Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. 

Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.

Earlier this week TechCrunch broke the news that Public, a consumer stock trading service, was in the process of raising more money. Business Insider quickly filled in details surrounding the round, that it could be around $200 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion. Tiger could lead.

Public wants to be the anti-Robinhood. With a focus on social, and a recent move away from generating payment for order flow (PFOF) revenues that have driven Robinhood’s business model, and attracted criticism, Public has laid its bets. And investors, in the wake of its rival’s troubles, are ready to make it a unicorn.

Of course, the Public round comes on the heels of Robinhood’s epic $3.4 billion raise, a deal that was shocking for both its scale and speed. The trading service’s investors came in force to ensure it had the capital it needed to continue supporting consumer trades. Thanks to Robinhood’s strong Q4 2020 results, and implied growth in Q1 2021, the boosted investment made sense.

As does the Public money, provided that 1) The company is seeing lots of user growth, and 2) That it figures out its forever business model in time. We cannot comment on the second, but we can say a bit about the first point.

Thanks not to Public, really, but M1 Finance, a Midwest-based consumer fintech that has a stock-buying function amongst its other services (more on it here). It told TechCrunch that it saw a quadrupling of signups in January as compared to December. And in the last two weeks, it saw six times as many signups as the preceding two weeks.

Given that M1 doesn’t allow for trading — something that its team repeatedly stressed in notes to TechCrunch — we can’t draw a perfect line between M1 and Public and Robinhood, but we can infer that there is huge consumer interest in investing of late. Which helps explain why Public, which is hunting up a way to generate long-term incomes, can raise another round just months after it closed a different investment.

Our notes last year on how savings and investing were the new thing last year are accidentally becoming even more true than we expected.

Market Notes

As the week came to a close, Coupang filed to go public. You can read our first look here, but it’s going to be big news. Also on the IPO beat, Matterport is going out via a SPAC, I chatted with Metromile CEO Dan Preston about his insurtech public offering this week that also came via a SPAC, and so on.

Oscar Health filed, and it doesn’t look super strong. So its impending valuation is going to test public traders. That’s not a problem that Bumble had when it priced above-range this week and then skyrocketed after it started to trade. Natasha and I (she’s on Equity, as well) have some notes from Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd that we’ll get to you early next week. (Also I chatted about the IPO with the BBC a few times, which was neat, the first of which you can check out here if you’d like.)

Roblox’s impending public debut was also back in the news this week. The company was a bit bigger than it thought last year (cool), but may delay its direct listing to March (not cool).

Near to the IPO beat, Carta started to allow its own shares to trade recently, on the back of news that its revenues have scaled to around $150 million. Not bad Carta, but how about a real IPO instead of staying private? The company’s valuation more than doubled during the secondary transitions.

And then there were so very many cool venture capital rounds that I couldn’t get to this week. This Koa Health round, for example. And whatever this Slync.io news is. (If you want some earlier-stage stuff, check out recent rounds from Treinta, Level, Ramp and Monte Carlo.

And to close, a small callout to Ontic, which provides “protective intelligence software” and said that its revenue grew 177% last year. I appreciate the sharing of the numbers, so wanted to highlight the figure.

Various and Sundry

Wrapping this week, I have a final bit for you to chew on from Mark Mader, the CEO of Smartsheet, a public company — former startup, it’s worth noting — that plays in the no-code, automation and collaboration markets. That’s a rough summary. Anyhoo, I asked Mader about no-code trends in 2021, as I have my eyes on the space. Here’s what he wrote for us:

If you thought the sudden shift to remote work sped up corporate America’s shift to digital, you haven’t seen anything yet. Digital transformation is going to accelerate even more rapidly in 2021. Last year, the workforce was exposed to many different types of technology all at once. For example, a company may have deployed Zoom or DocuSign for the first time. But much of this shift involved taking analog processes like meetings or document signing and approval and bringing them online. Things like this are merely a first step. 2021 is the year the companies will begin to connect large-scale digital events to infrastructure that can make them automated and repeatable. It’s the difference between one person signing a document and hundreds of people signing hundreds of documents, with different rules for each one. And that’s just one example. Another use case could involve linking HR software to project management software for automated, real-time resource allocation that allows a company to get more out of both platforms, as well as its people. The businesses that can automate and simplify complex workflows like these will see dramatically improved efficiency and return on their technology investments, putting them on the path to true transformation and improved profitability.

We shall see!

Alex

 

There’s always a fintech angle, even on Valentine’s Day.

