Nike has long been synonymous with premium sneakers and other sports gear, but now it seems that the company could be extending its brand into another area — digital media — thanks to the rumored acquisition of a Seattle-based startup.

TechCrunch has learned from a source that the multibillion-dollar sports giant has acquired TraceMe, which originally built an app to let fans engage with sports stars and other celebrities before later pivoting into a service called Tally, a platform aimed at sports teams, broadcasters and venues to help fans engage around sporting events.

TraceMe was originally founded by Russell Wilson, the champion quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks, who was the executive chairman of the startup. The company had raised at least $9 million from investors that included the Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group and Bezos Expeditions (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ fund), as well as YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley and others, and it was last valued, in 2017, at $60 million.

Our source said the deal closed in recent weeks and that “it was a good outcome” for the company and investors. It involved both IP — the main interest, the source said, was in TraceMe’s tech rather than Tally’s — and the team.

Indeed, at least eight of them, including TraceMe’s CEO Jason LeeKeenan, an ex-Hulu executive, are now listing Nike as their place of employment. LeeKeenan describes his new role as the head of Nike Seattle. Others on the team now have taken roles that include software engineers, head of product and product designers.

No one at TraceMe and Nike that we contacted has responded to our requests for comment, but just a little while ago GeekWire (which likely had the same tip we did) published a post noting that it had a source that confirmed the deal.

The athletic footwear giant Nike is no stranger to the world of technology: it has been a longtime collaborator with the likes of Apple to develop apps for its devices and has been an early mover on the concept of bringing and integrating cutting-edge (yes, possibly gimmicky) tech into its footwear and other gear. And that’s before you consider Nike as an e-commerce force.

But while the dalliance between sports, tech and fashion is well established, this deal opens up a different frontier for the company. It’s very rare for Nike to make an acquisition, but it makes sense that if it were going to do some M&A, it would be in the area of digital media and picking up engineers to execute on a wider vision in that area.

The company is best known, of course, for its shoes and related sporty clothes, which it has for a long time created in co-branding with the biggest sports stars and has more recently started to extend to a wider circle of celebrities and hot brands in a spirit of sporty street style. These have included the likes of so-cool Supreme, Travis Scott and seemingly tentative forays into music culture.

Nike overshadows all other sports shoe brands in size, with its current market cap at nearly $117 billion, more than twice that of its closest competitor, Adidas . But Adidas has been stealing a march when it comes to partnerships with a wide network of celebrities (even if Drake prefers checks over stripes).

While it isn’t clear yet how and if Nike will be using the startup’s existing services, you could see how a deal like this could help Nike start to think about how it might leverage the collaborations and endorsements it already has in place into experiences beyond shoes, advertising and athletic performance. In this age of Instagram and influencers playing a massive role in shifting consumer sentiment (and dollars), this could give Nike a shot at building its own media platform, independent of these, on its own terms.

This is a bigger trend that we’re seeing across a lot of digital media. Consider how companies like Spotify have extended beyond simple music streaming, investing in building tools to help artists on its platform with marketing and expanding their brands: selling shoes means selling a concept, and that concept needs to have a foothold in a digital experience. 

Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos hopped on the line with prominent investor, entrepreneur, thought leader, and Techstars co-founder Brad Feld to chat about the latest edition of his book “Venture Deals,” his advice to founders and investors, and his take on hot-button issues of the day.

In their conversation, Brad and Connie discuss the need to know information when it comes to preparing for, structuring and executing venture deals, and how that information has changed over the past several decades. Feld walks through the major topics that have been added in the latest edition of the book, such as how to handle venture debt, along with tactical attributes that aren’t currently in the book, such as secondary market trading.

Brad also shares his take on the most effective fundraising tactics for founders, and which common pieces of advice might be overblown.

Brad Feld: “I think the approach to the amount of money that you’re raising is both nuanced and evolves based on what financing round you’re at. So if you’re in an early round, some of the characteristics are different than if you’re in a later round. But I think the general truism… that I like to use when people say, ‘Well, how much money should I raise?’

