According to a Research and Markets report, the global Database as a Service market is estimated to grow at 16% CAGR to reach $24.8 billion by 2025 from $12 billion in 2020. The recent market turmoil...

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Some audience questions answered by Sramana: – What are some startup ideas that frequently fail? – Are VC funded startups usually more or less successful than bootstrapped ones? –...

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Pamela York is Founder and CEO, Atasi Ventures, with a special focus on women entrepreneurs in healthcare.

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Sramana Mitra: I understand your positioning. It sounds like you are taking these areas where you have quite gifted people pursuing a certain track. You’re giving them a more well-rounded education....

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Online payments are often synonymous with card payments, but today a startup that’s built a profitable alternative, based around making and taking payments by way of a bank transfer, is announcing a round of funding amid a surge of growth.

Trustly, a startup from Sweden that has built a platform to make it as easy (and competitive) for merchants to accept bank transfers as it is to take card payments to complete online transactions, is today announcing that it has raised a significant round of funding from a group of investors led by BlackRock.

In an interview, Trustly’s CEO Oscar Berglund said the company and its investors are not disclosing the exact amount of the investment, but we understand from reliable sources that the deal values the company — which is profitable and had revenues of over $150 million last year — at over $1 billion, and that it will give BlackRock and others participating in the investment (including Aberdeen Standard Investments, funds managed by Neuberger Berman, the Investment Corporation of Dubai and RSIC) a minority share in the business.

For some further background, private equity group Nordic Capital essentially acquired Trustly in 2018 for €700 million ($794 million at today’s rates). This deal represents a partial exit. From what we understand the base valuation also rose with this transaction.

That’s both on the back of growth — both organic and also inorganic, as it merged with US rival PayWithMyBank, last year, to expand its network to touch 600 million consumers — and Trustly’s impressive list of customers. That list has more than 6,000 merchants today and also includes Facebook, where you can find its logo to let people buy ads and pay via Trustly; AT&T, which lets people pay bills using the network; Alibaba.com for making purchases in Europe; topping up PayPal accounts in a number of countries; and sending and receiving money via TransferWise.

This also essentially puts this investment in the hundred/hundreds of million/s range.

Trustly’s growth comes amid a bigger picture of how e-commerce is evolving as it continues to mature and become more ubiquitous — a trend that has been accelerated in the last several months as many have turned away from physically making purchases because of social distancing measures.

When many of us think of online payments, we usually associate the process with using credit or debit cards, or maybe logging into a mobile wallet to complete a transaction. But the reality is that payments are a much more fragmented business, with consumer and merchant preferences changing with each region and including a wider range of options than simply Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and PayPal or some other wallet.

Bank transfers as a method of payment are not at all common in some markets, especially those where cards have become ubiquitous. For example in the UK only about 5% of transactions online are made this way.

But in other markets, this is a very common and well-used route. In Austria, Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands and Poland, a majority of consumers prefer to pay via bank transfer — respectively the rates are 50%, 50%, 40%, 60%, 45%, Trustly tells me, basing its figures on a number of data sources including some of its payment partners, Adyen, PPRO, Global Data and Worldpay.

And Berglund said that the picture is a positive one for Trustly — and other companies that it competes with, including Klarna (another startup ‘unicorn’ from Sweden, as it happens) — because it seems that bank-based transfers as a payment method is on the rise.

There are multiple reasons for that shift. Perhaps most obviously, we’ve seen a lot of security issues around card usage, including too many stories of malicious hackers breaching businesses’ network security and stealing data and card numbers, and other kinds of card fraud. Even as more watertight procedures are put into place (such as mandatory chip-and-pin transactions in many countries), there remain loopholes and also general unease among consumers.

On top of that are changing tides in consumer-focused financial services. Specifically, thanks to the rise of mobile apps and a plethora of startups that have built “challenger banks” to provide more user-friendly banking, consumers today want and expect more control over their finances.

Using credit cards for many represents a departure from that, given that they are designed to help you spend more than you might actually have to spend, so that you can pay back in increments with interest. And, I’d argue, even debit cards can be a departure from transparency, since you are still not seeing your account balance in real time when you make purchases, and many people have overdrafts in place to again spend more than they actually have to spend.

