With so many scandals around the quality of tap water these days, especially in the U.S., many people are turning to bottled water to drink. But this requires single-use plastics that are wreaking havoc on the environment.

One startup in Europe, Mitte, thinks it has the answer: filtering water direct from the tap. It has raised $10.6 million in a seed round. But it hasn’t started manufacturing yet. A new U.S.-based startup thinks it has a competitive solution.

oollee provides people with an unlimited supply of filtered drinking water for a small monthly fee. It’s now raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors, including Mission Gate Inc. and Columbus Holdings.

The idea is that with ordinary filters, people forget to maintain them and the water quality deteriorates. With oollee, maintenance and cartridge replacements are included in the monthly fee. To subscribe costs $29 per month (so less than $1 a day).

oollee uses the Reverse Osmosis method, where water is forced across a semipermeable membrane, leaving contaminants behind, which are then flushed down the drain. The clean drinking water collects in a holding tank. Usually, the installation and maintenance of an RO filter is costly and is too cumbersome for a house.

Umit Khiarollaev, CEO and co-founder of oollee says: “The small device connects to Wi-Fi and allows customers to monitor the water. The app reminds users to replace the filter element and lets them order new filters with a single click. Users can also check water condition, volume, temperature, and other factors.” Users also can check water condition, volume, temperature and other factors. The oollee water purifier filters water in four stages, re-introducing essential minerals in the final stage.

Competitors are all major bottled water or smart filter manufacturers, plus delivery services like Nestlé or Alhambra and the tech giant Xiaomi in China with water filters.

European peer-to-peer car rental service Drivy has a new name. It is now called Getaround, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been following Drivy’s recent news. Back in April, Getaround announced the acquisition of Drivy for $300 million to expand to Europe. And Drivy is now 100% part of Getaround as the company is unifying its brand across the globe.

While Getaround now operates under a single brand again, there are still two mobile apps — Drivy is called Getaround EU for now. Drivy CEO Paulin Dementhon is now the CEO of Europe for Getaround.

In addition to the new name, Getaround now offers hourly car rentals in Europe just like in the U.S. And that’s about all there is to know.

Overall, there are 5 million Getaround users and 20,000 cars around the world. The company operates in 300 cities across eight countries.

While Drivy started as a sort of Airbnb for cars, the company has slowly evolved to focus less on cars owned by regular car owners. The startup introduced a device that lets you lock and unlock the car using a smartphone. It then started partnering with small companies that own tiny fleets of connected cars that they want to list on the platform.

Education is a $4 trillion market globally in urgent need of overall — so where within education are top venture capitalists optimistic about startups building large businesses by providing new solutions?

According to EdSurge, $1.45 billion of venture capital (a mere 1.1% of the $130 billion in US venture funding) was invested in education startups in the US in 2018; there were only 112 education-focused deals. In line with the trend in venture capital overall, this represented an increase in overall capital but a concentration in fewer deals (mainly large late-stage rounds).

Education is regarded as a tough market for achieving VC scale returns. Selling into school districts and universities is difficult and slow, and freemium models that go direct-to-teachers have struggled to monetize.

New software, content, and financing solutions for learning outside the traditional school system are more compelling business opportunities. This is particularly the case in vocational training where the return on investment of an educational program or tool can be quantitatively measured in job offers and salary increases

I asked four leading edtech VCs and six of the top generalist VCs (who have a track record of education investments) to share where they see opportunity in this sector:

Jennifer Carolan, Reach CapitalAmit Mukherjee, NEAMichael Staton, Learn CapitalAnnie Kadavy, Redpoint VenturesAydin Senkut, Felicis VenturesMatt Greenfield, Rethink EducationHemant Taneja, General Catalyst PartnersMarlon Nichols, MaC Venture CapitalJan Lynn-Matern, Emerge EducationCharles Birnbaum, Bessemer Venture Partner

Here are their answers…

Jennifer Carolan, General Partner at Reach Capital (an education-focused VC firm in Palo Alto with investments including Abl, BetterLesson, Epic!, Handshake, Holberton School, Newsela, Outschool, and Tinkergarten):

“Human-centered learning has been traditionally limited to one’s physical geography but technology is unlocking learning opportunities that never before existed.  We’re particularly interested in the marketplaces that are better matching supply and demand across experiential learning, educator coaching, tutoring, and online small groups.