I start with two variables and you the entrepreneur get to define those two variables. The two variables are: the amount of money you raise and what getting to the next level means. The amount of money you should raise is the amount of money that you need to get your business to the next level. There are lots of different ways to define what next level is and by forcing yourself internally to define next level and then define what you need in terms of capital to get to that next level… when you’re raising that first round of financing or even the second or third round of financing, it helps you size rationally what you need versus reactively to whatever the market characteristics are.

I actually encourage entrepreneurs to raise the least amount of money they need to get to the next level, or at least that’s the number that they go out to market with. Not a range, not a big number because you’re trying to drive some kind of valuation characteristic off a big number, but the amount of money that you actually think you need to get to the next level. Then if you can be oversubscribed, that’s an awesome situation.”

Feld and Connie dive deeper into current issues in the startup and venture landscape, including Brad’s take on the impact of the SoftBank Vision Fund, what went down internally and externally at both WeWork and Uber, as well as how boards, executives and founders can manage cult of personality and static company cultures.

For access to the full transcription and the call audio — and for the opportunity to participate in future conference calls — become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free. 

Connie Loizos: I think the last time I saw you in person was out here in San Francisco at an event I was hosting and that was maybe two years ago?

Brad Feld: Yup, that’s right. That was at the Autodesk Lab if I remember correctly.

Loizos: Yes. It’s good to hear your voice, and thank you for joining us on this call. We have a lot of readers who are big fans of yours that are on the line and are eager to learn about your book “Venture Deals” and your broader thoughts about the current state of the market. That said — and I know you only have so much time — let’s dive first into the book. So Wiley, your publisher has just put out the fourth edition of this book “Venture Deals,” and it’s really easy to appreciate why. I was looking through it and it’s so incredibly instructive how venture deals come together and possible pitfalls to avoid. And given there are always new entrepreneurs emerging, it continues to be highly relevant.

How do you go about updating a book like this, given that some things change and some things stay the same?

Instacart has long been at odds with its shoppers — the people who go to the grocery store on behalf of customers. From November 3-5, thousands of Instacart shoppers plan to protest with three demands. They want Instacart to change the default tip amount to at least 10%, ditch the service fee and commit to always giving 100% of the tip to the shopper.

“We did not arrive at the 10% figure arbitrarily, rather this is what the default tip amount was back when I and many others started working for Instacart,” Vanessa Bain, an Instacart shopper wrote on Medium this week. “We are simply demanding the restoration of what was originally promised.”

In order to get as many participants as possible, Bain told TechCrunch it suggests each person shares the details of the protest with at least five shoppers in person.

“We are fortunate enough to have pockets of a centralized work space in grocery stores where we can connect with fellow workers,” Bain said.

Back in 2016, Instacart removed the option to tip in favor of guaranteeing its workers higher delivery commissions. About a month later, following pressure from its workers, the company reintroduced tipping. Then, in April 2018, Instacart began suggesting a 5% default tip and reduced its service fee from a 10% waivable fee to a 5% fixed fee.

“We take the feedback of the shopper community very seriously and remain committed to listening to and using that feedback to improve their experience,” an Instacart spokesperson told TechCrunch.

This protest is on the heels of a class-action lawsuit over wages and tips, as well as a tipping debacle where Instacart included tips in its base pay for shoppers. Instacart, however, has since stopped that practice and provided shoppers with back pay. Though, Fast Company recently reported that Instacart delivery drivers’ tips are mysteriously decreasing.

But it’s a new day for gig economy workers — at least in California. Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law gig worker protections bill AB-5. This legislation will make it harder for gig economy companies to classify their workers as 1099 independent contractors when it goes into effect in January. The victory came after gig workers made their voices heard through protests and other direct actions.

What’s clear at this point is that workers are refusing to stay silent and are more than willing to advocate for themselves. Organizers of the Instacart protest have outlined three ways for shoppers to get involved. The more active approach would entail shoppers signing up for as many hours as possible from November 3 -5, but keep letting the batches time out. The more passive approach entails not signing up for any hours at all, and not accepting any on-demand batches.

“What’s driving us to do this is a perpetual tug of war shoppers have been engaged in with Instacart for over three years now,” Bain said. “We’ve held actions annually to maintain the pressure and continue the momentum of our organizing. Right now, workers are in the worst financial position we have ever been in. The introduction of algorithmic pay, coupled with their rolling out of On Demand batches (instant offers that don’t require being on schedule to accept) have led to variability in pay, and the decline of pay to unprecedented levels.”

*This story has been updated with comment from Bain.

Polte has raised another $12.5 million. The company is building a service that leverages 4G (and potentially 5G) signal to track things for commercial and industrial use cases. The main advantage is that using cellular signal uses a lot less battery than acquiring GPS location and transmitting it over cellular.

Today’s funding round is an extension of the company’s Series A round. In 2017, Polte raised $6 million — and the company is raising another $12.5 million this year. Polte isn’t disclosing the list of investors. The startup participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield.

There are many potential use cases for Polte, but most of them involve tracking stuff on the move with as little battery as possible. You could use it for your supply chain, if you’re running a logistics or transportation company, in the energy or automotive industry, etc.

If you want to use an IoT device to track a package over multiple weeks, it can be a costly effort as you need to determine the location of the package using GPS and transmit the location of the package over the air. While GPS is insanely accurate, it also requires a ton of battery just to position a device on a map.

That’s why some devices rely on Wi-Fi signal to triangulate a position with a database of Wi-Fi access points. But that’s not as accurate, especially in the countryside.

Polte turns data from the cell modem into location information. It works with existing modems; Polte is a software solution. None of the computing is done on the device itself. Polte-enabled devices transmit 300 bytes of data back to Polte’s servers so the company can determine the location a few seconds later.

This way, you can use cheaper IoT devices to track packages. And if you’re running a company that wants to track thousands or millions of items, that could help you save a ton of money over the long run.

Sramana Mitra: How did you meet Yaniv? Lior Gal: Through one of the angel investors. He was a Chairman at one of the startups that I worked for and knew the three other technical co-founders from...

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There’s a GIGANTIC myth in the startup ecosystem. Go BIG or Go HOME! Raise GOBS of venture capital. Otherwise, you can’t build anything big. It’s GIGANTIC BS! Watch this inspiring 2 minute 09 second...

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During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Guillermo Gaspart, Founder and CEO of ByHours.com from Barcelona. He shared his wonderful journey of building a unique online travel company. We had...

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Uber will acquire Cornershop, a grocery delivery startup that began life serving the Latin American market and recently shifted to offer service in Toronto, its first North American city. Uber announced on Friday that it expects its acquisition of a majority ownership stake in Cornershop in early 2020, once it receives all the necessary regulatory sign-offs.

Cornershop was founded in 2015 by Oskar Hjertonsson, Daniel Undurraga and Juan Pablo Cuevas; it’s headquartered in Chile. The company will continue to operate under that leadership in its current form for now, Uber says, and will report to a board that counts Uber leadership in the majority of its overall makeup.

Over the course of four rounds of funding, Cornershop raised $31.7 million from investors including Accel, Jackson Square Ventures and others. The on-demand grocery company was supposed to be acquired by Walmart in a deal valued at $225 million announced in September, but that deal ultimately fell apart in June when Mexican anti-trust regulators blocked it from going through.

Meanwhile, Walmart has continued to work with Cornershop, expanding its service offerings in Toronto with the startup as recently as yesterday. Uber has previously experimented with grocery delivery, including in partnership with Walmart, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said that grocery delivery is a natural place for the company to expand its business, given the success of Uber Eats. It’ll face competition from entrenched players, including Instacart and Postmates, but Uber Eats also faced competition from much more established players at its genesis, too.

The deal is still subject to regulatory approval, as mentioned, and that’s exactly where the planned Walmart acquisition stumbled, so it’s worth keeping a close eye on this one. Still, Uber’s not making any secret of its intentions with the grocery category, so that looks likely to take shape one way or another.

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 461st FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, October 17, 2019, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious...

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Club Factory, a Chinese e-commerce platform that sells fashion and beauty items and electronics accessories, has raised $100 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprint in India.

The new financing round — Series D — was led by Qiming Venture Partners, Bertelsmann, IDG Capital “and  other Fortune 500 companies from the U.S. and Asia,” the five-year-old Hangzhou-headquartered startup said. Club Factory, which raised $100 million in its previous financing round early last year, has raised about $220 million to date.

