Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Banked, a London-based fintech using open banking to enable account-to-account payments at checkout (and beyond), has raised £2.35 million in further seed funding.

The round was led by Force Over Mass, with participation from previous investors Backed and Acrew Capital, along with a number of high-net-worth individuals, such as Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com).

It brings the total raised by the U.K. startup to £5.35 million, including some investment from Banked’s founders, who all previously worked together at 10x Future Technologies, the banking startup co-founded by former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins.

Founded in January 2018 and exiting beta last month, Banked has built account-to-account payment software that lets consumers, businesses and banks process payments significantly cheaper than older payment methods, such as card payments. By using open banking/PSD2 to initiate payments taken directly from a payee’s bank account, the fintech is able to charge just 0.1% to process payments — “a fraction of the 1-4% charge typically seen across the market,” the company says — and money is transferred in near real-time, rather than in some instances having to wait days.

In addition to cost savings and increased speed, the other upside of building a payments network on top of open banking is that it has the potential to dramatically reduce fraud by a claimed 96% and therefore “better protects consumers and businesses.” That’s because money is transferred without a customer having to share their card or bank details. Instead, authentication is handled by the customer’s bank via open banking APIs and typically in combination with its consumer-facing mobile app or website.

“The current payment system is antiquated, expensive and slow,” Banked co-founder and CEO Brad Goodall tells me. “Companies wait days, sometimes weeks to be paid and are taxed with high fees for the privilege. Banked transacts in real time, sending funds directly from the customer’s bank account to the company’s bank account and charges a single low fee of 0.1%.”

In some respects, Goodall says Banked is similar to Finix in the U.S. by offering companies the chance to save large amounts in payment processing fees. “However, while Finix insert themselves into the payment chain and then recycles the income back to their clients, we simply do not charge those fees in the first place,” he explains.

With that said, Goodall describes the key challenge as presenting the end consumer with a new payment option — and enticing them to use it — “without them really knowing Banked exists.” To do this, the fintech is “empowering” merchants to initiate payment and in turn is leveraging the end consumer’s trusted relationship with their bank and the merchant. “The end consumer does not necessarily believe the payments system is broken,” he concedes. “However, companies are sharing the upside [of lower processing fees and less fraud] with their customers to incentivise them to use us or promoting us as their preferred payment partner upfront.”

As it exists today, Goodall says Banked works best for companies where cash flow and high processing payment fees can be make or break the business. Use cases span top-up wallets and trading apps to car financing and even charities, “where every penny counts.” The fintech is also working with e-commerce providers who are looking to use Banked for high-value transactions and embedding loyalty into the payment flow.

Longer term, Banked wants to go beyond just payment initiation, with a vision where “security, real-time settlement and the reduction of fees eventually to zero is the starting point.”

“The future is about what features and experience at checkout we can create and curate for merchants and consumers,” says Goodall. “We are excited by the work banks are doing to open their infrastructure to regulated third parties and believe we have a role to play to distribute this infrastructure and enter into commercial relationships with banks to support them assisting their customers at point of checkout. We also believe in building the partnerships around loyalty, insurance and other checkout features that are useful to the merchant and consumer.”

Meanwhile, asked who Banked most directly competes with, Goodall doesn’t mince his words. “Visa and Mastercard, plain and simple,” he says. “They have scale, trust and a lot of money, [but] we have a better product at a fraction of the cost, faster and more secure.”

In addition, Goodall says Banked isn’t beholden to a legacy business model or a commitment to sell and promote pre-online products. “In the future, we believe the idea of using a 16-digit plastic card will be as alien as writing a cheque,” adds the Banked CEO.

AskRobin, an Estonia-founded fintech that operates a financial services marketplace for “underbanked” customers in Latin America, has picked up $1.7 million in funding.

The seed round is backed by VC funds Change Ventures, Vereeni Early Stage Fund, BENE Asia Capital, and Lemonade Stand. In addition, a number of tech entrepreneurs from Estonia participated, such as Ragnar Sass, co-founder of Pipedrive, and Taavi Tamkivi, founder of the anti-money laundering platform Salv.

