If you’re a video creator in 2019, you’re probably thinking about a long list of publishing destinations: YouTube, of course, but also Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and more.

StayTuned Digital is a new startup trying to help video creators and publishers push their content to multiple platforms. The company, which bills itself as “content’s best friend,” is officially unveiling its product today and announcing that it’s raised $2.5 million in funding.

StayTuned was founded by CEO Serge Kassardjian (previously the global head of media app business development for Google Play) and Randy Jimenez (previously CTO at SinglePlatform). Kassardjian told me he saw the need for a product like this during his time at Google, when he would talk to content creators becoming “overwhelmed” by the fragmentation across all the different devices and platforms available to them.

“What’s happened is every single one of the platforms is releasing new formats, new ways to optimize, it’s constantly changing every couple of months,” Kassardjian said.

So with StayTuned, publishers shouldn’t have to worry about all that. Kassardjian said the product does three big things: optimizes the video so it looks good and can perform well on each platform, pushes the video to each platform and then measures the results, which feeds back into the optimization.

Kassardjian acknowledged that getting into the media business, even as a technology provider, might seem like a bad idea right now, but he said, “There’s a misconception that what’s happening in the world is that media and content is dead, but there’s more media and content than ever before.”

Nor does Kassardjian believe that publishers can stop relying on Facebook and other platforms. Sure, they may want to drive more traffic to their own properties or launch their own subscription services, but unless they’re Netflix-sized, they can’t ignore the big platforms entirely.

“We provide ubiquity to where the audience is,” he said.

And when he talks about video publishers, he isn’t just thinking about traditional media companies (although he’s looking to work with them too). He also said StayTuned could work with newer digital companies, e-commerce retailers and other brands that are creating content — and eventually, small businesses.

As for the funding, it was led by Bowery Capital, with participation from CourtsideVC, Quaker Health, Social Leverage, Liquid 2 Ventures, The Fund, Hive Ventures, Grape Arbor and a number of angel investors. StayTuned is also part of the current GCT Startup-in-Residence program.

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Yash Hemaraj, Founding Partner at Arka Venture Labs and Partner at Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV). Arka has recently partnered with 1Mby1M to...

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Peltarion, a Swedish startup founded by former execs from companies like Spotify, Skype, King, TrueCaller and Google, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by Euclidean Capital, the family office for hedge fund billionaire James Simons. Previous investors FAM and EQT Ventures also participated, and this round brings the company’s total funding to $35 million.

There is obviously no dearth of AI platforms these days. Peltarion focus on what it calls “operational AI.” The service offers an end-to-end platform that lets you do everything from pre-processing your data to building models and putting them into production. All of this runs in the cloud and developers get access to a graphical user interface for building and testing their models. All of this, the company stresses, ensures that Peltarion’s users don’t have to deal with any of the low-level hardware or software and can instead focus on building their models.

“The speed at which AI systems can be built and deployed on the operational platform is orders of magnitude faster compared to the industry standard tools such as TensorFlow and require far fewer people and decreases the level of technical expertise needed,” Luka Crnkovic-Friis, of Peltarion’s CEO and co-founder, tells me. “All this results in more organizations being able to operationalize AI and focusing on solving problems and creating change.”

In a world where businesses have a plethora of choices, though, why use Peltarion over more established players? “Almost all of our clients are worried about lock-in to any single cloud provider,” Crnkovic-Friis said. “They tend to be fine using storage and compute as they are relatively similar across all the providers and moving to another cloud provider is possible. Equally, they are very wary of the higher-level services that AWS, GCP, Azure, and others provide as it means a complete lock-in.”

Peltarion, of course, argues that its platform doesn’t lock in its users and that other platforms take far more AI expertise to produce commercially viable AI services. The company rightly notes that, outside of the tech giants, most companies still struggle with how to use AI at scale. “They are stuck on the starting blocks, held back by two primary barriers to progress: immature patchwork technology and skills shortage,” said Crnkovic-Friis.

The company will use the new funding to expand its development team and its teams working with its community and partners. It’ll also use the new funding for growth initiatives in the U.S. and other markets.

With more industries and organizations recognizing design as a pillar of business, a battle is brewing among makers of design tools. And with a fresh $40 million in Series C funding, Figma is ready to fight.

Co-founder and CEO Dylan Field explains that when he and co-founder Evan Wallace started the company, in 2012, IBM employed one designer for every 72 engineers. Today, IBM has eight engineers to every designer, and that ratio goes to 3:1 on mobile.

