The Q2 2020 venture capital market did not bring a catastrophic slowdown to either the global private investment scene or the U.S.’s own VC scene. But inside the rosier-than-anticipated private capital results of the second quarter, there were pockets of weakness, and strength, that we should understand as we look to the rest of 2020 and the continuance of the pandemic-driven economy.

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This morning we’re exploring trends detailed in the PitchBook-NVCA Q2 venture report, adding to our coverage of similar data sets produced by competing venture and private business information sources CB Insights and Crunchbase.

The NVCA data provides a useful cross section of venture activity beyond the usual quarterly totals, allowing us to better understand the diverging fortunes of domestic venture investment into business-serving startups (which appear strong), and investments into consumer-serving startups (which appear weak).

It also provides a peek into AI/ML-focused investing, a topic that TechCrunch has covered extensively this year. And, finally, we have a lens into recent U.S. VC results for startups that have at least one female founder, or were founded by all-women teams.

Some of the news is positive, and some of it is less so. But we owe it to ourselves to understand all of it. So to wrap up our week’s dive into Q2 VC activity, let’s get into our final look at the data, focusing today on the nuances of the United States’s own venture results.

B2B’s rise continues

As 2019 came to a close, TechCrunch wrote about a notable trend: Seed investors shifted their attention from consumer-focused startups to business-focused startups. Seed deals had moved from majority-B2C to majority-B2B, in other words.

Boston-based startup Activ Surgical has raised a $15 million round of venture funding led by ARTIS Ventures, and including participation from LRVHealth, DNS Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, Tao Capital Partners and Rising Tide VC. The round will help Activ continue to develop and expand availability of its software platform, which it launched to market in May.

Activ Surgical’s ActivEdge platform uses data collected from surgical implements outfitted with sensors created by the company to collect real-time data during the actual surgical process. That data is then used to inform the development of machine learning and AI-based visualizations that can provide guidance to surgeons and surgical systems to help them reduce the occurrence of potential errors, and ultimately improve outcomes for patients.

The company’s primary aim is to bring technological innovation to the sphere of surgical vision, which still relies primarily on methods like using fluorescent dyes that date back more than 70 years. Activ wants to use computer vision to provide real-time visual insight into things that surgeons wouldn’t be able to see on their own — and ultimately to use those insights to power the next generation of both collaborative surgical robots and eventually even fully autonomous robotic surgical procedures.

ActivSight is the company’s first product in its ActivEdge platform offering, and is a small, connected imaging coddle that can be attached to existing laparoscopic and arthroscopic surgical instruments. The company is currently tracking toward getting their hardware cleared by the FDA for use by Q4 this year, and are working with eight hospital partners for pilot projects in the U.S.

The company has raised a total of $32 million in funding to date.

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Digital marketplaces are becoming part of public services. Chini discusses state health insurance programs. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to...

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Uber said Thursday it has acquired Routematch, an Atlanta-based company that provides software to transit agencies as the ride-hailing company looks to offer more SaaS-related services to cities.

Uber did not share terms of the deal. However, it doesn’t appear to be a minor “acqui-hire,” in which a company is purchased to land a few talented employees. Instead, Uber is making a strategic acquisition for a company that has developed software used by more than 500 transit agencies.

The operations of the 170-person company will continue and CEO Pepper Harward will remain.

The acquisition marks Uber’s push to become a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to public transit agencies. Routematch’s software provides trip planning, vehicle tracking, payment and tools for fixed route transit like buses as well as paratransit services. The 20-year-old company has a wide range of customers, including rural and suburban enclaves.

Last month, Uber locked in a deal to manage with a SaaS product an on-demand service for Marin County in the San Francisco Bay area. It was Uber’s first software partnership with a public transit agency.

Uber’s foray into SaaS has been years in the making, David Reich, head of Uber Transit, said in a recent interview.

“Uber knows that for cities to thrive, public transit has to thrive,” Reich said.

Uber has been developing services related to public transit since 2015, first with a planning feature and then ticketing, Reich noted. The public transit feature called Journey Planning is available in more than 15 cities around the world, including the Marin area since 2019. The company has also worked with Denver and Las Vegas. In 2018, Uber partnered with mobile ticketing platform Masabi to let people book and use transit tickets from within the Uber app.

Openpath, the developer of software-based security systems for office access, has raised $36 million in new financing as businesses try to find ways to make employees feel more comfortable about coming back to work.

The round was led by Greycroft, which had been following the company’s progress for years, and included participation from strategic investors like Okta Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of Lincoln Property Companies, Allegion Ventures and Sentre, and included follow-on from existing investors.

For the greater Los Angeles-based Openpath, the new funding offers a chance to boost its sales and marketing efforts and develop new security-focused products for companies and property managers trying to woo tenants back to the shared office space during a global pandemic.

“Openpath is clearly one of the most innovative companies in PropTech. Their solution has been rapidly accepted by the market and it’s clear to me they will be the leading access security platform for the built world, ” said Mark Terbeek, a partner at Greycroft, in a statement. “We have followed this team closely since their launch and preempted their fundraise plans, along with a host of important strategic investors, to lead this new round of capital. We are thrilled to be an investor as they execute on their ambitious road map and bring critical new solutions to a marketplace suddenly impacted by COVID-19.”

According to Openpath, Greycroft made it clear that they wanted to pre-empt any fundraising process the company would have attempted later in the year, so the firm and the company began to work on a round over the past quarter — even as the COVID-19 epidemic was spreading in the U.S.

Openpath also noted that the strategic partners involved in the round had worked with the company for at least a year, leading to a relatively smooth investment process.

What’s attractive to the investors — and to potential customers — is likely the company’s deep integration with Okta for digital identification and the use of the mobile-based credential and permission-based software that gets rid of the need for key cards or physical identifiers. Both Hines and Lincoln Property Company use the service to give landlords and tenants control over who can access properties.

The new funding offers Openpath a chance to boost its sales and marketing efforts and develop new security-focused products for companies and property managers trying to woo tenants back to the shared office space during a global pandemic.

The argument from Openpath’s chief executive Alex Kazerani is that as more workers push for flexible work schedules that incorporate an office and remote work, companies will need more controls over access.

“Our technology offers instant mobile credentials, virtual guest passes, remote unlock capabilities, and accommodate [sic] schedule management to comply with social distancing,” he wrote in an email. “Being able to manage the security of your building and employees while you are remote is crucial.”

Last month, Guidewire Software (NYSE: GWRE), platform provider for insurance providers, announced its third quarter results. The company’s performance outpaced market expectations, driving the stock...

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Lex, a new social app for women, trans, genderqueer and non-binary people offering the ability to post personal ads, has today announced the close of a $1.5 million seed funding round.

Investors in the round include Corigin Ventures, X-Factor Ventures and Tusk Ventures, as well as angels Michelle Kennedy (Peanut), Andy Dunn (Bonobos) Amanda Bradford (The League), Rei Wang (The Grand), Bumble Fund, Elisabeth Hartley, Tavi Gevinson, Nisha Dua, A.G. Breitenstein, Albert Lee, Alice Cheng, Justin Stefano, Piera Gelardi, Philippe von Borries, Debbie Millman and Roxane Gay. Female Founders Fund led the round.

Short for Lexicon, Lex was founded by Kell Rakowski, who originally rose to some prominence after starting an Instagram account called Herstory that curated cool lesbian content from the 1800s to the 90s, including the Personals Ads found in the backs of lesbian erotica magazines from the 80s.

“[The personal ads] were just so hot, and so cool,” said Rakowski. “They were really witty and the women were super direct, and were able to express themselves in a really clear and inspiring way.”

Rakowski had an idea: What if the queer personal ad came back? She asked her Herstory followers if they’d want to post their own personals and the premise quickly took off, with hundreds of personal ads flooding in over the two-day period each month when submissions were open.

The popularity of the format led to yet another idea. Rakowski decided to set up a dating/social app that was focused on these text-based personal ads for women, trans, genderqueer and non-binary people.

Lex, which launched on the App Store in November 2019, is an MVP that does just that.

Users can set up their own profile and post personals, as well as browse the feed of other personals and like the ones that pique their interest. While the personals themselves can be rather graphic, the app is not. There are currently no pictures on Lex, with the caveat that users can link out to their Instagram account if they so choose.

