Ben, a London-based employee benefits and rewards platform, has raised $2.5 million in funding. The seed round is led by Cherry Ventures, and Seedcamp.

A number of angel investors with backgrounds in fintech and HR tech also participated. They include Paul Forster (founder of Indeed), Taavet Hinrikus (founder of TransferWise), Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas (previously an exec at GoCardless but now a partner at Index Ventures), Philip Reynolds (VP of Engineering at Workday), and Matt Robinson (founder of Nested).

Part fintech, part HR play, Ben has built an employee benefits platform to enable SMEs to offer much more personalised and flexible benefits to employees. The U.K. startup does this via a SaaS for managing benefits, including a benefits marketplace, combined with per-employee debit cards powered by Mastercard.

The idea is to give employees more individual choice around which benefits they choose, while making it easy to on-board additional providers. This can be via the marketplace or through whitelisting merchant or merchant categories via the employer issued Mastercards, such as food and drink or travel and mobility, or a specific co-working space etc.

“While most companies offer benefits in order to attract and engage team members, and ultimately drive productivity, most solutions don’t deliver the desired outcomes,” Ben co-founder and CEO Sebastian Fallert tells me. “To have impact, offerings need to work for the individual employees; after all, a ‘benefit’ that’s relevant for somebody working from home in their mid-40s could be next to useless for a new starter in their 20s”.

Fallert says that providing the required level of personalised benefits has been impossible for most small to medium-sized companies due to the “high cost and complexity” of creating and administering personalised programmes. This has seen only large enterprises able to offer flexible benefit programmes where employees get to pick from a range of options. Ben aims to remedy this.

“The Ben software platform allows companies to load funds and set individual spend rules on how these can be used,” explains Fallert. “Employees are then able to choose from group benefits, such as private medical insurance, mental wellbeing services, or dental plans, while a real per-employee Mastercard opens the door to pretty much any product or service in a tax-efficient and compliant way”.

The result is a “win-win,” says the Ben CEO. “Employees get tailored benefits, and companies only pay for what’s used, take advantage of tax exemptions and preferred pricing, while streamlining the administration”.

The Ben platform is currently used by smaller and mid-market companies, especially those with a distributed team. “It’s these firms in particular that have to deal with the growing complexity of their programmes to keep up with a more diverse and increasingly remote/distributed workforce,” says Fallert.

Meanwhile, Ben has three revenue streams: a SaaS fee; interchange revenue every time its cards get used; and, of course, affiliate revenue from its marketplace.

Adds the Ben CEO: “One of our core hypotheses is that there are so many amazing services out there that simply can’t get through to companies as they’re often not relevant for all employees, such as debt consolidation or fertility treatment. With Ben, they get easy distribution on standard commercial terms while companies get to offer an additional benefit without any additional overhead”.

French startup Chefclub announced earlier this week that it has raised a $17 million funding round led by First Bridge Ventures. SEB Alliance, the venture arm of kitchen appliance maker Groupe SEB, Korelya Capital and Algaé Ventures are also participating.

Chefclub has been building a major media brand on social media platforms. It has attracted a huge audience that doesn’t look bad next to well-funded media brands Tastemade and Tasty.

I already covered the company at length, so I encourage you to read my previous profile of the company:

Chefclub is an interesting lesson in sales funnel. It has a huge top of the funnel with 100 million followers on YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok. Overall, they generate more than 1 billion views per month.

The company leverages that audience to create new products. It starts with cooking books, obviously. Chefclub has sold 700,000 books so far. As those books are self-published, the company gets to keep a good chunk of the revenue.

More recently, the startup has launched cooking kits for kids, with colorful measuring cups, cooking accessories and easy-to-understand recipes; 150,000 people have bought a product for children.

Chefclub now wants to display its brands in stores thanks to partnerships. That’s why having Groupe SEB as an investor makes sense. You can imagine co-branded items boosted by promotion on Chefclub’s accounts.

Finally, the startup plans to enter a new market — consumer-packaged goods. That’s the same thinking behind it, except that we’re talking about food. It’s interesting to see that Chefclub doesn’t think online ads represent the future of the company. And it seems like a smart decision during the current economic crisis.

German startup Trade Republic is rolling out its app and service in France this week. This is a significant expansion move as Trade Republic has only been available in Germany and Austria so far.

