Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Cooler Screens, which replaces the glass doors in store cooler aisles with interactive digital displays, is announcing that it has raised more than $80 million in Series C funding.

The startup has now raised more than $100 million in funding. The latest round comes from Verizon Ventures (Verizon owns TechCrunch), Microsoft’s M12 venture fund, Great Point Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank and others.

Cooler Screens is led by co-founder and CEO Arsen Avakian, who was previously founder and CEO of Argo Tea. Avakian told me that before starting Argo, he worked at a number of technology companies, including i2 Technologies.

“The joke was, I went from IT to tea, and now I’m back to IT,” he said. He also suggested the startup draws on all of his past experience — while Cooler Screens is a tech company, it also requires an understanding of how to build a consumer brand.

The idea of replacing simple glass doors with electronic displays might seem unnecessary or even annoying, but Avakian said his first priority is “winning consumers’ hearts.”

After all, we’re used to doing as much research as we want before buying a product online, but very little of that information is available in the brick-and-mortar shopping and experience. Avakian said Cooler Screens is changing that: “You could ask the screens, ‘Show me all the vegan items’ or ‘How many calories are in this product?'”

And it’s already available in some stores. After installing screens in 50 Walgreens locations in the Chicago area (where Cooler Screens is based), the startup announced plans to expand to 2,500 Walgreens stores across the United States. Other partners include Kroger and GetGo.

Avakian said he pitches stores on a partnership for “sophisticated digital merchandising and contextual advertising technology.”

Image Credits: Cooler Screens

He added, “We can digitize your stores, and as we do that, we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is and show you that the consumers will love us: The NPS scores will be through the [roof]. If we prove all of that to you, we’d love to start bringing into this marketplace the CPG brands that are relevant to consumers in your stores, and now we become the last mile of advertising.”

Avakian said that unlike most forms of digital advertising, Cooler Screens doesn’t gather any personal information about the viewer. Instead, its appeal to advertisers is the fact that it gives them a way to reach consumers “in a safe environment, where they’re in the mindset for shopping.”

Avakian said that since March, the startup has grown from 40  brands advertising on the platform to nearly 150.

Noting that stores like Walgreens and Kroger have been essential for many shoppers during the pandemic, Avakian said, “It’s obvious to everyone that brick-and-mortar retail is here to stay. It just needs to reinvent itself.”

The two main crowd-equity fundraising platforms in the UK, Crowdcube and Seedrs, have agreed terms on a long-rumoured merger, thus creating one of the world’s largest private equity marketplaces.

The merger is being structured as an acquisition by Crowdcube of all of the outstanding share capital of Seedrs, via scheme of arrangement. Existing Crowdcube shareholders and option holders will own 60% of the combined company, and existing Seedrs shareholders and option holders will own 40% of the combined company. According to a joint statement, the merger ratio reflects the approximate valuations of the two companies based on each of their most recent fundraising rounds.

Jeff Kelisky, Seedrs’ CEO, will become CEO of the combined company, and Darren Westlake, Crowdcube’s CEO and co-founder, becomes executive chairman. The management team will include key people from both businesses.

Darren Westlake, CEO and co-founder of Crowdcube, commented: “Equity crowdfunding has redefined how many ambitious businesses raise investment and engage with their customers. Today’s agreement is an incredibly exciting milestone that will benefit high growth businesses, their investors who believe in their vision and the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports them. Together with Seedrs, we can accelerate plans to further expand in the UK and overseas, launch innovative new products and improve our customers’ experience.”

Jeff Kelisky, CEO of Seedrs, said: “We are both fintech pioneers that have challenged the landscape of capital raising in Europe, building marketplaces for private equity investment. We believe that you need to be a player of greater scale to serve companies and the investors who support them. Now is the right time to bring our strengths together, in order to meet our common mission to deliver a step change in the accessibility and efficiency within private company investing.”