“I think that bank transfers plays into the younger generation of millennials who just consciously don’t want to get into the debt trap, while also  being used to everything being done in real time,” Berglund said. 

If the story for end users — be they the consumers doing the buying or the merchants doing the selling — is all about transparency, easy user interfaces and simplification, it’s because the work under the hood remains very complex and fragmented. Such is the case here as well.

Trustly’s network, Berglund explained, is based around Trustly itself setting up its own business accounts across a wide range of banks around markets where it is active.

When a user elects to pay by bank transfer, it essentially goes through whatever interface his/her own bank uses when interacting with it directly, which then routes the payment through Trustly’s network to be paid into a merchant’s account.

The system is as secure as an individual’s own online banking interface, which typically will use two-factor authentication to complete a transaction, unlike most card transactions. Berglund says that for this reason, the company has not experienced any of the kinds of of breaches or frauds that you see in card payments.

In terms of Trustly’s business model, it is a customer of the banks, while the merchants are its customers: it charges a transaction fee to merchants who use the Trustly network to receive payments, and Berglund said that the percentage varies but is essentially lower than what they would pay for card-based transactions.

But because payments are complex, this is not the full story. In addition to working with merchants directly, Trustly also integrates with a number of third parties like Worldpay, PPRO, Rapyd and others that use these latter services to integrate a number of payment options through a single API (rather than multiple APIs or integrations) into their check-out stack.

And Berglund added that it’s looking like it might be taking on another new wave of customers going forward. Banks themselves are exploring ways of providing more services to merchants who bank with them, and so Trustly is talking to some of them to sell on Trustly’s product as part of that (but not as a white-label, but branded solution).

The reason it’s not replicated is the same reason it’s hard to build any financial service from the ground up: Trustly has put in place not just a banking network but the integrations around it, plus the customer service it provides to merchants around the business of payments. That makes it hard to replicate, he added. “You have a huge platform here in the middle of this business, not unlike the platforms that exist for card payments,” he said. “It’s a big system all in all.”

This is one [expletive deleted] tough time to be an early-stage startup founder. But giving up simply isn’t part of startup DNA. Instead, it’s time to do whatever it takes to catch the eyes and imagination of investors, media and other tech and business influencers. Here’s an easy way to begin. Apply to be a TC Top Pick at virtual Disrupt 2020.

What’s a TC Top Pick? It’s an early-stage startup that passed rigorous scrutiny by TechCrunch editors with an eye for innovation and potential. The fortunate few to earn that designation win a free Digital Startup Alley Package, tons of exposure to investors and media, plus a bunch of other bennies designed to help you survive and thrive — even in tough times.

Here’s how it works. You’re eligible to apply if your pre-Series A startup falls into one of the following categories.

Social Impact + Education, Space, Artificial Intelligence + Machine Learning, Biotech + Healthtech, Enterprise + SaaS, Fintech, Mobility, Retail + E-commerce, Robotics, Hardware + IOT, and Security + Privacy.

TechCrunch editors will choose up to three startups in each category. Each Top Pick receives a Digital Startup Package, which lets three people exhibit from anywhere in the world. And since everyone wants to know who made the grade as a Top Pick, you can expect lots of requests for 1:1 virtual demos and video meetings with investors, media, potential customers, folks interested in collaborating — you name it. And you’ll have months to pitch and network.

Here’s another giant advantage: TechCrunch will conduct a virtual video interview for each Top Pick startup and promote the videos across our social media platforms — driving traffic to your website. Your video will make an excellent conversation starter and long-term marketing tool.

We’re not done with all the Startup Alley exhibitor perks and opportunities. You get exclusive access to the Leading Voices Webinar series. You’ll hear the brightest industry minds discuss ways to adapt during and after this pandemic.

All that networking will be a lot easier and more efficient with CrunchMatch, TechCrunch’s AI-powered networking platform. It helps you find and connect with like-minded investors, founders and other startup influencers. Save time by networking only with people who can move your business forward.

