically a sophisticated camera attached to a balloon that flies between 60,000 and 85,000 feet, with short duration flights that can nonetheless capture up to 270 square miles of imagery at 30cm per inch resolution in a single pass. Swift is also designed to be able to go up frequently, making trips up to as frequently as twice per day, and it’s designed to provide quick turnaround times for processed images, compared to long potential waits for imaging from geosynchronous or even LEO satellites based on orbital schedules, ground station transmission times and other factors.

And because Near Space Labs can basically ship its imaging equipment in a suitcase and have just about anyone train quickly to use it effectively, vs. having to build a satellite that requires delivery via rocket and operation by highly trained engineers, it can offer considerable savings vs. the space-based competition – at a time when cost sensitivity for public institutions and the organizations looking for this kind of data aren’t eager to open their wallets.

“In these uncertain economic times, margins and fiscal responsibility become very important for people,” Matevosyan explained. “We have the perfect solution for that – our approach is very flexible, very low-cost. Even states are ‘bankrupt,’ – so everybody’s looking for ways to improve their margins, and to improving their spend.”

Matevosyan told me that Near Space Labs has seen an uptick in interest in its product from two directions as a result of the ongoing global economic shifts – first, there are customers who have traditionally sourced this imaging from satellite providers and who are looking for cost savings and a product that more closely fits their geographic and timing needs. Second, there are organizations looking to start using this kind of imagery for the first time, as an alternative to in-person inspection or sensing, because of the ways in which COVID-19 has put restrictions on workforces.

“COVID also put a spotlight in general on the remote sensing industry, because people are unable to, for instance, go down to the assets or the sites that they usually would check manually,” she said. “So that started looking into remote sensing solutions, and we saw an uptick in applications and signups to our imagery. One example industry where that’s happening is conservation. Conservation wasn’t a vertical that was super active in our pipeline. But suddenly with COVID, it became pretty active.”

Matevosyan says that it took Near Space just “days” to ramp a new technical team to be able to launch its Swifts in Texas, and that’s representative of the speed at which it can now scale to establish imaging basically anywhere in the world. Flexibility and scalability were always key assets of the business, she says, but the COVID crisis pushed that essential value to the forefront, and could help propel the company’s growth a lot quicker than expected.

Up until 2013, Adobe sold its software in cardboard boxes that were distributed mostly by third party vendors.

In time, the company realized there were a number of problems with that approach. For starters, it took months or years to update, and Adobe software was so costly, much of its user base didn’t upgrade. But perhaps even more important than the revenue/development gap was the fact that Adobe had no direct connection to the people who purchased its products.

By abdicating sales to others, Adobe’s customers were third-party resellers, but changing the distribution system also meant transforming the way the company developed and sold their most lucrative products.

The shift was a bold move that has paid off handsomely as the company surpassed an $11 billion annual run rate in December — but it still was an enormous risk at the time. We spoke to Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard to learn more about what it took to completely transform the way they did business.

Understanding the customer

Before Adobe could make the switch to selling software as a cloud service subscription, it needed a mechanism for doing that, and that involved completely repurposing their web site, Adobe.com, which at the time was a purely informational site.

“So when you think about transformation the first transformation was how do we connect and sell and how do we transition from this large network of third parties into selling direct to consumer with a commerce site that needed to be up 24×7,” Stoddard explained.

She didn’t stop there though because they weren’t just abandoning the entire distribution network that was in place. In the new cloud model, they still have a healthy network of partners and they had to set up the new system to accommodate them alongside individual and business customers.

She says one of the keys to managing a set of changes this immense was that they didn’t try to do everything at once. “One of the things we didn’t do was say, ‘We’re going to move to the cloud, let’s throw everything away.’ What we actually did is say we’re going to move to the cloud, so let’s iterate and figure out what’s working and not working. Then we could change how we interact with customers, and then we could change the reporting, back office systems and everything else in a very agile manner,” she said.

Amazon makes an autonomous driving acquisition, Microsoft closes its retail stores and health insurance startup Oscar raises $225 million.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 26, 2020.

1. Amazon to acquire autonomous driving startup Zoox

According to Amazon’s announcement, Zoox will continue to exist as a standalone business, with current CEO Aicha Evans continuing in her role, along with CTO and co-founder Jesse Levinson. The Financial Time reports that the deal is worth $1.2 billion.