Club Factory has amassed more than 70 million users on its platform, of which about 40 million live in India. The startup cited figures from app analytics firm App Annie to claim that Club Factory is now the third-largest e-commerce platform in India, surpassing once a market-leader Snapdeal.

Club Factory does not charge local sellers any commission fee, incentivizing them to cut down the cost of their items and expand offerings. The number of sellers on its platform in India has grown by 10X in the last six months, the startup claimed. Club Factory, which has about 5,000 sellers in India, plans to double that figure by year-end, it said.

“At the same time, we have also pioneered to strengthen the ‘store-within-platform’ concept in India’s e-commerce industry, allowing direct contact between buyers and sellers through our application,” said Vincent Lou, co-founder and chief executive of Club Factory, in a statement.

He added, “We have changed the status of the Indian e-commerce industry that monopolized information of buyers and sellers, allowing SMEs to own their customers and run their business better. All this, combined with our strategy to reduce the transaction costs of buyers and sellers and allow more local players to enter the ecosystem, has worked very well for us in India.”

The startup said in the coming months it will also bulk up more items on its platform and introduce new product categories.

Apester, which helps digital publishers add interactivity to their content, is rolling out a new format called the Story Strip.

CEO and co-founder Moti Cohen told me that the Story Strip is modeled on the Story format popularized by Snapchat and Instagram — a format that he praised for being one of the few content types that’s truly “tailored to the mobile experience,” offering a fast, interactive experience for readers.

Cohen said that by bringing the format out of “the social walled gardens” and allowing publishers to embed Story Strips into their articles, Apester is “paving the way for media companies to capture a new audience, a young audience.”

You can see a Story Strip for yourself on TV Insider, a pop culture and entertainment website of NTVB Media. It appears in articles as a carousel of related stories, allowing readers to select the story that interests them and then quickly swipe through slides summarizing the story highlights.

Cohen said a Story Strip can be created by a publisher’s editorial team, or Apester can automatically generate them based on an article. And because they can also include ads, this creates new monetization opportunities for publishers. In fact, Apester says TV Insider has seen its daily revenue double since the two companies started working together.

As for how these kinds of content widgets might fit in as publishers explore subscriptions and other business models beyond advertising, Cohen argued that even as business models change, “the blend is what’s going to be important.”

And by allowing publishers to engage with users and collect data about their behavior, he said, “Apester is going to allow you to monetize all of [your audiences] differently … You can use the engagement that’s happening and understand why it’s happening in order to drive the right action.”

According to a recent Market Research Future report, the global sales performance management market is estimated to grow at 16.6% CAGR to $9.34 billion by the year 2023. The growth is attributed to...

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There remains a problem with the race to create a quantum computer, which is that experiments in this area can be extremely error-prone. Rahko is a new U.K. startup that thinks it can address this problem with what’s known as “Quantum machine learning.”

It’s now raised £1.3 million ($1.6 million) in a seed round led by Balderton Capital, a rare move for a VC that normally only comes in at a Series A level. Joining the round is AI Seed and angel investors Charles Songhurst (former Microsoft head of Corporate Strategy), Tom McInerney (founder, TGM Ventures), John Spindler (CEO, Capital Enterprise) and James Field (CEO, LabGenius).

Rahko says it is building “quantum discovery” capabilities for chemical simulation, which could enable groundbreaking advances in batteries, chemicals, advanced materials and drugs. It was started by co-founders Leonard Wossnig, Edward Grant, Miriam Cha and Ian Horobin.

Leo and Ed were longtime collaborators through their PhDs at University College London. They had been working on research in quantum machine learning (QML) with now lead developers Shuxiang Cao and Hongxiang Chen for several years and had been consolidating all their research into a QML platform.

They say the QML platform attracted serious attention from a tech giant and overtures were made. Leo and Ed made the decision not to give away control of the sum of their work, and decided instead to launch a business to commercialize it.

Chemical simulation is a vital capability for research that has not advanced significantly in recent years due to the limited computational power of classical computers. Rahko claims it has an arsenal of tools that may make quantum computers accessible and commercially usable at an accelerated pace, often through the use of hybrid approaches with classical computers.