This shift, which is reflected more broadly across various industries, has led more people within their organizations to want to be involved in the design process. Which means that tools that once “got the job done” for small design teams and individual freelancers working in a silo stopped being useful.

Field saw the need for real-time collaborative design tools, and dropped out of Brown to join the Thiel fellowship to build Figma . Since launch, the company has grown to 1 million sign-ups, with a total of $82.9 million raised on a $440 million post-money valuation.

Figma offers a freemium model, with the product remaining free up to three editors. From there you bump into the Pro tier, which offers unlimited version history and the ability to create a Design System for $15/month/editor. The org tier bundles in an extra layer of security and content control for $45/month/editor.

A big part of what sets Figma apart is its home on the web. Figma allows designers and collaborators to take care of every part of the process — from initial design to collaboration to storage to prototyping — right within a web app.

“We set out to make a cloud version of these traditional design tools,” said Field. “And what we realized is that once you put it all in the cloud, and make it so that the entire workflow across design and storage and prototyping and developer hand-off and version control… once you connect all that, you’re not actually creating all those different products. You’re creating one integrated system.”

Because of this, common design problems like file versioning and real-time collaboration aren’t really an issue for Figma. Designers can work together, or make changes on their own, and those changes are reflected across the file in real time with a complete revision history. To share something new, they can simply send over a link.

Adobe and InVision, the two other big players in the ring, have both built native apps to handle the same full-stack problem of bundling design tools, collaborative prototyping and file versioning. Adobe has addressed its growing competition through its collaborative design tool Adobe XD. InVision, which started as a collaborative prototyping platform in 2011, has either built or bought its products that expand up and downstream in the workflow.

And it seems that, for some big design teams, Figma’s web app has prevailed — which explains why Sequoia partner Andrew Reed changed his mind. Figma actually went to Sequoia when raising their Series B in 2018, and the VC firm passed up the opportunity.

“At the time, the product was interesting but the people we talk to about these products weren’t pointing to Figma as transforming their companies,” said Reed. “Over the past 12 months, things changed. We called people to ask their opinions and people were calling us proactively and telling us how impactful it was in their companies.”

After looking at the data, Reed said he discovered there were Figma users at half of Sequoia’s portfolio companies. He reached out to Field, sent over a term sheet in Figma and within a week Figma closed on what could be seen as an opportunistic round, considering how recently Figma picked up its Series B.

But one perk of the deal is Reed’s experience from investing in GitHub, which is a great exemplar for design tool companies looking to bring some level of cohesiveness to a fragmented landscape.

“Collaboration is going to be embedded in the future of software,” said Reed.

Sight Diagnostics, an Israeli medical devices startup that’s using AI technology to speed up blood testing, has closed a  $27.8 million Series C funding round.

The company has built a desktop machine, called OLO, that analyzes cartridges manually loaded with drops of the patient’s blood — performing blood counts in situ.

The new funding is led by VC firm Longliv Ventures, also based in Israel, and a member of the multinational conglomerate CK Hutchison Group.

Sight Diagnostics said it was after strategic investment for the Series C — specifically investors that could contribute to its technological and commercial expansion. And on that front CK Hutchison Group’s portfolio includes more than 14,500 health and beauty stores across Europe and Asia, providing a clear go-to-market route for the company’s OLO blood testing device.

Other strategic investors in the round include Jack Nicklaus II, a healthcare philanthropist and board member of the Nicklaus Children’s Health Care Foundation; Steven Esrick, a healthcare impact investor; and a “major medical equipment manufacturer” — which they’re not naming.

Sight Diagnostics also notes that it’s seeking additional strategic partners who can help it get its device to “major markets throughout the world”.

Commenting in a statement, Yossi Pollak, co-founder and CEO, said: “We sought out groups and individuals who genuinely believe in our mission to improve health for everyone with next-generation diagnostics, and most importantly, who can add significant value beyond financial support. We are already seeing positive traction across Europe and seeking additional strategic partners who can help us deploy OLO to major markets throughout the world.”

The company says it expects that customers across “multiple countries in Europe” will have deployed OLO in actual use this year.

Existing investors OurCrowd, Go Capital, and New Alliance Capital also participated in the Series C. The medtech startup, which was founded back in 2011, has raised more than $50M to date, only disclosing its Series A and B raises last year.

