Category: UNCATEGORIZED

SpaceX’s astronaut-ferrying Crew Dragon spacecraft is now docked to the International Space Station in Earth’s orbit, marking the successful completion of the first phase of its inaugural operational mission. Dragon was certified for human spaceflight earlier this month by NASA after having completed the development and testing program with a successful human demonstration flight earlier in 2020.

Dragon lifted off from Florida on Sunday evening, carrying four astronauts, including NASA’s Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and JAXA’s Soichi Noguchi. The spacecraft then spent a little over a day on orbit, moving into position to meet the Space Station and prepare for docking. It completed that late on Monday night, acting completely autonomously using SpaceX’s automated docking software to connect to the Space Station’s new international docking adapter, and then the hatch was opened by the existing ISS crew and the newly arrived team members made their way over.

The successfully docking and hatch opening means that SpaceX and NASA have achieved their goals so far with the Commercial Crew program: Creating a viable and effective means of launching people from the U.S. to space, and to the ISS. This mission’s astronauts will now spend the next six months at the Space Station, with Dragon attached, and then they’ll return likely next June in the second and final phase of this inaugural mission, which will prove that the system also works for coming back to Earth.

YardLink allows construction companies to obtain critical equipment faster than traditional equipment rental companies. It’s now raised a £1.7m seed round, bringing the total it’s raised to date to £2.4m. The round was led by Speedinvest Network Effects, with participation from FJ Labs.

Construction sites often have to hire equipment, but the centralized nature of the traditional hire market means suppliers can be slow to deliver, leading to downtime on-site, and delayed projects. Traditional suppliers include HSS Hire, Travis Perkins, Speedy Hire, Sunbelt Rentals. But YardLink aims to speed this process up with a digital-first, marketplace approach. It has a network of 100 suppliers with over 1,400 equipment depots across the UK.

The construction industry faces new guidelines to prevent the spread of coronavirus, such as having to provide portable site cabins and accommodation for its workforce. This, coupled with tight availability in the market and more demand for renting equipment, rather than buying it.

The global market for construction equipment rental is around $70bn.

The team consists of Neeral Shah (Founder and CEO), Matt Bloor (CCO) and Daniel Morris (CTO) .

5G. Edge. Open. Programmable. AI.

No, it’s not bingo at your local silicon chip enthusiast meetup, and no, I am not trying to game Google’s search algorithms (well, maybe just a bit). Rather, it’s a combination of technologies that are predicted to become critical for the future of the internet of things across industries as diverse as shipping and security.

One way to get all these technologies into single devices is just to agglomerate a bunch of off-the-shelf silicon chips and jam them into a product. Take a wireless radio chip, add some computing capacity, add some AI chip wizardly and voilà, you have yourself a modern IoT device.

There’s just one problem: these devices often have a lot of constraints. Most notably, they have power constraints, which means that they often can’t include five chips on board, but rather need one single chip that can use power extremely efficiently. In addition, there are space constraints, and constraints around how easy a chip is to reprogram remotely. In short, there’s a bet to be made that this new market — which is just getting started but expected to be huge in the coming years — needs a focused chip for it.

That bet has been made. EdgeQ, a stealthy silicon startup, emerged from stealth today to showcase a bit of its efforts around its new chip, and also to announce the closing of its $38.5 million Series A round led by Mohammad Islam of Threshold Ventures (formerly known as DFJ). The company previously closed a seed round led by Homan Yuen at Fusion Fund, bringing the company’s total fundraise to $51 million. AME Cloud Ventures also participated in the round, as did an undisclosed strategic customer.

What’s exciting here this early is the team. EdgeQ is founded by Vinay Ravuri, an ex-Qualcomm exec who worked on mobile and data center projects at the behemoth chipmaker during the attempted corporate takeover by Broadcom back in 2018. He left that year and teamed up with a stable of other senior engineers and execs from Qualcomm, Intel and Broadcom itself to work on the next-generation of chip tech for the edge. “We felt that there was an opportunity to focus outside of cell phones,” Ravuri said, which is what Qualcomm was heavily invested in given its dominance in 4G technologies.

EdgeQ remains under development, and the company isn’t ready to disclose the full details of its product as it continues its work. Nonetheless, Ravuri gave a broad overview of EdgeQ’s chip as it stands today.

“I just like to use this analogy of like a Goldilocks,” he said. “You know, this is too cold and this is too hot and what you really need is somewhere in the middle. And that’s kind of where EdgeQ comes in.”

