Nathan Beckord is CEO of Foundersuite.com, a software platform for raising capital and managing investors that has helped entrepreneurs raise over $2 billion since 2016. He is also the host of Foundersuite’s How I Raised It podcast.
Domm Holland, co-founder and CEO of e-commerce startup Fast, appears to be living a founder’s dream.
His big idea came from a small moment in his real life. Holland watched as his wife’s grandmother tried to order groceries, but she had forgotten her password and wasn’t able to complete the transaction.
“I just remember thinking it was preposterous,” Holland said. “It defied belief that some arbitrary string of text was a blocker to commerce.”
So he built a prototype of a passwordless authentication system where users would fill out their information once and would never need to do so again. Within 24 hours, tens of thousands of people had used it.
Nothing beats building human networks. That’s the way that you’re going to get this done in terms of fundraising.
Shoppers weren’t the only ones on board with this idea. In less than two years, Holland has raised $124 million in three rounds of fundraising, bringing on partners like Index Ventures and Stripe.
Although the success of Fast’s one-click checkout product has been speedy, it hasn’t been effortless.
For one thing, Holland is Australian, which means he started out as a Silicon Valley outsider. When he arrived in the U.S. in the summer of 2019, he had exactly one Bay Area contact in his phone. He built his network from the ground up, a strategic process he credits to one thing: hard work.
On an episode of the “How I Raised It” podcast, Holland talks about how he built his network, why it’s important — not just for fundraising but for building the entire business — and how to avoid the mistakes he sees new founders make.
Reach out with relevance
Holland’s primary strategy in building networks sounds like an obvious one — reach out to relevant people.
“When I first got to the States, I wanted to build networks,” Holland said, “but I didn’t really know anyone here in the Bay Area. So I spent a lot of time reaching out to relevant people — people working in payments, people working in technology, people working in identity authentication — just really relevant people in the space working in Big Tech who were building large-scale networks.”
One of the people Holland connected with was Allison Barr Allen, then the head of global product operations at Uber. Barr Allen managed her own angel investment fund, but Holland wasn’t actually looking for money when he reached out to her. He was much more interested in her perspective as the leader of an enormous financial services operation.
Among the many, many tasks required of grade school teachers is that of gauging each student’s reading level, usually by a time-consuming and high-pressure one-on-one examination. Microsoft’s new Reading Progress application takes some of the load off the teacher’s shoulders, allowing kids to do their reading at home and using natural language understanding to help highlight obstacles and progress.
The last year threw most educational plans into disarray, and reading levels did not advance the way they would have if kids were in school. Companies like Amira are emerging to fill the gap with AI-monitored reading, and Microsoft aims to provide teachers with more tools on their side.
Reading Progress is an add-on for Microsoft Teams that helps teachers administer reading tests in a more flexible way, taking pressure off students who might stumble in a command performance, and identifying and tracking important reading events like skipped words and self-corrections.
Teachers pick reading assignments for each students (or the whole class) to read, and the kids do so on their own time, more like doing homework than taking a test. They record a video directly in the app, the audio of which is analyzed by algorithms watching for the usual stumbles.
As you can see in this video testimony by 4th grader Brielle, this may be preferable to many kids:
If a bright and confident kid like Brielle feels better doing it this way (and is now reading two years ahead of her grade, nice work Brielle!), what about the kids who are having trouble reading due to dyslexia, or are worried about their accent, or are simply shy? Being able to just talk to their own camera, by themselves in their own home, could make for a much better reading — and therefore a more accurate assessment.
It’s not meant to replace the teacher altogether, of course — it’s a tool that allows overloaded educators to prioritize and focus better and track things more objectively. It’s similar to how Amira is not meant to replace in-person reading groups — impossible during the pandemic — but provides a similarly helpful process of quickly correcting common mistakes and encouraging the reader.
Four years ago, Argo AI made its first acquisition as a young, newly backed self-driving vehicle startup. Now, Argo says its acquisition of lidar company Princeton Lightwave is paying off and is poised to help it deliver autonomous vehicles that can operate commercially on highways and in dense urban areas starting next year.