Pour yourself something tasty, join the Pitchers and Pitches webinars and fine-tune your pitch with the TechCrunch editorial team that coaches the Startup Battlefield competitors.

Don’t let hard times drive your dream into a ditch. Do what it takes to place your startup in front of the influencers who can help you succeed. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Keep moving forward and apply to the TC Top Picks program.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

A Swiss startup called HMCARE, spun out of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, has raised a million Swiss Francs (equivalent to about $105 million) to commercialize its transparent and relatively eco-friendly surgical masks.

The founders were inspired by healthcare workers in the 2015 Ebola outbreak and at children’s hospitals around the world working closely with patients but unable to show their faces. Likewise parents and relatives of immunocompromised people who must make a human connection with two-thirds of their face covered.

There were technically transparent masks available, but they were just regular masks with a plastic window in them, which can fog up and isn’t breathable. Thierry Pelet, now CEO of the company, approached his EPFL colleagues with a prototype of a transparent mask material meeting the rigorous demands of a medical environment. It must permit air through but not viruses or bacteria, and so on.

The team worked with Swiss materials center Empa to create a new type of textile. Using biomass-derived transparent fibers placed 100 nanometers apart to form sheets and then triple-layered, they made a flexible, breathable material that’s also nearly transparent — a bit like lightly frosted glass. They call it the HelloMask.

The material can be made in bulk and formed into mask shapes just like normal cloth, but there is the matter of spinning up manufacturing for it. Fortunately, the world is desperate for masks, and the idea of a transparent one was clearly catnip for investors. HMCARE easily raised a million-franc seed round, the R&D work having been done using nonprofit donations and grants.

While the HelloMasks could launch as early as the start of 2021, they’ll be primarily for the medical community, though public availability is certainly a possibility.

We won’t sit here as we have for so many years with strong faces and encouraging words and pretend that we’re not tired.

We’re tired because we’ve spent yet another week mourning our Black brothers and sisters who died unjust deaths. We’re tired because we spent half of that week holding the hands of White allies as they were reminded that racism still exists and that it is, indeed, sad. We’re tired because we’re a broken record, telling firms and companies what they can do to fight racism and rarely getting the action they so emotionally promise they care about. We’re tired of holding back anger and sadness as we talk about these issues, knowing our industry isn’t even doing the bare minimum to support Black investors. On top of advising allies, mourning lives lost and working full time jobs, we also raised over $100,000. And we’re tired of racism.

Last week, BLCK VC hosted We Won’t Wait, a day of action where we called on venture firms to discuss, donate and diversify. We asked these firms to discuss Venture’s role in combating institutional racism, to donate to nonprofits that promote racial equity and to release their data on the diversity of their investment teams and portfolio founders. These are the first steps. If you haven’t done these, you’re likely not ready for “Office Hours.” So before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s address why these steps aren’t straightforward or sufficient.

Discuss. It took nationwide uprisings for many VC firms to discuss how they could combat institutional racism. Yet, 80% of firms don’t have one Black investment professional who can identify with what we go through in both our professional and personal lives. BLCK VC held its own discussion to share that perspective, centered on the experiences of Black investors and entrepreneurs.

During this discussion, Terri Burns of GV said, “when a Black person is murdered yet again by police, it is not correct to say that the system has failed, because the system was designed that way.” It is clear that systemic racism leads to the maltreatment, dehumanization and unjustified deaths of Black people across the country. Van Jones of Drive Capital drew a fitting analogy: “Being Black is like being in lane eight with a weight vest and cement boots.” Sounds uncomfortable. But that’s how every Black person in America feels stepping out of bed everyday. For Black founders, discrimination by VCs is par for the course. Elise Smith is not alone when she puts on her daily armor to allow herself to show up in the White-dominated industries of venture capital and Silicon Valley tech.

But we’re not going to repeat what they said. Because you can watch the video, and you can do the research, and you can understand the problem on your own. Truthfully, we have no interest in explaining the problem to White VCs again and again when so many of my brothers and sisters have already spoken on it. If you’d like to know why institutional racism made venture capital so homogeneous and exclusive and racist, please see here, here, here, here and here.

