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26 Aug 2021

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We’re focusing on fintech at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

Do you dig digital currency? Dream about decentralized finance, need to know NFTs? Maybe you’re just crypto-curious. Heck, check “all of the above” and get ready to focus on fintech at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23.

Disrupt is known for bringing the top experts, visionaries, founders, investors and makers to the stage, and this year we’ve packed more than 80 stellar presentations, events and breakout sessions into three full days.

Join the discussion: Buy your pass today and get ready to hear from the leading voices across the tech spectrum.

With such a wealth of options, here are just some of the sessions dedicated to the topic of fintech in its myriad forms. Plus, we’ll have a dedicated Disrupt Desk session where industry experts and TechCrunch editors will break it down with deep-analysis, insight and likely a laugh or two. Peruse the full Disrupt agenda for specific days and times. Ready? Behold.

Collecting Crypto Opportunities

Dapper Labs launched the digital collectible craze into the mainstream earlier this year with its smash hit NBA Top Shot. Hear from CEO Roham Gharegozlou who, even amid sinking NFT sales, has big ambitions for the space. His startup recently hit a $7.5 billion valuation and aims to own the NFT ecosystem with its Flow blockchain product.

Breaking the Bank

Coinbase’s massive direct listing earlier this year couldn’t have come at a better time as peaking crypto enthusiasm reached market exuberance. Hear from CEO Brian Armstrong who, amid a major market correction, is tasked once again with building for the future and navigating volatility while fending off global competitors knocking at their door.

Bankrolling Web 3.0

At $2.2 billion, Andreessen Horowitz’s third crypto-centric fund is its largest vertical-specific bet ever and a signal of just how crucial blockchain tech and decentralized finance is to the firm’s future. Hear from General Partner Katie Haun who co-leads the crypto team tasked with tracking down the firm’s next Coinbase, which returned billions for the firm.

Revolutionizing the Global Metaverse Economy

Together Labs is leveraging the power of blockchain technology to create the new metaverse economy where users can buy, sell, invest and shape its future. Earlier this year, Together Labs launched VCOIN, the first global, digital currency that can be used in and out of the metaverse. VCOIN makes it possible for users to play to earn real value and then convert that value to cash. Soon, the company will introduce additional blockchain offerings to accelerate the transition to a complete blockchain economy, setting the economic model for other metaverses to follow. Presented by VCOIN.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place on September 21-23. Get your pass today and hear the absolute latest trends in fintech — and so much more.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

26 Aug 2021

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Israel’s maturing fintech ecosystem may soon create global disruptors

Adi Levanon Contributor

Adi Levanon has been an early-stage VC for nearly a decade, with a strong focus on fintech investments since 2015, both in the U.S. and Israel. Currently, she is the Tel Aviv-based investor at Flint Capital.

“Even with its vast local talent, it seems Israel still has many hurdles to overcome in order to become a global fintech hub. [ … ] Having that said, I don’t believe any of these obstacles will prevent Israel from generating disruptive global fintech startups that will become game-changing businesses.”

I wrote that back in 2018, when I was determined to answer whether Israel had the potential to become a global fintech hub. Suffice to say, this prediction from three years ago has become a reality.

In 2019, Israeli fintech startups raised over $1.8 billion; in 2020, they were said to have raised $1.48 billion despite the pandemic. Just in the first quarter of 2021, Israeli fintech startups raised $1.1 billion, according to IVC Research Center and Meitar Law Offices.

It’s then no surprise that Israel now boasts over a dozen fintech unicorns in sectors such as payments, insurtech, lending, banking and more, some of which reached the desired status just in the beginning of 2021 — like Melio and Papaya Global, which raised $110 million and $100 million, respectively.

Over the years I’ve been fortunate to invest (both as a venture capitalist and personally) in successful early-stage fintech companies in the U.S., Israel and emerging markets — Alloy, Eave, MoneyLion, Migo, Unit, AcroCharge and more.

The major shifts and growth of fintech globally over these years has been largely due to advanced AI-based technologies, heightened regulatory scrutiny, a more innovative and adaptive approach among financial institutions to build partnerships with fintechs, and, of course, the COVID pandemic, which forced consumers to transact digitally.