Argo AI unveiled Tuesday details on a long-range lidar sensor that it claims has the ability to see 400 meters away with high-resolution photorealistic quality and the ability to detect dark and distant objects with low reflectivity. The first batch of these lidar sensors are already on some of Argo’s test vehicles, which today is comprised of Ford Fusion Hybrid sedans and Ford Escape Hybrid SUVs. By the end of the year, Argo’s test fleet will transition to about 150 Ford Escape Hybrid vehicles, all of which will be equipped with the in-house lidar sensor. Ford, an investor in and customer of Argo, plans to deploy autonomous vehicles for ride-hailing and delivery in 2022. Argo’s other investor and customer, Volkswagen, said it will launch commercial operations in 2025.
It’s not just the technical capabilities of the lidar sensor that matter, Argo CEO and co-founder Bryan Salesky told TechCrunch in a recent interview. The lidar sensor was developed to be cost-effective and manufactured at scale, two factors that matter for any company trying to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology.
“When we first started, I knew that the market did not have an adequate long-range lidar,” Salesky said, who noted that while Waymo had developed its own lidar sensors with long-range capabilities it was not available for other developers to buy. “We decided to make an acquisition focused on plugging the hole for that long-range need. It has really been a game-changer for our self-driving system and has enabled us to be able to move really fast, to the point now where we’re starting to equip cars with the sensor, and it’s opening up testing in urban and highway environments.”
Lidar, the light detection and ranging radar that measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world, is considered by most in the industry a critical sensor required to safely deploy autonomous vehicles at a commercial scale. More than 70 companies, some of which have recently gone public via mergers with special purpose acquisition companies, are developing lidar — all claiming technical breakthroughs and cost benefits. And then there are the AV developers such as Cruise and Aurora, which just like Argo have acquired lidar companies in hopes of developing an in-house solution that will give them an edge over the competition and free them from working with an outside supplier like Velodyne.
Ford, which invested $1 billion into Argo, had also backed lidar maker Velodyne, the dominant supplier in the market. But progress within Argo has changed Ford’s stance. Veoneer, which announced in 2019 that it was leveraging Velodyne’s technology for a contract to supply the sensor to an unnamed AV customer, reported in February that it had lost its contract. It wasn’t clear exactly who the customer was, although many speculated it was Ford or Argo. That same month, Ford reported in a regulatory filing that it had dissolved its 7.6% stake in Velodyne, cementing its bet on Argo’s in-house lidar.
“Assuming the sensor lives up to the claims, it should provide a substantial performance advantage over Velodyne and give them the flexibility to operate more safely at highway speeds,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst with researcher Guidehouse Insights. Abuelsamid points to a few factors, including its wavelength and sensitivity, that could give Argo an edge.
Low-speed urban areas to high-speed boulevards
Argo AI in the Strip District on Monday April 26, 2021 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jared Wickerham/for Argo AI)
Lidar sensors send out millions of beams or pulses every second to detect surrounding objects and then measure the return to create a point cloud or 3D image. That point cloud shows the objects and calculates their range.
The Argo sensor is based on what it describes as Geiger-mode time of flight lidar, which it says uses beam detectors that can detect the smallest particle of light. Argo says its single-photon sensors are able to build up images of low-reflectivity objects like a black-painted car at a much greater distance than can a traditional linear time of flight lidar. Argo also said its lidar sensor operates at a wavelength above 1400 nanometers, which theoretically enables more power to help the range.
Abuelsamid noted that more common 905 nm lidars are largely limited to vehicles traveling about 40 mph to 45 mph, which suggests that Argo’s sensor could be used at highway speeds.
“Argo lidar’s use of the Geiger-mode photodiode and binning of pixels also contributes to the increased sensitivity,” he said. “The ability to detect a single photon and then using the software to do statistical analysis to aggregate them and reject noise seems like it should help as well. Being able to pick up low reflectivity objects like truck tire treads or very black vehicles is important.”
He also noted that the Argo sensor is a mechanical spinning lidar, which is a common design based on the original Velodyne HDL-64. However, Argo’s lidar rotates the outer surface, a design decision to help throw off water from the sensor to help keep it clean.
Combining all of this will allow Argo to develop a self-driving system for a variety of use cases such as low-speed dense urban sectors, higher-speed boulevards that have a mix of pedestrian, cyclists and cars to contend with as well as highways.
Argo has spent much of its time testing in urban environments, specifically in Austin, Detroit, Miami, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. But Volkswagen, the company’s newest backer and customer, is also interested in autonomous driving on highways. Argo plans to begin testing in additional cities this year, including Munich.
Manufacturing partner and future applications
Argo has been working for more than a year with a contract manufacturer that has experience in assembling optoelectronics. Hundreds of sensors will be manufactured by the end of the year and ramp up from there. Argo declined to name the contract manufacturer.
Argo’s self-driving system is designed to be agnostic, meaning it could be used in multiple business models. Argo’s customers Ford and VW will of course dictate what those business applications will be, and for now it is robotaxis and middle-mile delivery. However, Salesky noted that the sensors could be applied to trucking.
“We’re kind of focused on goods movement and people movement, but I think trucking is something that we’re taking a hard look at,” Salesky said. “This isn’t something that we’ve prioritized yet, but we’re definitely keeping trucking open and I think it’s absolutely an interesting place for our technology.”
Argo also has aspirations beyond manufacturing a long-range lidar for its own needs. Salesky told TechCrunch that the underlying technology can be packaged in other ways to create different types of sensors. “It is a really interesting potential license opportunity,” he said, cautioning that the priority is on autonomous vehicle applications.
“I think it’s a little too soon to start selling within the automotive realm, but it’s an opportunity that’s there,” Salesky said. “I do think that this underlying technology can be packaged in a bunch of ways to service other industries such as mining, agriculture, oil and gas.”
In April, we brought you over a dozen breakout sessions on fundraising and operations at the TC Early Stage event. Calendly’s Tope Awotona explained how to bootstrap effectively, Marlon Nichols shared how to get an investor’s attention, Zoom CRO Ryan Azus talked about how to build and lead a sales team, and Fuel Capital’s Leah Solivan told us about the worst startup habits, and how to kick them.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
On July 8 and 9, we’re bringing even more of that goodness to the table with TC Early Stage Marketing & Fundraising. Our speakers will give brief presentations around a variety of startup core competencies, like product market fit, paid marketing strategies, and of course, fundraising. Each session is specifically designed to allow for loads of audience Q&A so you can ask your own questions to these experts.
Check out the sessions below:
Product Market Fit is All About Tempo with Mike Vernal (Sequoia)
Sequoia’s Mike Vernal understands that the most successful companies are not necessarily the ones with a great idea, but the ability to learn from their customers and adapt quickly. Hear this seasoned venture partner explain how customer feedback loops, product iteration tempo and mindset not only affect fundraising, but the overall trajectory of the company.
How to Line Up Your Growth with Your Goals with Susan Su (Sound Ventures)
Unlike giant brands, startups need to use their marketing spend wisely and efficiently. Sound Ventures’ Susan Su is a growth marketing expert and will share how to define growth based on your startup’s goals, and how to take a framework-based approach to growth, rather than relying on old playbooks that aren’t relevant.
How to Navigate the Ever-Changing World of Early Stage VC with Avlok Kohli (AngelList Venture)
With over 25 personal investments, AngelList Venture CEO Avlok Kohli knows a thing or two about early stage fundraising. At Early Stage, Kohli will explain the landscape of the early stage fundraising market and how to take advantage of the changes in the VC world over the past year.
Design Matters with Scott Tong (Designer Fund)
Design has never been more important. Users have been spoiled and startups, along with big brands, are offering designers many more seats at the table. Hear from Designer Fund’s Scott Tong on how to think about design from the early stage and how it can impact everything from UX to brand awareness to long-term vision.
How Founders Can Think Like a VC with Lisa Wu (Norwest Venture Partners)
Though there is more capital flowing through the market than ever before, the world of fundraising can still feel like a black box to many founders. Hear Norwest Venture Partners’ Lisa Wu explain how founders can get in the mind of a VC, framing their company’s narrative in terms that VCs love. Be the ball, as they say.
How to Capitalize on Being Coached with Ted Wang (Cowboy Ventures)
Ted Wang, partner at Cowboy Ventures, comes from the legal world where he was a partner at Fenwick. In short, he’s seen his fair share of startup success and failure. At Early Stage, Wang will explain the value of coaching for startup founders, including the different types of coaches one might utilize, how to choose between them, and how to get the most out of a good coach.
