Crytek announced today that the Crysis Remastered Trilogy is coming out this fall for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PCRead More

Join VB’s Dean Takahashi and others to learn how anti-tamper and anti-cheat solutions can protect your franchise and reputation.Read More

Electronic Arts announced today that next Battlefield is having its reveal on June 9 at 7 a.m. Pacific.Read More

Zenyum, a startup that wants to make cosmetic dentistry more affordable, announced today it has raised a $40 million Series B. This includes $25 million from L Catterton, a private equity firm focused on consumer brands. The round’s other participants were Sequoia Capital India (Zenyum is an alum of its Surge accelerator program), RTP Global, Partech, TNB Aura, Seeds Capital and FEBE Ventures. L Catteron Asia’s head of growth investments, Anjana Sasidharan, will join Zenyum’s board.

This brings Zenyum’s total raised so far to $56 million, including a $13.6 million Series A announced in November 2019. In a press statement, Sasidharan said, “Zenyum’s differentiated business model gives it a strong competitive advantage, and we are excited to partner with the founder management team to help them realize their growth ambitions.” Other dental-related investments in L Catteron’s portfolio include Ideal Image, ClearChoice, dentalcorp, OdontoCompany, Espaçolaser and 98point6.

Founded in 2018, the company’s products now include ZenyumSonic electric toothbrushes; Zenyum Clear, or transparent 3D-printed aligners; and ZenyumClear Plus for more complex teeth realignment cases.

Founder and chief executive officer Julian Artopé told TechCrunch that ZenyumClear aligners can be up to 70% cheaper than other braces, including traditional metal braces, lingual braces and other clear aligners like Invisalign, depending on the condition of a patients’ teeth and what they want to achieve. Zenyum Clear costs $2,400 SGD (about $1,816 USD), while ZenyumClear Plus ranges from $3,300 to $3,900 SGD (about $2,497 to $2,951 USD).

The company is able to reduce the cost of its invisible braces by combining a network of dental partners with a technology stack that allows providers to monitor patients’ progress while reducing the number of clinic visits they need to make.

First, potential customers send a photo of their teeth to Zenyum to determine if ZenyumClear or ZenyumClear Plus will work for them. If so, they have an in-person consultation with a dentists, including an X-ray and 3D scan. This costs between $120 to $170 SGD, which is paid to the clinic. After their invisible braces are ready, the patient returns to the dentist for a fitting. Then dentists can monitor the progress of their patient’s teeth through Zenyum’s app, only asking them to make another in-person visit if necessary.

ZenyumClear is currently available in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan, with more markets planned.

Sequoia India principal Pieter Kemps told TechCrunch, “There are 300M customers in Zenyum’s core markets—Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan—who have increased disposable income for beauty. We believe spend on invisible braces will grow significantly from the current penetration, but what it requires is strong execution on a complex product to become the preferred choice for consumers. That is where Zenyum shines: excellent execution, leading to new products, best-in-class NPS, fast growth, and strong economics. This Series B is a testament to that, and of the belief in the large opportunity down the road.”

Thousands of electric vehicle charging stations will be built around the country over the next decade. ChargerHelp!, founded in January 2020 by Kameale C. Terry and Evette Ellis, wants to make sure they stay up and running.

The idea for the on-demand repair app for EV charging stations came to Terry when she was working at EV Connect, where she held a number of roles including director of programs and head of customer experience. She noticed long wait times to fix non-electrical issues at charging stations due to the industry practice to use electrical contractors.

“When the stations went down we really couldn’t get anyone on site because most of the issues were communication issues, vandalism, firmware updates or swapping out a part — all things that were not electrical,” Terry said in an interview with TechCrunch earlier this year.

After Terry quit her job to start ChargerHelp!, she joined the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, where she developed a first-of-its-kind EV Network Technician Training Curriculum. Shortly after, Terry and Ellis were accepted into Elemental Excelerator’s startup incubator and have landed contracts with major EV charging network providers like EV Connect and SparkCharge.

The company uses a workforce-development approach to hiring, meaning that they only hire in cohorts. Workers receive full training, earn two safety licenses, are guaranteed a wage of $30 an hour and receive shares in the startup, Terry said.