Leo Wossnig, CEO, said: “Most people find quantum computers mysterious and wonder if they are going to save or break the world as we know it. In reality, quantum computing is going to unlock radical advances in areas of research and technology in which we have found ourselves stuck for some time now. Our team is excited to get together every day to work on problems that would have been impossible to solve only a couple of years ago. We are delighted to welcome on board this unique group of investors who truly share our excitement.” Earlier this year, Wossnig was the recipient of the prestigious 2019 Google Fellowship in Quantum Computing for his achievement in computer science.

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, general partner at Balderton Capital, said: “Rahko is one of the top teams in the world working on a complex space at the very edge of science and computing. The application of discoveries within quantum has already been profound and impacted our fundamental understanding of the world around us. The pace and rate of change in this field over the past few years has been astonishing, and we feel incredibly lucky to be supporting this exceptional team as they continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible.”

Rahko is one of several startups originating from UCL’s Computer Science programme, supported by Conception X, a venture builder for deep tech startups. It works in partnership with several of the world’s largest quantum hardware manufacturers, leading academic teams and national laboratories.

Wossnig added: “Quantum software is a relatively new field. It is growing very quickly but at this stage the field is small enough for us to know all of the best teams out there and be working with many of them. IBM and Microsoft, for instance, have large software teams but we are partners with both of them.”

The entire quantum computing industry is relying on quantum hardware maturing to a scale that will allow powerful, commercially valuable applications. It’s estimated this will be in three-five years. Until this happens it is a little premature to say definitively who is leading the race.

Satellite imagery holds a wealth of information that could be useful for industries, science and humanitarian causes, but one big and persistent challenge with it has been a lack of effective ways to tap that disparate data for specific ends.

That’s created a demand for better analytics, and now, one of the startups that has been building solutions to do just that is announcing a round of funding as it gears up for expansion. Descartes Labs, a geospatial imagery analytics startup out of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is today announcing that it has closed a $20 million round of funding, money that CEO and founder Mark Johnson described to me as a bridge round ahead of the startup closing and announcing a larger growth round.

The funding is being led by Union Grove Venture Partners, with Ajax Strategies, Crosslink Capital, and March Capital Partners (which led its previous round) also participating. It brings the total raised by Descartes Labs to $60 million, and while Johnson said the startup would not be disclosing its valuation, PitchBook notes that it is $220 million ($200 million pre-money in this round).

As a point of comparison, another startup in the area of geospatial analytics, Orbital Insight, is reportedly now raising money at a $430 million valuation (that data is from January of this year, and we’ve contacted the company to see if it ever closed).

Santa Fe — a city popular with retirees that counts tourism as its biggest industry — is an unlikely place to find a tech startup. Descartes Labs’ presence there is a result of that fact that it is a spinoff from the Los Alamos National Laboratory near the city.

Johnson — who had lived in San Francisco before coming to Santa Fe to help create Descartes Labs (his previous experience building Zite for media, he said, led the Los Alamos scientists to first conceive of the Descartes Labs IP as the basis of a kind of search engine) — admitted that he never thought the company would stay headquartered there beyond a short initial phase of growth of six months.

However, it turned out that the trends around more distributed workforces (and cloud computing to enable that), engineers looking for employment alternatives to living in pricey San Francisco, plus the heated competition for talent you get in the Valley all came together in a perfect storm that helped Descartes Labs establish and thrive on its home turf.

Descartes Labs — named after the seminal philosopher/mathematician Rene Descartes — describes itself as a “data refinery”. By this, it means it injests a lot of imagery and unstructured data related to the earth that is picked up primarily by satellites but also other sensors (Johnson notes that its sources include data from publicly available satellites; data from NASA and the European space agency, and data from the companies themselves); applies AI-based techniques including computer vision analysis and machine learning to make sense of the sometimes-grainy imagery; and distills and orders it to create insights into what is going on down below, and how that is likely to evolve.

This includes not just what is happening on the surface of the earth, but also in the air above it: Descartes Labs has worked on projects to detect levels of methane gas in oil fields, the spread of wildfires, and how crops might grow in a particular area, and the impact of weather patterns on it all.

