Year: 2021

TrustLayer, which provides insurance brokers with risk management services via a SaaS platform, has raised $6.6 million in a seed round.

Abstract Ventures led the financing, which also included participation from Propel Venture Partners, NFP Ventures, BoxGroup and Precursor Ventures. Interestingly, the startup also got some industry validation in the way of investors. Twenty of the top 100 insurance agencies in the U.S. (as well as some of their C-suite execs) put money in the round. Those agencies include Holmes Murphy, Heffernan and M3, among others.

BrokerTech Ventures (BTV), a group consisting of 13 tech-focused insurance agencies in the U.S. and 11 “top-tier” insurance companies, also invested in TrustLayer. The funding actually marked BTV’s first investment in a cohort member of its inaugural accelerator program. 

TrustLayer co-founder and CEO John Fohr said the company was founded on the premise that verification of insurance and business credentials is a major pain point for millions of businesses. The process takes time and is not always trustworthy, which can lead to money lost in the long run.

To help solve the problem, San Francisco-based TrustLayer has used robotic process automation (RPA) to build out what it describes as an automated and secure way for companies to verify insurance. It sells its software-as-a-service either through insurance brokers or directly to the companies themselves.

TrustLayer says that companies that use its platform can automate the verification of insurance, licenses, and compliance documents of business partners such as vendors, subcontractors, suppliers, borrowers, tenants, ride-sharing and franchisees. (By verification of insurance, we mean confirming that a company is actually insured and not just pretending to be.)

Recent traction includes companies working in the construction, property management, sports and hospitality industries. Insurance fraud is a real and expensive concern for companies working in those spaces, according to Fohr, who noted that the seed round was “heavily oversubscribed.”

TrustLayer’s long-term goal is to work with dozens of the largest brokers and carriers in the U.S. to build out a digital, real-time proof of insurance solution for businesses of all sizes, across all industries. 

“The best analogy to describe what we do is calling us the Carta for insurance,” Fohr told TechCrunch. “We’re automating a process that is hugely painful and manual to help our carrier and broker partners provide better services to their customers and help companies reduce risk and make sure their business partners  have the right coverage.”

David Mort, partner at Propel Venture Partners, said that nearly every business relationship requires one or both parties to prove they have the insurance required for engagement. 

TrustLayer comes in by “attacking a messy, data-rich, and unstructured problem within the insurance industry that is a major friction source for commerce.”

Mort appreciates that TrustLayer is tackling the problem not by becoming the insurance broker, but by working with the incumbents as a software solution.

Propel is no stranger to investing in fintech, having backed the likes of Coinbase, DocuSign, Guideline and Hippo. Mort acknowledges that much of the innovation in fintech has historically focused on the banking industry while the insurance industry has been slower to innovate.

“The most interesting opportunities we see are around modernizing legacy infrastructure, reducing friction, and improving the customer experience,” he told TechCrunch. “More generally, insurtech companies are well-positioned for this market environment, where recurring revenue (or policies in this case) is valued, and more people are at home shopping for digital financial services. The need for insurance is only increasing.”

Meanwhile, Ellen Willadsen, chief innovation officer at Holmes Murphy and executive sponsor of BrokerTech Ventures, noted that TrustLayer’s expanded digital proof of coverage software “is seeing high adoption” among member agencies.

TrustLayer will use its new capital to (naturally) some hiring of sales, marketing and engineering staff. It also plans to team up with The Institutes RiskStream Collaborative (considered to be one of the largest blockchain insurance consortiums in the U.S.) and insurance carriers to build out its digital proof of insurance offering.

Per a recent TechCrunch data analysis and some external data work on the insurtech venture capital market, it appears that private insurtech investment is matching the attention public investors are also giving the sector.

Trades in the infamous Reddit-basket of stocks and trades are taking a pounding today, with GameStop down 52.7%, AMC Entertainment off 42.7%, the silver-squeeze flopping and more. CNBC has a longer list if you want to feast your eyes on the carnage.

What a surprise that the thing that was always going to happen, has happened.