What we are interested in explaining is that these are just examples of what Black investors and entrepreneurs deal with everyday. For almost every Black person in tech, these examples are not only relatable, they are commonplace. These are not the stories that shock and surprise the Black community, these are the stories of the everyday. We didn’t talk about the times we heard the N-word from your colleagues or the times they said our natural hair and beards were unprofessional. We talked about the systems.

There are so many more stories and experiences out there besides what was shared by those seven voices, so please think about what perspectives are missing when you have your discussions. Not just your discussion about racism, but your discussions about the future of venture capital, and about aerospace investing, and about COVID-19 and D2C businesses, and about hiring, and about mentoring and about golf. Black voices are so often left out of the conversations where relationships are built and investment decisions are made, but discussions that lack a Black perspective are incomplete.

Donate. Many VC firms and investors spoke last week about donating their time and resources to Black entrepreneurs and investors — what an interesting way to talk about your job. Please do not donate your time or your money to Black investors or entrepreneurs.

Invest in Black founders because they’re some of the best entrepreneurs. Invest in them because they understand an issue that you do not. Invest in them for the same reason you invest in all of your entrepreneurs — because they’re good. When you frame what you’re doing as a donation, it not only demeans what these entrepreneurs are doing and perpetuates some of the most racist aspects of venture capital, but it also prevents you from understanding that you’re bad at your job. Yes, if you don’t have a diverse pipeline or a diverse portfolio you are bad at your job. Making a separate space and separate fund for Black entrepreneurs removes firms from the responsibility they have to search for, invest in and support Black founders.

If you would like to donate money, donate money to nonprofits that fight institutional racism. If you would like to donate time, volunteer. If you would like to become a better investor, figure out why your pipeline is so homogeneous and fix it.

Diversify. Let’s circle back to an important statistic: More than 80% of venture capital firms don’t have a single Black investor. This statistic is interesting because, as much as it’s about industry trends, it’s really about the failings of individual firms. Most firms don’t have a diverse investing staff. They don’t have a diverse investing staff because they don’t understand the value of racial diversity. They don’t understand the value of racial diversity because there are no diverse investors to force them to think about diversity. Rinse. Repeat.

The single most important part of diversifying a VC firm and diversifying VC broadly is tracking the lack of diversity. Most firms do not routinely track data on their investor, deal pipeline, event or investment diversity. As a result, they rarely think about racial diversity. This is where we ask firms to start. Yes, mentorship can be helpful, office hours can be helpful, but if you’re not tracking your firm’s diversity metrics, they will not improve.

What now? Okay, you’ve discussed racism with your partners, you’ve donated money to nonprofits and you (hopefully) started tracking the diversity of your firm. Now what? Racism resolved? Probably not.

Hopefully these conversations made you realize where your firm’s specific shortcomings are, and you have to address those. Most firms will realize they have a pipeline problem, so start there. Do all of your events, dinners and programs have Black representation? When you’re trying to fill an investor role, did you post the job on your website and in different Black online communities? Did your final round of candidates reflect the diversity of our country? Did you support the diverse investors you already employ so they don’t feel disadvantaged, under-advocated and left out? When you’re trying to write new checks, did you utilize Black scouts and consider businesses that don’t address you directly?

When you’ve done all of that, ask yourself this: When the protests quiet down, and articles about racial oppression aren’t at the top of your timeline, what will you be doing? Don’t let it just be office hours. Don’t let the enormity of the work ahead paralyze you against taking action now. Your actions matter. Your inaction matters.

The resilience of the Black community is unparalleled. That resilience means that no matter how tired we are, we will still fight to change this country and to change this industry. It means that no matter how many times we don’t want to advise allies, we will. And it means that no matter how many times we face oppression and mourn for our brothers and sisters, we will still rise to the challenges. And while the stories of overt racism and microaggressions will continue, so too will our drive to move forward and our action to break down barriers. We will continue to build a home for ourselves in this industry. We will continue to work to ensure that Black Lives Matter.

In the past few weeks, several venture capital firms have published different variations of the same pledge: we’ll do a better job supporting the Black community.