The two investment platforms have faced-off against each other ever since Seedrs was founded 2009 by Jeff Lynn and Carlos Silva (but launched in 2012 after regulatory approval) and Crowdcube was in 2011 by Westlake and Luke Lang. According to Crunchbase, Seedrs has raised a total of £28.2M while Crowdcube has raised £30.7M.

Since 2011, £2 billion has been invested in campaigns on Crowdcube and Seedrs, putting through 1,500 companies through their respective platforms. Notable companies include including Brewdog, Revolut, Perkbox, what3words and Moneybox.

But although attracting startups from across Europe — while the UK was in the EU — most observers looked quizzically on how two large players in crowd equity could survive in a relatively mid-sized market like the UK.

In fact, while both have ridden the wave of investor interest in startups (and not just tech-oriented ones) over the last ten years, TechCrunch understands that the two firms had been discussing a merger for some time but had not yet seen the right moment until now.

Neither has sat on their laurels in the intervening years. Seedrs just recently launched its secondary market offering to all private businesses. While Crowdcube has continued to attract fund-raises from notable companies such as Curve.

Google is postponing the enforcement of its new Play Store billing policy in India to April 2022, days after more than 150 startups in the world’s second largest internet market forged an informal coalition to express concerns over the 30% charge the Android-maker plans to mandate and started to explore an alternative store for their apps.

The company, which is going live globally with the new Play Store rule in September 2021, is deferring the enforcement of the policy only in India, it said. It is also listening to developers and willing to engage to allay their concerns, it said.

Last week, Google said it would no longer allow any apps to circumvent its payment system within the Play Store. The move, pitched by Google as a “clarification” of its existing policy, would allow the company to ensure it gets as high as a 30% cut on in-app purchases made through Android apps operating in a range of a categories.

Google’s announcement today is a direct response to the biggest scrutiny it has received in a decade in India — its biggest market by users but also a place where, compared to Western markets, it generates little revenue. More than 150 startups in India last week formed an informal coalition to fight the company’s strong hold on Indian app ecosystem. Google commands 99% of the smartphone market in India, according to research firm Counterpoint.

Among the startups that have expressed concerns over Google’s new policy are Paytm, India’s most valuable startup, payments processor Razorpay, fantasy sports firm Dream11, social network ShareChat, and business e-commerce IndiaMART.

More than 50 Indian executives relayed these concerns to India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology over a video call on Saturday, according to three people who attended the call.

Several businesses in India have long expressed concerns with the way Google has enforced its policies in India, but the matter escalated last month after the company temporarily pulled Paytm app from the Play Store for promoting gambling.

Google said Paytm had repeatedly violated its policies, and the company’s Play Store has long prohibited apps that promote gambling in India. Google has sent notices about warnings over gambling to several more firms in India in recent weeks.

A senior industry executive told TechCrunch that the company should have expressed these concerns months before the popular cricket tournament IPL was scheduled to commence. Fantasy sports apps allow users to pick their favorite players and teams. These players stand to win real money or points that they can redeem for physical goods purchase based on the real-world performance of their preferred teams and players. IPL season sees a huge surge in popularity of such fantasy sports apps. 

“The IPL even got delayed by months. Why did Google wait for so long? And why does the company have a problem with so-called gambling in India, when it permits such activities in other markets? The Indian government has no problem with it,” the executive said, requesting anonymity.

Paytm on Monday announced its own mini-app store featuring several popular services including ride-hailing firm Ola, health care provides 1mg and Practo, fitness startup Cure.fit, music-streaming service Gaana, car-rental provider Zoomcar, Booking.com, and eateries Faasos, Domino’s Pizza, and McDonald’s. The startup claimed that more than 300 firms have signed up for its mini store and that its app reaches more than 150 million users each month. (In a written statement to TechCrunch, Paytm said in June its app reached more than 50 million users in India each month.

Paytm, which says its mini-app store is open to any developer, will provide a range of features including the ability to support subscriptions and one-step login. The startup, which claims  said it will not charge any commission to developers for using its payments system or UPI payments infrastructure, but will levy a 2% charge on “other instruments such as credit cards.”