This systems-on-a-chip product will have the connectivity of 5G with the on-board processing of a typical AI chip, compressed under a tight power envelope to minimize energy usage. Even more vitally, the chips will be reprogrammable, allowing for changes on the fly as circumstances around a product shift. “Putting all of that into a single chip requires a lot of integration and lots of architectural innovation which, which is what EdgeQ has been able to do,” Ravuri said.

This model of systems-on-a-chip is similar to what you might have seen last week at Apple’s big event around its new M1 chip. By combining a bunch of individual silicon systems on one chip, you can increase capabilities while reducing power.

Where could EdgeQ’s chips end up? Ravuri suggested a bunch of applications. You could imagine a security camera having a chip like this to coordinate with other cameras while also processing some of the data it is seeing through its lens. Drones and robotic machinery in an enclosed space could use wireless to synchronize their actions with other machines, process their actions through compute, and also calculate their locations to extreme precision. And of course, a whole bunch more applications are at least possible, but we’ll know more as the chip technology matures.

Homan Yuen of Fusion Fund said that “my background being in semiconductors, I know how hard these companies are and why venture investors don’t really like doing [them]. After meeting Vinay, the team, the background and experience, I [thought] if there’s one company I’m going to take a bet on doing chips, it’s going to be them.”

It’s a bet that has gotten a bit more traction with new investors coming to the table, but of course, product development has to continue, and these chips ultimately have to be manufactured and actually placed in the market for customers to buy. In other words, a nice milestone, but a lot more work to go.

EdgeQ has offices in Santa Clara and San Diego along with Bangalore, India.

Twitter this morning is launching its own version of Stories — aka “Fleets” — to its global user base. The product, which allows users to post ephemeral content that disappears in 24 hours, had already rolled out to select markets including Brazil, India, Italy, South Korea, and most recently, Japan. The company, in a press briefing on Monday, also revealed its plans to test an audio-based social networking feature similar to the controversial app Clubhouse.

Like Clubhouse, Twitter’s new audio spaces will allow people to gather for live conversations with another person or a group of people.

This is an area that, so far, has faced significant moderation challenges due to the nature of live audio. Clubhouse, though still in a private, invite-only testing phase, has already seen several high-profile incidents of moderation failure, including the harassment of a New York Times reporter, and another conversation that delved into antisemitism.

Twitter, for all its efforts at developing new features to combat online abuse — from its Hide Replies feature to its newer conversation controls — has not yet proven itself to be the sort of company that has managed to successfully combat online abuse, harassment, and trolling. Nor has it managed to develop a robust reporting system where users feel their complaints are swiftly handled.

So, given that live audio has proven even more difficult to moderate than text-based posts, Twitter’s decision to invest in this space will likely be criticized by those who don’t believe Twitter can safely engineer a platform for this type of conversation.

For what it’s worth, Twitter is not rolling out live audio spaces to all users at once. Instead, it’s first testing the product with a small group of people who the company believes can provide better user feedback than those on Clubhouse’s VC chat room, for instance.

“It’s critical that we get safety right — safety and people feeling comfortable in these spaces. We need to get that right in order for people to leverage live audio spaces in the ways we might imagine or in the ways that would be most helpful for them,” explained Twitter Staff Product Designer, Maya Gold Patterson, when introducing the feature in a briefing for reporters.

“So we’re going to do something a little different,” she continued. “We are going to launch this first experiment of spaces to a very small group of people — a group of people who are disproportionately impacted by abuse and harm on the platform: women and those from marginalized backgrounds,” she added.

As to why Twitter felt the need to jump on the audio bandwagon so early in the game, when it’s arriving several years late to the Stories format is less clear.

According to Twitter Director of Design Joshua Harris, the company’s delay to launch Stories was because Twitter was being “methodical in exploring how the format works for people on Twitter.”

That’s not exactly true. Twitter wasn’t years late because it was being careful about Fleets’ development. The reality was that Twitter had prioritized work on its core product over new features.

That’s been changing in recent months, thanks in part to activist investor Elliott Management Group, which took a sizable stake in Twitter earlier this year. It did so with a plan to push the company for more innovation and new executive leadership. (The company later struck a deal to spare Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s ousting, however.)

At the time of Elliott’s campaign, Twitter’s lack of Stories had been referenced as an area where the company had fallen behind social media rivals in terms of innovation.

