Vouch, a provider of business insurance to startups and high-growth companies, announced today it has raised $90 million in new funding.

The $90 million figure was raised across two rounds: a $60 million Series C co-led by SVB Capital (a subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bank) and Ribbit Capital that values the company at $550 million, and a previously unannounced $30 million Series B1 led by Redpoint Ventures.

With the latest financing, San Francisco-based Vouch has now raised a total of $160 million since its 2018 inception. Other investors include Allegis Group, Sound Ventures and SiriusPoint.

While there are many insurance technology companies out there that serve consumers, there are far fewer that offer it to companies, much less startups. Vouch describes itself as “a new kind of insurance platform” for startups that offers fully digital, “tailored coverage that takes minutes to activate.”

Over the past year, Vouch has seen impressive growth. The company declined to reveal hard revenue figures, but said it saw “7x” increase in its customer base year over year and currently protects over $5.7 billion in risk across thousands of policies. Today, Vouch has more than 1,600 clients, including Pipe, Middesk, Neighbor and Routable. It is also the “preferred” business insurance provider to the customers of Silicon Valley Bank, Brex, Carta and WeWork. Y Combinator too also refers Vouch to its portfolio companies. 

To Vouch co-founder and CEO Sam Hodges, the ability to attract some of the highest-profile businesses in the startup world speaks to the company’s understanding of the startup ecosystem. 

“It’s our responsibility to meet startup founders where they are, and give startups flexibility as they navigate changing laws, regulations and the virtual and physical locations of their businesses,” he said.

Like many other companies, Vouch had to shift its model during the pandemic to adapt to the different types of emerging risks businesses have faced. For example, last year, Vouch saw a change in where its startup clients’ teams were distributed. Before the pandemic, nearly 30% of the teams were remote. During the pandemic, that figure has shifted to over 53%. As a result, Vouch developed a broader range of insurance coverages to adapt to the “new normal.”

Included in its new line of proprietary products and services aimed at startups are: work from anywhere coverage, broader cyber coverages and embedded insurance. It also expanded its underwriting capabilities to serve early-stage to growth-market startups.

In particular, the work from anywhere coverage is in direct response to the pandemic-related shift in remote work and can insure up to $500,000 per occurrence and can include a specified property owned by a startup regardless of the location of that property.

One major differentiator for Vouch, said Hodges, is that it is now the only business insurance provider for startups that has its own insurance carrier, which means the company backs its own policies.

“This capability means we have a lot of control over how we build and underwrite our policies — which translates into superior coverage and a better experience for our clients,” he said.

 Hodges co-founded Vouch with Travis Hedge three years ago after seeing how challenging it could be for a company to get the business insurance it needs to start and then scale.

The goal is to make it as easy as possible to onboard new customers and personalize the coverage as much as possible based on each company’s needs based on what they do, their customer base, stage of growth and the founder’s threshold for risk.

“A typical client can get a quote and bind their coverage online in under 10 minutes, without any phone calls or paperwork,” he told TechCrunch. “Vouch also has many coverage features that are uniquely geared for startups. For example, our directors and officers coverage includes a cap table coverage feature meant specifically to protect startups.”

Vouch looks at startups that need business insurance on a case by case basis, Hodges added. 

For example, it asks questions like, “Does an e-commerce company handle a very limited amount of client-sensitive information?” If so, it could make sense that it has a lower cyber insurance coverage limit and pay less for its policy. 

Conversely, if a startup is trying to raise money, it might need to invest more in Vouch’s directors and officers insurance to make sure it is covered should disputes arise in the future. 

Looking ahead, Hodges said the new capital would go toward continued investment in technical capabilities, an expansion of its product offerings, more hiring and building embedded insurance for its partners.

With regard to the embedded capabilities, within the next 12 months, all of the company’s partners’ customers will be able to purchase Vouch insurance directly from those partners’ websites. Vouch’s headcount has more than doubled, from 55 employees in September 2020 to 125 full-time employees presently, and Hodges expects that will continue to grow.

Greg Becker, president and CEO of SVB Financial Group, said that Vouch’s mission aligns with SVB’s in that they both aim to “empower the innovation economy.” 

“That’s what Vouch is doing today, helping startups and tech innovators mitigate their risks as they grow,” he wrote via email. “We are proud to co-lead Vouch’s latest funding round to give startups access to the insurance they need as they add headcount, increase their customer base, or raise funding rounds of their own.”

When Anik Khan graduated from college, his first job was working on credit cards and business expenses at Accenture. There, he found that someone could bring in a couple of thousand dollars just by having the right credit cards and following the rewards and promotions.