Trade Republic lets you buy and sell shares or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from your phone with low, transparent fees. The company charges €1 ($1.21) in fees per order, whether you’re buying a single share worth €100 or allocating €10,000 of your savings on an ETF. The company promises that it doesn’t add any commission on top of that €1.

The startup lets you buy European shares as well as stock in Asian or American companies. Overall, there are 7,500 shares and ETFs available in the app. While the service is relatively new, Trade Republic has been working on its infrastructure for several years.

Behind the scenes, the company has partnered with Solarisbank, a German banking-as-a-service platform regulated by German authorities. It means that your deposits are covered up to €100,000 ($121,000) in case of bankruptcy. When you’re submitting an order, Trade Republic works with LS Exchange and HSBC Transaction Services to handle those shares.

Trade Republic wants to position itself differently from Robinhood. The company thinks there are currently two options when it comes to trading.

You can open a trading account with your bank or a legacy broker, but they’ll charge a lot of money. Or you can use a mobile-first broker, but they’ll push you toward risky assets and day trading. And as we’ve seen this week with the GameStop saga, the second option can lead to some backlash.

Trade Republic is promoting a third way — low fees and low risk. The company wants to promote savings plans, for instance. Those plans let you buy shares progressively, which should protect users against volatility.

The company raised a €62 million funding round ($75.22 million at today’s rate) last year. The Series B round was co-led by Accel and Founders Fund.

As for French users, don’t forget that you have to declare that you have a foreign bank account when you file your taxes. Foreign brokers also don’t necessarily send information to tax authorities to pre-fill your tax reports. But if you’re fine with that, Trade Republic is most likely cheaper than your bank.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace hopped online for our weekly show, sans GameStop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now.

Here’s a taste of what we got into:

 Qualtrics IPO pricing, and the future of major acquisition pricing schemes. This company’s path to the public markets has been a long time coming, so we had plenty to say. How Atlanta’s Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3 billion company. This story was not only neat, but also operated as a sort of palate cleanser for the team. Rhino‘s interesting insurtech play, and how it is pre-IPO pretty damn early. Revenue questions, the power of insurtech and public markets impacting startups? This story had it all! Alex talks about how Fast is raising fast money ($102 million to be exact). Even more, the Fast story fits into a broader narrative of online checkout startups raising a zillion dollars in recent weeks. A boom in food delivery and restaurant startups, and why Danny is bearish on a plastic-free play. Natasha is in favor. Alex gets a company’s model mixed up with Spoon Rocket. Natasha explains how Clubhouse isn’t the first company to raise millions off of millions of users with no known near-term monetization plan. Her piece on ClassDojo illustrates how a quiet edtech giant finally turned its 51 million users into a profitable base. There’s also a new edtech investor survey for you to check out (Discount code: EQUITY).TCV’s record fund, and a female-focused angel fund coming out of Africa.

As always, it was a ton to get through because there is just so much going on. More Monday morning, until then stay cool!

Amidst all of the the sturm und drang of l’affaire GameStop, Qualtrics went public today.

After pricing its stock above its raised IPO range, the company received a warm welcome from public investors. After starting its trading life worth $41.85, Qualtrics closed the day worth $45.50, up some 51.67%.

The software company’s debut comes after a lengthy path to the public markets; Qualtrics sold to SAP on the eve of its first run at a public listing back in 2018. Now, SAP has completed spinning the company out, though the software giant remains the Utah unicorn’s largest shareholder.

That Qualtrics’ IPO might perform well was presaged in its pricing run, having prices far above its initial valuation estimates; there was evidence of strong demand even before its shares started to trade.

But did Qualtrics misprice, given its strong first-day performance? TechCrunch spoke with Qualtrics CEO Zig Serafin, and its founder and current executive chairman Ryan Smith about its public offering, hoping to learn a bit about what is next for the company.

Pricing, plans

Having spoken to myriad folks on IPO days, I’ve learned the best way to kick off is to ask about emotions. Most CEOs and other execs are tied up in what they can (and cannot) say. And they are well-trained by communications experts regarding what to repeat and emphasize. You can sometimes loosen them up a little, however, by asking them how they feel.

In response to that question, Serafin described a feeling of gratitude and Smith brought up the long game. Qualtrics, he said, had been told that it couldn’t bootstrap, that it couldn’t build in Utah, that SAP had overpaid, that SAP had messed up and so forth.

