Waresix, one of a handful of startups aiming to modernize logistics in Indonesia — the world’s fourth most populous country — has pulled in $14.5 million to grow its 18-month-old business.

This new investment, Waresix’s Series A, is led by EV Growth — the growth-stage fund co-run by East Ventures — with participation from SMDV — the investment arm of Indonesia corporation Sinar Mas — and Singapore’s Jungle Ventures . The startup previously raised $1.6 million last year from East Ventures, SMDV and Monk’s Hill Ventures. It closed a seed round in early 2018.

Waresix is aiming to digitize logistics, the business of moving goods from A to B, which it believes is worth a total of $240 billion in Indonesia.

A large part of that is down to the country’s geography. The archipelago officially has more than 17,000 islands, but there are five main ones. That necessitates a lot of challenges for logistics, which are said to account for 25-30% of GDP — a figure that is typically below 5% in Western markets — while Indonesia barely scraped the top 50 rankings in World Bank’s Logistics Performance Index.

But, as Southeast Asia’s largest economy and the key market for digital growth in the region, that makes this an attractive problem to solve… or, rather, attractive industry to modernize.

Like others in its space worldwide — which include Chinese unicorn Manbang and BlackBuck in India — Waresix is focused on optimizing logistics by making the process more transparent for clients and more efficient for haulage companies and truckers. That includes removing the chain of “middle man” brokers, who add costs and reduce transparency, and provide a one-stop solution for transportation by land or sea, as well as cold storage and general cargo handling.

As of today, Waresix claims a fleet of more than 20,000 trucks and over 200 warehouse partners across Indonesia. The company said it plans to use this new capital to expand that coverage further. In particular, that’ll include additional land transport options and additional warehouse capacity in tier-two cities and more remote areas. That’s a push that founders Andree Susanto (CEO) and Edwin Wibowo (CFO) — who met at UC Berkeley in the U.S. — believe fits with Indonesia’s own $400 billion commitment to improve national infrastructure and transport.

It is also consistent with East Ventures, the long-standing early-stage VC, which has backed a pack of young companies aiming to inject internet smarts into traditional industries in Indonesia. Some of that portfolio includes Warung Pintar, which develops smart street vendor kiosks, Kedai Sayur, which is digitizing street vendors, and Fore Coffee, which draws inspiration from China’s digital-first brand Luckin Coffee, which recently listed in the U.S.

Now with EV Growth, which reached a final close of $200 million thanks to LPs that include SoftBank, East Ventures has the firepower to write larger checks that go beyond seed and pre-Series A deals, as it has done with Waresix.

But the company is far from alone in going after the logistics opportunity in Indonesia. Its rivals include Kargo, which was started by a former Uber Asia exec and is backed by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick’s 10100 fund among others, and Ritase.

Ritase, which claims to be profitable, closed an $8.5 million Series A this week. It said it has 7,500 trucks and, on the client side, some 500 SMEs and a smattering of well-known global brands. Kargo has kept its metrics quiet, but it is a later arrival on the scene. The startup only came out of stealth in March of this year when it announced a $7.6 million funding round.

Alphabet-backed UnitedMasters, the music label distribution startup and record label alternative that offers artists 100% ownership of everything they create, launched its iPhone app today.

The iPhone app works like the service they used to offer, only via the web, giving artists the chance to upload their own tracks (from iCloud, Dropbox or directly from text messages), then distribute them to a full range of streaming music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and more. In exchange for this distribution, as well as analytics on how your music is performing, UnitedMasters takes a 10% share on revenue generated by tracks it distributes, but artists retain full ownership of the content they create.

UnitedMasters also works with brand partners, including Bose, the NBA and AT&T, to place tracks in marketing use across the brand’s properties and distributed content. Music creators are paid out via PayPal once they connect their accounts, and they also can tie-in their social accounts for connecting their overall online presence with their music.

Using the app, artists can create entire releases by uploading not only music tracks but also high-quality cover art, and by entering information like whether any producers participated in the music creation, and whether the tracks contain any explicit lyrics. You also can specify an exact desired release date, and UnitedMasters will do its best to distribute across services on that day, pending content approvals.

UnitedMasters was founded by former Interscope Records president Steve Stoute, and also has funding from Andreessen Horwitz and 20th Century Fox. It’s aiming to serve a new generation of artists who are disenfranchised by the traditional label model, but are seeking distribution through the services where listeners actually spend their time, and using the iPhone to manage the entire process definitely fits with serving that customer base.

HQ Trivia is struggling after a mutiny failed to oust its CEO. Downloads per month are down 92% versus last June according to Sensor Tower. And now four sources confirm that HQ laid off staff members this week. One said about 20% of staff was let go, and another said six to seven employees were departing. That aligns with Digiday reporter Kerry Flynn’s tweet that 7 employees were let go, bringing HQ to fewer than 30 (shrinking from 35 to 28 staffers would be a 20% drop).