It was back in 2017 when he and David Gao got the idea for his company MaxRewards, a digital wallet app that manages credit cards and automatically activates benefits like rewards, cashback offers and monthly credits. It also makes recommendations at the point of purchase on which card would yield the best reward for that purchase.

Going after the some 83% of Americans that have a credit card, the app version was officially launched in 2019, and now the Atlanta-based company is announcing a $3 million seed round co-led by Dundee Venture Capital and Calano Ventures. Also backing the company are Techstars, Fintech Ventures Fund, Service Provider Capital and Fleetcor president Nick Izquierdo.

Tracking his own credit cards manually prior to MaxRewards, Khan recalled in one year, getting $16,000 in rewards. However, utilizing those benefits was time-consuming and difficult, because the rewards and savings aren’t always made evident by the credit card companies.

“Other companies have tried to do something similar, but the issue is you don’t have the reward information or the offers,” Khan told TechCrunch. “If you were to aggregate this information, you still would have to activate all of these things and use them before they expired.”

Users connect their accounts and when they make a purchase, their location is cross-referenced with the merchant and an algorithm is applied to tell the user which card to use. The average app user has six credit cards.

MaxRewards is free to download and use, and the majority of the app’s functionalities are free. Users who want additional features, like the auto activation or rewards, can join MaxRewards Gold and are given the opportunity to choose their own monthly price — the average is over $25 per month — based on the value they expect to gain, Khan said.

Ron Watson, partner at Dundee, said his firm invests in seed-stage companies between the coasts and is interested in consumer and e-commerce companies. Watson said he was impressed with what MaxRewards has been able to do with a team of three. He also relates to the company’s mission, having grown up in a lower, middle-class family that did not frequently go on vacations.

When he got his first job and was suddenly flying everywhere, he recalls building up so many rewards to the point where he was able to go on a vacation to Hawaii and only spend maybe $100, he said.

“I used to put my points into a spreadsheet, but as I got older and had kids, I realized how hard it was for the average person to do that and how important it is to have automation,” Watson said. “I downloaded the app, and on the first day, saved $20.”

The company is often compared to NerdWallet or Mint, but in terms of functionality, Khan said he feels MaxRewards is unique due to its credit card system connectors. Rather than rely on third-party aggregators to discover the rewards, MaxRewards leverages its own proprietary connectors to card systems.

There are hundreds of thousands of offers to be discovered, and consumers are asking for even more features, so Khan decided it was time to go after seed funding. He had raised a small seed, about $200,000, from his time at Techstars, but the new funding will enable him to add to his team of three people. He expects to be at 20 by the end of the year. Khan also wants to accelerate its user acquisition, product improvement and compliance.

Next up, the company is going to automate rewards and savings across additional platforms like debit cards, payment apps and cashback apps, as well as create browser extensions and a web app. Khan also wants to do more on the education side with regard to using credit cards in a smart manner.

Arron Solano, managing partner at Calano, met Khan through Techstars and said he is an advocate for using credit cards in the right way. His firm was looking for a company like MaxRewards.

“During our first call, I remember telling my partner that Anik was a bulldog who knew what he was talking about, especially at that stage,” Solano added. “He had strong team members, his vision lined up well and that checked off a massive box for us. He energized us and showed he could find a market with insanely high ‘super users.’ ”

Media technology company Amagi announced Friday $100 million to further develop its cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected televisions.

Accel, Avataar Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners joined existing investor Premji Invest in the funding round, which included buying out stakes held by Emerald Media and Mayfield Fund. Nadathur Holdings continues as an existing investor. The latest round gives Amagi total funding raised to date of $150 million, Baskar Subramanian, co-founder and CEO of Amagi, told TechCrunch.

Bangalore-based Amagi provides cloud broadcast and targeted advertising software so that customers can create content that can be created and monetized to be distributed via broadcast TV and streaming TV platforms like The Roku Channel, Samsung TV Plus and Pluto TV. The company already supports more than 2,000 channels on its platform across over 40 countries.

“Video is a complex technology to manage — there are large files and a lot of computing,” Subramanian said. “What Amagi does is enable a content owner with zero technology knowledge to simplify that complex workflow and scalable infrastructure. We want to make it easy to plug in and start targeting and monetizing advertising.”

As a result, Amagi customers see operational cost savings on average of up to 40% compared to traditional delivery models and their ad impressions grow between five and 10 times.

The new funding comes at a time when the company is experiencing rapid growth. For example, Amagi grew 30 times in the United States alone over the past few years, Subramanian said. Amagi commands an audience of over 2 billion people, and the U.S. is its largest market. The company also sees growth potential in both Latin America and Europe.