We’re excited to announce that Kameale Terry will be joining us at TC Sessions: Mobility 2021, a one-day virtual event that is scheduled June 9. We’ll be covering a lot of ground with Terry, from how she developed her EV repair curriculum to what she sees in the company’s future.

Each year TechCrunch brings together founders, investors, CEOs and engineers who are working on all things transportation and mobility. If it moves people and packages from Point A to Point B, we cover it. This year’s agenda is filled with leaders in the mobility space who are shaping the future of transportation, from EV charging to autonomous vehicles to urban air taxis.

Among the growing list of speakers are Rimac Automobili founder Mate Rimac,  Revel Transit CEO Frank Reig, community organizer, transportation consultant and lawyer Tamika L. Butler and Remix/Via co-founder and CEO Tiffany Chu, who will come together to discuss how (and if) urban mobility can increase equity while still remaining a viable business.

Other guests include Motional’s President and CEO Karl Iagnemma, Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson, GM‘s VP of Global Innovation Pam Fletcher, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, Joby Aviation founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt, investor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (whose special purpose acquisition company just merged with Joby), investors Clara Brenner of Urban Innovation Fund, Quin Garcia of Autotech Ventures and Rachel Holt of Construct Capital, Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson.

We also recently announced a panel dedicated to China’s robotaxi industry, featuring three female leaders from Chinese AV startups: AutoX’s COO Jewel Li, Huan Sun, general manager of Momenta Europe with Momenta, and WeRide’s VP of Finance Jennifer Li.

Don’t wait to book your tickets to TC Sessions: Mobility as prices go up at the door. Grab your passes right now and hear from today’s biggest mobility leaders.

( function() { var func = function() { var iframe = document.getElementById('wpcom-iframe-3fb767030e6f67a7374753ae80701c36') if ( iframe ) { iframe.onload = function() { iframe.contentWindow.postMessage( { 'msg_type': 'poll_size', 'frame_id': 'wpcom-iframe-3fb767030e6f67a7374753ae80701c36' }, "https:\/\/tcprotectedembed.com" ); } } // Autosize iframe var funcSizeResponse = function( e ) { var origin = document.createElement( 'a' ); origin.href = e.origin; // Verify message origin if ( 'tcprotectedembed.com' !== origin.host ) return; // Verify message is in a format we expect if ( 'object' !== typeof e.data || undefined === e.data.msg_type ) return; switch ( e.data.msg_type ) { case 'poll_size:response': var iframe = document.getElementById( e.data._request.frame_id ); if ( iframe && '' === iframe.width ) iframe.width = '100%'; if ( iframe && '' === iframe.height ) iframe.height = parseInt( e.data.height ); return; default: return; } } if ( 'function' === typeof window.addEventListener ) { window.addEventListener( 'message', funcSizeResponse, false ); } else if ( 'function' === typeof window.attachEvent ) { window.attachEvent( 'onmessage', funcSizeResponse ); } } if (document.readyState === 'complete') { func.apply(); /* compat for infinite scroll */ } else if ( document.addEventListener ) { document.addEventListener( 'DOMContentLoaded', func, false ); } else if ( document.attachEvent ) { document.attachEvent( 'onreadystatechange', func ); } } )();

Meet June, a new startup that wants to make it easier to create analytics dashboards and generate reports even if you’re not a product analytics expert. June is built on top of your Segment data. Like many no-code startups, it uses templates and a graphical interface so that non-technical profiles can start using it.

“What we do today is instant analytics and that’s why we’re building it on top of Segment,” co-founder and CEO Enzo Avigo told me. “It lets you access data much more quickly.”

Segment acts as the data collection and data repository for your analytics. After that, you can start playing with your data in June. Eventually, June plans to diversify its data sources.

“Our long-term vision is to become the Airtable of analytics,” Avigo said.

If you’re familiar with Airtable, June may look familiar. The company has built a template library to help you get started. For instance, June helps you track user retention, active users, your acquisition funnel, engagement, feature usage, etc.

Once you pick a template, you can start building a report by matching data sources with templates. June automatically generates charts, sorts your user base into cohorts and shows you important metrics. You can create goals so that you receive alerts in Slack whenever something good or bad is happening.

Advanced users can also use June so that everyone in the team is using the same tool. They can create custom SQL queries and build a template based on those queries.

