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Best Buy investing millions in Brown Venture Group, a firm exclusively backing BIPOC founders
Last summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Best Buy committed to “do better” when it came to supporting communities of color. As part of the retail giant’s self-proclaimed mission to better address underrepresentation and technology inequities, the company announced today that it is investing up to $10 million in Brown Venture Group.
Minnesota-based Brown Venture Group is a three-year-old venture capital firm that has pledged to exclusively back Black, Latino and Indigenous technology startups in “emerging technologies.” Black and Latin communities were the recipients of just 2.6% of total funding in 2020, according to Crunchbase data.
Brown Venture Group is in the process of fundraising for its targeted inaugural $50 million fund, 75% of which has been committed, according to its principals. This means that Minneapolis-based Best Buy’s pledge to invest “up to $10 million” could represent as much as 20% of the total capital raised, making it a lead LP in the fund.
Brown Venture Group co-founder and managing partner Dr. Paul Campbell said that in the early days of forming the firm, he and co-founder Dr. Chris Brooks were told by “multiple people locally” that they should leave the Twin Cities metro area because “all the capital was on the coasts.”
“We just made a firm decision in the very early stages to stay put in the Twin Cities and that we wanted this to be a Twin City story,” Campbell told TechCrunch. “So when we thought about our Twin Cities ecosystem and who we wanted to be leading partners with, Best Buy was at the top of the list. So we are just more than excited to have Best Buy as a lead LP in our fund.”
For its part, Best Buy — which notched $47 billion in revenue last year — said the move is aimed at helping “break down the systemic barriers often faced by Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) entrepreneurs — including lack of access to funding — and empowering the next generation within the tech industry.”
The company added: “The partnership with Brown Venture Group will work toward making the technology startup landscape more inclusive and creating a stronger community of diverse suppliers.”
In conjunction with announcing Best Buy’s commitment to the fund, the company and venture firm said they would jointly launch an entrepreneurship program at Best Buy Teen Tech Centers to help develop young entrepreneurs through education, mentorship, networking and funding access.
Brown Venture Group — whose name was chosen to represent an “inclusive” skin color of the groups it represents — has so far invested in five companies, including clean energy startup Ecolution kwh.
Ten million dollars seems like a drop in the bucket for a company that generated sales of $47 billion last year. Best Buy said this initiative is just one of several that it has underway to support BIPOC businesses, including plans to provide $44 million to expand college prep and career opportunities for BIPOC students and a pledge to spend at least $1.2 billion with BIPOC and diverse businesses by 2025. The company has also said that by 2025 it will fill one out of three new non-hourly corporate positions with BIPOC employees and hire 1,000 new employees to its technology team, with 30% of them being diverse, specifically Black, Latinx, Indigenous and women.
“We’re committed to taking meaningful action to address the challenges faced by BIPOC entrepreneurs,” Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said in a written statement. “Through partnerships like this, we believe we can begin to do this by helping to build a stronger, more vibrant community of diverse innovators in the tech industry, some of whom we hope will become partners of Best Buy in the future.”
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Gwoop Academy wants to help you get better at video games
Every sport has its practice drills and exercises to help players hone skills between games. Why would esports be any different?
Gwoop, a startup out of Minnesota, wants to be the place where gamers go to train between matches. They’re building up a collection of free browser-based training tools meant to help you measure and improve vital stats like reaction time, mouse control, and aim, and see how your stats compare to the best.
Some of the training games currently up and running:
- Reaction Training: Wait for it … click! As soon as the screen changes from grey to orange, you click the mouse button. The lower your reaction time (measured in milliseconds), the better. Harder levels throw in more colors to fake you out and give you a bit of pause.
- Visual Speed: Targets spawn one-at-a-time all around a 2D plane. Click one and another appears. The more targets you click before time runs out, the higher your score.
- Keyboard speed: Straightforward keyboard key-finding practice, because any time spent looking at your keyboard is time not spent dodging shots.
Image Credits: Gwoop
- Mouse control: If you can’t get your mouse to go where you want it, you can’t aim. Gwoop’s mouse control exercise has you drag a ball through a curved track. If your cursor strays outside the track, the ball returns to the beginning. The more tracks you successfully complete before time is up, the higher your score.
- FPS Training Arena: Strafe around a 3D arena (pictured up top), scanning for randomly generated targets and clicking them as they appear. Bonus points for hitting the dead center of a target.
All of the tools are linked back to an analytics dashboard, allowing you to gauge your performance metrics over time. Each skill gets its own leaderboard so you can see, for example, how your average reaction time compares to others worldwide and amongst your friends.
Even in its 3D exercises, Gwoop’s graphics are pretty simple — and that’s intentional. They want it to work for as many players as possible. They’ve got no reason to try to look like a AAA title; the more graphically intense a game is, the more powerful your computer would have to be to run it smoothly. Co-founder Gavin Lee tells me that their goal is to keep it so that “all you need is a computer and the internet. It doesn’t matter if your device is 10 years old.” Even its 2D exercises have switches you can flip to further simplify the graphics and improve performance.
It’s the same reason they’ve built everything to work in the browser: not requiring any downloads means more people can train, with the added benefit for the Gwoop team of not having to worry about maintaining separate Mac/PC clients.
While the existing exercises might seem focused around improving first-person shooter skills, Lee tells me that they’re aiming to be “genre-agnostic” and are planning expansions tailored to other kinds of games. He mentions a “MOBA Arena” in the works meant to help polish skills required for games like League of Legends or DOTA, and another exercise in progress that’s “very Rocket League-centric.” Their training tools seem mostly focused on keyboard/mouse users right now, but they’re working on more functionality for players who prefer controllers.
Image Credits: Gwoop
Gwoop is entirely free to players — so how will they make money? Lee tells me they’ve got two different strategies there: They’ll sell additional advanced analytics tools to teams, and, once they’ve got enough players clicking around, hopefully be able to serve as a platform for esports recruiters. Lee says players should be able to opt-in to having their data shared with potential sponsors and esports teams, with Gwoop getting paid to connect the dots. “All these division one schools have these platforms where you can upload football films and get recruited,” says Lee “we want to become that platform [for esports].”
Why the name “Gwoop”? Is it a bit of super cool gaming lingo, or some sort of acronym? Nope! It was just a quick, memorable domain Lee had been holding onto for decades. “I wish I had a better story for you,” he says, “but I bought the domain in 2002 just because I wanted a five-letter domain that you could pronounce and was available.” It’s okay, Gavin: Most people don’t care why Google is called Google, after all.
The team’s timing is pretty good here. With most people being stuck at home, more people are getting into gaming than ever before. Battle Royale games like Fortnite, PUBG and Apex Legends are blowing up … but it’s hard to get better in a game where you spend the first 10 minutes looting only to get shredded in 10 seconds when a skilled team rotates through. While many titles have dedicated training areas or firing ranges to practice in, they’re usually meant more for quick pre-game warmups and don’t do things like help you track metrics and improvements over time.
Image Credits: Gwoop
The Minneapolis-based team is currently comprised of its three co-founders. It’s self-funded to date, but I’m told a seed round is underway.
Gwoop is currently in semi-closed beta and generally requires an invite to signup, but Lee tells me that the code #TC2021# should let our readers past the signup gate.
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Minneapolis-based VC shop Bread & Butter focuses on its own backyard
While many investors say sheltering in place has broadened their appetite for funding companies located outside major hubs, one firm is doubling down on backing startups in America’s heartland.
Launched in 2016 by Brett Brohl, The Syndicate Fund rebranded to Bread & Butter Ventures earlier this month (a reference to one of Minnesota’s many nicknames). Along with the rebrand, longtime Google executive and Revolution partner Mary Grove joined the team as a general partner and Stephanie Rich came aboard as head of platform.
The growth of the Twin Cities’ startup ecosystem is precisely why The Syndicate Fund rebranded. The firm, which has $10 million in assets under management, will invest in three of Minneapolis’ biggest strengths: agriculture and food, health care and enterprise software.
Agtech interest spans the entire spectrum from farming to restaurants and grocery stores. The firm is also interested in the “messy middle” of supply chain and logistics around food, said Brohl and is interested in a mix of software, hardware and biosciences. Within health care, the firm evaluates solutions focused on prevention versus treatment, female health startups working on maternal health and fertility and software focused on the aging population and millennials.
It’s also looking at enterprise software that can serve large businesses and scale efficiently.
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Rewarding civic pride and boosting the local economy? Akron, Ohio is trying out a startup for that
Akron, Ohio, the hometown of LeBron James; the seat of the U.S. tire industry; the 127 largest city in the U.S.; and the home of America’s first toy company, is now the latest site of a global experiment in whether cities can use behavioral economics to help foster good citizenship.
Thanks to the work of the city’s deputy mayor for integrated development, James Hardy, Akron is the first city to roll out services from an Israeli-based company called Colu. A startup backed by just over $20 million in financing from American and Israeli investors, the company has developed an app-based rewards service that cities can roll out to provide perks to users.
In Akron’s case, the initiative rewards points for shopping at local businesses that can be redeemed for discounts at those stores. The initial effort, which includes a platform for businesses to market directly to the app’s users, focuses on businesses owned by women and minorities (a response to the movement for racial justice that has sprung up in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis).
Akron is the first city of what Colu founder Amos Meiri expects to be a nationwide rollout throughout the U.S. The company already has managed to ink another agreement with the city of Chula Vista, Calif.
Colu, which has raised its capital from investors associated with blockchain technologies like Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group; the Boston-based venture capital firm, Spark Capital; New York’s Box Group and the Israeli corporate conglomerate, IDB Group, has deep ties to the cryptocurrency world of alternative financial instruments through Meiri.
One of the original architects of the Color coin blockchain experiment, Meiri’s work with Colu is in some ways an extension of that effort to create new kinds of economies powered by alternative financial mechanisms.
Meiri said cities typically pay for Colu out of their marketing budgets as a new way to communicate and attempt to influence civic behavior.
For Akron’s government officials, the company’s services are a way to boost locally owned businesses that have been hit hard by the state’s attempts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Our locally owned small businesses are facing enormous challenges and we need out-of-the-box ideas that safely connect them to consumers and turn local spending into a source of pride for residents,” said Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan, in a statement. “Our partnership with Colu will enable the city to reward customers for shopping local, improving revenues for our small businesses while helping folks stretch their dollars.”
Earlier work with the municipal government in Tel Aviv promoted sustainable business practice and encouraged businesses to do more to manage their waste and carbon footprint by introducing a “green label.” Businesses that followed the city’s guidelines were given the label and shoppers were encouraged to frequent those merchants.
Colu envisions itself as more than just a marketing and rewards platform for businesses. The company hopes it can draw users into a kind of social networking platform for civic engagement where users can share their own stories about city-life and their interactions with local business owners and the community.
In some ways, it’s a kinder, gentler version of China’s social credit scoring system, which is also designed to influence civic behavior. In this formulation, there’s a rewards system, but no mechanisms to punish citizens for bad behavior.
“Akron has a long history of innovation within our economy — this initiative draws on that legacy,” said Deputy Mayor Hardy, in a statement. “By putting the future of Akron’s locally owned small businesses in the palm of our citizens’ hands, we hope to make it easy for consumers to keep their money local and continue to strengthen our incredible community.”
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Decrypted: DEA spying on protesters, DDoS attacks, Signal downloads spike
This week saw protests spread across the world sparked by the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis last month.
The U.S. hasn’t seen protests like this in a generation, with millions taking to the streets each day to lend their voice and support. But they were met with heavily armored police, drones watching from above, and “covert” surveillance by the federal government.
That’s exactly why cybersecurity and privacy is more important than ever, not least to protect law-abiding protesters demonstrating against police brutality and institutionalized, systemic racism. It’s also prompted those working in cybersecurity — many of which are former law enforcement themselves — to check their own privilege and confront the racism from within their ranks and lend their knowledge to their fellow citizens.
