Bill Baumel, Managing Director at Ohio Innovation Fund, shares terrific insight into the region’s progress.

___

Framer, the Amsterdam-based startup behind interactive design platform Framer X, has raised $24 million in Series B investment. The round is led by European VC firm Atomico, with participation from Accel and AngelList. The startup says it will use the new capital to continue building out its platform for designers and product teams. It brings the total raised to date by Framer to $33 million.

Founded by ex-Facebookers Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk, Framer has set out to ride (and power) a trend that is seeing every company having to become a digital business and often a product-first company, as consumers become accustomed to high-quality apps and other desirable digital experiences. This means that better tools are required to prototype news apps or features, and therefore help shorten the feedback loop and speed up the development process overall.

To that end, Framer X is described as a “fully integrated design, prototyping and developer handoff tool” that makes it easy to create app designs and prototypes that are as visually polished as a production app. Designs created in Framer X are powered by the React framework, and the platform enables a lot of off-the-shelf interactivity, rather than prototypes simply being static wireframes or designs with limited transitions or hotspots. You can also export front-end code for use in your production apps, should you so desire.

However, as explained during a video presentation by Bok and Dijk, what potentially sets Framer X apart from other competing app design and prototyping tools is that you can also import production components and assets into the software for re-use so that designers aren’t continually re-inventing the wheel. Via the “Framer X Store,” these React-based components can also come from and be shared by the wider developer community. Examples include video players (such as YouTube), live maps and data generators, to UI kits and interactive design systems.

This means that Framer is attempting to be a platform play in the true sense of the word, while in turn the Framer X Store is a clever way of creating network effects. Tech brands that have their own developer ecosystems (and are in part “API businesses”) can make components and visual assets available in the store to further lower the barriers for third-party app developers who want to build integrations.

Related to this, the company is announcing the beta launch of a private design store for teams on Framer X. The Team Store enables members of teams at the same company to collaborate and share brand assets, design components and more, so as to allow for internal interactive design systems to also live within the Framer platform.

Cue a statement from Atomico partner Hiro Tamura, who led on behalf of the London-based venture capital firm: “The world’s best digital products, like Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter and Snap, are designed and built by teams. Those teams are already using Framer X. We are excited about partnering with Koen, Jorn and the Framer team to help make that level of digital product excellence and innovation accessible to any company in any traditional industry, from financial services to retail and beyond.”

Meanwhile, the Framer founding backstory is worth noting. Bok and Dijk previously founded app and design studio Sofa, which they sold to Facebook in 2011. As part of the deal they relocated to Facebook’s headquarters in the U.S., and worked on various products, reporting directly to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. However, seeing an opportunity to help more companies transition to becoming digital-first and product-led, the pair left to found Framer in 2014.

London’s transport regulator, TfL has announced a partnership with Bosch for its forthcoming co-working space in Shoreditch.

The civic tech project is intended to run for 18 months as a pilot — though Bosch’s ‘Connectory’ co-working facility won’t open until the end of January. A company spokeswoman confirmed the partnership is nonetheless up and running now.

The aim of the collaborative project is to share data and expertise, including by tapping into London’s startup ecosystem, to land on new ideas for tackling urban mobility issues — from traffic jams to awful air quality.

Transport issues are especially pressing for the city as London’s population is forecast to reach a staggering 10.8 million by 2041 — which would mean around six million additional trips being generated per day.

Specific issues TfL is looking for help with include developing more efficient, greener and safer vehicles; reducing congestion; and encouraging more people to walk, cycle and take public transport across London, it said today.

TfL will be providing technical knowledge and “a wide range” of datasets throughout the pilot to allow participating companies to test ideas and “understand patterns in more detail than has previously been possible”, it added.

The data will be based on its existing Unified API and open data platform, which it notes is already underpinning nearly 700 apps used by approaching half (42 per cent) of Londoners.

Startups selected for the collaboration will be provided with dedicated space within Bosch’s Connectory, alongside TfL staff who will also be based there during the pilot.

Commenting in a statement, Arun Srinivasan, executive VP and head of mobility solutions at Bosch UK said: “We believe that the collaboration between Bosch and TfL will enable us to accelerate the development of technologies, products and services that have a positive impact on city life.”

Startups will be selected by Bosch, according to a TfL spokesman. We’ve asked for more details on selection criteria.

Update: A Bosch spokeswomen told us: “There will be a number of programmes running for start ups in the Connectory. These programmes will be around specific mobility challenges and many will have open calls for start ups to enter. We also welcome direct approaches by small business/start ups who want to be part of the Connectory community feel they have something to offer that will help solve London’s transport challenges. Get in touch!”

She said there is no fixed number of startup planned to be selected for the pilot, saying they will have rolling cohorts “designed around specific London mobility challenges” — launching this process in the New Year.

“This new ‘urban mobility’ lab is the first of its kind with a primary focus on urban mobility, and will provide the forum for private sector partners, academia and public sector to work together to tackle a range of problems facing Londoners in years to come,” the pair added in a press release today.

“By facilitating closer collaboration, TfL and Bosch hope to support start-ups to develop a range of smart products and help them identify ways to bring them to market more quickly through open procurement.”

The entire co-working facility is focused on urban mobility — but will also be open to other interested companies and startups to rent or bag a space (i.e. via Bosch’s scouting programs where it does take equity), not just to the startups selected for the TfL pilot.

