Author: azeeadmin

Fresh off the heels of a $650 million Series E funding round, 3D printed rocket startup Relativity Space is now preparing to increase production capacity by a factor of ten, with the opening of a 1 million square-foot factory headquarters in Long Beach, California.

Relativity’s current factory, a 150,000 square-foot facility also in Long Beach, will remain in production. That factory will continue to focus on the company’s first rocket, the expendable Terran 1 that’s designed for smaller payloads. The new facility is aimed at building out the development and production of Terran R, Relativity’s heavy-lift, fully-reusable two stage rocket. Neither rocket has seen orbit yet, but Relativity aims to launch Terran 1 in June 2022 and Terran R as early as 2024.

Along with the factory opening, which is slated for January 2022, the company is also planning a hiring push – Relativity hopes to add at least 200 employees by the end of this year, CEO Tim Ellis told TechCrunch. The new facility has a labor force capacity of over 2,000, so “we’re certainly going to get into the thousands [of new hires] as we’re launching Terran One and then kicking off Terran R development as well,” Ellis said.

The company’s proprietary 3D printers, Stargate, can print either of the company’s two rockets. But they’re capable of much more than that – theoretically, at least. The Terran R is reusable, so the company will likely need to manufacture far fewer rockets than what the massive new facility will be capable of producing. So that begs the question: what are all those printers going to make?

Ellis alluded to other possibilities. “While it’s building Terran R, and doing Terran R development initially, certainly over time we’ll be able to continually upgrade and reconfigure this factory of the future to be able to build whatever else in aerospace that we’d go into next,” he said. But he stayed mum on exactly what that might look like.

“We will actually have a lot of extra print capacity over time, because we’ll be reusing Terran R. So at that point, we’ll have a ton of printers with a bunch of free time. You could imagine what one does, once you have that capability, you just keep diving into the next product to disrupt.”

In addition to the Stargate printers, the space will also house customized DMLS metal printers, a metallurgical laboratory, machine shop, and a mission control center. In the mission control center, true to its name, engineers and mission operators will be able to monitor and manage launches that take place in Cape Canaveral, Florida or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Relativity is leasing the space “for a long period of time” from property owner Goodman Group, Ellis said. The site was previously being used by Boeing to manufacture C-17 cargo military planes.

As enterprises and carriers gear up for operating and scaling IoT services and monitoring the activity of their devices, machines and more globally, a startup that is building technology to make this easier and cheaper to implement is announcing some funding.

FloLive, which has built a cloud-based solution to stitch together private, local cellular networks to create private global IoT 5G networks for its customers, has raised $15 million, funding that it will be using to continue expanding its service, both through investing and building out its tech stack, upgrading its network to 5G where it’s being used, and building a global SIM2Cloud offering in partnership with an as-yet unnamed global cloud provider.

Intel Capital, the investment arm of the chip giant, is leading the investment, with Qualcomm Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, 83North and Saban Ventures also participating. Intel, Qualcomm and Dell are all strategic backers here: the three work with carriers and enterprises to power and manage services and devices, and this will give them potentially a better way of integrating a much more flexible, global technology and network to provision those services more seamlessly across different geographies.

This is an extension to a $21.5 million round that London-based FloLive raised last year, bringing the total for the Series B to $36.5 million. From what we understand, the startup is also now working on its Series C.

As we move towards more ubiquitous 5G networks and services that use them, the challenge in the market that FloLive is addressing is a critical one to get right.

In a nutshell, enterprises and carriers that are building networks for managing IoT and other connected devices face a scaling issue. Typically, IoT networks to cover services like these are built on national or even more localized footprints, making it a challenge — if not completely impossible — to control or monitor devices in a global network in a centralized way.

“If you look on high level at tier one networks, you see two main things,” Nir Shalom, FloLive’s CEO, said in an interview. “These networks are built for local footprints, and they are mainly built for consumers. What we do is different in that we think about the global, not local, footprint; and our data networks are for IoT, not only people.”

Of course there are some carriers that might look at building their own networks to rival this, but they will often lack the scaled use cases to do so, and may in any case work with providers like FloLive to build these anyway. The bigger picture is that there are 900 larger mobile network operators globally, Shalom said, and the majority of that group is far from being able to do this themselves.

FloLive’s approach to fixing this is not to build completely new infrastructure, but to stitch together networks from different localities and to run them as a single network. It does this by way of its software-defined connectivity built and implemented in the cloud, which stitches together not just 5G networks but whatever cellular technology happens to be in use (eg 4G, 3G or even 2G) in a particular locale.

FloLive’s tech lives in the core network, where it builds a private radio access network that it can integrate with carriers and their capacity in different markets, while then managing the network for customers as a single service.

This is somewhat similar to what you might get with a enterprise virtual private network except that this is focused specifically on the kinds of use cases that might use connected objects — FloLive cites manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and utilities as four areas — rather than laptops for employees.

The resulting network, however, also becomes a viable alternative for companies that might otherwise use a VPN for connectivity, too, as well as carriers themselves needing to extend their network for a customer. In addition to its IoT focused core network, it also provides business support systems for IoT, device management, and solutions targeted for specific verticals. FloLive supports devices that use SIM or eSIM or “softSIM” technology to connect to networks. That’s one part that likely interested those strategic investors as it allows for significantly easier integration.

“We are truly excited about floLIVE’s unique cloud-native approach to IoT connectivity,” said David Johnson, MD at Intel Capital, in a statement. “Cloud-native architectures bring efficiency, scalability and flexibility which are important for IoT services. In addition, floLIVE’s cloud-based core can provide consistency of features across many independent private and public networks. We look forward to the expansion of floLIVE’s products and services enabled by this investment.”

For a glimpse of the security and privacy dystopia the UK government has in store for its highly regulated ‘British Internet’, look no further than guidance put out by the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) yesterday — aimed at social media platforms and private messaging services — which includes the suggestion that the latter should “prevent’ the use of end-to-end encryption on “child accounts”.

That’s right, the UK government is saying: ‘No end-to-end encryption for our kids please, they’re British’.

And while this is merely guidance for now, the chill is real — because legislation is already on the table.

The UK’s Online Safety Bill was published back in May, with Boris Johnson’s government setting out a sweeping plan to force platforms to regulate user generated content by imposing a legal duty to protect users from illegal (or merely just “harmful”) content.

The bill controversially bundles up requirements to report illegal stuff like child sexual exploitation content to law enforcement with far fuzzier mandates that platforms take action against a range of much-harder-to-define ‘harms’ (from cyber bullying to romance scams).

The end result looks like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Except the ‘nut’ that could get smashed to pieces in this ministerial vice is UK Internet users’ digital security and privacy. (Not to mention any UK startups and digital businesses that aren’t on board with mass-surveillance-as-a-service.)