This week, I covered Zeta, a new startup working on joint finances for modern couples. It aims to take away the money chores of a relationship, from splitting the bill at dinner to requesting rent through a payment app every month.

Aditi Shekar, the co-founder, gave me some notes about why the ongoing popularity of Venmo is validation for the company, instead of competition.

Here’s what I learned:

The success of Zeta hinges on the idea that people want to share their finances in an ongoing and meaningful way, and that the world of finance is ready to shift from individualism to collectivism earlier and louder. It sounds daunting, but we already know that social finance is big, as shown by apps like Venmo and Splitwise, and phenomena like the GameStop saga from just a few weeks ago.

Other startups have taken notice too, entering the world of multiplayer fintech, a term that categorizes socially focused and consumer-friendly financial services. Braid, a group-financing platform, is trying to make transactions work for various entities, from shared households to side hustles to creative projects.

Money is emotional and complex, and the opportunity within the multiplayer fintech reflects just that. The next wave of products will be able to straddle the line of comfort to successfully get adoption, and cultural shift to successfully deliver a truly collaborative cash experience.

(And in case that wasn’t enough Valentine’s Day content for you, here’s one more piece about a new dating app for gamers).

In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about the new career path to CEO, our favorite startups from Techstars Demo Day and the latest SPAC you should probably know about. As always, you can find me on Twitter @nmasc_ or e-mail me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Want this in your inbox each week? Sign up here.

Data on startups is dreadful

Data about startups is helpful to understand directional trends and how the flow of capital works and changes over time. But as ventures as an asset class grows and the documentation around raises gets thornier, the data can sometimes be missing a big chunk of what’s actually happening on the scenes.

Here’s what to know per Danny Crichton and Alex Wilhelm: PSA: most aggregate VC trend data is garbage and Are SAFEs obscuring today’s seed volume are two pieces that explain some of the reasons why the numbers might be flawed today. The good news is that the government is also in the dark about funding data; the bad news is that without good tracking, we don’t know how progress is being made.

Etc: Shameless plug for you to tip us on Secure Drop, TechCrunch’s submission system for any news you think is important to share. You can stay anonymous.

The new CEO

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced weeks ago that he was shifting into an executive chairman role and AWS CEO Andy Jassy would take over as chief executive. In this analysis, our enterprise cloud reporter Ron Miller explores the question: is overseeing cloud operations the new path to CEO?

Here’s what to know, per Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester Research:

“In both cases, these hyperscale business units of Microsoft and Amazon were the fastest-growing and best-performing units of the companies. [ … ] In both cases, cloud infrastructure was seen as a platform on top of which and around which other cloud offerings could be developed,” Bartels said. The companies both believe that the leaders of these two growth engines were best suited to lead the company into the future.

Etc: Ember names former Dyson head as consumer CEO as the startup looks beyond the smart mug, and Monzo, the British challenger bank nearing 5 million customers, has recruited a new US CEO.

A triple-hitter Demo Day

TechCrunch covered favorites from Techstars’ three Demo Days, which were focused on Chicago, Boston and workforce development. Make sure to dig into the startups yourself to form your own opinions, but if you care what stood out to us, here’s what we ended up with.

Here’s what to know: The reason I love Demo Days is that it’s a fast way to understand what the next wave of startups and entrepreneurs are thinking about. In this year’s cohorts, we saw an exclusive sneaker marketplace, flexible life insurance and a part-time childcare platform that helps parents cover random gaps in their childcare schedule.

Etc: Without desks and a demo day, are accelerators worth it?

Public markets fly high

Archer Aviation, the electric aircraft startup targeting the urban air mobility market, is teaming up with United Airlines to become a publicly traded company via, you guessed it, a SPAC.

Here’s what to know per Kirsten Korosec, our transportation editor:

The agreement to go public and the order from United Airlines comes less than a year after Archer Aviation came out of stealth. Archer was co-founded in 2018 by Adam Goldstein and Brett Adcock, who sold their software-as-a-service company Vettery to The Adecco Group for more than $100 million. The company’s primary backer was Lore, who sold his company Jet.com to Walmart in 2016 for $3.3 billion. Lore was Walmart’s e-commerce chief until January.

Etc: Bumble priced and Nigeria’s IROKO plans to go public on the London Stock Exchange.