It has produced work for a range of clients that have included governments (the methane detection, pictured above, was commissioned as part of New Mexico’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), energy giants and industrial agribusiness, and traders.

“The idea is to help them take advantage of all the new data going online,” Johnson said, noting that this can help, for example, bankers forecast how much a commodity will trade for, or the effect of a change in soil composition on a crop.

The fact that Descartes Labs’ work has connected it with the energy industry gives an interesting twist to the use of the phrase “data refinery”. But in case you were wondering, Johnson said that the company goes through a process of vetting potential customers to determine if the data Descartes Labs provides to them is for a positive end, or not.

“We have a deep belief that we can help them become more efficient,” he said. “Those looking at earth data are doing so because they care about the planet and are working to try to become more sustainable.”

Johnson also said (in answer to my question about it) that so far, there haven’t been any instances where the startup has been prohibited to work with any customers or countries, but you could imagine how — in this day of data being ‘the new oil’ and the fulcrum of power — that could potentially be an issue. (Related to this: Orbital Insight counts In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, as one of its backers.)

Looking ahead, the company is building what it describes as a “digital twin” of the earth, the idea being that in doing so it can better model the imagery that it injests and link up data from different regions more seamlessly (since, after all, a climatic event in one part of the world inevitably impacts another). Notably, “digital twinning” is a common concept that we see applied in other AI-based enterprises to better predict activity: this is the approach that, for example, Forward Networks takes when building models of an enterprise’s network to determine how apps will behave and identify the reasons behind an outage.

In addition to the funding round, Descartes Labs named Phil Fraher its new CFO, and is announcing Veery Maxwell, Director for Energy Innovation and Patrick Cairns, who co-founded UGVP, as new board observers.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some customers who have become payment facilitators on top of your platform. Focus on use cases and customers that are interesting. Talk about the before and the...

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Tick tock, it’s now-o’clock, startuppers. The last few hours of super early-bird savings on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 are slipping away faster than grains of sand through an hourglass. The bird bites the dust and prices go up as of 11:59 p.m. (CEST) tonight, 11 October.

Buy your passes to Disrupt Berlin now and, depending on which pass you choose, you can save up to €600. Who wants to pay more than necessary?

What’s high on your Disrupt must-see list? Maybe it’s the Hackathon, where up to 500 participants will compete in sponsored challenges to create solutions to real-world problems — in less than 36 hours. It’s intense, exhausting, caffeine-fueled fun, and we can’t wait to see which teams win the individual contests and which one team wins the €5,000 grand prize for best overall hack.

Perhaps you’re all about witnessing the glorious chaos that is Startup Battlefield? Who can blame you? It’s fast-paced action as 15-20 of the top early-stage startups take the Main Stage to deliver a convincing six-minute pitch and demo to a tough panel of expert technologists and veteran VCs. The follow-up Q&A is no joke, either. Talk about flop sweat. It’s worth the ride and the chance to take home the Disrupt Cup and $50,000.

Could be you’re looking to make business connections to keep your startup (founder or investor) dream moving forward. Set your GPS for Startup Alley, the exhibition floor where opportunity awaits. Hundreds of early-stage startups and sponsors will be in force to talk tech, share inspiration and meet potential customers, investors and collaborators. It’s a veritable breeding ground of opportunity, innovation and inspiration.

While you’re there, be sure to connect with our TC Top Picks. TechCrunch editors hand-pick this cohort of stellar early-stage startups, choosing only up to five to represent each of these tech categories: AI/Machine Learning, Biotech/Healthtech, Blockchain, Fintech, Mobility, Privacy/Security, Retail/E-commerce, Robotics/IoT/Hardware, CRM/Enterprise and Education.

As always, we’ll feature a slate of amazing speakers on our different stages. Iconic technologists, boundary-pushing VCs, entrepreneurs who’ve persevered, done the work and reaped the rewards. They’ll be on hand to share their stories, tips and insights. You’ll find big topics on the Main Stage and an opportunity to have smaller, more intimate conversations with speakers in our Q&A Sessions.

So much to do at Disrupt Berlin 2019 and so little time to get the best price on passes. Super early-bird pricing ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Don’t let the hours slip past you — buy your passes. It’s now-o’clock, baby!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

One of the most exciting aspects of Disrupt Berlin 2019, which takes place on 11-12 December, is networking with like-minded startuppers from around the world. But with thousands of attendees, hundreds of early-stage startups exhibiting in Startup Alley — and only two programming-packed days to take it all in — how the heck can you zero in on the right connections?

Never fear, we’ve got you covered, and then some. Take advantage of CrunchMatch, our free business match-making service that takes the pain out of networking. No more wasting time talking to the wrong people.

Before we explain how CrunchMatch simplifies your Disrupt experience, we must ask a vital question. Did you buy your pass yet? If not, know this: super early-bird pricing ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Buy your ticket now, and save up to €600.

Where were we? Ah, yes…CrunchMatch can help everyone attending Disrupt Berlin ’19 — founders looking for developers, investors hunting hot prospects, technology service providers eager for new customers, founders looking for marketing help — the list is endless. Here’s how it works.

We’ll email registered attendees when CrunchMatch launches and explain how to access the platform. Then you create a profile listing your specific business criteria, goals and interests. CrunchMatch (powered by Brella) waves its magic algorithm to find and suggests matches. And, subject to your approval, CrunchMatch proposes meeting times and sends out meeting requests.

If you’re wondering whether an automated, albeit curated, networking platform can really make a difference, listen up. In 2018, CrunchMatch facilitated more than 3,000 meetings. And Yoolbox — makers of a portable wireless charger — says the connections it made through CrunchMatch helped to increase its distribution.

Need more encouragement? More than 95% of our CrunchMatch users reported that they’d use the platform again. And here’s what Caleb John, co-founder of Cedar Robotics, said about his experience using CrunchMatch:

“CrunchMatch is a great way to pitch your ideas to investors quickly. Instead of approaching each one individually, just type up your pitch and send it to 50 people. Even if only 10% get back to you, you still have five investors. It’s one of Disrupt’s best benefits.”

You have only two action-filled days at Disrupt Berlin 2019. Make the most of your time, save your shoe leather and tap into more opportunity with CrunchMatch. And don’t forget: the super early-bird price disappears tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Go buy your pass and save!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Klarna is quietly becoming a fintech giant. Following its latest founding round, the company is now valued at $5.5 billion. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski will join us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.

If you live in Europe and regularly purchase stuff online, chances are you’ve used Klarna already. The company offers a simple way to pay for e-commerce purchases over multiple installments.

And it’s been massively successful in Europe. You could think as Klarna as a sort of credit card-alternative payment method. Even if you don’t have a credit card, you can choose to purchase something right now and pay after 30 days or pay over three or four installments without any interest.

This way, expensive payments become slightly easier for customers. And if there’s a problem with your purchase, Klarna ensures that you don’t have to pay or get your money back — your money never left your bank account in the first place.

Just like using a PayPal account, if you pay on another site that uses Klarna, you don’t have to enter your payment information again. Merchants that leverage Klarna get paid instantly after a purchase, even if clients choose to pay later.

Klarna is also building a marketplace of stores. You can download the mobile app and search for products across multiple stores. This could become a great alternative to e-commerce giants like Amazon.

Up next, Klarna wants to grow its presence in the U.S. While it already has millions of customers and thousands of merchants, the company thinks there’s still a ton of potential in the U.S.

If you want to know how a Swedish startup plans to disrupt the credit card industry in the U.S., buy your ticket to Disrupt Berlin to listen to this discussion — and many others. The conference will take place December 11-12.

In addition to panels and fireside chats, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield to compete for the highly coveted Battlefield Cup.

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In 2005, Sebastian Siemiatkowski co-founded Klarna in order to provide safe and smooth online payments. He currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Over the past decade, he has overseen the company’s rapid growth across Europe and more recently into North America. Klarna is a now fully licensed bank with 60mn consumer and 170,000 merchant user base.

Sebastian has received multiple awards for his leadership, including runner up in the 2015 global EY Entrepreneur of the Year award, Leader of the Year by Adecco, and European Entrepreneur of the Year Award by TechTour. He holds a master’s degree from the Stockholm School of Economics.