The pandemic pushed fintechs to become essential for business survival, acting as the main contributor of the rapid migration to digital payments.

So what is it about Israeli-founded fintech startups that stand out from their scaling neighbors across the pond? Israeli founders first and foremost have brought to the table a distinct perspective and understanding of where the gaps exist within their respective focus industries — whether it was Hippo and Lemonade in the world of property and casualty insurance, Rapyd and Melio in the world of business-to-business payments, or Earnix and Personetics in the world of banking data and analytics.

This is even more compelling given that many of these Israeli founders did not grow within financial services, but rather recognized those gaps, built their know-how around the industry (in some cases by hiring or partnering with industry experts and advisers during their ideation phase, strengthening their knowledge and validation), then sought to build more innovative and customer-focused solutions than most financial institutions can offer.

Having this in mind, it is becoming clearer that the Israeli fintech industry has slowly transitioned into a mature ecosystem with a combination of local talent, which now has expertise from a multitude of local fintechs that have scaled to success; a more global network of banking and insurance partners that have recognized the Israeli fintech disruptors; and the smart fintech -focused venture capital to go along with it. It’s a combination that will continue to set up Israeli fintech founders for success.

In addition, a major contributor to the fintech industry comes from the technological side. It is never enough to reach unicorn status with just the tech on the back end.

What most likely differentiates Israeli fintech from other ecosystems is the strong technological barriers and infrastructure built from the ground up, which then, of course, leads to the ability to be more customized, compliant, secured, etc. If I had to bet on where I believe Israeli fintech startups could become market leaders, I’d go with the following.

Voice-based transactions

Voice technologies have come a long way over the years; where once you knew you were talking to a robot, now financial institutions and applications offer a fully automated experience that sounds and feels just like a company employee.

Israel has shown growing success in the world of voice tech, with companies like Gong.io providing insights for remote sales teams; Bonobo (acquired by Salesforce) offering insights from customer support calls, texts and other interactions; and Voca.ai (acquired by Snapchat) offering an automated support agent to replace the huge costs of maintaining call centers.

26 Aug 2021

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Israel’s maturing fintech ecosystem may soon create global disruptors

Adi Levanon Contributor

I wrote that back in 2018, when I was determined to answer whether Israel had the potential to become a global fintech hub. Suffice to say, this prediction from three years ago has become a reality.

The pandemic pushed fintechs to become essential for business survival, acting as the main contributor of the rapid migration to digital payments.

In addition, a major contributor to the fintech industry comes from the technological side. It is never enough to reach unicorn status with just the tech on the back end.

Voice-based transactions

26 Aug 2021

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Otter.ai expands automatic transcription assistant to Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Cisco Webex

AI-powered voice transcription service Otter.ai is expanding its Otter Assistant feature for Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Cisco Webex. Otter.ai first released this feature for Zoom users earlier this year in May. With this new integration, Otter Assistant can now join and transcribe meetings on more platforms, even if the Otter user is not attending the meeting.

The Otter Assistant automatically joins calendared meetings and records, takes notes and shares transcriptions with meeting participants. If a user decides to skip a meeting altogether, they catch up on the discussion through the recorded notes afterwards. The tool can also help in instances where you have overlapping meetings or larger meetings where only a portion of them are relevant to you.

To use the new tool, users need to synchronize their calendars with the service. The assistant will then automatically join all future meetings, where it appears in the meeting as a separate participant, for transparency’s sake.

“With more companies adapting to a hybrid work model where professionals work and take meetings in-office, at home, and on mobile, many are looking to Otter as a tool to improve team communication and collaboration,” said Otter.ai co-founder and CEO Sam Liang in a statement. “We’re excited to make using Otter even easier and more accessible no matter where or how people conduct and participate in meetings.”

The new integration will be handy for those who attend meetings across several platforms, as the tool can keep all of your meeting notes in one place. The Otter Assistant is available to Otter.ai Business users. The business tier starts at $20 per month and includes features like two-factor authentication, advanced search, audio imports, custom vocabulary, shared speaker identification and more.