That will leave the company short-handed as it attempts to diversify revenue with the upcoming launch of monthly subscriptions. “HQ Words Everyday. Coming next month . . .  Bigger prizes . . . More ways to win. $9.99/mo. subscription,” the company tweeted from the account for its second game, the Wheel of Fortune-style HQ Words. The company has been trying to regain momentum with new hosts since the departure of Quiz Daddy, aka Scott Rogowsky, HQ Trivia’s original host.

The cuts hit HQ’s HR, marketing and product engineering teams, according to LinkedIn profiles of employees let go. The cuts could further hamper morale at the startup following a tough first half of the year. HQ Trivia and co-founder Rus Yusupov did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Following the tragic death of co-founder and CEO Colin Kroll, Yusupov retook control. But staff found him difficult to work with as he’d allowed the product to stagnate and popularity to decline. Yusupov was slow to make changes to the app, and “no one wanted to work under Rus,” a source told me.

That led 20 of 35 staffers to sign a letter to HQ Trivia’s board asking them to remove Yusupov, though it was never formally sent. Yusupov caught wind of the plot and fired two of the leaders of the petition. That further sunk morale, leading to the exit of HQ Trivia’s SVP of brand partnerships and its marketing manager. The board began a search for a new CEO, though it’s unclear how that’s panned out.

Since then, new games HQ teased in April haven’t materialized as its download rate continued to suffer. It’s dropped to the No. 731 U.S. game on iOS according to AppAnnie. HQ Trivia saw just 827,000 downloads from January through June 2019, down 92% from the 10.2 million it saw in the same time frame in 2018, according to Sensor Tower. That’s the same percentage drop in downloads from June 2019 versus June 2018, indicating Rogowsky’s replacements that started in April couldn’t turn things around.

Interest in the live game show format seems to be waning as a whole. HQ Trivia fan site HQTrivia.fan shut down this week, fearing the end was near for the official game, and the (Business) INSIDER-run clone of the game on Facebook Watch called Confetti stopped airing at the end of June.

Rather than solely monetizing a waning audience via in-app purchases and sponsorships, HQ Words announced it would debut a $9.99 monthly subscription sometime this month that would grant access to winning “bigger prizes.” This could be a smart way to squeeze more dollars out of a smaller but more die-hard audience.

While HQ Trivia was an inspiring approach to mobile gaming, its twice-daily games didn’t fit the always-on nature of mobile. It’s failed to build a proper onboarding experience that gives users a taste of it games right away rather than forcing them to wait for the next scheduled match, as we suggested over a year ago. Gamers are fickle, craving instant gratification, and HQ hasn’t tried to meet them in the middle.

Perhaps there’s a future for HQ on cable television, or as a small but steady business on mobile catering to loyalists. But all the unfortunate events and mismanagement may make it difficult to exceed the $100 million valuation it raised money at during its peak.

It’s no secret America thrives on tech-savvy immigrants who put down permanent roots: Three in five of the country’s biggest tech companies — Apple, Facebook, and Google among them — were founded by first- or second-generation immigrants.

Those giants combined boast a market cap of over $4 trillion and employ nearly two million workers. Considering such clear economic benefits, you’d expect an efficient, straightforward process for turning America’s tech-savviest new arrivals into U.S. citizens.

But that’s not the case. Naturalizing has only gotten harder and more expensive in recent years. And because of those barriers, even immigrants who manage to secure U.S. permanent residence often stop short of officially becoming U.S. citizens. In fact, a third of citizenship-eligible green card holders, or around 9.3 million people, have yet to apply.

If you’re among that group, don’t wait to take the final step of your immigration journey. After all, U.S. citizenship brings a host of tangible and intangible perks.

Taking the oath of citizenship, for one, is a profound experience and an affirmation that you’ve finally been welcomed into the American family. From the moment you naturalize, you become an equal stakeholder in our national project — as much an American as anyone born in this nation.

Of course, naturalization offers practical benefits, too. So take some time this Fourth of July to consider all the reasons why you should set your sights on citizenship now, not later:

It won’t get easier

The single best reason to file a citizenship application is to make sure you don’t miss the boat. The Trump administration is prone to overhauling immigration rules on short notice — so if you’re eligible today, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will be tomorrow.

Applying sooner will make the process quicker and cheaper, too. Already, the government plans to further complicate naturalization steps, at an estimated cost to applicants of nearly $205 million a year.

The bottom line: Getting citizenship will only get harder in the months and years ahead — applying for citizenship under the current rules will protect you from the future whims of America’s leaders. File your papers today, and save yourself headaches or heartbreak down the line.

