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The only take about the future of media is that media is the future
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace — had more than a little to noodle over, but not so much that we blocked out a second episode. We try to stick to our current format, but, may do more shows in the future. Have a thought about that? equitypod@techcrunch.com is your friend and we are listening.
Now! We took a broad approach this week, so there is a little of something for everything down below. Enjoy!
- Hims is going to SPAC itself onto the public markets, which should prove interesting for other D2C startups eyeing the same move.
- The final quarter of 2020 and the full year brought an ocean of capital to bear on U.S. startups, something that we delighted in chewing on. Fintech is also hot as all heck.
- Plaid is building a fintech accelerator, which we thought was cool.
- An edtech startup based in Nigeria raised a $7.5 million Series A on the back of a really neat distribution model. The march of live, tech-powered tutoring lives on!
- TripActions raised a pallet of new capital despite having had a somewhat rough 2020 due to the pandemic. It’s a fascinating wager, and one that we will track as it earns out.
- There was lots of news in the movement space, including Microsoft helping put $2 billion into self-driving startup Cruise, electric vehicle startup Rivian raising $2.65 billion from Amazon and others, and Bolt Mobility expanding to new markets.
- Danny’s GPS story.
- Wattpad exits for $600 million, leading to Alex detailing his love of science fiction.
- a16z is doubling-down on its in-house media project, and Forbes is building out a paid newsletter service that we think is very neat.
Like we said, it’s a lot, but all of it worth getting into before the weekend. Hugs from the team, we are back early Monday.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Unicorn layoffs keep piling up as the economy gets worse
Earlier today a grip of new data presented a sharply negative picture of the American economy. And this afternoon, news broke that a trio of well-known, heavily-backed unicorns were cutting staff.
With stocks down as well, we’ve received negative signals from the private market, the public market and the economy as a whole in the same day. Let’s take a minute to set the macro stage, and then go over the latest cuts from Carta (first reported by Bloomberg), Zume (Business Insider broke that particular story) and Opendoor (via The Information).
Economic malaise
The backdrop for today’s cuts is a faltering American economy. A glance at recent news is sufficient. In the last few hours, home builder confidence recorded the “biggest drop in history,” while retail sales fell 8.7% in March, what CNBC noted was “the most ever in government data,” and CNN Business reported that American factories’ output fell 5.4% in March, “their steepest one-month slowdown since 1946.”
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that we’ve seen unicorn layoffs all year. In January the news was Vision Fund-backed companies cutting burn to skate closer to profitability. Then, the first round of COVID-19-forced staff cuts landed at big companies; firms like Bird and TripActions slashed staff as their companies were rent by a slowdown in their core operations by the pandemic and its related economic and social changes.
Slimmer cuts at smaller companies have happened on a nearly chronic basis, something that TechCrunch has covered, as well.
Today, however, saw three cuts from three unicorns (private companies worth $1 billion or more) that have long been objects of TechCrunch’s attention. So, let’s talk about them briefly:
- Opendoor, a San Francisco-based home sales-focused startup with backing from SoftBank, announced deep cuts to its staffing today. In a statement provided to TechCrunch, the company’s CEO Eric Wu said that 35% of its employee base would be eliminated to “ensure that we can continue to deliver on our mission.” The CEO also said that exiting staff would get paid for eight weeks and “reimbursement of 16 weeks of health insurance coverage.” Wu is also donating his 2020 salary to a fund to support staff. Opendoor was most recently valued at $3.8 billion in a $300 million funding round announced last March.
- Carta, a San Francisco-based private company equity service platform, announced cuts worth 16% of its staff, or 161 roles, according to a memo that the company shared publicly. Previously eShares, Carta has grown from a provider of equity management for small private companies into a larger, broader service and software play supporting yet-private firms. Carta most recently raised $300 million at a $1.7 billion valuation last May.
- And finally, Zume. Zume didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of publication and did not post a public note that we could find. Still, Business Insider reports that the company is cutting 200 more staff after earlier 2020 personnel reductions. The firm will be left with around 100 employees, working on compostable boxes. Zume last raised $375 million at a valuation of just under $1.9 billion (post-money) in November 2018.
It’s getting hard to keep track of all the cuts. Heck, I helped break Modsy layoffs recently with TechCrunch’s Natasha Mascarenhas, and we were first to the BounceX cuts as well. It’s a rough, bad economy, and it’s harming growth-oriented companies that like startup unicorns.
More when we have it, probably sooner than we’d like to report.
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TripActions lays off hundreds amid COVID-19 travel freeze
The coronavirus demand crunch has taken another bite: Palo Alto-based corporate travel-focused unicorn TripActions has confirmed laying off hundreds of staff.
Per this post on Blind — written by someone with a verified TripActions email address — the company laid off 350 people. Business Insider reported the same figure yesterday, and the Wall Street Journal said the layoffs amount to between one-quarter to one-fifth of the startup’s total staff, citing a person familiar with the situation.
Update: A spokesman for TripActions told us the number of impacted employees impacted is “less than 300” — although he qualified the remark by saying the figure includes 25 people who were offered other roles within the company.
In an earlier email to Crunchbase News TripActions confirmed axing jobs in response to the COVID-19 global health crisis — saying it had “cut back on all non-essential spend.” It did not confirm exactly how many employees it had fired at that point.
“[We] made the very difficult decision to reduce our global workforce in line with the current climate,” TripActions wrote in the statement. “We look forward to when the strength of the global economy and business travel inevitably return and we can hire back our colleagues to rejoin us in our mission to make business travel effortless for our customers and users.”
“This global health crisis is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes, and our hearts go out to everyone impacted around the world, including our own customers, partners, suppliers and employees,” it added. “The coronavirus has had [a] wide-reaching effect on the global economy. Every business has been impacted including TripActions. While we were fortunate to have recently raised funding and secured debt financing, we are taking appropriate steps in our business to ensure we are here for our customers and their travelers long into the future.”
Per the post on Blind, TripActions is providing one week of severance to sacked staff and medical cover until end of month. “With [the coronavirus pandemic] going on you think they would do better,” the OP wrote. The layoffs were made by Zoom call, they also said.
However TripActions’ spokesman disputed the details about severance and medical cover, saying it is offering severance packages for U.S. employees that include two months of company-paid COBRA health insurance coverage, extending health benefits through the end of June, along with a minimum of 3 weeks salary.
He added that U.S. employees who were given notice yesterday were told their last day would be April 1, 2020 — meaning their health benefits continue through the end of April.
Travel startups are facing an unprecedented nuclear winter as demand has fallen off a cliff globally — with little prospect of a substantial change to the freeze on most business travel in the coming months as rates of COVID-19 infections continue to grow exponentially outside China.
However, TripActions is one of the highest valued and best financed of such startups, securing a $500 million credit facility for a new corporate product only last month. At the time, Crunchbase recorded $480 million in tracked equity funding for the company, including a $250M Series D TripActions raised in June from investors including a16z, Group 11, Lightspeed and Zeev Ventures.
Before the layoffs, the company had already paused all hiring, per one former technical sourcer for the company writing on LinkedIn.
This post was updated with additional comment from TripActions
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Travel startups are taking off
The second wave of Internet-era travel companies has captured the attention of venture capitalists.
In the last five years, travel companies have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital funding. That includes short-term rental startups, travel and tourism apps, marketplaces for “experiences” and other travel or hospitality tech platforms. Airbnb, a $38 billion company and an anomaly in the category, has raised $3 billion in that same time frame, according to PitchBook.
In the last few months alone, aspiring Concur-competitor TripActions and travel activities platform Klook entered the “unicorn” club with large venture rounds that valued both of the businesses at more than $1 billion. Meanwhile, luggage maker Away raised $50 million at a $400 million valuation and smaller startups in the space like Freebirds, IfOnly, KKDay, Duffel and RedDoorz all closed modest funding rounds.
“Something is really happening in the industry; something bigger than us,” TripActions co-founder Ariel Cohen said in a recent conversation with TechCrunch about his company’s $154 million Series C financing. “Different startups are identifying the opportunity here and the fact that companies want to make sure their employees are happy while they are on the go. That’s why you see investments in companies like Brex and like TripActions.”
Brex, though not classified as a travel startup, lets startup employees earn extra points on business travel with its corporate credit card for startups. It recently raised a $125 million Series C at a $1.1 billion valuation.
Global travel and tourism is one of the most valuable industries worth some $7 trillion. The online travel market, in particular, is expected to grow to $817 billion by 2020. VCs are hunting for tech-enabled startups poised to dominate that slice.
“You have a new wave of businesses where all of that digital infrastructure is set up, so the focus can be on things like efficiency, improved customer service, scale and growth — you have a ton of companies popping up catering to those needs,” Defy Partners co-founder Neil Sequeira told TechCrunch. Sequeira was a managing director at General Catalyst when the firm made its first investment in Airbnb.
On the other hand, you have a whole cohort of travel business founded amid the dot-com boom that are looking to technology startups for a much-needed infusion of innovation. Many of those larger companies have become active acquirers, fueling VC interest in the space. SAP Concur, for example, acquired the formerly VC-backed travel-booking startup Hipmunk in 2016. Before that, it bought travel planning company TripIt for $120 million, among others.
Expedia has gobbled up a number of travel brands too, like travel photography community Trover; Airbnb-competitor HomeAway, which it paid a whopping $3.9 billion for in 2015; and most recently, both Pillow and ApartmentJet.
Many of these acquisitions are for peanuts, which is far from ideal for a venture-funded company. And building a travel business is cash intensive, hence the $4.4 billion Airbnb has raised to date or even TripActions’ $236 million in total VC funding. To keep momentum in the space, companies need to be striking larger M&A deals.
It doesn’t help that many in and around the venture capital industry are predicting an imminent turn in the market. Travel companies, which are reliant upon a consumer’s tendency to spend excess cash, will be among the first sectors to be impacted by hostile economic conditions.
“If the market turns, people aren’t going to spend $10,000 on a trip to Zimbabwe,” Sequeira said, referencing companies like IfOnly, which sells curated experiences.
Travel startups should raise now while the market is hot. The conditions may not remain favorable for long.
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TripActions raises $14.6 million for its corporate travel booking tool
Corporations could be a lot more efficient with their travel spend, believes booking platform TripActions. Today, the company is announcing $14.6 million in funding from Zeev Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners to fulfill that mission. Based on the idea that people spend more money when it’s on their company’s dime, the startup offers employees rewards for staying under a… Read More
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