Singapore-based fintech Hashstacs Pte Ltd (STACS) announced today it has raised $3.6 million USD in pre-Series A funding. The company develops blockchain platforms that can work with financial institutions’ existing infrastructure, and its core technology is also used in GreenSTACS for environmental, social and governance (ESG) investments. The round was led by Wavemaker Partners, which focuses on enterprise and deep tech companies in Southeast Asia, with participation from the Tribe Accelerator, a program for blockchain startups backed by the Singaporean government. STACS participated in Tribe last year, along with Project Ubin, the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s blockchain-based multi-currency payments network initiative.

Founded in 2019, STACS has now raised a total of more than $6 million and is preparing to raise Series A funding later this year. The company’s goal is to fix fragmentation in the tech systems used by financial institutions that can result in capital being locked in international clearing systems, a build-up of transaction fees and fines for trades that fail to settle. Its core solution is a technology stack that is built around STACS blockchain. It allows clients to integrate payment platforms (including Ubin), trading platforms and external software like user management systems, while enabling smart contracts and digital ledgers.

STACS’ products include a real-time trade processing platform that is used by clients like Eastspring Investments and BNP Paribas Securities Service. Some of its other clients are Deutsche Bank, Bursa Malaysia, EFG Bank and Bluecell Intelligence. STACS co-founder and managing director Benjamin Soh told TechCrunch that STACS is targeting a network of more than 30 institutions by the end of this year.

GreenSTACS launched last month in a collaboration with Bluecell Intelligence to help companies certify and monitor green and sustainability-related loans and bonds.

Soh said in an email that STACS received many requests from financial institutions that needed to perform impact monitoring on ESG projects, but were not able to do so effectively because “information sources are asymmetric, there is no common data infrastructure and serving of ESG financing is typically too inefficient.”

STACS’ goal is to make GreenSTACS “the common infrastructure” for ESG financing and impact monitoring, he added. The platform enables loan and bond parameters to be programmed into security tokens and connects with data sources, like IoT devices or satellite images, to create real-time impact reports on a distributed ledger. This helps prevent “greenwashing,” a term that refers to making something seem more environmentally-friendly or sustainable than it really is.

“Essentially, this would boost investors’ and banks’ confidence with green financing by ensuring green money is strictly used in achieving pledged green goals and policies,” said Soh.

In a press statement, Wavemaker general partner Gavin Lee said, “There is an immense opportunity to help financial institutions process large volumes of trade more quickly, securely and accurately while reducing costs and illiquid capital. As an enterprise distributed ledger technology provider, STACS has productized a secure layer that can be deployed instantly above existing infrastructure. Enterprise sales is never easy for young companies, but Benjamin is a convincing and seasoned serial entrepreneur who has secured numerous leading financial institutions as key clients.”

Indonesian startup CoLearn started as a chain of physical tutoring centers and was in the process of shifting to a hybrid offline-online model when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The team sensed that remote learning would permanently change how students want to be tutored and decided to focus completely on its app, which launched in August 2020. CoLearn has since been downloaded more than 3.5 million times and has about one million active users, mostly students in grades 7 to 12.

The company announced today it has raised $10 million in Series A funding co-led by Alpha Wave Incubation and edtech-focused GSV Ventures. This marks the first time both have made an investment in Indonesia. The round also included participation from returning investors Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and AC Ventures.

One of the Jakarta-based company’s goals is to improve educational standards in Indonesia. The country’s PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment, a global ranking system created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) rankings are in the bottom 10% for math, science and reading. CoLearn’s goal is to help move up Indonesia’s PISA ratings to the top 50% over the next five years.

CoLearn’s app offers more than 250,000 pre-recorded videos with homework help. The videos serve as a hook to convince students (or their parents) to sign up for CoLearn’s live online classes.

The company’s co-founders are Abhay Saboo, Marc Irawan and BYJU product team alum Sandeep Devaram. Despite being the world’s fourth most populous country with 270 million people, Indonesia has not seen the same level of investment and innovation in its educational infrastructure as countries like China or India, Saboo told TechCrunch. “We’re trying to solve the problem of how do you change mindsets, how do you change motivation, how do you increase in confidence levels?”