Have your say

For many new citizens, this is the big one: As an American, you’ll be eligible to vote in all federal, state, and local elections and have your say in who gets to steer the country you’ve chosen to call home. Still, if you’re hoping to pull the lever for your preferred candidate in the 2020 presidential election, you’ll need to get a move on — there’s now a 10-month average wait just to get your application approved. Add all the other steps, and you could be looking at a total wait time of up to 1.6 years, and the line is only growing longer.

Also worth bearing in mind: Citizenship is a requirement for federal office and most state and local political positions. As a naturalized citizen, you’ll be able to run for office yourself.

And while immigrants can’t become president, plenty of naturalized Americans already represent their communities in Congress. Get your paperwork squared away if you want to be next.

Plan for the future 

Whether you’re starting a business, building your career, or buying a home, it helps to have the security that citizenship affords. Naturalizing also makes it far easier to bring relatives — even your parents and adult children — to America on green cards of their own. Spouses and immediate relatives of U.S. citizens get preferential treatment when it comes to green card applications, which means much shorter waits compared to the spouses and relatives of green cardholders.

Pro tip: If you’re a permanent resident and have a pending marriage green card application for your spouse, naturalizing upgrades you to the fast-track process for spouses of U.S. citizens.

Of course, naturalization is also a fantastic gift for your future offspring who are born abroad — they’re automatically citizens if you’re American at the moment of their birth. As a citizen, you’ll be able to register your children as U.S. citizens simply by reporting their birth to the nearest U.S. consulate or embassy.

Access public benefits

As an immigrant, you’re likely already paying taxes that fund public programs such as Social Security and Medicaid — but in many cases, you can’t actually benefit from those programs. In fact, you’ve probably been justly wary of using any government assistance whatsoever, for fear of being labeled a “public charge” and jeopardizing your immigration status.

As a citizen, all that changes: You’ll have as much right as anyone else to public benefits, and you won’t have to fret about being penalized for seeking help. You might never need public support beyond Social Security and Medicare — studies show that naturalized citizens use most benefits at much lower rates than the native-born — but it’s good to know there’s a safety net waiting to catch you if you fall.

Protect yourself

In theory, green cards offer permanent residence, but it’s still possible to lose your immigration status if you spend significant time outside the United States, if you have legal problems, or if the rules change. Citizens receive far greater protections and can’t be deported even if they run afoul of the law. You’ll also have an incontrovertible right to work in America and to win federal jobs and contracts that are off-limits to non-citizens.

One caveat: It’s been reported that the U.S. government is planning to “denaturalize” some citizens. This applies mostly to cases where applicants committed identity fraud or were subject to deportation orders that they did not disclose to immigration officers during the application process. That shouldn’t affect the vast majority of naturalized citizens, though, and in virtually any legal tangle you’ll be better off as a U.S. citizen.

Get a passport, and see the world

In these turbulent times, a U.S. passport is worth its weight in gold. You’ll be able to apply for the coveted navy-blue travel document immediately after receiving your Certificate of Naturalization and can look forward to visa-free travel to more than 180 countries. You’ll also be able to call on local U.S. embassies for assistance if you run into trouble while traveling.

As a citizen, you won’t have to worry about losing your status, regardless of how long you’re away from the United States. And remember: The United States allows dual citizenship, so depending on your nation of origin, you might not have to give up your existing passport — let alone your original nationality — in order to become an American.

Give back by getting ahead

Getting citizenship is a smart financial decision. Citizens fare better economically than non-citizen immigrants, perhaps because they’re better placed to put down roots and invest in their future.

Research shows that naturalized immigrants earn an average of $3,200 more each year than eligible non-citizens and also increase their homeownership rate by 6.3 percent. In fact, it’s estimated that if just half of eligible immigrants went ahead and gained citizenship, it would boost America’s GDP by up to $52 billion a year.

All those extra earnings translate into billions of dollars in extra local, state, and federal tax revenues, too. That makes naturalization a great way not just to make more money, but also to support your new community and make America a stronger and more prosperous place for yourself and your loved ones.

You’ve earned it, so go get it

Gaining citizenship is more than just a patriotic gesture; it’s a practical step toward building a secure future in America and seizing all the opportunities this country has to offer. As any immigrant knows, the pursuit of happiness is an American ideal — but it’s one that’s a whole lot easier to achieve if you have citizenship.

If you’re eligible to become a U.S. citizen, then you’ve already earned your place in this country by investing years of your life here, working hard, and playing by the rules. Applying for citizenship is a way to seal the deal, both by underscoring your commitment to the American project and receiving a definitive assurance that you’re welcome and wanted in the Land of the Free.

So this Fourth of July, if you’re chasing your own little piece of the American dream, bear in mind that there are real and concrete benefits to naturalization. After all, the smoke and noise from the fireworks will eventually fade away — but your American citizenship will last forever.