There’s been a heap of China in Africa coverage over the last decade, but very little of it is focused on tech. In part, because the country’s engagement with African startups is light compared to its deal-making on infrastructure and commodities. Now, that all looks to be shifting.

TechCrunch has tracked moves by a number of Chinese actors in Africa’s tech sector over the past year. This could signal the next chapter in China’s influence in Africa — one more digital than bricks and mortar.

Primer on China in Africa

To the former, the government of China has designated Africa a strategic priority in its foreign relations and has pursued policies and programs accordingly.

Micromobility has taken off over the last couple of years. Between electric bike-share and scooter-share, these vehicles have made their way all over the world. Meanwhile, some of these companies, like Bird and Lime, have already hit unicorn status thanks to massive funding rounds.

Horace Dediu, the well-known industry analyst who coined the term micromobility as it relates to this emerging form of transportation, took some time to chat with TechCrunch ahead of Micromobility Europe, a one-day event focused on all-things micromobility.

We chatted about the origin of the word micromobility, where big tech companies like Apple, Google and Amazon fit into the space, opportunities for developers to build tools and services on top of these vehicles, the opportunity for franchising business models, the potential for micromobility to be bigger than autonomous, and much more.

Here’s a Q&A, which I lightly edited for length and clarity, I did with Dediu ahead of his micromobility conference.

Megan Rose Dickey: Hey, Horace. Thanks for taking the time to chat.

Horace Dediu: Hey, no problem. My pleasure.

Rose Dickey: I was hoping to chat with you a bit about micromobility because I know that you have the big conference coming up in Europe, so I figured this would be a good time to touch base with you. I know you’ve been credited with coining the term micromobility as it relates to likes of shared e-bikes and scooters.

So, to kick things off, can you define micromobility?

Dediu: Yes, sure. So, the idea came to me because I actually remembered microcomputing.

Can you never find a scooter to rent when you need one? Here’s a radical idea. Buy one. While Bird, Lime, Skip, Scoot, Uber, Lyft and more compete for on-demand micromobility, a new startup invented a vehicle worthy of ownership. The Unagi looks downright futuristic with its classy paint jobs, foldable body, LED screen and built-in lights. The ride feels sturdy, strong and responsive while being light enough at 24 lbs to lug up subway stairs or the flights to your home.

That’s why Unagi has become a hit with musicians like Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, Halsey, Steve Aoki and teen pop megastar Billie Eilish, who use the scooter to rip around the empty venues as they soundcheck before concerts. Paparazzi shots of those moments have spurred demand for the $990 dual-motor and $840 single-motor Unagis, with co-founder David Hyman telling me the startup can’t make them fast enough, but it’s ramping up production.

To fuel the fervor for the scooter before it’s inevitably copied by cheap knock-offs, Unagi has raised a $3.15 million seed round led by Menlo Ventures . Building on its $750,000 in Kickstarter, angel and founder-contributed funding, the cash will go to building out a distribution network and developing its next-gen scooter with a smoother ride but no more pounds.

“We felt Unagi’s focus on light weight and substantial powering in a beautifully designed package was the right approach for ownership,” Menlo partner Shawn Carolan tells me. “This is what premium brands do — continue to reinvent the way we think about the world. This category of vehicle — personal, portable and electric — has enormous potential and we are still in the first inning of the game.”

The magic of the Unagi Model One is how it balances speed, battery, weight, price and style so it works for most anything and everyone. That combination won it CNET‘s best all-around scooter award versus the hardcore but extremely heavy Boosted Rev, cheap but weak Swagtron, long-lasting but boring Ninebot and speedy but scary Mercane.

The Unagi’s biggest flaw is the smoothness of the ride due to its harder airless wheels and narrow handlebars that can make gravelly roads precarious. The high-pitched beeeeeep of its horn is also so annoying that people are more likely to cover their ears than get out of your way, but Hyman promises his 12-person team will fix that.