CoLearn started its offline in business in 2018, before shifting to a hybrid model. Once the pandemic hit, the company decided to go fully online. Even after schools reopen, the team anticipates that most students will prefer the convenience of online afterschool learning because going to brick-and-mortar tutoring centers can eat up hours of their time each day, Saboo said.

CoLearn’s users ask about 5 million questions through the app each month. Its AI platform matches them with video tutorials, recorded by more than 400 tutors, that break down key concepts. Saboo said creating engaging videos instead of presenting solutions in a diagram is one of the ways CoLearn differentiates from competitors like SnapAsk, which raised $35 million last year to expand in Southeast Asia.

“What we realized is that kids are really craving a step-by-step explanation and this is the TikTok generation, so if a picture says a thousand words, then a video says a million,” he said. He added that students often hit pause on the video when they think they have the answer to a question, before skipping to the end to see if they got it right, indicating that they want to understand concepts instead of simply getting a solution.

CoLearn’s live online classes will be its main priority going forward and the startup hopes to replicate the success of companies like China’s Yuanfadao and Zuoyebang. As part of that goal, it runs teacher training programs and expects to train more than 200 teachers over the next two years, especially in STEM subjects. The company may eventually scale into other countries that have similar issues with their education systems, but Saboo said CoLearn’s plan is to focus on Indonesia for at last the next couple of years.

Other investors in CoLearn include Leo Capital, TNB Aura, S7V, January Capital, Alpha JWC, Taurus Ventures, Alter Global and Mahanusa Capital.

In press statement, GSV Ventures managing partner Deborah Quazzo said, “The opportunity to build efficacious learning solutions for the fourth largest country in the world is vast. The greatest businesses are created when entrepreneurs tackle large, important problems and CoLearn is doing that.”

 

Fintech startup Payhawk has raised a $20 million funding round. QED Investors is leading the round with existing investor Earlybird Digital East also participating. Payhawk is building a unified system to manage all the money that is going in and out.

Essentially, companies switching to Payhawk can replace several services they already use and that didn’t interact well with each other. Payhawk lets you issue corporate cards for your employees, manage invoices and track payments from a single interface.

After signing up, customers get their own banking details with a dedicated IBAN. You can connect with your existing bank account, load funds to your Payhawk account and start using it in multiple ways.

Compared to other companies working on similar products, Payhawk gives each customer their own IBAN, which means they can receive third-party payments.

One of the key features of Payhawk is that customers can issue virtual and physical cards for employees with different rules. You can set up a team budget, configure an approval workflow for large transactions and let Payhawk handle receipt collection from those card transactions.

You can upload invoices to manage them through Payhawk. The startup tries to automatically extract data from those invoices for easier reconciliation. Payhawk also lets you reimburse employees. The service acts as a single source of truth for your company’s spending. Finally, you can connect Payhawk with your existing ERP system.

As a software-as-a-service solution, you pay a monthly subscription fee that will vary depending on optional features and the number of active cards. Clients include LuxAir, Lotto24, Viking Life, ATU, Gtmhub, MacPaw and By Miles. Overall, the startup has 200 clients.

The company has been growing nicely as revenue doubled in Q1 2021. It currently accepts clients in the European Union and the U.K. but it already plans to expand beyond those markets. Up next, Payhawk plans to launch credit cards, more currencies and tighter integration with corporate bank accounts.

 

Druva, a software company that sells cloud data backup services, announced today that it has closed a $147 million round of capital. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a group that manages Quebec’s pension fund, led the round, which also saw participation from Neuberger Berman. Prior investors including Atreides Management and Viking Global Investors put capital into the deal, as well.

Druva last raised a $130 million round led by Viking in mid-2019 at around a $1 billion valuation. At the time TechCrunch commented that the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) backup service was tackling a large market. (TechCrunch also covered the company’s $51 million round back in 2016 and its $80 million raise from 2017.)

Since then SaaS has continued to grow at a rapid clip, including a strong 2020 spurred on by COVID-19 boosting digital transformation efforts at companies of all sizes. In that context, it’s not surprising to see Druva put together a new capital round.

A recent tie-up between Dell and Druva, first reported in January of this year, was formally announced earlier this month. The selection of Druva by Dell could help provide the unicorn with a customer base to sell into for some time. TechCrunch wrote about Druva earlier this year, during the reporting process the company said that it had “almost tripled its annual revenue in three years.”

Its new round did include some secondary shares, which Neuberger Berman managing director Raman Gambhir described as difficult to snag during a call with TechCrunch. He explained that some of the secondary sales were due to some prior funds reaching their end-of-life cycle. Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh stressed that his backers are working to do what’s best for the company instead of merely maximizing their returns during a joint interview.

Singh told TechCrunch that business at Druva is accelerating. Normally we’d note that that sounds like IPO fodder, especially as Druva passed the $100 million ARR threshold back in 2019. However, as the company has been making IPO noise for some time, it’s hard to predict when it might pull the trigger. Our coverage of the company’s 2016 round noted that the company could go public within a year. And our coverage of its 2019 investment included Singh telling TechCrunch that an IPO was 12 to 18 months away.

It probably is, now, but that’s beside the point. With refreshed accounts, a market moving in its direction, and some early investor relieved in its latest investment the company has quarters worth of time to play with. Still, Singh did stress that its new financing round did select investors that he said is building a long-term position; that’s the sort of verbiage that CEOs break out when they are building a pre-IPO cap table.

Gambhir told TechCrunch that his firm has already requested shares in Druva’s eventual IPO. Perhaps we’ll see Fidelity show up with a $50 million check in a few months.

Every startup that raises capital tells the media that they are going to use the funds to expand their staff, double down on their tech and, often, invest in their go-to-market (GTM) motion. Druva is no exception, but its CEO did tell TechCrunch that his company currently has over 200 open GTM positions. That’s quite a few. Presumably that spend will help the company keep its growth rate strong in percentage terms as it does, finally, look to list.

This is yet another growth round for a late-stage, enterprise-facing software company. But it’s also a round into a company that had to move its operations to the United States when it was founded, at the behest of its investors per Singh. And Druva has done some pretty neat cloud work, it told TechCrunch earlier this year, to ensure that it can defend software-like margins despite material storage loads.

It’s an S-1 that we’re looking forward to. Start the countdown.

 

Robotic process automation unicorn UiPath is set to go public this week, concentrating our focus on its value.

The well-known company was last valued on the private markets at $35 billion in February when it closed a $750 million round. Living up to that price as a public company, however, at least when it comes to its formal IPO price, is proving to be challenging.

In a sense, that’s not too surprising given that the red-hot IPO market cooled as Q1 2021 came to a close. UiPath raised its last private round when the markets were most interested in public offerings and is now going public in a slightly altered climate.

In numerical terms, UiPath raised its IPO range from $43 to $50 per share, to $52 to $54 per share. That’s a 21% jump in the value of the lower end of its range, and an 8% gain to the value of the upper end of its per-share IPO price interval.

UiPath is also selling more shares than before, which should make its total valuation slightly larger at the top end than a mere 8% gain. So let’s go through the math one more time. Afterward, we’ll stack its new simple, fully diluted IPO valuations against its final private price, ask ourselves if our musings on the company’s recent profitability bore out, and close by asking where the company might finally price, and if we expect it to do so above its new price range.

UiPath at $54

A stunning first quarter in venture capital funding was not restricted to the United States; Europe also had one hell of a start to the year.

According to data from Dealroom and Crunchbase News, an investor, and an analyst from PitchBook, European startups put together an impressive fundraising haul. The venture capital world kicked off its 2021 European investing cycle with enough activity to set the continent on the path that would crush yearly records.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. 

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Inside the data, there’s lots to unpack, including which sectors of European startups stood out in terms of capital raised, rising seed and late-stage deals, and dollar volume. We’ll also need to discuss exits — the Deliveroo IPO and its various woes was not the only transaction from the period worth understanding.

As with our prior looks at AI startup fundraising and the United States’ own blistering start to the year, we’ll lean on multiple sources to ensure that we have a wide lens. And we’ll keep in mind that all venture capital data lags reality somewhat, as many deals from a particular period are not disclosed or discovered until long after they actually occurred.

In this case, it makes the numbers all the more impressive. Let’s get into the data.