Expect an even hotter AI venture capital market in the wake of the Microsoft-Nuance deal

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26 Aug 2021

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Job offer management platform Compa emerges from stealth with $3.9M

If you haven’t noticed yet, the hiring market is a hot one — and getting more complicated as enterprise talent acquisition leaders face technology gaps while assessing candidates. This leads to difficulty in determining compensation.

Enter Compa. The offer management platform provides “deal desk” software for recruiters to more easily manage their compensation strategies to create and communicate offers that are easy to understand and are unbiased.

Charlie Franklin, co-founder and CEO of Compa, told TechCrunch it was frustrating to lose a candidate at the compensation stage, so the company created its software to reduce the challenge of relying on crowdsourcing data or surveys to compare pay.

“Recruiters often lack the data and tools to figure out how much to pay people and communicate that effectively,” Franklin told TechCrunch. “We see talent acquisitions teams like a sales team. If you think of it from that perspective, they need to close a candidate, but to ask the recruiter to operate off of a spreadsheet slows that process down.”

Compa co-founders, from left, Charlie Franklin, Joe Malandruccolo and Taylor Cone. Image Credits: Compa

With Compa, recruiters can input pay expectations and compare recent offers and collaborate with other team members and hiring managers to reach pay consensus quicker. The software automates all of the market intelligence in real time and provides insights about compensation across similar industries and organizations.

The company, based in both California and Massachusetts, emerged from stealth Thursday with $3.9 million in seed funding led by Base10 Partners. Participation in the round also came from Crosscut Ventures and Acadian Ventures, as well as a group of strategic angel investors including 2.12 Angels, Oyster HR CEO Tony Jamous and Scout RFP co-founders Stan Garber and Alex Yakubovich.

Jamison Hill, partner at Base10 Partners, said via email his firm was doing research in the ESG “megatrend,” particularly looking for startups focused on compensation management, when it came across Compa.

He was attracted to the founders’ “clarity and conviction” on the company’s vision, their understanding of the pay gap in the market, how Compa’s solution would “create a new wave of smarter, more-data driven recruiting teams” and how it was enabling employers to use compensation and a positive offer management approach to differentiate itself from competitors.

“They deeply understand the nuances that come with enterprise-level HR teams and bring that expertise to every aspect of Compa’s product offering, which is why we believe Compa can emerge as a leader in this trend and chose to partner with this very special team,” Hill added.

Franklin, who previously led human resources M&A at Workday, founded Compa last year with Joe Malandruccolo, who was on the engineering side at Facebook and Oculus, and Taylor Cone, who has done innovation consulting for organizations like Stanford University.

The company was bootstrapped prior to going after the seed round and will use the capital to expand the team and create additional products that fit into its mission of “making compensation fair and competitive for everyone,” Franklin said.

Going forward, he adds that job offers and compensation need to catch up to how quickly the world is changing. As more people work remotely and companies want to attract a diverse workforce, compensation will be an important factor.

“This is a long-term trend we are seeing in HR — compensation becoming more transparent — not just a spreadsheet shared internally, but a transition from secretive to open and accountable, Franklin said. “Technology is catching up to that, and we have the ability to produce outcomes that drive differences in pay.”

Companies should utilize real-time compensation data to ensure equal pay

26 Aug 2021

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Founders Fund backs Royal, a music marketplace planning to sell song rights as NFTs

Founders Fund and Paradigm are leading an investment in a platform that’s aiming to wed music rights with NFTs, allowing user to buy shares of songs through the company’s marketplace, earning royalties as the music they’ve invested in gains popularity.

The venture, called Royal, is led by Justin Blau, an EDM artist who performs under the name 3LAU, and JD Ross, a co-founder of home-buying startup Opendoor. Blau has been one of the more active and visible figures in the NFT community, launching a number of upstart efforts aimed at exploring how musicians can monetize their work through crypto markets. Blau says that as Covid cut off his ability to tour, he dug into NFTs full-time, aiming to find a way to flip the power dynamics on “platforms that were extracting all the value from creators.“

Back in March, weeks before many would first hear about NFTs following the $69 million Beeple sale at Christies, Blau set his own record, selling a batch of custom songs and custom artwork for a collective $11.7 million worth of cryptocurrency.

Royal’s investment announcement comes just as a broader bull run for the NFT market seems to reach a fever pitch with investors dumping hundreds of million of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies into community NFT projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. While visual artists interested in putting their digital works on the blockchain have seen a number of platforms spring up and mature in recent months to simplify the process of monetizing their art, there have been fewer efforts focused on musicians.

Paradigm and Founders Fund are leading a $16 million seed round in Royal, with participation from Atomic — where Ross was recently a General Partner. Ross’s fellow Opendoor co-founder Keith Rabois led the deal for Founders Fund.

Cent, the platform that Jack Dorsey used to sell his first tweet as an NFT, raises $3M

The company isn’t sharing an awful lot about their launch or product plans, including when the platform will actually begin selling fractionalized assets, but it seems pretty clear the company will be heavily leveraging Blau’s music and position inside the music industry to bring early fans/investors to the platform. Users can sign-up for early access on the site currently.

As NFT startups chase more complex ownership splits that aim to help creators share their success with fans, there’s plenty of speculation taking off around how regulators will eventually treat them. While the ICO boom of 2017 led to plenty of founders receiving SEC letters alleging securities fraud, entrepreneurs in this wave seem to be working a little harder to avoid that outcome. Blau says that the startup’s team is working closely with legal counsel to ensure the startup is staying fully compliant.

The company’s bigger challenge may be ensuring that democratizing access to buying up music rights actually benefits the fans of those artists or creates new fans for them, given the wide landscape of crypto speculators looking to diversify. That said, Blau notes there’s plenty of room for improvement among the current ownership spread of music royalties, largely spread among labels, private equity groups and hedge funds.

“A true fan might want to own something way earlier than a speculator would even get wind of it,”Blau says. “Democratizing access to asset classes is a huge part of crypto’s future.”

No, NFTs aren’t copyrights

26 Aug 2021

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Playbook, which aims to be the ‘Dropbox for designers,’ raises $4m in round led by Founders Fund

When Jessica Ko was head of design at Google and then Opendoor, she realized that her teams spent about 90% of their time digging around Dropbox looking for assets.

In many cases, they’d find older versions. Or they couldn’t find what they were looking for. Or even worse, they’d accidentally pick the wrong asset.

“It was such a chaotic process,” Ko recalls. “Anyone could go in and alter things and change folder structures around. It was a total mess, and just continued like that because there was no alternative.”

As Opendoor grew in size, the problem became an even bigger one, she said.

“Designers were quitting because it was giving them so much anxiety,” Ko recalls. “Dropbox hadn’t solved it yet. Google Drive was not a good alternative either. Designers deal with files the most, and we’re exchanging files constantly.”

Besides the frustration and stress the problem of file storage and sharing caused, not being able to locate the correct assets also led to errors, which in turn led to lots of money lost, according to Ko.

“We spent a lot of money on photo shoots because we couldn’t find new things, or people would have to recreate designs,” she said.

On top of that, she said, designers weren’t the only ones who needed to access the assets. Finance teams were constantly needing them for things like creating pitch decks.

So in 2018, Ko left Opendoor to set about solving the problem she was tired of dealing with by creating file storage for modern design workflows and processes. Or put more simply, she wanted to build a new kind of cloud storage that would serve as an alternative to Dropbox and Google Drive “built by, and for, creatives.”

In early 2020, Ko (CEO) teamed up with Alex Zirbel (CTO) to launch San Francisco-based Playbook, which she describes as the “Dropbox for designers,” to tackle the challenge. And today, the startup has emerged from stealth and announced it has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Founders Fund at a $20 million post-money valuation.

Other investors in the round include Abstract, Inovia, Maple, Basis Set, Backend, Wilson Sonsini and a number of angels including Opendoor co-founder and CEO Eric Wu, Gusto co-founder Eddie Kim and SV Angel’s Beth Turner.

The first thing Playbook set out to do was attempt to reinvent the way folders exist for assets, with subfolders underneath. And then, the company set about trying to change the way people share files.

“Since so much is done over email and Slack these days, version control becomes even more difficult,” Ko told TechCrunch. So Playbook, she said, has built a storage system that can be accessed by all parties as opposed to just sending files via different channels.

“For years, these assets have been dropped into what feels like a file cabinet,” Ko said. “But these days, sharing assets is much more collaborative and there’s different kinds of parties involved such as freelancers and contractors. So who is managing these files, and controlling the versions has become very complex.”

Playbook offers 4TB of free storage, which Ko says is 266 times the free version of Google Storage and 2000 times that of Dropbox. The hope is that this encourages users to use its platform as an all-around creative hub without worrying about running out of storage space. It also automatically scans, organizes and tags files and has worked to make it easier to browse files and folders visually.

Image Credits: Playbook

In March, Playbook opened a beta version of its product to the design community and got about 1,000 users in two months. People continued to sign up and the company at one point had to close the beta so that it could manage all the new users.

Today, it has about 10,000 users signed up in beta. Early users include individual freelancers to design teams at companies like Fast, Folx and Literati.

The 7-person company wants to focus on getting the product “right” before attempting to monetize and launch to enterprises (which will likely happen next year), Ko said.

For now, Playbook is focused on the needs of freelancers. The company believes that the exponential growth of freelancers post-pandemic means “cloud storage needs to be smarter.”

“We want to first solve that use case, and unlock the problem from the bottom up,” Ko told TechCrunch.

Also, another strategy behind that initial focus is that freelancers can also introduce Playbook to the companies and enterprises they work for, so the marketing then becomes built into the product.

“They can transfer assets and files through Playbook to their clients, who tend to adopt,” she said.

Today, Playbook is helping manage over 2 million assets and says it has “hundreds of waitlist sign-ups” every month.

Looking ahead, Zirbel said the startup wants to branch out into image scanning, similarity, content detection, previewing and long-term cloud storage and tons of integrations.

“There are lots of interesting technology challenges when you focus on the creative side of cloud storage,” he said.

Founders Fund’s John Luttig said when the firm first met Ko and Zirbel last year, it was “clear that they had a depth of understanding and thoughtfulness around file management” that his firm hadn’t seen before. Plus, in his view, there has been very little innovation in cloud storage since Dropbox launched in 2007.

“The product leverages modern design, collaboration principles, and artificial intelligence to make file management much faster and easier,” he wrote via email. “Given their design-centric backgrounds, they’re extremely well-positioned to rethink the user experience for file systems from the ground up.”

Playbook, he said, is able to leverage recent advancements in computer vision and design “to build a far better product to manage and share files.”

There’s a way to pick the absolute best images for your content: Apply AI

26 Aug 2021

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Techstars’ Saba Karim is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

Good news, TechCrunch family, Techstars’ Saba Karim is coming to Disrupt (Sept 21-23) this year.

With a great vantage point from his perspective as Global Startup Pipeline Manager at Techstars, Karim will be hosting a session on the Extra Crunch stage discussing how to craft a pitch deck that cannot be ignored. It’s a popular topic not only because of how important decks remain in today’s venture capital world, but also because what they should contain slowly changes over time — what not to include, as well.

Karim has a background in making people pay attention. Before he had his current role at Techstars, he was CMO at Evolve, for example. Earlier in his career, Karim helped found and run Rawberry in Australia, before working for Telstra. He was also the marketing director at T.H. Capital Ventures in Sydney, before jetting to Boston to work as the VP of growth at StartupCMO.

And as an investor — he writes checks to startups working in the future of work sphere, for example — he has seen pitch decks good, and pitch decks bad. We’re excited to have him aboard to help save our founder-heavy audience time and effort.

In case you need a refresher, Karim is joining what could be our strongest-ever Disrupt speaking cohort. Tope Awotona, the founder and CEO of Calendly is coming. Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong is making what I think is his third appearance at Disrupt. Mercedes Bent from Lightspeed Venture partners is coming. Salesforce’s Stewart Butterfield will be there. Hell, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is coming.