My timeline, and I’m assuming yours too, has been filled with statements from non-Black venture capitalists saying that they will rethink how to be more inclusive with their hiring and wiring.

There is no need to applaud firms for taking long overdue steps to treat others equally. What is more important is how we’re going to hold these firms accountable going forward, after a history of inaction.

In a memo published on Friday, Matchstick Ventures outlined a series of commitments to fight racism and underrepresentation. The firm, which manages nearly $37 million dollars and is led by Ryan Broshar and Natty Zola, turned to Black entrepreneur Clarence Bethea for advice on how to proceed.

The pledge stood out for two firm reasons: It is more robust than most promises we have seen by high-profile firms, and it has actual numbers and a deadline, which are key to benchmarking progress.

Disclose your current diversity statistics

Matchstick says 7% of the companies it has invested in have Black founders or founding team members, which is seven times the industry average. Portfolio diversity data needs to be more largely released by the VC community because it’s the only way to determine if progress is being made. So far, beyond Matchstick, we’ve only seen Initialized Capital release diversity metrics. Union Square Ventures said that of moe than 100 investments, only a few have been in self-identified Black founders.

Podhero is offering listeners a new way to pay their favorite podcasters.

The startup behind the app is led by Pete Curley and Garret Heaton, who previously founded HipChat (sold to Atlassian) and launched Swoot last year, which was focused on helping you find new podcasts through sharing.

In a Medium post published today, Curley wrote that despite Swoot’s “great retention and passionate users,” the team realized that podcasters faced a bigger problem: “It’s really hard to make money,” with 97.2% of podcasts not monetizing at all.

You’re probably used to hearing ads in some of your favorite podcasts, but Curley said only 1.4% of podcasts have ads. Meanwhile, he suggested that “subscription services are the most fair and predictable way for creators to make money,” and that “if 50% of podcast listeners paid for ad-free shows — creators would make $3.7 billion/year, nearly 6x more than ads made in 2019.”

So Podhero has launched its own subscription podcast app, but unlike Luminary — which has been criticized for taking a more closed approach to the previously open podcast ecosystem — it’s not trying to lure listeners to pay for exclusive content. Instead, it’s taking something closer to the Patreon approach of financially supporting creators.

Of course, podcasters can already ask for support via Patreon, but Curley argued that the service isn’t right for many podcasters, due to the extra work involved, the 8% cut taken by Patreon, the pressure to create bonus content and the fact that they simply don’t like asking for money.

Podhero is supposed to make it easier for both the podcaster and the listener, who pays a $5.99 subscription fee every month. That includes an optional $1 fee for Podhero, plus $4.99 that’s divvied up among podcasts.

Podhero will automatically create a list of podcasts based on your listening activity, but you can adjust the list and the percentages at any time. And Curley isn’t fully giving up on sharing as a discovery mechanism — listeners can also recommend podcast episodes, which affects their payouts as well.

While Podhero is launching today, the company says it’s already populated with more than 1 million podcasts. Most of those podcasters don’t work with Podhero — for example, TechCrunch’s podcasts are in the app even though we don’t have a business relationship. Curley told me via email that if a podcaster isn’t working with the startup yet, any money contributed by fans will be saved for whenever they claim their Podhero profile.

“We may have to do something with unclaimed money at some point, but [that’s] not a problem we’ll be worrying about for some time,” he said.

We’re just 24 hours away from the second installment of Pitchers & Pitches. If you want to whip your elevator pitch into shape, select your favorite beverage and join us for an interactive pitch-off and feedback session. We kick off tomorrow, June 10 at 4pm ET / 1pm PT. It won’t cost you a penny, so register here today.

You’ll walk away with insightful advice and actionable tips to help you create a 60-second pitch that highlights the best of your business. The companies competing in the pitch-off will vie for a consulting session with cela, an organization that connects early-stage startups to accelerators and incubators that can help them scale their business.

Note: The Pitchers & Pitches webinar series is free and open to all, but only companies that purchased a Disrupt Digital Startup Alley Package are eligible to pitch. We randomly chose these five startups to compete: