Author: azeeadmin

Correlated on Wednesday announced it raised $8.3 million in seed funding to launch its product-led growth platform for sales teams.

NextView Ventures led the round and was joined by Harrison Metal, Apollo Projects, Attentive co-founders Brian Long and Andrew Jones, Cockroach Labs co-founder Ben Darnell and Atrium’s Pete Kazanjy. The round includes funding raised last year and more recent follow-on funding from both NextView and Harrison, co-founder and CEO Tim Geisenheimer told TechCrunch.

The New York-based company was founded in 2020 by Geisenheimer and Diana Hsieh, who overlapped at TimescaleDB, and John Pena, who Geisenheimer met at Facet. In their previous roles, they saw a need to connect product data to sales tools.

While at Timescale, Geisenheimer said there were thousands of free users to talk to, and he and Hsieh built a similar version of a product-led growth platform there, but secretly wished there was something more like Correlated available.

What they saw was data across multiple tools being stored manually on spreadsheets so that actionable insights could be generated. The data would quickly become outdated. Add in that the way customers use products now is different. Traditionally, customers would not be able to use a product until they talked to the sales team. Today, customers start using products for free and either get value from it or not, but sales teams don’t have real-time data on their experience.

“Sales needs to know how customers are using the product and the right time for sales to engage based on maturity of the experience,” Geisenheimer said. “That was the missing piece of it and sales teams ended up talking to the wrong people. With Correlated, they can close more deals efficiently.”

Correlated’s technology pulls in product usage data from tools and data warehouses and connects to a management platform like Salesforce or HubSpot, stitching it together into a data graph to show how customers are using a product. For example, within a company of 200 to 500 employees, a salesperson can see the frequency employees logged in and be alerted of when the best opportunity is to make the sale.

The company has a SaaS pricing model and is already working with mid-market companies like Ally, Pulumi, ReadMe and LaunchNotes. To support its launch out of beta, Geisenheimer intends to use the new funding for hiring across functions like engineering and go-to-market. The company has 11 employees currently.

There are other product-led growth platforms out there that raised venture capital funding recently, for example, Endgame, and similarly Geisenheimer said the competition is often in-house product teams building their own systems. Correlated’s differentiator is that it has taken on that task itself and enables customers to quickly see value once they are up-and-running, he added.

David Beisel, co-founder and partner at NextView Ventures, said his firm invests in category stage companies and is currently operating out of its fourth fund, infusing business-to-business SaaS and e-commerce companies. Beisel has known Geisenheimer for nearly a decade now, having met him when NextView invested in one of Geisenheimer’s previous companies, TapCommerce.

“At the end of the day with Tim, he knows sales and the company is selling a product that has a strong founder market fit,” Beisel said. “We are moving toward a world where end-user adoption of software — not the initial engagement — is growing over time. Instead, Correlated empowers that initial sale and account expansion and that will align with where the industry is going.”

 

These past few years have seen the emergence of buy now, pay later services worldwide, with leading players raising buttloads of cash to serve an insatiable young adult population who don’t fancy credit cards or paying interest.

In what seems to be a consolidation of some sorts, fintech juggernaut Square acquired Australian buy now, pay later giant Afterpay in a mouthwatering $29 billion deal this week.

The deal is a sign of things to come for established markets like Europe and the U.S. and promising markets witnessing a proliferation of these services. For instance, in the Middle East, not less than ten startups offering BNPL services have launched within the past three years.

Tabby is one such service and clearly the most known in the region. Today, it is announcing that it has raised a $50 million Series B, valuing the company at $300 million.

Global Founders Capital and STV led the funding round, with participation from Delivery Hero and CCVA. Existing investors, including Arbor Ventures, Mubadala Investment Capital, Raed Ventures, Global Ventures, MSA Capital, VentureSouq, Outliers VC, JIMCO, and HOF, also participated.

Hosam Arab founded the company in late 2019 after he left fashion e-commerce Namshi, a company he led as CEO until a Dubai-based real estate firm acquired it. The launch of tabby as a buy now, pay later solution was to specifically target economic problems of the MENA and wider GCC region, says Arab.

Globally, BNPL services address obvious pain points around the flexibility of payments for customers and better conversion rates for merchants. However, in the Middle East, there’s another component tabby wanted to address, which was the over-dependence on cash as a payment method. It’s so deep-rooted that while running Namshi, Arab noticed that 80% of the transactions recorded by the company were cash-based, presenting unique challenges to scaling the e-commerce platform.

“With buy now, pay later, our view and hypothesis was that, in addition to the well-known benefits of buy now, pay later, we also provide an alternative for consumers to pay online digitally. And if we’re able to do that, that becomes a very interesting solution for the retailers of this market.”

The company integrates with retailers to allow their customers to shop at online and physical stores with interest-free installments. Tabby went live in early 2020. Although it had a relatively slow start because the launch coincided with the onset of the pandemic, it turned out to be in the company’s best interests, as merchants and customers began to shift online significantly. While pre-COVID e-commerce penetration levels in the GCC region stood at single digits, Arab thinks it might have increased to double digits due to the sheer number of merchants and consumers that have since embraced online commerce.

The jump in penetration is one reason tabby has scaled 20x in transaction volume since June 2020. According to the company, more than 400,000 active shoppers use its platform, and approximately 3,000 installs are recorded daily. In addition, over 2,000 global brands and small businesses, including Adidas, IKEA, SHEIN, and Marks & Spencer, use the platform.

The fast growth has allowed tabby to secure another round of capital than originally planned, Arab adds. In June, the company raised $50 million in one of the largest debt facilities by a fintech in the MENA and GCC region. The investment follows tabby’s seed and Series A rounds of $7 million and $23 million in 2020 per Crunchbase. This means tabby has received over $130 million despite launching early last year. 

But tabby isn’t the only company with such firepower in the region. Its Saudi counterpart Tamara recently raised a $110 million Series A in debt and equity financing from Checkout. Although Tamara claims Checkout acquired a minority stake, there are contrasting reports that prove otherwise.

If the latter is true, the buyout follows a line of consolidation happening in the MENA and wider GCC region. In May, Australian BNPL company Zip Co said it was acquiring Spotti, another major player in MENA, for $26 million. Afterpay also took a significant stake in Postpay’s recent $10 million investment. This series of events makes tabby the sole independent local player in the market. But how does the company see competition playing out?

“We’re seeing this level of competition globally. I don’t think that our market is any different. I think the market is big enough to handle a few players. How many players is really the question, and will that lead into further consolidation down the line potentially?” he said.

“I think what we’ve seen as well, even with Square’s acquisition of Afterpay, is that there needs to be a broader differentiation from the just plain vanilla BNPL. I think, if you continue to play in that very limited space of BNPL, the opportunities are going to be fairly challenging.”

Maybe this is why tabby strategically positioned itself with Delivery Hero instead of taking investments from an established BNPL player. The company, which owns and operates several regional food and grocery delivery companies, including Talabat, InstaShop and Hunger Station, has one of the largest customer bases in the MENA region. And the investment marks Delivery Hero’s first fintech investment in MENA.

“As we expand our offering, we’re looking at strategic partners where we see ourselves offering the same services in the future. And working with Delivery Hero that has one of the largest consumer platforms in the region, makes a lot of sense for us. Much more sense than working with, let’s say, a global BNPL player with zero presence in this market,” Arab added.

Mark Venema, the senior vice president, Strategy at Delivery Hero, acknowledges that investing in tabby is strategic. He says the multinational sees “great potential in tabby to drive the industry forward and “is proud to be supporting the company on its growth journey.”

Ahmad Alshammari, partner at co-lead investor STV, in a statement, said, “As the global BNPL market is expected to grow at ~30% CAGR over the next five years, we estimate that MENA will grow at least twice as fast, further accelerated by a rapid switch to contactless payments, e-commerce growth, and access to credit. Our doubling-down shows our strong belief that tabby is the market leader in MENA and that they will continue to drive BNPL’s growth across the region by enabling buyers and merchants alike.”

The funding will help tabby expand its product portfolio and enter new markets in the GCC area. When that happens, will we see more consolidation take place? For instance, will companies like Klarna and Affirm, which don’t have a presence in MENA and the GCC, try to acquire or buy a majority stake in tabby?

