Year: 2021

As more people return to the office over the next few months, companies will have to work harder than ever to make sure the environment is comfortable and inviting.

One company that is out to ease the pain of millions of employees leaving the comfy confines of their homes and losing the convenience of conducting meetings in nice tops and sweatpants has just raised new funding to help it advance on its goals.

New York-based New Stand announced it has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by Brookfield Property Group, one of the largest commercial real estate owners in the United States. Existing backers Maywic, Fantail Ventures and Raga Partners also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total raised to just over $56 million since its 2015 inception.  

New Stand is a clever take on the “newsstand” concept. The startup has built a modern-looking smart vending physical product that can be set up in all sorts of different spots –– from office lobbies to floors of companies within an office building to hotels to college campuses to airports. The company’s first location was at the Union Square subway station in New York City. Over time, New Stand has combined that physical presence with an app that is designed to give people convenience in getting basics (think snacks, books and personal care items such as umbrellas or pain relievers, for example) as well as access to “location-based media.”

On top of that, it wants to partner with companies to offer its platform as a way to communicate internal news in a more fun and engaging manner. The company is making a big push in the office vertical with the launch of its New Stand at Work, a workplace amenity.

So it’s not entirely surprising that Brookfield, one of the biggest commercial landlords in the country, would want to back a company that aims to make tenants and their employees happier.

TechCrunch talked with co-founder and CEO Andrew Deitchman about the new raise and plans for the capital. He earnestly describes New Stand as a “day improvement company” that aims to make people’s days easier and more interesting.

“And we do it by making sure we have basic stuff that people need, but also curating things that we think they would like,” he said. “We have little shops or touch points that are like convenience stores, and we combine that with an app that introduces people to content, and also allows them to interact in other ways to accumulate points and rewards.”

“So what New Stand really is building is a media and technology company, using convenience points as a means of accessing people’s lives and making their days a little bit better,” Deitchman added.

New Stand is working to evolve from being primarily a consumer business to an enterprise one.

“We can take care of basic needs but also engage people in a deeper relationship,” Deitchman said. “If you’re an employer who wants to relate to an employee or if you are a landlord who wants to relate better to your tenants, we can help make that happen.”

The company is planning to use its new capital primarily toward expanding into new spaces, office and otherwise. Currently, it’s in about 20 locations. 

It’s also planning to create “new engaging services and formats” and “grow and densify its distribution.”

In line with its investment, Brookfield Properties said it plans to “further activate” its properties in New York and, ultimately beyond, with New Stand’s offering.

Ben Brown, managing partner and head of the U.S. office in Brookfield’s Real Estate group, notes that prior to this investment, Brookfield had already partnered with New Stand at its flagship property, Brookfield Place New York — both as an amenity for its tenants and as an offering in its own office space for employees.

“On both fronts, New Stand has provided an elevated experience with tangible benefits,” he told TechCrunch. “As one of the largest — if not the largest — commercial real estate owners in the country and world, we have a particular interest in investing in enterprises we ourselves use, see the value in, and can help scale over time.”

Brown said the combination of New Stand’s physical assets and media platform has given Brookfield the opportunity to boost engagement with its tenants’ employees as well as its own, something “all landlords are trying to do.”

“Helping the world’s leading companies attract, retain and motivate their workforces has long been job one for us, and that has only intensified today as firms increasingly look for ways to have the office compete with the home,” he added.

TikTok announced a ban on political advertising all the way back in 2019. So you’d be forgiven for thinking the ugly problem of democracy-denting political disinformation doesn’t apply inside its walled garden of dancing Gen Zers. But you’d be wrong.

New research by Mozilla suggests that policy loopholes and lax oversight, especially around influencer marketing, coupled with an ongoing lack of ads transparency by TikTok — which offers no publicly searchable ad archive — are making its video-sharing platform vulnerable to passing off political ads as organic content.

Mozilla says it found over a dozen instances of TikTok influencers across the political spectrum who were being paid (or otherwise compensated) by a variety of political organizations to promote partisan messages without disclosing that these posts were sponsored.