That’s the danger if the government follows through on its wonky idea that — on the Internet — ‘safety’ means security must be replaced with blanket surveillance in order to ‘keep kids safe’.

The Online Safety Bill is not the first wonky tech policy plan the UK has come up with. An earlier bid to force adult content providers to age verify users was dropped in 2019, having been widely criticized as unworkable as well as a massive privacy intrusion and security risk.

However, at the time, the government said it was only abandoning the ‘porn blocks’ measure because it was planning to bring forward “the most comprehensive approach possible to protecting children”. Hence the Online Safety Bill now stepping forward to push platforms to remove robust encryption in the name of ‘protecting children’.

Age verification technologies — and all sorts of content monitoring solutions (surveillance tech, doubtless badged as ‘safety’ tech) — also look likely to proliferate as a consequence of this approach.

Pushing platforms to proactively police speech and surveil usage in the hopes of preventing an ill-defined grab-bag of ‘harms’ — or, from the platforms’ perspective, to avoid the risk of eye-watering fines from the regulator if it decides they’ve failed in this ‘duty of care’ — also obviously conjures up a nightmare scenario for online freedom of expression.

Aka: ‘Watch what you type, even in the privacy of your private messaging app, because the UK Internet safety thought police are watching/might block you…’

Privacy rights for UK minors appear to be first on the chopping block, via what DCMS’ guidance refers to as “practical steps to manage the risk of online harm if your online platform allows people to interact, and to share text and other content”.

So, pretty much, if your online platform has any kind of communication layer at all then.

Letting kids have their own safe spaces to express themselves is apparently incompatible with ministers’ populist desire to brand the UK ‘the safest place to go online in the world’, as they like to spin it.

How exactly the UK will achieve safety online if government zealots force service providers to strip away robust security (e2e encryption) — torching the standard of data protection and privacy wrapping Brits’ personal information — is quite the burning question.

Albeit, it’s not one the UK government seems to have considered for even a split second.

“We’ve known for a long time that one of government’s goals for the Online Safety Bill is the restriction, if not the outright criminalisation, of the use of end-to-end encryption,” said Heather Burns, a policy manager for the digital rights organization Open Rights Group (ORG), one of many vocal critics of the government’s approach — discussing the wider implications of the policy push with TechCrunch.

“Recent messaging strategies promoted by government and the media have openly sought to associate end-to-end encryption with child abuse, and to imply that companies which use it are aiding and abetting child exploitation. So DCMS’s newly-published guidance advising the voluntary removal of encryption from children’s accounts is a precursor to it becoming a likely legal requirement.

“It’s also part of government’s drive, again as part of the Online Safety Bill, to require all services to implement mandatory age verification on all users, for all content or applications, in order to identify child users, in order to withhold encryption from them, thanks to aggressive lobbying from the age verification industry.”

That ministerial rhetoric around the Online Safety Bill is heavy on tub-thumping emotional appeals (to ‘protect our children from online nasties’) and low on sequential logic or technological coherence is not a surprise: Successive Conservative governments have, after all, had a massive bee in their bonnets about e2e encryption — dating back to the David Cameron years.

Back then ministers were typically taking aim at strong encryption on counter-terrorism grounds, arguing the tech is bad because it prevents law enforcement from catching terrorists. (And they went on to pass beefed up surveillance laws which also include powers to limit the use of robust encryption.)

However, under more recent PMs Theresa May and Boris Johnson, the child protection rhetoric has stepped up too — to the point where messaging channels are now being actively encouraged not to use e2e encryption altogether.

Next stop: State-sanctioned commercial mass surveillance. And massive risks for all UK Internet users subject to this anti-security, anti-privacy ‘safety’ regime.

“Despite government’s claim that the Bill will make the UK ‘the safest place in the world to be online’, restricting or criminalising encryption will actually make the UK an unsafe place for any company to do business,” warned Burns. “We will all need to resort to VPNs and foreign services, as happens in places like China, in order to keep our data safe. It’s likely that many essential services will block UK customers, or leave the UK altogether, rather than be compelled to act as a privatised nanny state over insecure data flows.”

In a section of the DCMS guidance entitled “protect children by limiting functionality”, the government department literally suggests that “private channels” (i.e. services like messaging apps) “prevent end-to-end encryption for child accounts”. And since accurately age identifying online users remains a challenge it follows that in-scope services may simply decide it’s less legally risky if they don’t use e2e at all.

DCMS’s guidance also follows up with an entirely bolded paragraph — in which the government then makes a point of highlighting e2e encryption as a “risk” to users, generally — and, therefore by implication, to future compliance with the forthcoming Online Safety legislation…

“End-to-end encryption makes it more difficult for you to identify illegal and harmful content occurring on private channels. You should consider the risks this might pose to your users,” the UK government writes, emphasis its.

Whether anything can stop this self-destructive policy train now it’s left the Downing Street station is unclear. Johnson has a whopping majority in parliament — and years left before he has to call a general election.

The only thing that could derail the most harmful elements of the Online Safety Bill is if the UK public wakes up to the dangers it poses to everyone’s security and privacy — and if enough MPs take notice and push for amendments.

Earlier this month the ORG, along with some 30 other digital and humans rights groups, called on MPs to do just that and “help keep constituents’ data safe by protecting e2e encryption from legislative threats” — warning that this “basic and essential” security protocol is at risk from clauses in the bill that introduce requirements for companies to scan private and personal messages for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Zero access encryption is seen by the UK government as a blocker to such scanning.

“In order to do this, the use of end-to-end encryption is likely to be defined as a violation of the law,” the ORG also warned. “And companies operating in the UK who want to continue to defend user privacy through end-to-end encryption could, under the draft Bill, be threatened with partial shutdowns, being blocked from the UK, or even personal arrests.”

“We call on Parliament to ensure that end-to-end encryption must not be threatened or undermined by the Online Safety Bill, and that services utilising strong encryption are left out of the Bill’s content monitoring and filtering requirements,” it added in the online appeal.

DMCS has been contacted with questions on the logic of the government’s policy toward e2e encryption.

In a statement yesterday, the digital minister Caroline Dinenage said: “We’re helping businesses get their safety standards up to scratch before our new online harms laws are introduced and also making sure they are protecting children and users right now.

“We want businesses of all sizes to step up to a gold standard of safety online and this advice will help them to do so.”

For a glimpse of the security and privacy dystopia the UK government has in store for its highly regulated ‘British Internet’, look no further than guidance put out by the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) yesterday — aimed at social media platforms and private messaging services — which includes the suggestion that the latter should “prevent’ the use of end-to-end encryption on “child accounts”.