While it was quite honestly entertaining as hell to watch WallStreetBets go from cult-classic to internet hero overnight, tempting scads of new traders (check out how much Public has been growing while Robinhood raced to the top of app store charts) to try and take on the professional investing world, this was always going to be the result. Always.

Why? Because the companies that Reddit’s legion of traders decided to pump were ultimately not selected for anything other than price plasticity. GameStop was picked because traders thought they could punish shorts, remember, not because it was going to bring a revolution to video game distribution. Like what Steam did precisely 8 billion years ago.

Let’s make our point by way of comparison.

Tesla shares are up 3.7% today, as are the broader American stock markets. Tesla is up not because it is fairly valued, per se, but at least it’s a company that’s growing, makes money and has a good argument for what the future should look like. It’s hard to kill an idea based on something durable.

Compare the Tesla situation to GameStop. There’s little relation.

The brick-and-mortar game sales company has lots more room to fall. So does the movie theater chain suffering from the pandemic. But the original trader is still comfortably up. DeepFuckingValue, the Reddit trading icon, was still up 2,800% yesterday. That’s probably lower today, if he didn’t sell.

What worries me is all these dorks are getting torched today, after promising to stay in the trade yesterday when DeepFuckingValue updated the world on his epic trade:

Those folks probably weren’t up 2,800%.

Most of the people who are going to take a bath on the Reddit trades are regular folks: my friends, your siblings. Whereas professional money is probably making money on the way up and down.

This is how these things go. Gravity is real, and no matter how many times you shout stonks in the mirror, crying, while clutching your smartphone, it’s hard to keep a bag of shit in the air forever.

In 2021 maybe we don’t get 15 minutes of fame. There are so many different social platforms the very idea of 15 minutes of fame is outmoded; there are more slots than ever for everyone to build an audience. Perhaps instead the thing that the common person really wants is their 15 minutes of wealth. That feeling of safety and security and having made it that modern society so reserves for the wealthy few.

Which the stock market gave to a bunch of folks last week. And is taking away this week.

Andy Warhol is generally credited with the 15 minutes of fame concept. Today, however, our own Ron Miller came up with the variation, and was kind enough to let me use it for this post.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced today that Amazon will be required to pay $61.7 million to settle charges that it withheld some customer tips from its Amazon Flex drivers over a two and half year period. According to the complaint against Amazon and its subsidiary Amazon Logistics, the company had advertised that it paid 100% of tips to drivers. But in reality, Amazon used the customer tips to cover the difference after it lowered the hourly rate — a change it didn’t inform drivers about, the complaint says.

The FTC also alleged that Amazon didn’t stop this behavior until it became aware of the FTC investigation in 2019.

The complaint (PDF) specifically has to do with the Amazon Flex service, launched in 2015, which allowed anyone to sign up to deliver Amazon packages to customers. These Flx drivers were paid an hourly rate for those deliveries and could also receive customer tips.

In the FAQ section of the Amazon Flex app, the company had promised drivers they would receive 100% of their tips, saying: “For Prime Now, AmazonFresh, and store deliveries, the customer can choose to tip. You will receive 100% of the tips you earn while delivering with Amazon Flex.” An earlier version of this document had also stated that Amazon “will pass to you 100% of tips you earn,” back in May 2018.

Amazon also promoted the tips benefits in ads recruiting drivers, where the company offered a rate of up to $18-25 per hour and the ability to “make more” via tips. And when drivers signed up for the Amazon Flex service, its terms also promised 100% of tips, the FTC complaint explains.

Despite the language being used, when Flex drivers used the app to accept their delivery gigs, they would be assigns delivery “blocks,” only some of which were tips-eligible. Initially, this included Prime Now but later expanded to include AmazonFresh and Amazon Restaurants. Those that weren’t eligible for tips were paid a flat rate. Meanwhile, customers using the Amazon app were encouraged to tip drivers through the app, which noted that “cash is not accepted upon delivery.”