Rather, users can browse through the text-based personals and like them, or message the author of the personal to start up a conversation.

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Moreover, unlike traditional dating apps, there is no mutuality required to start a private conversation. In other words, people don’t have to be “matched” to chat. Just like the personal ads of yesteryear, the author sends out a call for responses and the responses flow in.

It’s still early days for the app, but Rakowski has plans to set up the ability to post pictures to profiles (which would not be included in the feed, but would be clickable should the text intrigue you), as well as adding group chat to the app for folks looking to build community.

Lex also has plans to eventually introduce a freemium subscription model to the app, giving users extended functionality for a monthly price. For now, however, the focus is on growth and building out the app.

With the new funding, Lex is looking to hire underrepresented talent in tech for product and engineering positions. The team, comprised of five people, is currently 80% cis women and 20% cis men, with 80% identifying as LGBTQ. Three of the five team members are people of color.

Lex is being aggressive about this hiring sprint, posting its open positions on the app and on Instagram.

“I’ve gotten so many incredible queer tech talent applying for positions at Lex,” said Rakowski. “It’s so inspiring and also emotional. People are writing the most beautiful emails about how much they like Lex. Hiring is 100% our main focus.”

Qumulo, a Seattle storage startup helping companies store vast amounts of data, announced a $125 million Series E investment today on a $1.2 billion valuation.

BlackRock led the round with help from Highland Capital Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Kleiner Perkins and new investor Amity Ventures. The company reports it has now raised $351 million.

CEO Bill Richter says the valuation is more than 2x its most recent round, a $93 million Series D in 2018. While the valuation puts his company in the unicorn club, he says that it’s more important than simple bragging rights. “It puts us in the category of raising at a billion-plus dollar level during a very complicated environment in the world. Actually, that’s probably the more meaningful news,” he told TechCrunch.

It typically hasn’t been easy raising money during the pandemic, but Richter reports the company started getting inbound interest in March just before things started shutting down nationally. What’s more, as the company’s quarter closed at the end of April, they had grown almost 100% year over year, and beaten their pre-COVID revenue estimate. He says they saw that as a signal to take additional investment.

“When you’re putting up nearly 100% year over year growth in an environment like this, I think it really draws a lot of attention in a positive way,” he said. And that attention came in the form of a huge round that closed this week.

What’s driving that growth is that the amount of unstructured data, which plays to the company’s storage strength, is accelerating during the pandemic as companies move more of their activities online. He says that when you combine that with a shift to the public cloud, he believes that Qumulo is well positioned.

Today the company has 400 customers and more than 300 employees, with plans to add another 100 before year’s end. As he adds those employees, he says that part of the company’s core principles includes building a diverse workforce. “We took the time as an organization to write out a detailed set of hiring practices that are designed to root out bias in the process,” he said.

One of the keys to that is looking at a broad set of candidates, not just the ones you’ve known from previous jobs. “The reason for that is that when you force people to go through hiring practices, you open up the position to a broader, more diverse set of candidates and you stop the cycle of continuously creating what I call ‘club memberships’, where if you were a member of the club before you’re a member in the future,” he says.

The company has been around since 2012 and spent the first couple of years conducting market research before building its first product. In 2014 it released a storage appliance, but over time it has shifted more toward hybrid solutions.

Meet Waldo, a new product that wants to make mobile testing both faster and easier. The New York-based startup lets you record tests in your browser by interacting with your app like you’d normally do. Every time you compile a new build, Waldo runs the same tests you previously recorded on multiple software and hardware models to tell you if everything works fine.

If you’re an app developer, you currently have two possibilities. You can keep a bunch of smartphones and run your current build on these devices to see if there’s anything wrong, but it takes a ton of time. Or you can develop testing scripts that validate the core features of your app — but that requires additional development and creates a whole new set of headaches when you need to update your scripts.

“It’s always a bit weird that we can create incredible experiences when it comes to UX, but that the way we test those apps is outdated,” co-founder and CEO Amine Bellakrid told me.

Waldo wants to lower the barrier to entry and let smaller mobile development teams take advantage of automated functional and UI testing. It is part of a bigger trend of “no code” startups — no technical skills required.