“There is a very long journey ahead of us and where we believe we’re headed and what we want to build around this business,” Arab said. “And so the short answer is no, we’re not looking for a quick exit; otherwise, we would have probably done it by now. The opportunity here for us is significantly bigger.”

Karan Bajaj, the founder and chief executive of WhiteHat Jr, is leaving the firm a year after selling the startup for $300 million to Indian edtech giant Byju’s.

In an email to employees on Wednesday, Bajaj and Byju’s founder and chief executive Byju Raveendran said the departure follows a “mutually decided” decision made at the time of acquisition of WhiteHat Jr.

Chatter about Bajaj leaving the firm has been floating around for more than a quarter. TechCrunch had asked Byju’s on April 1 if Bajaj was going to leave the firm, something India’s most valuable startup dismissed as false information at the time.

Days later, Byju’s announced it was rebranding its international business as Byju’s Future School and appointed Bajaj as its leader.

In the email today, Raveendran said, “while I wish he would’ve stayed longer, Karan is a force of nature and accustomed to making unconventional choices, as you all know, and I wish him only the best for what will surely be an exciting path ahead.”

Raveendran said Trupti Mukker, who previously oversaw the customer experience at WhiteHat Jr, will now be leading WhiteHat Jr.

WhiteHat Jr, which teaches kids coding, math, and science, is one of the fastest growing edtech startups in India. The startup has also drawn attention because of its unusual step to sue critics.

“All in all, I’m truly very excited for your path ahead and deeply grateful for allowing me to be a part of your lives for this intense, challenging but deeply satisfying period we experience together,” wrote Bajaj to employees today.

Karan Bajaj, the founder and chief executive of WhiteHat Jr, is leaving the firm a year after selling the startup for $300 million to Indian edtech giant Byju’s.

In an email to employees on Wednesday, Bajaj and Byju’s founder and chief executive Byju Raveendran said the departure follows a “mutually decided” decision made at the time of acquisition of WhiteHat Jr.

Chatter about Bajaj leaving the firm has been floating around for more than a quarter. TechCrunch had asked Byju’s on April 1 if Bajaj was going to leave the firm, something India’s most valuable startup dismissed as false information at the time.

Days later, Byju’s announced it was rebranding its international business as Byju’s Future School and appointed Bajaj as its leader.

In the email today, Raveendran said, “while I wish he would’ve stayed longer, Karan is a force of nature and accustomed to making unconventional choices, as you all know, and I wish him only the best for what will surely be an exciting path ahead.”

Raveendran said Trupti Mukker, who previously oversaw the customer experience at WhiteHat Jr, will now be leading WhiteHat Jr.

WhiteHat Jr, which teaches kids coding, math, and science, is one of the fastest growing edtech startups in India. The startup has also drawn attention because of its unusual step to sue critics.

“All in all, I’m truly very excited for your path ahead and deeply grateful for allowing me to be a part of your lives for this intense, challenging but deeply satisfying period we experience together,” wrote Bajaj to employees today.

Loship, the Vietnamese on-demand e-commerce platform that started as a reviews app, announced today it has raised $12 million in pre-Series C funding, bringing its valuation to $100 million. The round was co-led by BAce Capital, an Ant Group-backed venture firm, and the direct investment unit of Sun Hung Kai & Co Limited. 

Founded in 2017, Loship offered one-hour deliveries for a large range of products and services, including food, ride-hailing, medicine and B2B supplies. The company says it has more than 70,000 drivers and 200,000 merchants, and serves about 2 million customers in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Can Tho and Bien Hoa. 

The new round brings Loship’s total raised to $20 million. Its previous funding was a bridge round from MetaPlanet Holdings, announced in February 2021. Loship is in the process of raising a Series C, expected to close by the end of this year, and is in advanced talks with investors.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Trung Hoang Nguyen told TechCrunch that Loship raised a pre-Series C round because “there are so many investors participating in our Series C round that we find it would take a long time to completely close.” As a result, Loship decided to split the round into a pre-Series C and Series C. 