That’s right, the UK government is saying: ‘No end-to-end encryption for our kids please, they’re British’.

And while this is merely guidance for now, the chill is real — because legislation is already on the table.

The UK’s Online Safety Bill was published back in May, with Boris Johnson’s government setting out a sweeping plan to force platforms to regulate user generated content by imposing a legal duty to protect users from illegal (or merely just “harmful”) content.

The bill controversially bundles up requirements to report illegal stuff like child sexual exploitation content to law enforcement with far fuzzier mandates that platforms take action against a range of much-harder-to-define ‘harms’ (from cyber bullying to romance scams).

The end result looks like a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Except the ‘nut’ that could get smashed to pieces in this ministerial vice is UK Internet users’ digital security and privacy. (Not to mention any UK startups and digital businesses that aren’t on board with mass-surveillance-as-a-service.)

That’s the danger if the government follows through on its wonky idea that — on the Internet — ‘safety’ means security must be replaced with blanket surveillance in order to ‘keep kids safe’.

The Online Safety Bill is not the first wonky tech policy plan the UK has come up with. An earlier bid to force adult content providers to age verify users was dropped in 2019, having been widely criticized as unworkable as well as a massive privacy intrusion and security risk.

However, at the time, the government said it was only abandoning the ‘porn blocks’ measure because it was planning to bring forward “the most comprehensive approach possible to protecting children”. Hence the Online Safety Bill now stepping forward to push platforms to remove robust encryption in the name of ‘protecting children’.

Age verification technologies — and all sorts of content monitoring solutions (surveillance tech, doubtless badged as ‘safety’ tech) — also look likely to proliferate as a consequence of this approach.

Pushing platforms to proactively police speech and surveil usage in the hopes of preventing an ill-defined grab-bag of ‘harms’ — or, from the platforms’ perspective, to avoid the risk of eye-watering fines from the regulator if it decides they’ve failed in this ‘duty of care’ — also obviously conjures up a nightmare scenario for online freedom of expression.

Aka: ‘Watch what you type, even in the privacy of your private messaging app, because the UK Internet safety thought police are watching/might block you…’

Privacy rights for UK minors appear to be first on the chopping block, via what DCMS’ guidance refers to as “practical steps to manage the risk of online harm if your online platform allows people to interact, and to share text and other content”.

So, pretty much, if your online platform has any kind of communication layer at all then.

Letting kids have their own safe spaces to express themselves is apparently incompatible with ministers’ populist desire to brand the UK ‘the safest place to go online in the world’, as they like to spin it.

How exactly the UK will achieve safety online if government zealots force service providers to strip away robust security (e2e encryption) — torching the standard of data protection and privacy wrapping Brits’ personal information — is quite the burning question.

Albeit, it’s not one the UK government seems to have considered for even a split second.

“We’ve known for a long time that one of government’s goals for the Online Safety Bill is the restriction, if not the outright criminalisation, of the use of end-to-end encryption,” said Heather Burns, a policy manager for the digital rights organization Open Rights Group (ORG), one of many vocal critics of the government’s approach — discussing the wider implications of the policy push with TechCrunch.

“Recent messaging strategies promoted by government and the media have openly sought to associate end-to-end encryption with child abuse, and to imply that companies which use it are aiding and abetting child exploitation. So DCMS’s newly-published guidance advising the voluntary removal of encryption from children’s accounts is a precursor to it becoming a likely legal requirement.

“It’s also part of government’s drive, again as part of the Online Safety Bill, to require all services to implement mandatory age verification on all users, for all content or applications, in order to identify child users, in order to withhold encryption from them, thanks to aggressive lobbying from the age verification industry.”

That ministerial rhetoric around the Online Safety Bill is heavy on tub-thumping emotional appeals (to ‘protect our children from online nasties’) and low on sequential logic or technological coherence is not a surprise: Successive Conservative governments have, after all, had a massive bee in their bonnets about e2e encryption — dating back to the David Cameron years.

Back then ministers were typically taking aim at strong encryption on counter-terrorism grounds, arguing the tech is bad because it prevents law enforcement from catching terrorists. (And they went on to pass beefed up surveillance laws which also include powers to limit the use of robust encryption.)

However, under more recent PMs Theresa May and Boris Johnson, the child protection rhetoric has stepped up too — to the point where messaging channels are now being actively encouraged not to use e2e encryption altogether.

Next stop: State-sanctioned commercial mass surveillance. And massive risks for all UK Internet users subject to this anti-security, anti-privacy ‘safety’ regime.

“Despite government’s claim that the Bill will make the UK ‘the safest place in the world to be online’, restricting or criminalising encryption will actually make the UK an unsafe place for any company to do business,” warned Burns. “We will all need to resort to VPNs and foreign services, as happens in places like China, in order to keep our data safe. It’s likely that many essential services will block UK customers, or leave the UK altogether, rather than be compelled to act as a privatised nanny state over insecure data flows.”

In a section of the DCMS guidance entitled “protect children by limiting functionality”, the government department literally suggests that “private channels” (i.e. services like messaging apps) “prevent end-to-end encryption for child accounts”. And since accurately age identifying online users remains a challenge it follows that in-scope services may simply decide it’s less legally risky if they don’t use e2e at all.

DCMS’s guidance also follows up with an entirely bolded paragraph — in which the government then makes a point of highlighting e2e encryption as a “risk” to users, generally — and, therefore by implication, to future compliance with the forthcoming Online Safety legislation…

“End-to-end encryption makes it more difficult for you to identify illegal and harmful content occurring on private channels. You should consider the risks this might pose to your users,” the UK government writes, emphasis its.

Whether anything can stop this self-destructive policy train now it’s left the Downing Street station is unclear. Johnson has a whopping majority in parliament — and years left before he has to call a general election.

The only thing that could derail the most harmful elements of the Online Safety Bill is if the UK public wakes up to the dangers it poses to everyone’s security and privacy — and if enough MPs take notice and push for amendments.

Earlier this month the ORG, along with some 30 other digital and humans rights groups, called on MPs to do just that and “help keep constituents’ data safe by protecting e2e encryption from legislative threats” — warning that this “basic and essential” security protocol is at risk from clauses in the bill that introduce requirements for companies to scan private and personal messages for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Zero access encryption is seen by the UK government as a blocker to such scanning.

“In order to do this, the use of end-to-end encryption is likely to be defined as a violation of the law,” the ORG also warned. “And companies operating in the UK who want to continue to defend user privacy through end-to-end encryption could, under the draft Bill, be threatened with partial shutdowns, being blocked from the UK, or even personal arrests.”

“We call on Parliament to ensure that end-to-end encryption must not be threatened or undermined by the Online Safety Bill, and that services utilising strong encryption are left out of the Bill’s content monitoring and filtering requirements,” it added in the online appeal.

DMCS has been contacted with questions on the logic of the government’s policy toward e2e encryption.

In a statement yesterday, the digital minister Caroline Dinenage said: “We’re helping businesses get their safety standards up to scratch before our new online harms laws are introduced and also making sure they are protecting children and users right now.

“We want businesses of all sizes to step up to a gold standard of safety online and this advice will help them to do so.”

In 2020 lots of workloads shifted to the cloud due to the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean that figuring out how to migrate those workloads got any easier. Device42, a startup that helps companies understand their infrastructure, has a new product that is designed to analyze your infrastructure and make recommendations about the most cost-effective way to migrate to the cloud.

Raj Jalan, CEO and co-founder, says that the tool uses machine learning to help discover the best configuration, and supports four cloud vendors including AWS, Microsoft, Google and Oracle plus VMware running on AWS.

“The [new tool] that’s coming out is a multi-cloud migration and recommendation [engine]. Basically, with machine learning what we have done is in addition to our discovery tool […] is we can constantly update based on your existing utilization of your resources, what it is going to cost you to run these resources across each of these multiple clouds,” Jalan explained.

This capability builds on the company’s core competency, which is providing a map of resources wherever they exist along with the dependencies that exist across the infrastructure, something that’s extremely hard for organizations to understand. “Our focus is on hybrid IT discovery and dependency mapping, [whether the] infrastructure is on prem, in colocation facilities or in the cloud,” he said.

That helps Device42 customers see how all of the different pieces of infrastructure including applications work together. “You can’t find a tool that does everything together, and also gives you a very deep discovery where you can go from the physical layer all the way to the logical layer, and see things like, ‘this is where my storage sits on this web server…’,” Jalan said.

It’s important to note that this isn’t about managing resources or making any changes to allocation. It’s about understanding your entire infrastructure wherever it lives and how the different parts fit together, while the newest piece finds the most cost-effective way to migrate to the cloud it from its current location.

The company has been around since 2012, has around 100 employees. It has raised around $38 million including a $34 million Series A in 2019. It hasn’t required a ton of outside investment as Jalan reports they are cash flow positive with “decent growth.”

In 2020 lots of workloads shifted to the cloud due to the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean that figuring out how to migrate those workloads got any easier. Device42, a startup that helps companies understand their infrastructure, has a new product that is designed to analyze your infrastructure and make recommendations about the most cost-effective way to migrate to the cloud.

Raj Jalan, CEO and co-founder, says that the tool uses machine learning to help discover the best configuration, and supports four cloud vendors including AWS, Microsoft, Google and Oracle plus VMware running on AWS.

“The [new tool] that’s coming out is a multi-cloud migration and recommendation [engine]. Basically, with machine learning what we have done is in addition to our discovery tool […] is we can constantly update based on your existing utilization of your resources, what it is going to cost you to run these resources across each of these multiple clouds,” Jalan explained.

This capability builds on the company’s core competency, which is providing a map of resources wherever they exist along with the dependencies that exist across the infrastructure, something that’s extremely hard for organizations to understand. “Our focus is on hybrid IT discovery and dependency mapping, [whether the] infrastructure is on prem, in colocation facilities or in the cloud,” he said.

That helps Device42 customers see how all of the different pieces of infrastructure including applications work together. “You can’t find a tool that does everything together, and also gives you a very deep discovery where you can go from the physical layer all the way to the logical layer, and see things like, ‘this is where my storage sits on this web server…’,” Jalan said.

It’s important to note that this isn’t about managing resources or making any changes to allocation. It’s about understanding your entire infrastructure wherever it lives and how the different parts fit together, while the newest piece finds the most cost-effective way to migrate to the cloud it from its current location.

The company has been around since 2012, has around 100 employees. It has raised around $38 million including a $34 million Series A in 2019. It hasn’t required a ton of outside investment as Jalan reports they are cash flow positive with “decent growth.”

There are so many startups pledging to reinvent the mortgage process that it’s hard to keep up. But for anyone who has had to go through the process of applying for one, it’s clear that there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The latest startup to raise venture money with the goal of making the process “smarter and faster” is one that was founded by a pair of executives that spent years at real estate giant Zillow. Tomo is very early stage — so early stage that it is only launching operations in conjunction with announcing it has just raised $70 million in seed funding. That’s a massive seed round by any standards (the third-largest in the U.S., according to Crunchbase), but especially for the real estate tech space (perhaps the largest ever).

Ribbit Capital led the financing, which also included participation from DST Global, NFX and Zigg Capital.

Former Zillow executives Greg Schwartz and Carey Armstrong founded Stamford, CT-based Tomo in the fall of 2020 to take on big banks when it comes to providing mortgages to consumers. CEO Schwartz first joined Zillow in 2007, where he says he “built the sales and revenue operations from the ground up.” Armstrong, who serves as Tomo’s chief revenue officer, previously led business strategy, product strategy and core operations for Zillow’s $1 billion buyer services business. 

Launching today in Seattle, Dallas and Houston, Tomo says it will do things like issue fully underwritten pre-approvals “within hours, not days” and guarantee on-time closing. This is particularly important in competitive markets with multiple buyers making offers on homes.

It plans to use data to get homebuyers to closing in as little as 21 days, which they say is less than half of the industry average of 47 days. And, on top of all that, it claims it will offer “the lowest rates in the industry” with “customer-obsessed service.”

The company claims that besides having founders that have years of experience at a company with a reach like Zillow’s, they also aim to be different from other competitors in the space in that they are strictly focused on the buyer. For example, it won’t do any refinancing for existing homeowners but focus strictly on helping buyers secure new mortgage loans.

“The big banks have never made more money, yet an experience with their mortgage business has never been worse,” Schwartz told TechCrunch. “And it’s because the incumbents have no reason to fundamentally change.”

While it’s early days yet, only time will tell if Tomo can live up to its lofty goals. No doubt it has plenty of competition. In the past week alone, we’ve reported on two other digital mortgage startups raising significant funding rounds, including Lower and Accept.

Tomo’s investors are clearly confident about its potential.

Ribbit Capital’s Nick Huber said his firm had been connected to Schwartz and Armstrong prior to their even starting Tomo.

“When we learned that the two of them were working together, we immediately knew that we had to be a part of the journey,” he said. “We gained the conviction to lead the seed round as the team shared more of their vision for the future of home buying, which is a broken experience that they deeply understand and have the insight and relationships to fix.”

NFX founder and general partner Pete Flint has known Schwartz and Armstrong under a different capacity. They were once rivals. Flint co-founded another online real estate giant, Trulia and was its CEO and chairman from its 2005 inception until it was acquired by Zillow for $2.5 billion in 2015.