The company raised a $6.5 million round led by First Round Capital (with Josh Kopelman), with existing investor Matrix Partners and business angels also participating.

Creating tests on Waldo is pretty straightforward. The product runs your app directly (.app / .ipa / .apk), which means you don’t have to create a special version of your app to take advantage of the platform.

After uploading your app, you see your app running in your browser window. Waldo records every screen and every action you take. For instance, you can record the signup flow or a feature that lets you upload content.

When you’re done recording your tests, Waldo keeps them for future versions. Every time you have a new build of your mobile app, Waldo runs the same tests on that new version. In addition to that, Waldo can run those tests on other devices with different screen sizes, older versions of mobile operating systems and in different languages.

If a test fails, users get notified and can browse the replay of the test. You can see exactly what went wrong to spot the problematic step more easily.

The idea is that you set up Waldo once and let it run in the background. It integrates with popular continuous integration (CI) tools, such as Fastlane, Bitrise and CircleCI. You can receive alerts in Slack or see the status of your test results in GitHub directly.

“We have customers that run 500 tests at once every week or we have customers that run 10 to 15 tests multiple times a day,” Bellakrid said.

Waldo is launching a free plan today to kick the tires, and you can then pay a subscription to run more tests. Some companies have started using Waldo already, such as AllTrails, Jumprope, KeepSafe and Elevate. Right now, Waldo only works with iOS apps, but the team is already working on adding Android support in the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact us in ways that stretch well beyond our physical health, and one side effect of that in the tech world has been a surge of attention for apps that address mental health and help with mindfulness. According to a recent report from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the world’s 10 largest English-language mental wellness apps in April saw a combined 2 million more downloads during the month of April 2020 compared with January, reaching close to 10 million total downloads for the month.

Among market leaders such as Calm and Headspace that have become big hits was a name that may be a little less familiar: Meditopia. Quietly, it has become the most-downloaded meditation app in non-English speaking markets.

Today the eponymous Istanbul and Berlin -based startup is announcing some funding to continue driving that growth — a Series A investment of $15 million co-led by Creandum and Highland Europe . Carl Fritjofsson of Creandum and Fergal Mullen of Highland Europe will join Meditopia’s board with the deal. Total funding prior to this round was $3.2 million, and this new round takes the total raised by Meditopia to $18.2 million.

The meditation market — quite paradoxically, when you think about it — is kind of chaotic and crowded. Meditopia’s unique selling point within that, however, has been that it has majored on localization for 75 global markets, in 10 languages, with a focus on long-term mental well-being programs. In a world in which English has for some become something of a questionable lingua franca in tech, that’s helped it stand out and pick up more users and gain scale. In the three years since it launched in 2017, Meditopia has grown to 14 million users across 75 countries.

Until recently, most meditation and mental health apps were built to suit the needs of English-speaking, Western culture, especially in the way these apps dealt with topics such as gender.

The startup was founded by Fatih Celebi, Berk Yilmaz and Ali Murat Ceylan.

In a statement, Murat said: “Mental wellness is something everyone should be able to achieve, regardless of their country of origin, native language, socio-economic status, ethnicity, or religion. We first focused our efforts on our home country Turkey before expanding worldwide so whether you are Latino, Japanese, Russian, North American, or Arab, you can find support and coaching in our global community.”

Carl Fritjofsson, partner at Creandum commented: “We’ve followed Meditopia for the past two years and have been incredibly impressed by how they’ve been able to capture this opportunity across the world, all while being one of the most capital-efficient run companies around.”

Fergal Mullen, founding partner at Highland Europe, said: “For too long, the technology available was created for English-speaking groups alone. Meditopia provides the alternative; a solution that helps its members get to the heart of what they need in a way that suits them. We’re thrilled to be a part of getting this vital service to those people.”

Sramana Mitra: What year does this bring us up to? Jon Hirschtick: 1993. I stayed two and a half years with Computer Vision.  Sramana Mitra: I started at MIT in the Fall of 1993. Jon Hirschtick:...

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Investors are becoming more bullish on online education platforms in India as startups demonstrate growth at the height of a global pandemic that has severely impacted other industries.

Bangalore-based startup Vedantu said on Thursday it has raised $100 million in its Series D financing round, just five months after it closed its Series C funding.

