Year: 2020

Food delivery — be it ready-made restaurant meals, groceries, or anything in between — has seen a huge surge of activity in the last few weeks as people have sheltered in place to slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus. Today, one of the startups that’s built a business specifically in meal-kits in the UK is announcing funding to double down on its growth.

Gousto, a London-based meal-kit service, has closed £33 million ($41 million) in funding, money that it’s going to be using to continue investing in its technology — both in the AI engine that it says customers use to get more personalised recommendations of what to cook and eat, and in the backend tech used to optimise its own logistics and other operations — and in building more capacity to meet rising demand and expanding next-day delivery in the near future (it mainly operates on a three-day turnaround between ordering and delivery currently).

The company said that it’s currently delivering some 4 million meals to 380,000 UK households each month and is on course to cross 400 million meals delivered by 2025. It offers currently a choice of more than 50 recipes each week and gives people the option to tailor what they get, with the whole system running in an automated packing process, working out to average price per meal per person to £2.98 at its cheapest.

The funding — which was being raised before the novel coronavirus hit — is being led by Perwyn, with participation also from BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures and Joe Wicks — a hugely popular YouTube fitness coach who has built a lifestyle brand around healthy eating. This brings the total raised by Gousto to around £130 million ($162 million). It’s not disclosing its valuation with this round. It has 100 employees today and plans to expand that to 700 by 2022.

CTO Shaun Pearce said that Gousto was in high-growth mode before COVID-19, operating on forecasts of growing 70% year-on-year. That number — as with so many other delivery and specifically food-based delivery businesses right now — has spiked upward in recent weeks, not just from paying customers but also for Gousto’s own efforts to do something for the relief efforts, with food businesses like Gousto’s some of the remaining “key” businesses that have been allowed to stay open when others like restaurants have closed.

“We continue to be laser-focused on our vision to become the UK’s most-loved way to eat dinner. This additional investment is not only a validation of our track record, but it is also an endorsement of our strategic vision of the future which is rooted in investing in innovative technology to transform the way we search for, shop for, and cook our food,” said Timo Boldt, CEO and founder, in a statement. “In these challenging times, we want to continue offering people more choice and especially more convenience. We will maintain our close relationships with the government and other charitable partners to ensure those already struggling don’t see their situation worsen.”

In the last several weeks, Pearce said Gousto has also seen big changes in customer behavior from pre-existing customers, with a 28% increase in family boxes. “Those who buy from us want to buy more,” he said.

Gousto’s has also been trying to do its part in relief operations. It’s been working with the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to produce meal kits for vulnerable people, and it has donated some 6,000 meals to The Trussell Trust foodbank network and to the homeless charity, Shelter. It’s also ensuring that when its system is overcrowded that NHS employees get priority access to its ordering platform. (This is in addition to the contactless and other safety procedures that Pearce said that Gousto has put in place to minimise the risk of spreading the virus both to its workers and customers.)

Meal kit services in recent years have taken a beating in recent years, typified perhaps most publicly by Blue Apron, which saw its stock drop drastically after going public in part because of the huge amount of competition (not just from other pure-play meal kit companies but a plethora of others like Amazon that have added on meal kits to other existing business lines such as other grocery delivery).

Pearce said that Gousto’s growth and popularity and flexibility that it offers users by way of the AI engine to craft recipes they might actually want to use sets it apart from current competition, which in the UK includes HelloFresh, Mindful Chef, offerings from most major grocers, and many more.

“We continue to be impressed by Gousto and its dedication to its customers,” said Andrew Wynn, founder and managing partner at Perwyn, in a statement. “The business has adapted quickly to continue providing an essential service to so many. This reaffirms the decision we took far before COVID-19, that we’re investing in the right people and a business set for even greater success.”

Berlin-based startup Taxfix has raised a $65 million Series C funding round. Index Ventures is leading the round with Neil Rimer joining the board. The company started its fundraising process before the coronavirus process and managed to sign all contracts a few days ago.

As the name suggests, Taxfix thinks filing taxes remains broken in many countries. The company has built a mobile app that helps you through the process. There’s also a web version if you prefer.

The app asks you simple questions to maximize your tax refunds. As you start answering questions, Taxfix selects the next relevant questions and hides questions that don’t apply to your current situation. Taxfix accepts photos of your payslip so that you don’t have to file forms. It then submits your filing to the tax office.