After enduring a day’s worth of taking a beating across social media, government and the various app stores of the mobile world, Robinhood took to its own blog and CEO’s Twitter account to explain why it had halted trading of some stocks earlier today.

That Robinhood had restricted trading in a number of securities was bombshell news after the consumer trading platform had become synonymous with not only a rise in retail investing, but also a risky wager by some individual investors to push shares of heavily shorted companies, including GameStop, AMC and others higher. Speculation that Robinhood was limiting the trading ability of those users at the behest of, pick your poison, Citadel, the U.S. government, hedge funds, Janet Yellen, or others, ran rampant.

But none of it was true — at least according to Robinhood’s telling. In its post, Robinhood wrote that (emphasis TechCrunch):

[a]mid this week’s extraordinary circumstances in the market, we made a tough decision today to temporarily limit buying for certain securities. As a brokerage firm, we have many financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits. Some of these requirements fluctuate based on volatility in the markets and can be substantial in the current environment. These requirements exist to protect investors and the markets and we take our responsibilities to comply with them seriously, including through the measures we have taken today.

That reads like Robinhood ran low on capital and had to make some hard decisions, quickly. The securities its users wanted to trade likely generated the highest capital obligations given how volatile they proved and how long it takes for trades to settle, so Robinhood had to shut off some trades to stay on the right side of its capital needs. (Not great, not terrible?)

Reporting from Bloomberg indicates that Robinhood “tapped at least several hundred million dollars” from credit lines today makes sense in this context. As does the unicorn’s decision to allow for some trading of the afore-limited securities in the near future (“starting tomorrow, we plan to allow limited buys of these securities,” the company wrote); now reloaded with more capital, Robinhood can afford to let its users get back, somewhat, to business.

Of course Robinhood could have been more clear about all of this earlier in the day. Instead, unfairly or not, it became the face of theoretical corruption and other nefarious forces. (Here’s a tip, if your theory sounds like it could fit inside the QAnon orbit, try again?)

Nothing is settled. Congress has its hackles up. Other trading platforms had to suspend trading in GameStop and other stocks for a spell as well. Social media is pissed. Some Robinhood users were forced to liquidate positions. And somehow GameStop closed the day worth more than $196 per share. And after-hours it is up $72.40, or 37.40% to $266 per share.

Who knows what comes next. But grains of salt, please, as we continue this bizarre adventure.

An early Snapchat employee who once architected the “Our Stories” product, Chloë Drimal, has now launched her own social app, Yoni Circle. Described as a membership-based community, the app aims to connect womxn using storytelling — including through both live video chat sessions as well as with pre-recorded stories that are available at any time.

The company has been quietly operating in beta since April 2020, but is now making its public launch.

Drimal came up with the idea for a social storytelling app, in part, because she saw the potential when working on the Snapchat “Our Stories” product.

“I got to see that storytelling connects us,” she explains. “I got to peer into global experiences like New Year’s Eve or witnessing the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, and I just saw firsthand how connected we are as people,” Drimal continues. “I got to see how that was affecting our Snapchat users and making them feel more connected to the world because of this art of storytelling,” she adds.

But another inspiration came from Drimal’s personal experience in being taken off the “Our Stories” product to work on other projects at Snap — a difficult time in her career that started to make her feel very alone. She later ended up having conversations with other women — often older women who shared their own experiences — who helped her realized that she wasn’t as alone as she first thought.

“Their stories empowered me to write my next chapter, and know that this wasn’t the end of my career as I dramatically thought as a 25 or 24-year-old. It really was just the beginning and it helped me see the healing of storytelling — but also the importance of what strangers being vulnerable can do,” she says.

After leaving Snap, where she had later run women’s initiatives, Drimal began hosting an in-person community focused around more structured storytelling circles. The community evolved to become what’s now the Yoni Circle app, whose beta version was built with help from former Snap engineer Akiva Bamberger, now a Yoni Circle advisor.

Today, the app has two main features: the interactive Storytelling Circles component and the more passive Yoni Radio.

The former allows members to join 60-minute moderated live video chat sessions with up to six womxn who connect with one another by listening to each others’ stories. During the Circle, a trained “Salonniere” guide will first lead the group through introductions, a breathing exercise and will then introduce a storytelling prompt based on a specific theme, like “Stories on Gratitude,” or “Stories on Surprise,” for example.