In addition, in the last year, revenue grew 136%, while new customer year over year growth was 44%, including NBCUniversal — Subramanian said the Tokyo Olympics were run on Amagi’s platform for NBC, USA Today and ABS-CBN.

As more of a shift happens with video content being developed for connected television experiences, which he said is a $50 billion market, the company plans to use the new funding for sales expansion, R&D to invest in the company’s product pipeline and potential M&A opportunities. The company has not made any acquisitions yet, Subramanian added.

In addition to the broadcast operations in New Delhi, Amagi also has an innovation center in Bangalore and offices in New York, Los Angeles and London.

“Consumer behavior and infrastructure needs have reached a critical mass and new companies are bringing in the next generation of media, and we are a large part of that growth,” Subramanian said. “Sports will come on quicker, while live news and events are going to be one of the biggest growth areas.”

Shekhar Kirani, partner at Accel, said Amagi is taking a unique approach to enterprise SaaS due to that $50 billion industry shift happening in video content, where he sees half of the spend moving to connected television platforms quickly.

Some of the legacy players like Viacom and NBCUniversal created their own streaming platforms, where Netflix and Amazon have also been leading, but not many SaaS companies are enabling the transition, he said.

When Kirani met Subramanian five years ago, Amagi was already well funded, but Kirani was excited about the platform and wanted to help the company scale. He believes the company has a long tailwind because it is saving people time and enabling new content providers to move faster to get their content distributed.

“Amagi is creating a new category and will grow fast,” Kirani added. “They are already growing and doubling each year with phenomenal SaaS metrics because they are helping content providers to connect to any audience.

Revitalized by the pandemic, entrepreneurs are on the hunt to refresh some of education’s most traditional tenets, from flashcards to tutors to after-school programs. And those aren’t just bets: They’re unicorn-valued businesses looking to capitalize on consumers’ newfound digital adoption.

The edtech sector’s boom is rivaled by that of the creator economy, which promises to help creators monetize and democratize their passions, all while maintaining their identity. The creator economy has grown over the past year due to an increased appetite for digital content from at-home eyeballs and a wave of new creators eager to meet demand.

Edtech and the creator economy certainly differ in the problems they try to solve: Finding a VR solution to make online STEM classes more realistic is a different nut to crack than streamlining all of a creator’s different monetization strategies into one platform. Still, the two sectors have found common ground in the past year — as encapsulated by the rise of cohort-based class platforms.

At large, cohort-based platforms help experts launch classes for their communities, no previous teaching experience required. Students move through the class together — ergo “cohort” — with the expert on-demand as a sounding board. It’s a bet on education, but it also allows an individual to showcase their passion by pushing all their chips to the center of the table rather than working for an institution. While the idea of experts teaching a group of people isn’t exactly new, it’s being refreshed by a wave of new startups.

It’s not a simple overlap, entrepreneurs and investors say. Some fear that turning creators into educators could bring in a rush of unqualified teachers with no understanding of true pedagogy, while others think that the true democratization of education requires a disruption of who is traditionally given the right to educate.

Anyone’s a teacher!

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and traditional institutions are built around the belief that students want to learn from accredited teachers, while many cohort-based platforms are forming around a more controversial, yet compelling, ethos: Anyone can be a teacher. The idea of empowering people to monetize their talents is a page directly out of the creator economy rulebook.

In other words, instead of convincing a college professor to teach in their spare time, what if you convinced the star product manager at a tech startup to launch a class sharing their tips and trade secrets? It’s not a theory; it’s a venture-backed business. Mighty Networks raised a $50 million Series B to help its creators launch classes. Last month, Nas Academy raised $11 million to help creators launch their own MasterClass-type series. Then there’s Maven, an early-stage edtech company that raised millions before it even had a name — and led the charge on popularizing cohort-based classes as a branding move to begin with.

These companies sit at the intersection of edtech — and its evolving views on how education should look — and the creator economy, with its empowering premise of “individuals as a business.”

Mark Tan has taken part in a dozen fellowships and received years of coaching through his years in tech. For Tan, who moved from the Philippines to the United States, the allure of virtual classes has always been the network of students also participating in the program. That virtual networking led him to stints at Amazon and Twitch, and, most recently, he spent the last three years working as a director of product at Wyze.

The realization that “you don’t need to be an expert teacher, just an expert” is what eventually gave Tan the confidence to launch a course of his own on Maven. It will begin in a few weeks and is about community-driven product development.

“I’ve been in fellowships with people who are really well known, and sometimes it’s hard to connect with them because they’ve been in my shoes five or 10 years ago,” he said. “I think there’s an overreliance on the expert being the teacher.

“Over time, what I realized is that there’s way more stuff to learn from other people, so I spent more time connecting to [my peers] rather than spending time listening to the lecture.”

His four-week class was originally priced at $799 but now costs $599 and requires a commitment of five to 10 hours per week. Programming will range from live weekly workshops and open Q&As to guest speakers and peer-to-peer networking.

In many ways, Tan is the quintessential example that cohort-based platform founders look for when trying to bring creators onto their service. He has experience at big, well-known companies, has spent years experiencing the product he is now selling and has a passion for education after seeing the benefit of peer-to-peer learning firsthand.

“The best teachers are the ones who haven’t been teachers before,” said Ana Fabrega, who spent years as a primary school teacher before joining Synthesis, an online enrichment school inspired by Elon Musk’s Ad Astra model. “I think that the instinct of a teacher is to jump in and try to control, over-engineer and plan everything so kids don’t struggle … but I think the approach that works the best is [by doing] the opposite.”

Synthesis focuses more on creating good facilitators that can sense engagement and create intimacy with students than educators who focus on a specific curriculum to hit certain metrics, Fabrega explained.

“We really want to make sure that the kids are the ones in charge and doing all the heavy lifting, not the teachers,” she said.

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We like to buy things online ranging from e-commerce stores to subscription-based sites. However, no one enjoys the hassle when you have to always re-log into different sites and stores. I mean, shopping can be a whole lot more fun if a fast logging and checkout system existed across all your favorite online stores.

In the U.S., high-flying startup Fast already caters to this need. Although the company is building a global product, it is limited in Africa, and OurPass has taken an interest to build one for the market.

The Nigeria-based startup, which describes itself as the “Fast for Africa”, has also closed a $1 million pre-seed round to scale across the country. The round was led by Tekedia Capital and angel investors from Fortune 500 companies, the company said. 

E-commerce checkout problem is one founder and CEO Samuel Eze is familiar with, but through a second-hand experience.

“I watched my mother struggle to shop online where I saw her set up multiple accounts on different platforms while going through a rigorous checkout process,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “In many cases, she ended up dropping the card and moving on to a different online store. Seeing the same pattern happen with other friends and family, I had to dive into it and found that it was actually a major headache for consumers and online retailers.”

Nigeria’s e-commerce market is still heavily reliant on cash on delivery. In fact, as of 2019, 70% of Nigerians in a survey said they prefer cash on delivery options to making online payments.

But the narrative is slowly changing with the likes of Paystack and Flutterwave, making it easier for merchants to collect online payments.

Per Statista, 27% of online payments made on e-commerce sites are now carried out with cards, topping cash and bank transfers as the most common payment method.

Yet checkout still remains a major issue for merchants. Yearly, about 75% of shopping carts are abandoned due to how cumbersome the checkout experience can be with long forms and re-log ins.

Attempting to tackle this challenge, OurPass provides a mobile application that enables consumers to shop with one click. The first time consumers sign up on the OurPass platform, they enter their names, email and shipping addresses. OurPass then creates an identity for each customer, which is passed across every online store they shop.

“We built an identity layer across the web to enable consumer identity to be sent across to every single online store they go to check out from,” said Eze.

In essence, OurPass customers would not need to fill out any form anymore and do not have to deal with re-logging issues. But here’s the thing: they can only shop with merchants that have OurPass API linked to their platforms. And that’s a big ask. 

So why has OurPass decided to go this route of creating its own ecosystem of merchants and consumers? For instance, in Fast’s case, only the merchants need to install Fast Checkout, while users can access the service via an e-commerce or merchant’s website. But for OurPass, users need to download an application and shop with merchants using the platform.

Initially, OurPass allowed users to fill in their payment card details when completing their forms for the first time without the need to download an application. But after several instances of payment gateways flagging many cards used by OurPass consumers and failed card transactions, the company chose to adopt a wallet strategy and created an application for consumers.

“We did not want to defeat our USP of one-click checkout by allowing consumers to try to check out in one-click only for them to see their cards flagged as fraudulent,” Eze said. “Hence the reason why we had to build our system on a wallet system to enable that one-click checkout.”

That means consumers and merchants are assigned virtual account numbers to be used in a wallet. For consumers to check out from a store, they’ll need to fund their wallets, and once they check out, the money moves into the merchants’ wallets. Eze says this helps OurPass capture value end to end and offers instant settlement of payments which, according to him, was not the case with payment gateways.

OurPass has gathered a few merchants on its platform. Most of its clients are small businesses that use Storemia, an online storefront provider OurPass acquired recently. The company also plans to work with merchants on e-commerce platforms, including WooCommerce, Magento, Squarespace and Shopify in the future and social commerce platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.

Alongside its one-click checkout, OurPass also offers free delivery on all orders for customers. The company partnered with logistics companies like MAX.ng and Gokada to execute on this front.

The one-year-old company charges 0.8% per transaction, capped at N1,000 (~$20) for merchants and a commission of 5% on every product sold — Eze also hints at a plan for the company to introduce subscriptions.

Since beta launching in May this year, OurPass claims to have done $500,000 in transaction value and hopes continuous growth will see it become the go-to platform for consumer checkout in Nigeria by 2023.

Per use of funds, Eze says OurPass will develop its technology and grow its team to up to 200 people before the end of next year.

Snyk, the Boston-based late-stage startup that is trying to help developers deliver more secure code, announced another mega-round today. This one was for $530 million on an $8.5 billion valuation, with $300 million in new money and $230 million in secondary funding, the latter of which is to help employees and early investors cash in some of their stock options. The $8.5 billion valuation was up from $4.7 billion in March when the company raised $300 million.

The long list of investors includes an interesting mix of public investors, VC firms and strategics. Sands Capital Ventures and Tiger Global led the round, with participation from new investors Baillie Gifford, Koch Industries, Lone Pine Capital, T. Rowe Price and Whale Rock Capital Management. Existing investors also came along for the ride, including Accel, Addition, Alkeon, Atlassian Ventures, BlackRock, Boldstart Ventures, Canaan Partners, Coatue, Franklin Templeton, Geodesic Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Temasek.

This round brings the total raised in funding to $775 million, excluding secondary rounds, according to the company. With secondary rounds, it’s up to $1.3 billion, according to Crunchbase data. The company has been raising funds at a rapid clip (note that the last three rounds include the Snyk money plus secondary rounds):

While the company wouldn’t share specific revenue figures, it did say that ARR has grown 158% YoY; given the confidence of this list of investors and the valuation, it would suggest the company is making decent money.

Snyk CEO Peter McKay says that the additional money gives him flexibility to make some acquisitions if the right opportunity comes along, what companies often refer to as “inorganic” growth. “We do believe that a portion of this money will be for inorganic expansion. We’ve made three acquisitions at this point and all three have been very, very successful for us. So it’s definitely a muscle that we’ve been developing,” McKay told me.

The company started this year with 400 people and McKay says they expect to double that number by the end of this year. He says that when it comes to diversity, the work is never really done, but it’s something he is working hard at.

“We’ve been able to build a lot of good programs around the world to increase that diversity and our culture has always been inclusive by nature because we’re highly distributed.” He added, “I’m not by any means saying we’re even remotely close to where we want to be. So I want to make that clear. There’s a lot we still have to do,” he said.

McKay says that today’s investment gives him added flexibility to decide when to take the company public because whenever that happens it won’t have to be because they need another fundraising event. “This raise has allowed us to set up with strong, highly reputable public investors, and it gives us the financial resources to pick the timing. We are in control of when we do it and we will do it when it’s right,” he said.

Squad Mobility’s vision of the perfect urban vehicle is a low-cost EV equipped with solar panels, swappable batteries and enough zip and range in its diminutive 6.5-foot package to meet the needs of city drivers.

The early-stage Dutch startup, which recently revealed the final design of its quadricycle, is now assembling working prototypes in Breda, the Netherlands. Squad has said the vehicle will have a base price of €5,750 ($6,790), excluding taxes. That price goes up if buyers want to add features like removable doors, air conditioning, heating and extra batteries.

Squad plans to present the prototypes this fall, Robert Hoevers, CEO and co-founder of the company, said in a recent interview. Pre-production is also expected to begin this year with a goal to start delivering the car at the end of 2022.

Squad, like so many other new entrants to the EV car scene, will need more funds to reach its target.

In June, the company raised an undisclosed amount from Bloomit Ventures. To reach its production goals, Hoevers estimates Squad will need an additional €3.5 million ($4.1 million) for its next round, and then another €8 million ($9.6 million) to be able to deliver the first Squads. The company has not yet announced a round publicly, but says it’s in talks with various interested parties.

Interested customers can go on Squad’s website and pay a €5 reserve fee, but where Squad really sees its path to market is with shared mobility companies. The startup says it is in talks with a range of micromobility and car-sharing operators that might be interested in diversifying their fleets with a compact, smart vehicle.

The Squad, which is a combination of the words “solar” and “quadricycle,” seats two, punches up to 30 miles per hour and is fueled by two swappable batteries with a capacity of around 1.6 Kwh each and a collective range of about 62 miles. This is similar to the battery capacity and range of electric mopeds.

For the average European city driver, that should be enough range. Squad also installed a 250-watt solar panel to the vehicle, which the company says adds another 12 miles per day given the amount of sun Europe tends to get.

Squad is coming onto the scene at the intersection of new mobility categories and EV charging innovation, which could be appealing to shared mobility operators looking to solve more use cases.

Shared micromobility companies are beginning to add electric mopeds to their fleets of e-scooters and e-bikes. The Squad could appeal to operators that want to appeal to a broader demographic, and one specifically more comfortable in a four-wheeled vehicle.

The potential savings from harnessing the power of the sun could attract operators as well. In the micromobility world, the labor costs associated with swapping batteries or charging vehicles represent a roadblock to profitability. A vehicle that’s constantly on a bit of a charge, at least during the daylight hours, might help alleviate that pain point.

“The idea is not to drive directly on solar,” Hoevers told TechCrunch. “The idea is to buffer the batteries with solar and then drive on the batteries. The sun is more or less drip charging the battery throughout the day, which is actually a very healthy way of charging. You don’t want to top off your batteries to 100%. You want to keep them at around 50% to 60% all the time for a longer battery life.”

Hoevers said Squad has been in talks with shared micromobility providers to pitch the quadricycle, and has found that most dockless vehicles see about four to five rides per day and drive about 36 to 38 miles per day, numbers that TechCrunch confirmed with a few micromobility operators and that are well within the range of the Squad car.

Squad also intends to equip its vehicles with cameras, sensors and other smart features like remote diagnostics and maintenance, which will make the company more attractive to shared operators looking for a fleet that can be integrated into its management platforms. Hoevers also says he and his co-founder, Chris Klok, have used their collective 40 years of experience in mobility and shared past at long range solar EV company Lightyear to develop a strong CAN bus and drivetrain upon which new features can be added.

Whether Squad ends up selling fleets to micromobility platforms or car-sharing platforms might depend on the category in which the vehicle ends up. With its current speed and weight, the Squad car will be in the L6e category for light four-wheeled vehicles.

“There are interesting cost and tax benefits in this segment,” said Hoevers. “For example, there is no congestion charge, no road tax, no parking fees, low insurance fees and no car driving license needed in most markets.”

Hoevers said the company is also considering producing a more powerful L7 that can go top speeds of around 45 miles per hour, which might be better for cities with more hills.

The competition

Squad isn’t the only company that has added solar panels to its electric vehicles. Germany-based startup Sono Motors told TechCrunch that it’s on track to begin deliveries of its electric Sion vehicle by 2023. The vehicle’s exterior is composed of hundreds of solar cells that have been integrated into polymer instead of glass and can add up to nearly 22 miles of extra battery life per day.

Although the Sion has not yet been released, the Sono app is already inviting owners of the vehicle to engage in a sort of car sharing that’s reminiscent of Airbnb for Sions in order to make use of vehicles that otherwise sit parked and useless for most of the day. As of Thursday, Sono is expanding this vision to allow any car to be shared via the Sono app.

Aptera Motors, a California company that has promised to roll out the “first mass-produced solar car” this year, raised $4 million in a Series A this February that it is using to pay for fiberglass, carbon fiber and batteries for its spaceship-looking tricycle. Aptera says its vehicle, which is available for pre-order and could cost anywhere between $25,900 and $46,900, will be built with 34 square feet of solar cells that can add an additional 40 miles of battery capacity on a clear day.

Each of the players in the solar-powered EV space have differences in tech, path to market and style, but they’re all potentially finding ways to ease the strain on the electrical grid.

In the Netherlands, new electric cars make up 25% of total market share, and that number will only increase. It might not be feasible in the long run for all of those vehicles to each plug into the grid to power up, especially when industries across sectors are beginning to electrify.

While it’s clear that the technology isn’t there yet for vehicles to run purely on solar, Squad and other companies like it are laying the groundwork for future solar technology.

Southeast Asian tech companies are drawing the attention of investors around the world. In 2020, startups in the region raised over $8.2 billion, about four times more than they did in 2015. This trend continued in 2021, with regional M&A hitting a record high of $124.8 billion in the first half of 2021, up 83% from a year earlier.

This begs the question: Who exactly is investing in Southeast Asia?

Let’s explore the three key types of investors pouring money into and driving the growth of Southeast Asia’s tech ecosystem.