Around TC

Announcing the TC Early Stage Pitch-OffAlexa von Tobel brings 15 years of financial savvy to Early Stage 2021Kleiner Perkins’ Bucky Moore will outline what to think about before raising a Series A at Early Stage in April

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

Jack Dorsey and Jay Z invest 500 BTC to make Bitcoin ‘internet’s currency’Goldman Sachs and Sesame Workshop pour money into this edtech firm’s newest fundA Dallas-based founder looks to tackle the student loan crisis with his startup, College CashHow African startups raised investments in 2020

Seen on Extra Crunch

3 adtech and martech VCs see major opportunities in privacy and compliance5 ways Robinhood’s rushed UX changes exacerbated the GameStop crisisCommercializing deep tech startups: A practical guide for founders and investorsWill ride-hailing profits ever come?Best practices for Zoom board meetings at early-stage startups

@Equitypod: Does SoftBank have 20 more DoorDashes?

SoftBank earnings always give key insights about how a heavyweight in venture capital is performing (and the bonanza always comes with a healthy share of content and memes). This week on Equity, we couldn’t resist nerding out about it:

SoftBank and the late-stage venture capital J CurveSoftBank kills half the performance incentive for its Vision Fund execsWeWork is apparently doing better, not that SoftBank wants you to talk about that

Of course, if SoftBank isn’t your jam, there was a whole host of other news we chatted about, from Reddit’s latest raise to DoorDash buying a salad robot. Listen here.

Until next week,

N

 

The world has spent most of 2020 adapting to ever-changing guidelines and restrictions (with no end in sight, even as the vaccines start to roll out). Board meetings are quickly increasing in their significance to foster consistent and vital interactions as an organization. It’s essential for companies to capitalize on the essential time together during these uncertain times.

While we might look like the Brady Bunch while sharing a Zoom window, are you actually communicating more like the family from “Succession?”

Are your meetings organized? Do people talk over one another? Do you usually run over time? Are you giving people time to digest information?

As we move into 2021 and Q1 meetings are being put onto calendars, take some time to modernize how you conduct your board meetings.

Having served on public company boards, growth-stage businesses and Series A startups, an observation I have made in boards that are later stage are more about financial analysis and governance. Whereas earlier-stage board discussions hinge more on product strategy, key partnerships, sharing best practices to help develop founders as executives and important hiring decisions.

Since the nature of the discussions is more, let’s call it … creative in earlier-stage businesses, where the focus is on where they’ve been particularly impacted by reduced bandwidth for collaboration while meeting remotely.

As said best by Mike Maples and paraphrased by Jeff Bonforte — there are only four things a board really needs to consider:

Has the market changed since we last met? If so, did it affect us negatively or positively?Has the team changed? For better or worse?Has our position in the market changed?Can we do what we said we would?

Collecting data around those points is the job. In the meeting, the team can add color.

Remember the board works for you, so be sure to put them to work. Sharing materials with participants about three days ahead of time tends to be the best. Any later and they may not get enough time to digest, send earlier and the information might be out of date by the time you meet. It’s most common to format as a deck, but lately I’m seeing more written format and even magazine-style.

The number one request I get from early-stage companies is “help find me more customers.”

Other common requests are “help me find or land this type of talent, help me with industry benchmarks for this type of business deal or compensation structure, connect me to people that have experience with X so I can learn ways we could structure our process.” It’s helpful to put these asks in the materials you send ahead because sometimes board members might not be able to react quickly and now “homework” comes up spontaneously in the discussions.

Another purpose of these meetings is to build working relationships so when strategic decisions need to be made, board members are used to working together. Sometimes it is a forum for executives to gain exposure to board members and for board members to have the opportunity to evaluate and provide input on executives. For that reason execs are often invited to participate in certain discussions.

Like the product person who presents a roadmap or a market analysis, the head of sales should give color on pipeline and competitive deals, the marketing person may lead a discussion on ABM or channel marketing tactics, the engineering lead might ask for feedback on their metrics versus other companies, etc. Generally, CEOs also bring forth an interesting topic to have a discussion, such as channel strategy, market mapping/sizing, hiring plan and related issues.

Logistics

As far as logistics, we reserve two hours in calendars but we try to hit 90 minutes. I suggest something like this for a 90-minute session:

Building off TechCrunch’s coverage of the recent 500 Startups demo day, we’re back today to talk about some favorites from three more accelerator classes. This time we’re digging into Techstars’ latest three accelerator classes.

What follows are four favorites from the Techstars’ Boston, Chicago and “workforce development” programs. As a team we tuned into the accelerator live pitches and dug into recordings when we needed to.

As always, these are just our favorites, but don’t just take our word for it. Dig into the pitches yourself, as there’s never a bad time to check out some super-early-stage startups.