The Salonnieres are not volunteers, but rather paid contractors who have undergone specific training to lead these sorts of sessions. Over time, they’ll also be able to gather members to paid web-based events, which could be things like yoga classes, book clubs, cooking classes and more.

The Circle sessions have a basic rule: Take the stories with you and leave the names behind. In other words, what’s shared in circles is meant to remain confidential, unless the member chooses to share it publicly. Anyone violating that rule will be banned.

Members are also advised to speak simply, leave their egos at the door, and respect differences. No one receives the topic beforehand, either, so members can’t rehearse their speeches and put on a “performance.” The act of participating is meant to be about authenticity and vulnerability.

During the session, each participant takes their turn to share their own story and will listen to the others’ in return. Users only speak when they have the “talking piece,” and they can react to another story with snaps, or by clicking a snap icon.

While the sessions may uplift members the way that group therapy does, they’re not really focused on addressing psychological issues. Instead, Drimal says members compare them to “a slumber party combined with a mindfulness class.”

Still, she says, members feel like participating is an act of self-care.

“You just feel lighter,” Drimal explains. “It’s hard not to listen to other stories, to see yourself and just be reminded that you aren’t alone in the highs and lows of life.”

Members can also opt to record their own stories and then set them as either public or private on their Yoni Circle profile. The team then curates the public stories to share as highlights on the app’s homepage, allowing users to listen at any time. This also powers the Yoni Radio feature.

Recently, the company had been testing a weekly broadcast of these recorded stories, but will soon trial a new “story of the day” feature instead.

The Yoni Circle app first launched into beta last April, just as the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. had begun. That led to people isolating themselves at home away from friends, extended family, and other social interactions — driving demand for new social experiences.

But Yoni Circle doesn’t quite fit into the new live, interactive mobile market that’s developed as of late, led by apps like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces.

“I like to think we’ve carved out something different,” says Drimal. “It is intimate because we’re creating a safe space to be vulnerable … the things that I share in Yoni Circle I would never share on Clubhouse,” she says. “I think that’s also why we’ve been so focused on the way we grow our community. Yes, we’re looking to have millions of members, but we need to get there carefully.”

Currently, Yoni Circle is open to people who identify as womxn, and it involves an application process where you have to share who you are and what you’re looking to gain from the experience. Longer term, the goal is to evolve the platform into a safe space that’s open to all.

Though the pandemic helped generate initial interest in the app — it now has members from 1,000 cities across 80 countries — the startup sees a future in the post-pandemic market with in-person events that further connect its members.

Yoni Circle today is available on iOS for free. It will later monetize through an Audible-like credits model which provides access to the Circle sessions.

The L.A. and New York-based team of seven is backed by $1.3 million in pre-seed funding, led by BoxGroup. Investors include Cassius Family, Advancit and angels including Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss, Mirror founder and CEO Brynn Putnam, Beme CTO Matt Hackett, early Snap engineer Daniel Smith.

Yoni Circle plans to raise a seed round in a few weeks.

Just when we thought things couldn’t get worse in 2020, we received the news on the SolarWinds hack and its impact on more than 18,000 businesses and potentially dozens of U.S. government agencies — including the departments of Commerce, Energy and Treasury.

We’re just beginning to understand the extent of their infiltration, but this story brings to light what the cybersecurity industry has already known: Solving the cybersecurity problem will take more time and resources than we are currently allocating.

Adding to the challenge, COVID-19 has created fertile ground for the acceleration of cyberattacks that are more sophisticated, dangerous and prevalent. In this dire setting, cybersecurity has become even more competitive and a national security imperative and created higher demand for new solutions.

This is something we all — enterprises, startups, government and investors — need to work together to solve. So, from the venture capital perspective, where are cybersecurity investments being made, and where is the talent coming from to help stem the onslaught of hacks?

California’s Silicon Valley has traditionally been the epicenter of cybersecurity innovation. It’s home to some of the largest cybersecurity companies including McAfee, Palo Alto Networks and FireEye, as well as more recent high flyers such as CrowdStrike and Okta, providing a robust talent base for many willing venture investors.

However, that’s rapidly changing. Cybersecurity expertise is now budding in new regions where there is talent and a hands-on recognition of the need for innovative solutions. In particular we are seeing growth in areas such as the East Coast of the U.S. and in Europe, led by the United Kingdom.