Twitter’s trial launch of Fleets soon followed this shakeup. This intervention could also explain why the company is now rushing to enter the still unproven space of audio-based social networking.

Of course, Twitter is aware of the Clubhouse comparisons with its test of audio spaces.

“We think it’s we think that audio is definitely having a resurgence right now across many digital spaces,” noted Twitter Product Lead, Kayvon Beykour. “So it’ll be fascinating to see how other platforms explore the area as well, but we think it’s a critical one for us, too,” he said.

As for Fleets, there’s no change to the product beyond its global availability.

The feature itself is a fairly basic version of the basic Stories format which will be located at the top of the Twitter timeline. Users can post text, photos and videos to Fleets directly, or share tweets into Fleets and post their reactions. Others reply to Fleets via direct messages (DMs), much like how Stories work on other platforms. Twitter says more formats and creative tools will come to the product in the near future.

Twitter also says it’s working to bring standard voice tweets to Android and will make transcriptions for these tweets and other media available in 2021. It’s now testing audio in DMs in Brazil, as well.

The company additionally hinted at some new features in development aimed at pushing Twitter users to be more thoughtful and kinder to one another. These may include built-in reminders and nudges, including ways for friends to reach out privately to another user when they see something is going wrong.

“We’re exploring methods of private feedback on the platform, as well as private apologies, and forgiveness,” said Twitter Senior Product Manager Christine Su. “And so that may look like a notification — that’s like a gentle elbowing from someone that you follow. Or it also may look like a nudge like you’ve seen before.” No further details were provided, nor a timeframe for a rollout.

In the meantime, Fleets will be available to all markets where it hadn’t yet rolled out starting today. The audio spaces test is poised to launch to small groups of users soon.

TikTok today announced it’s expanding its parental control feature set known as Family Pairing to give parents additional tools to manage various aspects of their teen’s account as well as their privacy on the social video platform. The new tools will allow parents to set their teen’s account to private, control whether their Liked Videos are visible to others, control who can comment on the teen’s videos, and even decide whether the teen is allowed to use TikTok’s search feature.

When Family Pairing first launched in April, it allowed parents to link their account to their teen’s in order to manage screen time, direct messaging, and whether or not the teen’s account would be in “Restricted” mode — a special mode which limits TikTok’s feed to a safer set of more moderated content.

With the update rolling out today, parents will now be able to adjust an expanded range of parental control settings for their teen. They can now turn on or off the teen’s ability to access the search bar in the app, where they would otherwise be able to search for content, users, hashtags and sounds. This would be a form of punishment to an active TikTok user as it would significantly impact the teen’s ability to discover new creators and trends or create content of their own.

Parents can also choose to now turn on or off the ability for other users to see the teen’s “Like Videos” on their profile. And they can limit who is allowed to comment on their teen’s videos by selecting either “everyone,” “friends,” or “no one.”

Lastly, they can choose to switch the teen’s account from public to private. The latter would limit discoverability to just those people the teen knows and approves. A private account makes sense for a minor child, of course, but teens often turn their account to public in the hopes of gaining more views for their videos or going viral.

The Family Pairing feature is designed to be used by parents with children age 13 or older, as the app in the U.S. offers a COPPA-compliant, view-only mode for the “under 13” crowd, TikTok for Younger Users.

Families can choose which parental controls make sense for them for use with their teen and for how long. It’s a differentiating feature for TikTok to offer, as other social apps popular with teens — like Snapchat and Instagram — offer no way for parents to limit their teen’s experience.

The features arrive at a tumultuous time for TikTok, whose app is still possibly being banned in the U.S. (But who even knows these days?!).

The company says the new parental controls are rolling out to all users worldwide.

As Italy reinstates many COVID-19 restrictions, the country’s tech ecosystem is watching and waiting to see what the wider effects of the emergency will be. Italy’s ecosystem for tech venture capital and startups has been in development for years and has made decent strides in the last decade. Will the coronavirus stymie their efforts?

Put off by high taxes and paperwork in their home country, many Italian entrepreneurs moved to places like London in years past to startup. Indeed, the Italian Ministry of Economic Development and the Italian Trade & Investment Agency in London have even been known to fund Italian entrepreneurs abroad to help them gain more experience. There are an estimated 100,000 Italians already living in London, attracting the likes of Riccardo Zacconi, co-founder of King.com (maker of Candy Crush) and Simon Beckerman of social shopping app Depop.