Initially, Amazon from 2015 to 2016 paid drivers $18 per hour plus 100% of tips, as it claimed. But in 2016, it made changes to the program to adopt “variable base pay,” which ran over the course of two and a half years. During this time, Amazon would reduce its own contribution to drivers’ pay to an algorithmically set, internal “base rate” using data it collected about average tips in the area. This base rate was often below the $18-$25 advertised rate. Then, instead of paying out 100% of tips to drivers, Amazon treated the bottom of the range as a guaranteed minimum and used drivers’ tips to meet that minimum, the FTC says.

When Amazon made these changes, it didn’t ask for drivers’ consent or otherwise inform them. It also had internal discussions where the company tried to decide what level of detail about earnings to actually show to drivers, knowing that the changes would reduce their earnings.

Drivers began to realize they were no longer receive 100% of tips and hundreds complained both to the company and publicly on social media. When reporters asked Amazon to respond to these complaints, the company continued to say that it paid 100% of tips — even as it internally acknowledged the situation represented “a huge PR risk to Amazon” and described it as a “reputation tinderbox.”

The FTC says it issued a civil investigative demand to Amazon on May 23, 2019, and only afterwards — on August 22, 2019 — did Amazon announce an “updated earnings experience” to drivers, which was similar to the original compensation. In other words, it appears the investigation forced Amazon to stop the deceptive practice.

The FTC settlement includes a $61.7 million fine, which is the full amount of money withheld from drivers, the FTC says. This will be used to compensate drivers who can sign up to receive updates on the refund status here: https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USFTC/subscriber/new?topic_id=USFTC_155.

“Rather than passing along 100 percent of customers’ tips to drivers, as it had promised to do, Amazon used the money itself,” said Daniel Kaufman, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement. “Our action today returns to drivers the tens of millions of dollars in tips that Amazon misappropriated, and requires Amazon to get drivers’ permission before changing its treatment of tips in the future.”

In addition to the fine, the settlement also prohibits Amazon from making further changes to how drivers’ tips are used as compensation without first obtaining their “express informed consent.”

For Amazon, however, the FTC fine is barely a slap on the hand, given the scale of its business. The company in the third quarter of 2020 pulled in $96.15 billion in revenue and earnings of $12.37 per share. It said revenue would climb to $112-121 billion in Q4, or annual growth of 28%-38%.

Fines like this, then, become just a cost of doing business and not a disincentive on unfair practices, as intended.

Amazon is not the only delivery business that has received complaints over messing with driver pay. Instacart also found itself in hot water over its own tipping debacle in 2019, which included a class action lawsuit over also taking driver tips to pay wages. Other companies, like DoorDash, Shipt and more, have also faced complaints and even lawsuits over tips.

At the core of these issues is the fundamental problem of the shaky economics of same-day and online grocery delivery businesses, with small margin items and additional costs associated with picking, labor and cold food storage. These costs require businesses operating in this space to charge premium subscriptions and delivery fees, and/or to mark up the cost of the items over in-store prices in order to make money. But even still, they often feel the need to tap into another income stream by taking driver tips.

Tips, of course, are never given to sustain a business — they’re meant to benefit an individual worker.

Reached for comment, Amazon says it disagreed with the FTC complaint but glad it’s over.

“While we disagree that the historical way we reported pay to drivers was unclear, we added additional clarity in 2019 and are pleased to put this matter behind us,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “Amazon Flex delivery partners play an important role in serving customers every day, which is why they earn among the best in the industry at over $25 per hour on average.”

Udemy, which launched more than a decade ago, has sold courses to 50 million students through its digital learning platform. But new president Greg Brown sees “exponential growth” opportunities in doubling down on its enterprise arm, which currently has over 7,000 customers.

In a phone interview, Brown said Udemy for Business, the company’s corporate learning arm, “blew through $100 million ARR,” a metric it announced in October.

“One hundred million dollars was very conservative,” Brown said. While he wouldn’t share the latest metrics, he hinted that revenue had grown around 90%, which would put Udemy for Business’ new trajectory around $200 million in ARR. That’s a solid bump, considering it took five years for the arm to hit $100 million ARR, and a much smaller time frame to essentially double it.