Nail the Narrative with Caryn Marooney (Coatue Ventures)
Storytelling is a critical skill for startups. Coatue Management partner Caryn Marooney, formerly head of comms for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus, will share how to frame the narrative for a startup depending on the audience and ensure that when you’re talking about your company, people are not only listening, but they want to learn more.
Growth Hacking, Product Fit and Pricing with Rahul Vohra (Superhuman)
Superhuman’s Rahul Vohra shares strategies for early-stage founders on topics like hacking your way to product-market fit, driving user sign-ups without breaking the bank on paid ads, and identifying your product’s price point.
Growth Marketing 101 with Mike Duboe (Greylock)
“Growth” is a concept that is inconsistently defined and operationalized across startups. Mike has built Growth teams at early-stage and growth/IPO-stage companies, and will talk about how companies should think about organization design for growth, best practices in scaling performance marketing practices, and how investors deconstruct healthy vs unhealthy growth.
Is Corporate Investment Right for You with Arvind Purushotham (Citi Ventures)
There was a time when institutional VCs reigned supreme. Today, alt-fundraising, angel investors, strategic investors and corporations all have a hand in the pot. Hear from Citi Ventures Arvind Purushotham about whether or not corporate venture is right for your startup and how it can be advantageous in the long run.
How to Determine Your Earned Media Strategy with Rebecca Reeve Henderson (Enterprise SaaS Communications Expert)
Rebecca will be joining us to share insight on how to build an effective earned media strategy for your startup, building on her deep expertise developing effective communications programs for some of the top business software companies in the world. Earned media, aka the kind of exposure you get from a TechCrunch article, is a key element of any startup’s marketing strategy, but it’s also one of the trickiest things to get right. Rebecca has worked with companies ranging from Slack, to Shopify, to Zapier, to Canva and many more, helping craft effective earned media strategies in one of the most difficult areas of all: B2B SaaS.
How to Make People Want to Learn More with Doug Landis (Emergence)
No matter the genius of your idea, the strength of your metrics, or the level of your passion, no will care if you can’t nail the narrative. Emergence’s Doug Landis will outline how to craft a strong business story, the nuances of making it check all the right boxes, and ensuring its memorable long after you leave the room. This skill, once mastered, benefits every touchpoint of your startup, from fundraising to customer conversations and beyond.
Of the many frustrations of having a severe motor impairment, the difficulty of communicating must surely be among the worst. The tech world has not offered much succor to those affected by things like locked-in syndrome, ALS, and severe strokes, but startup Cognixion aims to with a novel form of brain monitoring that, combined with a modern interface, could make speaking and interaction far simpler and faster.
The company’s One headset tracks brain activity closely in such a way that the wearer can direct a cursor — reflected on a visor like a heads-up display — in multiple directions or select from various menus and options. No physical movement is needed, and with the help of modern voice interfaces like Alexa, the user can not only communicate efficiently but freely access all kinds of information and content most people take for granted.
But it’s not a miracle machine, and it isn’t a silver bullet. Here’s where how it got started.
Overhauling decades-old brain tech
Everyone with a motor impairment has different needs and capabilities, and there are a variety of assistive technologies that cater to many of these needs. But many of these techs and interfaces are years or decades old — medical equipment that hasn’t been updated for an era of smartphones and high-speed mobile connections.
Some of the most dated interfaces, unfortunately, are those used by people with the most serious limitations: those whose movements are limited to their heads, faces, eyes — or even a single eyelid, like Jean-Dominique Bauby, the famous author of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
One of the tools in the toolbox is the electroencephalogram, or EEG, which involves detecting activity in the brain via patches on the scalp that record electrical signals. But while they’re useful in medicine and research in many ways, EEGs are noisy and imprecise — more for finding which areas of the brain are active than, say, which sub-region of the sensory cortex or the like. And of course you have to wear a shower cap wired with electrodes (often greasy with conductive gel) — it’s not the kind of thing anyone wants to do for more than an hour, let alone all day every day.