The company raised a seed round of $1.85 million led by Point Nine. Y Combinator, Speedinvest, Kima Ventures, eFounders and Base Case also participated, as well as several business angels.

Prior to June, the startup’s two co-founders worked for Intercom. They noticed that the analytics tool was too hard to use for many people. They didn’t rely on analytics to make educated decisions.

There are hundreds of companies using June every week and that number is growing by 10% per week. Right now, the product is free but the company plans to charge based on usage.

Cloud kitchens are already meant to reduce the burden of infrastructure on food and beverage brands by providing them with centralized facilities to prepare meals for delivery. This means the responsibility falls on cloud kitchen operators to make sure they have enough locations to meet demand from F&B clients, while ensuring fast deliveries to end customers.

Indonesian network DishServe has figured out a way to make running cloud kitchen networks even more asset-light. Launched by budget hotel startup RedDoorz’s former chief operating officer, DishServe partners with home kitchens instead of renting or buying its own facilities. It currently works with almost 100 home kitchens in Jakarta, and focuses on small- to medium-sized F&B brands, serving as their last-mile delivery network. Launched in fall 2020, DishServe has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Insignia Ventures Partners.

DishServe was founded in September 2020 by Rishabh Singhi. After leaving RedDoorz at the end of 2019, Singhi moved to New York, with plans to launch a new hospitality startup that could quickly convert any commercial space into members’ clubs like Soho House. The nascent company had already created sample pre-fabricated rooms and was about to start leasing property when the COVID-19 lockdown hit New York City in March 2020. Singhi said he went on a “soul searching spree” for a couple of months, deciding what to do and if he should return to Southeast Asia.

He realized that since many restaurants had to switch to online orders and delivery to survive the pandemic, this could potentially be an equalizer for small F&B brands that compete with larger players, like McDonald’s. But lockdowns meant that a lot of people had to pick from a limited range of restaurants close to where they lived. At the same time, Singhi saw that there were a lot of people who wanted to make more money, but couldn’t work outside of their homes, like stay-at-home moms.

DishServe was created to connect all three sides: F&B brands that want to expand without spending a lot of money, home entrepreneurs and diners hungry for more food options. Its other founders include Stefanie Irma, an early RedDoorz employee who served as its country head for the Philippines; serial entrepreneur Vinav Bhanawat; and Fathhi Mohamed, who also co-founded Sri Lankan on-demand taxi service PickMe.

The company works with F&B brands that typically have between just one to 15 retail locations, and want to increase their deliveries without opening new outlets. DishServe’s clients also include cloud kitchen companies who use its home kitchen network for last-mile distribution to expand their delivery coverage and catering services.

“The brands don’t to have to incur any upfront costs, and it’s a cheaper way to distribute as well because they don’t have to pay for electricity, plumbing and other things like that,” said Singhi. “And for agents, it gives them a chance to earn money from their homes.”

How it works

Before adding a home kitchen to its network, DishServe screens applicants by asking them to send in a series of photos, then doing an in-person check. If a kitchen is accepted, DishServe upgrades it so it has the same equipment and functionality as the other home kitchens in its network. The company covers the cost of the conversion process, which usually takes about three hours and costs $500 USD, and maintains ownership of the equipment, taking it back if a kitchen decided to stop working with DishServe. Singhi said DishServe is usually able to recover the cost of a conversion four months after a kitchen begins operating.

Home kitchens start out by serving DishServe’s own white-label brand as a trial run before it opens to other brands. Each can serve up to three additional brands at a time.

One important thing to note is that DishServe’s home kitchens, which are usually run by one person, don’t actually cook any food. Ingredients are provided by F&B brands, and home kitchen operators follow a standard set of procedures to heat, assemble and package meals for pick-up and delivery.

DishServe makes sure standard operating procedures and hygiene standards are being maintained through frequent online audits. Agents, or kitchen operators, regularly submit photos and videos of kitchens based on a checklist (i.e. food preparation area, floors, walls, hand-washing area and the inside of their freezers). Singhi said about 90% of its agents are women between the ages of 30 to 55, with an average household income of $1,000. By working with DishServe, they typically make an additional $600 a month once their kitchen is operating at full capacity with four brands. DishServe monetizes through a revenue-sharing model, charging F&B brands and splitting that with its agents.

After joining DishServe, F&B brands pick what home kitchens they want to work with, and then distribute ingredients to kitchens, using DishServe’s real-time dashboard to monitor stock. Some ingredients have a shelf life of up to six months, while perishables, like produce, dairy and eggs, are delivered daily. DishServe’s “starter pack” for onboarding new brands lets them pick pick five kitchens, but Singhi said most brands usually begin with between 10 to 20 kitchens so they can deliver to more spots in Jakarta and save money by preparing meals in bulk.

DishServe plans to focus on growing its network in Jakarta until at least the end of this year, before expanding into other cities. “One thing we are trying to change about the F&B industry is that instead of highly-concentrated, centralized food business, like what exists today, we are decentralizing it by enabling micro-entrepreneurs to act as a distribution network,” Singhi said.

When it comes to meeting compliance standards, many startups are dominating the alphabet. From GDPR and CCPA to SOC 2, ISO27001, PCI DSS and HIPAA, companies have been charging toward meeting the compliance standards required to operate their businesses.

Today, every healthcare founder knows their product must meet HIPAA compliance, and any company working in the consumer space would be well aware of GDPR, for example.

But a mistake many high-growth companies make is that they treat compliance as a catchall phrase that includes security. Thinking this could be an expensive and painful error. In reality, compliance means that a company meets a minimum set of controls. Security, on the other hand, encompasses a broad range of best practices and software that help address risks associated with the company’s operations.

It makes sense that startups want to tackle compliance first. Being compliant plays a big role in any company’s geographical expansion to regulated markets and in its penetration to new industries like finance or healthcare. So in many ways, achieving compliance is a part of a startup’s go-to-market kit. And indeed, enterprise buyers expect startups to check the compliance box before signing on as their customer, so startups are rightfully aligning around their buyers’ expectations.

With all of this in mind, it’s not surprising that we’ve witnessed a trend where startups achieve compliance from the very early days and often prioritize this motion over developing an exciting feature or launching a new campaign to bring in leads, for instance.

Compliance is an important milestone for a young company and one that moves the cybersecurity industry forward. It forces startup founders to put security hats on and think about protecting their company, as well as their customers. At the same time, compliance provides comfort to the enterprise buyer’s legal and security teams when engaging with emerging vendors. So why is compliance alone not enough?

First, compliance doesn’t mean security (although it is a step in the right direction). It is more often than not that young companies are compliant while being vulnerable in their security posture.

What does it look like? For example, a software company may have met SOC 2 standards that require all employees to install endpoint protection on their devices, but it may not have a way to enforce employees to actually activate and update the software. Furthermore, the company may lack a centrally managed tool for monitoring and reporting to see if any endpoint breaches have occurred, where, to whom and why. And, finally, the company may not have the expertise to quickly respond to and fix a data breach or attack.

Therefore, although compliance standards are met, several security flaws remain. The end result is that startups can suffer security breaches that end up costing them a bundle. For companies with under 500 employees, the average security breach costs an estimated $7.7 million, according to a study by IBM, not to mention the brand damage and lost trust from existing and potential customers.

Second, an unforeseen danger for startups is that compliance can create a false sense of safety. Receiving a compliance certificate from objective auditors and renowned organizations could give the impression that the security front is covered.

Once startups start gaining traction and signing upmarket customers, that sense of security grows, because if the startup managed to acquire security-minded customers from the F-500, being compliant must be enough for now and the startup is probably secure by association. When charging after enterprise deals, it’s the buyer’s expectations that push startups to achieve SOC 2 or ISO27001 compliance to satisfy the enterprise security threshold. But in many cases, enterprise buyers don’t ask sophisticated questions or go deeper into understanding the risk a vendor brings, so startups are never really called to task on their security systems.

Third, compliance only deals with a defined set of knowns. It doesn’t cover anything that is unknown and new since the last version of the regulatory requirements were written.

For example, APIs are growing in use, but regulations and compliance standards have yet to catch up with the trend. So an e-commerce company must be PCI-DSS compliant to accept credit card payments, but it may also leverage multiple APIs that have weak authentication or business logic flaws. When the PCI standard was written, APIs weren’t common, so they aren’t included in the regulations, yet now most fintech companies rely heavily on them. So a merchant may be PCI-DSS compliant, but use nonsecure APIs, potentially exposing customers to credit card breaches.