Where Unagi truly excels is in its looks. The lithe curves of its polished carbon fiber frame are accented with candy paint jobs in matte black, white, grey and blue. It ditches the bike handlebar vibe for something closer to Space Shuttle controls. And while many people scoff at scooter riders, I saw those smirks turn into curious awe as I flew by.

Hyman got the idea for a premium scooter you own after a rental turned into a melty mess. He’d taken an on-demand scooter to the grocer on a hot day, picked up some ice cream, and emerged to find his ride snatched by another user. He hustled to another nearby but someone else got there first. He walked home dripping sugar everywhere wondering, “Why am I messing around with rentals, I just want to own one?”

He bought a generic scooter off Alibaba, and despite being janky straight out of the box, “it made me feel like I was a super hero with this magic carpet.” But he wanted something better.

Previously the CEO of audio fingerprinting giant Gracenote, and then Beats Music before it sold to Apple, Hyman is known for his obsession with hi-fi speaker systems. So after touring Chinese scooter factories and still being unsatisfied, he partnered with a group of inventors called QMY who’d prototyped a slick vehicle they called the Swan. Hyman funded it to production, brought the team in house, and now they’re selling Unagis as fast as they can.

Now the startup wants to double-down on selling to more petite riders who could never carry the 46-lb Boosted Rev out of a train station. But the clock is ticking before copycats with similar silhouettes but inferior insides spring up. Meanwhile, Unagi must keep safety top-of-mind to avoid any disastrous crashes hurting customers and its brand. There are plenty of better-funded mobility giants that could barge into the space if Unagi can’t build a lead. It also has to prove why the reliability of ownership is worth the price of renting a scooter hundreds of times.

Scooters are part of a powerful wave of new technologies that actually sell us back our time. When a 20-minute walk becomes a four-minute scoot, you gain something priceless. Urban landscapes unfold beneath their wheels as you explore new neighborhoods or parts of parks. I was once a diehard electric skateboarder until a crash on a Boosted Board shattered my ankle. Unagi is the first scooter that delivers that same gliding feeling of weightlessness and freedom but in a form-factor safe enough for most people to experience.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. WeWork withdraws its S-1 filing, will delay its IPO

The move was widely expected, but The We Company (which owns WeWork) made it official yesterday, with new co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham declaring that they’ve “decided to postpone our IPO to focus on our core business.”

Since the company’s S-1 became public, it has faced intense scrutiny over the general state of its finances, and more specifically over the power and behavior of Adam Neumann, who stepped down as CEO last week.

2. Europe’s top court says active consent is needed for tracking cookies

It’s a decision that plunges many websites into legal hot water in Europe. The Court says consent must be obtained prior to storing or accessing non-essential cookies, such as tracking cookies for targeted advertising.

3. Twitter launches its anti-abuse filter for Direct Messages

Twitter is rolling out its spam and abuse filter for Direct Messages, a month and a half after the company announced it had started testing the feature. This should be useful for people who want to keep their DMs open without having to see abusive content.

4. Microsoft OneDrive Personal Vault rolls out worldwide, launches expandable storage

Earlier this summer, Microsoft introduced an extra layer of security for its OneDrive product, allowing users to protect their files with two-step verification. Now it’s rolling this feature out worldwide.

5. Pandora puts its personalization powers to work in a revamped app

The company’s new mobile experience includes a dedicated “For You” tab where a continually updated feed of content is presented to users, including music and podcast recommendations.

6. Rapyd raises $100M for its ‘fintech as a service’ API, now valued at nearly a $1B valuation

Currently, Rapyd lets customers use its API to enable checkout, funds collection, fund disbursements, compliance as a service, foreign exchange, card issuing and integration.

