Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week wound being incredibly busy. What else would a week that included both the Airbnb and Affirm IPO filings, a host of mega-rounds for new unicorns, some fascinating smaller funding events, and some new funds?
Affirm has filed to go public! The fintech unicorn is big, growing, and losing less money over time. We were pretty impressed in our first look. Then, with a bit more time, we dug deeper and found a weakness or two. Still, Affirm is heading public and not in poor shape.
And then there was edtech, as always. This week we talked about Tencent backing Udemy, Duolingo raising again, and Transfr picking up a Series A that we thought was super interesting.
Financial Venture Studio put together a new fund to cut small checks into Seed-stage fintech startups. We think that’s great. Especially given what we know about what is going on in the fintech venture world.
What a week! Three episodes, some new records, and a very tired us after all the action. More on Monday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week wound being incredibly busy. What else would a week that included both the Airbnb and Affirm IPO filings, a host of mega-rounds for new unicorns, some fascinating smaller funding events, and some new funds?
Affirm has filed to go public! The fintech unicorn is big, growing, and losing less money over time. We were pretty impressed in our first look. Then, with a bit more time, we dug deeper and found a weakness or two. Still, Affirm is heading public and not in poor shape.
And then there was edtech, as always. This week we talked about Tencent backing Udemy, Duolingo raising again, and Transfr picking up a Series A that we thought was super interesting.
Financial Venture Studio put together a new fund to cut small checks into Seed-stage fintech startups. We think that’s great. Especially given what we know about what is going on in the fintech venture world.
What a week! Three episodes, some new records, and a very tired us after all the action. More on Monday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
The coronavirus has displaced millions of workers across the country. In order to recover, companies must focus on re-skilling their workforces in a measured and sustainable way. However, training and recruitment can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for companies, a heavy investment that is hard to explain during volatile times.
To Bharani Rajakumar, the founder of Transfr, the dilemma of displaced workers is the perfect use case for virtual reality technology. Transfr leverages virtual reality to create simulations of manufacturing-plant shop floors or warehouses for training purposes. The platform’s entry-level gives workers a way to safely and effectively learn a trade, and companies a solution on mass up-skilling needs.
At its core, Transfr is building a “classroom to career pipeline,” Rajakumar says. Companies have influence over the training they need, and students can turn into entry-level employees within vocational schools, on-site or within training facilities. Below is a presentation from the company highlighting the trainee experience.
Transfr’s core technology is its software. Hardware-wise, the business uses Facebook’s Oculus Quest headset with Oculus for Business, not the generic customer hardware available in stores.
Transfr makes money by charging a software-as-a-service licensing fee to companies, which can go for up to $10,000 depending on the size of the workforce.
Transfr started as a mentor-based VR training programming play. The business sold courses on everything from bartending to surgery skills, as shown below:
The shift to displaced worker training, Rajakumar says, came from realizing who had the purchasing power in the relationship of entry-level employees. Hint: It was the companies that had the most to gain from a higher-skilled worker.
Virtual reality has gotten an overall bump and better reputation from the coronavirus pandemic, but is yet to massively be adopted among edtech founders. Rajakumar thinks that it could be revolutionary for the sector. He first saw virtual reality when he attended a gaming conference in San Francisco in 2017.
“I can’t believe that gaming and pornography are the two big industries for this technology,” he said. “I don’t think anybody understands what this is gonna be for teaching and learning.”
Labster, which offers schools VR simulations of science class, had product usage grow 15 times since March. The company raised money in August to expand to Asia.
Labster CEO and co-founder Michael Jensen says that Transfr’s gamification and simply UX is good for adoption, but noted that production costs could be the biggest barrier toward making the company scale.
“It’s simply too expensive to build a stable, well-polished VR application still today, and all players, us included, need to think about reusability, testability and scalability to be able to truly succeed.”
Transfr is trying to lower costs by creating a catalog of work simulations, a Transfr virtual reality training facility of sorts, that it can then repurpose for each different customer. Each month, it adds to the training facility with new jobs that are in demand, helping it scale without needing to start from scratch with each new customer. Since March, Transfr’s customers have quadrupled.