“We were initially competitors and then deep collaborators after the Trulia/Zillow merger,” Flint said. Once the pair formed Tomo, Flint says NFX “had not seen a team that was so experienced and thoughtful about the entire real estate experience that was going after the mortgage and home buying opportunity.”

In fact, the investment represents NFX’s largest initial investment to date.

“They are rethinking the entire software stack and building a modern fintech company, free of legacy constraints,” he added.

There are so many startups pledging to reinvent the mortgage process that it’s hard to keep up. But for anyone who has had to go through the process of applying for one, it’s clear that there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The latest startup to raise venture money with the goal of making the process “smarter and faster” is one that was founded by a pair of executives that spent years at real estate giant Zillow. Tomo is very early stage — so early stage that it is only launching operations in conjunction with announcing it has just raised $70 million in seed funding. That’s a massive seed round by any standards (the third-largest in the U.S., according to Crunchbase), but especially for the real estate tech space (perhaps the largest ever).

Ribbit Capital led the financing, which also included participation from DST Global, NFX and Zigg Capital.

Former Zillow executives Greg Schwartz and Carey Armstrong founded Stamford, CT-based Tomo in the fall of 2020 to take on big banks when it comes to providing mortgages to consumers. CEO Schwartz first joined Zillow in 2007, where he says he “built the sales and revenue operations from the ground up.” Armstrong, who serves as Tomo’s chief revenue officer, previously led business strategy, product strategy and core operations for Zillow’s $1 billion buyer services business. 

Launching today in Seattle, Dallas and Houston, Tomo says it will do things like issue fully underwritten pre-approvals “within hours, not days” and guarantee on-time closing. This is particularly important in competitive markets with multiple buyers making offers on homes.

It plans to use data to get homebuyers to closing in as little as 21 days, which they say is less than half of the industry average of 47 days. And, on top of all that, it claims it will offer “the lowest rates in the industry” with “customer-obsessed service.”

The company claims that besides having founders that have years of experience at a company with a reach like Zillow’s, they also aim to be different from other competitors in the space in that they are strictly focused on the buyer. For example, it won’t do any refinancing for existing homeowners but focus strictly on helping buyers secure new mortgage loans.

“The big banks have never made more money, yet an experience with their mortgage business has never been worse,” Schwartz told TechCrunch. “And it’s because the incumbents have no reason to fundamentally change.”

While it’s early days yet, only time will tell if Tomo can live up to its lofty goals. No doubt it has plenty of competition. In the past week alone, we’ve reported on two other digital mortgage startups raising significant funding rounds, including Lower and Accept.

Tomo’s investors are clearly confident about its potential.

Ribbit Capital’s Nick Huber said his firm had been connected to Schwartz and Armstrong prior to their even starting Tomo.

“When we learned that the two of them were working together, we immediately knew that we had to be a part of the journey,” he said. “We gained the conviction to lead the seed round as the team shared more of their vision for the future of home buying, which is a broken experience that they deeply understand and have the insight and relationships to fix.”

NFX founder and general partner Pete Flint has known Schwartz and Armstrong under a different capacity. They were once rivals. Flint co-founded another online real estate giant, Trulia and was its CEO and chairman from its 2005 inception until it was acquired by Zillow for $2.5 billion in 2015.

“We were initially competitors and then deep collaborators after the Trulia/Zillow merger,” Flint said. Once the pair formed Tomo, Flint says NFX “had not seen a team that was so experienced and thoughtful about the entire real estate experience that was going after the mortgage and home buying opportunity.”

In fact, the investment represents NFX’s largest initial investment to date.

“They are rethinking the entire software stack and building a modern fintech company, free of legacy constraints,” he added.

MKT1 is a strategic marketing firm founded by experienced startup executives that is everything but a marketing agency. It advises startups on marketing approaches, recruiting and mentoring workshops, with some angel syndicate investing as well. It also provides a job board, a newsletter, and workshops for marketers.

Founders Kathleen Estreich and Emily Kramer say they are responding to a few big trends in the startup world. These days, young companies are raising more capital than ever and facing increased pressure to maintain rapid growth, but founders are typically focused on technology and product problems. The result, as they have sometimes seen first-hand, is marketing coming in too early or too late to truly help a startup grow. Instead, Kramer and Estreich help companies make marketing a core part of how they execute from their early days.

Estreich, previously at Facebook, Box, Intercom and Scalyr, and Kramer, previously Ticktfly, Asana, Astro and Carta, were recommended to us through our survey seeking recommendations for top growth marketers in the startup industry. (If you have your own recommendation, please fill out the survey here.)

In the interview below, they share more about how they recruit startup marketers and advise founders to approach marketing based on needs and several other issues that are critical for early-stage startups.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

TC: You’re both accomplished marketers and have worked at big-name companies. What made you decide to leave that career and open your own marketing firm?

Estreich: It was different for both of us. I was working in sales, and I left actually and had a baby. COVID hit and we were uncertain… Emily and I have known each other for several years, so she and I started talking over a year ago about what we were up to and what we were thinking about.  One of the trends that we were seeing was a lot of the companies when we started were typical founders [focused on technology and product], and there was a gap around helping them go to market and helping them with marketing.

We started talking and realized that we love working with founders; we love working with early-stage companies. We wanted to do that full-time. So we started doing that fall of last year and it’s been awesome. We’ve gotten to work with a lot of interesting companies and we’re starting to see a lot of trends. Hiring is a huge, huge thing, and it’s figuring out who’s the right person, when do you hire them, how do you find them, and how do you hire them.

Kramer: It’s somewhat similar for me. I had been the first, or first-ish, marketer at TicketFly and then at Asana — I was a marketer there and built up a team to about 25 people. I really love building teams, and I like them at scale too. I love the puzzle that is building a marketing team with all of the different functions, whether its hiring or figuring out what to do strategically.

Then I joined a seed-funded company — again, because I love building — a company called Astro. I actually had this experience where they hired too senior, too early on the marketing side, which is also a mistake I see people making. While we were trying to find product-market fit, I realized I was probably too senior coming off my experience at Asana. I then went to Carta — but Carta was 300 people. We didn’t have marketing at all. They had stops and starts and had a large-scale organization, so I built that marketing team up — just much later [stage].

I ended up filing a lawsuit against Carta, that is fairly public, for discrimination on equal pay, retaliation, among other things [Ed. TechCrunch coverage here]. After an experience like that, you start to re-evaluate things. So Kathleen and I started advising companies together and it’s become more than just advising. We help early companies build their marketing functions across the board.

TC: You focus on SaaS companies. Is there a reason that you have that focus versus going broader?

Estreich: That’s been our experience. Since leaving Facebook, I worked at B2B SaaS companies, with different audiences and different stages, so that’s been my experience. I think there’s a huge opportunity for marketing and it is changing in the B2B SaaS world.

Kramer: While we do focus on SaaS marketing, I think our sweet spot is in modern marketing, and significantly, self-serve as well as a lot of developer marketing. We actually think that developer marketing is how all of our things should be. It focuses on adding value, and it focuses on treating people like humans.

TC: You’ve written extensively about how to think about marketing in the earliest stages of a company. So what are the biggest mistakes that you see founders still making in 2021?

Estreich: I would say either they go too early or too late with who they’re hiring. Or one of the things that we talked about is that your first marketers are actually your founders. They’re the ones who help tell your story and do your early marketing.

I think a big part of it is finding that right early team on, and one of the key insights that we’ve written about is that the first marketer should be really a pi-shaped marketer. It’s someone who has breadth and depth, who has experience with product marketing and growth marketing. It is your first marketing hire. Regardless of what you’re hiring them for, they do everything since you don’t have anyone else. They are the default of every aspect of marketing.

Kramer: It’s not necessarily that you’re an expert in two areas instead of all the areas — product marketing, growth marketing, content marketing. So two of those areas, and normally, that is growth marketing and product marketing, based on what they need.

Estreich: When you’re thinking about going to market, some companies think that content is going to be the most important thing, so your first marketer should be pretty competent in it.

Kramer: I think the number-one thing that we look for, when we help companies with job descriptions and planning, is someone that is strategic and scrappy. But they also need to be able to set their own goals and figure out what to do, because the other trend that we see in marketing and marketing hires, is that founders will give marketers goals like “write 10 blog posts.”

That’s not the goal. What are you trying to drive? Are you trying to drive web traffic, because it actually just disincentivizes me as a content person or as a marketer to write good content if I have to write 10 pieces. It instead drives 50,000 page views. I could go write one really amazing data study or well-researched piece that does all of that that drives way more than 10 shitty posts.

Estreich: You could do a smaller number of things better and get the same outcomes. So it’s really that balance of a bunch of things you could do. And one of the most common conversations Emily and I have with marketers right now is, “How do I prioritize? What should I do?”

Kramer: “How do I set goals really about prioritization and how do I have my goals set in a way that is focused on these different activities?” Find that sweet spot of someone who still wants to get their hands dirty and wants to go early but can think strategically about what we are doing uniquely and how are we going to have an impact.

Estreich: People who have experience with your business model is another thing that we look at. So if you’re a top-down enterprise sales company, the marketing function in various fields are very different than if you’re bottom, inbound-driven. So hiring someone that matches what you think your go-to-market is going to look like, I think, is an important thing. It’s a different way of viewing the world, and if you compare companies, they might hire someone who has done one or the other. But you want someone who actually is new because that’s more important than almost the industry experience.

Kramer: Sometimes consumer stuff might be more similar to your business model. To amplify what Kathleen was saying about the industry, I think a lot of times I work with tech companies and they’re like we need people that have done fintech or finance. Now, you’re narrowing an already small pool for an early-stage marketing role to an even smaller pool. Getting a person that’s not too senior in their career, that’s full of ambition and can learn quickly is worth it versus them having the experience. Your company should have other people that are experts in the areas.

Estreich: So I think part of that, too, is a willingness and excitement around the audience. Similar to Emily, I’ve worked in marketing for very different audiences in my career. And part of it is like, am I excited about diving in and learning about this space?

TC: What are the major trends that you’re seeing in marketer hiring right now?

Kramer: Companies are going to marketers early on. One reason is that companies are in the larger rounds earlier than ever before. When you have more money to spend on go-to-market and marketing earlier, you’re bringing on marketers while earlier on.

Now some founders still aren’t. And they’re like, “Oh, we don’t need marketing.” But founders that really know that they need to differentiate how they’re doing distribution — which in my opinion would be a company that’s successful — are like, “Oh, we have more money to hire earlier on.” So there’s a shortage [of marketers], I think. I imagine that we will start to see turnover right after Labor Day, when some companies make people go back to the office.

Estreich: Yeah, we’re keeping a very close eye on going back to the office.

Kramer: I think it’s harder than ever with early-stage marketing goals.

Estreich: There are many more companies that are starting earlier and getting funding, and then when you get that funding earlier, there’s pressure to grow earlier. You’re like, “OK, we need marketing help sooner.” And then the bigger companies are doing great, people are like, “I’m sitting on this large exit package — what’s my incentive to go?”

Kramer: And I think there is starting to be a little less stigma on the job bouncing; people are like, “This isn’t great, I’m super lonely and I’m at home, I’m not being treated great. … I’m going to go somewhere else.” I think there’s also just more attrition in marketing roles than in other roles. Because to be the head of marketing you typically need to understand these different areas of marketing, and if you’re at a large company then you’re going to get siloed and you’re not going to learn these things and you’re going to stifle your career.

Estreich: Yeah, being clear about the benefits and the downsides of a big job is important. I’ve always appreciated this about companies that I’ve talked to, or about joining, that tell me everything so that when I get there, I’m not surprised. Because if you try and surprise me, I’m gonna find out anyway. To the extent that, you know, you could learn as much as you can without joining.

I think that’s important. And that’s what we’re trying to do on both sides, like help companies, you know, set these jobs up for success. And then on the marketer side, help them know what it’s actually going to be like and to the extent that we can do some sort of matching to help find good people for these companies that we think are good fits.

In one of your Substack posts, you said that “marketing strategy needs to be a healthy mix of testing new things, scaling what works, and optimizing what’s already working. Setting goals is critical here.” How do you work with companies to ensure that their goals are appropriate for the stage that they’re at?

Kramer: There are things that we say “keep the lights on,” like traffic numbers, conversion numbers.

Estreich: The steady state of marketing.

Kramer: And then there are things that can cause step-change growth, if you measure to find them. If you’re measuring everything against the same measures/metrics, you’re never going to get there, because the tests are never going to perform as well as the stuff that has already been up and running.

So it’s also about breaking up your goals. “Here are the big steps we’re taking and here are the step-change drivers that we hypothesize are a good idea and here’s how we’re going to test these things.” It’s the balancing of these quick wins and things that keep the lights on and long-term projects and how to bite off a little bit to test it.

Estreich: “What are we trying to do?” And then, “What’s the action plan we need to put together?” Other than that, “What can we do in the next three months?” And then, “What do we need to do and invest in the next several months?”

Kramer: You know, this is why I always say there’s so many different things that you can do. And I don’t think founders realize how many things there are to do, because founders often think of marketing in a couple of pockets. They’re like, “Oh, it’s ads, PR.” But it’s a lot more than that; it’s many things that are going to drive growth, both short-term and long-term. That’s a very fast definition of marketing, but that’s basically what it is. But there’s so many different things to do.

You’re more than most agencies, you’re angel investors and advisers. Is that how you think about yourselves, are you an operator rather than a growth marketing agency?

Kramer: We’re not a marketing agency; we are strategic marketers. We’re going to recommend agencies that you should work with. Part of this is like, “Could we go be operator VCs? Could we go raise a fund?” Yeah, probably … we’re doing this as advising and investing. We actually treat a lot of what we’re doing like you would at a SaaS company. We realized everybody wants help with recruiting. So we iterated on some stuff [and] launched a new job board.

And then we do angel investing. We’re always interested in iterating on what we’re doing there. So yes, there’s a huge switch towards people raising money from operators who are definitely part of that shift. We want to help as many companies as [we can whose] values are mission-aligned. And we also want to elevate markers. … I’m a marketer. That’s what I do. It’s marketing.

So it’s a bad word and marketers are/aren’t angel investors, and marketers often get paid less and marketers are often thought of as second-class citizens in the company. So we want to elevate the role of marketing to and help other workers. As much as we want to help companies grow, we also want to help marketers. We’re still trying to figure out the best way to do all of those things.

Estreich: We started off like, “OK, what do we like to do? Where do we see the market?” We like helping founders sort of think through early-stage marketing jobs, as we could do that as advisers then, you know. What are the common themes that we’re seeing? Everyone needs help on recruiting: How can we help not just these companies, but generally as well, which is like the job board that we talked about.

And I think there is a need in the market, like we talked about at the beginning, where there are many companies that started earlier with technical founders dealing with exposure to a lot of the business side. Companies that have good marketing are going to be more successful. That’s why we’re advising them, and that’s why we’re working with those marketers. That’s a main reason we started what we’re doing.

MKT1 is a strategic marketing firm founded by experienced startup executives that is everything but a marketing agency. It advises startups on marketing approaches, recruiting and mentoring workshops, with some angel syndicate investing as well. It also provides a job board, a newsletter, and workshops for marketers.

Founders Kathleen Estreich and Emily Kramer say they are responding to a few big trends in the startup world. These days, young companies are raising more capital than ever and facing increased pressure to maintain rapid growth, but founders are typically focused on technology and product problems. The result, as they have sometimes seen first-hand, is marketing coming in too early or too late to truly help a startup grow. Instead, Kramer and Estreich help companies make marketing a core part of how they execute from their early days.

Estreich, previously at Facebook, Box, Intercom and Scalyr, and Kramer, previously Ticktfly, Asana, Astro and Carta, were recommended to us through our survey seeking recommendations for top growth marketers in the startup industry. (If you have your own recommendation, please fill out the survey here.)

In the interview below, they share more about how they recruit startup marketers and advise founders to approach marketing based on needs and several other issues that are critical for early-stage startups.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

TC: You’re both accomplished marketers and have worked at big-name companies. What made you decide to leave that career and open your own marketing firm?

Estreich: It was different for both of us. I was working in sales, and I left actually and had a baby. COVID hit and we were uncertain… Emily and I have known each other for several years, so she and I started talking over a year ago about what we were up to and what we were thinking about.  One of the trends that we were seeing was a lot of the companies when we started were typical founders [focused on technology and product], and there was a gap around helping them go to market and helping them with marketing.

We started talking and realized that we love working with founders; we love working with early-stage companies. We wanted to do that full-time. So we started doing that fall of last year and it’s been awesome. We’ve gotten to work with a lot of interesting companies and we’re starting to see a lot of trends. Hiring is a huge, huge thing, and it’s figuring out who’s the right person, when do you hire them, how do you find them, and how do you hire them.

Kramer: It’s somewhat similar for me. I had been the first, or first-ish, marketer at TicketFly and then at Asana — I was a marketer there and built up a team to about 25 people. I really love building teams, and I like them at scale too. I love the puzzle that is building a marketing team with all of the different functions, whether its hiring or figuring out what to do strategically.

Then I joined a seed-funded company — again, because I love building — a company called Astro. I actually had this experience where they hired too senior, too early on the marketing side, which is also a mistake I see people making. While we were trying to find product-market fit, I realized I was probably too senior coming off my experience at Asana. I then went to Carta — but Carta was 300 people. We didn’t have marketing at all. They had stops and starts and had a large-scale organization, so I built that marketing team up — just much later [stage].

I ended up filing a lawsuit against Carta, that is fairly public, for discrimination on equal pay, retaliation, among other things [Ed. TechCrunch coverage here]. After an experience like that, you start to re-evaluate things. So Kathleen and I started advising companies together and it’s become more than just advising. We help early companies build their marketing functions across the board.

TC: You focus on SaaS companies. Is there a reason that you have that focus versus going broader?

Estreich: That’s been our experience. Since leaving Facebook, I worked at B2B SaaS companies, with different audiences and different stages, so that’s been my experience. I think there’s a huge opportunity for marketing and it is changing in the B2B SaaS world.

Kramer: While we do focus on SaaS marketing, I think our sweet spot is in modern marketing, and significantly, self-serve as well as a lot of developer marketing. We actually think that developer marketing is how all of our things should be. It focuses on adding value, and it focuses on treating people like humans.

TC: You’ve written extensively about how to think about marketing in the earliest stages of a company. So what are the biggest mistakes that you see founders still making in 2021?

Estreich: I would say either they go too early or too late with who they’re hiring. Or one of the things that we talked about is that your first marketers are actually your founders. They’re the ones who help tell your story and do your early marketing.

I think a big part of it is finding that right early team on, and one of the key insights that we’ve written about is that the first marketer should be really a pi-shaped marketer. It’s someone who has breadth and depth, who has experience with product marketing and growth marketing. It is your first marketing hire. Regardless of what you’re hiring them for, they do everything since you don’t have anyone else. They are the default of every aspect of marketing.

Kramer: It’s not necessarily that you’re an expert in two areas instead of all the areas — product marketing, growth marketing, content marketing. So two of those areas, and normally, that is growth marketing and product marketing, based on what they need.

Estreich: When you’re thinking about going to market, some companies think that content is going to be the most important thing, so your first marketer should be pretty competent in it.

Kramer: I think the number-one thing that we look for, when we help companies with job descriptions and planning, is someone that is strategic and scrappy. But they also need to be able to set their own goals and figure out what to do, because the other trend that we see in marketing and marketing hires, is that founders will give marketers goals like “write 10 blog posts.”

That’s not the goal. What are you trying to drive? Are you trying to drive web traffic, because it actually just disincentivizes me as a content person or as a marketer to write good content if I have to write 10 pieces. It instead drives 50,000 page views. I could go write one really amazing data study or well-researched piece that does all of that that drives way more than 10 shitty posts.

Estreich: You could do a smaller number of things better and get the same outcomes. So it’s really that balance of a bunch of things you could do. And one of the most common conversations Emily and I have with marketers right now is, “How do I prioritize? What should I do?”

Kramer: “How do I set goals really about prioritization and how do I have my goals set in a way that is focused on these different activities?” Find that sweet spot of someone who still wants to get their hands dirty and wants to go early but can think strategically about what we are doing uniquely and how are we going to have an impact.

Estreich: People who have experience with your business model is another thing that we look at. So if you’re a top-down enterprise sales company, the marketing function in various fields are very different than if you’re bottom, inbound-driven. So hiring someone that matches what you think your go-to-market is going to look like, I think, is an important thing. It’s a different way of viewing the world, and if you compare companies, they might hire someone who has done one or the other. But you want someone who actually is new because that’s more important than almost the industry experience.

Kramer: Sometimes consumer stuff might be more similar to your business model. To amplify what Kathleen was saying about the industry, I think a lot of times I work with tech companies and they’re like we need people that have done fintech or finance. Now, you’re narrowing an already small pool for an early-stage marketing role to an even smaller pool. Getting a person that’s not too senior in their career, that’s full of ambition and can learn quickly is worth it versus them having the experience. Your company should have other people that are experts in the areas.

Estreich: So I think part of that, too, is a willingness and excitement around the audience. Similar to Emily, I’ve worked in marketing for very different audiences in my career. And part of it is like, am I excited about diving in and learning about this space?

TC: What are the major trends that you’re seeing in marketer hiring right now?

Kramer: Companies are going to marketers early on. One reason is that companies are in the larger rounds earlier than ever before. When you have more money to spend on go-to-market and marketing earlier, you’re bringing on marketers while earlier on.

Now some founders still aren’t. And they’re like, “Oh, we don’t need marketing.” But founders that really know that they need to differentiate how they’re doing distribution — which in my opinion would be a company that’s successful — are like, “Oh, we have more money to hire earlier on.” So there’s a shortage [of marketers], I think. I imagine that we will start to see turnover right after Labor Day, when some companies make people go back to the office.

Estreich: Yeah, we’re keeping a very close eye on going back to the office.

Kramer: I think it’s harder than ever with early-stage marketing goals.

Estreich: There are many more companies that are starting earlier and getting funding, and then when you get that funding earlier, there’s pressure to grow earlier. You’re like, “OK, we need marketing help sooner.” And then the bigger companies are doing great, people are like, “I’m sitting on this large exit package — what’s my incentive to go?”

Kramer: And I think there is starting to be a little less stigma on the job bouncing; people are like, “This isn’t great, I’m super lonely and I’m at home, I’m not being treated great. … I’m going to go somewhere else.” I think there’s also just more attrition in marketing roles than in other roles. Because to be the head of marketing you typically need to understand these different areas of marketing, and if you’re at a large company then you’re going to get siloed and you’re not going to learn these things and you’re going to stifle your career.

Estreich: Yeah, being clear about the benefits and the downsides of a big job is important. I’ve always appreciated this about companies that I’ve talked to, or about joining, that tell me everything so that when I get there, I’m not surprised. Because if you try and surprise me, I’m gonna find out anyway. To the extent that, you know, you could learn as much as you can without joining.

I think that’s important. And that’s what we’re trying to do on both sides, like help companies, you know, set these jobs up for success. And then on the marketer side, help them know what it’s actually going to be like and to the extent that we can do some sort of matching to help find good people for these companies that we think are good fits.

In one of your Substack posts, you said that “marketing strategy needs to be a healthy mix of testing new things, scaling what works, and optimizing what’s already working. Setting goals is critical here.” How do you work with companies to ensure that their goals are appropriate for the stage that they’re at?

Kramer: There are things that we say “keep the lights on,” like traffic numbers, conversion numbers.

Estreich: The steady state of marketing.

Kramer: And then there are things that can cause step-change growth, if you measure to find them. If you’re measuring everything against the same measures/metrics, you’re never going to get there, because the tests are never going to perform as well as the stuff that has already been up and running.

So it’s also about breaking up your goals. “Here are the big steps we’re taking and here are the step-change drivers that we hypothesize are a good idea and here’s how we’re going to test these things.” It’s the balancing of these quick wins and things that keep the lights on and long-term projects and how to bite off a little bit to test it.

Estreich: “What are we trying to do?” And then, “What’s the action plan we need to put together?” Other than that, “What can we do in the next three months?” And then, “What do we need to do and invest in the next several months?”

Kramer: You know, this is why I always say there’s so many different things that you can do. And I don’t think founders realize how many things there are to do, because founders often think of marketing in a couple of pockets. They’re like, “Oh, it’s ads, PR.” But it’s a lot more than that; it’s many things that are going to drive growth, both short-term and long-term. That’s a very fast definition of marketing, but that’s basically what it is. But there’s so many different things to do.

You’re more than most agencies, you’re angel investors and advisers. Is that how you think about yourselves, are you an operator rather than a growth marketing agency?

Kramer: We’re not a marketing agency; we are strategic marketers. We’re going to recommend agencies that you should work with. Part of this is like, “Could we go be operator VCs? Could we go raise a fund?” Yeah, probably … we’re doing this as advising and investing. We actually treat a lot of what we’re doing like you would at a SaaS company. We realized everybody wants help with recruiting. So we iterated on some stuff [and] launched a new job board.

And then we do angel investing. We’re always interested in iterating on what we’re doing there. So yes, there’s a huge switch towards people raising money from operators who are definitely part of that shift. We want to help as many companies as [we can whose] values are mission-aligned. And we also want to elevate markers. … I’m a marketer. That’s what I do. It’s marketing.

So it’s a bad word and marketers are/aren’t angel investors, and marketers often get paid less and marketers are often thought of as second-class citizens in the company. So we want to elevate the role of marketing to and help other workers. As much as we want to help companies grow, we also want to help marketers. We’re still trying to figure out the best way to do all of those things.

Estreich: We started off like, “OK, what do we like to do? Where do we see the market?” We like helping founders sort of think through early-stage marketing jobs, as we could do that as advisers then, you know. What are the common themes that we’re seeing? Everyone needs help on recruiting: How can we help not just these companies, but generally as well, which is like the job board that we talked about.

And I think there is a need in the market, like we talked about at the beginning, where there are many companies that started earlier with technical founders dealing with exposure to a lot of the business side. Companies that have good marketing are going to be more successful. That’s why we’re advising them, and that’s why we’re working with those marketers. That’s a main reason we started what we’re doing.