“We started in Mexico in late 2017, where we initially developed a FB Messenger chatbot to bring basic financial education to people,” says askRobin co-founder and CEO Rain Sepp (who previously spent 13 years working at digital lending startup Credit24). “However, we soon realised that we need to go the whole nine yards and make sure we get the lending companies to actually get interested in serving those people and making them better offers”.

Since then, askRobin has evolved into something more comparable to Credit Karma in the U.K., which pairs free credit scoring with a marketplace of suitable financial products. “We bring our partner companies access to risk based customer segments, and get them competing for customers, resulting in improved product offers,” explains Sepp. This, he argues, is far better than the status quo.

“60% of employed middle class in emerging markets are not able to get access to formal credit and are left with predatory prestamistas (loan sharks) on the street. Those people are often just giving up after the first ‘No’ from the bank and getting back to their neighbourhood lender”.

To offer a fairer alternative, askRobin collects relevant financial and other data from customers and helps them build their financial profile so as to become an eligible borrower. Customers then get shown “all relevant offers in one go and can choose the best to save on interest”.

“For lending companies those risk-based customer segments and risk-adjusted product offers increase their approval rates, lower their CAC [customer acquisition costs] and help them to control credit risk – gradually opening up the markets where they simply lacked data and access previously”.

That appears to be working out well for askRobin. At the end of 2018, the startup expanded to Colombia and Argentina, and also now serves Peru. Sepp says that in most of these markets, emerging digital lending fintechs are fighting for market share with informal lenders and “old-school” micro-finance companies, making a product like askRobin a good fit.

“With the lending market getting more and more cautious in the current crisis situation, the service that we offer is increasingly important to the people. And it might work as ‘life-vest’ for lending companies, helping them to focus to the right type of customers and control the credit risk by showing right products to each segment,” adds the askRobin CEO.

As the country wrestles with the COVID-19 epidemic, home health testing, checkups and diagnostics have never been more important and companies like LetsGetChecked are filling a void left in a U.S. healthcare system consumed by the outbreak.

The surge in demand for the company’s services has led to an equal surge in investor interest, and LetsGetChecked is one of many home health and remote diagnostics companies to raise new capital during the pandemic.

The company’s new $71 million financing isn’t just about the services the company can provide during the COVID-19 epidemic. Now that an increasing number of Americans are accessing home health services, they’ll likely continue to use them thanks to their convenience and ease of use, according to LetsGetChecked chief executive, Peter Foley.

“People are very focused on COVID-19. [But] we’re seeing trends of increases in everything else,” said Foley. “This situation has definitely legitimized the space of home diagnostics. We are seeing spikes in those kinds of tests. Everything that needs monitoring we’re seeing spikes in.”

Most consumers are avoiding doctors, hospitals and clinics out of concern over the epidemic and that’s pushing them to use telemedicine and remote testing services, said Foley.

And the company has stepped up to address the coronavirus outbreak itself. The company, which has a manufacturing facility in Queens where it makes its own test kits has been unfazed by the supply chain issues that have hit other companies, said Foley. And LetsGetChecked has a certified lab facility where it can conduct its own tests.

LetsGetChecked at-home Coronavirus test kit.

Right now, the company is offering both a serological test (sourced from a Korean lab and awaiting approval by the FDA) and a PCR test (from ThermoFisher) for SARS-CoV-2 and is looking to expand the scope of its tests. The LetsGetChecked tests include a rapid (antibody) serology test for results within 15 minutes, followed by a PCR-based test which requires a swab sample to be collected from a patient and later processed within the LetsGetChecked high complexity CLIA lab in Monrovia, Calif., the company said. Initially the testing was for first responders and those most at risk from the disease, but the population that the company is testing is expanding as the spread of the virus slows.

“We were fortunate enough to be in a position where we could help people now,” says Foley.

LetsGetChecked isn’t the only startup at work developing and distributing home testing services for the coronavirus. Everlywell and Scanwell Health are two other startups that have been developing and selling home test kits as well.

LetsGetChecked began fundraising four months ago, and even then, in the days before COVID-19 hit American shores, the environment for raising capital had tightened, Foley said.

In the days before the disease reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. LetsGetChecked was pitching its ability to test at-home or through partner retailers for cancer screening, sexual health, fertility and pharmacogenomic testing.