7. SmartNews’ head of product on how the news discovery app wants to free readers from filter bubbles

SmartNews’ Jeannie Yang talks about the app’s place in the media ecosystem, creating recommendation algorithms that don’t reinforce biases, the difference between its Japanese and American users and the challenges of presenting political news in a highly polarized environment. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 459th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, October 3, 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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Streamlit, a new machine learning startup from industry veterans who worked at GoogleX and Zoox, launched today with a $6 million seed investment and a flexible new open-source tool to make it easier for machine learning engineers to create custom applications to interact with the data in their models.

The seed round was led by Gradient Ventures with participation from Bloomberg Beta. A who’s who of solo investors also participated, including Color Genomics co-founder Elad Gil, #Angels founder Jana Messerschmidt, Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross, Docker co-founder Solomon Hykes and Insight Data Science CEO Jake Klamka.

As for the product, Streamlit co-founder Adrien Treuille says as machine learning engineers, he and his co-founders were in a unique position to understand the needs of engineers and build a tool to meet their requirements. Rather than building a one-size-fits-all tool, the key was developing a solution that was flexible enough to serve multiple requirements, depending on the nature of the data with which the person is working.

“I think that Streamlit actually has, I would say, a unique position in this market. While most companies are basically trying to systemize some part of the machine learning workflow, we’re giving engineers these sort of Lego blocks to build whatever they want,” Treuille explained.

Treuille says that highly trained machine learning engineers that have a unique set of skills actually end up spending an inordinate amount of their time building tools to understand the vast amounts of data they have. Streamlit is trying to help them build these tools faster using the kind of programming tools with which they are used to working.

He says that with a few lines of code, a machine learning engineer can very quickly begin building tools to understand the data and help them interact with it in whichever way makes sense based on the type of data. That may mean building a set of sliders with different variables to interact with the data, or simply creating tables with subsets of data that make sense to the engineer.

Treuille says that this toolset has the potential to dramatically transform the way machine learning engineers work with the data in their models. “As people who are machine learning engineers and have seen this and know what it’s like to go through these challenges, it was really exciting for us to say, there’s a better way of doing this and not just a little bit better, but something that will turn a project that would have taken four weeks and 15,000 lines of code into something that you can do in an afternoon.”

The toolkit is available on GitHub for download starting today.

Books on tape were the lifeblood of self-help. But e-learning startups like Khan Academy and Coursera demanded our eyes, not just our ears. Then came podcasts that make knowledge accessible, yet rarely focus on you retaining and applying what they teach.

Today, a new startup called Knowable is launching to provide gaze-free audio education at $100 per eight-hour course on topics like how to launch a startup or how to sleep better. The idea is that by layering chapter summaries and eventually interactive activities atop premium, long-form, ad-free lessons, it can become the trusted name in learning anywhere. With always-in Bluetooth earbuds and smart speakers becoming ubiquitous, we can imbibe content in smaller chunks in new environments. Knowable wants to fill that time with self-improvement.

The big question is whether Knowable can differentiate its content from free alternatives and build a moat against copycats through savvy voice-responsive learning exercises so you don’t forget everything.

To evolve beyond the podcast, Knowable has raised a $3.75 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s partner Connie Chan, and joined by Upfront, First Round and Initialized. “The market is ready for a company like Knowable. Their timing is right and their team possesses the rare combination of product expertise and creative media experience necessary to win. That’s why I’m not just hosting Knowable’s first course, Launch a Startup, we’re also one of the earliest investors in the company,” says Initialized’s Alexis Ohanian.

There’s certainly a market opportunity, as 32% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly, up from 26% in 2018, with 74% of those citing the desire to learn. Half of Americans have listened to an audio book. The e-learning market is $190 billion today, but projected to grow to $300 billion as bloated and expensive higher education succumbs to cheaper and more focused options.

But to score consistent revenue, Knowable must build up its library and execute on plans to offer a subscription service with access to updates on prior lessons. A major challenge will be bundling classes on the right topics that don’t exhaust users so they keep listening and paying.

Building a school from sound

“My first-generation immigrant parents came here without college degrees. Great teachers let me move up the socioeconomic ladder pretty quickly,” says Knowable co-founder Warren Shaeffer. “The genesis of the idea came from our shared interest in education and the value of great teachers.”