Four favs from Techstars Boston

Everyday Life

What: A platform that wants to make life insurance flexible and personalized.Why we like it: The insurtech wave, from auto insurance to home insurance, has underscored the need for more consumer-friendly plans. Life insurance still feels like an untapped part of the equation, and Everyday Life wants to use technology to make the process cheaper and simpler.
The founding team says that there’s solid interest in life insurance amid the coronavirus pandemic, which amounts to a $20 billion market opportunity.

Knife Capital, a South African venture capital firm, is raising a $50 million fund for startups looking to raise Series B financing. With Knife Fund III called the African Series B Expansion Fund, the firm seeks to directly invest in the aggressive expansion of South African breakout companies. It also plans to co-invest in companies across the rest of Africa.

The first fund, known as Knife Capital Fund I or HBD Venture Capital, was a closed private equity fund managed by Eben van Heerden and Keet van Zyl. The firm offered seed capital to startups. It also generated significant exits from its portfolio — Visa acquisition of fintech startup Fundamo, and orderTalk’s acquisition by UberEats come to mind.

In 2016, the VC firm launched its current 12J offering with Knife Capital Fund II. The fund (KNF Ventures), which invests primarily in Series A stage, has eight startups in its portfolio. Last year the firm told TechCrunch of its intention to extend the Fund II and open to new investors. The plan was to give startups access to networks, money and expansion opportunities.

“We want to help South African and African companies internationalize,” said co-managing partner Andrea Bohmert at the time. A testament to its cause, one of its portfolio companies, DataProphet, raised $6 million Series A to expand into the U.S. and Europe.

Bohmert tells TechCrunch that the third fund aims to address the critical Series B funding gap that has characterised the venture capital asset class in South Africa, resulting in businesses not reaching full potential or exiting too early.

“Lately, we see an increase in companies able to raise $2 million to $5 million funding rounds. And while the companies are operating within their home country, in our case South Africa, such amounts take you far due to the local cost structure,” Bohmert says. “However, once these companies start gaining international traction and need to build an infrastructure outside of their home country, they need to raise significant amounts to afford so. There are currently hardly any South African VC funds, perhaps other than Naspers Foundry, that can write checks of $5 million or more and are willing to deploy them to finance the externalization of South African companies into larger markets.”

As a result, Bohmert argues that Africa has become an incubator for international VCs who can write these checks but cannot provide the local support most of these companies still need. Likewise, there are instances where international investors actively search for local co-investors in South Africa to invest in a round, and not finding one might blow the chances of them going further with the investment. This is the gap Knife Capital intends to fill by launching this fund, Bohmert says.

“We want to be the local lead investor of choice for South African technology companies looking to internationalise, co-investing with international investors who can lead the Series B discussion and further.”  

This week, Knife Capital secured $10 million from Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC), a South Africa-based investment firm. The commitment positions MIC as an anchor investor to the fund alongside other local and international investors.

Nchaupe Khaole, the CIO at MIC, explained that the move to change the way local institutional investors approach venture capital investment has been in MIC’s pipeline for a while. And by partnering with Knife Capital, this idea can begin to materialize.

“Our commitment brings to the table the investment, along with many of our strengths as an experienced player. One of which is our ability to influence the companies within our portfolio to partner with us and effect real, tangible change to the South African economy. We are delighted to be a key catalyst in the success of this funding round,” he said.

As per other details, Knife Capital aims for a first close by May and a final close by the end of the year. Most of its participation will be co-investing, and the idea is to do that in 10 to 12 companies.

Public.com, a social-focused free stock trading service, is nearing the close of a Series D just two months after raising a $65 million Series C, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

According to Business Insider, the San Francisco-based fintech is raising $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation in a round led by Tiger Global Management. Public.com did not respond to requests for comment. VC firm Accel — which led its Series A, B and C rounds — also declined to comment. 

Public aims to give people the ability to invest in companies using any amount of money, with a focus on community activity over active trading. It competes with Robinhood, M1 Finance and other American fintech companies that offer consumers a way to invest in equities with low or zero fees.

Public.com apparently got a flurry of investor interest over the past couple of weeks after Robinhood found itself in hot water and essentially raised $3.4 billion in a matter of days to help get itself out of a mess. 

That new capital came at a challenging time for the unicorn, which could pursue an IPO this year. And some investors reportedly want a piece of rival Public.com’s pie.

One source told TechCrunch that many of those offering term sheets believe there could be “a mass exodus from Robinhood” and want a way to capture that value.

Public recently shook up its business model, moving from generating revenue from order flow payments, a key way that Robinhood monetizes, to collecting tips from users in exchange for executing their orders. Payment for order flow, or PFOF, has become a touchstone in the debate surrounding low-cost trading platforms, and how users may pay for their transactions if not in direct fees.

Investors betting on Public, then, would be placing a wager on not merely future user growth, but the startup’s ability to monetize effectively in the future. 

The sources for this story were granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the discussions.

Public grew quickly in 2020, expanding its user base by a multiple of 10 since the start of the year.

Co-founder Leif Abraham told TC’s Alex Wilhelm in December that the company’s growth has been consistent instead of lumpy, expanding at around 30% each month. The co-founder also stressed that most of Public’s users find its service organically, implying that the startup’s marketing costs have not been extreme, nor its growth artificially boosted.

Since its 2019 inception, Public has raised a known $88.5 million from investors such as Accel, Greycroft, Advancit Capital, Dreamers VC’s Will Smith and Japanese soccer star Keisuke Honda; NFL star J.J. Watt and Girlboss founder and CEO Sophia Amoruso, among others, according to Crunchbase.

The story was updated post-publication to include additional details on the reported funding

Demetrius Curry has spent the last couple years chasing a dream.

His startup, College Cash, allows brands to petition users to create photo and video marketing content highlighting their product or service, with the wrinkle being that content creators are paid by the brands in the form of credits that go directly toward paying down their student loan debt. This model awards the brands involved a level of social good will and tax benefits.

The Dallas-area founder was inspired to tackle the student loan debt crisis after talking with his daughter about the prospect of eventually paying down her own loan debt. Curry has spent the past two years building out the nascent platform, tracking down brand partners, navigating accelerator programs, enticing users and pounding the pavement to find investors willing to bet on his vision.

College Cash has raised $105,000 to date, and is hoping to eventually wrap the funding into a $1 million seed round.

Filling out the round has been its own challenge for Curry, who has struggled at times to find opportunity, even among historic levels of capital flowing into the startup ecosystem, a distinction that has been less noticeable for black founders that still make up just a small percentage of VC allocation. In the aftermath of last summer’s protests against police brutality, a number of venture capital firms issued statements decrying institutional racism and pledging to back more underserved founders, spinning up new programs for diverse founders.

While Curry says he appreciates the scope of the problem and the good intentions of those making the statements, he believes that venture capital networks still have a lot to learn about what being an “underserved” founder means, and that plenty of the existing efforts feel like “lip service.” He says that even as Silicon Valley continues to idolize dropouts from prestigious universities, stakeholders have less interest in recognizing the accomplishments of founders who fought their way through poverty or found opportunity in geographies where opportunities are harder to come by.

“You can’t look for something different if you’re looking in the same places,” Curry tells TechCrunch. “When you look at the topic of ‘underserved founders,’ it’s not only a skin color thing, it’s also about where they came from and what they’ve been through.”

Curry says that it can be frustrating to compete for early-stage opportunities when investors aren’t willing to meaningfully adjust their parameters. Of particular frustration to Curry has been navigating the world of “warm introductions” to even get a foot in the door for programs meant for diverse founders, or applying for early-stage programs geared toward the “underserved” only to be told that they weren’t far enough along to qualify.

“Think about how much we had to go through to even get in the room with you,” Curry says. “I’ve sold plasma to pay a web hosting fee, nothing is going to stop me.”

College Cash’s mission of expanding opportunities for people struggling to manage their student loan debt is personal to Curry, who saw his life turn around after going back to school.

Decades ago, fresh out of the military, Curry said he had a random conversation with a stranger while eating at a Hardee’s — the discussion about what more he wanted from life ended up pushing him to to go back and get his GED and later a business degree. What followed was a career in finance that eventually led toward his recent entrepreneurial pursuits with College Cash.

The platform is firmly an early-stage venture at the moment, but Curry has big ambitions he’s building toward. His next effort is building out a College Cash tipping integration with gig economy platforms, with the aim that users of those platforms could ultimately opt to tip a worker and route that money directly toward paying down that person’s student loan debt.

Curry says the team at College Cash has been working with a “national gig economy platform” to run a pilot of the integration and has run focus groups showing that users are more likely to tip when they know that money goes toward erasing loan debt.

Just three years after its founding, biotech startup Immunai has raised $60 million in Series A funding, bringing its total raised to over $80 million. Despite its youth, Immunai has already established the largest database in the world for single cell immunity characteristics, and it has already used its machine learning-powered immunity analysts platform to enhance the performance of existing immunotherapies. Aided by this new funding, it’s now ready to expand into the development of entirely new therapies based on the strength and breadth of its data and ML.

Immunai’s approach to developing new insights around the human immune system uses a “multiomic” approach — essentially layering analysis of different types of biological data, including a cell’s genome, microbiome, epigenome (a genome’s chemical instruction set) and more. The startup’s unique edge is in combining the largest and richest data set of its type available, formed in partnership with world-leading immunological research organizations, with its own machine learning technology to deliver analytics at unprecedented scale.

“I hope it doesn’t sound corny, but we don’t have the luxury to move more slowly,” explained Immunai co-founder and CEO Noam Solomon in an interview. “Because I think that we are in kind of a perfect storm, where a lot of advances in machine learning and compute computations have led us to the point where we can actually leverage those methods to mine important insights. You have a limit or ceiling to how fast you can go by the number of people that you have — so I think with the vision that we have, and thanks to our very large network between MIT and Cambridge to Stanford in the Bay Area, and Tel Aviv, we just moved very quickly to harness people to say, let’s solve this problem together.”

Solomon and his co-founder and CTO Luis Voloch both have extensive computer science and machine learning backgrounds, and they initially connected and identified a need for the application of this kind of technology in immunology. Scientific co-founder and SVP of Strategic Research Danny Wells then helped them refine their approach to focus on improving efficacy of immunotherapies designed to treat cancerous tumors.

Immunai has already demonstrated that its platform can help identify optimal targets for existing therapies, including in a partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine where it assisted with a cell therapy product for use in treating neuroblastoma (a type of cancer that develops from immune cells, often in the adrenal glands). The company is now also moving into new territory with therapies, using its machine learning platform and industry-leading cell database to new therapy discovery — not only identifying and validating targets for existing therapies, but helping to create entirely new ones.

“We’re moving from just observing cells, but actually to going and perturbing them, and seeing what the outcome is,” explained Voloch. This, from the computational side, later allows us to move from correlative assessments to actually causal assessments, which makes our models a lot more powerful. Both on the computational side and on the lab side, this are really bleeding edge technologies that I think we will be the first to really put together at any kind of real scale.”

“The next step is to say, ‘Okay, now that we understand the human immune profile, can we develop new drugs?’,” said Solomon. “You can think about it like we’ve been building a Google Maps for the immune system for a few years — so we are mapping different roads and paths in the immune system. But at some point, we figured out that there are certain roads or bridges that haven’t been built yet. And we will be able to support building new roads and new bridges, and hopefully leading from current states of disease or cities of disease, to building cities of health.”

Metromile began trading as a public company yesterday. Its exit from the private market was accelerated by its decision to combine with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.

Such transactions have exploded in popularity in recent years, bridging the gap between a host of richly valued private companies and endless bored capital. SPACs raise cash, go public and then merge with a private entity. The SPAC then dissolves itself into the combined entity, a process that often includes an additional slug of money (PIPE) for good measure.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

SPAC-led debuts can move faster than a traditional IPO, making them attractive to companies in a hurry. And with more visibility into how much capital might be raised than during a traditional public-offering pricing run, they can smooth worries amongst target-companies regarding how much cash they can attract by leaving the private-market fold.

Metromile is hardly the final company we expect to debut this year via a SPAC. The list is long and may include fellow neoinsurance company Hippo. (Hippo declined to comment on the matter.)

But with many more SPACs coming our way, we took Metromile’s debut as a learning moment. To that end, we got on the horn with CEO Dan Preston to chat about what the day meant for his company, and to elicit a note or two on the SPAC process for our own enjoyment.

Metromile’s SPACtacular debut

TechCrunch asked Preston about the SPAC world and how his combination came about. He said his firm started by dipping its toe into the blank-check waters, kicking off with a small set of conversations, chats that quickly gathered traction.

But don’t take that to mean that any company will elicit a similar market response. Preston said SPACs are designed for a specific class of company; namely those that want or need to share a bit more story when they go public. Younger companies, in other words, for whom a traditional S-1 filing might not be provide a sufficient summation of its potential.

Compute costs, spurious noise, and privacy problems all mean that we can't keep moving toward bigger and bigger datasets to fuel AI progress.Read More

Michael Hurlston, CEO of Synaptics, has pivoted the maker of chips into the internet of things market, moving away from smartphones and PCs.Read More

Research from the UK and an update from Elon Musk on human trials at his brain interface company show software is now eating the mind.Read More

GamesBeat Decides tackles a review of Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury as well as the latest NPD game-sales reports.Read More

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation is a JRPG for people who love classic JRPGs.Read More

Arguments in favor of shared prosperity and in opposition to excessive robots, AI, and automation in the workplace.Read More

Kenny Williams of the L.A. Thieves talks to Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat about the opening tournament for the Call of Duty League.Read More

Dean Takahashi debates himself and others about whether the game industry has hit a hype peak or it's just getting started.Read More

A walk-through of the process: From building a test case to getting buy-in from data owners to building out your system.Read More

Federated learning lets you deploy AI in situations where data privacy or confidentiality concerns currently block adoption.Read More

I’m very proud of the work we’re doing here at Extra Crunch, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that today is our second anniversary.

Thanks to hard work from the entire TechCrunch team, authoritative guest contributors and a very engaged reader base, we’ve tripled our membership in the last 12 months.

As Extra Crunch enters its third year, we’re putting our foot on the gas in 2021 so we can bring you more:

Fresh analysis about today’s most dynamic tech industries.Surveys of top investors about trends in your sector.In-depth profiles of top companies from their earliest days.Expanded live programming.

Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription

To be completely honest: Eric and I wavered about posting this announcement. Both of us would prefer to show the results of our work than make a list of future-looking statements, so I’ll sum up:

I’m proud of the work we’re doing because people around the world use the information they find on Extra Crunch to build and grow companies. That’s big!

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; have a great weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

Will ride-hailing profits ever come?

Before the pandemic began, I took about seven or eight hailed rides each month. Since I began physically distancing from others to stem the spread of the coronavirus in March 2020, I’ve taken exactly 10 hailed rides.

Your mileage may vary, but last year, Uber and Lyft both reported steep revenue losses as travelers hunkered down at home. Today, Alex Wilhelm says both transportation platforms plan to reach adjusted profitability by Q4 2021.

He unpacked the numbers “to see if what the two companies are dangling in front of investors is worth desiring.” Since he usually doesn’t focus on publicly traded stocks, I asked Alex why he focused on Uber and Lyft today.

“Utter confusion,” he replied.

“Investors have bid up their stocks like the two companies are crushing the game, instead of playing a game with their numbers to reach some sort of profit in the future,” Alex explained. “The stock market makes no sense, but this is one of the weirder things.”

TechCrunch’s favorites from Techstars’ Boston, Chicago and workforce accelerators

In the theater, a “four-hander” is a play that was written for four actors.

Today, I’m appropriating the term to describe this roundup by Greg Kumparak, Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm and Jonathan Shieber that recaps their favorite startups from Techstars accelerators.

The quartet selected four startups each from Chicago, Boston and Techstars Workplace Development.

“As always, these are just our favorites, but don’t just take our word for it. Dig into the pitches yourself, as there’s never a bad time to check out some super-early-stage startups.”

As more insurtech offerings loom, CEO Dan Preston discusses Metromile’s SPAC-led debut

Neoinsurance company Metromile began trading publicly this week after it combined with a special purpose acquisition company.

Metromile will likely be one of 2021’s many SPAC-led debuts, so Alex interviewed CEO Dan Preston to learn more about the process and what he learned along the way.

A notable takeaway: “Preston said SPACs are designed for a specific class of company; namely those that want or need to share a bit more story when they go public.”

Adtech and martech VCs see big opportunities in privacy and compliance

Senior Writer Anthony Ha and Extra Crunch Managing Editor Eric Eldon surveyed three investors who back adtech and martech startups to learn more about what they’re looking for and whether deal flow has recovered at this point in the pandemic:

Eric Franchi, partner, MathCapitalScott Friend, partner, Bain Capital VenturesChristine Tsai, CEO and founding partner, 500 Startups

Commercializing deep tech startups: A practical guide for founders and investors

I have a hard time envisioning all of the hurdles deep tech founders must overcome before they can land their first paying customer.

How do you sustainably scale a company that probably doesn’t have revenue and isn’t likely to for the foreseeable future? How big is the TAM for an unproven product in a marketplace that’s still taking shape?

Vin Lingathoti, a partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, says entrepreneurs operating in this space face a unique set of challenges when it comes to managing growth and risk.

“Often these founders with Ph.D.s and postdocs find it hard to accept their weaknesses, especially in nontechnical areas such as marketing, sales, HR, etc.,” says Lingathoti.

How will investors value Metromile and Oscar Health?

This week, auto insurance startup Metromile completed its combination with SPAC INSU Acquisition Corp. II.

Last Friday, health insurance company Oscar Health announced its plans to launch an initial public offering.