Users can buy tests and collect samples at home before sending them to LetsGetChecked’s facility. The company connects its customers to board-certified physicians to discuss abnormal results and determine a course of action for treatment

The company’s initial pitch and the promise of a vast remote diagnostics market was enough to convince Illumina Ventures, which co-led the round with HLM Venture Partners. Other new investors included Deerfield, CommonFund Capital, and Angeles Investment Advisors. Previous investors Transformation Capital, Optum Vnetures, and Qiming Venture Partners USA also participated.

For Illumina Ventures, the LetsGetChecked remote testing service can serve as a channel for some of the tests under development at the firm’s other healthcare portfolio companies, according to Nick Naclerio, a founding partner at Illumina Ventures and a new director on the LetsGetChecked board.

“A lot of companies developing cutting edge new tests have challenges building a channel into the broader market,” said Naclerio. “Here is a company going after building the kind of future, patient-initiated testing channel that the world needs and is probably synergistic with some of the companies that are doing next generation testing.”

Those would be companies like Serimmune, which is developing tests to map the human immune system, or Genome Medical, which applies the latest understanding of the human genome to treatments for patients. The firm also has investments in cancer screening companies like Grail, which is aiming to provide an early detection diagnostic for cancer.

Naclerio also sees a dramatic shift in consumer behavior on the horizon in the post-COVID-19 world.

“COVID presents a tremendous need for at-home infectious disease testing or at-work infectious disease testing,” he said. “This is breaking down a lot of the barriers that have historically slowed the adoption of telehealth… It creates an opportunity for LetsGetChecked even once we get over the peak of the curve. There’s going to be a lasting impact.”

Wunderlist is going away, but fans of the productivity app may find some consolation in founder Christian Reber’s announcement that he is launching a new startup called Superlist.

“Superlist will be more than just a todo app, but never as bloated as the project management software you loathe to use,” he tweeted. “Slick, fast, and hyper-collaborative. Helping individuals or teams of any size get things done in record time.”

Today is a good day for reflection. With @Wunderlist closing down and @Pitch ramping up toward launch, I’m excited to announce a new company: @SuperlistHQ — a fresh new take on supercharged team productivity. https://t.co/YNmddyQxpP

— Christian Reber (@christianreber) May 5, 2020

Wunderlist was acquired in 2015 by Microsoft, which announced two years later it would shut down the app in favor of Microsoft To-Do. It finally said at the end of last year that Wunderlist to-dos will no longer sync after May 6, but users will be able to import all their content into Microsoft To-Do.

Shortly before Microsoft announced Wunderlist’s shut down date, Reber tweeted that he wanted to buy back the company. Obviously that didn’t happen, but Superlist may give him a chance to develop features he originally wanted to add to Wunderlist.

After Wunderlist’s acquisition, Reber launched Pitch, a challenger to PowerPoint that has raised more than $52 million in funding so far.

On his Twitter, Reber said he will continue focusing on Pitch, but will support the Superlist team, which is currently hiring.

Volkswagen plans to start selling the launch edition of its ID.3 vehicle next month to customers who placed pre-orders of the all-electric hatchback.

Customers who made reservations for the launch edition, known as ID.3 1st, will be able to order their vehicle starting June 17, according to a tweet posted by Volkswagen board member Jürgen Stackmann. Volkswagen has registered more than 37,000 reservations for the first edition, which will be limited to 30,000 units. Orders for right-hand drive markets will open up in July, Stackmann said.

The announcement follows the automaker’s decision last month to restart production of the ID.3 at its Zwickau, Germany factory, which had been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Production of the ID.3 1st resumed April 23, initially with reduced capacity and slower cycle times.

The ID.3 is the first model in the company’s new all-electric ID brand and the beginning of its ambitious plan to sell 1 million electric vehicles annually by 2025. The ID.3 will only be sold in Europe. Other models under the ID brand will be sold in North America.

The four-door, five-seater hatchback is as long as VW Golf. However, thanks to the ID.3’s shorter overhangs, its wheelbase is larger, giving the vehicle a roomier interior. The special edition version will start under €40,000 in Germany, the company has previously said.