The new funding will be used to further efforts to sell what it bills as its “lab-grade” point-of-care blood diagnostics system, OLO, around the world. Although its initial go-to-market push has focused on Europe — where it has obtained CE Mark registration for OLO (necessary for commercial sale within certain European countries) following a 287-person clinical trial, and went on to launch the device last summer. It’s since signed a distribution agreement for OLO in Italy.

“We have pursued several pilots with potential customers in Europe, specifically in the UK and Italy,” co-founder Danny Levner tells TechCrunch. “In Europe, it is typical for market adoption to begin with pilot studies: Small clinical evaluations that each major customers run at their own facilities, under real-world conditions. This allows users to experience the specific benefits of the technology in their own context. In typical progress, pilot studies are then followed by modest initial orders, and then by broad deployment.”

The funding will also support ongoing regulatory efforts in the U.S., where it’s been conducting a series of trials as part of FDA testing in the hopes of gaining regulatory clearance for OLO. Levner tells us it has now submitted data to the regulator and is waiting for it to be reviewed.

“In December 2018, we completed US clinical trials at three US clinical sites and we are submitting them later this month to the FDA. We are seeking 510(k) FDA clearance for use in US CLIA compliant laboratories, to be followed by a CLIA waiver application that will allow for use at any doctor’s office. We are very pleased with the results of our US trial and we hope to obtain the FDA’s 510(k) clearance within a year’s time,” he says.

“With the current funding, we’re focusing on commercialization in the European market, starting in the UK, Italy and the Nordics,” he adds. “In the US, we’re working to identify new opportunities in oncology and pediatrics.”

Funds will also go on R&D to expand the menu of diagnostic tests the company is able to offer via OLO.

The startup previously told us it envisages developing the device into a platform capable of running a portfolio of blood tests, saying each additional test would be added individually and only after “independent clinical validation”.

The initial test OLO offers is a complete blood count (CBC), with Sight Diagnostics applying machine learning and computer vision technology to digitize and analyze a high resolution photograph of a finger prick’s worth of the patient’s blood on device.

The idea is to offer an alternative to having venous blood drawn and sent away to a lab for analysis — with an OLO-based CBC billed as taking “minutes” to perform, with the startup also claiming it’s simple enough for non-professional to carry out, whereas it says a lab-based blood count can take several days to process and return a result.

On the R&D front, Levner says it sees “enormous potential” for OLO to be used to diagnose blood diseases such as leukemia and sickle cell anemia.

“Also, given the small amount of blood required and the minimally-invasive nature of the test when using finger-prick blood samples, there is an opportunity to use OLO in neonatal screening,” he says. “Accordingly, one of the most important immediate next steps is to tailor the test procedures and algorithms for neonate screening.”

Levner also told us that some of its pilot studies have looked at evaluating “improvements in operator and patient satisfaction”. “Clearly standing out in these studies is the preference for finger-prick-based testing, which OLO provides,” he claims. 

One key point to note: Sight Diagnostics has still yet to publish peer reviewed results of its clinical trials for OLO. Last July it told us it has a publication pending in a peer-reviewed journal.

“With regards to the peer-reviewed publication, we’ve decided to combine the results from the Israel clinical trials with those that we just completed in the US for a more robust publication,” the company says now. “We expect to focus on that publication after we receive FDA approval in the US.”

Sramana Mitra: Let’s do another company. Alireza Rahnema: Another company that has a very interesting background is Spocket. Spocket is one of the top three service providers on the Shopify platform....

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Today’s 431st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, February 14, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are...

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Today’s 431st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, February 14, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join....

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Grover, the Berlin-based startup that offers “pay-as-you-go” subscriptions to the latest consumer tech as an alternative to owning products outright, is going all-in on e-scooters or so-called micro-mobility. The latest to jump in on the e-scooter craze, the company is launching an e-scooter monthly subscription service in Germany.

Dubbed GroverGo, customers can rent the Xiaomi e-scooter Mijia M365 for €49.90 per month and have access to a rental scooter of their own for a fraction of the cost of buying.

The idea — and thinking behind Grover as a whole — is that instead of purchasing an e-scooter outright (or in this instance, relying on using the sprawling number of pay-per-ride services), GroverGo customers can enjoy unlimited e-scooter rides without the upfront costs or commitment of owning an e-scooter. A GroverGo rolling monthly subscription can be canceled at any time and includes Grover Care damage coverage.