Rome has more than 20 incubators/accelerators and many established VCs; because of its lower costs compared to other European cities, it’s become a major base for startups. However, while many startups exist in cities like Turin, Bologna, Naples and Rome, Milan is generally seen as a bigger ecosystem because of its mercantile culture and a significant share of VC funds.

The good news: VC funding in Italy has grown. In 2019, Italian startups attracted $850 million, compared to just €140 million in 2017, as the VC ecosystem became less insular and more international investors arrived. Milan tends to attract the lion’s share of VC funding — in 2019, startups located there received €311 million, according to NGP Capital. In 2019, about 300 deals were venture-backed.

Even so, Italy is still very much behind its European counterparts, which means founders tend to move their HQ to fundraise elsewhere, while keeping their comparatively cheaper workforce at home. Italy continues to have structural problems for startups: Credit is based on a company’s financial history, so loans are off-limits.

However, in June 2020, the Italian government sponsored a €1 billion investment program aimed at the native startup ecosystem, creating a new venture arm: CDP Venture Capital.

This has seven different funds under management, including a VC fund-of-funds, “Series A/B matching” funds and acceleration funds. It has also launched two different acceleration projects aimed at supporting SMEs and startups with mentoring, networking and support services.

Additionally, the Ministry of Economic Development launched an initiative called The Italian Startup Act that bundled previously passed legislation to incentivize the Italian ecosystem with tools like tax breaks on early-stage investments and R&D credits, plus a startup visa to attract talent.

Entrepreneurs still face plenty of red tape, however, which is tough enough for Italians, let alone outsiders who might consider relocating. And skeptical observers are concerned that some of the government-backed initiatives look like the government is trying to pick winners, which rarely ends well. Plus, there is controversy about how a €209 billion recovery fund from the European Union, earmarked for the country’s 11,000 startups, will be spent.

But the talent pool is increasing, with Italian universities attracting more overseas students with English-language-based courses and big corporates investing. Microsoft has announced a $1.5 billion investment plan, which includes its first cloud data center in the country. NTT data is investing in Calabria. Amazon has invested in new infrastructure. And Apple has sponsored a Naples-based developer academy.

With a population of 60 million (for comparison, U.K.: 66 million, Germany: 83 million, Spain: 46 million), Italy is not lacking in people, but GDP per capita is a low $34,000. It has an estimated 67 VC funds, with 18 of them started since 2015.

Notable startups from Italy include MoneyFarm (which has raised $127 million from United Ventures, Allianz), Prima.it (€100 million, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs), Soldo (€83 million, Accel, Battery Ventures), Casavo (€59 million, Greenoaks, Picus, Project A, 360 Capital), Milkman (€32 million, p101, 360 Capital Partners) and Mosaicoon (€12 million).

Approximately half of seed to Series A funds have raised $100 million+ funds in the last year. However, seed rounds for startups remain low, even for Europe, ranging from anywhere from €300,000 to €1 million.

ScaleIT is a notable tech business event for the country (which clearly took over from the fabulous TechCrunch Italy events of a million years ago).

And finally, WeWork is opening two more buildings in Milan, taking it to five locations in the city, by mid-2021. Milan-born Talent Garden, which has raised €56 million, is still bullish about co-working despite the pandemic. While this was announced before news of a vaccine emerged, it’s clear that major players are still betting on Italy’s emerging tech ecosystem.

These are the investors we interviewed:

• Giulia Giovannini, partner, United Ventures
• Anna Tampieri, partner, ENEA Tech
• Giuseppe Donvito, partner, P101 Ventures
• Massimiliano Magrini, partner, United Ventures
• Matteo Elli, partner, Pariter Partners
• Fabio Pirovano, partner, United Ventures
• Simone Riva, partner, H14
• Matteo Confalonieri, associate, Milano Investment Partners
• Gianluca Dettori, partner and founder, Primomiglio
• Alessandro Petrich, partner, LVenture Group
• Mario Scuderi, partner, CDP Venture Capital

Giulia Giovannini, partner, United Ventures

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?

We are sector-agnostic in our approach, and we invest both in B2B and B2C tech/digital companies from various industries. We mainly invest in SaaS companies with some proven traction in the market – but overall, we seek the best technology entrepreneurs that want to make an impact. Our focus is on entrepreneurial and technological initiatives aimed at digitalizing and increasing the productivity of traditionally undigitized sectors. Lately, we have been looking into insurtech and medtech.