Volkswagen will fulfill its orders for the special launch edition of the ID.3 first. VW customers paid a deposit of €1,000 ($1,122 based on conversion last year) to pre-order the special edition vehicle. Volkswagen said that the ID.3 1st will include free electric charging for the first year, up to a maximum of 2,000 kWh, at all public charging points connected to the Volkswagen charging app WeCharge and using the pan-European rapid charging network IONITY.

Volkswagen plans to produce the ID.3 in three configurations — the Pure, Pro and Pro S.

The ID.3 Pure is the entry-level model that will be equipped with a 45 kWh battery pack that can travel up to an estimated 260 miles under the WLTP standard. The entry-level version will be priced under €30,000 on the German market and come standard with 18-inch steel wheels, LED headlights with automatic lighting control and LED tail light clusters.

The ID.3 Pro has a larger battery than the Pure, increased range, more power and shorter charging times and will start at under €35,000 in Germany. The Pro S sits at the top of the model range and includes sportier equipment, including 19-inch Andoya wheels and “Play & Pause” design pedals.

Earlier this week, Amazon informed staff members at its Staten Island fulfillment center that a worker had died from COVID-19. The news was first noted by The Verge. The employee began to exhibit symptoms in early April, before being placed on quarantine April 11. He never returned to the site.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of an associate at our site in Staten Island, NY,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “His family and loved ones are in our thoughts, and we are supporting his fellow colleagues.”

Amazon says it doesn’t believe any of the individual cases at the Staten Island facility are directly linked. It notes that the employee was not contact-traced to any others in the warehouse.

Classified as an essential service, Amazon never shut down operations amid local stay at home orders. Last month, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post reported in mid-April that workers in at least 74 of Amazon’s warehouse and fulfillment centers have tested positive for the virus. In late-March, an employee at the company’s facility in Hawthorne, Calif. died from the virus a few days after exhibiting symptoms.

The company has been criticized for failing to provide proper protection against the spread of the virus, as workers push to get packages out to house-bound consumers. It’s an accusation Amazon has flatly denied, both in statements and in Jeff Bezos’s shareholder letter, which laid out safeguards and plans to build a testing facility exclusively for Amazon employees.

The company began offering guidelines after a Staten Island worker tested positive in mid-March. It’s not clear how many workers have tested positive for or died from the virus. 

The company was one of several prominent retailers targeted in last Friday’s May Day protests, while earlier this week, VP Tim Bray left the company out of protest over the firings of multiple whistleblowers.

JFK8, the massive Staten Island facility that serves as a hub for New York City, has been a focal point for multiple Amazon protests during the pandemic.

Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO by Ben Horowitz is one of the most commonly cited management think pieces of the last decade.

And for good reason; Horowitz surfaced a fundamental distinction in operating philosophy that is necessary for companies to survive, reinvent and ultimately win when macroeconomic environments shift. The framework is especially useful given how counterintuitive the advice is — behaviors of a peacetime CEO and wartime CEO are often on diametrically opposite sides of the spectrum; it is rare to find a CEO who can successfully emulate both personas.

While in concept it is easy to understand these principles, as with most things in life, nothing can replace the visceral comprehension that comes via learned experience. We are at the onset of enduring the most challenging startup environment of (at least) the last 15 years. COVID-19 is an indiscriminate event that is systematically wiping out businesses, whether “atoms” or “bits.”

For most startup operators, this is the first taste of true systematic adversity. The undercurrents of frothy valuations, the social milieu of early-stage investing and stores of excess capital are coming to a grinding halt as the bull market of the last 12 years is dramatically disrupted. We have an entire generation of founders/CEOs who may conceptually understand the peacetime CEO/wartime CEO ethos, but now, they’re going to actually live it. At the same time as every other founder/CEO. Brutal.

Since the onset of COVID-19, we have spoken to more than 100 founders and CEOs. Naturally, we are hearing frequent allusions to peacetime CEO/wartime CEO as a framework to help navigate the landscape. We’ve even used it over the last few months. While we believe it is a helpful framework, it is also incomplete. Further, we believe its application can lead to deeply problematic outcomes.

At a micro level, the misplaced application of peacetime CEO/wartime CEO can fundamentally change a company for the worse. A wartime CEO, as Horowitz notes, is “completely intolerant, rarely speaks in a normal tone, sometimes uses profanity purposefully, heightens contradictions, and neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements.” In the strictest application, we are seeing this align with a common false trope that has plagued the tech industry: “To change the world like Steve Jobs, I need to emulate all aspects of Steve Jobs’ personality.” A classic logical fallacy many founders/CEOs have learned the hard way — if you emulate all aspects of Steve Jobs’ personality, it doesn’t mean you will change the world like he did.

Each company is driven by its own unique culture and values — in a crisis situation, while it is important to be adept and agile, it’s equally, if not more important, to triple down on the strongest elements of your culture established pre-crisis. Many of the strongest founders/CEOs we have had the pleasure of coaching and investing in are uniquely world-class in their patience and tolerance, their ability to make the abnormal normal and their commitment to inspire with clarity. It is the adherence to these principles that will help carry their companies through this time.

At a macro level, peacetime CEO/wartime CEO conjures outdated themes that are at best inaccurate, and at worst, counterproductive. War implies “destruction, ruthlessness, blood, death;” there is an innate sense of machismo and bravado in this language reinforcing a homogeneous tech community. This type of vernacular and attitude increases barriers to a more inclusive community excluding women and underrepresented minority participation.

One of the most common takeaways we have heard in reference to the framework is, “now is the time when real founders are made.” If Rent the Runway, ClassPass, Away, the Wing and the countless other women-led/minority-led startups that have been adversely affected by COVID-19 are not able to bounce back, we highly doubt it is because “they weren’t able to cut it as real founders,” a ridiculous assertion to make under any circumstance.

The peacetime CEO/wartime CEO framework is clearly valuable — it forces us to dissect the behavioral shifts necessary to survive in a crisis. That being said, it needs to evolve. Being firm, decisive and staring down an existential crisis is not mutually exclusive with applying empathy, gratitude and generosity. You can be an intense, laser-focused and paranoid CEO without losing yourself or fundamentally changing the culture of your company.

We know dozens of leaders who are leading their companies through these challenging times without leaving a wake of carnage or damage to the foundation they have spent years building. They are leading with their heart and values and will be remembered for how they carried themselves, treated their employees and guided the company through the crisis. COVID-19 presents us with a unique opportunity as an industry. Now is the right time to retire the false dilemma of peacetime CEO or wartime CEO and empower the rise of the human-centric CEO:

• The human-centric CEO considers and balances the needs of her organization, employees, customers and other stakeholders in good and bad times;
• The human-centric CEO recognizes she cannot change the macro environment or competition so she focuses her effort and energy on what she and the team can control and manage;
• The human-centric CEO internalizes his mission, vision and values in the face of difficult challenges and critical strategic decisions;
• The human-centric CEO views and manages her company as a complex and dynamic human system with nuanced inputs and interdependencies;
• The human-centric CEO believes employees are the single most important stakeholder — that is reflected in how the organization hires, coaches, trains, incentivizes and retains;
• The human-centric CEO orients around decisive and bold decisions that impact employees rather than a series of micro maneuvers that damage culture and trust;
• The human-centric CEO creates shared meaning and purpose by reiterating the mission and vision over and over and over again;
• The human-centric CEO fosters an organization that values and cultivates psychological safety;
• The human-centric CEO develops self-awareness and inner resilience to weather the emotional ups and downs of company building;
• The human-centric CEO invests the time and energy to go deeper with her employees at strategic junctures and times of crisis;
• The human-centric CEO distills and simplifies issues, strategies and tactics to help employees reduce noise and increase focus;
• The human-centric CEO communicates frequently and articulates expectations with humility and confidence to avoid uncertainty, prevent anxiety and achieve alignment;
• The human-centric CEO recognizes he has a range of communication mediums at his disposal and selects the most appropriate one based on the magnitude of the situation;
• The human-centric CEO believes in the power of company rituals such as one-on-ones, exec team meetings, all-hands, stand-ups, retrospectives and off-sites;
• The human-centric CEO expresses empathy, appreciation and gratitude for the work performed by existing, outgoing and former employees;
• The human-centric CEO listens intensely and empathetically with her full self — ears, eyes and intuition;
• The human-centric CEO takes out time for self-care because she understands she cannot serve others and be highly effective unless she is mentally and physically healthy.