Big tech

Southeast Asia has become an attractive market for U.S. and Chinese tech firms. Internet penetration here stands at 70%, higher than the global average, and digital adoption in the region remains nascent — it wasn’t until the pandemic that adoption of digital services such as e-wallets and online shopping took off.

China’s tech giants Tencent and Alibaba were among the first to support early e-commerce growth in Southeast Asia with investments in Sea Limited and Lazada, and have since expanded their footprint into other internet verticals. Alibaba has backed Akulaku, M-Pay (eMonkey), DANA, Wave Money and Mynt (GCash), while Tencent has invested in Voyager Innovations (PayMaya), SHAREit, iflix, Ookbee and Sanook.

U.S. tech firms have also recently entered the scene. In June 2020, Gojek closed a $3 billion Series F round from Google, Facebook, Tencent and Visa. Google, together with Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, invested some $350 million in Tokopedia in October. Meanwhile, Microsoft invested an undisclosed amount in Grab in 2018 and has invested $100 million in Indonesian e-commerce firm Bukalapak.

Venture capitalists

In Q1 2021, Southeast Asian startups raised $6 billion, according to DealStreetAsia, positioning 2021 as another record year for VC investment in the region.

The region is also rising in prominence as a destination for investment capital relative to the rest of Asia. Regional VC investment grew 5.2 times to $8.2 billion in 2020 from $1.6 billion in 2015, as we can see in the table below.

Southeast Asia also has many opportunities for VC investment relative to its market size. From 2015 to 2020, China saw VC investment of nearly $300 per person; for Southeast Asia — despite a recent investment boom — this metric sits at just $47.50 per person, or just a sixth of that in China. This implies a substantial opportunity for investments to develop the region’s digital economy.

The region’s rising population and growth prospects are higher due to China’s population growth challenges, alongside the latter’s higher digital economy market saturation and maturity.

Houseparty, the social video chat app acquired by Fortnite maker Epic Games for a reported $35 million back in 2019, is shutting down. The company says Houseparty will be discontinued in October when the app will stop functioning for its existing users; it will be pulled from the app stores today, however. Related to this move, Epic Games’ “Fortnite Mode” feature, which leveraged Houseparty to bring video chat to Fortnite gamers, will also be discontinued.

Founded in 2015, Houseparty offered a way for users to participate in group video chats with friends and even play games, like Uno, trivia, Heads Up and others. Last year, Epic Games integrated Houseparty with Fortnite, initially to allow gamers to see live feeds from friends while gaming, then later adding support to livestream gameplay directly into Houseparty. At the time, these integrations appeared to be the end goal that explained why Epic Games had bought the social startup in the first place.

Now, just over two years after the acquisition was announced, and less than half a year since support for livestreaming was added to the app, Houseparty is shutting down.

The company didn’t offer any solid insight into what, at first glance, feels like an admission of failure to capitalize on its acquisition. But the reality is that Epic Games may have something larger in store beyond just video chat. That said, all Epic Games would say today is that the Houseparty team could no longer give the app the attention it required — a statement that indicates an executive decision to shift the team’s focus to other matters.

While none of the Houseparty team members are being let go as a result of this move, we’re told, they will be joining other teams where they will work on new ways to allow for “social interactions” across the Epic Games family of products. The company’s announcement hinted that those social features would be designed and built at the “metaverse scale.”

The “metaverse” is an increasingly used buzzword that references a shared virtual environment, like those provided by large-scale online gaming platforms such as Fortnite, Roblox and others. Facebook, too, claims the metaverse is the next big gambit for social networking, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg having described it as an “embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at.”

To some extent, Fortnite has begun to embrace the metaverse by offering non-gaming experiences like online concerts you attend as your avatar, and other live events. Ahead of its shutdown, Houseparty also toyed with live events that users would co-watch and participate in alongside their friends.

An Epic Games spokesperson tells TechCrunch the Houseparty team has worked on (and continues to work on) a number of other projects that focus on social. But some of the “multiple, larger projects” Epic Games has in the works remain undisclosed, we’re told.

In terms of social products, Houseparty’s technology now underpins all of Fortnite voice chat and the features they built are widely available for free to developers through Epic Games Services. They also worked on building out new social experiences, which have ranged from the social RSVP functions for Fortnite’s global events, like the recent Ariana Grande concert, to the upcoming “Operation: Sky Fire” event for collaborating quests and other game mechanics. More social functionality and new experiences are also being built into Fortnite’s user-generated content platform, Create Mode.

While it may seem odd to close an app that only last year experienced a boost in usage due to the pandemic, it appears the COVID bump didn’t have staying power.

At the height of lockdowns, Houseparty had reported it had gained 50 million new sign-ups in a month’s time as users looked to video apps to connect with family and friends while the world was shut down. But as the pandemic wore on, other video chat experiences gained more ground. Zoom, which had established itself as an essential tool for remote work, became a tool for hanging out with friends after-hours, as well. Facebook also started to eat Houseparty’s lunch with its debut of drop-in video chat “Rooms” last year, which offered a similar group video experience. And bored users shifted to audio-based social networking on apps like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces.

According to data from Apptopia, Houseparty has been continually declining since the pandemic bump. To date, its app has seen a total of 111 million downloads across iOS and Android, with the majority (63 million) on iOS. The U.S. was Houseparty’s largest market, accounting for 43.4% of downloads, followed by the U.K. (9.8%), then Germany (5.6%).

Epic Games, meanwhile, said the app served “tens of millions” of users worldwide. It insists the closure wasn’t decided lightly, nor was the decision to shutter “Fortnite Mode” made due to lack of adoption.

Houseparty will alert users to the shutdown via in-app notifications ahead of its final closure in October. At that point, Fortnite Mode will also no longer be available.

Buy now, pay later is growing globally — with various companies expanding to, and in, different parts of the world, such as Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Here in the U.S., Affirm and Klarna are big players, and Square recently announced plans to acquire Afterpay, which also is eyeing growth here.

Traditional buy now, pay later (BNPL) gives consumers the opportunity to pay in installments at the point of sale, either online or, increasingly, in person as well. But even domestically, the ability to pay in installments is branching out beyond e-commerce and retail.

Wisetack is a startup that brings buy now, pay later to in-person services. And it just raised $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners.

Existing backers Greylock Partners and Bain Capital Ventures also participated in the financing, bringing the company’s total raised to $64 million since its 2018 inception. The latest round comes just six and a half months after Wisetack announced it had raised $19 million across its seed and Series A rounds, which were both led by Greylock.

In a nutshell, the San Francisco-based startup helps in-person businesses offer financing to consumers. Wisetack is not the first company to do this, but what makes it different, according to co-founder and CEO Bobby Tzekin, is that it actually embeds financing options into software platforms that businesses have already built out and are using in their operations.

Its focus is on service-based businesses, such as HVAC contractors or plumbers. For example, if your AC unit goes out and costs thousands to replace, you could have the option of paying for it in installments if the contractor has Wistack’s API embedded into its site.

So far, Wisetack has been able to grow rapidly by partnering with vertical SaaS businesses such as Housecall Pro and Jobber. Those companies offer consumer financing to their respective customer base, which include tens of thousands of home services professionals.

Wisetack clearly seems to be filling a gap. So far in 2021, it has grown its revenue and loan volume “over 10x” compared to 2020. And it works with thousands of merchants, according to Tzekin.

The executive left his job in 2018 to start Wisetack because he felt there was “clearly a massive need,” teaming up with Liz O’Donnell and Mykola Klymenko (who was co-founder and CTO at VaroMoney, the holding company of Varo Bank).

With its new capital, Wisetack plans to expand into other service-based verticals, such as auto repair, elective medical, dental and veterinary and legal services. It also plans to double its team of 40 over the next year.

To Tzekin, the opportunity is huge.

Most service businesses are SMBs, which have historically been harder to serve than large e-commerce players. Americans spend more than $400 billion a year on residential renovations and repairs alone, according to this Harvard report. And the United States automotive repair and maintenance services market is projected to reach $250 billion by 2026, up from $201 billion in 2020.

And while the average BNPL online transaction is a few hundred dollars, purchases made to service-based businesses average closer to $4,000 to $5,000, according to Tzekin.

The CEO believes that buy now, pay later can be more attractive than paying for such purchases with a credit card, for a few reasons. For one, consumers have the option of paying in installments for anywhere from three months to 60 months. 

“This often means it’s more affordable to buy the better piece of equipment since they can spread the costs over time,” he said. 

Also, just how much they will be paying over time will be made clear at the time of purchase, whereas when paying with a credit card, the amount could vary depending on interest rates and how long it takes to pay the money back, Tzekin added.

The company makes money by charging a processing fee to merchants, as well as charging interest to consumers — which can be anywhere from 0% to 29%, “depending on how good their credit is,” Tzekin said.  

“But credit cards charge compounded interest, whereas we charge simple interest,” he added.

Insight Partners Principal Rebecca Liu-Doyle describes Wisetack as “a standout in the industry.”

“Wisetack has a differentiated platform for embedded BNPL that is purpose-built to address use cases that are both more complex and less well-served than e-commerce,” she wrote via email. 

Note: The article headline was updated post-publication to reflect the accurate funding amount