MetaPlanet Holdings returned for the pre-Series C round, which also saw participation from Wealth Well, Prism Ventures and SQ Capital Group (SCCG Ventures Asia). Individual investors included former Starbucks Vice President Mojtaba Ahkbari; FNZ Group APAC chief executive officer Tim Neville; BNP Paribas global macro sales director Ben Fitzpatrick; DASS-Inc founder and CEO Wayne Cowden; EC1 managing partners Simon Eglise; Ilwella Pty Ltd director Quentin Flannery; Prenzler Group director Jonathan Feil; and iVS CEO Milan Reinartz

Loship’s new funding will be used to expand into new cities and grow verticals like B2B deliveries for small food and beverage businesses and retail stores. As part of the round, BAce Capital founder Benny Chen, the former managing director of Ant Group India, where he invested in Paytm and Zomato, will join Loship’s board of directors. 

Co-founder and CEO Trung Hoang Nguyen said Loship has a “very clear path to profitability.” The company started out as an online review platform, before people began using it to buy and sell items through chats. 

“Back then, people used our Lozi app the same way as eBay, where they could list their products, buy from and sell to others. However, we couldn’t really know whether the transaction via Lozi was completed, especially when it was purely online chat,” Nguyen told TechCrunch. “The best way to know the exact status of the transaction was to control the delivery.” 

As a result, the company launched Loship in late 2017, starting with food deliveries and then expanding into other verticals. Nguyen explained that its platform includes “basically anything that can fit on or be transported legally by motorcycle.” This means verticals dedicated to ride-hailing, groceries, medicine, laundry, packages, flowers, beauty products and B2B supplies like ingredients and food packaging. 

The number of its verticals helps Loship differentiate from large players like Grab and Gojek, Nguyen said. He added that being a homegrown startup also gives it an advantage. 

“As the only local player, we understand our local customers on a deeper level compared to other regional ones. We are locals and we have our winning playbook. We strategically enter into new and relatively untouched markets like lower-tier cities, grow the customer base and then take things forward from there.” 

Loship’s plan until the end of 2021 is to expand into five more major cities, bringing the total number of cities it operates in to 10. Then it plans to launch in Tier 2 and 3 cities in Vietnam, before expanding regionally in Southeast Asia (Nguyen describes Laos and Cambodia as “must-win markets.”)

In a statement about the funding, Chen said, “Loship creates a strong ecosystem which adds value to small business, customers as well as riders. Under Trung’s entrepreneurship and leadership, we saw the company get much stronger during the pandemic by constantly bringing product and service innovation to its merchants and users.”

InstaCarro, a digital marketplace that connects used car sellers to dealers in Brazil, has raised $23 million in a Series B round of funding.

Notably, U.S.-based firms co-led the investment, including J Ventures, FJ Labs and Rise Capital. Spain’s All Iron Ventures and Big Sur also participated in the financing, among others. With the latest round, São Paulo-based InstaCarro has now raised more than $56 million since its 2015 inception.

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in people all over the world buying and selling things online, with cars being no exception. InstaCarro plans to use its new capital in part to capitalize on the shift and “aggressively” expand its reach within Brazil.

Until this year, the startup operated only in São Paulo. In the first half of this year, it launched operations in eight new cities, and is now also live in Campinas, Curitiba, Joinville, Santos, Brasília, Goiânia, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.

For context, the startup compares itself to Carvana in the U.S., Chehaoduo in India and Carro in Indonesia. 

CEO Luca Cafici started InstaCarro after having co-founded a car classified startup in Asia with Rocket Internet. That experience, according to Cafici, taught him that “car classifieds were not solving the problems people had when selling their own cars.”

Inspired by the early success of Auto1 in Europe, he decided to return to Latin America to build a similar model, with an exclusive initial focus on Brazil because it is the third largest car market in the world.

Today, InstaCarro is one of the largest used car buyers in Brazil, according to Cafici. Since its inception, the company has transacted more than R$1 billion, or US$193.2 million, working with over 35,000 people seeking to sell their cars to dealers. The startup has been growing 21% month over month since the start of COVID, and has been profitable since 2019. Profitability is up by nearly 10x compared to pre-pandemic levels, Cafici said.