Startups are not to blame for the mix-up between compliance and security. It is difficult for any company to be both compliant and secure, and for startups with limited budget, time or security know-how, it’s especially challenging. In a perfect world, startups would be both compliant and secure from the get-go; it’s not realistic to expect early-stage companies to spend millions of dollars on bulletproofing their security infrastructure. But there are some things startups can do to become more secure.

One of the best ways startups can begin tackling security is with an early security hire. This team member might seem like a “nice to have” that you could put off until the company reaches a major headcount or revenue milestone, but I would argue that a head of security is a key early hire because this person’s job will be to focus entirely on analyzing threats and identifying, deploying and monitoring security practices. Additionally, startups would benefit from ensuring their technical teams are security-savvy and keep security top of mind when designing products and offerings.

Another tactic startups can take to bolster their security is to deploy the right tools. The good news is that startups can do so without breaking the bank; there are many security companies offering open-source, free or relatively affordable versions of their solutions for emerging companies to use, including Snyk, Auth0, HashiCorp, CrowdStrike and Cloudflare.

A full security rollout would include software and best practices for identity and access management, infrastructure, application development, resiliency and governance, but most startups are unlikely to have the time and budget necessary to deploy all pillars of a robust security infrastructure.

Luckily, there are resources like Security 4 Startups that offer a free, open-source framework for startups to figure out what to do first. The guide helps founders identify and solve the most common and important security challenges at every stage, providing a list of entry-level solutions as a solid start to building a long-term security program. In addition, compliance automation tools can help with continuous monitoring to ensure these controls stay in place.

For startups, compliance is critical for establishing trust with partners and customers. But if this trust is eroded after a security incident, it will be nearly impossible to regain it. Being secure, not only compliant, will help startups take trust to a whole other level and not only boost market momentum, but also make sure their products are here to stay.

So instead of equating compliance with security, I suggest expanding the equation to consider that compliance and security equal trust. And trust equals business success and longevity.

Meet Café, a new French startup founded by two brothers that wants to help companies switch to a hybrid remote-and-office workplace model. Café isn’t a traditional desk-booking tool. Instead, the company helps you see when people in your team are coming to the office so that you can plan when you should go to the office as well.

Instead of focusing on workspace, Café focuses on people first. “We decided that we wouldn’t let you book a desk directly,” co-founder and CTO Arthur Lorotte de Banes told me.

When you open the app, you get a simplified calendar view. For each day, you can see your team members divided by groups — people coming to the office, people working from home, etc.

In just a few taps, you can tell your other co-workers what you plan to do. This way, it becomes much easier to schedule meetings, have in-person conversation and more generally hang out with your co-workers. It also makes it easier to find a common day with a specific co-worker if you’re working on the same project.

“We interviewed 150 companies and we realized companies faced the same issue after interviewing the first five companies. They all use spreadsheets,” co-founder and CEO Tom Nguyen told me.

Using a tool like Café also gives you insights about your office. For instance, you can see the average number of persons in your office depending on the day of the week or the day of the month. Admins can configure a weekly reminder to make sure that everybody fills out information.

In addition to its mobile app and web app, Café integrates with your existing tools. For instance, you can connect your Café account with Slack so that your status on Slack reflects your status in Café. Teammates can hover over your name to know that you’re in the office or you’re at home.

The company is also working on integrations with human resource information systems, such as PayFit, so that your vacation is automatically synchronized with Café.

As companies start hashing out a plan to return to the office, Café arrives on the market at the right time. Companies can create custom statuses to fit their specific needs. For instance, a Café customer has created a status so that they know who has the office keys to make sure that the office remains open.

The company raised a $1 million seed round from 122West, Kima Ventures, Jonathan Widawski, Guillaume Lestrade, Jacques-Edouard Sabatier and various business angels who work or have worked for WeWork, Dropbox, Github, Snapchat, Intercom, Stripe, Alan and PayFit.

Like Typeform, Doodle or Slido, Café has chosen a freemium strategy. Teams can sign up for free and start using the product with their immediate co-workers. You don’t need to enter card information to sign up.

If you want to roll it out across the organization with more users, you have to start paying — existing clients include Livestorm, Jellysmack and Yubo. The startup believes employees will become product advocates for the entire organization. And it seems like the right strategy for a product that is supposed to make employees happier at work.