THE BIG PICTURE
DEA allowed ‘covert surveillance’ of protesters
The Justice Department has granted the Drug Enforcement Administration, typically tasked with enforcing federal drug-related laws, the authority to conduct “covert surveillance” on protesters across the U.S., effectively turning the civilian law enforcement division into a domestic intelligence agency.
The DEA is one of the most tech-savvy government agencies in the federal government, with access to “stingray” cell site simulators to track and locate phones, a secret program that allows the agency access to billions of domestic phone records, and facial recognition technology.
Lawmakers decried the Justice Department’s move to allow the DEA to spy on protesters, calling on the government to “immediately rescind” the order, describing it as “antithetical” to Americans’ right to peacefully assembly.
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How to go to market in middle America
Deborah Eisenberg is the founder of TechStarts PR, where she helps technology companies both big and small hone their message and reach their audience.
There comes a time for many startup companies where they either realize they need to do a nationwide rollout, or they need to actively target buyers in the middle of the country. If you are a startup on either the East or the West Coasts, it’s worth thinking about how this market might present its own set of unique challenges, and how you plan to overcome them.
There are a lot of misconceptions about what some people call “flyover country,” and as a San Francisco native who spent two decades in New York, Washington DC, and Boston before moving to Pittsburgh, I can assure you they are almost all wrong. Without getting into specifics, the reality of “middle America” is that it’s the same as anywhere else.
Income, education, world view, and waistlines are all varied. It’s pretty accurate that San Francisco possesses a culture obsessed with fitness and entrepreneurship, but California isn’t necessarily all like that, and if you think it is, I encourage you to go to Bakersfield, the Central Valley, or Eureka sometime.
In addition, just because the stereotypes are wrong doesn’t mean there’s nothing different about doing business here. As you think about how to conduct your rollout, here are some things you should consider:
Table of Contents
Research
As with any market, research is key since it informs every other aspect of the rollout. Start by looking into who your competition is.
Since there are fewer VC-backed startups in middle America, and smaller companies tend to get less press, the research may be harder. However, there are some major universities that are actively putting money into their own Entrepreneurship programs and those spinoffs often do very well.
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Another food delivery startup, Foodsby, rakes in venture capital funding
Venture capitalists are still hungry for food delivery startups.
Foodsby, the provider of a lunch delivery service based out of Minneapolis, has raised a $13.5 million Series B led by Piper Jaffray Merchant Banking. Greycroft Partners, Corazon Capital and Rally Ventures also participated. With the new capital, Foodsby plans to expand to 15 to 25 new markets. The round brings Foodsby’s total raised to $21 million.
“We have established a successful model for new market entry with a tried and true combination of talent and technology,” Foodsby founder and CEO Ben Cattoor said in a statement. “We look forward to building on our early successes and learnings to deliver continued growth for our investors and our team.”
Founded in 2012, the company connects employees in office buildings in 15 cities with local restaurants. How it works: A hungry worker uses Foodsby to pre-order a meal from a restaurant in its network, Foodsby aggregates all the orders it receives, sends the orders to the restaurants and the restaurants then make all the deliveries at once, streamlining what can be a logistically complicated process.
That strategy, the company says, sets Foodsby apart from competitors. Because Foodsby only works with businesses and has restaurants make the deliveries rather than its own fleet of delivery agents, the overall costs of the operation are lower. It’s free to join the Foodsby network as both a company that wants to provide the service to its employees and as a restaurant. Deliveries cost $1.99 per person.
While continued VC support may give the company a vote of confidence, the food delivery space is crowded and competitive. Foodsby is not unlike Peach, a Seattle-based office lunch delivery service that shed one-third of its staff in March. Peach had also landed VC support, raising about $11 million from Madrona and others. Munchery, another similar meal delivery service, also looks to be in hot water, laying off 30 percent of its workforce in May and ceasing operations in Los Angeles, Seattle and New York.
Food delivery startups are hit or miss, but VCs continue to flock to investment rounds in hopes of betting on the next Uber of food delivery — though Uber itself is really the Uber of food delivery, its food delivery service is reportedly the most profitable arm of the ride-hailing giant. And Uber, much like Amazon, is not a company you want to be going head-to-head with.
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