Yet even among those with the most profound physical disabilities, cognition is often unimpaired — as indeed EEG studies have helped demonstrate. It made Andreas Forsland, co-founder and CEO of Cognixion, curious about further possibilities for the venerable technology: “Could a brain-computer interface using EEG be a viable communication system?”
He first used EEG for assistive purposes in a research study some five years ago. They were looking into alternative methods of letting a person control an on-screen cursor, among them an accelerometer for detecting head movements, and tried integrating EEG readings as another signal. But it was far from a breakthrough.
A modern lab with an EEG cap wired to a receiver and laptop – this is an example of how EEG is commonly used.
He ran down the difficulties: “With a read-only system, the way EEG is used today is no good; other headsets have slow sample rates and they’re not accurate enough for a real-time interface. The best BCIs are in a lab, connected to wet electrodes — it’s messy, it’s really a non-starter. So how do we replicate that with dry, passive electrodes? We’re trying to solve some very hard engineering problems here.”
The limitations, Forsland and his colleagues found, were not so much with the EEG itself as with the way it was carried out. This type of brain monitoring is meant for diagnosis and study, not real-time feedback. It would be like taking a tractor to a drag race. Not only do EEGs often work with a slow, thorough check of multiple regions of the brain that may last several seconds, but the signal it produces is analyzed by dated statistical methods. So Cognixion started by questioning both practices.
Improving the speed of the scan is more complicated than overclocking the sensors or something. Activity in the brain must be inferred by collecting a certain amount of data. But that data is collected passively, so Forsland tried bringing an active element into it: a rhythmic electric stimulation that is in a way reflected by the brain region, but changed slightly depending on its state — almost like echolocation.
The Cognixion One headset with its dry EEG terminals visible.
They detect these signals with a custom set of six EEG channels in the visual cortex area (up and around the back of your head), and use a machine learning model to interpret the incoming data. Running a convolutional neural network locally on an iPhone — something that wasn’t really possible a couple years ago — the system can not only tease out a signal in short order but make accurate predictions, making for faster and smoother interactions.
The result is sub-second latency with 95-100 percent accuracy in a wireless headset powered by a mobile phone. “The speed, accuracy and reliability are getting to commercial levels — we can match the best in class of the current paradigm of EEGs,” said Forsland.
Dr. William Goldie, a clinical neurologist who has used and studied EEGs and other brain monitoring techniques for decades (and who has been voluntarily helping Cognixion develop and test the headset), offered a positive evaluation of the technology.
“There’s absolutely evidence that brainwave activity responds to thinking patterns in predictable ways,” he noted. This type of stimulation and response was studied years ago. “It was fascinating, but back then it was sort of in the mystery magic world. Now it’s resurfacing with these special techniques and the computerization we have these days. To me it’s an area that’s opening up in a manner that I think clinically could be dramatically effective.”
BCI, meet UI
The first thing Forsland told me was “We’re a UI company.” And indeed even such a step forward in neural interfaces as he later described means little if it can’t be applied to the problem at hand: helping people with severe motor impairment to express themselves quickly and easily.
Sad to say, it’s not hard to imagine improving on the “competition,” things like puff-and-blow tubes and switches that let users laboriously move a cursor right, right a little more, up, up a little more, then click: a letter! Gaze detection is of course a big improvement over this, but it’s not always an option (eyes don’t always work as well as one would like) and the best eye-tracking solutions (like a Tobii Dynavox tablet) aren’t portable.
Why shouldn’t these interfaces be as modern and fluid as any other? The team set about making a UI with this and the capabilities of their next-generation EEG in mind.
Image Credits: Cognixion
Their solution takes bits from the old paradigm and combines them with modern virtual assistants and a radial design that prioritizes quick responses and common needs. It all runs in an app on an iPhone, the display of which is reflected in a visor, acting as a HUD and outward-facing display.
In easy reach of, not to say a single thought but at least a moment’s concentration or a tilt of the head, are everyday questions and responses — yes, no, thank you, etc. Then there are slots to put prepared speech into — names, menu orders, and so on. And then there’s a keyboard with word- and sentence-level prediction that allows common words to be popped in without spelling them out.
“We’ve tested the system with people who rely on switches, who might take 30 minutes to make 2 selections. We put the headset on a person with cerebral palsy, and she typed our her name and hit play in 2 minutes,” Forsland said. “It was ridiculous, everyone was crying.”
Goldie noted that there’s something of a learning curve. “When I put it on, I found that it would recognize patterns and follow through on them, but it also sort of taught patterns to me. You’re training the system, and it’s training you — it’s a feedback loop.”
“I can be the loudest person in the room”
One person who has found it extremely useful is Chris Benedict, a DJ, public speaker, and disability advocate who himself has Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy. It limits his movements and ability to speak, but doesn’t stop him from spinning (digital) records at various engagements, however, or from explaining his experience with Cognixion’s One headset over email. (And you can see him demonstrating it in person in the video above.)
Image Credits: Cognixion
“Even though it’s not a tool that I’d need all the time it’s definitely helpful in aiding my communication,” he told me. “Especially when I need to respond quickly or am somewhere that is noisy, which happens often when you are a DJ. If I wear it with a Bluetooth speaker I can be the loudest person in the room.” (He always has a speaker on hand, since “you never know when you might need some music.”)
The benefits offered by the headset give some idea of what is lacking from existing assistive technology (and what many people take for granted).
“I can use it to communicate, but at the same time I can make eye contact with the person I’m talking to, because of the visor. I don’t have to stare at a screen between me and someone else. This really helps me connect with people,” Benedict explained.
“Because it’s a headset I don’t have to worry about getting in and out of places, there is no extra bulk added to my chair that I have to worry about getting damaged in a doorway. The headset is balanced too, so it doesn’t make my head lean back or forward or weigh my neck down,” he continued. “When I set it up to use the first time it had me calibrate, and it measured my personal range of motion so the keyboard and choices fit on the screen specifically for me. It can also be recalibrated at any time, which is important because not every day is my range of motion the same.”
Alexa, which has been extremely helpful to people with a variety of disabilities due to its low cost and wide range of compatible devices, is also part of the Cognixion interface, something Benedict appreciates, having himself adopted the system for smart home and other purposes. “With other systems this isn’t something you can do, or if it is an option, it’s really complicated,” he said.
Next steps
As Benedict demonstrates, there are people for whom a device like Cognixion’s makes a lot of sense, and the hope is it will be embraced as part of the necessarily diverse ecosystem of assistive technology.
Forsland said that the company is working closely with the community, from users to clinical advisors like Goldie and other specialists, like speech therapists, to make the One headset as good as it can be. But the hurdle, as with so many devices in this class, is how to actually put it on people’s heads — financially and logistically speaking.
Cognixion is applying for FDA clearance to get the cost of the headset — which, being powered by a phone, is not as high as it would be with an integrated screen and processor — covered by insurance. But in the meantime the company is working with clinical and corporate labs that are doing neurological and psychological research. Places where you might find an ordinary, cumbersome EEG setup, in other words.
The company has raised funding and is looking for more (hardware development and medical pursuits don’t come cheap), and has also collected a number of grants.
The One headset may still be some years away from wider use (the FDA is never in a hurry), but that allows the company time to refine the device and include new advances. Unlike many other assistive devices, for example a switch or joystick, this one is largely software-limited, meaning better algorithms and UI work will significantly improve it. While many wait for companies like Neuralink to create a brain-computer interface for the modern era, Cognixion has already done so for a group of people who have much more to gain from it.
You can learn more about the Cognixion One headset and sign up to receive the latest at its site here.
There’s a stark contrast between Oura’s deck and the others we pored through on Extra Crunch Live. The slides CEO Harpreet Rai brought to the event were the clear output of a more mature and confident company seeking out its Series B. It’s a company with a focus, aware of where it wants the product to go and do (and it went there, announcing a massive followup round on Tuesday).
Then there’s that giant image of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with the company’s smart ring adorning Harry’s right hand. From there, it’s a parade of celebrity faces: Will Smith, Lance Armstrong, Bill Gates, Arianna Huffington and Seth Rogen, to name a few.
It’s clearly been a wild half-dozen years since the company was founded. Rai joined up in 2018, not long before the company embarked on its $28 million Series B. Forerunner General Partner Eurie Kim got on board during the round.
“[I] enthusiastically took the meeting and Harpreet shared his story and the story of Oura. The deck is what we talked through,” says Kim. “Because I was a consumer, it was just a no-brainer that I knew what he was trying to build. So we were very excited to lead the round.”
Kim and Rai joined us on Extra Crunch Live to discuss the process of taking Oura to the next level — and beyond — as the product found a second (or third) life during the pandemic through partnerships with sports leagues like the NBA. And as we’re wont to do, we asked the pair to take a look and a handful of user-submitted pitch decks. If you’d like your deck to be reviewed by experienced founders and investors on a future episode, you can submit it here.
On the hardness of hardware
By the time Oura sought out its Series B, the startup had already progressed pretty far. Kim compares the first-generation product (circa 2016 — predating both Rai and Kim’s time with the company ) to a “Power Rangers ring.” You’ve got to start somewhere, of course — and if nothing else, the admittedly bulky original edition of the product served as a powerful proof of concept.
Crypto startups couldn’t be hotter as currencies push past all-time-highs and investor appetite reaches mania for new projects. Crypto investment firms that have been investing in blockchain startups for years are not only beginning to see major movement from their portfolio, but are gaining renewed appetite from LPs after a lengthy crypto winter to make bigger, more audacious bets.
Austin-based Multicoin Capital has been around since 2017 investing in blockchain startups, cryptocurrencies and tokens with a venture fund and separate hedge fund. Today, the firm announced its raise of its second venture fund as it aims to further capitalize on rampant excitement in the crypto world. The new $100 million fund will help the company back new entrants in the space including companies tackling DeFi, digital collectibles, Web3 and crypto-enabled infrastructure.
Multicoin’s team says that it has already been investing out of this fund for several months and it seems the timing is more aligned with the promotion of three of the firm’s employees — Matt Shapiro, Mable Jiang, and John Robert Reed — to Partner status. The team is just 12, but is looking to expand as they build out their remote presence in other geographies.
The firm’s previous bets include The Graph, Solana, Torus, StarkWare and Arweave, among others.
It’s been a wild couple of years for Oura. Last year, in particular, proved to be a major driver for the wearable fitness manufacturer. With the pandemic bringing professional sports to a screeching halt in 2020, a number of major leagues have adopted the ring, including the NBA, WNBA, UFC and NASCAR.
The company has also been making a major push into health research courtesy of UCSF, which has published peer-review studies around the ring’s temperature monitor. That feature in particular has made it a big draw for the aforementioned leagues, as temperature spikes could point to larger issues, including the early stages of COVID-19.
Today the company is announcing a $100 million Series C. The round, led by The Chernin Group and Elysian Park (the Dodgers’ investment arm), brings the wearable company’s total funding up to $148.3 million. New investors include Temasek, JAZZ Venture Partners and Eisai, joining existing investors Forerunner Ventures, Square, MSD Capital, Marc Benioff, Lifeline Ventures, Metaplanet Holdings and Next Ventures.
The company initially set itself apart with its form factor, joining a crowded field that largely revolved around the wrist. Clearly, however, it’s come into its own over the last few years. To date, it’s sold more than 500,000 rings.
“The wearables industry is transitioning from activity trackers to health platforms that can improve people’s lives,” CEO Harpreet Singh Rai said in a press release tied to the news. “Oura focused first on sleep because it’s a daily habit, and lack of sleep has been linked to worsening health conditions including diabetes, cardiac disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, poor mental health, and more.”
The company says the round will go toward R&D (both hardware and software development) and hiring, including additional marketing and customer experience. The round also sees the hiring of a number of key roles, including head of Science, Shyamal Patel; site leader Tommi Heinonen and Daniel Welch, who has been promoted to CFO.
“This year has shined a spotlight on gaps in our healthcare industry, and the increasing need for each of us to take control over our own health,” Forerunner Managing Director Eurie Kim said in the release. “Oura is emerging as the trusted leader and community in the space by empowering people with personalized data that provides actionable insights for health improvement.”
In March 2020, Tame had a digital event suite for offline corporate events. But with the pandemic hitting, it did a hard pivot into providing a highly customizable virtual events platform, primarily used by companies for their sales events. The result is that it has now raised a seed round of $5.5m, a large round for its native Denmark, led by VF Venture (The Danish Growth Fund), along with byFounders and and three leading angels: Mikkel Lomholt (CTO & Co-founder, Planday); Sune Alstrup (Ex-CEO & Co-founder, The Eye Tribe); and Ulrik Lehrskov Schmidt.
The investment will be used to scale from 20 to 60 new employees across Copenhagen, London, and Krakow; expand to the UK, and grow revenues.
Founder Jasenko Hadzic, CEO and Co-founder said the pivot to virtual grew revenues “by 700% organically last year. No sales. No marketing. Organically. Therefore, Tame sees a huge opportunity and is going all-in on expanding aggressively to position itself as a market leader.”
Jacob Bratting Pedersen, Partner, VF Venture, said: “At VF Venture, we want to help develop and drive innovation. The corona crisis has brought digital momentum with it, and here Danish IT entrepreneurs have the opportunity to seize that agenda and bring Danish technology and expertise to the global market. Tame is a really good example of that. Tame has great potential to create a strong, global business for the benefit of growth and jobs in Denmark.”
Hadzic himself is already a success story – he eventually made it into the tech industry after arriving in Denmark as a child refugee from war-torn Bosnia during the Yugoslavian civil war.
But don’t mistake Tame for a Hopin. Hadzic told me: “We’re not interested in getting TechCrunch Disrupt as a customer or, or the big trade fairs. We just want to focus on those enterprise companies which we sell to a marketing department or an HR department.”
NurseFly, the healthcare jobs marketplace owned by IAC, has rebranded to Vivian Health as it expands its range of services. Originally launched for traveling nurses (or nurses willing to travel for short-term positions), Vivian Health now includes listings for permanent positions, per diem shifts and local openings. It also added employer reviews and a pay database that uses information gathered from the 1.7 million jobs that have come through its system.
Founded in 2017, NurseFly was acquired by IAC in August 2019. It is used by providers like AMN Healthcare, Cross Country Healthcare, Host Healthcare, Trinity Health, SSM Health and Honor Health. During the pandemic, Vivian Health quadrupled its employee headcount in order to meet demand, founder and chief executive officer Parth Bhakta told TechCrunch in an email.
“Over the past year, we’ve grown to fill nearly 10% of all travel nursing positions across the United States, oftentimes helping fill a crisis position in a matter of hours rather than weeks,” Bhakta said. During that time, the platform heard from major health systems “that their challenges around hiring for permanent roles were oftentimes even more dire than filling their travel positions,” he added. “Permanent roles at health systems were taking months to fill, costing tens of thousands of dollars to hire, and leading to short-staffed facilities in the meantime.”
As a result of these conversations, Vivian Health’s team spent three months rebuilding the platform to serve a wider range of healthcare providers and employers. Its rebranding and expansion comes at a time when many healthcare professionals are reporting burnout as a result of the pandemic.
In a study of 1,300 respondents published earlier this month, Vivian Health found that 83% said their mental health had been affected by working in healthcare over the past year. About 43% said they had considered quitting the profession.
One of the main reasons for burnout is working overtime, with 86% of their respondents reporting that their facilities are short-staffed, even as demand for healthcare professionals accelerates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), about 17.3 million people were employed in the heatlhcare sector in 2018, and that number is expected to increase 15% to 19.9 million by 2028, making it one of the fastest growing sectors.
“Crisis-level staffing shortages” are compounded by the amount of time, sometimes up to 120 days, it can take to hire a permanent employee. Shortening the amount of time it takes to fill positions has a ripple effect because clinicians need to work less overtime. Meanwhile, recruiters can focus on the right leads. Bhakta said employers have been able to use Vivian Health to fill permanent positions in as little as one week, and are typically able to do so within 30 days.
Vivian Heath built a proprietary dataset of healthcare industry information through the 1.7 million jobs that have come through its systems and asks all of its staffing agency partners to include pay rates in their listings. As a result, job seekers are able to see how a position’s compensation compares against the market, while employers can quickly adjust their rates to be more competitive.
Bhakta said Vivian Health added pay information because “our business is built on transparency, which we believe is a crucial element in solving the healthcare hiring crisis.”