Intel announced two new additions to the lineup of 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processors for thin-and-light laptops.Read More

Templafy's research explains why, despite an influx of new tools meant to improve productivity, employees feel less efficient than ever.Read More

igital transformation CMOs can drive an analytics-first culture that re-imagines the role of data to increase revenue and grow the business.Read More

Microsoft emphasized speed and ease of development in announcements for Power Apps, Power BI, and Cosmos DB at Microsoft Build.Read More

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford had to deal with some haters after his team made wove a Borderlands 3 expansion story around two gay characters.Read More

Here are a few effective ways to future-proof your advertising efforts against a world without cookies and device IDs.Read More

As privacy laws start to limit companies' data sets, synthetic data could be key to continuing to leverage AI.Read More

Blockchain and nonfungible tokens are going from curiousity to mainstream, and this could change how the game industry makes games.Read More

Adversarial attacks present a growing threat to commercial AI and machine learning systems. Fortunately, some solutions exist.Read More

The move to privacy is worrying businesses, especially big tech, who fear giving up control of their data will stifle innovation.Read More

For many VCs, the exit is the endgame; you cash in and move on. But as we know, the startup world is evolving, and that means the impact of investment is no longer limited to how much money is made.

As investors, we’re looking further into what each investment means to human beings, at interlinking our mission with our money. And yet, one of the events that generates the most momentum for long-term impact — the successful exit of a portfolio company — is not being harnessed.

When leveraged properly, an exit can be the beginning of a firm’s true impact, especially when we’re talking about giving all founders equal opportunities and empowering the best ideas. The investment sphere is slowly shaking off its “America first” approach as foreign products take the world by storm and international businesses become the norm.

Investors will be driving forces in enabling the highest-potential companies to build products that countries everywhere will benefit from — no matter where they were conceived. The way they play the game can transform the industry into one in which a founder from across the ocean has as much of a chance to change the world as one from next door.

We know the basics of how to do this with cash: Investing in underrepresented founders is a necessary first step. But who’s talking about the power of exits to change the playing field for diverse founders? We must consider the psychological motivation of seeing a huge buyout on other entrepreneurs, what that startup’s ex-team members go on to build, and what the achievements of one citizen does for that nation’s reputation.

Last year, 41 venture-backed companies saw a billion-dollar exit, totaling over $100 billion, the highest numbers in a decade. We have an unprecedented amount of clout to do something with those power moves and four ways to turn them into a domino effect.

1. Competitor effect

When a foreign entrepreneur raises money from U.S. firms and sells to a U.S. company, other immigrants see that. Regardless of how groundbreaking their product idea might be, immigrant Americans will always be more wary of putting their eggs into the entrepreneurship basket, at least as long as 93% of all VC money continues to be controlled by white men.

This, despite research suggesting that immigrants contribute 40% more to innovation than local inventors.

What these foreign entrepreneurs most need is confidence, role models and success stories proving other people who look like them have made it, especially when those founders are making waves in the same industry as them.

So a big, well-publicized exit will create momentum in the industry for other foreign founders to give fuel to their venture and seek to take it to the next stage. Not only that, it will instill more self-assurance when it comes to fundraising, and investors will value that.

I was inspired to write this column after Returnly, a fintech founded by a fellow immigrant from Spain based in San Francisco — which, for full transparency, I invested in as an angel investor, and then for Series B and C via my fund — was acquired for $300 million by Affirm.

While there was undoubtedly a personal financial gain worth celebrating, the success of a foreign founder who persevered against the odds in such a competitive ecosystem as Silicon Valley, raised large rounds from U.S.-based investors, and was finally acquired by a U.S. company served as a moment of inspiration for other diverse founders around the world. We saw this in the amount of media attention it received in both business and mainstream press in Spain and the floods of connect requests and congratulations that followed on LinkedIn.

The impact of an exit is greater when it shows foreign entrepreneurs that there are globally minded organizations helping startups like theirs get equal access to funding. That means having VC firms that spotlight international entrepreneurship and foster global expert networks.