Amazon has been working on its own autonomous vehicle technology projects, including its last-mile delivery robots. The company has also invested in autonomous driving startup Aurora, and it has tested self-driving trucks powered by self-driving freight startup Embark.

2. Microsoft is closing all of its retail stores for good

As other retailers begin the slow process of reopening, Microsoft has announced that it will be permanently shutting down the vast majority of its retail stores. The remaining locations — in cities like London, New York City and Sydney, as well as on Microsoft’s Redmond campus — will become “Microsoft Experience Centers,” rather than standard retail stores.

3. Oscar’s health insurance platform nabs another $225 million

Oscar’s insurance customers have the distinction of being among the most active users of telemedicine in the United States, according to the company. Around 30% of patients with insurance plans from Oscar have used telemedical services, versus only 10% of the country as a whole.

4. Luckin Coffee will unluckin’ly delist from Nasdaq following fraud allegations

An investigation by the company’s board found that Luckin had inflated sales by essentially having affiliated companies buy large orders of coffees that never got delivered. And of course, that’s fraud when you put it on a 10-K form and submit it to the SEC.

(Also, it’s very important to me that you know: I did not write this headline.)

5. Four perspectives: Will Apple trim App Store fees?

Given its massive reach, is it time for Apple to change its terms? Will the company allow its revenue share to go gently into that good night, or does it have enough resources to keep new legislation at bay and mollify an increasingly vocal community of software developers? (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Google finally brings group calling to the Nest Hub Max

Video chat has long been one of the chief selling points of smart screens like the Amazon Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub Max (the regular Hub doesn’t have a camera). But until yesterday, the latter only offered users the option to have one-on-one calls.

7. Amazon really just renamed a Seattle stadium ‘Climate Pledge Arena’

One more Amazon story to close out the week: The company is buying the rights to Seattle’s KeyArena, an aging stadium currently under redevelopment. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said, “Instead of calling it Amazon Arena, we’re naming it Climate Pledge Arena as a regular reminder of the urgent need for climate action.”

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Two years after closing their debut fund of $150 million, Base10 co-founders Adeyemi Ajao and TJ Nahigian, are back with a $250 million investment fund and a sense of vindication for their thesis of investing in startups making automation for the people.

For Ajao, an immigrant who spent grew up in Nigeria and Spain before moving to the US, the new fund is a confirmation that even without having an explicit focus on minority investments, it’s possible to create a portfolio led by a diverse mix of founders. Indeed, roughly 60 percent of the firm’s investments have been into companies led or co-led by women or minority founders.

“We might be minority-led but we are not minority focused,” said Ajao, in an interview. “We’re targeting industries that are big problems for the 99 percent so we hope the portfolio will reflect the diversity of the 99 percent.”

Part of that diversity simply comes from the geographic diversification of the portfolio, said Ajao. “We like to invest in Latin America [and] we like to invest outside of Silicon Valley… We have always had the knack of look where others are not looking.”

And as part of that commitment, the firm is making a diversity pledge including: doubling-down on a commitment to diversity through its investment process, hiring practices, and bias training; and a commitment of 1 percent of the firm’s profits from its management company and another 1 percent commitment of its carried interest to support organizations fighting for inclusion and racial equality.

Ajao and Nahigian have already enlisted firms like Precursor Ventures, Illumen Capital and Plexo Capital in the new commitment.

Drawing on Ajao’s connections in the Spanish and Latin American community of entrepreneurs has meant that Base 10 already has a geographically and racially diverse portfolio. Latin American companies account for about 5 of the firm’s 28 publicly listed portfolio companies, with other portfolio companies coming from the Netherlands and Germany. Ajao and Nehigian have also spread the wealth pretty broadly across the U.S. with companies in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Stamford, Conn. and Seattle in addition to the traditional startup hub of San Francisco.

At Base 10, the typical check size will remain in the $500,000 to $5 million range and the focus remains on experienced founders in industries as diverse as agriculture, construction, logistics, waste management, shipping and logistics.

Investments include Cottage, which is building adjacent dwelling units for the California market; Faber, which provides staffing for commercial construction; the Mexico City-based digital freight forwarder, NowPorts; birth control delivery startup The Pill Club; on-demand staffing company Wonolo and TokenSoft, a platform for compliant token sales.

The new capital is a huge vote of confidence in both Nahigian, a Los Angeles native who spent years as an investor at Summit Partners, Accel, and Coatue Management before founding the mobile job platform, Jobr; and Ajao, who only began working in venture as a corporate investor with Workday Ventures. Previously, the serial entrepreneur launched seferal companies including Identified, which was sold to Workday, and Tuenti, which Telefonica acquired for $100 million back in 2010. Ajao also has the distinction of co-founding Cabify, which raised at a $1.4 billion valuation back in 2018.

And he was Nahigian’s first investor in Jobr. The pair stayed in touch, discussed startups and potential deals, and ultimately decided to go into business together back when the firm was first getting off the ground. 

These days, Ajao believes that the public’s fears of automation coming for people’s jobs have been replaced with a realization that automation is “essential to survival for millions of people and small and medium businesses” looking to stay afloat amid the wave of economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Moreover, with issues of racial, economic, and gender inequality front and center, it is evident today more than ever that we have a collective responsibility to focus on urgently solving problems that are actually important for 99% of people,” Ajao wrote in a blog post announcing the new Base 10 fund. 

As the co-founder of what is one of the largest Black-led venture fund, with $400 million in assets under management, Ajao is taking this moment to situate his fund in a place that supports the development of technology for the 99%.

Examples of portfolio companies stepping in to solve real business problems abound, writes Ajao, in his blog post. From a family-owned restaurant in San Francisco using Virtual Kitchen Company to transition its operations to a full-service delivery model; to restaurants across the Southeast using PopMenu. There’re also newer portfolio company investments like AMI, a Salesforce-style software platform for direct marketers.

As employers responded to the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 epidemic by slashing jobs, many laid-off workers turned to direct sales to support their families, Ajao said. Tools like AMI are helping these stay-at-home entrepreneurs continue to make money as their main source of income.

New investments in the firm’s second fund in companies like Wise, which gives online storefronts and gig economy workers a way to set up bank accounts online easily; Mimic, which is building a distributed kitchen network for Brazil; and Lana, the financial management service for gig workers in Latin America.

These new deals illustrate the firm’s belief that “the tech industry’s collective responsibility [is] to focus on the problems that affect 99% of people, and to work in tandem with communities, governments, and existing Real Economy companies to solve these problems.”

Ultimately, Ajao and Nahigian are attributing their success to what amounts to the old (and overused) investment cliche that investors go to where opportunities are going to be.

“If the VC industry as a whole is overlooking minorities, you can generate alpha by simply taking steps to ensure that you don’t have this same blind spot,” Ajao writes. 

 

Byju’s is in advanced stages of talks to acquire Doubtnut, a two-year-old education learning app, as the Indian edtech giant looks to expand its reach in smaller cities and towns in the world’s second largest internet market.

Three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that the acquisition offer from nine-year-old Byju’s values the younger startup between $125 million to $150 million. The talks haven’t finalized yet and its terms could change or the deal could fall apart, the sources said.

A separate source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that Facebook-backed Unacademy also held preliminary talks with Doubtnut but they are no longer engaging while some investors have suggested the startup to remain independent.

Byju’s and Unacademy declined to comment. One of Doubtnut’s founders did not respond to a text message sent to them Friday afternoon.

The sudden interest in Doubtnut comes as the two-year-old New Delhi-based startup’s app has attracted millions of new users in recent months, most of whom live in smaller cities and towns across India.

Byju’s, which has over 55 million registered users, has a better hold on urban Indian cities. The startup sees Doubtnut as a way to expand its reach in tier 2 and tier 3 Indian markets and tackle the online learning opportunities in a more comprehensive way.

Doubtnut, which has raised $18.5 million to date including $15 million in its Series A financing round earlier this year, allows students from sixth grade to high-school solve and understand math and science problems in local languages. Doubtnut app enables students to take a picture of the problem, and uses machine learning and image recognition to deliver the answers through short-videos.

A student can take a picture of the problem, and share it with Doubtnut through its app, website, or WhatsApp and get a short video that shows the answer and walks them through the procedure to tackle it.

In late January, Doubtnut said it had amassed over 13 million monthly active users across its website, app, YouTube, and WhatsApp channels. More than 85% of its users at the time came from outside of the top 10 cities in India, the startup said in a statement then.

Last year The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups was held at a sunny garden party next to a historic museum in London. Last night, because of the global Coronavirus pandemic, it was held over Zoom. But the enthusiasm and success of Europe’s tech startup industry still shone through the list of finalists and winners.

After 11 years of identifying the most innovative tech startups in Europe (past winners have included Spotify, Transferwise, Soundcloud, and Babylon Health) The Europas has shown itself capable of finding Europe’s hottest startups and remains the only independent and editorially-curated event to recognize the European tech startup scene. The winners have been featured in Reuters, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Forbes, CNET, many other media outlets — and of course, TechCrunch which was the exclusive media sponsor of the awards, alongside the to-be-launched “impact innovation” title The Pathfounder.

The awards cover 20 categories, including new additions such as AgTech / FoodTech, SpaceTech and GovTech. After a record number of awards entries, an intense round of public voting and judges’ deliberations, then 13 deep-dive online workshops (which ticket holders are still able to watch here) the awards reached their conclusion. The all-star panel of judges (see below) were drawn from a diverse range of European tech founders, investors and journalists and their picks for the winners were combined with the results of the online public voting, as they have done for the last 11 years.

The live stream of the awards – which also featured two panels on addressing racial diversity in the tech industry and the future for environmental innovation – on Zoom is available here (Password: 2v*34=^f), although due to a technical hitch recording started a few minutes into the first panel, before the start of the awards themselves. You can sign up to get news of next year’s awards and similar events here.

This year the physical event was replaced by 13 live workshops built around the awards categories, where shortlisted companies were able to pitch live on the platform. In addition, the “Pathfounder Sessions” offered exclusive workshops with specially invited guests, aimed at European startups raising money at this time. Attendees networked on the dedicated Slack community.

Sponsors of The Europas Awards:
1. FieldHouse Associates
2. The Royal Academy of Engineering
3. Burlington CC
4. The Telecom Infra Project
5. Potter Clarkson
6. PlayFair Capital
7. TechCrunch
8. Bizzabo
9. iHorizon

The winners are listed both here and below:

There were two, panel, discussions. The first was on “Black Founders: The State of Black Tech Entrepreneurship and Increasing Access to Funding”. Featuring: Tom Adeyoola, co-founder at Extend Ventures and former founder and CEO of Metail; Andy Davis, Venture Partner, Backstage Capital, and Angel Programme Atomico 2020; and Yvonne Bajela, of Impact X Capital (pictured below).

The second panel was on Sustainability. “Here comes the next crisis: can green startups save the planet?”. This featured Greg Jackson, CEO and Founder, Octopus Energy; Lubomila Jordanova, CEO and Founder, PlanA.Earth; and Ana Avaliani, Associate Director, Enterprise, Royal Academy of Engineering.

At the end of the awards, attendees were entertained by DJ MAX, broadcasting live from Munich.

So, the winners of The Europas Awards 2020 are:

Hottest Ag/FoodTech Startup

ConstellR, Germany, monitoring our planet’s temperature down to the fraction of a degree through a constellation of satellites

Earth Rover, UK, AI Powered crop agronomy service for high-value crops.

iFarm, Finland, Building indoor farming tech including automated vertical farms

Planted, Switzerland, Turning all-natural ingredients into plant-based meat, including chicken.

Winner: iFarm
With sales across 21 countries, iFarm is seeing steadily growing revenues from its indoor farming tech that can be installed in stores, restaurants, warehouses, and homes for a more sustainable way of growing some 120 crops.

Hottest Climate/GreenTech Startup
Finalists:
Cervest, UK, Building climate security tools to empower optimal, informed decisions about climate.

GreyParrot, UK, Waste recognition software to monitor, audit & sort waste at scale

Hawa Dawa, Germany, transforming data on air pollution into real insights for greener cities & future-oriented companies

Solytic, Germany, Maximizing the all-round performance of PV plants.

Winner: GreyParrot – The startup has gained early, significant traction amongst waste recycling plants not just in the UK, but in Italy and South Korea. They also recently won Cathay Pacific’s global tender to help the airlines monitor the waste going to landfill to support airline’s sustainability goal of zero waste to landfill by 2030. Serving a massive market, that since the pandemic is getting worse.

Hottest Cyber Startup

Aloha Browser, Cyprus, Private browser with free unlimited VPN for not so tech savvy users

Buguroo, Spain, anti-fraud solution founded in behavioural biometrics.

Picus Security, a cybersecutiry breach and attack platform

SwIDch, United Kingdom, generate OTAC (One Time Authentication Code) on your own device for each transaction without a network connection.

Winner: SwIDch has built dynamic virtual PAN (primary account number) technology for businesses offering a numberless cards solution. It’s recently scored two massive contracts within Indondesia that will secure revenues across a guaranteed 100m transactions.

Hottest EdTech Startup

Blackbullion, UK, financial education platform for university students

CoachHub, Germany, digital coaching platform for companies available globally.

Life Based Value, Italy, Transforming life experiences into sustainable training grounds for soft skills development.

Lingoda, Germany, building the one-stop language learning ecosystem centered around the live classroom.

SoSafe Cyber Security Awareness, Germany, building an awareness platform that offers employees effective and engaging training on IT security topics with a lasting impact

Winner: Blackbullion, with a growing number of university partners, Blackbullion is educating students on financial skills by teaching them how to manage financing and budgeting for their university education.

Hottest Fintech Startup

FintechOS, is the technology as a service platform that makes fast, plug and play digital transformation for financial services possible.

Funding Options, the UK’s marketplace for business finance

Holvi, the business account for sole traders and the self-employed.

TaxScouts, your Self Assessment sorted online by a certified accountant, fast,

WeVat, helping travellers get their tax refunds on their UK shopping

YuLife, life insurance that rewards your team for living well.

Winner: Fintech OS, Helping banks and insurers build digital products in weeks rather than months. In 24 months, onboarded 30 clients across the world, with $25bn under management, and opened offices in London, Amsterdam, Vienna and Bucharest.

Hottest HealthTech Startup

Axial3D, enabling surgeons to create surgical plans in the form of high-quality, patient-specific 3D anatomical models.

Foodmarble, Using breath analysis to measure the foods individuals can digest most successfully

Fundamental Surgery, the flight simulator for surgeons.

Joint Academy, connects patients with physical therapists to deliver an online treatment for chronic joint pain

Patchwork Health, digital platform helping hospitals fill vacant shifts more cost-effectively whilst stemming the tide of clinicians leaving the health service due to poor work-life balance.

Medshr, the secure and easy way to discuss cases by specialty with verified medical colleagues.

Siilo,a secure medical messenger platform designed for healthcare professionals
Winner: Joint Academy – combining the best of both worlds, access to physical therapists along with digital tracking and reminders to change outcomes for the better for chronic joint pain.

Hottest Mobility Startup

Cake, Sweden, Light, clean and silent. CAKE develops high performance electric off-road motorbikes.

Dott, Netherlands. offering our dockless, shared electrical scooters and bikes as alternatives for short-distance travel.

Einride, Sweden. Building both autonomous and driver operated electric trucks
Tier Mobile, Germany, sustainable micro-mobility sharing-solutions, including electric scooters.

Winner: Einride, Helping drive road freight to a more sustainable future with all-electric trucks. Growing number of partnerships with known corporates like Lidl and Oatly.

Hottest Proptech Startup

GoodMonday, a digital Workspace Management Platform for office managers and employees

Home.ht

MQube – UK

Tiko – Spain,

Winner: GoodMonday, In Covid-challenged times, those companies that must maintain offices need more than ever an easy, efficient way to manage them. GoodMonday does this through their platform

Hottest PubTech, GovTech, RegTech, CivTech Startup

Apiax, Germany, a platform making it radically simple for companies to comply with global regulations.

Apolitical, UK, the global learning platform for government

Cyan Forensics, UK, software to help law enforcement, social media and cloud companies find and block harmful content

Parlia, UK, building an encyclopaedia of all the world’s opinions
Seed Legals, UK, platform leveraging big data and automation to give startups the exact legals they need in minutes.

Winner: Seed Legals, Helping launch UK startups by giving them a quick, fast, digital way to sort the legals.

Anthony Rose, CEO and Founder, CONFIRMED

Hottest RetailTech / eCommerce Startup

Trouva, UK. Taking the world’s best independent retail online

Typology, France, vegan, ethically sourced and manufactured, skin care range

Ave + Edam, Germany, a new generation of skincare: personalized by advanced technology and powered by the cleanest, high-performance ingredients.

Winner: Typology, The under £15 skin care range packaged in flat, rectangular bottles that post through the letterbox has tapped into the lockdown, self care zeitgeist

Hottest Sustainability Tech Startup
SPONSORED BY THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING

Infinited Fiber Company, transforming pre- and post-consumer textile waste, cellulose rich agricultural waste and cardboard into high quality, cotton-like fibers

Little Black Door, social wardrobe sharing application that lets users play, share, borrow and sell to rethink and retrain our relationship with fashion.

Otrium: an online fashion marketplace that helps independent clothing brands sell end-of-season collections

Peelpioneers: turning citrus peel waste into valuable resources

Winner: Infinited Fiber Company – For a more sustainable fashion industry -Infinited Fiber Company has created tech that allows textile waste to be used again and again, preserving 100% quality – this isn’t just recycling, but creating a new fiber.

Hottest Social Innovation Startup

Aidonic, a social fundraising and last mile aid distribution technology for humanitarian and development programs, powered by blockchain technology.

Amicable, building a kinder, better and affordable way to divorce, separate and co-parent.

DataSwift, enables everyone to benefit from the ethical data economy, by providing the essential tools to give, take and use data responsibly.

Farewill, Services that make death easier

Winner: Farewill – The easiest way to sort your will – and more importantly, for destigmatizing death and making it simple for people to take care of a bureaucratic process typically fraught with emotion.

Hottest SpaceTech Startup

Angoka, managing cybersecurity risks inherent in machine-to-machine communication (M2M) networks.

FocalPoint, transforming the capability of all GNSS systems worldwide.

SatelliteVu, High frequency thermal imagery for better decisions in the trading, environmental and insurance markets.

Winner: FocalPoint, just in time for contact tracing, Focalpoint increases the accuracy of the positioning ability of mobiles, wearables and vehicles in urban environments.

Hottest SaaS/B2B Startup

Akur8, AI-based insurance pricing solution that automates risk modeling for insurance companies while keeping full transparency and control on the models created, as required by regulators worldwide.

AnyDesk, fastest and most seamless remote desktop offering for today’s workforce

Chattermill, helping companies understand and improve customer experience, by taking unstructured customer feedback and generating clear and actionable customer experience insights.

Dixa, a customer service platform that unifies channels and data to create exceptional experiences for agents and customers alike

Funnel, helping businesses become fully data-driven and answer all their marketing and business questions easily with the help of the data they have.

Huub, an integrated logistics platform which is fully dedicated to fashion brands
Keylight, platform for managing and selling subscriptions

Polystream, the world’s most scalable 3D interactive cloud streaming platform

Winner: Funnel – Funnel collects and normalizes data from all digital marketing channels that then allows it to be analysed. With digital marketing still leading the spend, Funnel continues to grow with it.

Hottest AI Startup

Builder.ai, Platform builds, runs and scales just about anything you can think of.

Monolith AI, the first AI Platform for Engineers to enable companies to build better products, dramatically faster

Mostly AI, A Synthetic Data platform, leveraging generative AI, that allows organizations to balance their need for AI & Big Data Innovation with privacy protection.

Papercup, A tool which translates voices, allowing all audio and video content to be watched in other languages.

Sonantic, The world’s most expressive and realistic artificial voices

Speechly, Developer tool for next-generation voice user interfaces

Veriff, building an AI driven tool to verify a person’s identity online.

Winner: Builder.ai, At a time when every business needs to be digital, Builder.AI giving them an easy way to go live fast.

Hottest Blockchain Startup

Fireblocks, a Secure Asset Transfer Network that enables financial institutions to move, store and issue digital assets on-chain, without compromising speed or security.

Trustology, A custodial wallet for individuals and businesses

Ubirch, Enabling New Data Driven Business Models, by Making Data Trustworthy and Verifiable Through Blockchain Technology.

Nexus Mutual, uses the power of blockchain technology and Ethereum to allow people from all over the world to share insurance risk together without the need for an insurance company.

Winner: Fireblocks, As digital assets are increasingly held by mainstream banks, a secure and fast way for them to hold and move them.

Hottest Quantum Startup

IQM, builds useful quantum computers to generate value for the society using faster quantum processors designed hand-in-hand with their applications.

Oxford Quantum Circuits, building quantum computers, to help solve some of humanity’s most pressing challenges, from the discovery of new drugs to the development of secure communications.

Phasecraft, developing fundamental quantum theory and software for quantum computers. aims to design quantum algorithms to solve problems beyond the capacity of classical computation

Rahko, building the capability to model the behaviour of drugs and chemical reactions, and design advanced materials with vastly greater speed and accuracy than what is currently possible, at greatly reduced cost.

Winner: Rahko – building “quantum discovery” capabilities for chemical simulation, which could enable groundbreaking advances in batteries, chemicals, advanced materials and drugs.

Hottest European Accelerator

ATI Boeing
Entrepreneur First
Founders Factory
Seraphim Space Camp
SetSquared Bristol
Startup Wise Guys

Winner: SetSquared Bristol, This regional player has helped propel some of the UK’s leading startups to success, including Immersive Labs and Ultraleap (ultrahaptics).

Hottest European Seed Investor

Cavalry Ventures, an early stage venture fund based in Berlin with true value-add for founders.

Entrepreneur First, an international Talent Investor, which supports individuals to build technology companies. It has offices in seven locations; Toronto, London, Berlin, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangalore.

Forward Partners, a venture fund meets startup studio, investing capital, craft and capability from day one…UK

Kima Ventures, Paris based – Kima Ventures is one of the world’s most active early-stage investors, investing in 2 to 3 startups per week all over the world; providing founders with funding, network, and support for them to reach the next steps of their journey.

Playfair Capital, an early-stage fund that commits to companies early and with conviction. Based in London, Playfair combines the best aspects of angel investing with a focused fund, to invest in truly ambitious founders, wherever they are in the world

Winner: Playfair Capital, Based in London, Playfair combines the best aspects of angel investing with a focused fund, to invest in truly ambitious founders, wherever they are in the world. Playfair takes a sector-agnostic approach and investments span deep tech, SaaS, marketplaces and B2B companies. We’ve backed the founders of more than 50 companies including CryptoFacilities, Mapillary, Ravelin, Stripe, Thought Machine and Trouva. Recent exit, Mapilliary sold to FB.

Hottest European VC

Accel
Balderton
EQT Ventures
Draper Esprit
IDInvest
Joyance
Northzone
Target Global

Winner: EQT Ventures, founded and run by the founders who built and scaled King, Spotify, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Huddle, and Lithium to name but a few. Building a global success story takes more than just money. It takes a whole ecosystem of expertise and support from people who’ve done it before, made plenty of mistakes along the way and learnt from them.

Hottest European Unicorn

Bolt, the European transportation platform providing ride-hailing and scooter sharing services.

DoctoLib, the online booking platform and management software provider for doctors in Europe

Klarna, the e-commerce payment solutions platform for merchants and shoppers.

Meero, the world’s leading on-demand photography platform

Winner: Bolt raised €100 million from Naya Capital Management, pushing its valuation to €1.7 billion. The Estonian business will use the funds to increase its market share by investing in its ridehailing, food delivery and e-scooter segments. The investment comes as many ridehailing companies are struggling amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Europe’s third fastest growing company in FT 1000 for the second year in a row.

The “Pathfounder” Of The Year award

Dom Hallas, Coadec, UK
Kinga Staniilawska, Poland
Richard Godfrey, UK, CEO of Rocketmakers

Taavet Hinrikus, Estonia, UK

Winner: Taavet Hinrikus

 

This year’s judges were:

Anne Boden
CEO
Starling Bank

Bernhard Niesner
CEO and c-founder
busuu

Chris Morton
CEO and founder
Lyst

Claire Novorol
Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer
Ada Health

Clare Jones
Chief Commercial Officer
what3words

Emily Orton
Co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer
Darktrace

Holly Jacobus
Investment Partner
Joyance Partners, New York

Husayn Kassai
CEO and co-founder
Onfido

Julia Bosch
Founder and CEO
Outfittery

Julia Hawkins
Partner
LocalGlobe

Kieran O’Neill
CEO and co-founder
Thread

Leanne Kemp
Founder & CEO
Everledger

Lina Wenner
Principal
Firstminute Capital

Luca Bocchio
Principal
Accel

Nate Lanxon (Speaker)
Editor and Tech Correspondent
Bloomberg

Tania Boler
CEO and founder
Elvie

Raph Crouan
Venture Partner
C4 Ventures

Mike Butcher (Chair)
Editor-at-large
TechCrunch