Most notably, though, is Transfr’s recent work in Alabama. The company is behind a statewide initiative in Alabama where its software is being used in the community college system and industrial workforce commission for re-skilling purposes. It’s through these large contracts that Transfr will truly be able to scale in its mission to train workforces. Rajakumar hopes to sign 10 to 15 similar contracts in the next year.
It’s an ambitious goal, and one worth raising financing to achieve. Transfr today announced that it has raised $12 million in a round led by Firework Ventures . The money will primarily be used to grow Transfr’s catalog of virtual reality simulations. While the company is not yet profitable, Rajakumar says that Transfr “could be” if they wanted to move at a slower growth rate.
“Before COVID, people would say we’re such good Samaritans for working on workforce development,” he said. “In a post-COVID world, people say that we’re essential.”
The coronavirus has displaced millions of workers across the country. In order to recover, companies must focus on re-skilling their workforces in a measured and sustainable way. However, training and recruitment can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for companies, a heavy investment that is hard to explain during volatile times.
To Bharani Rajakumar, the founder of Transfr, the dilemma of displaced workers is the perfect use case for virtual reality technology. Transfr leverages virtual reality to create simulations of manufacturing-plant shop floors or warehouses for training purposes. The platform’s entry-level gives workers a way to safely and effectively learn a trade, and companies a solution on mass up-skilling needs.
At its core, Transfr is building a “classroom to career pipeline,” Rajakumar says. Companies have influence over the training they need, and students can turn into entry-level employees within vocational schools, on-site or within training facilities. Below is a presentation from the company highlighting the trainee experience.
Transfr’s core technology is its software. Hardware-wise, the business uses Facebook’s Oculus Quest headset with Oculus for Business, not the generic customer hardware available in stores.
Transfr makes money by charging a software-as-a-service licensing fee to companies, which can go for up to $10,000 depending on the size of the workforce.
Transfr started as a mentor-based VR training programming play. The business sold courses on everything from bartending to surgery skills, as shown below:
The shift to displaced worker training, Rajakumar says, came from realizing who had the purchasing power in the relationship of entry-level employees. Hint: It was the companies that had the most to gain from a higher-skilled worker.
Virtual reality has gotten an overall bump and better reputation from the coronavirus pandemic, but is yet to massively be adopted among edtech founders. Rajakumar thinks that it could be revolutionary for the sector. He first saw virtual reality when he attended a gaming conference in San Francisco in 2017.
“I can’t believe that gaming and pornography are the two big industries for this technology,” he said. “I don’t think anybody understands what this is gonna be for teaching and learning.”
Labster, which offers schools VR simulations of science class, had product usage grow 15 times since March. The company raised money in August to expand to Asia.
Labster CEO and co-founder Michael Jensen says that Transfr’s gamification and simply UX is good for adoption, but noted that production costs could be the biggest barrier toward making the company scale.
“It’s simply too expensive to build a stable, well-polished VR application still today, and all players, us included, need to think about reusability, testability and scalability to be able to truly succeed.”
Transfr is trying to lower costs by creating a catalog of work simulations, a Transfr virtual reality training facility of sorts, that it can then repurpose for each different customer. Each month, it adds to the training facility with new jobs that are in demand, helping it scale without needing to start from scratch with each new customer. Since March, Transfr’s customers have quadrupled.
Most notably, though, is Transfr’s recent work in Alabama. The company is behind a statewide initiative in Alabama where its software is being used in the community college system and industrial workforce commission for re-skilling purposes. It’s through these large contracts that Transfr will truly be able to scale in its mission to train workforces. Rajakumar hopes to sign 10 to 15 similar contracts in the next year.
It’s an ambitious goal, and one worth raising financing to achieve. Transfr today announced that it has raised $12 million in a round led by Firework Ventures . The money will primarily be used to grow Transfr’s catalog of virtual reality simulations. While the company is not yet profitable, Rajakumar says that Transfr “could be” if they wanted to move at a slower growth rate.
“Before COVID, people would say we’re such good Samaritans for working on workforce development,” he said. “In a post-COVID world, people say that we’re essential.”
We did shots to celebrate. Chrome rocked, and we were Day One Fans.
But over time what was once a romance began to sour, as Chrome got a bit slower, a bit heavier and a bit worse over the years.
The devolution felt a bit like what was happening to Google search, in which a very good idea was slowly turned into something that made more money at the cost of functionality, speed, and user happiness (more on that natural terminus of that progression here).
And because I am a petulant child, I have been very annoyed by what has happened to Chrome, software that I have never paid a single dollar to use. To make this point, I went out to round up a tweet or two from myself complaining about Chrome over the years, but after finding at least nine examples since May I started to feel bad (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine). So let’s move on.
What went wrong with Chrome? I don’t know. Over time its taste for RAM, lag, and being generally annoying grew. But as I was living in a G Suite world, sticking to Chrome made sense — so I endured.
And now, I may not have to any longer. This week Google detailed an impending set of Chrome updates that are amazing to read through and imagine the real-world impact of. Big Goog appears to have gone deep into its browser’s code, finding ways to make it faster, lighter on memory usage, and smarter.
Even if you have a lot of tabs open, you likely only focus on a small set of them to get a task done. Starting in this release, Chrome is actively managing your computer’s resources to make the tabs you care about fast—while allowing you to keep hundreds of tabs open—so you can pick up where you left off.
In this release, we’re improving how Chrome understands and manages resources with Tab throttling, occlusion tracking and back/forward caching, so you can quickly get to what you need when you need it.
Google this is literally me. I feel incredibly seen. Thank you.
We investigated how background tabs use system resources and found that JavaScript Timers represent >40% of the work in background tabs. Reducing their impact on CPU and power is important to make the browser more efficient. Beginning in M87, we’re throttling JavaScript timer wake-ups in background tabs to once per minute. This reduces CPU usage by up to 5x, and extends battery life up to 1.25 hours in our internal testing.
When the world works again, I want to buy lunch for everyone who took part in this effort.
Next, we’re bringing Occlusion Tracking–which was previously added to Chrome OS and Mac–to Windows, which allows Chrome to know which windows and tabs are actually visible to you. With this information, Chrome can optimize resources for the tabs you are using, not the ones you’ve minimized, making Chrome up to 25% faster to start up and 7% faster to load pages, all while using less memory.
Hell yes.
How many times have you visited a website and clicked a link to go to another page, only to realize it’s not what you wanted and click the back button? […] In Chrome 87, our back/forward cache will make 20% of those back/forward navigations instant, with plans to increase this to 50% through further improvements and developer outreach in the near future.
I didn’t even know I needed this, but I do. And I can’t wait to have it.
All in all, as I write this short post to you inside of Chrome, I cannot help but be freaking excited about New And Improved Chrome. More later after I get some testing in, but, honestly, yay!
Facebook has today filed another lawsuit against a company acting in violations of its terms of service. In this case, the company has sued Ensar Sahinturk, a Turkish national who operated of a network of Instagram clone sites, according to court filings. Facebook says Sahinturk used automation software to scrape Instagram users’ public profiles, photos, and videos from over 100,000 accounts without permission, and this data was then published on his network of websites.
In the filing, Facebook says it became aware of the clone website network a year ago, in November 2019. It learned that the defendant had controlled a number of domains, many with names that were similar to Instagram, including jolygram.com, imggram.com, imggram.net, finalgram.com, pikdo.net, and ingram.ws. The first in that list, jolygram.com, had been in use since August 2017. The others were registered in later years as the network expanded. Finalgram.com was the latest that was put to use, and has been in operation since Oct. 2019.
Facebook doesn’t say how large these sites were, in terms of visitors, but described the clone network to TechCrunch as having “voluminous traffic.”
In addition to being what Facebook claims are trademark violations associated with these domains, the sites were populated with data that was pulled from Instagram’s website through automated scraping — that is, via specialized software that pretends to be a human instead of a bot to access data.
