Teamleader, the SaaS platform that helps SMEs operate in a more digitally savvy way, has closed $22 million in Series C funding. The round was led by London-based Keen Venture Partners, with participation from PMV and existing investors Fortino Capital and Sage Capital.

Claiming to serve nearly 10,000 customers in 6 countries — comprised mostly of small and medium-sized enterprises — Belgium-headquartered Teamleader offers a SaaS-based platform to enable SMEs to digitise their business processes. This includes CRM and sales, project management, time tracking, and invoicing.

A more recent aspect — and where Teamleader sees future growth — is the Teamleader Marketplace, which allows customers to integrate their favourite local SaaS tools with Teamleader. This is on track to support 1,000 integrations, with a heavy emphasis on localisation.

“We even created a $1 million fund for developers across Europe to create integrations with Teamleader, a pretty wild idea that’s working great,” Teamleader co-founder and CEO Jeroen De Wit tells me.

“What’s great about the marketplace is that it also allows European SaaS players to piggyback on our growth — like the Belgian startup Cumul.io which is now finding customers in Spain through our marketplace. This perfectly fits our vision”.

More broadly, De Wit says SMEs are no longer afraid of digitization, and are using more and more business software to their advantage. “These tools need to work side by side as one, in integrated systems, for SMEs to get maximum value out of them,” he adds.

Meanwhile, in addition to investing in the Teamleader Marketplace, Teamleader says it plans to use its Series C funding for continued international growth and to accelerate its product roadmap. This will include doubling-down on what it calls a “multi-local approach” and fine-tuning the Teamleader product for country-specific needs. How very European.

Entrepreneurs are invited to the 410th FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Tuesday, August 7, 2018, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious entrepreneur, register...

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Sramana Mitra: In 2015, you decided to create this cloud stack. Then you started getting traction with other customers like Magento. How did you get to that? What gave you the idea of building that...

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B2B e-commerce company Sokowatch closed a $2 million seed investment led by 4DX Ventures. Others to join the round were Village Global, Lynett Capital, Golden Palm Investments and Outlierz  Ventures.

The Kenya-based company aims to shake up the supply chain market for Africa’s informal retailers.

Sokowatch’s platform connects Africa’s informal retail stores directly to local and multi-national suppliers — such as Unilever and Proctor and Gamble — by digitizing orders, delivery and payments with the aim of reducing costs and increasing profit margins.

“With both manufacturers and the small shops, we’re becoming the connective layer between them, where previously you had multiple layers of middle-men from distributors, sub-distributors, to wholesalers,” Sokowatch founder and CEO Daniel Yu told TechCrunch.

“The cost of sourcing goods right now…we estimate we’re cutting that cost by about 20 percent [for] these shopkeepers,” he said.

“There are millions of informal stores across Africa’s cities selling hundreds of billions worth of consumer goods every year,” said Yu.

These stores can use Sokowatch’s app on mobile phones to buy wares directly from large suppliers, arrange for transport and make payments online. “Ordering on SMS or Android gets you free delivery of products to your store, on average, in about two hours,” said Yu.

Sokowatch generates revenues by earning “a margin on the goods that we’re selling to shopkeepers,” said Yu. On the supplier side, they also benefit from “aggregating demand…and getting bulk deals on the products that we distribute.”

The company recently launched a line of credit product to extend working capital loans to platform clients. With the $2 million round, Sokowatch — which currently operates in Kenya and Tanzania — plans to “expand to new markets in East Africa, as well as pilot additional value add services to the shops,” said Yu.

MallforAfrica and DHL launched MarketPlaceAfrica.com: a global e-commerce site for select African artisans to sell wares to buyers in any of DHL’s 220 delivery countries.

The site will prioritize fashion items — clothing, bags, jewelry, footwear and personal care — and crafts, such as pictures and carvings. MallforAfrica is vetting sellers for MarketPlace Africa online and through the Africa Made Product Standards association (AMPS), to verify made-in-Africa status and merchandise quality.

“We’re starting off in Nigeria and then we’ll open in Kenya, Rwanda and the rest of Africa, utilizing DHL’s massive network,” MallforAfrica CEO Chris Folayan told TechCrunch about where the goods will be sourced. “People all around the world can buy from African artisans online, that’s the goal,” Folayan told TechCrunch.

Current listed designer products include handbags from Chinwe Ezenwa and Tash women’s outfits by Tasha Goodwin.

In addition to DHL for shipping, MarketPlace Africa will utilize MallforAfrica’s e-commerce infrastructure. The startup was founded in 2011 to solve challenges global consumer goods companies face when entering Africa.

French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a $76 million African startup fund at VivaTech 2018 and TechCrunch paid a visit to the French Development Agency (AFD) — which will administer the new fund — to get details on how it will work.

The $76 million (or €65 million) will divvy up into three parts, AFD Digital Task Team Leader Christine Ha told TechCrunch.

“There are €10 million [$11.7 million] for technical assistance to support the African ecosystem… €5 million will be available as interest-free loans to high-potential, pre-seed startups…and…€50 million [$58 million] will be for equity-based investments in series A to C startups,” explained Ha during a meeting in Paris.

The technical assistance will distribute in the form of grants to accelerators, hubs, incubators and coding programs. The pre-seed startup loans will issue in amounts up to $100,000 “as early, early funding to allow entrepreneurs to prototype, launch and experiment,” said Ha.

The $58 million in VC startup funding will be administered through Proparco, a development finance institution — or DFI — partially owned by the AFD. “Proparco will take equity stakes, and will be a limited partner when investing in VC funds,” said Ha.

Startups from all African countries can apply for a piece of the $58 million by contacting any of Proparco’s Africa offices.

The $11.7 million technical assistance and $5.8 million loan portions of France’s new fund will be available starting in 2019. On implementation, AFD is still “reviewing several options…such as relying on local actors through [France’s] Digital Africa platform,” said Ha. President Macron followed up the Africa fund announcement with a trip to Nigeria last month.

Nigerian logistics startup Kobo360 was accepted into Y Combinator’s 2018 class and gained some working capital in the form of $1.2 million in pre-seed funding led by Western Technology Investment.

The startup — with an Uber -like app that connects Nigerian truckers to companies with freight needs — will use the funds to pay drivers online immediately after successful hauls.

Kobo360 is also launching the Kobo Wealth Investment Network, or KoboWIN — a crowd-invest, vehicle financing program. Through it, Kobo drivers can finance new trucks through citizen investors and pay them back directly (with interest) over a 60-month period.

On Kobo360’s utility, “We give drivers the demand and technology to power their businesses,” CEO Obi Ozor told TechCrunch. “An average trucker will make $3,500 a month with our app. That’s middle class territory in Nigeria.”

Kobo360 has served 324 businesses, aggregated a fleet of 5,480 drivers and moved 37.6 million kilograms of cargo since 2017, per company stats. Top clients include Honeywell, Olam, Unilever and DHL.

Ozor thinks the startup’s asset-free, digital platform and business model can outpace traditional long-haul 3PL providers in Nigeria by handling more volume at cheaper prices.

“Logistics in Nigeria have been priced based on the assumption drivers are going to run empty on the way back…When we now match freight with return trips, prices crash.”

Kobo360 will expand in Togo, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire and Senegal.

[PHOTO: BFX.LAGOS] And finally, applications are open for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Africa, to be held in Lagos, Nigeria, December 11. Early-stage African startups have until September 3 to apply here.

More Africa Related Stories @TechCrunch

·         CowryWise micro-savings service opens high-yield government bonds to everyday Nigerians

African Tech Around the Net

·         More Than Half of Sub-Saharan Africa to Be Connected to Mobile by 2025, Finds New GSMA Study
·         Ethiopia’s Gebeya acquires Coders4Africa to accelerate its growth
·         Rwanda, Andela partner to launch pan-African tech hub in Kigali
·         Google’s free public Wi-Fi initiative expanded to Africa
·         Accounteer wins 2018 MEST Entrepreneur challenge
·         SafeBoda completes expansion to Kenya, now live in Nairobi
·         Uganda government sued over social media tax

During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Dafina Toncheva, Partner at US Venture Partners, an expert in Cyber Security. We discussed a variety of topics including the shifting of Series A...

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Uproxx Media Group — owner of sites like HitFix, Dime and Uproxx itself — has been acquired.

The Uproxx site focuses on entertainment and pop culture news, and was founded back in 2008. It was bought by Woven Digital in 2014, which eventually rebranded as Uproxx. Like many digital media companies, it includes both a publishing arm and a studio that works with marketers to create videos and other branded content.

Today, Warner Music Group announced that it’s buying the company and its portfolio of websites (minus BroBible, which will continue to operate independently). The company says Uproxx will still to be run by CEO and chief creative officer Benjamin Blank, along with co-founder and publisher Jarret Myer, and that the individual sites will still have editorial independence.

Back in the 1990s, Myer (pictured above) was one of the founders of hip hop label Rawkus Records, where he worked with Max Lousada — who would eventually become Warner’s CEO of Global Recorded Music.

“UPROXX brings together pioneering personalities and credible brands in ways that move huge audiences to talk, listen and share,” Lousada said in the acquisition announcement. “It’ll be exciting to collaborate with Jarret again, along with Ben and their team, who will thrive in the creative and entrepreneurial environment we’re building. They’ll be great partners as we redefine what it means to be a dynamic, future-focused music company.”

Warner says Uproxx reaches an audience of 40 million people through its websites and other platforms.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Uproxx raised a total of $43.3 million from investors, including IVP, Advancit Capital and WPP Ventures.

The B2B digital payment space is changing. Listen to Jeremy discuss the developments. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as PayStand. Jeremy Almond: I’m the...

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Meet Radar Relay, a cryptocurrency startup that just raised $10 million from Blockchain Capital and other investors. The company is taking advantage of the 0x protocol to change your tokens into other tokens without going through a traditional exchange.

Centralized exchanges have been one of the main weaknesses of the cryptocurrency industry for years. A centralized exchange can get hacked or shut down. Malicious users can also hijack your account and transfer all your tokens.

“I definitely hope centralized exchanges go burn in hell as much as possible,” Vitalik Buterin said in a recent TechCrunch interview.

So what is the solution? Decentralized exchanges that never hold your tokens on their wallets. As TechCrunch’s Josh Constine wrote, 0x is a protocol that makes this possible. 0x connects traders so that you can swap tokens without going through a centralized marketplace. It leverages smart contracts so that you don’t end up sending the tokens first and waiting for the other person to send you back their tokens — the transaction happens simultaneously.

Many companies are building projects on top of the 0x protocol, and Radar Relay is one of them. As the name suggests, Radar Relay helps you find other traders who are interested in your order.

For instance, if you want to exchange 10 MLN for 162 ZRX, you need to publicize your order somewhere so that other users can find it. If another Radar Relay user wants to make a similar transaction, but in the other direction, then the trade occurs.

Users connect wallet addresses on Radar Relay so that you stay in control of your tokens at all times. For instance, if you use a Ledger wallet, you can exchange tokens from one address on your Ledger to another. In the future, you can imagine integrations with wallet makers so that you can submit an order from your wallet directly.

In addition to leaving you in control of your tokens, you don’t need to create an account to use a decentralized exchange. Radar Relay is only compatible with ERC20 tokens as 0x has been designed for ERC20 tokens specifically. Since October, users have traded the equivalent of $150 million in 170 tokens.

While Blockchain Capital is leading the round, a ton of investors have put money in Radar Relay — Tusk Ventures, Distributed Global, Reciprocal Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Distributed Global, Reciprocal Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Elefund, Slow Ventures, SV Angel, Kindred Ventures, Breyer Capital, Digital Currency Group, V1.VC, Kokopelli, Village Global and Chapter One.

It’s an impressive list of investors. So let’s see if decentralized exchanges can shake up the big exchanges that everybody uses today.

Rent the Runway today announced that it has partnered with Temasek for a $200 million credit facility.

Founded in 2009, Rent the Runway lets users rent items of clothing for special events or occasions, bringing runway styles to folks without the cash to purchase the clothing outright.

Rent the Runway started out by letting users rent their wares for about 10 percent of the item’s price. But in 2017, RTR introduced a subscription model, giving users unlimited rentals for $89/month.

The model has already been proven by other businesses. RTR started giving users access to fashion in the same way that Netflix gives users access to video, Spotify gives access to music, or even the way ClassPass gives users access to studio fitness classes.

Since the subscription launch, RTR’s subscription business is up 150 percent year over year, and represents 50 percent of the company’s overall revenue.

According to the release, RTR will use the new funds to continue growing its subscription business, expand operations, and refinance its existing debt facility. As part of the deal, Temasek has received an observer seat on the board of directors.

In response to the question around why Rent The Runway chose a credit facility over traditional VC investment, CFO Scarlett O’Sullivan had this to say via email:

We are very pleased that the company has demonstrated the kind of business model, growth prospects and financial discipline that make it possible to access a credit facility of this size with an equity-minded long-term partner like Temasek – they have a proven track record of supporting disruptive high-growth companies.

We were specifically looking for debt for three key reasons:

1 – This facility gives us the ability to access more financing – we can draw capital as we need to, giving us flexibility to grow our subscription business more quickly

2 – We improved the terms of our prior facility which we refinanced with a portion of these funds — and debt for us is a lower cost option to finance the business

3 – It is less dilutive to our existing shareholders – we believe there will be significant value creation over the next several years as we continue to change consume behavior and help women put their closet in the cloud

Before this latest deal, Rent the Runway had raised more than $200 million in funding from investors such as Bain Capital, KPCB, Highland Capital, TCV, and more.

Stampli, an invoice management platform, announced today the closing of a $6.7 million Series A funding round led by SignalFire, with participation from Bloomberg Beta, Hillsven Capital and UpWest Labs.

If you’ve ever freelanced for a company, you know that the long, instant ramen-filled days between filing an invoice and having it completed can be grueling. Brothers Eyal and Ofer Feldman launched Stampli in 2015 to help solve this problem and bridge the communication gap between accountants, related internal departments and vendors. Aimed at mid to large-size companies, to date Stampli has helped a wide range of companies (from fashion to tech) manage more than $4 billion in invoices through its AI-driven interface.

“Invoice management is like an elephant,” co-founder and CEO Eyal Feldman told TechCrunch. “One person sees the head, one person sees the tail, one person sees the legs. It’s a process that different people see different versions of but the whole picture should include everybody. The ability for all of these people to be involved is really the core of the process.”

Traditional invoice management between vendors and internal departments in a company can be a tangled mess of email exchanges, lost messages and ultimately delayed payments. But, Stampli’s interface (which can be integrated directly into a company’s enterprise resource planning software like NetSuite, Intuit QuickBooks or SAP) allows for every step of the invoice’s journey to have a central landing page on which every relevant party can collaborate.

“We found that 85 percent of our users are not accounting people,” said Feldman. “[They] are all the managers around and all the other people involved. What we found in our research is that when the process works for them is when accounting is happy.”

This landing page not only provides easy access to pertinent information between departments, but Stampli’s built-in AI, Billy the Bot, helps invoice managers fill in relevant information by first learning the structure of the invoice and then learning through observation the user’s behavior and work flow. When Billy passes an 80 percent confidence threshold for its decision, it goes ahead and auto-fills the information. But, if it’s feeling unsure about its choice, Billy will leave it as a suggestion instead to avoid introducing any errors to the paperwork.

The more invoices users process through Stampli, the more Billy learns how to best streamline the process for that company.

In the arena of invoice management, Stampli faces competition from companies like Determine and Concur, which also offer all-in-one platforms for invoice management and, in the case of Concur, also incorporate machine learning to capture invoices.

According to Feldman, what helps Stampli stand apart from the competition is its emphasis on company collaboration and its no-fee installation of the software. With no upfront cost, the company only charges per invoice.

Sramana Mitra: We’re going to need to double-click on that. What do you actually provide? My understanding is that Magento is a hosted e-commerce platform. Fred Plais: Exactly. When you take a look...

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The cost of childcare is one of the biggest financial burdens American families face. Even dependent care flexible spending accounts, pre-tax benefit accounts meant to reduce caregiving costs, can be an extra stressor because they involve filling out many forms. Kinside, a startup in Y Combinator’s current batch, wants to help by automating the claims process. It also serves as a childcare management tool, letting parents pay their care providers with a Venmo-like feature while making it simpler for companies to offer childcare benefits, like matching costs, that can help attract talented employees. Kinside is still in beta, but it’s already been adopted by several tech companies, including Le Tote.

Kinside’s three founders—CEO Shadiah Sigala, COO Rob Bircher and CTO Abe Han—were motivated to launch the startup after realizing that dependent care FSAs (which can also be used for other caregiving-related costs, like elder care) are vastly underutilized.

“Even though upwards of 70% of companies offer this FSA, we found in our conversations with numerous companies that maybe 10% of eligible parents are using this benefit,” Sigala says. “From an employee experience perspective, we are really taking on a very onerous, traditional FSA product and streamlining the payments process, not only for employers to offer this benefit very seamlessly, but also streamlining the process for parents to take advantage of this benefit.”

One reason eligible employees forgo their dependent care FSA benefits is the claims process, which can take weeks to process and involves collecting receipts and uploading them onto a website (snail mail and fax are other options). As parents, Kinside’s founders have experienced firsthand the headache of dealing with dependent care FSA forms at previous jobs.

“Some of the products we’ve seen already look a decade old, with multiple screens of input. They are really clumsy, so from a modern Web app and UX experience, Kinside brings it up to speed,” says Han.

Kinside also takes advantage of the trio’s past experience in the payments and benefits space. Before launching Kinside, Sigala co-founded HoneyBook, a CRM for entrepreneurs in creative fields. Han also worked at HoneyBook as lead software engineer, while Bircher was senior vice president of sales and marketing at healthcare benefits tech company Picwell.

The team’s goal is to not only encourage use of dependent care FSAs, but also relieve the mental load for harried parents. To sign up for Kinside, they enter their childcare provider’s information on its Web app and connect a bank account. Kinside then makes automated childcare payments with funds from their FSAs and bank accounts or sends payment reminders. It keeps receipts and at the end of the year provides parents with a tax form.

“This couldn’t be done five years ago because there wasn’t a modern payroll. There weren’t modern payments services that existed and we didn’t have APIs for payment and payroll services,” says Sigala. “A lot of employers offer dependent care FSAs already, but they are very receptive to our service because they are looking for products that will improve the experience.”

Kinside is targeting other tech companies first, since many are at the forefront of building family-friendly policies. Several, including Netflix, Facebook and Etsy, have made headlines for offering parental benefits that are considered very generous by American standards, like longer paid leave, flex time and childcare subsidies. This doesn’t just help parents. It also helps companies build diverse workforces by attracting more millennials and women (the high cost of childcare is a big reason why many new mothers leave the workforce, even if they don’t want to. They simply can’t afford to work).

“They know that you have to offer more than a trivial benefit like free lunch or a foosball table,” says Sigala. “Childcare is more expensive than healthcare, or as expensive as rent. Childcare is eating up to 20% of a Bay Area family’s income.”

One of Kinside’s selling points is enabling small to mid-sized businesses to offer competitive benefits, too. “You see solutions that cater to larger employers, like on-site daycare centers, that are very inaccessible to smaller to mid-sized companies,” says Bircher. “We want to fill a void that we thought existed for SMBs and this was one way to do it.”

As more companies turn to better family benefits to boost recruitment and retention, it’s conceivable that other startups will also look at ways to make using Dependent Care FSAs easier. Sigala says one advantage Kinside has is the founding team’s prior experience, which means they know the right distribution channels. The startup is looking at ways to help parents get more use out of the money they put in their FSAs by partnering with eligible childcare-related services. It also wants to work with companies that pre-screen providers, so Kinside can potentially address all steps of the childcare process, from finding a trustworthy carer and paying them on time to preparing year-end tax forms.

“Parents are going to pay an arm and a leg for childcare already,” says Sigala. “If we can help them get tax-free dollars toward childcare, that’s what we want to do.”

Today’s 409th FREE online 1Mby1M roundtable for entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, August 2, at 8:00 a.m. PDT/11:00 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are welcome!

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Today’s 409th FREE online 1Mby1M roundtable for entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, August 2, at 8:00 a.m. PDT/11:00 a.m. EDT/8:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. All are...

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A recent Newzoo report estimates the global gaming industry to have grown 13% to be worth $137.9 billion with 2.3 billion gamers worldwide. Billion Dollar Unicorn player Discord is a social...

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Cisco today announced its intention to buy Ann Arbor, MI-based security firm, Duo Security. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco is paying $2.35 billion in cash and assumed equity awards for Duo.

Duo Security was founded in 2010 by Dug Song and Jonathan Oberheide and went on to raise $121.M through several rounds of funding. The company has 700 employees with offices throughout the United States and in London, though the company has remained headquartered in Ann Arbor.

Co-founder and CEO Dug Song will continue leading Duo as its General Manager and will join Cisco’s Networking and Security business led by EVP and GM David Goeckeler. Cisco in a statement said they value Michigan’s “resources, rich talent pool, and infrastructure,” and remain committed to Duo’s investment and presence in the Great Lakes State.

The acquisition feels like a good fit for Cisco. Duo’s security apparatus lets employees use their own device for adaptive authentication. Instead of issuing key fobs with security codes, Duo’s solution works securely with any device. And within Cisco’s environment, the technology should feel like a natural fit for CTOs looking for secure two-factor authentication.

“Our partnership is the product of the rapid evolution of the IT landscape alongside a modernizing workforce, which has completely changed how organizations must think about security,” said Dug Song, Duo Security’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “Cisco created the modern IT infrastructure, and together we will rapidly accelerate our mission of securing access for all users, with any device, connecting to any application, on any network. By joining forces with the world’s largest networking and enterprise security company, we have a unique opportunity to drive change at a massive scale, and reshape the industry.”

Over the last few years, Cisco has made several key acquisitions: OpenDNS, Sourcefire, Cloudlock, and now Duo. This latest deal is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2019.

Duo Security’s Dug Song On Company Priorities | Disrupt NY 2017

Ram Palaniappan: Once we got that algorithm, we were able to expand it to salaried workers as well. Another thing that was interesting was, when I started, I was pushing money out over ACH. It shows...

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Shedul, an online booking platform for salons and spas, has raised $5 million in funding. The round is led by Berlin’s Target Global, with participation from New York based FJ Labs. A number of individuals also invested personally, including Tom Stafford (Managing Partner at DST Global), Niklas Östberg (founder and CEO of Delivery Hero), and Hakan Koç (co-founder and co-CEO of Auto1 Group).

Launched in 2015, Shedul’s first product is a free SaaS designed to help salons and spas manage their day-to-day sales and operations. The platform’s features span managing appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records, inventory, and financial reporting. A second, more recent offering is the Fresha.com marketplace, and it here where the London-headquartered company generates revenue by charging merchants a small percentage fee on top of bookings.

“We’ve built the world’s best platform for beauty and wellness industry and given it to all businesses globally 100 percent subscription free,” says founder and CEO William Zeqiri. “Good free software has spread virally with users in the industry enabling us to acquire new merchants very fast”.

This has seen Shedul acquire salon and spa operator customers in more than 120 countries, primarily in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. Around 6 million appointments are booked each month, growing at an average rate of 20 percent month-on-month, while the platform is on track to process $3.5 billion worth of appointment bookings by the end of 2018.

“Leveraging our existing pool of global merchants allowed us to bootstrap the consumer marketplace with a lot of liquidity,” explains Zeqiri. “This created additional value proposition for both merchants and marketplace customers. With our Free SaaS-enabled marketplace business model we are leveraging the critical mass of merchants and marketplace users to scale the platform exponentially”.

Currently in the initial rollout phase, Zeqiri says Fresha.com provides mobile apps for customers and real-time booking integrations through Instagram, Facebook and Google, along with in-app payment processing. It also incorporates intelligent features to help merchants grow revenues. This includes displaying price and availability options based on a customer’s purchase history and the merchant’s projected occupancy.

“With our two-sided Marketplace platform, we’re automating many processes of running a business in the beauty industry with powerful online booking features, marketing tools and access to our consumer marketplace to attract new clients,” adds the Shedul CEO. “This frees up merchants to do what they do best and spend more face time with customers.

“We have salons where 80 percent of their bookings are now made though our online marketplace Fresha.com. Our technology helps businesses optimize their schedule with real-time online availability; in some cases it has increased merchant revenues more than 30 percent”.

Shedul counts its main competitors in the U.S. as MindBody, Vagaro, and StyleSeat. In Europe, the startup competes most directly with marketplace TreatWell.

Meanwhile, Shedul says the new capital will be used for product development and to support the continued rollout of the new marketplace offering. It brings the total amount raised by the company to over $11 million to date and should see it through to an upcoming Series B round.

After he apologized to an analyst on Wednesday, investors seemed ready to cheer Tesla CEO Elon Musk again. AP