If you are in the startup world, it’s going to be a must-attend event, thanks in no small part to what Karim will be bringing to the show. And your humble servant will be hosting the Extra Crunch stage, so I will see you there! Disrupt is less than a month away and you can still get your pass to access it all for less than $100! Register today.

26 Aug 2021

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Simbe’s robots will be deployed across midwestern grocery chain, Schnucks

St. Louis-based grocery chain Schnucks (one of those “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good” situations, one imagines) announced this week that it will be deploying technology from Simbe Robotics across its 111 U.S. locations.

The deal comes a year and a half into a global pandemic that has substantially increased interest in automation, particularly around essential businesses – a qualifier that certainly applies to grocery stores.

Simbe’s mobile robots provide inventory scanning, offering a constantly updating picture of what’s on the store shelves and what needs to be restocked. Anyone who’s ever worked retail can almost certainly tell you that doing inventory is one of the biggest headaches in the industry, often requiring hours-long shutdowns or overnight marathons to complete.

The “multi-year” chain-wide rollout comes four years after Schnucks first began piloting the tech. Over the years, the partnership has gradually expanded. Simbe says its shelf-scanning Tally robot is capable of reducing out of stock items by 20-30% and detect 14 times more missing inventory than traditional human scanning.

Schnuck Markets deploys Tally robot by Simbe Robotics to its stores – bringing shelf insights for better shopping experience. Photographed on Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, in Des Peres, Mo.

“By deploying Tally to all stores, we are fully operationalizing these insights into our supply chain and expanding our ability to leverage real-time data to make revenue impacting decisions,” Schnucks VP Dave Steck said in a release. “Tally has become an integral component of our stores, streamlining operations and ultimately creating a better store experience for our customers and teammates.”

A number of companies are working to automate the world of inventory scanning, including Brain Corp and Bossa Nova, though the latter was dealt a massive setback when Walmart ended a large contract at the end of 2020.

Simbe raises a $26M Series A for its retail inventory robot

26 Aug 2021

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Are B2B SaaS marketers getting it wrong?

Konrad Sanders Contributor

Konrad Sanders is founder, CEO, and content strategist at The Creative Copywriter, a tech-specialist copywriting and content agency.

Which terms come to mind when you think about SaaS?

“Solutions,” “cutting-edge,” “scalable” and “innovative” are just a sample of the overused jargon lurking around every corner of the techverse, with SaaS marketers the world over seemingly singing from the same hymn book.

Sadly for them, new research has proven that such jargon-heavy copy — along with unclear features and benefits — is deterring customers and cutting down conversions. Around 57% of users want to see improvements in the clarity and navigation of websites, suggesting that techspeak and unnecessarily complex UX are turning customers away at the door, according to The SaaS Engine.

That’s not to say SaaS marketers aren’t trying: Seventy percent of those surveyed have been making big adjustments to their websites, and 33% have updated their content. So how and why are they missing the mark?

They say there’s no bigger slave to fashion than someone determined to avoid it, and SaaS marketing is no different. To truly stand out, you need to do thorough competitor analysis.

There are three common blunders that most SaaS marketers make time and again when it comes to clarity and high-converting content:

Not differentiating from competitors.
Not humanizing “tech talk.”
Not tuning their messaging to prospects’ stage of awareness at the appropriate stage of the funnel.

We’re going to unpack what the research suggests and the steps you can take to avoid these common pitfalls.

Blending into the competition

It’s a jungle out there. But while camouflage might be key to surviving in the wild, in the crowded SaaS marketplace, it’s all about standing out. Let’s be honest: How many SaaS homepages have you visited that look the same? How many times have you read about “innovative tech-driven solutions that will revolutionize your workflow”?

The research has found that of those using SaaS at work, 76% are now on more platforms or using existing ones more intensively than last year. And as always, with increased demand comes a boom in competition, so it’s never been more important to stand out. Rather than imitating the same old phrases and copy your competitors are using, it’s time to reach your audience with originality, empathy and striking clarity.

But how do you do that?

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