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Lt. Gen. John Thompson of the United States Space Force spoke at TechCrunch Session: Space earlier this week on the importance of working with startups. The general is the Commander of the Space and Missiles Systems Center, where he oversees research, design, development, and acquisition of satellites and their associated command and control systems for the U.S. Space Force. His role puts him in direct contact with some of the most ambitious and innovative startups.

Gen. Thompson spoke extensively on the importance of working with American business, specifically startups, where he sees many producing innovative products that fit within Space Force’s missions. He gave tips on how startups can interact with Space Force.

ExtraCrunch subscribers and TechCrunch Session: Space ticket holders can watch the 30 minute interview below.

Space Force’s Lt. Gen. John Thompson spoke at TechCrunch Session: Space earlier this week. Throughout the wide-ranging interview, General Thompson explained the various ways and means for private companies like startups should interact with Space Force.

Thompson knows what he’s talking about. As the Commander of the Space and Missiles Systems Center, he oversees research, design, development, and acquisition of satellites and their associated command and control systems for the U.S. Space Force. His role puts him in direct contact with some of the most ambitious and innovative startups.

He pointed to three things when asked what’s a good first step for interfacing with the Space Force.

1) Join the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC). He describes it as “A purpose-built consortium that values partnerships between government, traditional industry partners, and non-traditional partners like academia, small businesses, and startups” that’s grown to over 440 members in three years

At the end of the interview, General Thompson notes that he’s working on expanding the deployment of SpEC’s funds to reach more “game-changing technologies that those non-traditional small businesses and startups are bringing to SpEC.

2) Watch for Space Pitch Days. The next event is in the spring of 2021. These pitch days give startups an inside track to government contracts. Apparently, after the first event held with the Air Force, which General Thompson hosted, contracts were offered within three minutes of the pitches.

3) Look into SpaceWERX; a program launched this December to help Space Force work with private sector companies to field new technology for military applications. Like its Air Force counterpart, this “werx” center is a key component for Space Force’s acquisition strategy.

“Dr. Roper just announced it last week at the Space and Missile System Center,” Gen. Thompson said, “[This] is an integral part of the acquisition enterprise of the United States. Space Force is a full partner in the SpaceWERK endeavor. And using the WERKs model, we hope to inject more small businesses and startups into our innovation ecosystem.”

Following numerous reports that the U.S. government was seeking to crack down on DJI, the Department of Commerce today will be adding the drone giant to its “Entity List.” The decision is set to officially go into effect at around 11AM ET this morning, when the list is officially released. Reuters and Drone DJ have issued early reporting based on a conference call with a state official.

The news comes as a pretty massive blow to DJI. The 14-year-old Chinese company has been an utterly dominant force in the drone category. Here in the States, it commands an estimated 77% of the market.

Increased tensions between the U.S. and China have long been a looming concern for DJI’s presence in the States, with surveillance capabilities being a particular sticking point. Along with their wildly successful consumer drones, DJI also has a wide reach in both industrial and governmental applications. In fact, the company specifically offers a government line of products as part of its enterprise offerings.

DJI is one of dozens of companies added to the list. Also of note is chipmaker, SMIC. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross singled the chipmaker out in a press release this morning, stating, “we will not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary.”

The DOC notably placed Huawei and several of its affiliates to the list last year, a move that has severely hamstrung the hardware giant. Among other things, it’s cut off the company’s access from key U.S. technologies like Google’s Android and other software. Huawei has opted to develop its own operating system, but the landing has been a difficult one to stick.

There’s been a good deal of talk around restricting use of the company’s technology by federal and state departments, but this update could prove even more sweeping. DJI has been bracing for this manner of revelation over the past year and chance. The drone maker has spent a lot of time and resources lobby on Capitol Hill. There’s been a good deal of speculation around the shape these bans will take after a new President is sworn in on January 20.

We’ve reached out to both DJI and the DOC and will update accordingly.

Creditas, the Brazilian lending business, has raised $255 million in new financing as financial services startups across Latin America continue to attract massive amounts of cash.

The company’s credit portfolio has crossed 1 billion reals ($196.66 million) and the new round will value the company at $1.75 billion thanks to $570 million raised in outside financing over five rounds.

Creditas is the latest company to benefit from a boom in financial services startup investing across the region. As the year dawned, venture investments into fintech startups in Latin America had grown from $50 million in 2014 to top $2.1 billion in 2020 across 139 deals, according to a report from CB Insights.

Investors in the round include new investors like LGT Lightstone, Tarsadia Capital, Welington Management, e.ventures, and an affiliate of Advent International, Sunley House Capital. Previous investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 1, SoftBank Latin America DFund, VEF, Kaszek, Vemtires and Amadeus Capital Partners also returned to put more money into the company.

“Creditas is still in the early innings of penetrating the huge untapped secured lending market in Brazil and Mexico” says Paulo Passoni, Managing Partner of Softbank Latam fund, in a statement.

The company’s growth is a testament both to the need for new lending products across Latin America and the perspicacity of investors like Kaszek Ventures, whose portfolio has included several massive wins from bets on startups tackling financial services in Latin America.

“The journey since our investment in the Series A has been absolutely extraordinary. The team has executed on its vision, and Creditas has evolved into an asset-light ecosystem that resolves key financial needs of its customers throughout their lifetimes”, says Nicolas Szekasy, Managing Partner of Kaszek Ventures, in a statement.

Another big winner is Redpoint’s e.ventures fund, which has focused on investments in Latin America for the last several years.

“By empowering Brazilians to take control of their lending needs at reasonable rates, Creditas creates a beloved consumer product that will drive significant value for customers and investors. Having been involved since the seed stage through Redpoint e.ventures, we’re thrilled to support the company with our Global Growth Fund as well, as they change the Brazilian fintech landscape,” said Mathias Schilling, co-founder and Managing Partner of e.ventures.

Creditas has plans to use the cash to expand its home and auto lending as well as a payday lending service based on customers’ salaries and a retail option to sell through buy now, pay later loans based on a customer’s salary.

The company is also looking to expand to other markets, with an eye toward establishing a foothold in the Mexican market as well.

Founded in 2012, when the founders worked out of a 5 squre meter office on Berrini Avenue in Sao Paulo, the company now boasts a robust business with hundreds of employees and a business resting on a secured lending marketplace and independent home and auto lending operations.

The company also released quarterly results for the first time, showing losses narrowing from 74.9 million Brazilian reals to 40.5 million reais in the year ago quarter.

Zomato has raised $660 million in a financing round — Series J — that it kicked off last year as the Indian food delivery startup prepares to go public next year.

The Indian startup said Tiger Global, Kora, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, and Steadview participated in the round, which gives Zomato a post-money valuation of $3.9 billion. Zomato had previously disclosed fundraise of about $212 million as part of Series J round from Ant Financial, Tiger Global, Baillie Gifford, and Temasek.

Deepinder Goyal, the co-founder and chief executive of Zomato, said the 12-year-old startup is also in the process of closing a $140 million secondary transaction. “As part of this transaction, we have already provided liquidity worth $30m to our ex-employees,” he tweeted.

More to follow…

Zomato has raised $660 million in a financing round — Series J — that it kicked off last year as the Indian food delivery startup prepares to go public next year.

The Indian startup said Tiger Global, Kora, Luxor, Fidelity (FMR), D1 Capital, Baillie Gifford, Mirae, and Steadview participated in the round, which gives Zomato a post-money valuation of $3.9 billion. Zomato had previously disclosed fundraise of about $212 million as part of Series J round from Ant Financial, Tiger Global, Baillie Gifford, and Temasek.

Deepinder Goyal, the co-founder and chief executive of Zomato, said the 12-year-old startup is also in the process of closing a $140 million secondary transaction. “As part of this transaction, we have already provided liquidity worth $30m to our ex-employees,” he tweeted.

More to follow…

So much for a year-end IPO slowdown.

On the heels of news that Expensify could direct list next year and Coinbase’s announcement that it has filed to go public (albeit privately), Poshmark dropped a public S-1 last night.

We’ll have more on the bloc of IPO news in coming posts, but as Poshmark has provided hard numbers and a fascinating business 2020 story, we’ll start here.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

We’re going to range a little wider in this IPO dig than usual, including more notes on investor ownership and what the the company does. That’s in case you, like myself, had forgotten.

So, we’ll start with product and talk finances before noodling over the surprising venture capital results that Poshmark is prepped to produce. Let’s get into the filing!

Poshmark

Poshmark is an e-commerce marketplace that allows users to sell new and used fashion-related goods to one another. It sits atop secular trends towards e-commerce over traditional retail, mobile commerce over static, and what I would call a cultural rethinking of used goods in recent years.

And of course, Poshmark has braved the economic waves that COVID-19 brought to the global market.

The company’s model is simple: It holds no inventory, instead providing a marketplace where buyers and sellers connect, juiced with an algorithmically-built feed of items and an emphasis on digital social interactions. At the end of 2019, the company’s audience was 83% female and 80% of its members were part of the Gen Z and Millennial generations.

It’s not hard to understand how Poshmark makes money, with the company charging 20% of a sale price for goods over $15, or a capped rate for cheaper goods.

In theory, the company has a workable flywheel for growth. Attracting new users via marketing helps it build a deeper user base. Those users generate more social activity and purchases, which, in turn, could bring in more sellers.

That would help keep Poshmark’s goods selection fresh. Which, could attract even more buyers. More goods and more sales means more revenues for Poshmark. Which can then spend some of the resulting margin back into marketing, kickstarting the process all over again.

But despite that winsome circular updraft, the company has posted regular losses, which means Poshmark has had to outspend its business model to keep its growth up. Until 2020, that is. This year, things turned around in profit-terms for the e-commerce marketplace, ending with the company turning in consecutive profitable quarters.

Poshmark’s cash generation also improved in 2020, putting it on strong footing heading into its public offering. As with other companies that wound up enjoying a strong 2020 based at least in part on COVID-19 and its resulting economic impacts, investors will have to math out what happens to the company in 2021.

Let’s talk about the company’s historical growth and how it wound up generating net income this year.

Results

From the first nine months of 2019 to the same period of 2020, Poshmark grew its revenues 28% from $150.5 million to $192.8 million. Its profitability, however, swung sharply from a net loss of $33.9 million in the first three quarters of 2019 to net income of $8.1 million during the same period of 2020.

So much for a year-end IPO slowdown.

On the heels of news that Expensify could direct list next year and Coinbase’s announcement that it has filed to go public (albeit privately), Poshmark dropped a public S-1 last night.

We’ll have more on the bloc of IPO news in coming posts, but as Poshmark has provided hard numbers and a fascinating business 2020 story, we’ll start here.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

We’re going to range a little wider in this IPO dig than usual, including more notes on investor ownership and what the the company does. That’s in case you, like myself, had forgotten.

So, we’ll start with product and talk finances before noodling over the surprising venture capital results that Poshmark is prepped to produce. Let’s get into the filing!

Poshmark

Poshmark is an e-commerce marketplace that allows users to sell new and used fashion-related goods to one another. It sits atop secular trends towards e-commerce over traditional retail, mobile commerce over static, and what I would call a cultural rethinking of used goods in recent years.

And of course, Poshmark has braved the economic waves that COVID-19 brought to the global market.

The company’s model is simple: It holds no inventory, instead providing a marketplace where buyers and sellers connect, juiced with an algorithmically-built feed of items and an emphasis on digital social interactions. At the end of 2019, the company’s audience was 83% female and 80% of its members were part of the Gen Z and Millennial generations.

It’s not hard to understand how Poshmark makes money, with the company charging 20% of a sale price for goods over $15, or a capped rate for cheaper goods.

In theory, the company has a workable flywheel for growth. Attracting new users via marketing helps it build a deeper user base. Those users generate more social activity and purchases, which, in turn, could bring in more sellers.

That would help keep Poshmark’s goods selection fresh. Which, could attract even more buyers. More goods and more sales means more revenues for Poshmark. Which can then spend some of the resulting margin back into marketing, kickstarting the process all over again.

But despite that winsome circular updraft, the company has posted regular losses, which means Poshmark has had to outspend its business model to keep its growth up. Until 2020, that is. This year, things turned around in profit-terms for the e-commerce marketplace, ending with the company turning in consecutive profitable quarters.

Poshmark’s cash generation also improved in 2020, putting it on strong footing heading into its public offering. As with other companies that wound up enjoying a strong 2020 based at least in part on COVID-19 and its resulting economic impacts, investors will have to math out what happens to the company in 2021.

Let’s talk about the company’s historical growth and how it wound up generating net income this year.

Results

From the first nine months of 2019 to the same period of 2020, Poshmark grew its revenues 28% from $150.5 million to $192.8 million. Its profitability, however, swung sharply from a net loss of $33.9 million in the first three quarters of 2019 to net income of $8.1 million during the same period of 2020.

Unfold, the social media startup acquired by Squarespace last year, is launching a new tool for users to share all the links that are important with them.

This is the first step Unfold has taken beyond its story-format authoring tools. Co-founder Andy McCune told me that the team has a bigger vision now — just as Squarespace has become “the all-in-one platform for your web presence,” Unfold aims to become “the all-in-one platform for your social presence.”

“We’re both playing in very saturated spaces with a lot of competitors,” McCune said. “We both stand out because we appeal to the person that cares about design. That’s always been the North Star.”

In the case of the new Bio Sites, he said one of the goals is to help Unfold users — whether they’re individuals or large brands — become less reliant on a single social media platform. After all, he noted that when you build a following on Instagram, you’re building on “borrowed territory,” and “you don’t really own your audience.”

Image Credits: Unfold

By creating a simple profile that highlights the links of your choice, then by linking your Instagram and other social profiles to your Bio Site, you can then point audiences to other channels where you have more control — or at least diversify the platforms that you’re relying on.

McCune and his co-founder Alfonso Cobo aren’t the first ones to think of this idea. For example, Linktree raised funding earlier this year, and there are other startups creating similar products. But Cobo said Bio Sites benefit from Unfold’s design-centric approach, allowing users to create simple profiles that aren’t just functional, but also looks great and reflect their personality.

Cobo also noted that Bio Sites are created from the Unfold native app — it’s launching on Android today, with plans for iOS in January. The feature will be available available to all Unfold users, including free users, but subscribers to the premium Unfold+ and Unfold for Brands tiers get additional features like custom URLs.

“We’re really going to be expanding in the next few weeks with presence and expressibility tools to help users stand out in different ways,” Cobo said. “We’re also very interested in commerce and will be exploring that route in the future, too.”

In a return to active launch, constellation satellite operator OneWeb has sent 36 new satellites to join its existing spacecraft on orbit. This is the third large batch of OneWeb satellites to be delivered, after an initial launch of six in 2019, and then a second and third launch of 34 satellites each in February and March of this year. The company then ran into financial difficulties that led to its filing for bankruptcy protection in March, before emerging from said bankruptcy in July thanks to a deal funded in part by the UK government, and in part by Bharti Global. In short, it’s been a year for OneWeb.

Today’s launch took off from the Vostochny cosmodrome, and used a Russian Soyuz-2.1b rocket to make the trip. This is the first ever commercial launch from Vostochny (prior commercial launches handled by Roscosmos have used the Baikonur cosmodrome), and it meant that OneWeb could launch 36 satellites instead of 34, because of its position relative to OneWeb’s target orbit.

OneWeb is building a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites that will provide high-bandwidth connectivity for use in Earth-based networks. The company aims to ultimately have 648 satellites on orbit, and intends to speed up the pace of its launches in order to achieve its target by 2022, which will enable it to offer global network coverage to its customers.

Getting ramped and operational is key to OneWeb being able to generate revenue from its offering. The company is also competing with major, well-capitalized LEO networks being created by both SpaceX and Amazon – but we heard from Amazon’s Dave Limp just this past week at TC Sessions: Space that there should be plenty of room for multiple winners in the LEO broadband market, since there’s no shortage of demand for high-quality connectivity at a global scale.

While OneWeb’s arrangement with Bharti and the UK has helped it emerge from bankruptcy, Bharti founder and Chairman Sunil Mittal noted earlier this week that the company will likely need to raise a total of $2.5 billion to finish its constellation – half of which is provided by the UK/Bharti consortium.