Bosch’s network of Connectory co-innovation spaces also links out to cities internationally, including Chicago and Stuttgart, further expanding potential knowledge-sharing opportunities.

Commenting in a statement, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “This initiative will foster closer working between London’s tech sector and other leading tech cities. If we are to use data and smart technology to help solve the biggest problems our city faces, it’s crucial we take a more collaborative approach. I see London’s future as a global ‘test-bed city’ for civic innovation, where the best ideas are developed, amplified and scaled.”

Depending on the outcome of the pilot, TfL said the Greater London Authority may seek similar collaborative approaches to support other aspects of its work — including housing, environment and policing, aligning with the mayor of London’s strategic priorities.

“I’ve been clear I want London to become the world’s smartest city and this is a further step towards realising that ambition,” Khan added.

This report was updated with additional detail about startup selection; and to correct that the lab will focus exclusively on urban mobility — but is also open to interested companies to rent space, as well as to startups Bosch selects to take a stake in  

Selling equity to buy Facebook and Google ads is a bad deal for startups. Clearbanc offers a fundraising alternative. For fast-growing businesses reliably earning sales from their marketing spend, Clearbanc offers funding from $5,000 to $10 million in exchange for a steady revenue share of their earnings until it’s paid back plus a 6 percent fee. Clearbanc picks which merchants qualify by developing tech that scans their Stripe, Facebook ads and other accounts to assess financial health and momentum. It’s already doled out $100 million this year.

“As a business successfully scales, we continue to provide them ongoing capital,” co-founder and CEO Andrew D’Souza tells me. “Our goal is to be the first and last backer of a successful business and save the entrepreneur from having to take hundreds of pitch meetings to keep their company funded.”

After largely flying under the radar since being found in 2015, now Clearbanc has some big funding news of its own. It’s now raised $70 million from a seed and new Series A round from Emergence Capital, Social Capital, CoVenture, Founders Fund, 8VC and more, with Emergence’s Santi Subotovsky joining the board.

“Venture capital has shifted. Instead of funding true research and development, today 40 percent of venture capital goes directly to buying Google and Facebook ads,” D’Souza claims (that may be true for some e-commerce startups, but TechCrunch could not verify that stat for all startups). “Equity is the most expensive way to fund digital ad spend and repeatable growth. So we created something new.”

Clearbanc emerged from an angel investing alliance between two serial entrepreneurs. D’Souza built Andreessen Horowitz-funded social recruiting site Top Prospect, USV-backed education tech company Top Hat and Mastercard portfolio biometric authentication wearable startup Nymi. He helped raise more than $300 million in venture after a stint at McKinsey, when he began co-investing with Michele Romanow, a VC from Canada’s version of the TV show Shark Tank called Dragons’ Den. She’d bootstrapped shopping hub Buytopia that acquired 10 other e-commerce companies, and discount-finder SnapSaves that she sold to Groupon in 2014.

“We started investing together in some of the deals we would see from Dragons’ Den and often found that an equity investment wasn’t the right structure for these consumer product companies. They had great economics and had found a niche of customers, but often didn’t want to exit the business at any point,” D’Souza recalls. “They needed money to acquire more customers, scale up their marketing efforts and online ad spend. So we started to do these revenue share deals.”

Both engineers, they built tech to automate the due diligence and find companies with healthy unit economics and customer acquisition costs. The partnership blossomed into Clearbanc, and romance. “We’re also a couple, so we spend a lot of time together,” D’Souza writes. Inter-startup dating can be problematic, but so far seems to be working for Clearbanc.

Now Clearbanc has poured over $100 million into 500 companies in 2018, like Vinebox. The subscription wine box company used Clearbanc to grow its membership numbers while raising a Series A for developing new products. Clearbanc’s companies pay out 5 percent in revenue share until the investment plus 6 percent is paid back. That’s a great deal for companies that are already proven moneymakers, like Hunt A Killer, a murder mystery game subscription box that had raised $10,000 and was selling swiftly. Derisked, it didn’t need venture, and has now taken $8 million from Clearbanc to ramp its business.

Clearbanc is rising up at a time when organic growth channels are shutting down. The ruthless optimization of algorithmic feeds by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter suppress marketing content unless businesses are willing to pay. Without free virality opportunities, companies must rely on venture funding or loans just to turn around and pay that money to big ad platforms. With the new cash, which also comes from iNovia Capital, Real Ventures, Portag3, Precursor, WTI, Berggruen and FJ Labs, Clearbanc plans to expand abroad after doing deals in the U.S. and Canada. It’s also going to invest in building awareness as well as its data science capabilities.

D’Souza and Romanow must have confidence in their tech, as a wrong investment means they might never get their cash back. “We pay a lot of attention to our underwriting and decision-making process because if we make a mistake, we can lose a lot of money. Unlike a VC, we don’t expect the majority of our companies to fail and have the winners make up for the losses,” says D’Souza. One big misstep could wipe out the gains from a bunch of other investments.

Meanwhile, it has to break the norms of how businesses find funding. Startups immediately seek traditional venture or debt financing that can depend on the flashy names already on their cap table, while merchants turn to exploitative online lenders that require a personal guarantee and base their decisions on the founders’ own credit history instead of the business.

While riskier hard-tech startups that will take years to get to market will still need venture, a new crop of direct-to-consumer products and other fast-monetizing startups that are already humming can avoid diluting their team and investors by using Clearbanc. D’Souza concludes, “We’ve spent our entire careers as entrepreneurs and wanted to build a new asset class to help entrepreneurs grow.”