Taxfix costs €34.99 when the app calculates at least €50 in tax returns. It’s a pretty low threshold, so most users probably pay €35 at the end of the process. Taxfix is currently live in Germany, France and Italy.

Overall, the startup has helped collect €270 million for hundreds of thousands of users. The company isn’t competing with people who have already been filing tax returns every year. Many people are just too lazy to file tax returns altogether — they represent the core audience of Taxfix.

Many software companies have built tax return apps for U.S. taxpayers. But Europe is a fragmented market when it comes to taxes. That’s why there are fewer tax return apps in Europe than in the U.S. Taxfix now plans to expand to more European countries, adapting its product to local regulation in different markets.

The company plans to expand its team by adding 100 employees on top of its team of 200 employees. Existing investors Valar Ventures, Creandum and Redalpine are also participating in today’s funding round.

View, a 13-year-old, Milpitas, Calif.-based company that makes dynamic glass designed to reduce heat and glare as well as lessen eyestrain, has cut an unknown number of employees, including at a plant in Olive Branch, Mississippi. One employee of several years, an IT manager, wrote on LinkedIn that he was laid off owing to the pandemic. Another employee of the company for the better part of decade — an engineer and project manager — wrote on LinkedIn that he has also been laid off and that the company “really cleaned house.”

This individual added that several other “long timers” had also lost their jobs.

Efforts to reach these former View employees was unsuccessful this afternoon. A request for help from the company’s head of communications also went unreturned today.

The company — which touts its glass as a way for real estate owners to attract commercial tenants as well to improve energy consumption by up to 20 percent —  is among a large stable of companies that raised enormous amounts of capital from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

The funding it was provided by outfit — $1.1 billion in early November 2018 — was notable at the time given that it included no other investors.

The round was also announced at a trying time for the Vision Fund —  roughly on month after the journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Instabul, Turkey, drawing unwanted scrutiny to both Saudi Arabia and to the Vision Fund. As many industry watchers will know, the Japanese conglomerate had raised nearly half the capital for its massive Vision Fund from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Though no one in Silicon Valley was willing to speak up at the time about the episode, SoftBank’s checks were presumably seen as radioactive in that moment to at least some founders.

View has been selling its glass to building owners and commercial real estate developers. On its site, it features a testimonial from a 14-person development firm in Utah named Cottonwood Partners, for example.

Real estate, as with transportation and fintech, has been an apparent area of interest for SoftBank, whose other portfolio companies include Katerra, a tech-driven construction company that had run into troubles well before this year, according to several reports by The Information, and Opendoor, the home-buying company that earlier today announced that it was laying off 35 percent of its employees.

Though the construction industry has been hard hit since the coronavirus hit the U.S. market and largely shut the nation down, it is still operating in some pockets, saved by the belief in some states and cities that certain projects constitute essential business.

Earlier this month, for example, crews were at work on apartment buildings just south of West Hollywood. Asked by the New York Times to explain, officials agreed the work was essential, while a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department called what was happening “uncharted territory for all of us.”

Before SoftBank came onto the scene, View had raised about $800 million over the years, including from Corning, Madrone Capital Partners, TIAA Investments and a New Zealand sovereign wealth fund.

At the time it was announced, CEO Rao Mulpuri told Bloomberg that the deal predated Khashoggi’s murder, telling the outlet, “Obviously, what happened in the region there is quite concerning. But, at the same time, we’ve now built a relationship of getting to know SoftBank over a long period of time, and we are quite comfortable moving forward with this investment.”

Heading into its current layoff, which was announced to employees yesterday, View had roughly 600 employees, according to LinkedIn.

View, a 13-year-old, Milpitas, Calif.-based company that makes dynamic glass designed to reduce heat and glare as well as lessen eyestrain, has cut an unknown number of employees, including at a plant in Olive Branch, Mississippi. One employee of several years, an IT manager, wrote on LinkedIn that he was laid off owing to the pandemic. Another employee of the company for the better part of decade — an engineer and project manager — wrote on LinkedIn that he has also been laid off and that the company “really cleaned house.”

This individual added that several other “long timers” had also lost their jobs.

Efforts to reach these former View employees was unsuccessful this afternoon. A request for help from the company’s head of communications also went unreturned today.

The company — which touts its glass as a way for real estate owners to attract commercial tenants as well to improve energy consumption by up to 20 percent —  is among a large stable of companies that raised enormous amounts of capital from SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

The funding it was provided by outfit — $1.1 billion in early November 2018 — was notable at the time given that it included no other investors.

The round was also announced at a trying time for the Vision Fund —  roughly on month after the journalist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Instabul, Turkey, drawing unwanted scrutiny to both Saudi Arabia and to the Vision Fund. As many industry watchers will know, the Japanese conglomerate had raised nearly half the capital for its massive Vision Fund from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. Though no one in Silicon Valley was willing to speak up at the time about the episode, SoftBank’s checks were presumably seen as radioactive in that moment to at least some founders.

View has been selling its glass to building owners and commercial real estate developers. On its site, it features a testimonial from a 14-person development firm in Utah named Cottonwood Partners, for example.

Real estate, as with transportation and fintech, has been an apparent area of interest for SoftBank, whose other portfolio companies include Katerra, a tech-driven construction company that had run into troubles well before this year, according to several reports by The Information, and Opendoor, the home-buying company that earlier today announced that it was laying off 35 percent of its employees.

Though the construction industry has been hard hit since the coronavirus hit the U.S. market and largely shut the nation down, it is still operating in some pockets, saved by the belief in some states and cities that certain projects constitute essential business.

Earlier this month, for example, crews were at work on apartment buildings just south of West Hollywood. Asked by the New York Times to explain, officials agreed the work was essential, while a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department called what was happening “uncharted territory for all of us.”

Before SoftBank came onto the scene, View had raised about $800 million over the years, including from Corning, Madrone Capital Partners, TIAA Investments and a New Zealand sovereign wealth fund.

At the time it was announced, CEO Rao Mulpuri told Bloomberg that the deal predated Khashoggi’s murder, telling the outlet, “Obviously, what happened in the region there is quite concerning. But, at the same time, we’ve now built a relationship of getting to know SoftBank over a long period of time, and we are quite comfortable moving forward with this investment.”

Heading into its current layoff, which was announced to employees yesterday, View had roughly 600 employees, according to LinkedIn.

Previse, a fintech focused on helping suppliers get faster payment, announced that it has raised $11 million in new funding led by Reefknot Investments and Mastercard. Returning investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Hambro Perks and Augmentum Fintech also participated.

Founded in 2016, Previse says it currently processes about 100,000 invoices a day, and its goal is to handle payments for five million suppliers within the next five years.

This round brings Previse’s total raised so far to more than $21.8 million and will be used to expand its InstantPay product to more corporate buyers around the world. Previse is taking part in Mastercard’s Start Path accelerator program. Reefknot was founded by Temasek Holdings and Kuehne + Nagel last year to invest in logistics and supply chain startups.

Paul Christensen, the founder and CEO of Previse, told TechCrunch that InstantPay allows corporate buyers to send quick payments to suppliers by using machine-learning based technology to analyze historical data and predict which invoices can be paid immediately, and which ones are potentially higher risk and need to be checked manually.

Traditional invoice payment methods used by large buyers can take up to months to complete, putting pressure on the cash flow of small- to medium-sized businesses. Christensen said this is due to a combination of corporate policy, including the terms and conditions of a sale, and the amount of administrative tasks, including inputting, checking and approving invoices, that need to be performed. InstantPay can reduce that timeframe down to a day.

Rapid payment to suppliers is even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

“The pandemic has put a huge strain on the working capital of companies, large and small, all over the world, causing a severe cash crunch. Previse’s platform can unlock working capital, meaning that the tens of thousands of SME suppliers who supply to a large corporate chain can be paid on day one, rather than having to wait weeks or months,” he said.

“This is critical now when supply chains have been disrupted, but it will also be critical when we come out the other side and there is a demand surge and supplier supplies have to fulfill large orders.”

Previse, a fintech focused on helping suppliers get faster payment, announced that it has raised $11 million in new funding led by Reefknot Investments and Mastercard. Returning investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Hambro Perks and Augmentum Fintech also participated.

Founded in 2016, Previse says it currently processes about 100,000 invoices a day, and its goal is to handle payments for five million suppliers within the next five years.

This round brings Previse’s total raised so far to more than $21.8 million and will be used to expand its InstantPay product to more corporate buyers around the world. Previse is taking part in Mastercard’s Start Path accelerator program. Reefknot was founded by Temasek Holdings and Kuehne + Nagel last year to invest in logistics and supply chain startups.

Paul Christensen, the founder and CEO of Previse, told TechCrunch that InstantPay allows corporate buyers to send quick payments to suppliers by using machine-learning based technology to analyze historical data and predict which invoices can be paid immediately, and which ones are potentially higher risk and need to be checked manually.

Traditional invoice payment methods used by large buyers can take up to months to complete, putting pressure on the cash flow of small- to medium-sized businesses. Christensen said this is due to a combination of corporate policy, including the terms and conditions of a sale, and the amount of administrative tasks, including inputting, checking and approving invoices, that need to be performed. InstantPay can reduce that timeframe down to a day.

Rapid payment to suppliers is even more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

“The pandemic has put a huge strain on the working capital of companies, large and small, all over the world, causing a severe cash crunch. Previse’s platform can unlock working capital, meaning that the tens of thousands of SME suppliers who supply to a large corporate chain can be paid on day one, rather than having to wait weeks or months,” he said.

“This is critical now when supply chains have been disrupted, but it will also be critical when we come out the other side and there is a demand surge and supplier supplies have to fulfill large orders.”

Silicon Valley mainstay the Mayfield Fund has raised $750 million across two new funds, the firm said today.

The venture capital firm said its Mayfield XVI will continue to invest in early-stage companies, while its Mayfield Select II will invest in later-stage rounds of breakout portfolio companies. One difference in the new Select fund will be its ability to invest in growth-stage companies outside of its portfolio. 

Navin Chaddha

In its blog post announcing the new funds, Mayfield managing partner Navin Chaddha recalled the timing of its fund XIII, raised in September 2008 right after the market crash.

In the wake of the crisis, Chaddha writes, Mayfield stuck to core principles. The firm decided not to dramatically increase the size of its investment vehicles (unlike some of its peers, which now hold several billion under management in current funds), and kept to a four-year fundraising cycle.

Kleiner Perkins, by contrast, went through a $600 million investment vehicle in about a year and went back out to market to raise another fund shortly thereafter.

“We stuck to our conviction of staying as an early-stage venture investor over four subsequent funds even as the venture industry was shifting. We went deeper into domains we were already experts in vs. following shiny new objects. We raised funds at a measured pace of every four years and built a team of investors who were company builders,” Chaddha wrote.

To date, Mayfield has backed a slew of companies that have gone on to successful exits, including Lyft, Marketo, ServiceMax and SolarCity — all deals that came out of the 2008 financial crisis and its subsequent funds. Current portfolio companies, like the CRISPR-focused biotech company Mammoth Biosciences and retail investments like PoshMark, show that the firm hasn’t lost its luster for picking new deals.

The secret to the firm’s continued success is its focus on what Chaddha considers to be the “craftsman model” of investors “working closely with a handful of entrepreneurs.”

“As many of our peers raised mega-funds, it took courage and discipline for us to stay focused rather than follow the crowd. We raised a similar size fund every four years and invested in thirty companies per fund. We primarily led Series A investments and were comfortable with the fact that the companies we invested in will evolve,” Chaddha wrote.

So what’s next for the venerable firm as it heads into its latest fund? Chaddha flags biology as technology; human-centered artificial intelligence; the resurgence of chip design; the future of work; privacy and security; and next-generation consumer brands as areas where Mayfield will look to commit capital.

Some big changes are underway for Medopad, a startup that builds software for medical practitioners to monitor patients remotely based on digital biomarkers — measurable indicators of the progression of illnesses, diseases or overall health that are picked up not with blood samples or in-doctor visits but using apps and wearables.

The company is rebranding to Huma and appointing its first chairman, the former UK Health Minister Alan Milburn. And alongside that, Huma is announcing the acquisition of two AI startups to expand the scope of its business: the mental health-focused BioBeats, and cardiovascular specialist Tarilian Laser Technologies (TLT).

The financial terms of the deals have not been disclosed but we understand BioBeats was around a $10 million deal, and TLT includes software assets, a number of patents, and a new hardware device that measures blood pressure continuously but in a non-invasive way that is currently awaiting FDA approval.

Both will help Huma expand its biomarker monitoring to new areas of coverage (specifically mental-health related biomarkers, and all of the indicators related to blood pressure), and extend into areas around preventative, proactive human health, alongside monitoring for chronic illnesses, diseases and other conditions.

Huma has built a strong network of partnerships to expand its reach and scope. They include working with Tencent on a trial to measure the progress of Parkinson’s just by monitoring you as you speak into the camera on your smartphone. And with pharmaceutical giant Janssen, it’s working on a way to measure Alzheimer’s based on the sound of your voice. It’s also collaborating closely with leading research hospitals like Kings and Barts in London and Johns Hopkins in the US to develop other biomarker tests.

But when it comes to building some of the early work, it would take years for Huma to build up knowledge and teams that would be on par with what BioBeats and TLT have built: hence the move to acquire.

That’s a pattern that the startup plans to follow.

Huma is currently working on closing a fundraise in the coming weeks and months that’s targeted to be one of the biggest ever in the UK health technology sector (the high water mark is Babylon Health, which last year raised $550 million).

The fundraise will be to make more acquisitions, not to run the business itself: Huma still has more money in the bank than it last raised (it announced a $25 million round led by Bayer last November), and has, according to CEO and founder Dan Vahdat, already hit its revenue target for the whole year (and it’s only April).

Part of that strong business funnel is due to the novel coronavirus. Huma announced a COVID-19 tracker at the end of March that aims to help keep hospitals from overflowing. People with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 that are not serious enough to land them in the hospital are instead monitored closely using measurements taken using smartphones, watches and other devices. If their biomarkers indicate that their illness may be taking a turn for the worse, they can subsequently be ordered to come into the hospital before the case becomes a dire one.

At a time when many health systems around the world are being stretched to breaking point with the influx of coronavirus cases, this is one way to try to triage the traffic, and that’s struck a chord in many places. Huma is due to announce its first official deals for the service in multiple countries in the coming weeks, Vahdat said.

“I’m pleased to work with Huma to help transform the health sector by developing a new understanding of the human body through digital biomarkers,” said Milburn in a statement. “We’re at the very early stages of what could be breakthroughs in how we understand health, diagnose and treat illnesses and Huma could become a true leader in this promising new area for life sciences, innovation partners and healthcare.”

Glitch is building a premium tier for power users of its user-created micro apps.

The rather eccentric developer tools platform launched in 2017, combining a coding workspace with a community of users sharing and customizing web apps. With more than 5 million apps and bots now on its platform, the team is launching paid subscriptions today, eliminating some of the barriers that plagued coders that were pushing the platform’s limits.

The $10 per month (or $96 annually) service is geared towards juicing the service for power users, allowing paid users to choose five of their apps to run continually, stripping rate limits from all of their apps, doubling the free tier disk space allotment to 400MB and quadrupling memory to 2GB. The service is all designed around giving power users something worth paying for.

Apps on the platform are bite-sized and generally pretty limited in scope, but can fulfill customized tasks that other platforms can’t. Apps exist for tracking your focus, visualizing COVID-19 data, or — on the sillier side — comparing turnip prices in Animal Crossing with your friends.

CEO Anil Dash tells TechCrunch he sees the new subscription plan as a step further towards letting its users create deeply unique and useful tools that might not have been created otherwise. Dash says the company’s offering represents “a more consumerized version of cloud computing.”

“[Glitch] eliminates all the barriers between getting your idea out in the world,” Dash says. “It’s a different view of what coders are and how much better the internet is when it’s made by people rather than the five big companies people talk about.”

The New York company already has built a Teams product in free beta, though paid plans are also on the horizon, the company says. The firm raised a $30 million Series A this past July from Tiger Global.

Last fall we launched a series of new benefits for annual and 2-year Extra Crunch members called Partner Perks. The idea with the Partner Perks program was to find products or services that could benefit our readers, and then collaborate with the makers of the products to offer up discounts to our members. Since many of our members are building companies from scratch on tight budgets, we felt that the Partner Perks program would be a great way for our community to save a few bucks on products and services that are in high demand.

Now we are making it easier for readers to find and use the Partner Perks by parking everything on a single page on the site (this one). Feel free to browse the offerings and claim the discounts. If you are already a subscriber, this is a great page to bookmark for future reference.

Here’s a full list of the Partner Perks and how to claim each deal.