“Our research found that TikTok influencers across the political spectrum had undisclosed paid relationships with various political organizations in the U.S.,” it writes. “Several right-wing TikTok influencers appear to be funded by conservative
organizations like Turning Point USA, a tax-exempt nonprofit which has a dedicated influencer program specifically targeted at funding young conservative content creators on social media.”

Examples of TikTok influencers spreading political messaging (Image credits: Mozilla)

It similarly found evidence of left-leaning sponsored political messaging being spread without proper disclosures by TikTok influencers, noting that: “We found some evidence that progressive influencers supported by left-leaning political organizations were posting pro-Biden messages prior to the U.S. presidential election. For instance, The 99 Problems created and funded the Hype House account House of US, where influencers post political messaging.”

In the report, Th€se Are Not Po£itical Ad$: How Partisan Influencers Are Evading TikTok’s Weak Political Ad Policies, Mozilla calls out the platform for not offering adequate tools for ‘influencers’ — aka users who have amassed a large enough number of followers to become attractive targets for advertisers to target for making paid postings — to report sponsorships, pointing out that other major social media platforms (like Facebook/Instagram) do offer such tools and can flag influencer content if they’re found failing to properly report ads.

“Of course, it’s hard to know exactly how self-disclosure ad policies are being enforced across platforms but TikTok is significantly far behind Instagram and YouTube when it comes to providing tools and enacting clear, strict, and transparent policies,” Mozilla writes in the report.

Per TikTok’s rules, content creators are supposed to self-identify any paid content (typically by using the hashtag #ad or #sponsored), in keeping with U.S. Federal Trade Commission guidelines for the disclosure of paid influence.

But, as Mozilla points out, if TikTok isn’t actively monitoring or scrutinizing influencer ads (as the report suggests) it raises an obvious concern over how the platform can claim to be enforcing its “trust and safety” protocols.

Mozilla’s report also points to rumours that TikTok is testing features that will allow influencers to pay to further promote specific posts — which could dial up the ‘dark money’ political disinformation problem further, i.e. if not combined with active policing and enforcement of sponsorship disclosures.

“There do not appear to be any safeguards preventing creators from using this feature to promote paid political messages,” it warns. “It is unclear how TikTok is monitoring this content to ensure that it complies with their political ad policy.”

Another major criticism in the report is the general lack of ads transparency by TikTok vs other social platforms — with Mozilla’s report pointing out that it does not offer public, searchable ad databases as others (including Facebook/Instagram, Snap, and Google/YouTube) do. Twitter has also had a searchable ads archive since 2018.

“Mozilla believes Facebook and Google are doing a poor job on ad transparency, so the fact that TikTok can’t match even them is troubling,” the report notes.

In recommendations to TikTok (or to policymakers shaping laws aimed at preventing abuse of such platforms) Mozilla suggests that it needs to develop specific mechanisms for content creators to disclose partnerships; invest in comprehensive advertising transparency, including launching an ad database which includes paid partnerships (not just native platform ads); and update its policies and enforcement processes to cover all the ways that paid political influence can happen on its platform.

TikTok was contacted with questions on its approach to ads transparency and sponsored content. It sent this statement:

There are signs that TikTok is trying to get ahead of criticisms in the report — as Mozilla’s researcher, Becca Ricks, notes that the company has very recently (“within the past week”) created a branded content policy.

“It includes mention of a ‘branded content toggle‘ to help influencers disclose paid partnerships,” she went on, adding: “We’re currently analyzing the feature to learn more. But we’re cautiously optimistic that this could be a (small) step in the right direction, especially after we raised these issues directly with TikTok two weeks ago in the course of our research.

“That said, Mozilla’s other recommendations — and the entirety of the problems we uncovered in the research — remain. So TikTok has a long road to being truly transparent.”

Mozilla’s report is just the latest black cloud to fall over TikTok’s platform which is under pressure on a variety of fronts related to its content and wider policies, including around ad disclosures.

Last week, EU regulators kicked off what they couched as a formal “dialogue” with TikTok following a number of complaints by consumer protection groups which have accused the platform of hidden marketing, aggressive advertising techniques targeted at children and misleading and confusing contractual terms.

Other regional complaints have called out TikTok’s approach to privacy and user data. And it’s being sued in the UK over its handling of children’s data.