The Xiaomi scooter goes up to 25 km/h, and can ride up to 30 km without recharging. It is also foldable and fairly lightweight, which Grover says makes it easy to travel with. The company also reckons that GroverGo makes sense for anyone who would ride 10 or more times per week.

“The biggest advantage of GroverGo versus pay-per-ride e-scooter services is the guaranteed availability and efficient use, as each scooter stays with its renter rather than hundreds of them clogging the sidewalks waiting to be picked up and recharged,” says Grover, taking a dig at the likes of Lime and Bird. “GroverGo customers make their scooter their own for the time of their subscription and know that it’s always charged and at their disposal. Even in the most remote neighbourhoods, the scooter can be folded and taken to the office or a bar and will be there for the ride home.”

The tech subscription service is also confident e-scooters will become more useful, as German authorities make changes to how the devices are regulated. “Thanks to a recently issued ordinance by the federal government, it is expected that Germany will change its regulations and allow e-scooters on public streets soon,” says Grover.

Meanwhile, Michael Cassau, CEO and founder of Grover, tells me he believes micro-mobility services are the “future of cities” and that the Product-as-a-Service model that Grover is based on is particularly suited to the space. “I am confident that our approach with GroverGo is smart and efficient, and will convince many to switch to e-mobility without the barriers and commitment of buying and financing, and without the hassle of shared e-scooter services,” he adds.

Teckro, a software platform that claims to make the conduct of clinical trials more efficient and collaborative, has closed $25 million in Series C funding. The round, which brings the total raised by the Irish company to $43 million, was led by Northpond Ventures, with participation from Founders Fund, Sands Capital Ventures, Bill Maris’ Section 32 venture fund and Borealis Ventures.

Founded by brothers Gary and Nigel Hughes and Jacek Skrzypiec in 2015, Teckro’s technology is designed to improve the conduct of clinical trials, including by employing machine learning to improve the speed and accuracy of clinical trials. Through digitisation, it also attempts to make clinical trials more transparent across stakeholders and those responsible for conducting the trial, including doctors, research nurses and patients.

“The industry still relies heavily on paper, on working off retrospective data, and there is still an over-reliance on sending CRAs to busy research sites,” says Teckro co-founder and CEO Gary Hughes. “This approach, together with the plethora of point solutions that get ‘bolted on,’ only adds to the complexity and disjointed experience of research sites and patients.”

To that end, Teckro says it has users in more than 80 countries, up from 30 countries at the time of the Series B in August 2017. It employs more than 100 staff across its global headquarters in Limerick, Ireland, an engineering hub in Dublin, Ireland and a U.S. base in Nashville, Tennessee.

“Our mission is to engage more physicians in clinical research,” Hughes tells me. “We believe increased participation by physicians (currently less than 3 percent globally) will provide greater access to patients, effectively making clinical research a treatment option for millions of patients with unmet medical needs. That requires a complete rethink of clinical trial operations, particularly the experience of research sites. It’s very much a ‘fix one thing’ approach, establishing new digital touch points that remove friction and provide busy research staff with instant access to critical trial information when it is needed most.”

The broader Teckro vision is to be “at the centre of all site and patient interactions in a clinical trial,” says Hughes. “We are building a new digital infrastructure and toolset for clinical research that makes the conduct of trials simpler, more transparent and more inclusive.”

The resulting aim, of course, is to ensure that effective drugs are efficiently moved from the lab to the patient “so that [more] lives can be saved.”

French startup Malt is raising a $28.6 million funding round (€25 million) with Idinvest Partners leading the round and existing investors ISAI and Serena also participating. Overall, the company has raised $36.6 million since its creation (€32 million).

Malt has created a marketplace for companies and engineers working as freelancers. There are currently 100,000 freelancers on the platform and 15,000 companies using Malt regularly.

With today’s funding round, the company wants to grow its platform in other European countries. There are 10,000 freelancers on the platform in Spain, and the company plans to open new markets, starting with Germany and the Netherlands.

The startup thinks that hiring freelancers can be a great alternative to big IT consulting companies. Every time a freelancer accepts a job, clients rate the freelancer. This way, clients can know for sure that somebody is a capable developer.