U.S.-based Coatue led the six-year-old Vedantu’s new financing round, with participation from some existing investors. The new funds valued Vedantu at $600 million, up from $275 million in February this year when the startup closed its extended Series C round. Vedantu has raised about $200 million to date.

Vedantu offers live and interactive courses for students in grades six though 12 — and in recent months it has expanded its catalog to serve students from grade one to five as well, said Vamsi Krishna, co-founder and CEO of the startup, in an interview with TechCrunch.

Students who have enrolled for the interactive sessions are required to answer questions every few minutes by tapping on their smartphone screen or on the desktop. They also can raise questions at the end of the session. Some of these sessions are free for students, but a selection of it requires a subscription, said Krishna.

Vedantu serves 25 million students each month. The startup has amassed an additional 2 million students in recent months as schools closed across the nation after New Delhi enforced a lockdown.

Krishna said Vedantu is adding to the platform more than 20,000 paying subscribers each month. More than one million students attend live classes on the platform each month, he said. In recent months, the startup has also introduced coding courses for students.

India has the largest school-age population in the world and households in the nation are willing to invest in their children’s education to advance their lives. About a million students look to pursue undergraduate courses each year, for instance.

But the quality of education and its affordability are two major challenges that millions of students, especially those living in smaller cities and towns, have to confront. An offline coaching centre can have as many as 100 students sitting in the room, with most not getting a chance to engage with the teacher. But for some, it also means there aren’t many teachers left to teach them.

Because Vedantu operates virtual classes, it has been able to accommodate more students in a session. A paid session may have as many as 600 students, while the free lessons could have 2,000, said Krishna, who is a teacher himself. Until early 2014, he also ran Lakshya Institute, which helped students prepare for undergraduate-level courses, before selling a majority stake to Mumbai-based K-12 tutoring and test preparation firm MT Educare.

Running a tech platform has also enabled Vedantu to offer its subscription service at a more affordable price than a typical offline coaching equivalent that can cost users anything between a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. To ensure that students are paying attention and identify their weaknesses, Vedantu says it has built a patented system called WAVE that evaluates about 70 parameters, including whether the student is looking at the screen. More than 90% of its students engage with the session, said Krishna, who added that the startup was working on a new iteration of WAVE.

The fundraise by Vedantu comes as investors rush to secure deals with edtech startups in India and major giants look for merger and acquisition opportunities with younger firms. Byju’s, which is now valued at $10.5 billion, raised an undisclosed amount from Mary Meeker’s Bond last month. Unacademy, which raised $110 million from General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital India and Facebook early this year, is in talks with investors to finance its new round.

Earlier this month, Unacademy acquired PrepLadder, another online learning startup, for $50 million. Days later it also acquired a majority stake in Mastree. TechCrunch reported last month that Byju’s was in talks to acquire Doubtnut.

“Online learning adoption in India is at an all-time high setting a new benchmark for the rest of the world. As we continue to focus on driving high-growth ventures, our investment in Vedantu marks our entry into the Indian EdTech market. This move underlines our strategy to partner with companies that are strategically positioned for high growth & scale. We are excited to partner Vedantu in their next stage of growth,” said Rahul Kishore, managing director at Coatue, in a statement.

Vedantu, which last month invested $2 million in InstaSolv, a startup that operates an app to help students clear their doubts, is open to investing in more startups as well, said Krishna.

The fresh capital Vedantu has raised, he said, will be deployed to expand to new categories and reach more students, especially in smaller towns and cities of India. Existing investors Tiger Global, GGV Capital, Omidyar and Westbridge Capital also participated in the new round. Accel and Tiger Global are among the earliest investors in Vedantu.

Optimizely, a San Francisco-based startup that popularized the concept of A/B testing, has laid off 15% of its staff, the company confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch. The layoff impacts around 60 people, and those laid off were given varied levels of severance. Each employee was given six months of COBRA and was allowed to keep their laptops.

“As with so many other businesses globally, Optimizely has been impacted by COVID-19. Today, we have had to make a heartbreaking decision to reduce the size of our workforce,” Erin Flynn, chief people office, wrote in a statement to TechCrunch, adding that “today’s difficult decision sets up our business for continued success.”