Udemy declined to confirm the new ARR total, instead opting to share a slew of other growth metrics to indicate growth, including the fact that it has seen more than 480 million course enrollments and owns over 155,000 courses. The startup said that it has 40 million students, but in 2019 the business said it had 50 million users, based on a previous interview. When asked about the user drop, Udemy said that “we’ve made some changes to our metrics as we grow as a company to better reflect user engagement.”

“The opportunity that the company sees has really forced us to reallocate resources and strategy,” Brown said. While Udemy will “continue to invest” in its direct-to-consumer business, it sees bigger potential in its enterprise product.

Car insurance startup MetroMile said it has fixed a security flaw on its website that allowed a hacker to obtain driver’s license numbers.

The San Francisco-based insurance startup disclosed the security breach in its latest 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

MetroMile said a bug in the quote form and application process on the company’s website allowed the hacker to “obtain personal information of certain individuals, including individuals’ driver’s license numbers.” It’s not clear exactly how the form allowed the hacker to obtain driver’s license numbers or how many individuals had their driver’s license numbers obtained.

The disclosure added: “Metromile immediately took steps to contain and remediate the issue, including by releasing software fixes, notified its insurance carrier, and has continued its ongoing operations. Metromile is working diligently with security experts and legal counsel to ascertain how the incident occurred, identify additional containment and remediation measures, and notify affected individuals, law enforcement, and regulatory bodies, as appropriate.”

Rick Chen, a spokesperson for MetroMile, said that the company has so far confirmed that driver’s license numbers were accessed, but that the “investigation is still ongoing.”

MetroMile has not disclosed the security incident on its website or its social channels. Chen said the company plans to notify affected individuals of the incident.

News of the security incident landed as the company confirmed a $50 million investment from former Uber executive Ryan Graves, who will also join the company’s board. It comes just weeks after the auto insurance startup announced it was planning to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company — or SPAC — in a $1.3 billion deal.

There are some additions to the TechCrunch team that I’m happy to announce.

First, Kirsten Korosec, who has been with us for more than two years, was promoted to Transportation Editor. Kirsten has done amazing work, helping to elevate our foothold in the transportation space and making our Mobility events some of the most successful we’ve produced. This means that not only will she continue to hunt for scoops, but she’ll also be bringing on some fresh voices in transportation. Look for them on TechCrunch and Extra Crunch soon.

We’re also happy to say that Jon Shieber will become our new Climate Editor, focused on the startups and funding being put behind renewables, environmental technology and green businesses. More on this soon.

Next, we’d like to welcome some new contract writers who will be joining our small but mighty team of reporters covering the startup ecosystem:

• Tage Kene-Okafor, who is based in Lagos, will be covering Western Africa for us. He comes to us from TechPoint Africa where he covered startups and venture capital.
• Mary Ann Azevedo will be covering startups and investing. She is coming to us from FinLedger, where she was charged with getting the fintech-focused site launched. Before that, she worked for our very own Alex Wilhelm at Crunchbase News.
• Sophie Burkholder will be covering startups from health and biotech to enterprise.

Rounding out our fresh lineup of writers are some other contributors. Mark Harris, who has already broken several great scoops for us, Leigh Cuen who will be covering crypto and Marcella McCarthy, who will be all over the startup scene in Miami, as well as contribute to Extra Crunch.

Finally, we are welcoming back Drew Olanoff who has taken on our community-building project, something we’re extremely excited about. Drew will help us to identify the global TechCrunch community and will serve as the connective tissue between Extra Crunch and TechCrunch, as well as our events, like Disrupt, where all of our content comes alive.

It’s going to be a big year at TechCrunch and we’re excited to have them all a part of the team. Welcome them aboard if you get a chance.

An “anonymously”-led startup called Millions has raised a $3 million seed round for its fintech company that’s currently giving away free money through its Twitter account. The concept, inspired by the likes of YouTuber David Dobrik, is partly aimed at attracting attention for the new company but is also setting the stage for a forthcoming business model of sorts, where brands could participate in giveaways more directly.