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?

In October 2020, we led a $7M Series A round in Boom Image Studio, a Milan-based company on a mission to reshuffle the world of commercial photography by transforming the way digital photo content is generated. We believe that Boom will significantly accelerate the photography industry’s digital transformation, dramatically improving the photo production experience for customers and photographers.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?

The strategy of venture capital is not to capitalize on the continuity of trends already existing on the market or to focus on the hype of the moment, but rather the exercise of imagining the demands of tomorrow, intercepting products and services capable of reinventing entire sectors with a view to a future industrial policy. Startups using tech to foster remote work, education, healthcare are undoubtedly in the spotlight at the moment: the key question is which technologies and platforms can meet current priorities and remain relevant in the post-pandemic future.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?

There is no such thing as a “typical United Ventures company,” but there is a paradigm that all our best investments have in common: ambitious founders with strong values and who know how to inspire their team, with an entrepreneurial project focused on a large growing market and the ability to scale internationally.

Which areas are either oversaturated or would be too hard to compete in at this point for a new startup? What other types of products/services are you wary or concerned about?

I have seen too many startups in payment services. I think the wave has passed.

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?

We are a European VC with a strong focus – approximately 50% – on the Italian ecosystem, where we are best placed to support teams in terms of value-add. We are committed to making the most of the Italian market’s peculiarities, connecting Italian entrepreneurs and talents to the global market. On a national level, we are active all around Italy, with startups headquartered in Milan, Rome, Bologna, Pisa.

Which industries in your city and region seem well-positioned to thrive, or not long-term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?

Milan is well positioned on fintech matters, while Italy is home to many exciting initiatives very much oriented towards deep technologies thanks to research centers of excellence such as Milan and Turin Polytechnics and the IIT (Italian Institute of Technology). Concerning our portfolio, I am very excited by Credimi, a digital lending platform offering digital factoring solutions to enterprises experiencing significant growth rates, and I’m looking forward to working with Boom, our latest investment.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?

The Italian ecosystem is still small compared to other European hubs, but it has been developing rapidly in recent years. Milan has earned a national hub’s status and reached that critical mass — of large companies, multinationals, universities with cosmopolitan vocation, new companies — capable of generating an ecosystem able to attract the best talents and connect them with other continental and global hubs.

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come, with startup hubs losing people due to the pandemic and lingering concerns, plus the attraction of remote work?

I think startups will continue to gravitate around big cities’ hubs because they bring value in terms of network and contamination. However, the pandemic has allowed an acceleration in the adoption of remote work organization, enabling the search and recruitment of talents from abroad. Many of our portfolio companies opened up fully-remote roles.

Which industry segments that you invest in look weaker or more exposed to potential shifts in consumer and business behavior because of COVID-19? What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?

B2C startups are certainly favored due to the increased penetration of e-commerce. On the other side, the adoption of new B2B business models may be slowed down by the modus operandi of large companies that are not at their ease signing remote commercial agreements, causing delays.

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?

Our role, as Venture Capital investors, is to support our portfolio companies at our best capacity. Getting fundraising done and signing customer deals has been challenging in these months, so our advice is, first of all, to control and manage the cash carefully. We highlighted the need to communicate effectively and realistically with their employees, clients, and stakeholders. Concerning our investment strategy, we refocused on the Italian market.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?

Tech startups are facing challenges and opportunities. Our portfolio is navigating the pandemic with determination and creativity. For example, Credimi has put in place several initiatives to aid Italian SMEs to face the COVID-19 emergency. More generally, B2C startups have seen significant growth in revenues, while B2B startups have, in some cases, seen a lengthening in the average time taken to underwrite commercial contracts.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.

Having managed to close the investment in BOOM working remotely with the startup from the first meetings to the closing, I had the confirmation that our job can be easily managed through remote work.

Any other thoughts you want to share with TechCrunch readers?

Technology is driving radical change across all aspects of our life, and the uncertain times we are going through has accelerated the digital transformation in multiple ways. Our job requires a long-term outlook: now more than ever, we are confident in technological innovation’s potential to lay the groundwork for a brighter future.

Anna Tampieri, partner, ENEA Tech

What trends are you most excited about investing in, generally?

Material science and biotech.

What’s your latest, most exciting investment?

Green Bone Ortho.