Sramana Mitra: What are some of the highlights of recent companies that have crossed $5 million in revenues? Cristobal Perdomo: It’s hard to know the revenues unless you’re actually working with...

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Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Vikas Choudhury was recorded in May 2019. Vikas...

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Some of the world’s most fascinating names and leaders in tech startup and investing come to our Disrupt Main Stage to discuss big-picture topics. And that tradition continues at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December.

But what happens when you want to dig into a specific technology or emerging trend? You head for a Q&A Session. These sessions — featuring many of the same folks you’ll hear on the Main Stage and moderated by TechCrunch editors — take place in a smaller, more intimate setting.

Hold up a sec. Don’t have your Disrupt Berlin pass yet (insert vinyl record scratch here)? Buy your super early-bird ticket now and score super savings.

Q&A Sessions are a series of lively discussions where audience members get to ask panels of subject-matter experts their most pressing questions. They’ll cover a range of pivotal, thought-provoking topics related to Disrupt Berlin’s category tracks — Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Biotech/Healthtech, Blockchain, Fintech, Gaming, Investor Topics, Media, Mobility, Privacy/Security, Retail/E-commerce, Robotics/IoT/Hardware, SaaS, Space and Social Impact & Education.

You’ll find all the Q&A Sessions happening on the Extra Crunch Stage, our new home for fireside chats, panel discussions and plenty of actionable, how-to content and tips from successful founders and investors. We’re talking stuff you can put into practice in your own startup. We named the stage after the subscription-based how-to content we create for our most engaged readers. It offers in-depth exclusive content on topics like startup-building fundamentals, resources and recommendations and unicorn deep dives. Curious? Learn more about our Extra Crunch content.

Pro Tips:

Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December. Buy your super early-bird tickets, unleash your curiosity — and your questions — and dig deep at our Q&A Sessions. We can’t wait to see you in Berlin!

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

European micro-mobility startup Dott is about to raise a $34 million Series A round (€30 million). Compared to many scooter companies out there, the startup is taking a careful approach when it comes to growth in order to build a good reputation and a sustainable service.

EQT Ventures and Naspers are leading today’s found. Existing investors Axel Springer Digital Ventures, DN Capital, Felix Capital, FJ Labs and U-Start Club are also investing again.

Dott had previously raised a $23 million round (€20 million) from EQT Ventures, Naspers and others.

Some scooter startups are aggressively expanding in dozens of cities. They’re often buying a ton of scooters and putting them on the streets without thinking about a long term plan.

Dott has made many promises ticking all the right boxes to go against this “move fast, break things” motto. The company works with local governments to get approval.

It then rolls out a reasonable fleet of scooters. Dott is currently live in Brussels, Paris, Lyon and Milan. The company has around 1,000 to 2,500 scooters per city.

The company has its own warehouses to charge and repair vehicles. There’s no juicer who collect scooters at night and charge them at home. Dott hires full-time employees and works with third-party logistics providers.

Scooters are also supposed to be sturdier thanks to a dual brake system and bigger wheels. Every part is supposed to be replaceable.

And the company is now going one step further by including insurance coverage for no extra cost. Dott is partnering with Zego and La Parisienne Assurances to cover personal injuries and third-party liability in France, Belgium and soon Italy.

Up next, Dott plans to release a second generation of scooter with swappable batteries, which should make fleet management much easier. And the company is already working on a third generation of vehicles.

Dott also plans to launch a new type of vehicles, e-bikes. They aren’t ready for prime time yet — they will be produced in Europe and China, and assembled in France. And of course, the company plans to gradually expand to new cities in Germany, the U.K. and Netherlands.

Now let’s see if Dott can keep all its promises as it scales around Europe. Taking a sustainable approach will require a ton of capital. Dott is betting that other scooter companies will crash before Dott runs out of cash.

And it’s clear that many scooter companies didn’t realize how brutal the scooter market could be. Les Echos reported earlier this week that Bolt, Wind, Hive, Ufo, Voi and Tier had all halted their services in Paris.

Lime, Bird, Circ, Dott, Jump and B-Mobility are still around, but I’m sure there will be more consolidation over the next 12 months.

French startup Shine is launching two new features today — Shine Premium, a premium account with basic insurance coverage for freelancers, and support for more types of companies using Shine Start.

Shine is building an alternative to traditional bank accounts for freelancers. In addition to bank information and a payment card, users can register a “micro-company” to start accepting freelancing jobs, create invoices, export transactions for taxes, etc.

The startup thinks that it is an underserved market even though it can get complicated really quickly when you start freelancing. The app tries to remind you when you’re supposed to pay taxes for instance.

Basic accounts currently cost €4.90 to €7.90 per month depending on your incorporation. But the company is adding a new premium tier called Shine Premium.