The idea of brand and cash giveaways is not a new one, of course. Outside of social media personalities and traditional sweepstakes like Publishers Clearing House, the mobile game HQ Trivia more recently had tried to integrate brand giveaways in an attempt to draw players to its live trivia games. But HQ Trivia couldn’t maintain an audience after the novelty wore off and eventually shut down, after also dealing with internal strife and tragedy.

Millions has a different idea. Instead of weekly live games, users follow the Twitter account @millions, which either does a drop of some sort or gives away money to its followers every month. This month, for example, the account is launching its “million dollar sweepstakes.” Users follow @millions on Twitter, visit Millions.app, the enter 6 numbers. If all 6 match, they win $1 million*. (See details below). 

Next month, the startup will launch a game called “are you my number neighbor?” where users will enter their phone number on a website, and if it’s just a digit off from the phone number on the site, the user wins $100,000.

These stunts — apparently just giving away investor cash — are meant to raise brand awareness and acquire customers.

Image Credits: Millions/MyCard, Inc.

“If you think about customer acquisition costs — and this is a little bit controversial — people just give money to Facebook or Instagram, or Apple or Google. The money goes straight to a social network and not the people,” explained a Millions co-founder, who asked to remain anonymous. “They’re trying to get the people, but they’re not giving the people the money. The Millions way is really giving the people the money. We don’t need to run advertisements. We’re giving the money directly to the people, and hopefully, they follow our ecosystem, subscribe for updates, and they’ll see the future launch,” they said.

Ultimately, the larger plan for Millions is to transfer the customers it acquires through the games to the fintech play, which will also have something to do with winning money.

TechCrunch agreed to not reveal the co-founders’ name during a discussion to learn what the startup was up to, as they said they wanted to keep the game playful and anonymous for the time being. But we’re not breaking any agreements by pointing to what’s easy-to-access, publicly available data. We found the company, Mycard Inc. is referenced on the Millions website’s Terms as the legal entity behind this endeavour. That same company is on this SEC filing for a $3 million fundraise in December 2020. The filing lists two names: Kieran and Rory O’Reilly. These are the same names as the brothers behind gifs.com.

Investors in the startup’s seed round included Giant Ventures, 8VC, Supernode, Supernode, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Italic CEO Jeremy Cai, Allbirds co-founder and CEO Joey Zwillinger, Casper co-founders Neil Parikh and Luke Sherwin, MSCHF head of strategy and growth Daniel Greenberg, CEO of Deel Alex Bouaziz, CEO of Hellosaurus James Ruben, CEO of Beek Pamela Valdes, PM at Facebook (for the Payments Gateway team) Luis Vargas, co-founder of Block Renovations Koda Want, CEO of Nebula Genomics Kamal Obbad, plus some of the co-founders from Warby Parker and Harry’s, and other fintech angels.

A few investors also agreed to vouch for Millions on the record, and hinted at the MyCard product to come.

“This company is creating delight from what would otherwise be the mundane, everyday necessity of swiping a credit card. We invested in Millions because they will spark joy in people’s lives, and think the traditional points model of accumulating hard-to-use airline and hotel points is tired, and ripe for reinvention,” said Allbirds co-founder and CEO Joey Zwillinger.

“Millions is building an incredibly loyal audience through an unparalleled, engaging customer experience and the $1M giveaway is only the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come. These are some of the strongest founders I know and have truly captured lightning in a bottle,” said Italic CEO Jeremy Cai.

“I invested in Millions because the trend is clear – people love winning money.It’s clear that there’s something going on here. Millions is dedicated to giving away money in crazy ways and I’m happy to be involved,” said MSCHF head of strategy and growth, Daniel Greenberg.

Millions’ arrival, however, comes at a time when people are desperate for money due to the economic downturn driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of government assistance. The pandemic has exacerbated the class divide, leading people (including the Pope) to question whether capitalism has failed. It has fueled the “eat the rich” ethos behind the GameStop frenzy. And this situation has added a darker layer to otherwise do-gooder activities, like Dobrick’s stunts or Lexy Kadey’s TikTok “Venmo Challenges,” where she tips waitstaff and fast food workers hundreds or even a thousand dollars and films them breaking down in relief.

Millions’ co-founder acknowledges we’re in a time of need, but also argues that’s why the product makes sense.

