During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Jennifer Carolan, Co-founder and General Partner at Reach Capital, a venture firm with 100% focus on EdTech. The conversation was an excellent...

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Heidi Roizen: The point is to understand the terms and understand how they impact not only your return but the motivations of everyone else around the table. When you set up a situation where someone...

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Italian startup Freeda Media is raising a $10 million Series A round led by Alven Capital. U-Start and business angels are also participating in the round.

Freeda Media runs the popular Freeda Facebook page. With nearly 1.4 million likes, the page has an impressive reach. 24 million unique users see Freeda content every month in Italy, including 100 percent of millennial women who live in Italy. The company is also quite active on Instagram.

In other words, Freeda Media is a new media company that runs mostly on social media platforms. Many of the Facebook posts are short videos, social cuts with subtitles and quick interviews. Some posts link to Freeda’s own website for more traditional articles with text and photos. But there’s no front page per se.

With today’s funding round, the company plans to expand to other markets, starting with Spain. More interestingly, Freeda is still quite young as it took them 15 months to reach this level.

The company compares itself with other media brands for women, such as Elle, Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan or Man Repeller. According to CrowdTangle, Freeda has a much higher engagement rate compared to its direct competitors.

Freeda Media’s business model is branded content and native advertising. But the startup is looking at other potential revenue streams. There’s clearly a risk of branded content overload for social-first media organizations. When you build a Facebook audience based on trust, your reputation can also quickly deteriorate and the algorithms can turn on you. So far, it doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Internationalization is going to be key to foster Freeda’s growth. If Freeda can replicate the same impressive numbers in multiple countries, the startup could end up convincing bigger advertisers and distributing more or less the same content in multiple countries.

Last quarter Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced plans to bring overseas cash stock back into the country in view of the change in the tax code. This quarter, it announced a record share repurchase plan...

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Sramana Mitra: If you look at the last six months of your deal flow, could you synthesize some of the most interesting trends that you have observed? Guy Resheff: A common one is artificial...

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Today’s 398th FREE online 1Mby1M roundtable for entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, May 3, at 8:00 a.m. PDT/11:00 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are welcome!

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Today’s 398th FREE online 1Mby1M roundtable for entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, May 3, at 8:00 a.m. PDT/11:00 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are...

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Paroon has bootstrapped Passageways from Indiana and wants to help other Indiana entrepreneurs succeed. Along the way, he has pivoted from licensed software to cloud software, and made other...

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Sramana Mitra: The sad thing is when you’re going for job interviews and negotiating job packages, the companies will not tell you all these details. Heidi Roizen: By the way, I now have to say the...

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Adya is a SaaS data security platform that helps enterprises manage and secure their SaaS apps. It helps Google’s G Suite admins to get visibility into what data has been exposed, what third-party...

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Sramana Mitra: A follow-on question that comes to my mind is that if you are looking for most of the core R&D to be done before you come in, what is the assumption about how the prospective...

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Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) recently announced its first quarter results. The revenues for the quarter outpaced market expectations, as the company continued to drive growth through its growth engines of...

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Sramana Mitra: I’ll tell you exactly what happened in your case. You did a Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later strategy. You were going out to raise Series A with $2 million in revenue. You went out...

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Zinc, the London-based company builder tackling various societal problems, has picked up £3 million in seed investment as it readies its second cohort and mission. Backing the round is LocalGlobe, Niklas Zennström’s Atomico, U.K. university LSE, and a number of angel investors.

Launched late last year, Zinc helps build startups almost from scratch. Somewhat similar to Entrepreneur First, it focuses on recruiting potential founders — in this instance, experts in social science, technology, design and business — who through the 9-month programme form new companies.

Each Zinc cohort is tasked with tackling a specific mission around a broader theme. The debut programme, which was used to prove the model and is currently drawing to a close, set out to create startups that can tackle the problem of women’s mental and emotional health. This saw 55 prospective founders and entrepreneurs participate, resulting in 17 new companies being formed.

They span tech-enabled businesses working on problems as diverse as perinatal mental health, loneliness amongst the elderly, young women discovering sexual pleasure, stress-related physical conditions like IBS, women walking safely in cities, new talking therapies, and more. One criteria of Zinc-founded companies is that the resulting solution needs to be applicable globally, and that the problem being tackled affects a large enough number of people in the developed world ie ~100 million or more.

“We try to solve huge societal issues by mobilising talent, ideas and capital, and by taking a mission-led approach,” Ella Goldner, co-founder and GM of Zinc, tells TechCrunch. “Our programme does so by finding the best talent, surrounding them with smarts experts to help them build new tech-enabled scalable businesses, and help them develop products and services that tackle the issues in the context of the mission”.

Zinc’s second mission, which the company builder is currently recruiting for, will see it focus on the 150 million people living in places that have been hit hard by automation and globalisation over the last 20 or 30 years, as traditional industries in those areas have declined (e.g. coal, manufacturing, textiles, shipbuilding, ports and tourism).

