Blueground, the startup providing turnkey flexible rental apartments, has raised $20 million in a round led by Athens-based VentureFriends, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, Dubai’s Jabbar Internet Group, and serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan. Ryan – who helped found MongoDB, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and others – will also join Blueground’s Board of Directors.

It’s no secret that remote work and frequent business travel are becoming more and more commonplace. Now, as a result, a growing number of people are shying away from lengthy rental or lease commitments and are instead turning to companies like Blueground for more flexible short-term solutions.

Blueground is trying to be the go-to option for individuals moving or traveling to a city for as little as a month, or any duration longer. Similar to flexible office space providers, Blueground partners with major property owners to sign long-term leases for units it then furnishes and rents out with more flexible terms.

Users can rent listings for anywhere between one month to five years and rates are set on a monthly basis, which can often lead to more favorable prices over medium-to-long-term stays relative to the short-term pricing structures commonly used by hospitality companies.

Filling hospitality gaps and easing rental friction

CEO Alex Chatzieleftheriou is intimately familiar with the value flexible leasing can unlock. Before founding Blueground, Chatzieleftheriou worked as a consultant for McKinsey, where he was frequently sent off to projects in far-off cities for months at a time – living in 15 different cities over just seven years.

However, no matter how much time Alex logged in hotels, he constantly felt the frustration and mental strain of not having a stable personal living arrangement.

“I spent so much time in hotels but they never really resembled a home. They didn’t have enough space or enough privacy,” Chatzieleftheriou told TechCrunch. “But renting an apartment can be a huge pain in these cities. They can be hard to find, they usually have a minimum rental term of a year or more, and you usually have to deal with filling out paperwork and buying furniture.” 

Knowing there were thousands of people at his company alone dealing with the same frustrations, Alex launched what would become Blueground, beginning with a handful of apartments in his home city of Athens, Greece.

Chatzieleftheriou and his team structured the platform to make the rental process as seamless as possible for the needs of flexible renters like himself. Through a quick plug-and-play checkout flow – more similar to the booking process for a hotel or Airbnb – renters can lock down an apartment without having to deal with the painful, costly and time-consuming traditional rental process. Tenants are also able to switch to any other Blueground listing during their rental period if their preferences change or if they want to explore different locations during their stay.

Every Blueground listing also comes completely furnished by the company’s design team so renters don’t have to deal with buying, transporting – and eventually selling – furniture. And each apartment comes outfitted with digital and connected infrastructure so that tenants can monitor their apartment and arrange maintenance, housekeeping and other services directly through Blueground’s mobile app. 

The value proposition is also fairly straight-forward for the landlords Blueground partners with, as they avoid costs related to marketing and coordinating with fragmented brokers to fill open units, while also benefitting from steady rental payments, tenant vetting and free property management. 

The offering certainly seems to be compelling for renters – While Chatzieleftheriou initially focused on serving business travelers and those moving for work, he quickly realized the market for flexible leasing was in fact much bigger. Blueground’s sales have tripled over the past three years and after its expansion in the US last year, Blueground now hosts 1,700 listings in ten cities across three continents.

“The trend of flexible and seamless real estate is bigger and is happening everywhere,” Chatzieleftheriou said. “A lot of people throughout the real estate sector really want this seamless, turnkey, furnished solution.”

To date, Blueground has raised a total of $28 million and plans to use funds from the latest round for additional hiring and to help the company reach its goal of growing its portfolio to 50,000 units over the next five years.

Blueground, the startup providing turnkey flexible rental apartments, has raised $20 million in a round led by Athens-based VentureFriends, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, Dubai’s Jabbar Internet Group, and serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan. Ryan – who helped found MongoDB, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and others – will also join Blueground’s Board of Directors.

It’s no secret that remote work and frequent business travel are becoming more and more commonplace. Now, as a result, a growing number of people are shying away from lengthy rental or lease commitments and are instead turning to companies like Blueground for more flexible short-term solutions.

Blueground is trying to be the go-to option for individuals moving or traveling to a city for as little as a month, or any duration longer. Similar to flexible office space providers, Blueground partners with major property owners to sign long-term leases for units it then furnishes and rents out with more flexible terms.

Users can rent listings for anywhere between one month to five years and rates are set on a monthly basis, which can often lead to more favorable prices over medium-to-long-term stays relative to the short-term pricing structures commonly used by hospitality companies.

Filling hospitality gaps and easing rental friction

CEO Alex Chatzieleftheriou is intimately familiar with the value flexible leasing can unlock. Before founding Blueground, Chatzieleftheriou worked as a consultant for McKinsey, where he was frequently sent off to projects in far-off cities for months at a time – living in 15 different cities over just seven years.

However, no matter how much time Alex logged in hotels, he constantly felt the frustration and mental strain of not having a stable personal living arrangement.

“I spent so much time in hotels but they never really resembled a home. They didn’t have enough space or enough privacy,” Chatzieleftheriou told TechCrunch. “But renting an apartment can be a huge pain in these cities. They can be hard to find, they usually have a minimum rental term of a year or more, and you usually have to deal with filling out paperwork and buying furniture.” 

Knowing there were thousands of people at his company alone dealing with the same frustrations, Alex launched what would become Blueground, beginning with a handful of apartments in his home city of Athens, Greece.

Chatzieleftheriou and his team structured the platform to make the rental process as seamless as possible for the needs of flexible renters like himself. Through a quick plug-and-play checkout flow – more similar to the booking process for a hotel or Airbnb – renters can lock down an apartment without having to deal with the painful, costly and time-consuming traditional rental process. Tenants are also able to switch to any other Blueground listing during their rental period if their preferences change or if they want to explore different locations during their stay.

Every Blueground listing also comes completely furnished by the company’s design team so renters don’t have to deal with buying, transporting – and eventually selling – furniture. And each apartment comes outfitted with digital and connected infrastructure so that tenants can monitor their apartment and arrange maintenance, housekeeping and other services directly through Blueground’s mobile app. 

The value proposition is also fairly straight-forward for the landlords Blueground partners with, as they avoid costs related to marketing and coordinating with fragmented brokers to fill open units, while also benefitting from steady rental payments, tenant vetting and free property management. 

The offering certainly seems to be compelling for renters – While Chatzieleftheriou initially focused on serving business travelers and those moving for work, he quickly realized the market for flexible leasing was in fact much bigger. Blueground’s sales have tripled over the past three years and after its expansion in the US last year, Blueground now hosts 1,700 listings in ten cities across three continents.

“The trend of flexible and seamless real estate is bigger and is happening everywhere,” Chatzieleftheriou said. “A lot of people throughout the real estate sector really want this seamless, turnkey, furnished solution.”

To date, Blueground has raised a total of $28 million and plans to use funds from the latest round for additional hiring and to help the company reach its goal of growing its portfolio to 50,000 units over the next five years.

The French government has unveiled a complete overhaul of the French Tech Visa for employees working for a tech company. And France is taking a contrarian stance by making it easier to come and work in France.

Let’s start with the big number. According to French Tech Mission director Kat Borlongan, there are over 10,000 startups that meet the requirements to access the French Tech Visa and hire foreign employees more easily. (And if you live in the European Union, you don’t need a visa, of course.)

I asked Borlongan why it was important to overhaul the French Tech Visa. “Because our startups needed it,” she told me. “There are two dimensions to that. There’s the economic supply-demand part — all the high growth startups we interviewed pretty unanimously said that hiring was their number one priority and that they were looking for profiles that weren’t readily available in France.”

“The second is cultural. As strong an ecosystem as the French Tech is becoming, it’s still perceived as overwhelmingly French. To succeed globally, we need to become global ourselves, in terms of team composition, mindset, markets, etc.”

Unlike many American visas, you don’t need to prove that you’ve been looking for candidates in France. You don’t need to pay crazy high immigration lawyer fees — the French Tech Visa costs €368 in administrative fees. Future employees don’t need to meet any diploma requirement.

The previous version of the visa was limited to roughly 100 companies that were selected as part of the Pass French Tech program. Employees also had to graduate with a master degree. So it’s a huge change.

And it’s a pretty sweet deal for foreign employees as well. Your visa is valid for four years and renewable after that. You don’t have to stay in the same company — you can work for another company and keep your visa. Your family also gets visas so that they can come with you.

If your startup has raised money from a VC fund, has been part of an accelerator, has received state funding or has the JEI status, then you’re eligible.

La French Tech and the French government have created various lists of VC funds, accelerators, grants, etc. If you meet one of those conditions, you can apply to the visa program. You’ll find most VC funds and accelerators based in France (but not all of them), as well as a few foreign companies (Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Techstars, Entrepreneur First, Plug and Play, Startupbootcamp). Those lists will be updated multiple times per year.

Startups that want to take advantage of the French Tech Visa need to fill an online form first — the full list of VC funds and accelerators is embedded in the form. Future employees can then get their visa from their home country at the French Consulate.

The French tech ecosystem has been growing rapidly. And many French startups have chosen to work in English and hire foreign talent. Tech talent is becoming a global talent pool, so this visa scheme is essential for the future of the French tech ecosystem.

Let me blunt up front: I think Google should launch a censored search engine in China (albeit with careful organizational boundaries). And I think that Google employees who would undermine such a project need to step down and walk out the front door to opportunities more in line with their purported values.

I am reacting to Ryan Gallagher’s piece yesterday in The Intercept, in which his sources within the search giant have been tracking changes in the Project Dragonfly software repository, the code that would power a hypothetical Google search engine in China. As Gallagher wrote:

But Google executives, including CEO Sundar Pichai, refused both publicly and privately to completely rule out launching the censored search engine in the future. This led a group of concerned employees — who were themselves not directly involved with Dragonfly — to closely monitor the company’s internal systems for information about the project and circulate their findings on an internal messaging list.

Gallagher seemingly celebrates the guerrilla actions of these disaffected workers, but what confuses me is why these employees continue to work at Google at all? It’s one thing to vociferously argue against a business decision within the confines of a corporate campus; it is something completely else to regularly track activity and leak that to a journalist. When did Mountain View become Capitol Hill?

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At least some employees appear to be understanding that paradox and taking action. As Gallagher wrote:

The lack of clarity from management has resulted in Google losing skilled engineers and developers. In recent months, several Google employees have resigned in part due to Dragonfly and leadership’s handling of the project. The Intercept knows of six staff at the company, including two in senior positions, who have quit since December, and three others who are planning to follow them out the door.

If you disagree with the ethics of your company, the best course of action — particularly in the strongest employment economy in years — is to find a job more in line with your values.

Dragonfly and the intensifying ethical tradeoffs of tech

That said, these ethical tradeoffs are a pattern we are going to see more and more frequently in tech. The intellectual and ethical purity of the original internet as written by people like John Perry Barlow has been subsumed by the power politics of capitals like Washington, Beijing, and Brussels.

The internet as independence movement is 100% dead.

That makes the ethical terrain for Silicon Valley workers much more challenging to navigate. Everything is a compromise, in one way or another. Even the very act of creating value — arguably the most important feature of Silicon Valley’s startup ecosystem — has driven mass inequality, as we explored on Extra Crunch this weekend in an in-depth interview.

What’s worse is that product designers are losing their agency to even affect those tradeoffs. A decade or two ago, Google might have made something of a difference in the development of the Chinese internet. But today? It’s impossible for me to see how Google could convince the Chinese Communist Party of, well, pretty much anything.

There is an incredible arrogance that a product decision made at Google these days will somehow affect the course of Chinese civilization. As Gallagher concluded his piece:

If Google is still developing the censored search engine, [Anna Bacciarelli, a technology researcher at Amnesty International] said, “it’s not only failing on its human rights responsibilities but ignoring the hundreds of Google employees, more than 70 human rights organizations, and hundreds of thousands of campaign supporters around the world who have all called on the company to respect human rights and drop Dragonfly.”

“Respect human rights” by not offering a censored search product in a country where every other search engine already has the same censorship? What exactly is Google pioneering here? How does its entry negatively affect anything or further deny human rights?

China is now the world’s largest internet userbase, and Google ignores it at its peril. I want Google services in China, if only because I trust Google far more than other companies (American or Chinese) to try to push toward openness even in a closed system. Maybe it will censor slightly less than its competitors — and isn’t that what progress looks like?

Technology in this context isn’t about disruption or liberation but about the margin: it’s the tweaks in aggregate that might one day make a difference.

Yes, there are huge implications for execution. Creating an independent operating unit with its own P&L and separately reported financials would be critical to ensure that Chinese censorship policies don’t seep into Google’s main search product in the West. Thankfully, Alphabet is already setup to do just that.

I am a resolute defender of human rights, but the world is the world. China’s government has incredible control over its internet, and those constraints are unlikely to relax in the short-to-medium term. Google can be “pure” and just ignore the largest internet market in the world, but that seems like a seriously naive tradeoff. Far better to engage and try to find venues to push for openness, even if it will be mostly unsuccessful.