The startup was founded in 2009 by Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen on the idea that it helps to have customers experience different versions of the website, also known as A/B testing, to see what iteration sticks best. A year after founding, the startup went through Y Combinator and in 2013 it signed a lease for a 56,000-square-foot office in San Francisco.

Optimizely last raised $50 million in Series D financing from Goldman Sachs, bringing its total venture capital secured to date to $200 million. Other investors include Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and GV.

In June, Optimizely said it handles more than 6 billion events a day. Customers include Visa, BBC, IBM, The Wall Street Journal, Gap, StubHub and Metromile.

Optimizely was not listed as applying for a PPP loan, a program created by the government to help businesses avoid laying off staff. The loans were met with controversy in Silicon Valley, as some thought venture-backed businesses should turn to investors, instead of the government, for extra capital.

Optimizely’s layoffs are somewhat surprising, given recent earnings reports that show that enterprise SaaS companies have broadly benefited from the coronavirus pandemic. In an online work world, infrastructure and software services become more vital by the day. Box, for example, helps people manage content in the cloud and it beat expectations on adjusted profit and revenue. So why is Optimizely struggling?

There are a ton of reasons for layoffs beyond what the market thinks about a business. Optimzely’s customers are a mix of heavy-hitters in enterprise, but also include businesses that have struggled during this pandemic, including StubHub and Metromile — both of which had layoffs.

While the pace of layoffs is slowing down, cuts themselves aren’t disappearing. As the stocks show us, it’s a volatile time and businesses are looking for ways to stay financially safe.

StackHawk, the Denver-based software startup offering service to detect and fix security bugs, is doubling down on its support for the popular open-source OWASP Zed Attack Proxy web app security scanner by bringing on board its founder, Simon Bennetts.

At StackHawk, Bennetts will continue to focus on the development of the open-source project, which the company said is among the world’s most frequently used security scanning tools.

StackHawk already uses the open-source project for its underlying scanning technology and has built a business by layering on security test automation, integrations with development tools and functionality for new development paradigms. 

“Since founding ZAP, the vision has always been to deliver application security to developers,” Bennetts said, in a statement. “While the project has been widely adopted by security teams and pen testers, I’m excited to work with a team dedicated to delivering our original vision of AppSec for devs and that also believes in growing the open source community.” 

StackHawk founders Joni Klippert, Scott Gerlach and Ryan Severns and Bennetts found common cause in their belief that bug-editing tools are too often built for external enterprise security teams instead of the developers who are closest to the apps they’re building.

“Simon’s work on the ZAP project has both changed the security and open-source worlds for the better. It became clear that we were highly aligned in our mission to bring application security into the hands of developers,” said Klippert, the chief executive and founder of StackHawk, in a statement. “Simon joining the StackHawk team provides an exciting opportunity to invest more in the ZAP open source project, while also building capabilities that make it easy for enterprise development teams to streamline AppSec into their CI/CD pipelines.” 

In the eleven years since Bennetts first began working on ZAP, the OWASP Foundation-incorporated security scanner has become popular among the developer community for its dynamic application security testing.

After the hire, StackHawk said that nothing much will change. Bennetts will continue to work on the open-source project while the company will continue to build functionality around the scanner.

The Denver-based company has raised nearly $5 million in financing from investors including Flybridge, Costanoa Ventures, Matchstick Ventures and Foundry Group .

On the heels of nCino’s blockbuster debut, GoHealth’s public offering proved a more sedate affair, at least when comparing the two companies’ initial trading days.

GoHealth priced above its anticipated IPO range, selling more shares than initially planned in the process. By vending 43.5 million shares at $21 apiece — $1 per share more than the top of its preceding $18 to $20 range, and four million shares more than its target of 39.5 million — the insurance technology company put more than $900 million onto its balance sheet this week.

The debut is a win for Chicago’s industry and tech scenes. GoHealth was worth a little less than $6.7 billion at its IPO price, not counting shares that may be sold to its underwriters, which would boost its valuation.

Despite its better-than-anticipated pricing, however, GoHealth shares sagged in afternoon trading, slipping to $19.00 per share, down 9.5% as of the time of writing. The declines stand in contrast to the recent debuts of nCino, Lemonade and others, which saw their shares instantly gain value after going public.

