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Extra Crunch roundup: Tonal EC-1, Deliveroo’s rocky IPO, is Substack really worth $650M?
For this morning’s column, Alex Wilhelm looked back on the last few months, “a busy season for technology exits” that followed a hot Q4 2020.
We’re seeing signs of an IPO market that may be cooling, but even so, “there are sufficient SPACs to take the entire recent Y Combinator class public,” he notes.
Once we factor in private equity firms with pockets full of money, it’s evident that late-stage companies have three solid choices for leveling up.
Seeking more insight into these liquidity options, Alex interviewed:
- DigitalOcean CEO Yancey Spruill, whose company went public via IPO.
- Latch CFO Garth Mitchell, who discussed his startup’s merger with real estate SPAC $TSIA.
- Brian Cruver, founder and CEO of AlertMedia, which recently sold to a private equity firm.
After recapping their deals, each executive explains how their company determined which flashing red “EXIT” sign to follow. As Alex observed, “choosing which option is best from a buffet’s worth of possibilities is an interesting task.”
Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch! Have a great weekend.
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
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The Tonal EC-1
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman
On Tuesday, we published a four-part series on Tonal, a home fitness startup that has raised $200 million since it launched in 2018. The company’s patented hardware combines digital weights, coaching and AI in a wall-mounted system that sells for $2,995.
By any measure, it is poised for success — sales increased 800% between December 2019 and 2020, and by the end of this year, the company will have 60 retail locations. On Wednesday, Tonal reported a $250 million Series E that valued the company at $1.6 billion.
Our deep dive examines Tonal’s origins, product development timeline, its go-to-market strategy and other aspects that combined to spark investor interest and customer delight.
We call this format the “EC-1,” since these stories are as comprehensive and illuminating as the S-1 forms startups must file with the SEC before going public.
Here’s how the Tonal EC-1 breaks down:
- Part 1: How a homegrown experiment became one of the fastest-growing companies in fitness tech
- Part 2: Millions of dollars and 3.5 years, and it all came down to this
- Part 3: Building online communities for fun, profit and product
- Part 4: Can Tonal become the luxury fitness market champion?
We have more EC-1s in the works about other late-stage startups that are doing big things well and making news in the process.
What to make of Deliveroo’s rough IPO debut
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Why did Deliveroo struggle when it began to trade? Is it suffering from cultural dissonance between its high-growth model and more conservative European investors?
Let’s peek at the numbers and find out.
Kaltura puts debut on hold. Is the tech IPO window closing?
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
The Exchange doubts many folks expected the IPO climate to get so chilly without warning. But we could be in for a Q2 pause in the formerly scorching climate for tech debuts.
Is Substack really worth $650M?
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
A $65 million Series B is remarkable, even by 2021 standards. But the fact that a16z is pouring more capital into the alt-media space is not a surprise.
Substack is a place where publications have bled some well-known talent, shifting the center of gravity in media. Let’s take a look at Substack’s historical growth.
RPA market surges as investors, vendors capitalize on pandemic-driven tech shift
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Robotic process automation came to the fore during the pandemic as companies took steps to digitally transform. When employees couldn’t be in the same office together, it became crucial to cobble together more automated workflows that required fewer people in the loop.
RPA has enabled executives to provide a level of automation that essentially buys them time to update systems to more modern approaches while reducing the large number of mundane manual tasks that are part of every industry’s workflow.
E-commerce roll-ups are the next wave of disruption in consumer packaged goods
Image Credits: Javier Zayas Photography (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
This year is all about the roll-ups, the aggregation of smaller companies into larger firms, creating a potentially compelling path for equity value. The interest in creating value through e-commerce brands is particularly striking.
Just a year ago, digitally native brands had fallen out of favor with venture capitalists after so many failed to create venture-scale returns. So what’s the roll-up hype about?
Hack takes: A CISO and a hacker detail how they’d respond to the Exchange breach
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The cyber world has entered a new era in which attacks are becoming more frequent and happening on a larger scale than ever before. Massive hacks affecting thousands of high-level American companies and agencies have dominated the news recently. Chief among these are the December SolarWinds/FireEye breach and the more recent Microsoft Exchange server breach.
Everyone wants to know: If you’ve been hit with the Exchange breach, what should you do?
5 machine learning essentials nontechnical leaders need to understand
Image Credits: David Malan (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Machine learning has become the foundation of business and growth acceleration because of the incredible pace of change and development in this space.
But for engineering and team leaders without an ML background, this can also feel overwhelming and intimidating.
Here are best practices and must-know components broken down into five practical and easily applicable lessons.
Embedded procurement will make every company its own marketplace
Image Credits: Busakorn Pongparnit / Getty Images
Embedded procurement is the natural evolution of embedded fintech.
In this next wave, businesses will buy things they need through vertical B2B apps, rather than through sales reps, distributors or an individual merchant’s website.
Knowing when your startup should go all-in on business development
Image Credits: twomeows / Getty Images
There’s a persistent fallacy swirling around that any startup growing pain or scaling problem can be solved with business development.
That’s frankly not true.
Dear Sophie: What should I know about prenups and getting a green card through marriage?
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie:
I’m a founder of a startup on an E-2 investor visa and just got engaged! My soon-to-be spouse will sponsor me for a green card.
Are there any minimum salary requirements for her to sponsor me? Is there anything I should keep in mind before starting the green card process?
— Betrothed in Belmont
Startups must curb bureaucracy to ensure agile data governance
Image Credits: RichVintage / Getty Images
Many organizations perceive data management as being akin to data governance, where responsibilities are centered around establishing controls and audit procedures, and things are viewed from a defensive lens.
That defensiveness is admittedly justified, particularly given the potential financial and reputational damages caused by data mismanagement and leakage.
Nonetheless, there’s an element of myopia here, and being excessively cautious can prevent organizations from realizing the benefits of data-driven collaboration, particularly when it comes to software and product development.
Bring CISOs into the C-suite to bake cybersecurity into company culture
Image Credits: Jetta Productions Inc (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Cyber strategy and company strategy are inextricably linked. Consequently, chief information security officers in the C-suite will be just as common and influential as CFOs in maximizing shareholder value.
How is edtech spending its extra capital?
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Edtech unicorns have boatloads of cash to spend following the capital boost to the sector in 2020. As a result, edtech M&A activity has continued to swell.
The idea of a well-capitalized startup buying competitors to complement its core business is nothing new, but exits in this sector are notable because the money used to buy startups can be seen as an effect of the pandemic’s impact on remote education.
But in the past week, the consolidation environment made a clear statement: Pandemic-proven startups are scooping up talent — and fast.
Tech in Mexico: A confluence of Latin America, the US and Asia
Image Credits: Orbon Alija (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images
Knowledge transfer is not the only trend flowing in the U.S.-Asia-LatAm nexus. Competition is afoot as well.
Because of similar market conditions, Asian tech giants are directly expanding into Mexico and other LatAm countries.
How we improved net retention by 30+ points in 2 quarters
Image Credits: Steven Puetzer (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
There’s certainly no shortage of SaaS performance metrics leaders focus on, but NRR (net revenue retention) is without question the most underrated metric out there.
NRR is simply total revenue minus any revenue churn plus any revenue expansion from upgrades, cross-sells or upsells. The greater the NRR, the quicker companies can scale.
5 mistakes creators make building new games on Roblox
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Even the most experienced and talented game designers from the mobile F2P business usually fail to understand what features matter to Robloxians.
For those just starting their journey in Roblox game development, these are the most common mistakes gaming professionals make on Roblox.
CEO Manish Chandra, investor Navin Chaddha explain why Poshmark’s Series A deck sings
Image Credits: Poshmark
“Lead with love, and the money comes.” It’s one of the cornerstone values at Poshmark. On the latest episode of Extra Crunch Live, Chandra and Chaddha sat down with us and walked us through their original Series A pitch deck.
Will the pandemic spur a smart rebirth for cities?
Image Credits: hopsalka (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Cities are bustling hubs where people live, work and play. When the pandemic hit, some people fled major metropolitan markets for smaller towns — raising questions about the future validity of cities.
But those who predicted that COVID-19 would destroy major urban communities might want to stop shorting the resilience of these municipalities and start going long on what the post-pandemic future looks like.
The NFT craze will be a boon for lawyers
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There’s plenty of uncertainty surrounding copyright issues, fraud and adult content, and legal implications are the crux of the NFT trend.
Whether a court would protect the receipt-holder’s ownership over a given file depends on a variety of factors. All of these concerns mean artists may need to lawyer up.
Viewing Cazoo’s proposed SPAC debut through Carvana’s windshield
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
It’s a reasonable question: Why would anyone pay that much for Cazoo today if Carvana is more profitable and whatnot? Well, growth. That’s the argument anyway.
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Uruguayan payments startup dLocal quadruples valuation to $5B with $150M raise
Cross-border payments startup dLocal has raised $150 million at a $5 billion valuation, less than seven months after securing $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation.
This means that the five-year-old Uruguayan company has effectively quadrupled its valuation in a matter of months.
Alkeon Capital led the latest round, which also included participation from BOND, D1 Capital Partners and Tiger Global. General Atlantic led its previous round, which closed last September and made dLocal Uruguay’s first unicorn and one of Latin American’s highest-valued startups.
DLocal connects global enterprise merchants with “billions” of emerging market consumers in 29 countries across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. More than 325 global merchants, including e-commerce retailers, SaaS companies, online travel providers and marketplaces use dLocal to accept over 600 local payment methods. They also use its platform to issue payments to their contractors, agents and sellers. Some of dLocal’s customers include Amazon, Booking.com, Dropbox, GoDaddy, MailChimp, Microsoft, Spotify, TripAdvisor, Uber and Zara.
In conjunction with this latest round, dLocal has named Sumita Pandit to the role of COO. Pandit is former global head of fintech and managing director for JP Morgan, and also worked at Goldman Sachs.
“Sumita is a highly respected and accomplished fintech investment banker, and she’s played a pivotal role advising some of the world’s most successful fintech companies as they’ve scaled to become global leaders,” said dLocal CEO Sebastián Kanovich in a written statement.
Meanwhile, former COO Jacobo Singer has been promoted to president of dLocal.
The company plans to use its new capital to enhance its technology and continue to expand geographically.
Alkeon General Partner Deepak Ravichandran believes that emerging markets represent some of the fastest growth opportunities in digital payments.
“However, as global merchants look to access these markets, they are often faced with a complex web of local payment methods, cross-border regulations, and other operational roadblocks,” he said in a written statement. “dLocal’s unique platform empowers merchants with a single integrated payment solution, to reach billions of customers, accept payments, send payouts, and settle funds globally.”