Looking ahead, InstaCarro aims to become a “full-service” car trading platform after hearing from customers that they would be interested in buying a car directly through its platform as well.

Under its current model, the process seems straightforward. When a customer sells their car through InstaCarro, the company comes out to their home to inspect the car, taking more than 150 pictures, and then auctions the car through its network of over 4,000 dealers across Brazil. Customers receive a bid for their car in 24 hours, and InstaCarro pays out the customer the same day and handles all of the paperwork, according to Cafici.

“The auction is a key component to achieve a great price, as there is no agreement on what the true value of a used car is,” he added. “The more dealers you talk with, the higher price you get.” 

The startup also plans to use its new capital to “improve the coverage” of its home inspection model and improve the efficiency of its digital auction process, Cafici said. It, naturally, intends to also do some hiring. InstaCarro has 120 employees, and it plans to double that number by 2022.

Prior to the pandemic, the company had partnered with major supermarket chains to create inspection points. But with the onset of the pandemic, it began inspecting cars at the sellers’ homes, which has proven to help the company move and grow faster, Cafici said.

“The pandemic forced us to reinvent our business model. Before the lockdowns, most of our operations depended on central inspection sites, which we had to shut down overnight in March 2020,” he told TechCrunch. “For our customers, our dealers, and our team, last year was challenging and scary. Our team worked hard to reinvent our business model around home inspections, so that we could continue doing business in a safe way. We started going to our client’s driveway instead of having them come to an inspection site.”

Today, over 90% of the company’s customers choose to do everything online.

John Nordin of J Ventures said his firm was impressed by the way the company shifted its business model after COVID hit and is “now growing faster than ever.”

“We see digital car dealerships finding success in markets across the world, from the U.S. to the U.K., Indonesia and Mexico,” Nordin said. “The team or teams that build a digital car dealership in Brazil have a lot of work cut out for them, not only to figure out how to fit the model to Brazilian consumers, but also to handle the operational challenges of buying and selling a huge volume of cars every day. InstaCarro has the right team to tackle the challenges ahead.”

On Sunday Square announced it was gobbling up Afterpay in a deal worth $29 billion at the time of announcement. Alex followed up yesterday with more details on why the deal made sense for Square and Afterpay over here, but we wanted to ask some notable VCs what it means for the startup market.

For context, the Square deal follows a ton of money and interest flowing into the BNPL market. Just this year, VCs have invested in companies like Alma ($59.4 million, January 2021), Scalapay ($48 million, January 2021), Wisetack ($19 million, February 2021), Zilch ($80 million, April 2021) and Dividio ($30 million, June 2021).

Then there’s Klarna, which raised $639 million at a post-money valuation of $45.6 billion in June, after raising $1 billion in March at a post-money valuation of $31 billion.

There’s also interest from some major public companies. After a slow start, PayPal is aggressively pushing BNPL services with merchants that offer it as a payment option. And there are reports that Apple is building its own BNPL offering through Apple Pay.

We reached out to Commerce Ventures founder and GP Dan Rosen,  Better Tomorrow Ventures founding partner Jake Gibson, Fika Ventures partner TX Zhuo, and Matthew Harris of Bain Capital Ventures to see what they thought of the deal, as well as what it might mean for the opportunity for other BNPL companies and startups.

The main takeaways? “Buy now, pay later” may be effective at driving retail conversion, but scale matters and long-term margins look slim for BNPL startups.

Now, let’s hear from the venture community.

The venture view

Why is the BNPL market so hot?

A coalition of app-based ride-hailing and on-demand delivery companies including Lyft, Uber, Doordash and Instacart have filed a petition for a ballot initiative in Massachusetts that would keep gig economy workers classified as independent contractors as the industry takes a fight it won in California on the road.

The ballot measure proposed by the Massachusetts Coalition for Independent Work comes nearly a year after California voters approved a similar measure known as Proposition 22 that pitted labor rights advocates against gig economy companies in a costly multimillion battle.

Lyft, Uber and other members of the coalition, which also includes several local chambers of commerce in the state, said Tuesday they want the ballot question included in the November 2022 election. The question has to pass a legal review and receive enough signatures from voters for it to be included on the ballot.

“While our priority is to find a legislative solution in Massachusetts, this part of our continued efforts to advocate what the vast majority of drivers want — a flexible earning opportunity that our platform provides plus new benefits,” Lyft co-founder John Zimmer said during Lyft’s earnings call Tuesday. ” While we’re pursuing the ballot option, we’re also closely engaged with the Massachusetts State Legislature and are continuing to work with them on a potential legislative solution.”

The coalition said the proposed ballot question would grant app-based ride-hail and delivery workers new benefits such as healthcare stipends while keeping them classified as independent contractors.

Among the provisions that the coalition touted would be an earnings floor equal to 120% of the Massachusetts minimum wage ($18 per hour in 2023 from app-based platforms, before customer tips) and healthcare stipends for drivers who work at least 15 hours per week. Drivers would still keep all of their tips and be guaranteed at least $0.26 per mile to cover vehicle upkeep and gas, according to the coalition.

Labor activists are already pushing back. The Coalition to Protect Workers’ Rights, a group composed of a variety of organizations including the NAACP New England Area Conference, the Union of Minority Neighborhoods and the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Coalition, said Tuesday the ballot measure contains problematic language that will hurt workers.

The group argued there are extensive loopholes that create a subminimum wage for app-based workers and that few qualify for healthcare. It also noted that the measure would remove anti-discrimination protections, eliminates workers’ compensation rules and allows companies to cheat the state unemployment system of hundreds of millions.

While Uber, Lyft and the broader coalition lobbies for either a ballot measure or legislation, it also faces a lawsuit filed last year by the Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey who has asked the court to rule that Uber and Lyft drivers are employees under Massachusetts Wage and Hour Laws.

The AG’s Office alleges in its complaint that Uber and Lyft are unable to meet a three-part test under state law that would allow them to classify drivers as independent contractors. To qualify as an independent contractor the worker must be free from a company’s direction and control, perform services outside the usual course of the business and does similar work on their own.

Uber has been signaling since last year that it planned to push for laws similar to the Proposition 22 measure. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in November 2020 during an earnings call with analysts that the company will “more loudly advocate for laws like Prop 22.” He later added that it will be a priority of the company “to work with governments across the U.S. and the world to make this a reality.”

WhatsApp said that it would soon let users send disappearing photos and videos and this week the feature will be rolling out to everybody. Anyone using the Facebook-owned messaging app can share a photo or video in “view once” mode, allowing a single viewing before the media in question goes poof. Media shared with “view once” selected will show up as opened after the intended audience takes a peek.

The company notes that the new feature could be helpful for an array of needs that definitely aren’t sending nudes, like sharing a photo of some clothes you tried on or giving someone your wifi password. In the fine print, the company would like to remind you that just because the photos or video will vanish, that doesn’t prevent someone from taking a screenshot (and you won’t know if they do).

Facebook says the new feature is a step to give users “even more control over their privacy,” a song it’s been singing since Mark Zuckerberg first declared a new “privacy-focused vision” for the company back in 2019. Facebook has made a few gestures toward letting people wrest control of their online privacy since then, streamlining audience controls on its core app and enabling disappearing messages in WhatsApp.

The company has also been talking a big game about bringing end-to-end encryption to its full stable of messaging services, which it plans to make interoperable in the future. WhatsApp enabled end-to-end encryption by default back in 2016, but for Messenger and Instagram, the hallmark privacy measure could still be years out.

Square paid around a quarter of its present-day value for Afterpay, Alex Wilhelm notes in The Exchange. That seems like a lot. But was it too much?

“Afterpay brings global revenues, global users and a more diverse merchant network to Square,” Alex notes. “It would have had to spend to derive those assets over time. Square is willing to pay up to snag them now.”

Dana Stalder, a partner at Matrix Partners and Afterpay’s only institutional investor, describes the deal as part of a recurring “critical innovation cycle” in fintech that “determines the winners and losers” for decades to come.

“I’ve never seen a combination that has such potential to deliver extraordinary value to consumers and merchants,” says Stalder. “Even more so than eBay + PayPal.”

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week!

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

The best way to grow your career? Treat it like an app

Developers may delight in solving complex technical problems, but the problem of a career path is one many don’t think much about, Juniper Networks CTO Raj Yavatkar writes in a guest column.

He offers a solution that should appeal to developers and engineers: “​​Treat career advancement as you would a software project.”

Design expert Scott Tong outlines 4 concepts founders should consider when designing products

At Early Stage 2021, design expert Scott Tong shared some ways founders should think about design and branding.

If you can link your brand with your company’s reputation, I think it’s a really great place to start when you’re having conversations about brands. What is the first impression? What are the consistent behaviors that your brand hopes to repeat over and over? What are the memorable moments that stand out and make your brand, your reputation memorable?

You can’t afford to make poor decisions about incentive stock options

If you’re fortunate enough to be considering cashing in on vested stock options, this guest column is worth a read.

“Most companies admit they need to be better at explaining how ISOs work in general, but they can’t legally work one-on-one with employees to help them exercise and sell shares the right way,” Wealthramp’s Pam Krueger and John Chapman write.

“That’s why, when the time is right, many employees actively look for help from a qualified fiduciary financial adviser who can walk these could-be ‘options millionaires’ through various cash-in scenarios.”

Demand Curve: Questions you need to answer in your paid search ads

At some point, almost every early-stage startup will use paid search ads to connect with customers and throw down the gauntlet with their competitors.

Most of these initial attempts at paid search are unsuccessful. There’s a steep learning curve when it comes to transforming passive searchers into paying customers, and almost no one gets it right the first time.

In a comprehensive guest post, growth marketing expert Stewart Hillhouse identified “14 questions your paid search should answer to ensure you’re only paying for the highest-intent shoppers.”

Question 1? “What’s in it for me?”

5 lessons from Duolingo’s bellwether edtech IPO of the year

Duolingo’s debut last week was a bright spot, Alex Wilhelm and Natasha Mascarenhas write, with the language learning app’s stock price landing above a raised IPO range.

Alex and Natasha detail five lessons to take from Duolingo’s flotation:

1. The IPO event will bring “more sophistication” to Duolingo’s core service.
2. Roadshow investors didn’t view Duolingo as an edtech company.
3. China’s edtech crackdown will have a “neutral” impact on Duolingo.
4. In certain cases, post-COVID growth declines aren’t lethal.
5. Growth can still absolve rising losses.

Can your startup support a research-based workflow?

In the U.S. alone, yearly spending on AI R&D is expected to reach $100 billion by 2025.

But can your humble startup attract and retain users while it conducts research and product development?

“For obvious reasons, companies want to make things that matter to their customers, investors and stakeholders. Ideally, there’s a way to do both,” says João Graça, CTO and co-founder of Unbabel, an AI-powered language operations platform.

Kodiak Robotics’ founder says tight focus on autonomous trucks is working

As part of an ongoing series with transportation startup founders, Rebecca Bellan interviews Kodiak Robotics CEO and co-founder Don Burnette about why the autonomous trucking company remains private when so many of its rivals have gone public.

“I think there’s also lots of opportunity within the VCs and the private markets,” said Burnette.

“Kodiak is one of the only remaining serious AV trucking companies still in the private sector, and so I think that gives us some advantages in a lot of ways.”

How public markets can help address venture capital’s limitations

After interviewing Draper Esprit co-founder Stuart Chapman, Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim took a look at the trend of European VCs floating themselves.

Traditional VC models “can foist artificial time constraints on investors and force them to focus their deal flow into particular stages for fund-construction reasons,” Alex and Anna write for The Exchange.

“As we found out researching this piece, the public venture model highlights some of these limitations — and may be able to alleviate them in part.”

Robinhood’s CFO says it was ready to go public

After Robinhood failed to burn up the stock charts, Alex Wilhelm wondered why, exactly, the investing and trading app’s IPO didn’t live up to expectations.

He spoke to Robinhood CFO Jason Warnick, who shared a few reasons why it was time for the company to float:

… Warnick indicated that there were a few factors at play, including that Robinhood had built out its leadership team and its internal processes, and that it had worked on user-safety-related tasks and expanded the site’s use cases. All of that is true.