Shaeffer and his co-founder Alex Benzer have already been through the struggles of startup life together. After meeting at MuckerLab in LA and splitting from their respective co-founders, in 2007 they created SocialEngine, a community website builder that sold to Room 214. Next they built up a video platform for independent creators called Vidme that raised $9 million but never became sustainable before selling to Giphy in 2018.

The pair had glimpsed how great content could rope in an audience, but felt like the true potential of the podcast hadn’t been explored. Why did they have to be produced on the cheap, distributed on generic platforms and supported by ads? Knowable emerged as a way to create luxury audio, delivered through a purpose-built app and paid for with direct sales or subscriptions. Instead of recording unscripted discussions as episodes, they mapped out course curriculum and filled them with structured advice from experts.

I’m a few hours into the Ohanian-hosted Launch a Startup. It’s certainly a lot more efficient than trying to learn the basics just through storytelling from podcasts like Reid Hoffman’s Masters of Scale or NPR’s How I Built This. One chapter breaks down the top ways startups die and the traits you’ll need to persevere. From optimism and resilience operating in unstructured environments to a refusal to make excuses why you can’t succeed, Ohanian cooly recaps the learnings at the end of the chapter. Open the app and you’ll get a written summary plus suggested blog posts and books for diving deeper. An accompanying 95-page PDF workbook collects all the key learnings for rapid review later.

The topic is huge, though, and Knowable is at its best when it’s distilling knowledge into neatly packaged lists and frameworks. The course’s weakest moments are when it feels most like a podcast, with somewhat meandering conversations with random founders discussing how they dealt with problems. Meanwhile, it currently lacks some basic tools like in-app notetaking and sharing, or as wide a range of playback speeds and rewind options as you’ll get on Audible. “We don’t think of ourselves as a podcast company,” Shaeffer says, but that’s still who he’s competing against.

What’s also missing is any true interactivity. The downside of audio learning is that if you’re not paying full attention, it’s easy to zone out. Knowable needs to develop voice and touch-controlled exercises to help users apply and retain the lessons. There are plans to launch learning communities where students can confer about the classes, akin to Y Combinator’s “Bookface” forum.

However, Shaeffer says that “we’re on a mission to make education more accessible and quizzes might be an impediment to that,” which leaves questions about what the learning activities will look like, even though they’re crucial to users coughing up $100 per class. It’s easy to imagine Spotify/Anchor, Gimlet Media or other major podcast players developing their own interactive features and classes if Knowable doesn’t get there first.

Snackable audio education

The startup’s bid for virality is the ability to give a friend a code to take the class with you. Knowable is also hoping big-name experts and quality driven by a team cobbled together from NPR, The Washington Post, William Morris Endeavor, Masterclass and Vice will set it apart. They’ve got a lot of work ahead to grow beyond the six courses currently available on topics like climate change activism and real estate, especially because there’s a 100% money-back guarantee if classes fall short.

For the moment, Knowable feels a bit late with its homework. It has the potential and demand to reinvent audio learning but currently sounds too similar to what’s already everywhere. I was hoping for a Bandersnatch for education that made a broadcast experience feel more like a game.

But the opportunity will only continue to grow as we spend more of our lives in earshot of AirPods and Echoes. With a broad enough library and clever editing, one day you might tell Knowable “teach me something about venture capital in eight minutes” as you walk to the coffee shop. That’s going to have a much better impact on your life than just scrolling through another feed.

 

Sramana Mitra: When a bank does hire you to do this kind of work, double-click down to exactly how the technology works and what it is that it’s doing on behalf of the bank. Richard Hamm: What the...

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Aero, a new air travel startup backed by Garrett Camp’s startup studio Expa, is officially announcing the appointment of its first CEO: Uma Subramanian, who previously launched Airbus’ helicopter service Voom.Flights.

The startup is also revealing that it has raised a total of $16 million in funding. In addition to Expa, GGV Capital also invested.

Aero said its goal is to offer the luxury of private jet travel while charging “less than the cost of commercial first class.” To do this, it matches up travelers who are going to the same destination, putting them on direct flights into and out of private airports.