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Argentina’s Digital House raises over $50M to help solve LatAm’s tech talent shortage
Digital House, a Buenos Aires-based edtech focused on developing tech talent through immersive remote courses, announced today it has raised more than $50 million in new funding.
Notably, two of the main investors are not venture capital firms but instead are two large tech companies: Latin American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre and San Francisco-based software developer Globant. Riverwood Capital, a Menlo Park-based private equity firm, and existing backer early-stage Latin American venture firm Kaszek also participated in the financing.
The raise brings Digital House’s total funding raised to more than $80 million since its 2016 inception. The Rise Fund led a $20 million Series B for Digital House in December 2017, marking the San Francisco-based firm’s investment in Latin America.
Nelson Duboscq, CEO and co-founder of Digital House, said that accelerating demand for tech talent in Latin America has fueled demand for the startup’s online courses. Since it first launched its classes in March 2016, the company has seen a 118% CAGR in revenues and a 145% CAGR in students. The 350-person company expects “and is on track” to be profitable this year, according to Duboscq.
Digital House CEO and co-founder Nelson Duboscq. Image Credits: Digital House
In 2020, 28,000 students across Latin America used its platform. The company projects that more than 43,000 will take courses via its platform in 2021. Fifty percent of its business comes out of Brazil, 30% from Argentina and the remaining 20% in the rest of Latin America.
Specifically, Digital House offers courses aimed at teaching “the most in-demand digital skills” to people who either want to work in the digital industry or for companies that need to train their employees on digital skills. Emphasizing practice, Digital House offers courses — that range from six months to two years — teaching skills such as web and mobile development, data analytics, user experience design, digital marketing and product development.
The courses are fully accessible online and combine live online classes led by in-house professors, with content delivered through Digital House’s platform via videos, quizzes and exercises “that can be consumed at any time.”
Digital House also links its graduates to company jobs, claiming an employability rate of over 95%.
Looking ahead, Digital House says it will use its new capital toward continuing to evolve its digital training platforms, as well as launching a two-year tech training program — dubbed the the “Certified Tech Developer” initiative — jointly designed with Mercado Libre and Globant. The program aims to train thousands of students through full-time two-year courses and connect them with tech companies globally.
Specifically, the company says it will also continue to expand its portfolio of careers beyond software development and include specialization in e-commerce, digital marketing, data science and cybersecurity. Digital House also plans to expand its partnerships with technology employers and companies in Brazil and the rest of Latin America. It also is planning some “strategic M&A,” according to Duboscq.
Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, co-founder & co-managing partner of Riverwood Capital, noted that his firm has observed an accelerating digitization of the economy across all sectors in Latin America, which naturally creates demand for tech-savvy talent. (Riverwood has an office in São Paulo).
For example, in addition to web developers, there’s been increased demand for data scientists, digital marketing and cybersecurity specialists.
“In Brazil alone, over 70,000 new IT professionals are needed each year and only about 45,000 are trained annually,” Alvarez-Demalde said. “As a result of such a talent crunch, salaries for IT professionals in the region increased 20% to 30% last year. In this context, Digital House has a large opportunity ahead of them and is positioned strategically as the gatekeeper of new digital talent in Latin America, preparing workers for the jobs of the future.”
André Chaves, senior VP of Strategy at Mercado Libre, said the company saw in Digital House a track record of “understanding closely” what Mercado Libre and other tech companies need.
“They move as fast as we do and adapt quickly to what the job market needs,” he said. “A very important asset for us is their presence and understanding of Latin America, its risks and entrepreneurial environment. Global players have succeeded for many years in our region. But things are shifting gradually, and local knowledge of risks and opportunities can make a great difference.”
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Flourish, a startup that aims to help banks engage and retain customers, raises $1.5M
It’s not uncommon these days to hear of U.S.-based investors backing Latin American startups.
But it’s not every day that we hear of Latin American VCs investing in U.S.-based startups.
Berkeley-based fintech Flourish has raised $1.5 million in a funding round led by Brazilian venture capital firm Canary. Founded by Pedro Moura and Jessica Eting, the startup offers an “engagement and financial wellness” solution for banks, fintechs and credit unions with the goal of helping them engage and retain clients.
Also participating in the round were Xochi Ventures, First Check Ventures, Magma Capital and GV Angels as well as strategic angels including Rodrigo Xavier (former Bank of America CEO in Brazil), Beth Stelluto (formerly of Schwab), Gustavo Lasala (president and CEO of The People Fund) and Brian Requarth (founder of Viva Real).
With clients in the U.S., Bolivia and Brazil, Flourish has developed a solution that features three main modules:
- A rewards engine designed to incentivize users to save or invest money.
- An intelligent and automated micro-savings feature where users can create personalized rules (such as transferring $15 into a rainy day fund every time their favorite sports team wins).
- A financial knowledge module, where personal financial transactions and spending patterns are turned into a question and answer game.
In the U.S., Flourish began by testing end-user mechanics with organizations such as CommonWealth and Opportunity Fund. In 2019, it released a B2C version of the Flourish app (called the Flourish Savings App) as a pilot for its banking platform, which can integrate with banks through an SDK or an API. It is also now licensing its engagement technology to banks, retailers and fintechs across the Americas. Flourish has piloted or licensed its solution to U.S.-based credit unions, Sicoob (Brazil’s largest credit union) and BancoSol in Bolivia.
The startup makes money through a partnership model that focuses on user activation and engagement.
Both immigrants, Moura and Eting met while in the MBA program at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Moura came to the U.S. from Brazil as a teen, while Eting is the daughter of a Filiponio father and mother of Mexican descent.
The pair bonded on their joint mission of building a business that empowered people to create positive money habits and understand their finances.
Currently, the 11-person team works out of the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. It plans to use its new capital to increase its number of customers in LatAm, do more hiring and develop new functionalities for the Flourish platform.
In particular, it plans to next focus on the Brazilian market, and will scale in a few select countries in the Americas.
“There are three things that make Latin America, and more specifically Brazil, attractive to us at this moment,” Moura said. “Currently, the B2B financial technology market is still in its nascency. This combined with open banking regulation and the need for more responsible products provides Flourish a unique opportunity in Brazil.”
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RecargaPay closes a $70 million Series C
RecargaPay, a Brazil-based fintech that allows users to top off their prepaid cell phones online, announced this morning that they’ve closed their $70 million Series C. The company, which operates solely in Brazil, was launched in 2010 by Miami-based serial entrepreneur Rodrigo Teijeiro, who is co-founder and CEO.
Unlike in the U.S. where most people have a cell phone plan through a major carrier, in Brazil — a country where the minimum wage is currently $1,100 reals per month (roughly $202 USD) — many people must buy calling cards at local shops to add credit to their phones, which allows them to avoid a monthly recurring bill.
“Most people were using prepaid [phones] for control because they didn’t trust the telephone companies — they didn’t want roaming fees or fees for going over etc.,” said Teijeiro. Many of us can relate to the days when we’d come home from an international trip and have an astronomical phone bill because of roaming fees, but imagine if that were a monthly occurrence?
In 2014, Teijeiro and his co-founders — one of whom is his brother, Alvaro, the CTO — turned the RecargaPay website into an app.
“Before RecargaPay, if your cell phone ran out of credits and it was 10 p.m. and you needed to make a phone call, you’d have to go out and find a shop that sold the prepaid cards to add the credits to your phone — it was super inconvenient,” Teijeiro added. Cell phones caught on quickly in Brazil because it has traditionally been difficult to obtain a landline — an ordeal that often took several months to solidify.
RecargaPay originally had operations in various Latin American countries, such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Brazil, as well as in Spain and the U.S. But in 2016 the company decided to focus on the Brazilian market, because not only is it the biggest in LatAm, but it also has the highest penetration of credit cards.
“The number one mistake investors make when investing in LatAm is that they think that LatAm is one whole market. But especially in fintech, all the regulations are very different. That’s why it’s hard to scale in LatAm,” he said.
The company makes money by charging a monthly fee of $19.99 reals. When a customer makes an online top-off on the app, they get 4% cash back because the cell phone carriers pay RecargaPay the equivalent amount, which it then passes on to the user.
The company, which is EBITDA positive according to Teijeiro, has raised just over $100 million in capital to date and plans to use the $70 million to “expand its financial services offerings to small businesses and consumers, including further development of its popular subscription program Prime+,” the company said in a statement.
Already, RecargaPay offers much more than the ability to top off your cell phone. Other features include the ability to buy gift cards, apply for and receive microloans, refill your public transportation cards and pay bills. Teijeiro explained that RecargaPay and Nubank, LatAm’s largest digital bank, are not direct competitors, but rather operate in the same ecosystem. A lot of Nubank customers who now have a credit card, thanks to the bank’s no-fee cards, can use RecargaPay to top off their cell phones, he added.
According to a 2020 report by TechnoBlog, a Brazilian media outlet, in 2010 about 83% of cell phones in Brazil were prepaid. Today, that number is smaller, but it’s still a whopping 49%. The change started in 2012 with the advent of smartphones in Brazil and the popularization of WhatsApp. While this may sound insane, previously, Brazilians could only call others who used their same cell phone carrier — if they called people in other networks they’d incur a hefty fee.
To get around this problem, Brazilians bought multiple cell phone chips from different carriers and they would have to top off these chips individually. You’d also have to remember which of your contacts used which carrier — mind-blowing, I know. So when WhatsApp launched, it eliminated that problem altogether, hence its massive penetration in the Brazilian market.
(l-r) Renato Camargo: country manager & CMO; Alvaro Teijeiro: co-founder & CTO; Gustavo Victorica: co-founder & COO; Rodrigo Teijeiro: founder & CEO; Diego Escobar: CFO. Image Credits: RecargaPay
RecargaPay’s Series C was co-led by Miami-based Fuel Venture Capital and Madrid-based IDC Ventures, with additional participation from LUN Partners, Experian Ventures and ATW Partners.
“RecargaPay is a pioneer in the payments sector as one of the first all-in-one platforms to serve such a wide array of everyday needs of Brazilians,” said Maggie Vo, Fuel Venture Capital managing general partner and chief investment officer. “We are thrilled to back a company that is actively improving the lives of so many people by giving them more control over their finances, all the while challenging the status quo of banking systems.”
“Often people think that RecargaPay is for the unbanked, but it’s actually for the unbanked and the banked,” Teijeiro added. “What we always had in mind was to build — in the long-term — a mobile money ecosystem. Our approach was to solve problems one-by-one, and now we have a vertically integrated payment platform that offers financial services.”
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Valoreo closes on $50M to roll up LatAm e-commerce brands
A new breed of startups is acquiring and growing small but promising third-party merchants, and building out their own economies of scale.
And while there are a number of such startups based in the U.S. and Europe, none had emerged in the Latin American market. Until now.
Valoreo, a Mexico City-based acquirer of e-commerce businesses, announced Tuesday that it has raised $50 million of equity and debt financing in a seed funding round.
The dollar amount is large for a seed round by any standards, but most certainly ranks among the highest ever raised by a Latin American startup — further evidence of increased investor interest in the region’s burgeoning venture scene.
Upper90, FJ Labs, Angel Ventures, Presight Capital and a slew of angel investors participated in the round. Those angels included David Geisen, head of Mercado Libre Mexico; BEA Systems’ co-founder Alfred Chuang; and Tushar Ahluwalia, founder of Razor Group, a European marketplace aggregator, among others.
Founded in late 2020, Valoreo aims to invest in, operate and scale e-commerce brands as part of its self-described mission “to bring better products at more affordable prices” to the Latin American consumer.
“We were substantially oversubscribed and were therefore able to select investors that not only provide capital, but also additional know-how in key areas,” said co-founder Alex Gruell.
Valoreo joins the growing number of startups focused on rolling up e-commerce brands.
The company’s model is similar to that of Thrasio — which just raised another $750 million –– and Perch in the U.S. But Valoreo says its approach has been tailored to “the specific needs of the Latin American market and is specifically focused on the Latin American end customer.”
Another new company in the space called Branded recently launched its own roll-up business on $150 million in funding. Others in the space include Berlin Brands Group, SellerX, Heyday and Heroes.
But as my colleague Ingrid Lunden points out, “the feverish pace of fundraising in the area of FBA roll-ups feels very much like a bubble in the market — not least because none of these still-young companies have yet to prove that the strategy to buy up and consolidate these sellers is a useful and profitable one.”
How it works
Valoreo (which the company says is an extension of the Spanish word “valor,” meaning to add value), acquires merchants that operate their own brands and primarily sell on online marketplaces such as Mercado Libre, Amazon and Linio. The company targets brands that offer “category-leading products” and which it believes have “significant growth potential.” It also develops brands in-house to offer a broader selection of products to the end customer.
Like Thrasio, Valoreo says it’s able to help entrepreneurs who may lack the resources and access to capital to take their businesses to the next level.
Co-founder and co-CEO Stefan Florea says the company takes less than five weeks typically from its initial contact with a seller to a final payout.
Then, the acquired and developed brands are integrated into the company’s consolidated holding. By tapping its team of “specialists” in areas such as digital marketing and supply chain management, it claims to be able to help these brands “reach new heights” while giving the entrepreneurs behind the companies “an attractive exit,” or partial exit in some cases.
“We have different structures, always taking into account the personal objectives of the seller,” Stefan Florea added.
Generally Valoreo acquires the majority of the business, with the purchase price typically being a combination of an upfront cash payment and a profit share component so sellers can still earn money.
Looking ahead, Valoreo plans to use its new capital mostly to acquire and develop “interesting” brands, as well as build out its current team of 10 while expanding its infrastructure and operations.
The company is currently focused on the Mexican and Brazilian markets, but is planning its expansion into other Latin American countries where it has strong local support systems, such as Colombia, according to co-founder Martin Florea.
“Our mission is to be a pan-Latin American player providing value to the entire region,” Martin Florea said. “Latin America in general and Mexico in particular are in a distinct situation which provides phenomenal opportunities for e-commerce merchants on the one hand but also presents particular challenges on the other hand.”
Those challenges, according to Martin Florea, include limited access to growth capital, a lack of specialized expertise in certain areas (such as supply chain management), limited opportunities to sell their business and pursue new ventures, as well as operational burdens and the lack of capacities to expand into new countries and marketplaces.
Valoreo emphasizes it is not out to compete with Mercado Libre, Amazon and other regional marketplaces but instead wants to partner with them.
“Without these platforms, this opportunity would not exist,” Martin Florea said.
Hernán Fernández, founder and managing partner of Angel Ventures, believes Valoreo “will add a lot of value” to the Latin American e-commerce landscape, which is experiencing both market growth and the fragmentation of the seller space.
Jüsto co-founder and CEO (and Valoreo investor) Ricardo Weder notes that the e-commerce market is at an inflection point in Latin America. According to eMarketer, the region was the fastest-growing e-commerce market in the world in 2020, with 37% year over year growth. However, it is a much more fragmented and crowded market compared to other regions, such as the United States.
This, Valoreo believes, provides an opportunity for consolidation.
“There are still many consumers that are not aware of the great variety of outstanding local brands that sell innovative products on marketplaces online,” Stefan Florea said. “In the U.S. or Europe e-commerce is the new way of shopping, offering an even greater range of products and brands than offline shopping. We firmly believe it will not take long until end-customers in Mexico and across Latin America discover all the benefits that e-commerce offers.”
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This Week in Apps: TikTok viral hit breaks Spotify records, inauguration boosts news app installs, judge rules against Parler
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.
Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.
Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.
This week, we’re looking into how President Biden’s inauguration impacted news apps, the latest in the Parler lawsuit, and how TikTok’s app continues to shape culture, among other things.
Top Stories
Judge says Amazon doesn’t have to host Parler on AWS
Logos for AWS (Amazon Web Services) and Parler. Image Credits: TechCrunch
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle this week ruled that Amazon won’t be required to restore access to web services to Parler. As you may recall, Parler sued Amazon for booting it from AWS’ infrastructure, effectively forcing it offline. Like Apple and Google before it, Amazon had decided that the calls for violence that were being spread on Parler violated its terms of service. It also said that Parler showed an “unwillingness and inability” to remove dangerous posts that called for the rape, torture and assassination of politicians, tech executives and many others, the AP reported.
Amazon’s decision shouldn’t have been a surprise for Parler. Amazon had reported 98 examples of Parler posts that incited violence over the past several weeks before its decision. It told Parler these were clear violations of the terms of service.
Parler’s lawsuit against Amazon, however, went on to claim breach of contract and even made antitrust allegations.
The judge shot down Parler’s claims that Amazon and Twitter were colluding over the decision to kick the app off AWS. Parler’s claims over breach of contract were denied, too, as the contract had never said Amazon had to give Parler 30 days to fix things. (Not to mention the fact that Parler breached the contract on its side, too.) It also said Parler had fallen short in demonstrating the need for an injunction to restore access to Amazon’s web services.
The ruling only blocks Parler from forcing Amazon to again host it as the lawsuit proceeds, but is not the final ruling in the overall case, which is continuing.
TikTok drives another pop song to No. 1 on Billboard charts, breaks Spotify’s record
@livbedumb♬ drivers license – Olivia Rodrigo
We already knew TikTok was playing a large role in influencing music charts and listening behavior. For example, Billboard last year noted how TikTok drove hits from Sony artists like Doja Cat (“Say So”) and 24kGoldn (“Mood”), and helped Sony discover new talent. Columbia also signed viral TikTok artists like Lil Nas X, Powfu, StaySolidRocky, Jawsh 685, Arizona Zervas and 24kGoldn. Meanwhile, Nielsen has said that no other app had helped break more songs in 2020 than TikTok.
This month, we’ve witnessed yet another example of this phenomenon. Olivia Rodrigo, the 17-year-old star of Disney+’s “High School Musical: The Musical: the Series” released her latest song, “Drivers License” on January 8. The pop ballad and breakup anthem is believed to be referencing the actress’ relationship with co-star Joshua Bassett, which gave the song even more appeal to fans.
Upon its release the song was heavily streamed by TikTok users, which helped make it an overnight sensation of sorts. According to a report by The WSJ, Billboard counted 76.1 million streams and 38,000 downloads in the U.S. during the week of its release. It also made a historic debut at No. 1 on the Hot 100, becoming the first smash hit of 2021.
On January 11, “Drivers License” broke Spotify’s record for most streams per day (for a non-holiday song) with 15.17 million global streams. On TikTok, meanwhile, the number of videos featuring the song and the views they received doubled every day, The WSJ said.
Charli D’Amelio’s dance to it on the app has now generated 5 million “Likes” across nearly 33 million views, as of the time of writing.
@charlidamelio♬ drivers license – Olivia Rodrigo
Of course, other TikTok hits have broken out in the past, too — even reaching No. 1 like “Blinding Lights” (The Weeknd) and “Mood” (24kGoldn). But the success of “Drivers License” may be in part due to the way it focuses on a subject that’s more relevant to TikTok’s young, teenage user base. It talks about first loves and being dumped for the other girl. And its title and opening refer to a time many adults have forgotten: the momentous day when you get your driver’s license. It’s highly relatable to the TikTok crowd who fully embraced it and made it a hit.
Weekly News
Platforms: Apple
- Apple stops signing iOS 12.5, making iOS 12.5.1 the only versions of iOS available to older devices.
- A report claims Apple’s iOS 15 update will cut support for devices with an A9 chip, like the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s Plus and the original iPhone SE.
- New analysis estimates Apple’s upcoming iOS privacy changes will cause a roughly 7% revenue hit for Facebook in Q2. The revenue hit will continue in following quarters and will be “material.”
Platforms: Google
- Google adds “trending” icons to the Play Store. New arrow icons appeared in the Top Charts tab, which indicate whether an app’s downloads are trending up or down, in terms of popularity. This could provide an early signal about those that may still be rising in the charts or beginning to fall out of favor, despite their current high position.
- Google appears to be working on a Restricted Networking mode for Android 12. The mode, discovered by XDA Developers digging in the Android Open Source Project, would disable network access for all third-party apps.
Gaming
- Goama (or Go Games) introduced a way for developers to integrate social games into their apps, which was showcased at CES. The company focuses on Asia and Latin America and has more than 15 partners, including GCash and Rappi, for digital payments and communications.
- Fortnite maker Epic Games is getting into movies. The animated feature film Gilgamesh will use Epic’s Unreal Engine technology to tell the story of the king-turned-deity. The movie is not an in-house project, but rather is financed through Epic’s $100M MegaGrants fund.
Augmented Reality
- Patents around Apple’s AR and VR efforts describe how a system could be identified in a way that’s similar to FaceID, then either permitted or denied the ability to change their appearance in the game.
- Pinterest launches AR try-on for eyeshadow in its mobile app using Lens technology and ModiFace data. The app already offered AR try-on for lipsticks.
Entertainment
- The CW app became the No. 1 app on the App Store this week, topping TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, thanks to CW’s season premieres of Batwoman, All American, Riverdale and Nancy Drew.
- Users of podcasting app Anchor, owned by Spotify, say the app isn’t bringing them any sponsorship opportunities, as promised, beyond those from Spotify and Anchor itself.
- YouTube launches hashtag landing pages on the web and in its mobile app. The pages are accessible when you click hashtags on YouTube, not via search, and weirdly rank the “best” videos through some inscrutable algorithm.
- Apple’s Podcasts app adds a new editorial feature, Apple Podcasts Spotlight, meant to increase podcast listening by showcasing the best podcasts as selected by Apple editors.
E-commerce
- WeChat facilitated 1.6 trillion yuan (close to $250 billion) in annual transactions through its “mini programs” in 2020. The figure is more than double that of 2019.
Fintech
- Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, launched an e-wallet, Douyin Pay. The wallet will supplement the existing payment options, Alipay and WeChat Pay, and will help to support the Douyin app’s growing e-commerce business.
- Neobank Monzo founder Tom Blomfield left the startup, saying he struggled during the pandemic. “I think [for] a lot of people in the world…going through a pandemic, going through lockdown and the isolation involved in that has an impact on people’s mental health,” he told TechCrunch.
- New estimates indicate about 50% of the iPhone user base (or 507 million users) now use Apple Pay.
- Samsung’s newest phones drop support for MST, which emulates a mag stripe at terminals that don’t support NFC.
Social
- Indian messaging app, StickerChat, owned by Hike, is shutting down. Founder Kavin Bharti Mittal said India will never have a homegrown messenger unless it bars Western companies from its market. Hike pivoted this month to virtual social apps, Vibe and Rush, which it believes have more potential.
- Instagram head Adam Mosseri, in a Verge podcast, said he’s not happy with Reels so far, and how he feels most people probably don’t understand the difference between Instagram video and IGTV. He says the social network needs to simplify and consolidate ideas.
- Facebook and Instagram improve their accessibility features. The apps’ AI-generated image captions now offer far more details about who or what is in the photos, thanks to improvements in image recognition systems.
- TikTok launches a Q&A feature that lets creators respond to fan questions using text or videos. The feature, rolled out to select creators with more than 10,000 followers, makes it easier to see all the questions in one place.
Health & Fitness
- Health and fitness app spending jumped 70% last year in Europe to record $544 million, a Sensor Tower report says. The year-over-year increase is far larger than 2019, when growth was just 37.2%. COVID-19 played a large role in this shift as people turned to fitness apps instead of gyms to stay in shape.
Government & Policy
- Biden’s inauguration boosted installs of U.S. news apps up to 170%, Sensor Tower reported. CNN was the biggest mover, climbing 530 positions to reach No. 41 on the App Store, and up 170% in terms of downloads. News Break was the second highest, climbing 13 positions to No. 65. Right-wing outlet Newsmax climbed 43 spots to reach No. 108. In 2020, the top news apps were: News Break (23.7 million installs); SmartNews (9 million); CNN (5 million); and Fox News (4 million). This month, however, News Break saw 1.2 million installs, followed by Newsmax with about 863,000 installs, the report said.
- Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) sent a draft decision to fellow EU Data Protection Authorities over the WhatsApp-Facebook data sharing policy. This means a decision on the matter is coming closer to a resolution in terms of what standards of transparency is required by WhatsApp.
- German app developer Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents filed a complaint with the EU, U.S. DOJ and other antitrust watchdogs around the world over Apple and Google’s rejection of his COVID-related mobile game. Both stores had policies to only approve official COVID-19 apps from health authorities. Mueller renamed the game Viral Days and removed references to the novel coronavirus to get the app approved. However, he still feels the stores’ rules are holding back innovation.
Productivity
- Basecamp’s Hey, which famously fought back against Apple’s App Store rules over IAP last year, has launched a business-focused platform, Hey for Work, expected to be public in Q1. The app has more App Store ratings than rival Superhuman, a report found. Currently, Hey has a 4.7-star rating across 3.3K reviews; Superhuman has 3.9 rating across only 274 reviews.
Trends
- Baby boomers are increasingly using apps. Baby boomers/Gen Xers in the U.S. spent 30% more time year-over-year in their most used apps, App Annie reports. That’s a larger increase than either Millennials or Gen Z, at 18% and 16%, respectively.
Funding and M&A
- Curtsy, a clothing resale app for Gen Z women, raised an $11 million Series A led by Index Ventures. The app tackles some of the problems with online resale by sending shipping supplies and labels to sellers, and by making the marketplace accessible to new and casual sellers.
- Storytelling platform Wattpad acquired by South Korea’s Naver for $600 million. The reading apps whose stories have turned into book and Netflix hits will be incorporated into Naver’s publishing platform Webtoon.
- On-demand delivery app Glovo partnered with Swiss-based real estate firm, Stoneweg, which is investing €100 million in building and refurbishing real estate in key markets to build out Glovo’s network of “dark stores.”
- Pocket Casts app is up for sale. The podcast app was acquired nearly three years ago by a public radio consortium of top podcast producers (NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago and This American Life). The owners have now agreed to sell the app, which posted a net loss in 2020. (NPR’s share of the loss was over $800,000.)
- Travel app Maps.me raised $50 million in a round led by Alameda Research. The funding will go toward the launch of a multi-currency wallet. Cryptocurrency lender Genesis Capital and institutional cryptocurrency firm CMS Holdings also participated in the round, Coindesk reported.
- Bangalore-based hyperlocal delivery app Dunzo raised $40 million in a round that included investment from Google, Lightbox, Evolvence, Hana Financial Investment, LGT Lightstone Aspada and Alteria.
- London-based food delivery app Deliveroo raised $180 million in new funding from existing investors, led by Durable Capital Partners and Fidelity Management, valuing the business at more than $7 billion.
- Dating Group acquired Swiss startup Once, a dating app that sends one match per day, for $18 million.
Downloads
Bodyguard
Image Credits: Bodyguard
A French content moderation app called Bodyguard, detailed here by TechCrunch, has brought its service to the English-speaking market. The app allows you to choose the level of content moderation you want to see on top social networks, like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Twitch. You can choose to hide toxic content across a range of categories, like insults, body shaming, moral harassment, sexual harassment, racism and homophobia and indicate whether the content is a low or high priority to block.
Beeper
Image Credits: Beeper
Pebble’s founder and current YC Partner Eric Migicovsky has launched a new app, Beeper, that aims to centralize in one interface 15 different chat apps, including iMessage. The app relies on an open-source federated, encrypted messaging protocol called Matrix that uses “bridges” to connect to the various networks to move the messages. However, iMessage support is more wonky, as the company actually ships you an old iPhone to make the connection to the network. But this system allows you to access Beeper on non-Apple devices, the company says. The app is slowly onboarding new users due to initial demand. The app works across MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android and charges $10/mo for the service.
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On the diversity front, 2020 may prove a tipping point
Since Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd in May and kicked off months of nationwide protests, the corporate world — including venture capitalists — have attempted to respond to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Indeed, many quickly took to social media to voice their support, broadcast their new diversity-focused networking groups and pledge to do better, particularly when it comes to finding and funding more Black founders and other underrepresented entrepreneurs.
As of 2018, 81% of venture firms still lacked a single Black investor.
It was tempting to dismiss it as so much hot air, given that VCs have talked about diversity for eons without doing much about it.
As of February 2020, according to a report by All Raise, an organization that promotes female founders, 65% of VC firms still had no female partners. As of 2018, 81% of venture firms still lacked a single Black investor, per an analysis by Equal Ventures partner Richard Kerby.
Those numbers are comparatively rosy when considering the percentage of women and Black investors in senior decision-making roles. According to recent PitchBook data, at the start of this year, just 12.4% of decision-makers at U.S. venture firms were women (up slightly from the 9.65% at the start of 2019). As for for the number of Black investors in senior positions, it has long hovered around just 2%.
But here’s the good news: While it remains an ongoing challenge to get these numbers in sync with other industries, there were two developments specifically in 2020 that may beget more action in 2021.
We’d first point to the decision this fall by Yale’s endowment to require its asset managers to do better when it comes to diversity. Specifically, the school’s $32 billion endowment — led since 1985 by investor David Swensen — told its 70 U.S. money managers that from here on out, they will be measured annually on their progress in increasing the diversity of their investment staff, from hiring to training to mentoring to their retention of women and minorities.
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Brazilian lending company Creditas raises $255 million as Latin America’s fintech explosion continues
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, Wellington 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 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.
Founded in 2012, when the founders worked out of a five-square-meter office on Berrini Avenue in São 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 reals in the year ago quarter.
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Will Brazil’s Roaring 20s see the rise of early-stage startups?
Since 2007, the number of publicly listed companies in Brazil has decreased from 400 to just a little over 300.
In the past six years there were only 21 IPOs — an average of just 3.5 public exits per year; by 2019, even Iran had more listed companies than Brazil. Global capital markets are heated given pandemic stimulus packages and low interest rates worldwide, but in Brazil the boom comes with a special feature: in Q3 2020, there were 25 primary and secondary equity offerings, and this year is on track to be the most active in history both in number of deals and dollar volume.
The most important event, however, is not necessarily the reversal of a shrinking public market but the fact that startups are issuing stocks for the first time, a dramatic change for a market previously dominated by industries like commodities and utilities.
Growth versus value: Revert the shrinking market and internet companies
Not only is Brazil’s IPO market roaring, the waitlist is even more impressive: More than 47 companies have filed at CVM (equivalent to the the Securities and Exchange Commission) to issue equity and are waiting for approval. In other words, the IPO is equivalent to more than 15% of the number of publicly listed companies. In the first half of October, six companies were approved to issue equity. Obviously construction and retail names are still predominant as they take advantage of the lower rates, but the main novelty are new entrants in internet and technology.
In the past decade, there were 56 IPOs in Brazil and only two were in the software space, both in 2013. That is a reflection of the profile of the investors who dominate local markets, which are used to allocating assets to companies in sectors like oil, paper and cellulose, mining or utilities. Historically, publicly listed companies in the country were value plays, as few of them had significant exposure to the domestic market and derived a significant share of revenue from commodities and exports.
As a result, companies that focused on the domestic market or on growth were never quite embraced by local investors. Many investors deploying capital in Brazil were mostly foreign and very risk-averse to the dynamics of the domestic market; in 2007, when Brazil went through a similar IPO boom, 70 percent of the demand for equity offerings came from foreign investors.
Along with an undervalued currency, growth companies struggled to find attractive valuations on the local exchange. As a result, growth companies such as Stone Payments, Netshoes, PagSeguro, Arco Educação and XP Investimentos did their IPOs in New York where they attained higher valuations. It’s ironic that there were three times more IPOs of Brazilian growth companies in the U.S. in the past five years than there were in the domestic market in the last decade.
Roaring 20s: New investors and massive portfolio relocations
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