“If you think about what’s going on in the world right now — with the pandemic and the 99% versus the 1% — people are looking for a) hope and b) money,” they said. “If you can combine a product that has two of those things, you’re giving people fun, excitement, and something to look forward to…I think that’s really inspiring.”

*Note: Like many sweepstakes, you’re playing for a “chance” to win. But in this case, $10,000 is a guaranteed Grand Prize win for one person. The Millions website lists the digital promotions company Realtime Media as being involved in helping manage the game. However, the insurance provider that insures the program is actually HCC.  

If you’ve ever applied for a mortgage, you know it’s one of the most painful processes out there. Keeping up with payments and dealing with customer service over the course of the loan is no picnic either.

So it’s no surprise that big bucks are being poured into the space with the goal of making the process easier, more digital and more transparent.

To that end, Valon, a tech-enabled mortgage servicer, announced this morning it has raised $50 million in a Series A round of funding — which is large for its stage even by today’s standards.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round for the New York-based company formerly known as Peach Street. Returning backers Jefferies Financial Group, New Residential Investment Corporation – an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC – and 166 2nd LLC also participated in the financing.

Valon previously raised $3.2 million from seed investors such as serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan’s Alley Corp, Soros, Kairos, and Zigg Capital. 

Andrew Wang, Eric Chiang and Jon Hsu founded Valon in June 2019 with the mission of breaking up what it sees as “a monopoly in the market,” with “the largest mortgage servicing software company” (software giant Black Knight) controlling more than half of all U.S. residential loans.

“We’re on the cusp of a mortgage foreclosure crisis comparable to 2008, and the majority of homeowners struggling to make their loan payments are unaware of their options,” Valon CEO Wang said. “This stranglehold has driven servicing costs up nearly 250% in the past decade, and the fees are passed on directly to the borrower.”

Concurrent with the raise, Valon recently got the green light from Fannie Mae to service its government sponsored home loans. (For the unacquainted, servicing loans means doing things like collecting payments on behalf of a lender). The approval will only continue to fuel Valon’s rapid growth, according to Wang.

“We went from no contracts committed to $10 billion in mortgages committed to be serviced in one year,” he told TechCrunch. 

Valon operates in 49 states, and expects to add New York this year. 

As a former investor in mortgage servicing space, Wang was frustrated by “the lack of service” provided by other servicers. So he teamed up with Chiang and Hsu, who had prior product and engineering experience at Google and Twilio, to launch Valon.

The company’s cloud-native platform aims to deliver what it describes as a borrower-oriented experience. Lenders also can request access to real-time API data feeds to view performance of their borrowers and reconcile transaction data. 

Unlike mortgage originators, which lend money to the borrower, a mortgage servicer interfaces with the borrower for the duration of their loan – and that can be anywhere from 15 to 30 years. 

“This includes things like collecting payments on behalf of the lender and providing assistance and guidance to the borrower in moments of stress,” Wang said. “Traditional mortgage servicers use antiquated technology and provide poor service to borrowers. Valon looks to change that dynamic by providing transparency and full self-service capabilities to homeowners.”

The company also claims that its technology has the potential to reduce mortgage servicing costs by up to 50% by vertically integrating the entire process. Its platform is built on Google Cloud with security as a “first-principle” with features such as default encryption and intrusion detection, the company said.

Millions of Americans stopped paying their mortgages in 2020 due to the economic strain of the coronavirus pandemic. This led to requests for forbearance (postponement of payments) and foreclosure moratoriums.

“The pandemic highlighted the stress in the market and greatly accelerated the need for a new age mortgage servicer,” Wang said. “Homeowners faced a great deal of financial stress and had difficulty getting the right option and assistance from existing servicers due to their antiquated technology and inability to process requests… In 2021 we will see forbearance and foreclosure leniency come to an end and this need will be even more acute.”

Angela Strange, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz who joined Valon’s board in mid-2020, says Valon has built a mobile-first mortgage servicer from the ground up.