“The founders on the programme are a diverse group of entrepreneurial creative individuals who are driven by the mission, and are keen to set up a new business. They have background in tech, the mission’s focus area, or in ops and marketing. The average age is 34 and they are truly diverse in terms of nationalities… We believe in people’s ability to take control over those issues and solve them, rather than relying on public sector to do that,” explains Goldner.

Suzanne Ashman Blair, partner at LocalGlobe, echoes that sentiment and says that Zinc has got off to a great start with its first mission. “To have an impact on society’s deepest challenges, we need to bring together entrepreneurial talent and capital. Zinc has demonstrated that its approach to addressing social problems through technology is a powerful combination”.

LSE’s investment in Zinc also sees it effectively become a founder of the burgeoning company builder. The London university is leading a new consortium of U.K. universities (Oxford, Manchester, Sussex and Sheffield) who will work with the Zinc programme to “turn research insight into new businesses that have commercial and social impact”.

To that end, in addition to Goldner, Zinc lists it founders as Paul Kirby (a former Head of the No 10 Policy Unit and previously a senior partner at KPMG), Saul Klein (co-founder of LocalGlobe and a serial tech entrepreneur), and Professor Julia Black (Pro-Director for Research at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Board Member of U.K. Research & Innovation).

Meanwhile, Zinc says the new £3 million funding will enable it to plan future missions and replicate the success of its launch programme.

The BBC will start running ads in its podcasts, thanks to a partnership with podcast publishing and monetization company Acast.

Acast CEO Ross Adams told me that ads will start running later this week, with the BBC including “bumpers” today announcing the imminent ad launch.

“Podcasts are one way we’re reinventing BBC radio to engage younger audiences with our world class content,” said Bob Shennan, director of BBC Radio and Music, in the announcement. “We’re working with established and new talent to produce shows which are informative and entertaining as only the BBC can be. The BBC has been challenged to generate more commercial income to supplement the licence fee and this new deal will contribute to that.”

To be clear, the BBC will remain ad-free in the United Kingdom, where it’s supported by the aforementioned license fee. Adams said one of the things Acast could offer was the ability to make sure ads were only served outside the U.K. (and to account for edge cases like U.K. military bases in other countries).

Adams said Acast will also be providing the BBC with new data about how the podcasts are performing.

“We give them the data and the dashboard to start really doubling down and focusing on podcasting as a medium,” he said.

According the announcement, this will apply to all BBC podcasts outside the U.K. (subject to rights restrictions), including Global News, The Assassination, World Business Report and Radio 4’s In Our Time. Most podcasts will have a single 30-second ad at the beginning, then another at the end.

Cisco just announced an agreement to acquire Accompany, which uses artificial intelligence to build databases of people and relationships at companies.

Founder and CEO Amy Chang has compared the product to a digital chief of staff or personal assistant, giving executives the context they need before conversations and meetings. Cisco plans to incorporate Accompany technology into its collaboration products, for example by introducing company and individual profiles into Webex meetings.

Cisco says it will pay $270 million in cash and stock in the deal.

The company probably didn’t have to search too hard to find Accompany, since Chang (who previously served as the head of product for Google’s ad measurement and reporting) has been on Cisco’s board of directors since October 2016. As part of the transaction, she’s resigning from the board, effective immediately.

In addition, Chang will be taking over the company’s Collaboration Technology Group. Rowan Trollope, who currently leads the collaboration group, is departing to become CEO at cloud software company Five9.

“Amy has proven to be an effective and innovative leader through her years as an entrepreneur, an engineer, and CEO, and I couldn’t be more pleased to have her and the Accompany team join Cisco,” said Cisco chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins in the announcement. “Together, we have a tremendous opportunity to further enhance AI and machine learning capabilities in our collaboration portfolio and continue to create amazing collaboration experiences for customers.”

According to Crunchbase, Accompany has raised around $40 million in funding from investors including CRV, Cowboy Ventures, Iconiq Capital and Ignition Partners.

Cisco also announced today that it’s selling off some of its NDS video assets.

We’ve seen a large wave of used-car sales startups launch across developed markets like the U.S. and Europe, disrupting a marketplace that has largely been untouched for years. Now a startup focusing on the used car-sales opportunity specifically in developing economies is ramping up its activities.

Frontier Car Group, a Berlin startup that has built a used car marketplace targeted specifically at countries outside of Western Europe and North America, is announcing $58 million in funding — $41 million in equity and $17 million in debt funding — to continue expanding its business into Africa, Latin America and Asia, where it has sold 50,000 vehicles since launching at the end of 2016 and is on track to do $200 million in annualised revenues per year.

The Series B brings was led by Balderton Capital and TPG Growth (both of which participated in Frontier’s previous $22 million round), with Fraser McCombs Capitaland Autotech Ventures — two automotive-specific funds — also participating.

Frontier is not disclosing its valuation with this round but a source close to the company said the demand to participate in this round was high and led to two unsolicited Series C term sheets — each for around $100 million — and both on a pre-money valuations of over $200 million.

Developing markets continue to be a huge focus for tech companies when their home countries become to competitive or growth there starts to slow, and that trend has inevitably tipped into startups also targeting those markets from the very start.