GoHealth’s CEO, however, stressed the long-term vision of his company in an interview with TechCrunch. Speaking with Clint Jones during GoHealth’s first trading day, the executive told TechCrunch that his company’s offering was oversubscribed, and had met its goal of accumulating long-term investors during its IPO process.

The company intends to hire with its new funds, including 1,000 more licensed insurance agents, the CEO said.

Asked whether the company has plans to acquire smaller companies with its IPO funds, Jones told TechCrunch that it could be “opportunistic” regarding buying tech platforms, or smaller teams with particular talent. For the many startups competing in other parts of the insurance marketplace world — TechCrunch has covered the space extensively, including a bevy of funding rounds for insurtech startups — a newly wealthy public company could provide an interesting exit opportunity.

The company’s strong IPO pricing, if somewhat slack first-day’s trading, feels akin to a wash for related, smaller firms watching its public offering with interest; how GoHealth trades moving forward could help set the tone for select insurtech startup valuations.

For today, however, we have yet another unicorn tech-ish offering all wrapped up. GoHealth’s path to the public market’s wasn’t as straightforward as some, but it got there all the same.

Some audience questions answered by Sramana: – How do you bootstrap an AI startup? – How can I get feedback on my startup venture? Rendezvous Online with Sramana Mitra 7.14.20

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Those forced to acclimate to remote work understand what a pain it can be. Sure, there are certainly benefits to not having to commute into work each day, but among other things, you lose a lot when you eliminate human interaction. Apps like Zoom and Slack have their place, certainly, but none does a particularly good job replicating the in-person work environment.

Formed by three ex-Palantir employees and a former Googler, Y Combinator-backed Sidekick has impeccable timing. The startup (which is fittingly remotely split between the Bay Area and New York), has built a hardware solution designed to bring an always-on video connection to the desk of remote workers (which, as it so happens, is most of us non-essentials, these days).

Development of the project began in earnest when the startup set out interviewing 100+ teams to discuss the challenges of remote work.

“We reflected deeply on what’s needed to enable these organic conversations. We came from a background as ICs and managers working on distributed teams at Palantir and Google, where we had all the shiniest collaboration tools at our disposal — Slack, Zoom, Notion, Tandem,” Sidekick writes in a recent blog post. “Despite this entire suite of shiny tools, we would still fly out for a week every month from our home office in NYC to join our remote halves in London — over 20 hours in travel and thousands of dollars in expenses every month.”

Sidekick contends that teleconferencing apps like Zoom create too much friction between the user and creating a kind of virtual open office. The teams the company spoke with suggested that a dedicated hardware device was the way to go here, so Sidekick repurposed an OEMed tablet, forking Android to their purpose. The company’s roadmap involves a proprietary hardware device sporting key aspects like a depth sensor.

For now, however, it’s selling its version of the existing consumer tablet through a hardware-as-a-service plan. Customers will be charged $50 per month, per device.

“They should only pay us as long as we’re delivering that value, and stop paying us if we’re not,” Sidekick told TechCrunch when asked about the subscription method. “We see the hardware as the best way of delivering that, but we believe that what’s most fair is for our users to pay for exactly the continued value we provide — not the hardware itself.”

There’s a physical button that puts the system to sleep, but when it’s on, it’s on. Users can’t turn the camera off and remain in stealth, either. Personally, I’d be hesitant to have an always-on camera sitting in my living room (small, one bedroom New York apartment) with a direct line to my co-workers. One of the things you risk working from home is getting a little too…comfortable, if you will. After a few hours of not interacting, it’s easy to forget that there’s a camera trained on you.

The startup tells TechCrunch that the system isn’t for everyone. “Sidekick is meant for fast-moving teams, often forced into remote work, that truly need to be in the same room to make progress,” the company explains. “Teams like startup founding teams, product leadership, executives/chief-of-staffs and sales.”

There’s probably something to be said for the executives themselves who are looking for an easier way to keep tabs on employees now that they can’t just swing by their cubicle. Sidekick has a purchasing option “for teams of all sizes and setups,” though hopefully the product remains more about collaboration and less about monitoring for most teams.