“Homeowners are faced with clumsy websites, call centers, and often misinformation,” she said in a written statement. “In Valon, they have a trusted software driven advisor who can provide clear, transparent, regulatory compliant information in good times and bad – without needing to pick up the phone.”

The Fannie Mae approval only serves as further validation of the platform the team has created, she added.

Valon plans to use its new capital to triple headcount to about 100 by year’s end as well as to acquire more mortgage servicing rights (MSR) contracts to service.

Atlassian has made it clear for some time that it’s all in on the cloud, but now it’s official. The company stopped selling new on-prem licenses as of yesterday. Perhaps to take away the sting of that move for large organizations, today it announced a new all-inclusive enterprise pricing tier.

Atlassian chief revenue officer Cameron Deatsch says that previously the company had offered a free tier and then standard and premium level paid tiers. “And now this cloud Enterprise Edition will be our highest tier, and what this will allow is for the most complex deployments, the largest customers who need unlimited scale, the customers that have all the security and regulatory requirements, data residency, you name it, — that is what we’re launching starting [today],” Deatsch told me.

What the enterprise tier delivers is unlimited instances across the Atlassian product line for each enterprise customer. That means a big company with multiple divisions could, for instance, have 20 instances of Jira and Trello deployed with one for each division and a central management console, while paying a single price regardless of how much they use.

While the company is supporting existing on-prem customers until 2024, the idea is to now move them to the cloud and this offering should help. One thing we have clearly seen is that the pandemic has accelerated the move to the cloud by companies of every size, and this should encourage the company’s largest customers to make the move.

“The reality is, the demand was there, which was great to see, but we actually had this huge pipeline of our largest customers, basically trying to build their plan over the next couple of years to get to our cloud. The general availability of our Enterprise Edition is going to accelerate that even more,” he said.

It’s a move the company has been working towards for some time, but it really began to take shape when they shifted their operations to AWS and rebuilt the entire stack as a set of microservices beginning in 2016. This was the first step towards being able to handle the increased kinds of workloads an enterprise tier would require.

The company reported earnings at the end of last month with revenue of $501.4 million up 23% YoY with over 11,000 net new subscribers, a record for the company. The new enterprise tier won’t help with new customer volume, but it should help with overall revenue as more customers look for cloud solutions and pricing that meets their needs.

On the heels of private companies Robinhood and Databricks each raising $1 billion or more yesterday, Bumble is out with a new IPO filing this morning indicating that it wants to raise ten figures as well.

The relationship-finding service where women reach out first will go public on the heels of strong public debuts in December by companies like Airbnb, DoorDash and C3.ai and Qualtrics and Poshmark lighting the way in January.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

But at a range of $28 to $30 per share, is Bumble aiming high or low in its valuation and resulting multiples? (For more, check out our first-look at Bumble’s results here.)

Annoyingly, it’s a little tricky to figure out, as the company’s ownership structure and results are messy thanks to a majority-sale to Blackstone back in 2019. So this won’t be entirely clean or simple.

But we’ll get through it. Here’s what we want to know:

• Simple and diluted valuations for Bumble at its current IPO price range
• What sort of multiples Bumble expects public investors to pay for its shares
• How those stack up compared to Match Group’s own numbers
• And, finally, what the Bumble IPO could mean for dating and relationship-focused startups; could this IPO prove that there is lucrative space in the market for more dating products?

So let’s get to work, starting with Bumble’s valuation.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a very valuable bee?

Bumble’s simple valuation is just that to calculate, a doddle. At $28 to $30 per share, and Bumble noting that it expects to have 108,384,634 shares outstanding after its IPO, including its full underwriters’ option, the company would be worth $3.03 billion to to $3.25 billion.

But that’s actually a bit too simple. Bumble’s share count is actually quite a lot higher. For example, if we assume the “exchange of all Common Units held by the Pre-IPO Common Unitholders,” then the company’s share count rises to 189,548,952. At that share count, Bumble is worth $5.31 billion to $5.69 billion. That’s a lot more!

Now things get actually tricky. Our last share count did not take into its confines “any shares of Class A common stock issuable in exchange for as-converted Incentive Units or upon settlement of certain other interests.” So, what are those?