On the other side, freelancers don’t necessarily have all the connections to find freelancing jobs on their own. Malt can help you work with more companies. The startup also acts as a sort of broker. You no longer have to send emails weeks or even months after completing a job to get your money. Malt takes care of all the pesky admin tasks. Freelancers also get a few deals on benefits, health coverage, etc.

Big French companies, such as Accorhotels, Société Générale and BlaBlaCar use Malt. Seventy-five percent of France’s top 40 public companies in the CAC40 have worked with a Malt freelancer at some point. And if your big company doesn’t know much about data science, DevOps and other jobs, Malt can help you find freelancers for you.

Eastnine, a new fitness startup and app co-founded by London entrepreneur and investor Jason Goodman, is de-cloaking today, including disclosing that it has raised £2 million in seed funding.

Leading the round is London-based LocalGlobe and Berlin-based Cherry Ventures, which are joined by a list of prominent angel investors that includes Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype and London venture capital firm Atomico.

Also participating is former Spotify CMO and now Atomico partner Sophia Bendz, Supercell founder Ilkka Paananen, Moo co-founder Richard Moross, Wonga founder Errol Damelin and Climate Corp. co-founder and Atomico partner Siraj Khaliq, amongst others.

The links to current Atomico personnel, who have all invested in a personal capacity, shouldn’t come as a total surprise. Before co-founding Eastnine, Goodman spent a year as an Atomico Executive-in-Residence (XiR), where he mentored founders within the venture capital firm’s portfolio. Prior to Atomico, he was founder and CEO of product design agency Albion, which was acquired by KBS.

Launching in beta for iOS, the Eastnine app is initially focusing on running, blending professional coaching sessions delivered via audio with more innovative social features. The latter includes the ability to “race” against other Eastnine runners who have previously taken the same coaching session. The feature uses asynchronous session data, but is presented on a map in real time, something akin to racing against an action replay.

The social element, explained Goodman in a call yesterday, is important to help motivate people to engage with and improve their fitness. That’s because running can often feel incredibly isolated and it is difficult to see an improvement because it can be slow to manifest.

“A daily run is hard to make a habit and can be inherently solitary,” says Goodman. “Doing it with others makes it enjoyable, purposeful and addictive. We’ve tried all sorts of apps, but they are linear and lonely and miss the extra push you get from doing it with others, on your terms. Our training experience combines the fun and sport of being surrounded by other Eastnine runners on a real-time leaderboard with [a] genuinely knowledgeable coaching approach that inspires people to run more and run better.”

(“Hate running but now actually doing it,” is how one London millennial founder described the Eastnine app, having taken part in the startup’s closed beta.)

More broadly, Goodman says he wants to disrupt the “con” in fitness and the way people approach fitness everyday. “We want to do this by helping to create the right habits, making it accessible, social and enjoyable,” he tells me, whilst bemoaning the number of charlatans that currently exist in the fitness space. He also believes the industry is crying out for a more British and quietly European approach, instead of the “shouty” coaching style often imported from North America.

The Eastnine coaching team is made up of qualified coaches from the world of professional sport. They include Team GB athletes JJ Jegede and Lewis Richardson; former professional rugby player Leo Savage; osteopath to elite sports professionals Alice Monger-Godfrey; and nutritionist to competitive cyclists and Ironman athletes Will Girling.

“The fitness industry on so many levels is a con,” says Goodman. “Too many products and services are sold to us in a way that suggests an immediate fix — but human nature means that when we don’t see results, or create the right habits, we don’t push on and make tangible progress. The real challenge is to learn the right habits that help us make real progress. The cons are well-documented: gyms make profit on the users that don’t show up or cancel their membership and social media is full of pseudo celebrities selling the latest appetite suppressant lollipop that they have never used but are happy to endorse. The category is full of people saying one thing and trying to sell you something else.”

While in beta, the Eastnine app remains entirely free. However, the startup plans to eventually switch to a freemium model, with an optional monthly subscription similar to Calm or Headspace that can be canceled at any time. “We want as many people using it as possible so we can develop the service with our members’ feedback,” adds Goodman. “We’ll use a freemium approach so a portion of content will always be free.”

Meanwhile, it would be remiss not to mention Eastnine’s other co-founders. They are David McCreary, previously VP Engineering of Boiler Room and senior software engineer at NextVR; Cat Forrest, former international GB high jumper, Rapha cycling ambassador and marketeer at Virgin Group; and Matt Harrison, previously Strategy Director at innovation agency Seymourpowell.