That means the flight itself should be what Aero described as a luxurious, social experience — and you also get to skip the nightmare of airport security. For example, the company ran test flights over the summer in partnership with a European air carrier, transporting passengers directly between Mykonos (Greece) and Ibiza (Spain), and it plans to start selling tickets to Telluride and La Paz (Mexico) next month.

Camp (who, in addition to Expa, co-founded StumbleUpon and Uber) previously invested in private jet startup BlackJet, which eventually shut down.

When asked who’s been taking these flights so far, a company spokesperson said, “Our customers are experience-driven, and skew towards millennial and Gen Z customers who believe that seamless air should be part of their travel experience.”

Aero also said it’s developing a mobile-first booking and ticketing system.

“I am super excited to be leading the Aero team to bring to life our vision of ushering in a new golden age of air travel,” Subramanian said in a statement. “I believe that flying should be a magical experience – not just getting from A to B, but rather an experience to be savored and shared. We want to be the premier air carrier for the experience economy.”

Dropbox (Nasdaq: DBX) went public last year, but since then, it has had a tumultuous year. Despite beating analyst expectations on performance, its stock price has fallen. Today, the company is...

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The digital payments market is forecast to balloon to $3 trillion by 2023, and today a startup that lets businesses implement not just payments, but also the many other related (and necessary) services that go along with them, by way of a single API, has raised a big round of funding to meet that demand.

Rapyd, a London-based startup that bills itself as a “fintech as a service” provider, has picked up $100 million, money it will use to expand its platform — which today lets customers use its API to enable checkout, funds collection, fund disbursements, compliance as a service, foreign exchange, card issuing and integration — as well as to make acquisitions and expand its team.

This brings the total raised by Rapyd to $160 million. We understand that the valuation in this latest round comes at a significant spike and is now at close to $1 billion.

“Rapid” is indeed the operative word when it comes to Rapyd: The company is not only riding a wave of strong growth, but this is the second funding round it has raised this year, after raising $40 million in February. Arik Shtilman, co-founder and CEO of Rapyd, says the total payments volume on the platform (that is, how much Rapyd is moving) has grown more than five times this year, and that next year it’s forecasting that its revenue run rate will triple compared to 2019.

Rapyd doesn’t disclose current revenue numbers, but it counts companies like Uber, other large marketplaces and digital and brick-and-mortar merchants among its customers, to give you an idea of the kinds of companies and businesses that use its white-label service.

This latest round is being led by Oak HC/FT with participation from Tiger Global, Coatue, General Catalyst, Target Global, Stripe and Entrée Capital. GC and Stripe led its previous round. Stripe is currently one of the biggest players in the world of venture-backed fintech startups: in September it announced a $250 million round that values it at over $35 billion. But interestingly, Stripe’s position in Rapyd, at least for now, is not tied to working with the company. Shtilman describes Stripe a “just a financial investor.”

The challenge that Rapyd has identified and is tackling is the fragmentation that exists in the global payments market: Each region has its own preferred payment methods (not every consumer globally uses credit or debit cards, and even if they do, accepting them all involves payment deals at the local level), and increasingly there is a lot more regulatory compliance that needs to be followed when making or taking payments.

All of that is not a core competency of most businesses, and that has led to the emergence of fintech companies that knit all that together behind the scenes. Currently, Rapyd’s platform allows these customers to accept cash, bank transfers, e-wallets and local debit card payments in more than 100 countries; make disbursements in more than 170 countries; and make multi-currency settlement in 65 currencies, numbers that Shtilman said are continuing to grow as it continues making more interconnection deals with local partners.

Rapyd is not the only company targeting that opportunity: Adyen, PayPal, WorldPay and increasingly Stripe are among the other big names also providing services in this area. Rapyd’s unique selling point, however, lies in the fact that it offers its services through one Swiss Army knife-style API, that continues to grow.

“We are excited to become investors in Rapyd and believe the Company is enabling global internet companies to improve their ability to accept local payments in emerging markets,” said Scott Shleifer, partner, Tiger Global Management, in a statement.