Sujay Tyle — Frontier’s 24 year-old American CEO (who comes with an impressive record: he went to Harvard aged 15, and has a degree from there in Economics; and he has also been a Thiel Fellow), who co-founded the company with Peter Lindholm (COO), and André Kussmann (CTO) — said that the choice to launch first and only in countries like Mexico and Nigeria, two of Frontier’s largest markets, was borne out of a couple of reasons.

“I fell in love with the Auto1 model,” he said, in reference to another Berlin startup that earlier this year laid claim to the highest-ever venture round raised by a European startup when it landed €460 million from Softbank, “and I could see how it could be applied to emerging markets. Emerging markets represents nascency.”

Used car marketplace startups in countries like the US or in Europe have been focused on making it easier or faster or more flexible to own a used car — examples being the well-capitalised Fair.com, the now-public Carvana, and Auto1. Frontier’s service (which has different branding in each market) is modelled on these. It first gives would-be sellers online quotes for how much their car might sell for. It then inspects and buys in the vehicle at that price. Would-be buyers then use an app or web to browse stock and arrange for financing.

Tyle says that one of the bigger challenges in developed markets for this model is simply competing against others doing exactly the same thing as each other, leading to a lot of price competition. In contrast, not only is the market less crowded in the countries where Frontier operates, but similar to Uber, Frontier appears to be playing on the idea that alternatives are less good than what Frontier represents.

“The number one channel for car theft in Mexico is classified advertising,” claimed Tyle. “People make deals in cash, but if you show up to a public location with $5,000, that’s a dangerous value proposition. Also, it takes a lot of time and is onerous.”

On the side of supply, he says Frontier is also providing a service that didn’t exist before. “Smaller dealers have a lot of trouble finding cars in these markets, where there are no auction houses or services to import vehicles, so for car dealers, we can provide them with a source of inventory, which also means we have a big impact,” he said.

Frontier has made some lucrative sourcing deals that have helped it get a leg up in some countries. In Mexico City, for example, it has the contract to sell ex-Alamo rentals — “a very lucaratve business,” he added.

If you’ve been following the used-car and automotive startups, you’ll know that it’s been a bumpy road for the space overall. Some of the notable fallen stars have included Beepi, Vroom (which is still going but has shuttered some operations and laid off staff), Carspring and Hellocar in the UK, among others. Tyle said he expects Frontier to be Ebitda-profitable by Q2 of 2019.

“Balderton first invested in FCG a little under 2 years ago and it is staggering what the team have achieved in such a short time, getting to significant scale and building a platform that is capable of being leveraged in many different operating environments,” said Daniel Waterhouse, a partner at Balderton Capital. “We are excited to further support the company and look forward to the next chapter of this extraordinary story.”

Mark Norman, Managing Partner at Fraser McCombs Capital, said in a statement: “Fraser McCombs Capital is excited to support the FCG team and their unique software and data platform to transform the used vehicle buying and selling experience in key growth markets around the world.  We’re pleased to bring our global automotive investment and operating experience to the board.”

Update: This post has been updated to reflect that Regulus’ chief executive is Yonatan Zur. 

Over the next 20 years the autonomous vehicle market is expected to grow into a $700 billion industry as robots take over nearly every aspect of mobility.

One of the key arguments for this shift away from manually operated machines is that they offer greater safety thanks to less risk of human error. But as these autonomous vehicles proliferate, there needs to be a way to ensure that these systems aren’t exposed to the same kinds of hacking threats that have bedeviled the tech industry since its creation.

It’s the rationale behind Regulus Cyber, a new Israeli security technology developer founded by Yonatan Zur and Yoav Zangvil — two longtime professionals from Israel’s aerospace and defense industry.

“We’re building a system that is looking at different sensors and the first system is GPS,” Zur says. Using a proprietary array of off-the-shelf antennas and software developed internally, the system Regulus has designed can determine whether a GPS signal is legitimate or has been spoofed by a hacker (think of it as a way to defend against the kind of hack used by the bad guys in “Die Hard 2“).

Zur first had the idea to launch the company three years ago while he was working with drones at the Israeli technology firm, Elbit. At the time, militaries were beginning to develop technologies to combat drone operations and Zur figured it was only a matter of time before those technologies made their way into the commercial drone market as well.

While the technology works for unmanned aerial vehicles, it also has applications for pretty much any type of autonomous transportation technology.

Backing the company are a clutch of well-known Israeli and American investors, including Sierra Ventures, Canaan Partners Israel, Technion and F2 Capital.

Regulus, which raised $6.3 million in financing before emerging from stealth, said the money will be used to expand its sales and marketing efforts and to continue to develop its technology.

The company’s first two products are a spoofing protection module that integrates with any autonomous vehicle and a communication security manager that protects against hacking and misdirection.

“We are very excited to lead this round of financing. Sensors security for autonomous machines will become as important as processors security. Regulus identified the key vulnerabilities and developed the best-in-class solutions,” said Ben Yu, a managing director of Sierra Ventures, in a statement. “Having been working with the company since seed funding, Sierra invested with strong confidence in the team to build Regulus into the category leader.”