Are there startups that you wish you would see in the industry but don’t? What are some overlooked opportunities right now?

Startups dealing with new materials.

What are you looking for in your next investment, in general?

Innovative materials and solutions coming from recycling and the circular economy.

What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not), which founders?

Food and beverage, biotech, automation and tourism.

How should investors in other cities think about the overall investment climate and opportunities in your city?

Before the pandemic the business climate was positive, even if it was challenging.

Do you expect to see a surge in more founders coming from geographies outside major cities in the years to come, with startup hubs losing people due to the pandemic and lingering concerns, plus the attraction of remote work?
No, I don’t expect that: I think that the pandemic will create a move towards “localism.”

What are the opportunities startups may be able to tap into during these unprecedented times?

Mainly biotech and company involved in developing various anti-COVID solutions.

How has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy? What are the biggest worries of the founders in your portfolio? What is your advice to startups in your portfolio right now?

Startups dealing with new solutions for personal mobility.

Are you seeing “green shoots” regarding revenue growth, retention or other momentum in your portfolio as they adapt to the pandemic?

Many.

What is a moment that has given you hope in the last month or so? This can be professional, personal or a mix of the two.

The moment that I contacted a newco developing an innovative cure for COVID-19 using monoclonal antibodies.

Any other thoughts you want to share with TechCrunch readers?

I would share an unpopular thought: To focus more on true innovations versus the short-term economic return.

Giuseppe Donvito, partner, P101 Ventures

Targeting the population that’s most underserved with new treatment options has been part of the mission fro Twentyeight Health since its launch. Now a new partnership with the venture-backed startup, Healthify, means that the company will be able to expand its reach. 

Healthify works with managed care organizations and case workers to integrate social determinants of health into the healthcare system.

Social factors have a significant role to play in patient outcomes, according to new research, and both Twentyeight Health and Healthify are trying to do their part to ensure that access to care becomes less of an issue.

Twentyeight Health sells and delivers birth control pills, patches, rings, shots and emergency contraception prescriptions at a low-cost — or covered by insurance including Medicaid.

Through the Healthify integration, the company will be able to offer its services through health plans and providers that use Healthify to determine social factors that may influence treatment, the companies said.

“This partnership comes at a time when many women in vulnerable communities are in need of prescription delivery or virtual healthcare services due to COVID-19,” said Amy Fan, Co-Founder of Twentyeight Health. “By working with Healthify, we can strengthen our efforts to ensure that all women who want birth control are able to access it.”

Since its launch two years ago, Twentyeight Health is now operating in six states including Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“Together, we can expand Twentyeight Health’s impact by offering their services to help individuals receive the low- or no- cost birth control that is right for them,” said Manik Bhat, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Healthify.

To date, Healthify has raised $25.5 million from investors including Primary Venture Partners and BlueCross Blue Shield Venture Partners. Twentyeight Health recently announced a $5 million early stage round of funding and is backed by investors including Third Prime and Town Hall Ventures.

Byron Deeter’s portfolio includes Twilio, DocuSign, Box, Canva, Intercom, SendGrid and many more. He is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced SaaS and cloud investors in the biz, which is why Alex Wilhelm and I are more than thrilled to lead a live Q&A with Deeter on today’s forthcoming episode of Extra Crunch Live.

Deeter co-authors Bessemer Venture Partners’ 10 Laws of Cloud Computing and the annual State of the Cloud report, created the Bessemer Forbes Cloud 100 and is now the host of Bessemer’s new podcast Cloud Giants. To say this man has his head in the cloud would be an understatement.

The move over to the cloud had plenty of momentum behind it before the pandemic struck, which has only served to speed up that transition even more. With businesses across almost every industry moving to the cloud, and startups clamoring to get a piece of the pie, Deeter has a unique perspective on what it takes to win big in this market.

We’ll chat with Deeter about what he looks for in SaaS and cloud startups, both subjectively (founder qualities) and objectively (metrics), and which trends he foresees in the year ahead.

I’ll also Q Deeter about his investment in Team SoloMid as anyone who knows me knows I can’t resist a good discussion about esports, especially considering that investment is a bit of an outlier in Deeter’s portfolio.

Of course, Alex and I won’t be the only ones asking questions. Extra Crunch Members are more than encouraged to submit their own question (you can do that ahead of time using the link below), which we’ll pass on to Deeter during the conversation.

You can catch the chat live at 3pm ET/12pm PT today or watch it on demand right here. (Pro Tip: That link will also take you to the full library of all Extra Crunch Live episodes of the past, which include conversations with guests such as Mark Cuban, Roelof Botha, Aileen Lee, Charles Hudson, Max Levchin, Zack Perret and many, many more.)

If you’re not yet an Extra Crunch member, what the hell are you waiting for? You can sign up here (and you really should!).

Details:

Below are links to add the event to your calendar and to save the Zoom link. We’ll share the YouTube link shortly before the discussion:

Communication tools are evolving quickly. We have all kinds of social media for our personal lives, Slack for chatting with our coworkers, Discord for gaming and other communities, and Zoom and FaceTime for when we want to look someone (almost) in the eyes.

But the business phone has been mostly stuck in the past. OpenPhone wants to change that.

The company, which today announced the close of a $14 million Series A financing, is looking to bring the same modern communications features that we use every day to our work phone. The round. was led by Craft Ventures’ David Sacks with participation from Slow Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Y Combinator, Garage Capital and Chapter One Ventures.

OpenPhone lets employees make calls, send texts, and add context to their business contacts all from an app on their phone or computer. Moreover, the app lets an organization work collaboratively across the platform. For example, a company or department can have a single shared number, as well as their own individual numbers, and can also share and sync information about contacts across the org.

Alongside the announcement of the funding, OpenPhone is also releasing a handful of new features on the platform, including new integrations with HubSpot and Zapier. The app is also introducing international calling, group messaging among teammates, search functionality, and analytics around OpenPhone usage.

The company claims that 77 percent of consumers use text for business communication and that upwards of 80 percent of small businesses use a personal cell phone for professional calls. That said, legacy solutions are often highly complicated phones with no messaging capabilities.

There are, however, several competitors looking to bring the work phone into the 21st century alongside OpenPhone. RingCentral and DialPad are just two that also put the work phone in the cloud, and they’ve raised $44 million and $220 million respectively with an impressive list of investors across the two of them (such as Sequoia and A16Z).

OpenPhone costs $10/month per user for the base tier, with more expensive options for more complicated use cases. The startup is happy to sell directly to individuals within an organization for a bottom-up approach.

“The biggest challenge so far is breaking out of the noise,” said cofounder and CEO Mahyar Raissi. “Our strategy is to build OpenPhone for startups because they’re small businesses that grow up and can become difficult to serve, and if we can build for that kind of company that means we’re the type of solution that can potentially be applied in most use cases.”

OpenPhone has a team of 11 employees, with just over 25 percent female team members and the same ratio of non-white employees. Four of the 11 employees are first-generation immigrants, including the cofounders.

The company says its tripled revenue since the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, and has powered more than 7.5 million calls and more than 17.3 million messages since launch.

Giraffe360 has a robotic camera, combined with a subscription service, which enables real estate agents and brokers to generate high-resolution photos of properties, floor plans and virtual tours easily. It’s now raised $4.5M in a funding round led by LAUNCHub Ventures and Hoxton Ventures. Also participating is HCVC (Hardware Club), alongside existing investor Change Ventures.

The startup is leaning into the opportunity of 2020 qs property viewings have migrated from physical to virtual, in large part because of the pandemic.

Giraffe360 uses a high-specification sensor, LIDAR laser technology and robotics. The camera is sold as a service for £399 per month to real estate agents and brokers. It was founded in 2016 in Riga, Latvia by two brothers Mikus Opelts and Madars Opelts and is headquartered in London, UK.

The competition is obviously the older model of hiring a professional photographer or the agent taking their own pictures. The 3D rendering or virtual tour also usually requires professional help.

In the US, a similar company, Matterport, has raised $114M to date.

Mikus Opelts, founder and CEO of Giraffe360 said in a statement: “Our growth numbers speak for themselves. Subscriptions grew 800% in 2019 and will be even higher in 2020. More than ever this year, our clients and prospective buyers and tenants have started to see virtual viewing as the default way to look at a property.”

Todor Breshkov, partner at LAUNCHub Ventures said: “We’re always keeping an eye on proptech trends and we’re impressed with the potential their product has to modernize the real estate industry.”

Hussein Kanji, partner at Hoxton Ventures: “Giraffe360 has global potential with customers in 26 countries, including industry-leading brands such as RE/MAX, CBRE, and BNP Paribas Real Estate.”