Shtilman likes to compare his company to AWS when it comes to continually expanding services and features. He said that since its last funding round in February, the company has not only expanded the number of countries that it covers — he notes that Asia Pacific and Latin America are currently its fastest-growing regions — but it has added more marketplace features like escrow account management and more compliance-related capabilities.

“We’ve had a significant boost in the platform and now have very large customers in the process of getting on board,” he added.

Given that so much of the e-commerce world is linked to the sale of physical goods (not just services), that presents an interesting opportunity for Rapyd to move into another big area of the ecosystem: logistics. Indeed, Shtilman noted that the company is currently working on its first partnerships in that area, which will likely first launch in Asia Pacific.

Whichever area Rapyd tackles after that, the main idea will be to continue to apply digitised processes to those that have traditionally been done manually, which not only helps to speed up transactions, but makes them less prone to errors and more traceable. “With humans in the middle of transactions, it opens you up to disaster,” Shtilman noted.

“As financial services become increasingly digitized and global, Rapyd’s fintech-as-a-service approach has tremendous growth potential,” said Tricia Kemp, co-founder and managing partner at Oak HC/FT, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to back and partner with the Rapyd team as they tackle one of the biggest challenges in financial services by helping businesses navigate the complexity of local and cross-border digital payments.”

Sramana Mitra: You said earlier that you are a close partner of Microsoft Azure. Azure is one of the platforms that is really working hard to establish as much abstraction as possible so developers...

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Rhino, the insurtech startup incubated by Kairos and co-founded by Kairos CEO Ankur Jain, has today announced the close of a $21 million Series A round led by Kairos and Lakestar.

Rhino was founded in 2017 with the goal of getting back to renters the billions of dollars that are locked up in cash security deposits, all while protecting landlords and their property. As it stands now, landlords usually take one month’s rent to cover any damage that might be done to the apartment during the lease. This is piled on top of first and sometimes last month’s rent, and even at times a broker’s fee of one month’s rent, which adds up to an incredibly steep cost of moving.

Because of certain regulations, this money is held in an individual escrow account and can’t really generate interest, which results in billions of dollars zapped out of the economy and instead sitting dead in some account.

Rhino is looking to give renters the option to pay a small monthly fee (as low as $3) to cover an insurance policy for the landlord. Rhino is itself a managing general agent, allowing the company to both sell and create policy plans for landlords through partnerships with carriers.

Thus far the startup has saved renters upwards of $60 million in 2019, with users in more than 300,000 rental units across the country.

“The greatest challenge is working against legacy and industry norms,” said Rhino CEO and co-founder Paraag Sarva. “That start has begun, but there is a huge amount of inertia behind the status quo and that is far and away what we are most challenged by day in and day out.”

To help speed up the process, Rhino is working alongside policymakers to enact change on a federal level.

Alongside the funding announcement, the company is announcing its new policy proposal that was created in collaboration with federal, state and local government officials. The policy essentially allows for renters to be given a choice when it comes to cash deposits, including allowing residents to cover security deposits in installments or use insurtech products like Rhino to cover deposits.

Rhino says it will be sharing the policy proposal with 2020 presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle.

Rhino is one of a handful of companies that has been incubated by Kairos, a startup studio led by Ankur Jain with the goal of solving the biggest problems faced by everyday Americans. The studio focuses on housing and healthcare, with companies such as Rhino, June Homes, Little Spoon, Cera and a couple of startups still in stealth.

Meet DataHawk, a French startup that wants to build a sort of App Annie for Amazon listings. The company lets you track products and search results so you can learn more about your competitors and your space.

This sort of product is becoming increasingly relevant as more and more products sold on Amazon are listed directly on Amazon by third-party companies on Amazon’s marketplace.

If you’re selling products on Amazon, chances are that your performance depends on search results. Many customers search for a product and look at the first results. So you want to rank as high as possible on important keywords.

With DataHawk, you can track any keyword and see how the results evolve over time. This way, if your sales drop, now you know why. The platform can help you tweak your listings to rank higher.