Investment in Silicon Valley cybersecurity startups remained flat in 2020 as we are seeing record venture funding of cybersecurity companies in these emerging regions. And the reasons why may mean better solutions to solve current and future cyber needs.

The emergence of a new cybersecurity ecosystem

A new generation of cyber-experienced practitioners coming from government and financial services are becoming the next generation of entrepreneurs. Fueling new innovation, this newest breed of cybersecurity startups in emerging in cities like New York, Washington, D.C. and London, and away from Silicon Valley. East Coast businesses like IronNet*, founded by former NSA director General Keith Alexander, is one example of this growing trend of new leaders coming from federal government backgrounds.

These new cybersecurity leaders with front-line experience are developing solutions that fix the problems they faced as customers and, thanks to COVID-19, are hiring the best talent to join them regardless of their location. The pandemic has accelerated remote-working trends, increasing more flexible-location working opportunities in the cybersecurity industry. These companies are creating advantages over their West Coast counterparts in the ability to recruit better talent, lower costs and have closer proximity to customers and prospects.

Coinbase plans to go public by way of a direct listing, the company announced in a blog post today.

The cryptocurrency exchange was founded in 2012 and allows users to buy and trade decentralized tokens like bitcoin and ethereum. The company has raised over $540 million in funding as a private company.

Last month, the company shared that it had confidentially filed an S-1 with the SEC.

The public has yet to see the company’s financials, but we now know that it has opted out of the traditional IPO process. Direct listings have been slowly gaining popularity. And given some outsized first day pops from recent tech IPOs, it’s not too surprising to see a company like Coinbase opt for this path to public markets.

The company is not alone in going this route. Roblox delayed its own offering after observing the late-2020 IPO market, opting instead for a direct listing of its own.

Direct listings allow companies to skip elements of the traditional IPO by removing the need to price and sell a block of new equity. Instead, a company merely lists its shares, which then become available for trading. Of course, not every company has sufficient profile for the method to prove attractive, and the direct listing entity loses its ability to raise new primary capital; the best-known and richest companies may find direct listings the most attractive.

Recent months have been very friendly to tech IPOs, with investors racing to back technology companies that are primed to help with what’s been called the “digital transformation.” And with the cryptocurrency markets matching the public markets for froth, Coinbase could find itself in a pretty favorable spot when it begins to trade.

There is a general correlation between consumer interest in cryptocurrencies, trading volume and the price of bitcoin. As Coinbase generates incomes from users trading, it’s not a stretch to presume that a recent rally in the price of bitcoin and its peers has helped Coinbase’s own financial performance.

Coinbase’s announcement comes as Qualtrics, a software company, went public today. Its shares have rallied nearly 50% in today’s trading alone. More when the cryptocurrency company drops a public S-1 filing.

Training data platforms are emerging as the best way to handle the collection, labeling, and feeding of data into supervised learning models.Read More

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Edtech is so widespread, we already need more consumer-friendly nomenclature to describe the products, services and tools it encompasses.

I know someone who reads stories to their grandchildren on two continents via Zoom each weekend. Is that “edtech?”

Similarly, many Netflix subscribers sought out online chess instructors after watching “The Queen’s Gambit,” but I doubt if they all ran searches for “remote learning” first.

Edtech needs to reach beyond underfunded public school systems to become more sustainable, which is why more investors and founders are focusing on lifelong learning.

Besides serving traditional students with field trips and art classes, a maturing sector is now branching out to offer software tutors, cooking classes and singing lessons.

For our latest investor survey, Natasha Mascarenhas polled 13 edtech VCs to learn more about how “employer-led up-skilling and a renewed interest in self-improvement” is expanding the sector’s TAM.

Here’s who she spoke to:

Deborah Quazzo, managing partner, GSV VenturesAshley Bittner, founding partner, Firework Ventures (a future of work fund with portfolio companies LearnIn and TransfrVR)Jomayra Herrera, principal, Cowboy Ventures (a generalist fund with portfolio companies Hone and Guild Education)John Danner, managing partner, Dunce Capital (an edtech and future of work fund with portfolio companies Lambda School and Outschool)Mercedes Bent and Bradley Twohig, partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners (a multistage generalist fund with investments including Forage, Clever and Outschool)Ian Chiu, managing director, Owl Ventures (a large edtech-focused fund backing highly valued companies including Byju’s, Newsela and Masterclass)Jan Lynn-Matern, founder and partner, Emerge Education (a leading edtech seed fund in Europe with portfolio companies like Aula, Unibuddy and BibliU)Benoit Wirz, partner, Brighteye Ventures (an active edtech-focused venture capital fund in Europe that backs YouSchool, Lightneer and Aula)Charles Birnbaum, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners (a generalist fund with portfolio companies including Guild Education and Brightwheel)Daniel Pianko, co-founder and managing director, University Ventures (a higher ed and future of work fund that is backing Imbellus and Admithub)Rebecca Kaden, managing partner, Union Square Ventures (a generalist fund with portfolio companies including TopHat, Quizlet, Duolingo)Andreata Muforo, partner, TLCom Capital (a generalist fund backing uLesson)

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

In other news: Extra Crunch Live, a series of interviews with leading investors and entrepreneurs, returns next month with a full slate of guests. This year, we’re adding a new feature: Our guests will analyze pitch decks submitted by members of the audience to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

If you’d like an expert eye on your deck, please sign up for Extra Crunch and join the conversation.

Thanks very much for reading! I hope you have a fantastic weekend — we’ve all earned it.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

13 investors say lifelong learning is taking edtech mainstream

Rising African venture investment powers fintech, clean tech bets in 2020

After falling into yesterday’s wild news cycle, Alex Wilhelm returned to The Exchange this morning with a close look at venture capital activity across Africa in 2020.

“Comparing aggregate 2020 figures to 2019 results, it appears that last year was a somewhat robust year for African startups, albeit one with fewer large rounds,” he found.

For more context, he interviewed Dario Giuliani, the director of research firm Briter Bridges, which focuses on emerging markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Talent and capital are shifting cybersecurity investors’ focus away from Silicon Valley

New cybersecurity ecosystems are popping up in different parts of the world.

Some of of that growth has been fueled by an exodus from the Bay Area, but many early-stage security startups already have deep roots in East Coast cities like Boston and New York.

In the United Kingdom and Europe, government innovation programs have helped entrepreneurs close higher numbers of Series A and B rounds.

Investor interest and expertise is migrating out of Silicon Valley: This post will help you understand where it’s going.

Will Apple’s spectacular iPhone 12 sales figures boost the smartphone industry in 2021?

Today’s smartphones are unfathomably feature-rich and durable, so it’s logical that sales have slowed.

A phone purchased 18 months ago is probably “good enough” for many consumers, especially in times of economic uncertainty.

Then again, of the record $111.4 billion in revenue Apple earned last quarter, $65.68 billion came from phone sales, largely driven by the release of the iPhone 12.

Even though “Apple’s success this quarter was kind of a perfect storm,” writes Hardware Editor Brian Heater, “it’s safe to project a rebound for the industry at large in 2021.”

The 5 biggest mistakes I made as a first-time startup founder

Finmark co-founder and CEO Rami Essaid wrote a post for Extra Crunch that candidly describes the traps he laid for himself that made him a less-effective entrepreneur.

As someone who’s worked closely with founders at several startups, each of the points he raised resonated deeply with me.

In my experience, many founders have a hard time delegating, which can quickly create cultural and operational problems. Rami’s experience bears this out:

“I became a human GPS: People could follow my directions, but they struggled to find the way themselves. Independent thinking suffered.”

Dear Sophie: How can I sponsor my mom and stepdad for green cards?

Dear Sophie:

I just got my U.S. citizenship! My husband and I want to bring my mom and her husband to the U.S. to help us take care of our preschooler and toddler.

My biological dad passed away several years ago when I was an adult and my mom has since remarried.

Can they get green cards?

— Appreciative in Aptos

Check out the amazing speakers joining us on Extra Crunch Live in February

Next month, Extra Crunch Live returns with a lineup of guests who are extremely well-qualified to discuss early-stage startups.

Each Wednesday at noon PPST/3 p.m. EST, join a conversation with founders and the investors who backed their companies:

February 3:

Gaurav Gupta (Lightspeed Venture Partners) + Raj Dutt (Grafana Labs)

February 10:

Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures) + Kevin Busque (Guideline)

February 17:

Steve Loughlin (Accel) + Jason Boehmig (Ironclad)

February 24:

Matt Harris (Bain Capital) + Isaac Oates (Justworks)

Also, we’re adding a new feature to Extra Crunch Live — our guests will offer advice and feedback on pitch decks submitted by Extra Crunch members in the audience!