As investors, we can maximize the impact of our exits in the industry by highlighting the foreign origins of our founders in a big way when it comes to promoting the exit, including narrating the challenges and opportunities they encountered on their journey. We can use the victory to drive the point home to our fellow investors that diverse and international entrepreneurship is an undervalued gem. We can personally take the win to boost our brand as one that empowers foreign entrepreneurs in that niche, attracting more to seek funding with us in a positive reinforcement cycle.

2. Wealth effect

The windfall from a big exit puts all previous investors in a privileged position, and it’s unlikely that money will sit around for long. They’ll look to reinvest in other high-potential companies — probably ones that look a lot like the one that was just sold.

But in addition to those investors multiplying the positive impact in their own portfolio, they will rally other investors to behave in a similar way.

Each exit — good or bad — sets a precedent for that niche and that type of company. Other investors will follow suit if they sense that one of their peers is onto a cash cow. Because foreign and ethnic minority founders are still underrepresented in startup funding, it makes this field less competitive while harboring huge potential. VCs who have an eye out for unique opportunities will spot when an investor has made a hefty profit from an unconventional startup, especially if they continue to invest in others in that same field.

To help this along, angels and VCs who’ve been behind a recent exit and are reinvesting in similar founders should publicize those knock-on investments, explaining how their previous success motivated them to support similar ventures. They can also be vocal within their network about their decision to raise up certain entrepreneurs because they’ve seen it works.

Returnly’s founder recently offered to put some of his earnings back into our fund, enabling more foreign entrepreneurs like himself to access capital. If as investors we foster meaningful relationships with our funders and truly care about empowering diverse entrepreneurs, we’ll see more of that wealth circle back into our mission.

3. Team effect

The PayPal Mafia is a set of former PayPal executives and employees — such as Elon Musk, a South African, and Peter Thiel, a German American — who have gone on to seriously disrupt not one but multiple industries across tech. Among the companies they’ve founded are YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp and Tesla, and they’ve even been named U.S. ambassadors. That’s just one company. Imagine what other diverse and driven teams can do with the influx of cash and inspiration that comes with a big exit. There will be a ripple effect of team members eager to start out on their own who feel empowered by the success of someone who believed in them.

Their ventures will be more likely to “pass it on” when it comes to giving equal opportunities to people regardless of origin and will generate more jobs for people with their mission. Take Thiel, who has to date backed over 40 companies in Europe alone.

As VCs, we can capitalize on this team effect by keeping our eye on any spinoff ventures that arise and supporting them when possible (with experience and contacts, if not with capital). But beyond this, you can also consider encouraging these people to join the investment sphere, maybe even within your firm. Many successful startup founders and executives go on to become investors — the PayPal Mafia has contributed to some of the most notorious funds out there today. The origin story of these former team members will make them more prone to supporting underrepresented founders they can get behind. In turn, new entrepreneurs will draw more value from their personal experiences.

4. Reputation effect

Although Returnly is headquartered in San Francisco, its founder is Spanish and many of its employees were based in Spain.

That means that the impact of Returnly’s exit will be felt on the other side of the Atlantic as well as among co-nationals in the United States. The same is true of other notable sales, like AlienVault, which was founded in Spain and had multiple offices there. AlienVault was acquired by U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T for $900 million. Or IPOs — earlier this month, the Spanish-origin payments company Flywire filed for an IPO that could value the company at $3 billion. One startup’s success boosts the reputation of its entire team, and with it other founders and talent with their same country of origin, background, education and drive.

It follows that investors and other stakeholders will be more inclined to back opportunities among founders from the same home country if it says something about the mission, expertise and culture they bring to their startup.

At the same time, growing startups will be more interested in hiring the talent of evidently successful teams. That doesn’t just mean hiring more foreign experts in the United States, but seeking to outsource farther afield. We’re already becoming far more comfortable with remote teams, and it’s more capital-efficient for one half of the team to be working while the other half sleeps. But founders will always gravitate more to countries where local talent and innovation is already seen to be thriving. Open up that conversation with your portfolio companies.

VCs have the power to change an industry forever, to connect startup ecosystems across continents and to see startups expand worldwide. But this is about staying relevant as an investor as much as it’s about ensuring this next stage in the startup world is a positive one.

Investors who don’t recognize that the future of startups is global and diverse in nature won’t be in sync with the best opportunities — and won’t be selected by the best founders. Rather than trying to play catchup, help build that ecosystem.