Concerns over weak age verification also led to an intervention by Italy’s data protection regulator earlier this year — acting on concerns for the safety of underage users. In that case TikTok was forced to remove over half a million accounts which were suspected of being used by children younger than 13.

In recent months TikTok has been trying to burnish its image with policymakers, announcing what it bills as a ‘Transparency Center’ in the U.S. last year — and another for Europe this April — saying these centers would provide a space for outside experts to access information about its content moderation and security policies.

However Mozilla said the centers suffer from a lack transparency vis-a-vis ads, writing in the report that they “do not provide detailed transparency regarding advertisements”, and specifying TikTok does not disclose specific data about “how many or which ads were rejected under TikTok’s ban on political advertisements”, for example.

TikTok’s opacity arounds ads looks to be on borrowed time as the issue of online political ads transparency is coming into sharper focus around the world.

In the U.S. a bipartisan bill to try to regulate online platforms that sell ads was introduced in 2017 — although progress stalled as the bill failed to pass ahead of the 2019 US presidential election.

In Europe lawmakers are expected to put forward a regulatory proposal this fall that will tighten ad disclosure and reporting requirements on platforms, as part of a wider package of digital reforms that aim to drive safety, transparency and accountability.

NUE Life Health, a telemedine startup in the USA, is developing what it describes as a “next-generation mental wellness solution” employing treatments such as psychedelic-assisted therapies, combined with a graph database-driven app.

The Miami-based startup has raised a $3.3m Seed round from investors including Jack Abraham (Atomic Ventures, Hims), Shervin Pishevar (Shervin Pishevar (formerly of Sherpa Ventures, UBER), Martin Varsavsky (Prelude Fertility, Overture), and Jon Oringer (Shutterstock, Pareto Holdings), James Bailey (a capstone supporter of the Multidisciplinary Assoc. for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)) and Christina Getty. All the above are part of the recent diaspora from Silicon Valley to Miami.

NUE Life Health is currently operating in California, Texas, and Florida, with plans for expansion across the United States. The platform will offer at-home ketamine therapy, considered the fastest-acting anti-depressant in the market, combined with music therapies and a data-led approach.

NUE Life says research from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and Imperial College in London on MDMA and psilocybin assisted psychotherapy appears to indicate that these are “safe alternatives” in treating mental illness.

Juan Pablo Cappello, NUE Life’s CEO said: “We view ketamine therapy and psychedelic therapy simply as catalysts for change. While helping patients reset is important, we at NUE Life are committed to helping our members find community and connection through our digital platform well after the effects of any psychedelic therapies have faded.”

NUE Life’s digital platform will leverage “Knowledge Graphs and AI to deliver personalized evidence-based therapies that approach patient care in a holistic manner,” said Demian Bellumio, co-founder and CTO of NUE Life Health. Its enterprise HIPPA-compliant health platform plans to launch in the late summer of 2021.

Christina Getty a co-founder and investor in NUE Life Health said: “With one of five women in the United States relying on an antidepressant to get through the day, and with our losing 22 veterans a day to suicide, we felt compelled to launch a different kind of mental wellness company.”

NUE Life comes as players in psychedelic medicine such as MindMed and ATAI are going public.

Bellumio added: “The mental wellness platform leverages Knowledge Graphs and AI to deliver personalized evidence-based therapies that approach patient care in a holistic manner.  Our platform also rigorously measures outcomes and improves over time,”

He said the platform creates a detailed “knowledge graph” of the patient. This allows it to understand everything about them in order to diagnose and treat their mental health condition, using an approach called integrated psychiatry. AI algorithms are then deployed to personalize recommendations, from what treatments use, what supplements to take, and what music to listen to during therapy. A proprietary music streaming service will be part of the offering.

Bellumio formerly worked on graph databases while at Accenture (where he ran the Knowledge Graph Center of Excellence for 2 years) and at NEORIS. The approach is also employed by United Healthcare, user its “Connected Healthcare” platform.

European Union lawmakers have asked tech giants to continue reporting on efforts to combat the spread of vaccine disinformation on their platforms for a further six months.