10 VCs say interactivity, regulation and independent creators will reshape digital media in 2021

Since the pandemic disrupted the social rhythms of work and school, many of us have compensated by changing our relationship to digital media.

For instance, I purchased a new sofa and thicker living room curtains several months ago when I realized we have no idea when movie theaters will reopen.

Last year, podcast sponsors spent almost $800 million to reach listeners, but ad revenue is estimated to surpass $1 billion this year. Clearly, I’m not the only person who used a discount code to buy a new product in 2020.

At this point, I can scarcely keep track of the multiple streaming platforms I’m subscribed to, but a new voice-activated remote control that comes with my basic cable plan makes it easier to browse my options.

Media reporter Anthony Ha spoke to10 VCs who invest in media startups to learn more about where they see digital media heading in the months ahead. For starters, how much longer can we expect traditional advertising models to persist?

And in a world with hundreds of channels, how are creators supposed to compete for our attention? What sort of discovery tools can we expect to help us navigate between a police procedural set in a Scandinavian village and a 90s sitcom reboot?

Here’s who Anthony interviewed:

Daniel Gulati, founding partner, Forecast FundAlex Gurevich, managing director, Javelin Venture PartnersMatthew Hartman, partner, Betaworks VenturesJerry Lu, senior associate, MaveronJana Messerschmidt, partner, Lightspeed Venture PartnersMichael Palank, general partner, MaC Venture Capital (with additional commentary from MaC’s Marlon Nichols)Pär-Jörgen Pärson, general partner, NorthzoneM.G. Siegler, general partner, GVLaurel Touby, managing director, Supernode VenturesHans Tung, managing partner, GGV Capital

Normally, we list each investor’s responses separately, but for this survey, we grouped their responses by question. Some readers say they use our surveys to study up on an individual VC before pitching them, so let us know which format you prefer.

Does a $27 billion or $29 billion valuation make sense for Databricks?

Data analytics platform Databricks is reportedly raising new capital that could value the company between $27 billion and $29 billion.

By the end of Q3 2020, Databricks had surpassed a $350 million run rate — a $150 million YoY increase, reports Alex Wilhelm.

At the time, he described the company as “an obvious IPO candidate” with “broad private-market options.”

Which begs the question: “Can we come up with a set of numbers that help make sense of Databricks at $27 billion?”

End-to-end operators are the next generation of consumer business

Rapid shifts in the way we buy goods and services disrupted old-school marketplaces like local newspapers and the Yellow Pages.

Today, I can use my phone to summon a plumber, a week’s worth of groceries or a ride to a doctor’s office.

End-to-end operators like Netflix, Peloton and Lemonade take a lot of time and energy to reach scale, but “the additional capital required is often outweighed by the value captured from owning the entire experience.”

Unpacking Chamath Palihapitiya’s SPAC deals for Latch and Sunlight Financial

On January 25, Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya tweeted that he was making two blank-check deals.

Enterprise SaaS company Latch makes keyless entry systems; Sunlight Financial helps consumers finance residential solar power installations.

“There are nearly 300 SPACs in the market today looking for deals,” noted Alex Wilhelm, who unpacked both transactions.

“There’s no escaping SPACs for a bit, so if you are tired of watching blind pools rip private companies into the public markets, you are not going to have a very good next few months.”

Fintechs could see $100 billion of liquidity in 2021

On Monday, we published the Matrix Fintech Index, a three-part study that weighs liquidity, public markets and e-commerce trends to create a snapshot of an industry in perpetual flux.

For four years running, the S&P 500 and incumbent financial services companies have been outperformed by companies like Afterpay, Square and Bill.com.

In light of steady VC investment, increasing consumer adoption and a crowded IPO pipeline, “fintech represents one of the most exciting major innovation cycles of this decade.”

Drupal’s journey from dorm-room project to billion-dollar exit

On January 15, 2001, then-college student Dries Buytaert released Drupal 1.0.0, an open-source content-management platform. At the time, about 7% of the world’s population was online.

After raising more than $180 million, Buytaert exited to Vista Equity Partners for $1 billion in 2019.

Enterprise reporter Ron Miller interviewed Buytaert to learn more about his 18-year journey.

“His story is compelling, but it also offers lessons for startup founders who also want to build something big,” says Ron.