In addition to everything you get in the basic plan, Shine offers you insurance coverage in case you end up in a hospital. You can claim up to €100 per day. Shine also covers your equipment, and particularly broken smartphone screens. As a premium user, you can also access better support and a better knowledge base.

This product could be particularly attractive for users who work for Deliveroo, Uber Eats and other food delivery companies. As Libération recently reported, many people riding bikes all day long to deliver food end up in a hospital. They simply don’t have time to be cautious.

If you’re not already a freelancer, Shine can help you register your company and get started. For €34.90, the company handles the paperwork for you and you get an “auto-entrepreneur” certificate. Shine is expanding that service to other types of companies.

After you reach the limit of the basic “auto-entrepreneur” company, you need to switch to a more sophisticated type of companies with initial capital, more legal constraints, etc.

In other words, you need a true accountant. For €119, you can register an EURL, SASU or EI and get a certificate of incorporation. Shine then recommends you accountants who can take care of the legal paperwork for you going forward.

As you can see, Shine is gradually adding more features to turn its service into a one-stop shop for all your freelancing admin needs.

P.F.C. (Personal Finance Co.), a so-called “neobank” founded in Sweden, has raised €5 million in funding. Backing the young company is Nordea, the largest bank in the Nordics region.

In other words, chalk this up as another example of an incumbent bank placing financial and strategic bets on a fintech upstart, even if it doesn’t always end as the parties involved planned.

Nordea is present in 20 countries, including having a stronghold in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Also targeting the Nordics, P.F.C. is tiny in comparison. The neobank says it hopes to get to 100,000 users by the end of the year.

Described as a personal finance app and accompanying debit card, P.F.C. is regulated under a payments institution license rather than being a fully-licensed bank. It’s the same lighter touch model that Revolut and a plethora of other banking apps choose, before in some instances applying for a bank license so they can begin doing more risky regulated activities: namely lending out deposits in the form of overdrafts and loans.

P.F.C.’s features include being able to instantly top up your account/card using Swish (a mobile payment technology provided by a group of Swedish banks), the ability to set a weekly budget, and automatic transaction categorisation.

In addition, you can freeze, unfreeze, change your pin and order a new card directly within the P.F.C. app. You also have the option to receive a push notification after each purchase with your updated balance.

It’s a travel card, too: P.F.C. says there are no additional fees for purchases and ATM withdrawals abroad.

Other soon-to-launch features include the ability for friends and partners to share expenses and settle debts, and personalised savings and credit products with “transparent pricing”.

“There’s an opportunity in the market for companies that personalize financial services,” says Eli Daniel Keren, founder and CEO of P.F.C., in a statement. “We provide a personal, transparent and simple banking experience for our customers”.

Adds Ewan Macleod, Chief Digital Officer at Nordea: “We are delighted to have P.F.C. in our portfolio as it provides a personalized digital solution for customers. We see the investment as a great opportunity for us to team up and support P.F.C. in their growth”.

Superhuman, the buzzy and currently invite-only email startup that you might have come across even if you yourself don’t have access if you’ve ever encountered a “Sent via Superhuman” email signature, is making some changes based on community feedback. These include removing location logging altogether, getting rid of all existing location data and turning off read receipts by default and making them an opt-in feature for users.

The email app’s default email tracking behavior (embedding the commonly used advertising tool of a “pixel” in emails to report back to senders info like whether an email’s been opened or not) raised a number of concerns, centered around this blog post by former Twitter design executive Mike Davidson. Davidson’s post generated a lot of community response, and now Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra has issued a response to that response, including a list of actions that his company is taking to address concerns. Specifically, Superhuman’s product changes are focused around mitigating the potential for abuse of sharing location data – which could be very dangerous in the hands of a sender with ill intent for their recipient.

These include immediately stopping any location logging for any emails sent by the service, and also rolling out new versions of the app that don’t show location data in the interface. All existing logged location data will also be deleted so it’s not even discoverable through means other than the UI, Vohra says in a blog post detailing the changes.

Superhuman won’t be getting rid of its “read status” feature entirely however — it’ll still provide info to Superhuman users about whether or not an email was opened. This feature will be turned off by default, however, so it’s on users to activate it. Note that that still doesn’t change anything for recipients of Superhuman emails with read receipts turned on — they don’t get an option to consent to sending read receipts. Finally, Superhuman will enable disabling of remote image loading, which is itself a way to block incoming tracking pixels.

Vohra said on Twitter the reason Superhuman hasn’t issued a response to this previously, despite a few days of heated conversation about their company, is that the startup was considering how best to address the concerns. As Matthew noted in an article Tuesday on the subject, this is actually how discussion and debate should work.

Larissa Russell and Fiona Lee founded a cookie startup called Green Pea Cookie in 2014. The cookies were 100% natural, vegan and “handcrafted with love.”