“There are many challenges with traditional mobile apps such as maintaining multiple codebases across platforms (iOS, Android or Web), costly user acquisition and requirement of app release and then a waiting period for user adoption for any change made in the app. Launching as a Mini Apps gives you freedom from all these hassles: implying lesser development/testing and maintenance costs which help you reach millions of Paytm users in a Jiffy,” the Indian firm said in its pitch.

The launch of a mini-store further cements Alibaba-backed Paytm’s push into turning itself into a super-app. Its chief rivals, Walmart-backed PhonePe and Google Pay, also operate similar mini stores on their apps.

Whether Paytm’s own mini app store and postponement of Google’s new Play Store policy are enough to calm other startups’ complaints remain to be seen. PhonePe is not one of the mini apps on Paytm’s store, a Paytm spokesperson told TechCrunch.

“I am proud that we are today launching something that creates an opportunity for every Indian app developer. Paytm mini app store empowers our young Indian developers to leverage our reach and payments to build new innovative services,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, co-founder and chief executive of Paytm, in a statement.

Just six days after Uber won its appeal against London transportation regulators to continue operating in London for another 18 months, one of its bigger rivals has found itself in the hot seat. Ola, the India-based ride-hailing startup, is not getting its Transport for London ride-hailing license renewed, after failing to meet some of TfL’s public safety requirements specifically around licensing for drivers and vehicles.

Ola told TechCrunch it plans to appeal the decision, and as was the case with Uber, under TfL’s rules, a company is allowed to continue operating while appealing a decision.

Sky News, which had first reported the news of Ola failing to get renewed, noted that TfL said it discovered multiple failures in how Ola operates, specifically around its use of unlicensed drivers and vehicles covering more than 1,000 passenger trips, “which may have put passenger safety at risk,” according to a statement from Helen Chapman, TfL’s director of licensing, regulation and charging. It’s not clear if there were other violations involved. We have contacted TfL and will update this post as we learn more.

From what we understand, Ola plans to defend itself by claiming that the issue was partly technical: the company and TfL used different conventions in its databases to track licensing for drivers and vehicles, and Ola was not seeing licensing expirations come through in a timely enough way. The gap between having licensed and unlicensed drivers appeared to create a big enough safety issue for TfL, which it did not believe Ola was working to fix as a priority going forward. (And indeed, this also meant that Ola could conveniently continue to have those drivers, uninterrupted, on its books and working.)

As with Uber and its own run-in with TfL, Ola is already preparing to appeal TfL’s decision.

“At Ola, our core principle is to work closely, collaboratively and transparently with regulators such as TfL,” Marc Rozendal, Ola’s UK MD, said in a statement. “We have been working with TfL during the review period and have sought to provide assurances and address the issues raised in an open and transparent manner. Ola will take the opportunity to appeal this decision and in doing so, our riders and drivers can rest assured that we will continue to operate as normal, providing safe and reliable mobility for London.”

Ola — which has raised some $3.8 billion in funding over the years, partly to shore up its business to compete heavily against the likes of Uber — has been running commercial services in London since February of this year and in that time has signed up more than 25,000 drivers, the company said, but it has not disclosed how many rides it has completed, nor how many passengers it has amassed, nor any other metrics.

In addition to its own direct customers, Ola also partners with other on-demand ride services, such as Gett, as an extra capacity provider for services for Gett’s customers. It also operates in other cities in the UK, one of the SoftBank-backed company’s few big international forays outside of India (the others are Australia and New Zealand). The UK, and London specifically — even now, as many cut down their movements due to Covid-19 — represent one of the biggest and more lucrative markets in the world for ride-hailing services. But as with all ride-hailing companies, Ola’s position in the UK market is not always secured and it has made multiple efforts to plead its case with lawmakers in its time here.