Enterprise software giant SAP announced today that it has agreed to acquire Qualtrics for $8 billion in cash, just before the survey and research software company was set to go public. The deal is expected to be completed in the first half of 2019. Qualtrics last round of venture capital funding in 2016 raised $180 million at a $2.5 billion valuation.

This is the second-largest ever acquisition of a SaaS company, after Oracle’s purchase of Netsuite for $9.3 billion in 2016.

In a conference call, SAP CEO Bill McDermott said Qualtrics’ IPO was already oversubscribed and that the two companies began discussions a few months ago. SAP claims its software touches 77 percent of the world’s transaction revenue, while Qualtrics’ products include survey software that enables its 9,000 enterprise users to gauge things like customer sentiment and employee engagement.

McDermott compared the potential impact of combining SAP’s operational data with Qualtrics’ customer and user data to Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “The legacy players who carried their ‘90s technology into the 21st century just got clobbered. We have made existing participants in the market extinct,” he said. (SAP’s competitors include Oracle, Salesforce.com, Microsoft, and IBM.)

SAP, whose global headquarters is in Walldorf, Germany, said it has secured financing of €7 billion (about $7.93 billion) to cover acquisition-related costs and the purchase price, which will include unvested employee bonuses and cash on the balance sheet at close.

Ryan Smith, who co-founded Qualtrics in 2002, will continue to serve as its CEO. After the acquisition is finalized, the company will become part of SAP’s Cloud Business Group, but retain its dual headquarters in Provo, Utah and Seattle, as well as its own branding and personnel.

According to Crunchbase, the company raised a total of $400 million in VC funding from investors including Accel, Sequoia, and Insight Ventures. It had intended to sell 20.5 million shares in its debut for $18 to $21, which could have potentially grossed up to about $495 million. This would have put its valuation between $3.9 billion to $4.5 billion, according to CrunchBase’s Alex Wilhelm.

This year, Qualtrics’ revenue grew 8.5 percent from $97.1 million in the second-quarter to $105.4 million in the third-quarter, according to its IPO filing. It reported third-quarter GAAP net income of $4.9 million. That represented an increase from the $975,000 it reported in the previous quarter, as well as its net profit in the same period a year ago of $4.7 million. Qualtrics grew its operating cash flow to $52.5 million in the first nine months of 2018, compared to $36.1 million during the same period in 2017.

In today’s announcement, Qualtrics said it expects its full-year 2018 revenue to exceed $400 million and forecasts a forward growth rate of more than 40 percent, not counting the potential synergies of its acquisition by SAP.

Qualtrics’ main competitors include SurveyMonkey, which went public in September.

The second wave of Internet-era travel companies has captured the attention of venture capitalists.

In the last five years, travel companies have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital funding. That includes short-term rental startups, travel and tourism apps, marketplaces for “experiences” and other travel or hospitality tech platforms. Airbnb, a $38 billion company and an anomaly in the category, has raised $3 billion in that same time frame, according to PitchBook.

In the last few months alone, aspiring Concur-competitor TripActions and travel activities platform Klook entered the “unicorn” club with large venture rounds that valued both of the businesses at more than $1 billion. Meanwhile, luggage maker Away raised $50 million at a $400 million valuation, TourRadar nabbed $50 million and TravelPerks brought in $44 million. Plus, smaller startups in the space like Rocketrip, Freebirds, IfOnly, KKDay, Duffel and RedDoorz all closed modest funding rounds.

“Something is really happening in the industry; something bigger than us,” TripActions co-founder Ariel Cohen said in a recent conversation with TechCrunch about his company’s $154 million Series C financing. “Different startups are identifying the opportunity here and the fact that companies want to make sure their employees are happy while they are on the go. That’s why you see investments in companies like Brex and like TripActions.”

Brex, though not classified as a travel startup, lets startup employees earn extra points on business travel with its corporate credit card for startups. It recently raised a $125 million Series C at a $1.1 billion valuation.

Global travel and tourism is one of the most valuable industries worth some $7 trillion. The online travel market, in particular, is expected to grow to $817 billion by 2020. VCs are hunting for tech-enabled startups poised to dominate that slice.

“You have a new wave of businesses where all of that digital infrastructure is set up, so the focus can be on things like efficiency, improved customer service, scale and growth — you have a ton of companies popping up catering to those needs,” Defy Partners co-founder Neil Sequeira told TechCrunch. Sequeira was a managing director at General Catalyst when the firm made its first investment in Airbnb.

On the other hand, you have a whole cohort of travel business founded amid the dot-com boom that are looking to technology startups for a much-needed infusion of innovation. Many of those larger companies have become active acquirers, fueling VC interest in the space. SAP Concur, for example, acquired the formerly VC-backed travel-booking startup Hipmunk in 2016. Before that, it bought travel planning company TripIt for $120 million, among others.

Expedia has gobbled up a number of travel brands too, like travel photography community Trover; Airbnb-competitor HomeAway, which it paid a whopping $3.9 billion for in 2015; and most recently, both Pillow and ApartmentJet.

Many of these acquisitions are for peanuts, which is far from ideal for a venture-funded company. And building a travel business is cash intensive, hence the $4.4 billion Airbnb has raised to date or even TripActions’ $236 million in total VC funding. To keep momentum in the space, companies need to be striking larger M&A deals.

It doesn’t help that many in and around the venture capital industry are predicting an imminent turn in the market. Travel companies, which are reliant upon a consumer’s tendency to spend excess cash, will be among the first sectors to be impacted by hostile economic conditions.

“If the market turns, people aren’t going to spend $10,000 on a trip to Zimbabwe,” Sequeira said, referencing companies like IfOnly, which sells curated experiences.

Travel startups should raise now while the market is hot. The conditions may not remain favorable for long.

The kids in Madrid’s El Retiro Park are loving their new on-demand joyriding toys. Lime launched its scooters in the Spanish capital this summer.

Spending a weekend in the city center last month the craze was impossible to miss. Scooters parked in clusters vying for pay-to-play time. Sometimes lined up tidily. All too often not.

The bright Lime rides really stood out, though it’s not the only brand in town. Scooter startups have been quick to hop on the international expansion bandwagon as they gun for growth.

Grandly proportioned El Retiro clearly makes a great spot for taking a scooter for a spin. Test rides beget joyrides, and so the kids were hopping on. Sometimes two to one.

The boulevard linking the Prado with the Reina Sofia was another popular route to scoot.

While a busy central bar district was a hot ride-ditching spot later on. Lines of scooters were vying for space with the vintage street bollards.

The appeal was obvious: Bowl up to the bar and drink! No worries about parking or how to get your ride home afterwards. But for Saturday night revellers there was suddenly a new piece of street furniture to lurch around, with slouching handlebars sticking up all over the place. Anyone trying to navigate the pavement in a wheelchair wouldn’t have had much fun.

In another of Spain’s big tourist cities the scooter story is a little different: Catalan capital Barcelona hasn’t had an invasion of on-demand scooter startups yet but scooters have crept in. In recent years locals have tapped in of their own accord — buying not renting.

Rides are a front-of-store sight in electronics shops, big and small — costing a few hundred euros. Even for a flashy Italian design…

Take a short walk in one of the more hipster barrios and chances are you’ll pass someone who’s bought into the craze for nipping around on two wheels. There’s lots of non-electric scooters too but e-scooters do seem to have carved out a growing niche for themselves with a certain type of Barcelona native.

Again, you can see the logic: Well-dressed professionals can zip around narrow streets that aren’t always great for finding a place to (safely) lock up a bike.

There’s actually a pretty wide variety of wheeled e-rides in play for locals with the guts to get on them. Some with seats and/or handles, others with almost nothing. (The hands-in-pockets hipsters on self-balancing unicycles are quite the sight.)

In both of these Spanish cities it’s clear people are falling for — and, well, sometimes off — the micro-mobility trend.

But the difference between the on-demand scooters being toyed with in Madrid vs Barcelona’s locally owned two wheelers is a level of purpose and intent.

The Lime rides in Madrid’s center seemed mostly a tourist novelty. At least for now, having only had a couple of months to bed in.

Whereas the organic growth of scooters in Barcelona barrios is about people who live there feeling a need.

Even the unicycling hipsters seem to be actually on their way somewhere.

Hop on

What does this mean for scooter startups? It’s another example of how technology’s utility and wider societal impacts can vary when you parachute a new thing into a market and hope people jump on board vs growth being organic and more gradual because it’s led by real-world demand.

And it’s essential to think about impacts where scooters and micro-mobility is concerned because all this stuff must piggyback on shared public spaces. No one has the luxury of being able to avoid what’s buzzing up and down their street.

That’s why lots of on-demand scooters have ended up trashed and vandalized — as residents make their feelings known (having not been asked about the alien invaders in the first place).

In Europe there’s a further twist because the spaces scooter startups are seeking to colonize are already well served with all sorts of public transport options. So there’s a clear and present danger that these new kids on the block won’t displace anything. And will just mean more traffic and extra congestion — as happened with ride-hailing.

In Madrid, the first tranche of on-demand scooters seems to be generating pretty superficial and additive use. Offering a novel alternative to walking between sights or bars on a trip to-do list. Just possibly they’re replacing a short taxi or metro hop.

In the park, they were being used 100% for fun. Perhaps takings are down at the boating lake.

Barcelona has plenty of electro-powered joyriding down at the beach front in summer — where shops rent all sorts of wheels to tourists by the hour. But away from the beach locals don’t seem to be wasting scooter charge riding in circles.

They’re stepping out for regular trips like commuting to and from work. In other words, scooters are useful.

Given all this activity and engagement micro-mobility does seem to offer genuine transformative potential in dense urban environments. At least where the climate doesn’t punish for most of the year.

This is why investors are so hot on scooters. But the additive nature of micro-mobility underlines a pressing need for the technology to be properly steered if cities, residents and societies are to get the best benefits.

Scooters could certainly replace some moped trips. Even some local car journeys. So they could play an important role in reducing pollution and noise by taking trips away from petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles.

Because they offer a convenient, low-barrier-to-entry alternative with populist pull.

Not being too high speed also means, in and of themselves, they’re fairly safe.

If you’re just barrio hopping or can map most of your social life across a few city blocks there’s no doubting their convenience. Novelty is not the only lure.

Hop off

Though, equally, the local-level journeys that scooters are best suited for could just as easily be completed on foot, by bike or via public transit options like a metro.

And Barcelona’s congested streets don’t look any less packed with petrol engines — yet.

Which means scooters are both an opportunity and a risk.

If policymakers get the regulations right, a smart city could leverage their fun factor to nudge commuters away from more powerful but less environmentally friendly vehicles — with, potentially, some very major gains up for grabs.

Subsidized scooters coupled with a framework of congestion zones that levy fees on petrol/diesel engines is one simple example.

A clever policy could open the possibility of excluding cars almost entirely from city centers — so that streets could be reclaimed for new leisure and retail opportunities that don’t demand masses of parking space on tap.

Pollution is a chronic problem in almost all large cities in the world. So reshaping city centers to be more people-centric and less toxic to human health by displacing cars would be an incredible win for micro-mobility.

Even as the hop on, hop off ease of scooters offers a suggestive glimpse of what’s possible if we dare to rethink urban architecture to put people rather than four-wheeled vehicles first.

Yet get the policy wrong and scooters could end up — at very best — a frivolous irrelevance. A joyride that disrupts going nowhere. Yet another nuisance on already choked streets. An optional extra that feels disposable and gets rudely discarded because no one feels invested.

In this scenario the technology is not socially transformative. It’s more likely an antisocial nuisance. And a pointless drain on resources because it’s doing no more than disrupting walking.

Scooter startups have already run into some of these issues. And that’s not surprising given how fast they’ve been trying to grow. Their early expansionist playbook does also risk looking like Uber all over again.

Yet Uber could have pioneered micro-mobility itself. But being ‘laser focused on growth’ seemingly gave the company tunnel vision. Only now, under a new CEO, it’s all change. Now Uber wants to be a one-stop platform for all sorts of transport options.

But how many years did it waste missing the disruptive potential of micro-mobility coming down the road because it was too busy trying to fit more cars into cities — and ignoring how residents felt about that?

An obsession with growth at all costs may well be a side effect of major VC dollars flooding in. But for startups it really does pay to stay self-aware, perhaps especially when you’re rolling in money. Else you might find your investors funding your biggest blind spot — if you end up missing the next even more transformative disruption.

The really clever trick to pull off is not ‘scale fast or die trying’; it’s smart growth that’s predicated upon applying innovative technologies in ways that bring whole communities along with them. That’s true transformation.

For scooters that means not just dumping them on cities without any thought beyond creaming a profit off of anything that moves. But getting residents and communities engaged with the direction of travel. Partnering with people and policymakers on the right incentives to steer innovation onto its best track.

Move people around cities, yes, and shift them out of their cars.

There’s little doubt that Uber’s old ‘growth at any cost’ playbook was hugely wasteful and damaging (not least to the company’s own reputation). And now it’s having to retrofit a more inclusive approach at the same time as unpicking an ‘environmentally insensitive’ legacy that original playbook really doesn’t look so smart.

Scooter startups are still young and have made some of their own mistakes trying to chase early scale. But there are reasons to be cheerful about this new crop of mobility startups too.

Signs they see value and opportunities in being pro-actively engaged with the environments they’re operating in. Having also learnt some hard early lessons about the need to be very sensitive to shared spaces.

Bird announced a program this summer offering discounted rides to people on low incomes, for example. Lime has a similar program.

These are small but interesting steps. Here’s hoping we’re going to see a lot more.

Meet Bubble a bootstrapped startup that has been building a powerful service that lets you create a web application even if you don’t know how to code. Many small and big companies rely on Bubble for their website.

I have to say I was quite skeptical when I first heard about Bubble. Many startups have already tried to make coding as easy as playing with Lego bricks. But it’s always frustratingly limited.

Bubble is more powerful than your average website building service. It recreates all the major pillars of web programming in a visual interface.

It starts with a design tab. You start with a blank canvas and you can create web pages by dragging and dropping visual elements on the screen. You can put elements wherever you want, resize maps, text boxes, images and more. You can click on the preview button to see the development version of your time whenever your want.

In the second tab, you can create the logic behind your site. It works a bit like Automator on the Mac. You add blocks to create a chronological action. You can set some conditions within each block.

In the third tab, you can interact with your database. For instance, you can create a sign up page and store profile information in the database. At any time, you can import and export data.

There are hundreds of plugins that let you accept payments with Stripe, embed a TypeForm, use Intercom for customer support via chat, use Mixpanel, etc. You can also use your Bubble data outside of Bubble. For instance, you can build an iPhone app that relies on your Bubble database.

Many small companies started using Bubble, and it’s been working fine for some of them. For instance, Plato uses Bubble for all its back office. Qoins and Meetaway run on Bubble. Dividend Finance raised $365 million and uses Bubble.

The startup takes care of hosting your application for you. Every time you resize your instance as your application gets bigger, you pay more.

Even though the company never raised any money, it already generates $115,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Bubble is still a small startup, which can be scary for bigger customers. But the company wants to improve the product so that customers don’t see the limitations of Bubble. Now, the challenge is to grow faster than customers’ needs.

Nested, the London-based “data-driven” estate agency that provides a cash advance to help you buy a new home before you’ve sold your old one, has raised a further £120 million in funding. The new round is a mixture of equity and debt: £20 million and £100 million, respectively. Leading the equity round is Northzone, and Balderton Capital, while the debt finance comes from an unnamed institutional investor.

It is noteworthy that Balderton has only just invested in Nested several rounds into the company’s existence, considering that the London-based venture capital firm typically invests earlier at Series A. Balderton is also a backer of GoCardless, the payments company previously co-founded by Nested founder Matt Robinson. That said, Balderton General Partner Tim Bunting did invest in Nested in a personal capacity very early on.

Launched in late 2016, Nested competes with high-end estate agents by providing all of the services needed to sell your house, but with a key difference. In addition to handling valuation, marketing and sales, the startup will loan you up to 95 per cent of the market value of your property as a cash advance, that way you’re able to purchase a new home prior to your old one selling. Before Brexit and the uncertainty it has caused with regards to London house prices, that figure was up to 97 percent of the market value of the property, and I understand Nested hopes to return to that percentage once things settle down.

More broadly, the idea behind Nested is to eliminate much of the stress and uncertainty of selling and buying a home, including what your final budget will be, and also ensure that you’re never caught up in the dreaded property ‘chain’ and miss out on your desired home, or are kept in limbo indefinitely waiting for your property to sell. By becoming a cash buyer, it also puts you in the strongest possible position to negotiate on your onward purchase. Robinson says this typically sees savings of 2-4 percent.

In return, Nested charges a fee from 2-4 per cent (plus VAT) depending on how soon you want to receive the advance, and takes a loss if it fails to sell the property for an amount above its initial advance. The idea is to incentivise the startup to always try to get you the genuine market price or more.

Asked how well that is working out so far, Robinson tells me historical valuation accuracy is on average within 1.5 percent of what the company predicted. Better still, Nested is running at 100 percent accuracy for 2018 and is confident enough to make this data public.

“The traditional agents don’t even track it and the online players do their best to obscure the fact that they sell only roughly 4/10th of properties they take on i.e. most customers pay them £1,000 up-front to not sell their house and are left out-of-pocket!” says the Nested founder.

To date, Nested has helped over 400 home-owners, and, aside from increasing volume, including helping property owners outside of London, the company says it plans to further expand its product offering. The bulk of these new products will continue to target sellers to “radically improve the selling experience”. However, I understand that since sellers are buyers, too, future services could also include using Nested’s data, tech and expertise to help with the buying process as well.

Adds Robinson in a statement: “We’re excited to receive the backing from some of Europe’s top VCs who share our vision for fixing the age-old problem of buying and selling homes. We are building an incredible team to offer an unassailable service with the most progressive technology in the property industry. This investment will allow us to continue solving the problems that prevent people from moving home with ease”.

By Guest Author Marylene Delbourg-Delphis Peter Cappelli, Professor of Management at Wharton School and Director of the Wharton’s Center for Human Resources endorsed Marylene Delbourg-Delphis’...

___

  Marylene Delbourg-Delphis is a serial technology CEO, executive consultant and board member who has focused on avant-garde products throughout her career. For 30 years, she has empowered...

___

Sramana Mitra: Are you chasing unicorns? Kerry Rupp: No. The other thing about our business is that we are looking for capital-efficient companies that aren’t likely to need a Series C and maybe not...

___

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Kelly Perdew was recorded in June 2018. Kelly...

___

Sramana Mitra: What did you learn about how many clients could each coach service? Nick Shaw: A lot of it depends on the coach. All of our coaches were either in school or professors. Currently, we...

___

Eight months after bringing in a $40 million Series D, Moogsoft‘s co-founder and chief executive officer Phil Tee confirmed to TechCrunch that the IT incident management startup had shed 18 percent of its workforce, or just over 30 employees.

The layoffs took place at the end of October; shortly after, Moogsoft announced two executive hires. Among the additions was Amer Deeba, who recently resigned from Qualys after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged him with insider trading.

Founded in 2012, San Francisco-based Moogsoft provides artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) to help teams work more efficiently and avoid outages. The startup has raised $90 million in equity funding to date, garnering a $220 million valuation with its latest round, according to PitchBook. It’s backed by Goldman Sachs, Wing Venture Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Dell’s corporate venture capital arm, Singtel Innov8, Northgate Capital and others. Wing VC founder and long-time Accel managing partner Peter Wagner and Redpoint partner John Walecka are among the investors currently sitting on Moogsoft’s board of directors.

Tee, the founder of two public companies (Micromuse and Riversoft) admitted the layoffs affected several teams across the company. The cuts, however, are not a sign of a struggling business, he said, but rather a right of passage for a startup seeking venture scale.

“We are a classic VC-backed startup that has sort of grown up,” Tee told TechCrunch earlier today. “In pretty much every successful company, there is a point in time where there’s an adjustment in strategy … Unfortunately, when you do that, it becomes a question of do we have the right people?”

Moogsoft doubled revenue last year and added 50 Fortune 200 companies as customers, according to a statement announcing its latest capital infusion. Tee said he’s “extremely chipper” about the road ahead and the company’s recent C-suite hires.

Moogsoft announced its latest executive hires on November 2, only one week after completing the round of layoffs, a common strategy for companies looking to cast a shadow on less-than-stellar news, like major staff cuts. Those hires include former Splunk vice president of finance Raman Kapur as Moogsoft’s first-ever chief financial officer and Amer Deeba, a long-time Qualys executive, as its chief operating officer.

Deeba spent the last 17 years at Qualys, a publicly traded provider of cloud-based security and compliance solutions. In August, he resigned amid allegations of insider trading. The SEC announced its charges against Deeba on August 30, claiming he had notified his two brothers of Qualys’ missed revenue targets before the company publicly announced its financial results in the spring of 2015.

“Deeba informed his two brothers about the miss and contacted his brothers’ brokerage firm to coordinate the sale of all of his brothers’ Qualys stock,” the SEC wrote in a statement. “When Qualys publicly announced its financial results, it reported that it had missed its previously-announced first-quarter revenue guidance and that it was revising its full-year 2015 revenue guidance downward. On the same day, Deeba sent a message to one of his brothers saying, ‘We announced the bad news today.’ The next day, Qualys’s stock price dropped 25%. Although Deeba made no profits from his conduct, Deeba’s brothers collectively avoided losses of $581,170 by selling their Qualys stock.”

Under the terms of Deeba’s settlement, he is ineligible to serve as an officer or director of any SEC-reporting company for two years and has been ordered to pay a $581,170 penalty.

Tee, for his part, said there was never any admission of guilt from Deeba and that he’s already had a positive impact on Moogsoft.

“[Deeba] is a tremendously impressive individual and he has the full confidence of myself and the board,” Tee said.

Virtual reality hasn’t proven itself to be the lucrative escape of the every-man, but the medium has done a fairly good job enticing the gaming community and keeping that niche (mostly) happy. While a couple of big titles have gotten some halfway-decent ports to VR, for the most part VR users are confined to whatever indies can build or whatever Oculus can fund.

BigBox VR has been trying to capture attention in the space by not building solo adventures that lead users to find themselves, but instead by trying to match VR’s physicality and immersion with social gameplay that leads users to gain greater appreciation for the medium’s scale.

The company just closed a $5 million funding round led by Shasta Ventures with participation from GSR Ventures and Pioneer Square Labs Ventures. As part of the round, Shasta partner Jacob Mullins will be getting a seat on the board.

Venture cash for VR content hasn’t exactly been free-flowing in 2018, more so for startups that aren’t caught up in building out a “platform play.” Co-founders Chia Chin Lee and Gabe Brown are more interested in just building out titles and hopefully creating one so successful that they don’t have to stop evolving it. The team at BigBox VR got its start with a cartoonish shooter title called Smashbox Arena; the small team has been really interested in finding what VR enables when it comes to competitive online play.

Funding rounds aren’t often about the achievements of the past; however, the company is currently going full-steam ahead with its next ambitious title, a battle royale title called “POPULATION: ONE.”

I had a chance to suit up in VR and dive-in with Jacob and the founding team. I got my ass kicked a couple times, but then they let me win at some point, which I admit I was pretty okay with.

To say the game shares some similarities with Fortnite is an understatement. Not only is it a battle royale title with a shrinking environment, but certain mechanics like gliding in at the beginning to scrounge for weapons and even Fortnite’s building feature are central to the gameplay. That being said, battle royale titles have exploded in the wake of PUBG and they seem to all share a lot among each other. For BigBox, VR is the distinguishing feature, with motion controls and the general feeling that everything is life-sized and in your control.

To be honest, a lot of it really does work. Every surface in the game is climbable (by physically grabbing surfaces with the controllers and then doing the arm-work to scale) but more central movements like turning and moving are left to buttons, a technique that ultimately isn’t for the faint of stomach but is a lot more fluid than teleporting around. There are certainly mechanics which could have felt smoother, but this is a private beta game with a lot of room to finesse.

One of the really powerful things about the game was what happened after I was repeatedly sniped and killed off early on in the first couple rounds. The spectator mode is great and it’s interesting how much the precise controls of VR lend to allowing you to get more actively enveloped in matches that you aren’t even competing in. There are companies in the VR space working exclusively on this, but for a gaming audience obsessed with streamers, adapting traditional games with a VR spectating workflow or doing so natively seems like a huge opportunity.

Battle royale games remain white-hot, and VR game studios have been trying to find the right way to get a slice of the pie. Perhaps the key is knowing where to innovate while also realizing that the multi-platform grandiose of Fortnite has yet to find its way to VR, so maybe finding a title that scratches that itch is the best place to start.

Another day, another exit scam. This time it comes to us from South Korea, where an exchange, Pure Bit, has completely shut down after raising $2.8 million in Ethereum from investors.

The exchange, which promised to deliver something call Pure Coin, was live yesterday and today is completely shut down after posting “Sorry” and “Thanks” to their communications channels.

According to a Reddit thread, the team was anonymous and that the process of building and pumping exchange tokens is a “popular trend in Korea.”

“They have gotten rid of every evidence,” wrote one reader. “Website hosted by fake name / out of Korea host / messenger / contacts were all fake too. Now their only hope is to keep on track with that ether and hope for the best.”

There is no proof yet that the team has pulled a full exit scam — there are examples of founders pretending to scam their investors to “teach them a lesson” — but given the abrupt movement of 13,000 ETH out of the collection wallet we can assume that the story ends here.

Even their chat room, hosted on their own site, is shut down.

It should be noted that South Korea has banned ICOs, giving scammers the perfect cover for absolute anonymity.

Sramana Mitra: What is the go-to market strategy in each of these cases? Are you particularly counting on clinicians recommending this? In that case, are you actively working with the clinicians to...

___

The tech scene in São Paulo is an absolute delight, and we’re honored to have seen such an amazing turnout at the Startup Battlefield Latin America.

In case you missed it, we’ve put together a little recap of the event below.

Editor’s Note: We will embed videos from the event as soon as they’re available.

A China Twist to Brazil’s Mobility Revolution

Featuring Ariel Lambrecht (Yellow), Eduardo Musa (Yellow), Tony Qiu (Didi Chuxing), Hans Tung (GGV)

Mobility is a massive challenge for megacities around the world, including Sao Paulo. The first panel of the event featured notable founders and investors attempting to solve this problem in Brazil and throughout Latin America.

Eduardo Musa is the cofounder and CEO of Yellow and was joined on stage by his cofounder Ariel Lambrecht. Lambrecht also founded the mobility company 99, which is the only startup worth more than 1 billion USD in Brazil. Didi Chuxing recently invested and purchased 99, and current CEO and former investor Tony Qiu sat on the panel as well. Lastly, Hans Tung, managing partner at the Silicon Valley firm GGV and lead investor on 99’s latest round, joined the group. The panel was moderated by TechCrunch’s Managing Editor, Matt Burns.

Both Musa and Qiu acknowledged the crisis facing the Brazilian market and noted parallels with the Chinese market. Both markets have megacities with a diverse population, and there are countless opportunities for startups to address.

Throughout the panel, it was noted that Brazilian startups face several obstacles including finding enough talent and investment. The panelists agreed that often companies in Brazil are looking to Silicon Valley for both. For hiring, they said, there are not enough engineers locally, and to obtain funding, it’s best to show growth to local investors and the look tow Silicon Valley for additional investors.

Fireside Chat

Featuring Cristina Junquiera (Nubank) and David Velez (Nubank)

Any kind of partnership with a global internet giant is a big win for a startup. Nubank co-founders David Velez and Cristina Junquiera took the stage at Startup Battlefield Latin America to discuss Tencent’s $180M investment into their Sao Paulo-based digital banking company. Nubank is has raised over $700M from hard hitting investors like DST and Sequoia, valuing the company at over $4B, so it’s not about the money. While the invest to buy strategy is common for Chinese internet giants, Velez says that isn’t the goal for Nubank.

The founders are focused on the 20 million customers who have already applied for their credit card, and building culture from the ground up. There’s a lot wrong with Brazilian banks, and Nubank is taking a customer-focused approach to provide its digital banking service for Brazil’s huge population. When you’re one of the most successful companies in a region, you feel a responsibility to give back to the ecosystem. The best way to do that, say Velez and Junquiera, is to set an example of success.

Venture Investing In Latin America Today

Featuring Eric Acher (Monashees), Veronica Allende Serra (Innova Capital Consultoria Ltda), Hernan Kazah (Kaszek), Fernando Lelo de Larrea (ALLVP)

Latin American startup companies have hit an inflection point. No longer an afterthought for global investment firms the region is on pace to surpass $1 billion in committed capital for the second year in a row.

Driving that growth, according to investors Eric Acher, the co-founder of Monashees; Veronica Allende Serra, the founder of Innova Capital; Hernan Kazah of Kaszek Ventures and Fernando Lelo de Larrea of ALL VP; is a rash of exits like the public offering for the payment technology provider Stone and the sale of ride-hailing company, 99, to the Chinese global giant mobility company, DiDi.

Yet, as the market grows, entrepreneurs need to consider the partners they’re bringing on board as the aim for international growth. And while Brazil leads the pack in terms of committed capital — grabbing 73% of the total money invested in the region in the first half of the year — Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Chile are all emerging as important capital markets in their own right.

20 Years Ahead of the Curve

Featuring Fabricio Bloisi (Movile)

For Fabricio Bloisi, the journey to building a multi-billion dollar company in Movile wasn’t always easy. Building a business requires making tough decisions along the way and a commitment to constantly churning through ideas.

Over the first ten years of its existence, Movile struggled as a smaller content provider. It was once the company agreed to consolidate and control more of the market that it began to grow, Bloisi said.

Now, businesses like iFood, which brought in over $100 million in revenue in the month of October alone, and new payment businesses like Zoop and its delivery and logistics companies, are contributing to a powerhouse that Bloisi thinks could be a $10 billion company in a few years.

Bloisi believes in the region, and the promise it holds for local and international investors to build more multi-billion dollar businesses. The future belongs to the entrepreneurs in the audience, Bloisi said. And if they can make the tough decisions (and get the right investment partners) they could find themselves on the TechCrunch stage.

New Wave Latin Founders

Ana Lu McLaren (Enjoie), David Arana (Konfio), Sebastian Mejia (Rappi), Juan Pablo Bruzzo

A vast majority of startup and investment activity across Latin America is coming out of Brazil. But that doesn’t mean entrepreneurship doesn’t thrive in other parts of the region. Rappi co-founder Sebastian Mejia, Konfio’s David Arana, Moni’s Juan Pablo Bruzzo and Ana McLaren from Enjoie discussed the challenges of launching and scaling an early stage tech company in this new wave founder discussion. Volatile economies, scarce technical talent, and undercapitalized markets aren’t so much challenges, but opportunities for these founders.

Logistics, fintech and ecommerce sectors are getting shaken up by these founders, and the foreign investment dollars are following. Rappi just raised a $200M round to grow its last-mile delivery service, but threats from foreign powerhouses like Uber threaten to eclipse market share. The landscape is more competitive than ever for founders, so expect to see big moves happening from startups launching out of the region.

Sramana Mitra: What about technology trends? I’m sure you’re immediately going to say AI. I know AI is a big trend. Is there anything else that you’re seeing out there that is worth highlighting?...

___