Like that strategy or hate it, but these sorts of compromises are increasingly the future for Silicon Valley. In this way, the tech industry is joining the ranks of pretty much every other industry in the economy. Changing the world sometimes means playing by unfair and dubious rules.

Obsessions

• Perhaps some more challenges around data usage and algorithmic accountability
• We have a bit of a theme around emerging markets, macroeconomics, and the next set of users to join the internet.
• More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to danny@techcrunch.com.

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

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Mercedes-Benz revealed Tuesday the Concept EQV, an all-electric premium van designed to travel up to 249 miles on a single charge.

Concepts often times never become production vehicles. But this one will.

The EQV, which was unveiled at the Geneva International; Motor Show, will go into series production. The automaker plans to produce an electric van based off of the EQV concept. The production version will debut at the Frankfurt International Motor Show later this year.

This isn’t the typical “van life” vehicle.

The EQV, which can seat up to 8 people, is designed to appeal to customers seeking a more luxurious ride.  Mercedes is marketing this towards families, upscaled adventurers and corporate clients who might be looking for a shuttle vehicle. The vehicle’s seating can be configured in a numerous ways to meet various customers’ needs.

The EQV comes with a compact electric drivetrain on the front axle that produces 150 kW or 201 horsepower. The vehicle is also capable of rapid charging that enables a range of 62 miles within just 15 minutes, according to Mercedes.

The company’s EQ brand is supposed to represent a tech-forward approach, including the EQV. The vehicle is equipped with Mercedes new MBUX infotainment system, which boasts a self-learning voice control system with connectivity features. The navigation system has been modified to take into account the charge level of the battery. The system will also include apps that can enable control of the pre-entry climate control or allow for cashless payments at public charging stations, the company said.

This concept is part of Mercedes’ “EQ” technology brand that the automaker kicked off in 2016. A few “EQ” related concepts have been introduced since then, including the first “Concept EQ” and later the Concept EQA.

In September 2018, the company introduced the first series-production vehicle, the EQC electric drive SUV. The company plans to invest more than $12 billion to produce a line of battery-powered models under its new EQ brand and spend another $1.2 billion in global battery production.

SoundCloud wants to make its streaming music service more affordable to a key demographic: younger users who generally spend more time listening to music, compared with their older counterparts. This morning, the company announced the launch of discounted student accounts, offering a 50 percent discount off its top-tier SoundCloud Go+ subscription. That brings the cost down to $4.99 per month.

The company is a bit late to the party with its launch of lower-cost student subscriptions. All the major streaming services today – including Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music Unlimited – offer special student pricing. They know that getting younger users hooked early on their product is an investment in the future – when the student graduates, they’ll hopefully want to continue using the service where they’ve spent so much of their time and energy. And they’ll pay the higher rate then.

Students have been asking for a discounted plan for years, following the launch of SoundCloud’s $9.99/month plan (SoundCloud Go+)  in 2016. On SoundCloud’s own community forum, for example, you’ll run into questions from students about the topic, with some even noting that the lack of a more affordable plan is the “only thing holding me back” from subscribing. Others just seemed perplexed that there wasn’t an option for students, given how standard it is these days to offer students a discount.

Instead of catering specifically to students, SoundCloud in 2017 introduced a $4.99 per month SoundCloud Go plan that had fewer features than the SoundCloud Go+ plan for those who wanted a more affordable option. The move was meant to help convert a larger portion of SoundCloud’s 175 million free users to paying customers – but a year later, the company was estimated to have only gained some 100,000 subscribers, according to Midia Research’s Mark Mulligan.

The new student subscriptions will include the perks that come with the flagship Go+ premium offering, like ad-free listening, track downloads for offline listening, high-quality audio, and access to SoundCloud’s full catalog of now over 200 million tracks, which includes originals, DJ sets, remixes and more.

To access the new student pricing, students have to verify they’re attending an accredited college or university full-time, in a market where SoundCloud is available.

SoundCloud Go+ for Students is launching today in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada today, and will be live in Germany, France and the Netherlands next week.

San Francisco-based mobile banking startup Chime announced this morning it has raised an additional $200 million in Series D financing led by DST Global, valuing its business at $1.5 billion. The oversubscribed round also included participation from new investors Coatue, General Atlantic, ICONIQ Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group, along with existing investors Menlo Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Cathay Innovation and others.

To date, Chime has raised approximately $300 million, including last year’s $70 million Series C, which then saw the company valued at $500 million.

With the new funding, Chime has now raised the most funding and has the highest valuation among other U.S. challenger banks.

The company is now one of of several going after a younger, millennial audience who no longer sees the need for banks with physical branches, and who are sick of being nickel-and-dimed by bigger banks’ numerous fees. Like others in this space, Chime offers a “no fees” bank account, which won’t penalize users for things like dropping below a minimal balance or even overdrafts.

On top of this, is a modern-day banking app with features that make it look like it was actually built by a technology company – not a traditional bank. That’s because its team’s background is a mix of both tech and finance. Chime’s co-founder and CEO Chris Britt had previously worked at Flycast, was an early comScore employee, and worked at Visa and Green Dot; co-founder and CTO Ryan King spent time at Plaxo and Comcast before Chime.

Chime also includes a couple of innovative features that help to differentiate it from the other mobile banking apps on the market. This includes an automatic savings feature that rounds up purchases to pocket the change; another feature that automatically saves 10 percent of your paycheck into Chime’s savings account; and one that offers a no-fee paycheck advance that makes your money available sooner.

To date, customers have opened over 3 million FDIC-insured bank accounts on Chime, which makes it the largest brand in its category, the company claims. (This appears to be true. SoFi had 500,000 members as of last year, but Simple doesn’t disclose its account base beyond “hundreds of thousands.” Moven and Varo Money are smaller, according to American Banker’s round-up.)

Its size, scale, and growth trajectory, perhaps, have aided Chime in poaching a few execs from its other fintech businesses – including rivals. For example, the company recently added Chime VP Risk Brian Mullins, who was the former Head of Risk Ops at Square; and Chime GM, Lending Aaron Plante, who was the former Business Unit Leader for Student Loans at SoFi.

The company says it plans to use the new investment to continue to accelerate growth and launch new products, including those in lending and credit. It also plans to double its San Francisco-based team to over 200 employees and expand its leadership.

“We’re excited to welcome some of the world’s leading growth investors to Chime,” said Chris Britt, Chime Founder and CEO, in a statement about the funding. “Banking should be free, helpful and easy to use but traditional banks are reluctant to embrace this reality. We aim to set a new standard in the industry by using technology to create services that are truly aligned with the best interests of consumers.”

Soldo, the London-based fintech startup that offers a multi-user spending account primarily for businesses, has secured an Electronic Money Institution licence from Ireland’s Central Bank, a move the company says is designed to mitigate against the uncertainty of Brexit.

The Accel-backed company is currently licensed by U.K. financial regulator the FCA and benefits from so-called “passporting,” European Union regulation that lets a company regulated in one EU country offer financial services across the whole of the EU and other EAA countries. That arrangement could come to an abrupt end post-Brexit, leaving Soldo unable to service its European customers, which it says represents half of its business.

Explains Soldo: “The E-Money licence enables Soldo to operate its services smoothly during a time of unprecedented turbulence in the business and political sphere and demonstrates the company’s commitment to providing uninterrupted enterprise level financial technology services for businesses of all sizes. With the licence the company will be able to issue payments in Ireland across the European Union under passporting rights”.

Furthermore, in a move that Soldo says will ensure it is Brexit-ready whatever the outcome of ongoing Brexit talks, the company plans to migrate its EU customers and the team that supports them from its U.K. regulated E-Money Institution to Ireland.

“It’s crazy to think we’ve been forced to work for a year and a half on a hugely complex project, mostly duplicating something that we had already, to prepare our business for something that may or may not happen,” says Soldo co-founder and CEO Carlo Gualandri.

In an email, Gualandri told me he chose Ireland because it was a recognised jurisdiction with a “high reputation,” and has the benefit of being an English language country with a similar legal system to the U.K. and strong ties to the U.K., where Soldo is headquartered.

Asked how much of Soldo’s staff will be moved to Ireland, Gualandri says that after March — the official Brexit deadline — all of the company’s financial services activities related to EU market customers will be managed from Ireland, meaning that the new Irish team will quickly grow to around ten people, a mixture of relocations and new hires.

“Given that we will continue to serve the U.K. from our FCA regulated entity initially all this will just be a duplication but over time as we expand in Europe most of the personnel growth in our financial services organisation will happen in Dublin,” he adds. “All this would have been based in London but Brexit forced us to change our plans because in a regulated business the people must be located where you are legally established”.

And although Gualandri says he is “delighted” to have passed the robust checks that an Irish license entails, there are a number of other uncertainties related to Brexit that could heavily affect the business. They include issues around data transfer and processing, taxation and, of course, freedom of movement or the ability to hire talent from abroad.

“We have a diverse workforce with a lot of internal mobility and that will become much more difficult if not impossible,” he tells me. “I actually just did the process to obtain settled status myself (and my family) and luckily I have been in the U.K. for quite a long time but some of our younger people are much less confident”.

Given all of the above, does Gualandri have a message for the U.K. government?

“My message to the U.K. government would be this: We just spent a huge amount of time, energy and money (that as a startup is a very very scarce resource) to be ready for Brexit but we don’t know if it will ever happen, or if yes, how and when. So if it happens I’ll be relieved to have done the right thing for the business even though I’ll personally be very sad as a person living in this country. If it doesn’t happen I’ll be personally happy but I’ll have to face the responsibility that I have wasted my company’s time and money by doing the ‘proper’ thing.

“How can we have come to the point where something so big and impactful on the country and the lives of everybody has been managed without any level of planning whatsoever. It is hard to believe this has happened and is still happening today”.

The August View didn’t launch at CES as anticipated (the smart home maker had some slightly underwhelming brand announcements instead), but earlier leaks did seem to get just about everything else spot on about the doorbell camera.

The new wireless model features a bit of a sleek, minimalistic redesign, coupled with a 1440 sensor, for higher resolution shots. The tech mostly builds atop August’s existing doorbell cameras, bringing motion alerts when it spots someone and on-demand streaming when it’s time to just check in on what’s going on.

The video is zoomable for a better look, while subscription plans let users go back in time up to 15 or 30 days, depending on how much they’re able to pony up.

Naturally, the system is compatible with the rest of the company’s ecosystem — and could actually prove a decent option for users in apartments or other places where hardwiring a doorbell camera isn’t really an option.

It will arrive March 28, priced at $230 — not particularly cheap as far as these things go, but probably your best choice if you’ve already opted into August’s hardware/app ecosystem. The newly redesigned hardware comes with a choice of eight faceplates of four materials s (satin nickel, oil-rubbed bronze, satin brass, midnight gray) and four colors (black, red, blue and white).

Eargo wants to become the ultimate consumer hearing brand.

The company’s small and virtually invisible direct-to-consumer hearing aids, which come in an AirPods-style chargeable case, are designed to help destigmatize hearing loss. One month after revealing its newest product — the Eargo Neo ($2,550), which can be customized remotely via the case’s Bluetooth connectivity — the startup has closed a $52 million Series D, bringing its total raised to date to $135 million.

The latest round of capital comes from new investor Future Fund (Australia’s sovereign wealth fund) and existing investors NEA, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Nan Fung Life Sciences and Maveron. 

Headquartered in San Jose, Eargo, which counts 20,000 users, will use the cash to continuing crafting and innovating new products targeting baby boomers. The newly-launched Eargo Neo is the business’s third line of high-tech hearing aids. The first, Eargo Plus ($1,450), was released in 2017 and the Eargo Max ($2,510) was launched the following year.

“We can see that the product is really making a difference for users,” Eargo chief executive officer Christian Gormsen told TechCrunch. “We have the opportunity to really create a leading brand in the consumer hearing health space.”

Roughly 48 million Americans, or 20 percent of the population, suffer from hearing loss but, aside from some Medicare Advantage programs, insurance companies provide no reimbursement for hearing aids. Despite high price tags — this is expensive tech — Eargo’s priority is still to make its hearing aids as accessible as possible and to send a message that there’s nothing wrong with admitting to hearing loss.

“Getting a hearing aid feels like admitting a defeat like there’s something wrong with you but that’s not true, hearing loss is natural and happens,” Gormsen said. “The number one challenge for the entire industry is awareness. There is so little knowledge about hearing loss out there; it’s such a stigmatized category and how do you change that? The current channel doesn’t do anything to address it, the only way you can address it is through education and communication.”

“I think we’ve come far, but we are looking at 48 million Americans and we are still barely scratching the surface.”