Just six days after Uber won its appeal against London transportation regulators to continue operating in London for another 18 months, one of its bigger rivals has found itself in the hot seat. Ola, the India-based ride-hailing startup, is not getting its Transport for London ride-hailing license renewed, after failing to meet some of TfL’s public safety requirements specifically around licensing for drivers and vehicles.

Ola told TechCrunch it plans to appeal the decision, and as was the case with Uber, under TfL’s rules, a company is allowed to continue operating while appealing a decision.

Sky News, which had first reported the news of Ola failing to get renewed, noted that TfL said it discovered multiple failures in how Ola operates, specifically around its use of unlicensed drivers and vehicles covering more than 1,000 passenger trips, “which may have put passenger safety at risk,” according to a statement from Helen Chapman, TfL’s director of licensing, regulation and charging. It’s not clear if there were other violations involved. We have contacted TfL and will update this post as we learn more.

From what we understand, Ola plans to defend itself by claiming that the issue was partly technical: the company and TfL used different conventions in its databases to track licensing for drivers and vehicles, and Ola was not seeing licensing expirations come through in a timely enough way. The gap between having licensed and unlicensed drivers appeared to create a big enough safety issue for TfL, which it did not believe Ola was working to fix as a priority going forward. (And indeed, this also meant that Ola could conveniently continue to have those drivers, uninterrupted, on its books and working.)

As with Uber and its own run-in with TfL, Ola is already preparing to appeal TfL’s decision.

“At Ola, our core principle is to work closely, collaboratively and transparently with regulators such as TfL,” Marc Rozendal, Ola’s UK MD, said in a statement. “We have been working with TfL during the review period and have sought to provide assurances and address the issues raised in an open and transparent manner. Ola will take the opportunity to appeal this decision and in doing so, our riders and drivers can rest assured that we will continue to operate as normal, providing safe and reliable mobility for London.”

Ola — which has raised some $3.8 billion in funding over the years, partly to shore up its business to compete heavily against the likes of Uber — has been running commercial services in London since February of this year and in that time has signed up more than 25,000 drivers, the company said, but it has not disclosed how many rides it has completed, nor how many passengers it has amassed, nor any other metrics.

In addition to its own direct customers, Ola also partners with other on-demand ride services, such as Gett, as an extra capacity provider for services for Gett’s customers. It also operates in other cities in the UK, one of the SoftBank-backed company’s few big international forays outside of India (the others are Australia and New Zealand). The UK, and London specifically — even now, as many cut down their movements due to Covid-19 — represent one of the biggest and more lucrative markets in the world for ride-hailing services. But as with all ride-hailing companies, Ola’s position in the UK market is not always secured and it has made multiple efforts to plead its case with lawmakers in its time here.

Chinmay Malaviya and Charlie Depman found themselves at the center of the shared micromobility industry just as it took off, working for companies like Bird, Lime and Scoot. They experienced a rollercoaster ride of venture funding and skyrocketing demand, product pitfalls and regulatory hurdles. It was in the midst of this activity that the pair noted a shift in the industry and an opportunity. 

“From our vantage point there was a massive shift happening in mobility and transportation, in terms of personal ownership,” Malaviya told TechCrunch in an interview last month. “People were looking for their own electric scooter, electric bike and electric moped.”

Malaviya and Depman, who met on LinkedIn, determined there wasn’t a suitable way to research, vet and buy e-bikes, e-mopeds or e-scooters beyond Google and Amazon searches. And Ridepanda, an online marketplace for light electric vehicles, was born.

It’s safe to call the pair “light electric vehicle” evangelists. They see Ridepanda, which raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from General Catalyst and Will Smith’s Dreamers Fund, as the best way to deliver on the mission of getting more electric bikes, scooters and mopeds in the public’s hands.

“We are all for cities that can be happier and efficient, if they run on these vehicles that are small, quiet eco-friendly and also a lot more fun,” said Malaviya, who added that light electric  vehicles are particularly well-suited for the majority of trips people take, which data shows is up five miles.