There’s no way to mince words. COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on the startup community. The inevitable is unfortunately occurring every day — many startups will never come back from this. As eternal optimists, however, we see opportunity in this crisis for the broader industry: the rise of the human-centric CEO. Now is the time for us to propagate community, resourcefulness and generosity. It’s the time to be ever thoughtful about employees, colleagues, stakeholders and fellow founder/CEOs in need. Individual startups may not survive this crisis, but it is our hope that an everlasting mentality does.

By no means is this list exhaustive, but it captures the behaviors and attributes from the top leaders we are working with. We believe CEOs should strive to become human-centric. Not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because we believe it will lead to healthier organizations and better results over time.

Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet, and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies to conversations easier to follow.

These features have been in testing for just over a year in Twitter’s prototype app, twttr, affectionally dubbed “little T” internally at the company.

The app was first introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2019, as a way for Twitter to try out new ideas in space outside its public network. Twitter wanted to understand if an updated user interface would help people to better follow the conversations taking place on its platform — particularly those longer threads where the original poster also participates in the back-and-forth, and users end up replying to the wrong comment.

In its prototype app twttr, Twitter tried out a variety of styles including, at one time, a design where the individual responses were more rounded — similar to chat bubbles.

The design that’s stuck around the longest, however, is the one that’s now making its public debut on Twitter.com and Twitter’s iOS app.

It involves branching lines that connect the different parts of the conversation threads together. The lines are more subtle than the chat bubbles had been, appearing as a lighter gray when Twitter’s default white theme is applied. Extra replies are also hidden beneath the “Show replies” label, which you have to tap to continue to read through a given thread.

The overall experience is something that’s more akin to a discussion board site, like Reddit.

In addition to the branching lines, the idea to hide Twitter’s engagement buttons was also something originally tested in twttr.

The company said in January 2020 that it intended to soon bring twttr’s experiments in threaded conversations to its main app.

“We’re taking all the different branches — all the different parts of the conversation — and we’re making it so it’s all in one global view,” explained Suzanne Xie, Twitter’s head of Conversations, speaking to reporters at CES 2020 earlier this year. “This means you can easily understand, and get a pulse of what’s happening in the conversation,” she added.

Twitter says the features will initially roll out to a portion of Twitter users on iOS and the web.

Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the company is today announcing the close of a $12 million Series A round of funding, led by EQT Ventures, a multi-stage VC firm that invests in companies across Europe and the U.S.

Index Ventures and Female Founders Fund also participated, bringing Peanut’s total raise to date to $21.8 million.

The round itself closed just weeks ago — arriving at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is impacting the startup world, often drying up venture capital for emerging companies. Some startups, as a result, have laid off employees to self-sustain, while others have sought exits or even folded.

Peanut, on the other hand, has seen rapid growth for its platform as women looked for a supportive online environment to discuss their own concerns over how COVID-19 was impacting their lives.

Many women participating in Peanut’s newer “Trying to Conceive” group, for example, worried about their canceled IVF rounds and how to plan for the future. Current moms-to-be wanted to hear from others about how COVID-19 would impact their hospital delivery plans. And others stuck working at home with kids looked for advice and coping strategies.

Since the outbreak, Peanut has seen engagement across its app increase by 30% and content consumption increase by 40%. Its total community also grew from 1 million users in December 2019 to now 1.6 million, as of April.

“We’re really lucky in that we’re growing and that we are, for the most part, untouched by what’s happening,” says Peanut founder and CEO Michelle Kennedy. “And actually, if anyone needed community more, it’s now,” she added.

Though the pandemic has sent the app’s usage skyrocketing, it has also readjusted Peanut’s priorities with regard to its roadmap.

Most notably, its friend-finding feature needs a rethink.

Peanut originally worked as a sort of “Tinder for mom friends” — an idea that arose from Kennedy’s personal experience with how difficult it was to forge female friendships after motherhood. As the former deputy CEO at dating app Badoo and an inaugural board member at Bumble, she brought her extensive experience in matchmaking apps to Peanut, which uses a similar swipe-based mechanism.

But COVID-19 has up-ended this side of Peanut’s business. Today, Peanut users are meeting in Zoom chat rooms to hangout or play games, but not in person.

Kennedy says the company will try to meet these users where they are with the development of more video networking features, potentially with technology built in-house. Other plans for the new capital include improvements to the social discovery aspects of its app, the development of a web version of Peanut, and the creation of more groups beyond those focused on fertility and motherhood, which have so far been core to the Peanut experience.

Specifically, the company soon plans to launch a new community focused on women living with menopause, an experience that will reach more than a billion women by 2025. Despite the fact that all women with ovaries will go through menopause, there are relatively few online communities dedicated to it — which Peanut sees as an untapped market.

Peanut’s real strength, however, is not in the types of communities it grows on its platform, but how they’re created.

There has not yet been a social network that focused on “building a platform for women, thinking about women’s needs and built by a women,” explains Kennedy. “So what we end up doing is using things that already exist — trying to twist them and mold them into what we need, and never getting it exactly right,” she says. “We can do better than that.”

One small example of this is the recent launch of Peanut’s “Mute Keywords” feature that allows women to remove certain types of discussions from their feeds and notifications. Some women used this to create a coronavirus-free news feed that focused on other aspects of motherhood. Others who were trying to conceive muted conversations around “pregnancy,” which they found emotionally triggering.

With the Series A’s close, Peanut says Naza Metghalchi from EQT Ventures joins the company’s majority-female board, alongside Hannah Seal from existing investor Index Ventures.

“Peanut’s user engagement metrics are a testament to the app’s ability to act as a true emotional companion throughout women’s journeys,” said Naza Metghalchi, venture lead and investment advisor at EQT Ventures, in a statement. “The EQT Ventures team is excited to partner with Michelle and continue to grow Peanut into a platform that serves all women at different life milestones, exploring topics beyond fertility and motherhood which have already seen such huge traction.”

The additional funding allows London-based Peanut to expand its business and hire more engineers to join its current team of just 16.

“I think having closed a round in this climate is great for the team,” says Kennedy. “It’s also great for the community because it means that we can grow the team, build quicker, build faster and develop the product more quickly,” she adds.

It was not long ago that the world watched World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov lose a decisive match against a supercomputer. IBM’s Deep Blue embodied the state of the art in the late 1990s, when a machine defeating a world (human) champion at a complex game such as chess was still unheard of.

Fast-forward to today, and not only have supercomputers greatly surpassed Deep Blue in chess, they have managed to achieve superhuman performance in a string of other games, often much more complex than chess, ranging from Go to Dota to classic Atari titles.

Many of these games have been mastered just in the last five years, pointing to a pace of innovation much quicker than the two decades prior. Recently, Google released work on Agent57, which for the first time showcased superior performance over existing benchmarks across all 57 Atari 2600 games.

The class of AI algorithms underlying these feats — deep-reinforcement learning — has demonstrated the ability to learn at very high levels in constrained domains, such as the ones offered by games.

The exploits in gaming have provided valuable insights (for the research community) into what deep-reinforcement learning can and cannot do. Running these algorithms has required gargantuan compute power as well as fine-tuning of the neural networks involved in order to achieve the performance we’ve seen.

Researchers are pursuing new approaches such as multi-environment training and the use of language modeling to help enable learning across multiple domains, but there remains an open question of whether deep-reinforcement learning takes us closer to the mother lode — artificial general intelligence (AGI) — in any extensible way.

While the talk of AGI can get quite philosophical quickly, deep-reinforcement learning has already shown great performance in constrained environments, which has spurred its use in areas like robotics and healthcare, where problems often come with defined spaces and rules where the techniques can be effectively applied.

In robotics, it has shown promising results in using simulation environments to train robots for the real world. It has performed well in training real-world robots to perform tasks such as picking and how to walk. It’s being applied to a number of use cases in healthcare, such as personalized medicine, chronic care management, drug discovery and resource scheduling and allocation. Other areas that are seeing applications have included natural language processing, computer vision, algorithmic optimization and finance.

The research community is still early in fully understanding the potential of deep-reinforcement learning, but if we are to go by how well it has done in playing games in recent years, it’s likely we’ll be seeing even more interesting breakthroughs in other areas shortly.

So what is deep-reinforcement learning?

If you’ve ever navigated a corn maze, your brain at an abstract level has been using reinforcement learning to help you figure out the lay of the land by trial and error, ultimately leading you to find a way out.