The defendant was able to evade Instagram’s security measures against automated tools of this nature by making it look like the requests to Facebook’s servers were coming from a person using the official Instagram app, the complaint states.
The defendant had programmed his scraping software by creating and using thousands of fake Instagram accounts that would mimic actions that real, legitimate users of the Instagram app could have taken. Facebook said the number of fake accounts used daily could be very high. On April 17, 2020, the defendant used over 7,700 accounts to make automated requests to Facebook servers, for example. On April 22, 2020, he used over 9,000.
On the clone websites created, users were able to enter in any Instagram username and then view their public profiles, photos, videos, Stories, hashtags, and location. The clone sites also allowed visitors to download the pictures and videos that had been posted on Instagram, a feature that Instagram doesn’t directly offer. (Its official website and app don’t offer a “save” button.)
Facebook attempted to protect against these various terms of service violations in 2019, when it disabled approximately 30,000 fake Instagram accounts operated by the defendant. It also sent a series of Cease and Desist letters and shut down further Instagram and Facebook accounts, including one Facebook Page belonging to the defendant. However, the defendant claimed he didn’t operate jolygram.com, it was just registered under his name. But he also said he had shut it down.
Facebook claims the resources it used to investigate and attempt to resolve the issues with the defendant’s operations have topped $25,000 and is asking for damages to be determined during the trial.
The lawsuit is now one of many Facebook has filed in the years that followed the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where millions of Facebook users’ data has harvested without their permission. Facebook has since sued analytics firms misusing its data, developers who violated its terms to sell fake “Likes,” and other marketing intelligence operations. However, the company tells TechCrunch this is the first Instagram lawsuit against clone websites.
Lime is launching its fourth generation scooter in Paris this week, an example the company says of its financial turnaround and commitment to growth. But that product rollout isn’t over.
Lime CEO Wayne Ting hinted Thursday during the WSJ Future of Everything event that a “third mode,” beyond bikes and scooters, are also in the works for the first quarter of 2021 as well as the addition of third-party companies to its platform. Earlier this year, Lime started to include Wheels -branded electric bikes in certain cities on its app. Ting said users should expect more partnerships like these.
Ting wouldn’t give specifics on this “third mode” except to explain that will will probably serve a slightly longer distance than its scooters and be better at carrying cargo.
“We want to make sure that it continues to appeal to different demographics that maybe don’t see themselves on a scooter,” Ting added.
For now, Lime is focused on deploying the Gen4, a model that Ting says will surpass the more than two-year lifespan of its previous generation. The Gen4 will rollout across Europe in early 2021.
The Gen 4 features swept back handlebars that are similar to the design of bike handles, which Lime says allows for a more comfortable grip. The new model also an enhanced suspension and larger wheels, a dual hand brake system, a lower baseboard to optimize the center of gravity on the scooter and a new kickstand with two legs.
Perhaps the biggest change is the addition of a swappable battery, which Ting described as a “huge improvement on existing technology.” These swappable batteries will be interchangeable with the Lime bike fleet, further streamlining its operations, the company said Thursday.
Image Credits: Lime
Lime said Thursday it was both operating cash flow positive and free cash flow positive in the third quarter — a first — and is on pace to be full-year profitable, excluding certain costs (EBIT), in 2021. That turnaround will allow the company to continue to invest in product development and expand its footprint, according to Ting.
Byron Deeter is not backing down from his optimism about the cloud and the end of the COVID-19-induced wave of software buying doesn’t have him too worried.
Of course, Deeter is an investor at Bessemer, a venture capital concern that has done well betting on the cloud, so you might expect him to stay a cloud bull. But during a recent chat with TechCrunch as part of our Extra Crunch Live series, his answer was worth re-reading.
The Extra Crunch Live series continues: Click this to see what’s coming up on the agenda.
We asked the about what might happen once the newly announced vaccines arrive and the pandemic-led digital transformation acceleration loses its tailwind.
“Will that growth decelerate? [Or] was it a point-in-time moment for COVID? Or has this been a pulling forward of overall trends? Certainly, you’re going to have both,” he said, adding that he doesn’t “think in a year from now, we’re going to be spending 10 hours a day on Zooms,” but that in his view Zoom will remain “foundational in the economy.”
In Deeter’s view, “we’ve just set a new baseline [for software] and the beauty of these subscription businesses is that they’re not going to turn them off.” The result of all of that? Bullish growth expectations.
Drilling in further, we asked if he expects Bessemer software portfolio companies will grow faster in percentage terms in 2021 than they did in 2020. Saying that the cohort profile will change, he added that “on balance,” he thinks that “there’s a real case that [the group] could grow the same or faster.”
In a deal that has potentially big implications for the sustainability of consumer packaged goods, biomaterial manufacturing technology developer Genomatica and the massive nylon material manufacturer Aquafil have partnered on a new demonstration scale facility.
Nylon-6 is used to make everything from toothbrush bristles to pantyhose and industrial materials like carpeting and other heavy-duty fabrics.
The material will be used to develop renewable products and showcase goods that can be brought to market as more companies look to clean up their supply chains and make products that have fewer negative consequences for the environment at the end of their life.
The deal is a 50-fold expansion of previous production levels for Genomatica and represents a significant expansion of Genomatica’s capabilities.
The textile industry is a $960 billion business, and it’s one of the most polluting in the world — both in terms of chemical treatments and greenhouse gas emissions. According to data cited by the World Economic Forum, the textile industry accounts for 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per-year — nearly as much as the auto industry. Nylon production alone is responsible for about 60 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year, according to the companies.
The multi-year agreement with European-based Aquafil expands on the two companies’ existing relationship. Earlier this year the two companies produced the first ton of bio-nylon-6 precursor material at a pilot scale. Now, the move to a demonstration scale plant will give Genomatica the ability to move ahead with supply agreements to certain brand partners.
Clothing maker Far Eastern New Century uses Genomatica’s products in its clothes, and other partnerships are in the works, the company said.
Genomatica is backed by Casdin Capital, Viking Global Investors, which continues as Genomatica’s largest shareholder, and organism engineering partner Ginkgo Bioworks .
“Bio-nylon is positioned to replace a material that’s used in millions of applications every day,” said Christophe Schilling, Genomatica CEO. “Our research shows that despite health and economic turmoil, 56% of Americans still want brands to prioritize sustainability. With this scale, Genomatica is offering our brand partners a key way to meet their sustainability objectives, differentiate themselves, and meet surging consumer demand.”
Aquafil is building the plant in Slovenia, where the Genomatica biological precursor material will be converted into bio-nylon-6 yarns, films and engineered plastics.
HuffPost has a new owner, with its current parent company Verizon Media reaching an agreement to sell the site to BuzzFeed.
The Wall Street Journal broke the news and described this as a stock deal. Verizon Media is also making an investment in BuzzFeed and becoming a minority shareholder in the digital media company.
The deal also includes an agreement to syndicate content between the two companies while collaborating on advertising and creating a joint innovation group to explore other monetization opportunities.
As BuzzFeed’s press release notes, this deal brings HuffPost full circle, since BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti was also one of the founders of what was originally known as The Huffington Post.
“I have vivid memories of growing HuffPost into a major news outlet in its early years, but BuzzFeed is making this acquisition because we believe in the future of HuffPost and the potential it has to continue to define the media landscape for years to come,” Peretti said in a statement. “With the addition of HuffPost, our media network will have more users, spending significantly more time with our content than any of our peers.”
AOL acquired The Huffington Post for $315 million nearly a decade ago, just a few months after it acquired TechCrunch.
There have been on-and-of rumors of a HuffPost sale over the years. Last year, Verizon Media Guru Gowrappan said that the company was “not selling HuffPost” because it was “so core to our content.”
BuzzFeed is also searching for a new editor in chief at HuffPost. The position has been empty since Lydia Polgreen departed in March.