The company failed, but not because the cookies weren’t selling. The business couldn’t keep up with the antiquated wholesale food distribution system’s steep costs. Two incumbent players, United Natural Foods Inc. and KeHE Distributors, essentially controlled its only pathway to grocery stores across the country. So the founders shut down Green Pea and focused their efforts on building the tool Green Pea had needed to survive: Pod Foods, a distribution and logistics platform for emerging food brands.

“We were like so many other young entrepreneurs,” Russell, Pod Foods’ chief executive officer, tells TechCrunch. “I had studied government and economics and did the cookie company because I wanted to create something better for the world but we realized there was a much bigger issue at hand and it wasn’t enough to solve for the end product, we needed to solve for the way the product reached consumers.”

“The distribution system hasn’t evolved since World War II,” Lee adds. “For so many years, there’s been little evolution in this space, even since the advent of technology and the internet.”

Today, Pod Foods is announcing a $3 million seed round led by Moment Ventures, with participation from M12 and Unshackled Ventures to fuel the growth of its software and data-enabled platform. The capital follows a $250,000 pre-seed investment from Unshackled, a venture capital firm that invests in immigrant founders and, if necessary, helps them navigate the complex visa process.

Lee immigrated to the U.S. from Singapore five years ago to double down on Green Pea Cookie. Her business partner, Russell, had been handling operations in the U.S. while she helped build the business from her home country. With Pod Foods up and running, the founders now have the opportunity to bring Green Pea back from the dead. Instead, they tell me their focus and efforts are entirely on scaling their B2B software upstart. Green Pea is gone for good.

Pod Foods is an end-to-end platform that connects retailers with manufacturers, facilitating the overly complex wholesale-food distribution market. The startup works with a third-party network that handles both fulfillment and logistics to create a tool beneficial to emerging brands, big retailers and consumers. The company charges retailers on a subscription basis and takes a cut of each transaction. The end goal is to simplify an age-old process, allow startup brands the opportunity to sell products inside big retailers and make great products accessible to customers at a lower price.

The San Francisco-based startup has launched in the Bay Area and Chicago. Currently, it’s working with 350 food brands and 100 retailers. With a fresh funding deal, Pod Foods plans to scale 10x in the next 12 months.

“We want to change the way food is distributed,” Russell said. “We want to turn [the system] on its head so the consumer can get what they would like to buy in retail stores at an affordable price.”

It might seem like you’ve now got podcasts covering any and every conceivable topic, but comedy writer and actor Maria Blascucci argued that there’s still “this whole untapped market” — namely, podcasts created by women.

Certainly, some of the most successful shows are hosted by women — but if you look at a list of popular podcasts, you’ll see a lot of men. Similarly, most of the major podcasting networks and companies (like Gimlet, Crooked Media and Earwolf) were founded by men.

So Blascucci teamed up with her friends Amanda Lund (also a writer and actor) and Priyanka Mattoo (a former agent at United Talent Agency and William Morris Endeavor) and created a new company called Earios. They raised $26,000 on Kickstarter last year, and launched their first shows this week.

“As we saw the landscape of podcasts changing and becoming more like television … we started to realize that we might as well carve out a space for ourselves, a community of funny women, instead of just letting it happen to us,” Lund told me.

The goal is to launch 12 shows this year, including four this week — Filling the Void (where “Love” creator Lesley Arfin talks to her friends about their passions and hobbies), Foxy Browns (with Mattoo and Camille Blackett discussing beauty and wellness from the perspective of women of color), Web Crawlers (where Melissa Stetten and Ali Segel explore strange and mysterious things on the web) and The Big Ones (where Blascucci and Lund discuss moral dilemmas).

Upcoming shows include titles from comedian Margaret Cho and musician Feist.

“What we have been trying to do is just trying to do projects and [find] really interesting voices and perspectives that alone will make our shows stand out,” Lund said. “With podcasting, there is a template for it. It sounds like this, and your art looks like this, and we’re conscious of not necessarily falling into that same template. We’re still trying to do things outside of the box whenever possible and keep the medium cracked open, in a way.”

As for monetization, while there are startups exploring subscriptions and paywalls (with some hiccups), Earios is focused on running ads in partnership with Acast.

Mattoo suggested that there’s a similar untapped market here, recalling that as she talked to ad sales companies, “The refrain we heard over and over again was, ‘We have all these ads targeted at women and nowhere to put them.’ ”

Upfront Ventures, a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise its third growth-stage investment fund.

Though the firm typically invests at the seed and Series A, capital from Upfront Growth III will be used for follow-on or late-stage deals.

The firm, known for its investments in Bird, Goat, Ring, ThredUP and Parachute, plans to raise $250 million for the effort. Mark Suster and Yves Sisteron, listed on the filing, lead the firm as managing partners. Upfront’s investor line-up also includes partners Kobie Fuller, Greg Bettinelli, Kara Nortman and Kevin Zhang.

One of the oldest VCs rooted in LA, Upfront previously closed on $400 million for its sixth flagship early-stage fund in 2017.

LA is on pace for a banner year of VC investment, attracting $33 billion across more than 1,000 deals already in 2019, according to PitchBook. Last year, companies headquartered in LA raised more than $60 billion.

The legalization of cannabis and hemp for medicinal and recreational use in states across the U.S. and in Canada has opened up a huge vein of green, green cash for startups.

Two entrepreneurs tantalized early on by the smell of dank profits are Pax Labs CEO Bharat Vasan and Eaze and Wayv founder Keith McCarty. They will join us on stage at Disrupt SF to hash out the opportunities for investors and help founders avoid seeing their vision go up in smoke.

Bharat Vasan took over as chief executive at Pax Labs in February 2018. Before that, he served as president and COO at August Home, which sold to Assa Abloy in 2017. Prior to August Home, Vasan was co-founder and COO at Basis Science, which sold to Intel in 2018 for a reported $100 million. Vasan was also at Electronic Arts from 2002 to 2010, where he went from senior manager of Mergers & Acquisitions to serving as CFO and COO.

Pax Labs’ valuation, as of its latest $420 million funding round in April of this year, was at $1.7 billion. The company, which makes cannabis vaporizers, has plans to use the funding for international expansion and new products, but Vasan also hinted at a data play in this new market.

“People know about different kinds of alcohol,” said Vasan, in an interview in April. “They may know that they’re a beer person or a wine person. But none of that exists within cannabis. They see names like ‘Lemon Haze’ and ‘Cherry Fizz’ and they don’t know what that is. These are all really awesome names for a band but not great to let you know what you’re consuming. We want to provide more clarity around what that means.”

How Pax Labs plans to do this is unclear, but we’re hoping to learn more about it in October.

Keith McCarty, founder and CEO of Wayv, has a rich history in the tech space and as an entrepreneur. After spending five years at Yammer, and then Microsoft following the acquisition, McCarty went on to found Eaze, a legal cannabis delivery platform.

And while Eaze has continued to grow alongside the cannabis market itself, it put a new problem on McCarty’s radar. The supply chain logistics of the cannabis industry, combined with the fast-changing regulatory market, presents an opportunity for one startup to solve for this problem. McCarty wants that to be Wayv, a new venture that has raised $5 million in funding.

Wayv wants to be the Eaze of the enterprise, connecting licensed cannabis companies to licensed brands to provide next-day delivery of cannabis products.

These two titans will join us at Disrupt SF in October to discuss the changes in this market and the opportunities appearing before the tech world as a result of those changes.

Disrupt SF runs October 2 – October 4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Tickets are available here.

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The immigration process in the U.S. has become a high-stakes undertaking for employers, workers, and entrepreneurs. Predictability has eroded. Processing times have soared. And any mistake or misstep now has dire consequences.

Over the past three years, immigration policies and procedures have been in a state of flux and the process has become more unforgiving for even the smallest mistakes. Putting your best foot forward is crucial. Employers and individuals need to formulate a long-term strategy and backup options to stay protected.

The increase in Requests for Evidence and the backlog for many visa and green card categories has meant longer waiting times. What’s more, the Trump administration’s recent decision to close all USCIS’s international offices—and shift that workload back to the U.S.—is expected to compound the backlogs and delays.

We are seeing these issues affect startups every day. My law firm works with hundreds of startups every year to help them and their employers figure out their immigration paperwork. The overall piece of advice we give is to decide on a specific goal based on a deep understanding of the company and the individual and by examining the options strategically.

Then, you can figure out the right approach for a visa, green card, or citizenship application. Regardless of my personal interest in the matter, now more than ever, I recommend consulting with an experienced immigration attorney who can handle the process with integrity, creativity, compassion, and rigor.

What employers should know

The new normal for immigration means increased employee recruiting and retention costs for employers. However, hiring immigrants remains possible.

Sramana Mitra: Are you seeing B2B SaaS in Latin America or is that not so much a trend? Is the trend more towards transaction-based marketplaces and FinTech? Cristobal Perdomo: FinTech, across the...

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Deciding what to patent can be a confusing process but by creating a formal process it is something that every startup can manage.

Intellectual property (IP) is one of the most valuable assets of a startup and patents are often chief among IP in terms of value. Patents allow the startup to prevent competitors from using their technology, which is a powerful feature that can grant unique advantages in the marketplace.

From a business perspective, patents can help with driving investment and acquisitions, provide protection during partnerships and business deals, and help defend itself against patent lawsuits by others.

However, startups also often have a hard time determining when and what to patent. Innovative startups are inventing new things on a regular basis, and there is a danger of slipping into a haphazard approach of patenting whatever happens to be available rather than systematically analyzing the business needs of the company and protecting the IP that moves the needle the most.

Moreover, startups must balance the need to protect IP with other areas of the business: Patents are complex documents that require an investment of time and resources to obtain. They often require specialized legal counsel to write and a lengthy examination process at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO).

This article is a how-to guide for startups to make the decision on when and what to patent with a mature approach to IP strategy.

Table of Contents

Creating a regular IP harvesting process

In order to make a decision about what to patent, a startup must first know what IP it has. For very small teams, it may be possible for everyone to have a shared idea of the IP. However, once teams grow beyond a few people, it is no longer possible to have complete visibility into what everyone on the team is doing and potentially inventing. Therefore, a regular IP harvesting process must be put in place to ensure proper reporting of IP to the executive level.

Most startups are best served with a simple IP harvesting process involving just three steps: (1) disclosure (2) invention review and (3) patent filing. In the disclosure stage, employees who are in IP creation roles must be trained to disclose ideas that are potentially protectable IP.

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) is one company that has truly pivoted itself to adapt to the modern subscription economy. The transition has benefited the company significantly. Since 2015, it has reported more...

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Spacetech startup NSLComm is gearing up to put its first satellite into orbit, aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket launching this Friday at 1:42 AM ET. Not only is the launch a first for the company, but it’s also the first deployment of a new kind of satellite technology, an expandable antenna solution created by NSLComm which is the secret ingredient that will unlock a number of different lines of business for the fledgling Israeli startup.

“Satellite communication is too expensive,” explained NSLComm CEO and co-founder Raz Itzhaki in an interview. “And this is the case, because satellites are expensive. A communication satellite is basically a dish in space, you want more communication, you need a larger dish. But a larger dish requires a larger satellite, and a larger launcher, so everything becomes more expensive. This is why if you launch a geostationary communication satellite you have to launch it for 20 years, because it has an ROI of more than 10 years. It weighs tons because it needs to live for 15-20 years, and when you sell the capacity, you pay hundreds of billions per megabit per second per month, because you need to return the amount of investment in the satellite.”

What Raz and his team saw was that much of the size and weight for these high-powered communication satellites was actually due to the antennas they need to use to ensure they can achieve a good signal from space. These are either large and fixed, requiring a lot of extra launch hardware and protection as they make their way to space (which is not needed once in orbit), or, for unfolding antennas that existed previously, they require a lot of additional hardware to actually do the unfolding antenna deployment in space, adding again a bunch of bulk and weight. All of which translates to higher launch costs, the need for longer productive life spans for the satellites and higher costs for connectivity consumers.

NSLComm’s solution was to develop a new kind of antenna that can deploy on its own, without the help of any additional heavy machinery, and that can extend to the sizes needed to provide truly high-throughput connectivity on a satellite that’s small and much easier to launch, providing about 100 times faster connectivity than the fastest nano-satellites in the same size class today at about one-tenth the launch cost.

“Our approach was to develop an antenna based on SMP — that’s a shape memory polymer,” Itzhaki said. “This antenna is actually a 3D spring; it memorizes its shapes, it needs no opening mechanism, because the antenna itself is its own opening mechanism. So when you open a hatch, it jumps out like a jack-in-the-box. We have an antenna that is compacted to a volume that is so small, that it fits less than 1U [around the space of one rack in a multi-rack server configuration, or about 1.75 inches tall] for a 60 centimeter [about two feet] diameter dish. And the antenna weighs 140 grams. Well, this changes the economics of satellite communication.”

NSLComm intends to launch 30 satellites by 2021 and hundreds in total by 2023, but launching its own network is only one part of its business plan, and there are other ways it intends to generate revenue in the more immediate term. Itzhaki explained that, in fact, the startup has four primary ways of doing business, including first offering cost-effective ways for customer companies to build their constellations using the startup’s technology. Next, there’s a “turnkey” option for customers that can purchase satellite terminals and ground stations for specific use, including one client already who is using this for an IoT application. Itzhaki says there are already “many” of these types of arrangements in the pipeline.

Third, NSLComm intends to offer a “private constellation” offering, where, for example, a cruise ship operator could build, launch and operate its own network constellation for its customers at minimal cost. Finally, there’s a “constellation as a service” model, where NSLCom would launch the constellation itself, partner with an operator and sell the capacity of the network on a subscription basis.

To date, NSLComm has raised $16 million, including $12 million from VCs, including Jerusalem Venture Partners, OurCrowd, Cockpit Innovation and Liberty Technology Venture Capital. It’s also backed by the Israel Space Agency and the Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel, which provided the remaining $4 million in initial funding.