As the saying goes: Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but using 2020 debuts by neoinsurance firms Lemonade and Root as a reference point, Alex says the IPO window is wide open for other players in the space.

“All the companies in our group are pretty good at adding customers to their businesses,” he found.

Dear Sophie: How can I improve our startup’s international recruiting?

Dear Sophie:

We’ve been having a tough time filling vacant engineering and other positions at our company and are planning to make a more concerted effort to recruit internationally.

Do you have suggestions for attracting workers from abroad?

— Proactive in Pacifica

5 creator economy VCs see startup opportunities in monetization, discovery and much more

The people who produce viral TikTok duets, in-demand Substack newsletters and popular YouTube channels are doing what they love. And the money is following them.

Many of these emerging stars have become media personalities with full-fledged production and distribution teams, giving rise to what one investor described as “the enterprise layer of the creator economy.”

More VCs are backing startups that help these digital creators monetize, produce, analyze and distribute content.

Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm interviewed five of them to learn more about the opportunities they’re tracking in 2021:

Benjamin Grubbs, founder, Next10 VenturesLi Jin, founder, Atelier VenturesBrian O’Malley, general partner, Forerunner VenturesEze Vidra, managing partner, Remagine VenturesJosh Constine, principal, SignalFire

Are SAFEs obscuring today’s seed volume?

Simple agreements for future equity are an increasingly popular way for startups to raise funds quickly, but “they don’t generate the same paperwork exhaust,” Alex Wilhelm noted this week.

This creates cognitive dissonance: Investors see a hot market, while people who rely on public data (like journalists) get a different picture.

“SAFEs have effectively pushed a lot of public signal regarding seed deals, and even smaller rounds, underground,” says Alex.

Container security acquisitions increase as companies accelerate shift to cloud

Many enterprise companies were snapping up container security startups before the pandemic began, but the pace has picked up, reports Ron Miller.

The growing number of companies going cloud-native is creating security challenges; the containers that package microservices must be correctly configured and secured, which can get complicated quickly.

“The acquisitions we are seeing now are filling gaps in the portfolio of security capabilities offered by the larger companies,” says Yoav Leitersdorf, managing partner at YL Ventures.

Two $50M-ish ARR companies talk growth and plans for the coming quarters

In December 2019, Alex Wilhelm began reporting on startups that had reached the $100M ARR mark. A year later, he decided to reframe his focus.

“Mostly what we managed was to collect a bucket of companies that were about to go public,” he said.

Since then, he has recalibrated his sights. In the latest entry of a new series focusing on “$50M-ish” companies, he studies SimpleNexus, which offers digital mortgage software, and photo-editing service PicsArt.

Alex has more interviews and data dives coming on other companies in this cohort, so stay tuned.

With a higher IPO valuation, is Bumble aiming for Match.com’s revenue multiple?

Dating platform Bumble initially set a price of $28 to $30 for its upcoming IPO, but at its new range of $37 to $39, Alex calculated that it could reach a max valuation of $7.4 billion to $7.8 billion.

Extrapolating revenue from its Q3 2020 numbers, he attempted to find the company’s run rate to see if it’s overpriced — and how well it stacks up against rival Match.

Oscar Health’s IPO filing will test the venture-backed insurance model

Jon Shieber and Alex Wilhelm co-bylined a story about Oscar Health, which filed to go public last week.

Although the health insurance company claims 529,000 members and a compound annual growth rate of 59%, “it’s a deeply unprofitable enterprise,” they found.

Jon and Alex parsed Oscar Health’s 2019 comps and its 2020 metrics to take a closer look at the company’s performance.

“Both Oscar and the high-profile SPAC for Clover Medical will prove to be a test for the venture capital industry’s faith in their ability to disrupt traditional healthcare companies,” they write.

SoftBank and the late-stage venture capital J-curve

Managing Editor Danny Crichton filed a column about Softbank’s Vision Fund that tried to answer a question he asked in 2017: “What does a return profile look like at such a late stage of investment?”

Softbank’s recent earnings report shows that its $680 million bet on DoorDash paid off handsomely, bringing back $9 billion. Compared to its competition, “the fund is actually doing quite decent right now,” he wrote. But Softbank has invested $66 billion in 74 unexited 74 companies that are worth $65.2 billion today.

“SoftBank quietly chopped half of the performance fees for its VC managers, from $5B to $2.5B, which led us to ask: are the best investments in the fund already in SoftBank’s rearview mirror? One upshot: WeWork seems to have turned something of a corner, with some improvements in its debt profile portending more positive news post-COVID-19.”