“The continuation of the monitoring programme is necessary as the vaccination campaigns throughout the EU is proceeding with a steady and increasing pace, and the upcoming months will be decisive to reach a high level of vaccination in Member States. It is key that in this important period vaccine hesitancy is not fuelled by harmful disinformation,” the Commission writes today.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TikTok and Twitter are signed up to make monthly reports as a result of being participants in the bloc’s (non-legally binding) Code of Practice on Disinformation — although, going forward, they’ll be switching to bi-monthly reporting.

Publishing the latest batch of platform reports for April, the Commission said the tech giants have shown they’re unable to police “dangerous lies” by themselves — while continuing to express dissatisfaction at the quality and granularity of the data that is being (voluntarily) provided by platforms vis-a-via how they’re combating online disinformation generally.

“These reports show how important it is to be able to effectively monitor the measures put in place by the platforms to reduce disinformation,” said Věra Jourová, the EU’s VP for values and transparency, in a statement. “We decided to extend this programme, because the amount of dangerous lies continues to flood our information space and because it will inform the creation of the new generation Code against disinformation. We need a robust monitoring programme, and clearer indicators to measure impact of actions taken by platforms. They simply cannot police themselves alone.”

Last month the Commission announced a plan to beef up the voluntary Code, saying also that it wants more players — especially from the adtech ecosystem — to sign up to help de-monitize harmful nonsense.

The Code of Practice initiative pre-dates the pandemic, kicking off in 2018 when concerns about the impact of ‘fake news’ on democratic processes and public debate were riding high in the wake of major political disinformation scandals. But the COVID-19 public health crisis accelerated concern over the issue of dangerous nonsense being amplified online, bringing it into sharper focus for lawmakers.

In the EU, lawmakers are still not planning to put regional regulation of online disinformation on a legal footing, preferring to continue with a voluntary — and what the Commission refers to as ‘co-regulatory’ — approach which encourages action and engagement from platforms vis-a-vis potentially harmful (but not illegal) content, such as offering tools for users to report problems and appeal takedowns, but without the threat of direct legal sanctions if they fail to live up to their promises.

It will have a new lever to ratchet up pressure on platforms too, though, in the form of the Digital Services Act (DSA). The regulation — which was proposed at the end of last year  — will set rules for how platforms must handle illegal content. But commissioners have suggested that those platforms which engage positively with the EU’s disinformation Code are likely to be looked upon more favorably by the regulators that will be overseeing DSA compliance.

In another statement today, Thierry Breton, the commissioner for the EU’s Internal Market, suggested the combination of the DSA and the beefed up Code will open up “a new chapter in countering disinformation in the EU”.

“At this crucial phase of the vaccination campaign, I expect platforms to step up their efforts and deliver the strengthened Code of Practice as soon possible, in line with our Guidance,” he added.

Disinformation remains a tricky topic for regulators, given that the value of online content can be highly subjective and any centralized order to remove information — no matter how stupid or ridiculous the content in question might be — risks a charge of censorship.

Removal of COVID-19-related disinformation is certainly less controversial, given clear risks to public health (such as from anti-vaccination messaging or the sale of defective PPE). But even here the Commission seems most keen to promote pro-speech measures being taken by platforms — such as to promote vaccine positive messaging and surface authoritative sources of information — noting in its press release how Facebook, for example, launched vaccine profile picture frames to encourage people to get vaccinated, and that Twitter introduced prompts appearing on users’ home timeline during World Immunisation Week in 16 countries, and held conversations on vaccines that received 5 million impressions.

In the April reports by the two companies there is more detail on actual removals carried out too.

Facebook, for example, says it removed 47,000 pieces of content in the EU for violating COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation policies, which the Commission notes is a slight decrease from the previous month.

While Twitter reported challenging 2,779 accounts, suspending 260 and removing 5,091 pieces of content globally on the COVID-19 disinformation topic in the month of April.

Google, meanwhile, reported taking action against 10,549 URLs on AdSense, which the Commission notes as a “significant increase” vs March (+1378).

But is that increase good news or bad? Increased removals of dodgy COVID-19 ads might signify better enforcement by Google — or major growth of the COVID-19 disinformation problem on its ad network.

The ongoing problem for the regulators who are trying to tread a fuzzy line on online disinformation is how to quantify any of these tech giants’ actions — and truly understand their efficacy or impact — without having standardized reporting requirements and full access to platform data.

For that, regulation would be needed, not selective self-reporting.

Climate change is intensifying across the globe, and one of the most challenging cases is Japan. In addition to lying on a major fault, the archipelago is increasingly inundated from rising sea levels that make the country more prone to disasters. A decade ago, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami dealt billions of dollars in damage, and the recovery from that tragedy remains a major international relations flashpoint.

Technology to address disasters and resilience is a key area of venture capital investment these days, and now another startup in the space is proving that there is widespread interest in this growing market.

One Concern, which builds a platform to model and simulate community resilience and response to earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters, announced this morning that it has raised $45 million from SOMPO Holdings, the venture wing of Japan’s SOMPO, one of the country’s largest insurers. The investment is part of a total $100 million, multi-year deal that will plug One Concern’s platform into the Japanese market.

Japan has been something of a gem in One Concern’s market development the past few years. The startup hired Hitoshi Akimoto as country manager for Japan in late 2019 before formally announcing that it was expanding to Japan in February 2020. In August last year, it announced a strategic partnership with SOMPO, and the insurer’s venture wing invested $15 million. Today’s deal expands that partnership further.

According to its press release, One Concern will sell its platform to six or more Japanese cities as part of the tie-up.

Previously, One Concern had raised three rounds of capital according to Crunchbase and SEC filings: a seed round in October 2015, a $33 million Series A round led by NEA in 2017, and a $37 million round also co-led by NEA. The company was founded in 2015.

United Airlines is the first official U.S. customer for Boom Supersonic, a company focused on making supersonic commercial flight a reality once again. Boom unveiled its supersonic sub-scale testing aircraft last year, and intends to start producing its Overture full-scale commercial supersonic passenger jet beginning in 2025, with a planned 2029 date for the beginning of commercial service after a few years of flight testing, design refinement and qualification.

United agreed to purchase 15 of the Overture aircraft, provided they meet United’s “safety, operating and sustainability requirements,” and the agreement also includes an option for the airline to purchase an additional 35 after that. United is obviously interested in the benefits of supersonic flight, which aims to reduce travel times by half, but it’s also looking to boost its sustainability profile with this deal with Boom.

Boom’s goal is to be the first commercial aircraft that runs on net-zero carbon footprint fuel right from day one. The company is focused on sourcing and using 100% sustainable aviation fuel, and part of the arrangement between the two companies includes United working in collaboration with the startup to develop and improve production sources for that sustainable fuel.

U.S. airlines committed jointly to a goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and as part of that they agreed to partner with government and other stakeholders to accelerate the development and commercialization of sustainable aviation fuel, so this team-up with Boom could be a key driver of those aims for United long-term.

Virgin Galactic has a new customer: The International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), which will be flying researcher, citizen scientist and STEM influencer Kellie Gerardi on an upcoming dedicated Virgin Galactic launch. Gerardi will be conducing a range of experiments on her flight, focused on researching healthcare technologies including a new biomonitor system to study the effects of spaceflights on astronauts in real time.

Gerardi has flown on multiple previous parabolic research flights, which are high-altitude aircraft flights that simulate the reduced gravity environment of space. This will be her first trip to space proper, however, and that transition exemplifies the benefits Virgin Galactic hopes to be able to offer to researchers who previously conducted their work in simulated zero-G conditions.

Image Credits: Kellie Gerardi

The biomonitor system that Gerardi will be testing was developed by Canadian startup Hexoskin along with the Canadian Space Agency, and is a wearable array of sensors dubbed ‘Astroskin’ that’s intended to provide monitoring of the impact of launch, reduced gravity, re-entry and landing for those making trips to space. Another experiment Gerardi will perform will test fluid dynamics to inform the design of humidifiers and syringes designed for use in space.

Virgin Galactic has booked similar missions previously, including a dedicated flight for scientist Alan Stern, who will be performing experiments on behalf of NASA and the Southwest Research Institute. Much of the attention on the company has focused on its space tourism flights for paying private astronauts, but the potential for commercial research is another key ingredient in its overall business mix.

WhatsApp will soon let you use the popular instant messaging app simultaneously on multiple devices, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said. The instant messaging app, used by over 2 billion users, also plans to add more options to its disappearing messages feature, top executives said.

Zuckerberg confirmed to news outlet WaBetaInfo that multi-device support will be arriving on the instant messaging service “soon.” WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said users will be able to connect up to four devices to one account.

The instant messaging service, which last year introduced the ability to set a seven-day timer on messages (disappearing mode), is now planning to expand this feature to let users share pictures and videos that can only be viewed once. “We’re also about to start rolling out ‘view once,’ so you can send content and have it disappear after the person sees it,” Zuckerberg said.

WhatsApp users will also get an option to enforce disappearing mode across the app for all new chats.

Zuckerberg and Cathcart told the news outlet — and it’s indeed the two of them talking — that these features will be available to users in public beta “in the next month or two.”

Razor Group. Branded. Thrasio. These are big names in the new wave of e-commerce companies taking the world by storm. Their business of acquiring small e-commerce brands that look promising and consolidating them is quite popular in the U.S. and Europe.

The concept has sifted through those shores to Latin America and Asia, where companies like Una Brands and Valoreo have raised significant investment to acquire and build these brands. Today, the concept has made its way into the Middle East and Africa as Opontia has closed a financing of $20 million to acquire and scale e-commerce brands across the regions.

This seed round, one of the largest in the Middle East and Africa, is a mix of debt and equity financing. While Opontia does not disclose the ratio of equity and debt, it confirmed that the majority was debt which will be used to make acquisitions.

Investors include Global Founders Capital, Presight Capital, Raed Ventures and Kingsway Capital. The angel investors that participated are also notable names in e-commerce across EMEA; they include Tushar Ahluwalia, CEO of Razor Group; Jonathan Doerr, the former CEO of Daraz and co-founder of Jumia; and Hosam Arab, the CEO of Tabby and the former CEO of Namshi.

Opontia was founded by co-CEOs Philip Johnston and Manfred Meyer in March 2021. Opontia has teams in Dubai and Riyadh, with professionals from Amazon, Zomato, Noon.com, Namshi, McKinsey and Uber Eats. In the coming months, the company plans to open in Cairo, Istanbul and Lagos.

Often when small e-commerce brands take off, the owner usually starts by being passionate about their product and customers. However, due to no fault of their own, most begin to reach a point of stagnation caused by constraints on working capital, operations, logistics and e-commerce commercial management.

Johnston and Meyer started Opontia to take these burdens off their back by convincing them to sell their brands and for Opontia to manage all parts of their operations. But the interesting thing, like most companies that roll up e-commerce brands, these owners will continuously be involved with the day-to-day activities of building the brand.

“We started Opontia to enable e-commerce entrepreneurs to realize the full potential of their brands. We want to do this both in terms of getting an exit now as well as benefiting from future growth,” Johnston said to TechCrunch. “We also want to help nurture and build the entrepreneurial e-commerce ecosystem in the Middle East and Africa. 

When Opontia acquires these brands, the owners get to share in the increase in profits over the next couple of years, Johnston added. “We do this so that they continue to see the benefit of their hard work.”

The two-month-old company is particularly interested in brands with at least $10,000 in monthly revenue and at least $5,000 in net profit per month. Per the categories of products, Opontia has a soft spot for less seasonal “all-weather” products, including kitchen products, bathroom, sport, home and living, cosmetics and toys.

There are lots of startups rolling up e-commerce brands worldwide besides Razor Group, Branded and Thrasio. But none of them has sights on the Middle East and Africa yet, with their bigger and more mature target markets.

For instance, China is the world’s largest e-commerce market, with an annual growth rate of more than 30% and annual online sales exceeding $850 billion. The second-largest market, which is the U.S, stands at over $350 billion. Brazil has annual sales reaching $36 billion, accounting for 32% of Latin America’s e-commerce market. For the Middle East and Africa, these numbers are at $30 billion and $25 billion, respectively.   