You also can track products directly to spot changes in the product title, price, reviews and description. Because DataHawk uses scrapping, you’re not limited to your own products — you can monitor products from your competitors.

You can visualize data from the DataHawk interface or export everything to Excel spreadsheets. You also can receive email alerts.

DataHawk has raised $1.3 million from Axeleo Capital and business angels. The company has 140 clients so far, with 80% of them in the U.S. Clients include PharamaPacks, Pfizer and L’Oréal. It currently tracks 2.6 million products every day.

The company operates as a software-as-a-service with a free plan to try out the service and monthly plans that get more expensive as you track more products and keywords.

If you’ve been to an airport recently, you’ve probably spotted a ton of iconic Away suitcases. The company has built one of the most successful consumer brands in recent years, and it’s just getting started. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Away co-founder and Chief Brand Officer Jen Rubio will join us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.

Away has been around since 2015, long before a ton of direct-to-consumer brands took over Instagram ads. Thanks to this early bet, thoughtful design and amazing branding, Away has managed to sell more than 1 million suitcases.

More recently, the company has started to expand to other travel gear, such as backpacks, weekenders and organizers. Away now even has a handful of brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. and London.

Earlier this year, the startup raised a $100 million round at a $1.4 billion valuation. Back in 2018, Away even said that it was already profitable.

Jen Rubio has been instrumental to Away’s success. She was the head of social media at Warby Parker when she thought about building Away. And I’m sure she has many tips for the next generation of direct-to-consumer entrepreneurs.

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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Jen Rubio is the co-founder and Chief Brand Officer of Away, a global lifestyle brand that’s working to transform the entire travel experience. Under her leadership, Away has been named one of Fast Company’s “World’s Most Innovative Companies,” one of TIME’s “50 Most Genius Companies,” one of LinkedIn’s “Top Startups,” and a Forbes “Next Billion Dollar Start-Up.”

Before starting Away, Jen built her career as a branding, creative, and social media expert, redefining how customers and brands connect at companies like Warby Parker and AllSaints. She has been named to Fortune’s 40 Under 40, the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Marketing and Advertising, Inc.’s 30 under 30 list, and NRF’s People Shaping Retail’s Future list. She lives in New York.

Great news for time-strapped early-stage startup founders across Europe and beyond! We’re extending our application deadline to the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December. If you’re ready to launch your startup on a global stage and compete for glory, cash, media attention and investor love, it’s time to act.

Apply to Startup Battlefield before the new deadline window expires on October 4 at 11:59 p.m. PT.

Applying to and participating in a Startup Battlefield is free — no fees, no equity, just good old-fashioned value. You have nothing to lose and much to gain. TechCrunch editors will sift through hundreds of applications and select only 15-20 startups — the best of the best — to step onto the Main Stage at Disrupt Berlin.

Selected founders all receive intensive (and free) pitch coaching from TechCrunch editors. Their expertise will help you prepare your pitch and perfect your demo. During the Battlefield, you’ll have just six minutes to present your case in front of the judges — a panel of technologists and investors — followed by a Q&A.

If you survive to round two, you’ll do it all over again in front of a fresh set of equally smart judges. And while only one outstanding startup will walk away with the coveted Disrupt Cup and the $50,000 prize, all participating teams benefit from massive media and investor exposure. It’s a potentially life-changing opportunity.

All the thrilling action takes place on the Disrupt Main Stage in front of thousands of avid startuppers, journalists and investors. Plus, we record and live-stream the entire event around the world.

So far, Startup Battlefield pitch competitions have launched 857 stellar tech companies, which form our Startup Battlefield alumni community. They’ve collectively raised $8.9 billion and produced 112 exits. You’ll join the ranks of companies like Vurb, Dropbox, Mint, Yammer and many more.

The Startup Battlefield takes place at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December. Don’t be so busy that you miss this extended opportunity to shine a bright spotlight on your startup. Apply to Startup Battlefield before 11:59 p.m. PT on October 4. Come and show the world what you can do!

Need passes to Disrupt Berlin? Buy them here; get the super early-bird price and save up to €600.

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