The startup, which the pair launched in early 2020 and recently came out of stealth, aims to be one-stop “e-ride” shop where customers can find a curated set of expert-vetted e-rides and a customization feature that helps shoppers home in on the right product. Ridepanda launched in late September, a new site with an improved user interface, a “ridefinder quiz” that helps people find the right product as well as other support services. These support services, which are bundled and branded “pandacare,” connects users with information on insurance, home assembly, repair and maintenance plans as well as help finding the right helmet.

The Ridepanda homepage.

Visitors to Ridepanda will spot the “ridefinder quiz,” which lets users select the electric bike, moped or scooter icon, their height and weight, top uses and finally, preferences like foldable or cargo and budget. The user is then given a few results that best match their selections. Users can skip this process and just conduct searches based on the three product types or use cases such as “commute,” “adventure,” “delivery,” or “accessibility.”

Not just any electric bike, scooter or moped qualifies for Ridepanda’s site, said Depman, who is the company’s CTO.

“We’ve seen like a Cambrian explosion of different vehicle types; there are literally hundreds of options out there,” said Depman. “If you go on Amazon website, you’re going to see 150-plus in each category, and it’s really hard to sift through them. So what we’ve been building on the back end is a vetting system.”

For a product to be included on the platform, it must meet certain criteria and rating. The company rates vehicles across performance, safety, sustainability, durability and repairability, Depman said. That rating is achieved by evaluating all the different components of the vehicle, including the battery, motor and brakes.

Ridepanda is focused on the U.S. market for now, particularly cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle. The company offers customers financing and it’s even looking into a subscription service, although it’s unclear when or if that will roll out.

“Basically I think we are fighting the noise and the decision fatigue,” Malaviya said.

For the past four years, Swedish startup Einride has captured interest, investment and even a few customer contracts for its unusual-looking pods — electric and autonomous vehicles that are designed to carry freight. But progress in developing, testing and validating autonomous vehicles — particularly ones that don’t even have space for a driver and rely on teleoperations — is an expensive and time-consuming task.

The company has made some progress with its T-Pod vehicles; four of them are on public roads today and even carry freight for customer Oatly, the Swedish food producer. Now, a year after raising $25 million, the company said it has another $10 million coming in from its existing investors.

The announcement comes ahead of a new vehicle the Einride will unveil October 8. Not much is known about the vehicle; Einride has only supplied a short and obscure teaser video.

Einride said the $10 million in new funding was led by impact fund Norrsken VC and included participation from  EQT Ventures fund, Nordic Ninja VC and Ericsson Ventures. Norrsken VC is also joining Einride’s advisory board.

The capital will be used to fast track the official launch of its Einride Pods, the company said. Einride acknowledged that startups in AI and robotics were upended, and even shuttered altogether, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company contests that demand for contactless delivery options — not coincidentally the kind it hopes to provide — has grown because of COVID-19. Einride said it’s maintained a “strong stream of new partnerships,” including onboarding partners Oatly and supermarket chain Lidl as well as launching a freight mobility platform designed to give customers information on shipping volume, distance driven and associated emissions and help pick the most efficient routes.

“There is both a lot of excitement and a lot of uncertainty about autonomous trucking, but the fact remains: this is one of the largest business opportunities in the history of mankind,” said Einride CEO Robert Falck said in a statement, who added that the company expects to see the autonomous transport industry expand exponentially in the coming years, especially in the wake of a global pandemic.

“Away,” a new drama on Netflix, tells the story of the first manned expedition to Mars — Emma Green (played by Hilary Swank) leads an international team of astronauts on the three-year mission, while her husband Matt (Josh Charles) is part of the support team back on Earth.

As we explain on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, the show starts a bit slowly, and its space sequences (particularly an early space walk) aren’t quite as thrilling as we’d hoped.

But “Away” excels at creating compelling human drama — there’s believable tension on the spaceship and in mission control, and pain and guilt on both sides as the astronauts are separated from their loved ones for the long journey to-and-from Mars.

Anthony admitted that before watching, he worried that the show might be a bit too weepy and melodramatic. Instead, he was impressed by the way it made all the storylines feel natural and important, no matter how high or low the stakes. And we also appreciated how the astronauts’ backstories are filled in via flashbacks — the third episode, focused on Chinese astronaut Lu Wang (Vivian Lu), was an early highlight.

In addition to reviewing “Away,” we also caught up on what we’ve been up to since the last regular episode two weeks ago, and we discussed a new Disney+ co-watching feature called GroupWatch.

You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

If you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro/catch-up
5:55 Disney+ discussion
9:19 “Away” review
41:41 “Away” spoiler discussion

The other week TechCrunch’s Extra Crunch Live series sat down with Accel VCs Sonali De Rycker and Andrew Braccia to chat about the state of the global startup investing ecosystem. Given their firm’s broad geographic footprint, we wanted to know what was going on in different startup markets, and inside a number of business-model varietals that we are tracking, like API-focused startups and low-code work.

As with all Extra Crunch Live episodes, we’ve included the full video below, along with a number of favorite quotes from the conversation.

Above the paywall, I wanted to share what De Rycker said about the European startup ecosystem: It’s been stuck in my head for the last day, because her comments points to a future where there is no single center of startup gravity.

Instead, considering her bullishness on her local scene, we’re going to see at least three major hubs, namely North America with a locus in the United States, Asia with a possible capital in India, and Europe, with a somewhat distributed layout.

Here’s De Rycker from our chat, responding to my question about how active the European venture and startup scene is today (transcript has been lightly edited for clarity):

What has surprised me even more [than change in the European startup scene over time] is the acceleration in the last couple of years. And I think it’s continued in the last few months, despite the COVID environment.

And that’s really because Europe isn’t just one location, right? It’s a collection of different ecosystems, different locations, different hubs. At any point in time there are 15 to 20 cities that are relevant, and they’ve all sort of reached this tipping point. And together, Europe is at this inflection point, in terms of the quality of entrepreneurs, [and] the number of opportunities. And it feels like it’s all come together with the digitization that’s going on that we’re all, you know, very much believing in right now. And the fact that there’s a ton of capital around. So I would say that we’re seeing a pretty frenetic pace, more than, candidly, pre-COVID, which is not something we expected. […]

But I would say that overall, Europe is incredibly active [regarding] deal pace, deal count, I wouldn’t say it’s very different from what I understand to be the situation in the U.S.

Undergirding what De Rycker said above, TechCrunch recently reported on the financial results of TransferWise, a European fintech unicorn that grew 70% in the last year, to £302.6 million in revenue. Toss in Adyen’s epic run as a public European tech company and there’s lots to celebrate from the continent, even if we don’t read enough about here in the States.

Extra Crunch Live continues with some really damn fun stuff coming up (including a few more that I am hosting). So, make sure you’re in and ready for the next edition as we dig deeper into season two.

Hit the jump for the full chat and some further bits from the transcript.

Sonali De Rycker and Andrew Braccia

Here’s the full video:

After taking five consecutive business days off from my work laptop — and to shout at my personal laptop while losing games on Dominion online — I am back. I missed you. And while The Exchange’s regular columns were off this week (Friday aside, which you can read here), there’s still a hell of a lot to talk about.

First, a new website. If you click here, you’ll be taken to a sortable list (spreadsheet? database?) of startups with Black founders. Dubbed The Black Founder List, it’s a great asset and tool.

For folks like myself with a research and reporting focus, the list’s sortability of companies founded by Black entrepreneurs by gender, stage and market focus is amazing. And, for investors, it should provide potential dealflow. Do you write lots of Series C checks? The Black Founder List has 23 Series B startups with Black founders. Or if you prefer Series D checks, there are 11 Series C startups with Black founders to check out.

Who is writing the most checks to Black founders? Among the top names are M25, a midwest VC group, Techstars Boston and a number of angels.

The website was compiled by much the same team that TechCrunch highlighted earlier this year, when their data collection work concerning Black founders was more spreadsheet than app. So, please point your thanks for the new resource to Yonas Beshawred, Sefanit Tades, James Norman and Hans Yadav.

The Black Founder List also has a data submission button, so if you notice a missing name, add it. I want the data set to be as robust as possible, as, I reckon, it will prove a great reporting resource. And public data like this obviates certain excuses from the investing class.

Market Notes

• I missed a lot this week that I was looking forward to, including the Asana and Palantir IPOs. For fuller thoughts, head here. Summaries follow:
• Asana’s direct listing and resulting valuation and implied revenue multiples make its direct listing a win for the company, and the model. If other SaaS companies have the ability to raise ample pre-debut cash, perhaps the direct listing is not as dead as it seemed a few months ago when SPACs stole its spotlight, and most companies were pursuing traditional IPOs regardless.
• Palantir’s direct listing did not feel hot until it dropped some strong revenue guidance. With that, its direct listing went fine despite its cosmically comedic voting structure. Watching Palantir’s higher-ups try to snuff public input while still providing a thin patina of democracy made me think more about Russia or Texas than a functioning democratic system.
• Looking ahead, Airbnb is said to be hunting up $3 billion for its own IPO. Airbnb had to take on a lot of expensive cash when its business collapsed in the early COVID days. It wanted to direct list. Now it’s going to cash in a huge pile during its debut.
• Good. More capital > less capital.
• Sticking to our late-stage theme, when I left, Root was said to be pursuing an IPO, and when I came back, Roblox is now also tipped to be plotting with the public markets. (Root’s IPO in the wake of the successful Lemonade debut made sense. Insurtech is hot.)
• The news should not be a surprise; Roblox’s model has found cachet with young gamers and has found a great way to make money at the same time. With a mix of Legos and video game design and Minecraft, perhaps it’s not a surprise that the company is doing well.
• Reuters reports that Roblox could be worth $4 billion when it goes public. I believe it.
• Datto is going public. Ron and Danny have the details here.
• And I chatted with a few Accel investors, the juicy bits from which you can find here.

Various and Sundry

• Draper Esprit, a Europe-focused venture capital fund that trades on the London Stock Exchange, raised £110 million this week. Esprit is a fun shop to track (I’ve known its denizen James since his LSE days), because it’s more transparent than most VC firms than you’re familiar with thanks to its structure.
• According to the firm’s release, its share sale was “oversubscribed.” Tech.eu has more.
• Mobile app spend grew to $29.3 billion in Q3, driven by 36.5 billion installs, per SensorTower. Revenue was up 32% year-over-year.
• Uber sold $500 million worth of Uber Freight to a PE firm.
• As noted, tech stocks had a bad September, but just how bad might surprise you.
• And I covered Noyo’s Series A before I left, with the post going up on Monday.
• In short, Noyo is doing the hard work to build APIs to connect the world of health insurance. It’s a huge, hard task.
• The $12.5 million was “led by Costanoa Ventures and Spark Capital. Prior investors Core Innovation Capital, Garuda Ventures, the Webb Investment Network, Precursor Ventures and Homebrew upped their investment in the new round.”
• (I can’t shake the thought that there’s something in the middle of the no-code/low-code boom, and startups delivering more of their products via APIs instead of as managed services. And please don’t say mashups, we left that phrase behind ages ago.)
• I missed the window for officially commenting on the Coinbase culture dustup — the Equity crew did talk about it while I was AFK — so I will merely share this thread as my $0.02.
• Also, read this from Eileen Burbidge on TechCrunch concerning the same matter. It’s good.

Regular morning Exchange columns return Monday morning. It’s good to be back.

By the way, TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility is coming up next week. I am going! To help you get there, here’s a 50% off code for you to get full access to the event. Or if it’s your jam, this code will get you into the expo and breakout sessions for free.

Chat soon,

Alex