Both regions present Opontia with a huge opportunity. Still, if past happenings in other regions repeat themselves, it wouldn’t be too long before the company starts facing new competition. Every business needs to adopt what model works best in a region but the founders believe the model used by companies in other markets can also serve the Middle East and Africa, despite differences in size and how they operate.

“The market in the Middle East and Africa is currently less mature than in the West, but is growing faster than any other market in the world, with the number of sellers on marketplace growing at over 50% per year,” Meyer remarked. “The business model will work here because there have been so many amazing entrepreneurs in the Middle East coming up over the last few years. It’s a great opportunity for sellers to be able to realize some of the hard work from building their brand so that they can take a break or work on their next big thing.”  

Two years ago, it would’ve been a concern if Opontia or a similar company launched in both regions, as there just weren’t enough sellers. But with the recent and continued growth in marketplace sellers, there are now more than enough brands for Opontia to acquire. Currently, there are about 5 million third-party sellers on Amazon, with 1 million joining just last year. Opontia says that its opportunity lies in the 30,000 African and Middle East sellers in Amazon and Noon marketplaces.

Opontia adds that it will scale acquired brands across their regions and to other parts of the world. The company is in talks with more than 100 small e-commerce brands and claims to have signed “several term sheets” with some of them.

Johnston and Meyer come from two distinct e-commerce backgrounds. A former McKinsey consultant, Johnston worked on e-commerce strategy, private equity and post-merger integration at the Big 3 firm. Before that, he spent years doing venture capital, investing and banking across Southern Africa, London, New York and Singapore. On the other hand, Meyer worked as the chief marketplace officer for Lazada and CEO of Next Commerce, an e-commerce enabler in the Middle East. In addition to acquiring brands, the founders will be looking to hire talent with industry experience, who will be tasked with managing and growing these brands post-acquisition.

Meet Lightyear, a new London-based startup coming out of stealth today. The company is building a stock trading app with a focus on creating a truly commission-free app. In addition to waving account fees and trading fees, Lightyear doesn’t charge foreign exchange fees either — up to a certain point.

The two founders met when they were working at Wise — then known as TransferWise. That’s why it makes sense that Lightyear wants to stand out from the crowd with lower foreign exchange fees.

Martin Sokk, co-founder and CEO of Lightyear, worked at Wise between 2012 and 2017. He has held various roles, such as head of product, head of people and head of operations. Mihkel Aamer, Lightyear’s other co-founder and CTO, was an engineering lead at Wise between 2013 and 2019.

“Having spent my career in financial services, I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly. I believe retail investing in Europe is still very much ‘the ugly’ — we’re talking about sneaky fees, less access and complicated products remaining as the status quo,” Martin Sokk said in a statement. “We’re building something that will change that by opening up investing up to everyone, whichever global market they want to invest in and however much they want to invest.”

As a user, you can expect a mobile app that lets you buy and sell shares and ETFs. There will be 1,500 stocks and ETFs from multiple markets at launch. Customers won’t pay any account fees, trading fees and foreign exchange fees. But there will be a limit on foreign exchange fees. After £3,000 per month, users will pay 0.35% in FX fees.

The app isn’t quite ready just yet as Lightyear is opening up a waitlist today. The product should roll out at some point during the third quarter of this year.

Image Credits: Lightyear

Lightyear has raised a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round co-led by the new unnamed fund formed by Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus and Teleport co-founder Sten Tamkivi Teleport. This is their first investment through this new venture. Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn is also co-leading the found through Metaplanet. There are also several business angels participating in today’s funding round, including Checkout.com CTO Ott Kaukver, former President of Robinhood UK Wander Rutgers, and Veriff founder Kaarel Kotkas.

It’s a nice list of investors but the company will face tough competition from other startups — you’ll likely end up paying more fees if you use one of these competitors, but they’re already well established. For instance, Berlin-based stock trading app Trade Republic has recently raised $900 million. In the U.K., Freetrade has also managed to attract 600,000 users.

And yet, more importantly, Lightyear also competes with legacy brokers. Unlike in the U.S., the vast majority of retail investors still rely on traditional banks and web platforms for stock trading. There will be room for more than one company in this space. So let’s see how Lightyear executes in the coming months.