The big numbers

Dealroom was first out of the gate, reporting that European startups had a record quarter in Q1 2021 back when April just got started. Its preliminary results for the first quarter indicated that startups on the continent raised €16.6 billion, or $19.9 billion at today’s exchange rates.

That total was not only a record, but what Dealroom described as double the results of Q1 2020. While we’ve become slightly inured in recent months to the venture capital market’s rapid pace and capital-rich environment, it’s worth considering for a moment, as the first quarter of last year ended, how few of us would have guessed that just a year later — as COVID-19 still harms public health and disrupts life and business — we’d see numbers like this.

The Dealroom data, however, was not all records. Round volume by the group’s estimates was down from the year-ago period, if slightly better than the last few quarters. The general move toward the later-stage and larger-round venture capital market is alive and well in Europe.

Regret — such an unfortunate and unnecessary emotion, is it not? If you missed out on our April TC Early Stage bootcamp, this is your chance to cast regret aside and secure your spot at TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising on July 8-9.

Jumping on the TC Early Stage bandwagon this well, early, offers a sweet benefit — you’ll save $100 bucks. But that early-bird savings disappears in less than two weeks. Don’t miss out. Buy your Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising ticket before April 30, at 11:59 p.m. (PDT).

Let’s talk about the other benefits of attending TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising. This bootcamp is all about helping founders in their early innings learn, develop and improve on the essential skills required to build a successful startup.

You’ll hear from top-tier investors, seasoned founders and respected subject-matter experts across the startup ecosystem. Topics range from fundraising and marketplace positioning to growth marketing and content development.

But it’s more than just listening — all the presentations are highly interactive. It’s a rare opportunity to ask questions and get answers from the folks who’ve been there, done that and want to help you move forward.

We debuted TC Early Stage last year, and it was so well received that we doubled down in 2021. Here’s what Ashley Barrington, the founder of MarketPearl, told us about her experience.

Early Stage 2020 was a great opportunity to hear seasoned startup founders talking about their experiences and how they dealt with many of the same challenges I faced then and am going through now. It’s like a mini-MBA session on early-stage companies.

Here are just two of the high-profile speakers lined up to share their knowledge in July at TC Early Stage 2021. We’re adding new speakers every week, so keep checking back.

Mike Duboe, general partner at Greylock will talk about the latest growth trends in consumer and B2B technology.Sarah Kunst, founding partner at Cleo Capital, will share best practices and solid advice on a topic everyone wants to hear — how to get ready to fundraise.

That’s just the tip of the TC Early Stage experience. Day one will be packed with presentations and break-out sessions and day two … well that’s a whole new realm of opportunity. That’s the day-long TC Early Stage Pitch-Off. TechCrunch will select 10 standout startups to pitch to a panel of VC judges for invaluable feedback and prizes, too.

Curious? You can read about the April TC Early Stage Pitch-Off right here — spoiler alert: Nalagenetics took first place.

We’ll open the application process (you have to apply to be considered) in the coming weeks, so if you want in on the pitch-off action, be sure to check back.

TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising takes place on July 8-9. Kick regret to the curb, save $100 and learn the best ways to build a strong foundation for your startup. Remember: buy your pass before prices go up on April 30, at 11:59 p.m. (PDT).

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021 — Marketing and Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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French startup Alan has raised a $220 million funding round at a $1.67 billion valuation (€185 million and €1.4 billion respectively). Coatue is leading the round with Dragoneer, Exor, and existing investors Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital and Temasek also participating.

Alan has been building health insurance products from scratch. When I first covered the company back in 2016, the startup had just managed to get approval from regulators to become an official health insurance company.

Since then, it’s been a not-so-slow-and-steady growth story as the company now covers 160,000 people. Overall, Alan generates over €100 million in annualized revenue. While most of that revenue is spent back on claims, it’s an impressive revenue trajectory.

Like other insurance companies, Alan has some capital requirements to comply with health insurance regulation. Alan has to raise more if it wants to insure more people. But that’s just part of the story as the startup still had enough cash on its bank account for the next 12 to 18 months.

“The context is that we managed to end the year 2020 very strong, finally — and I say finally because it’s been stressful until the last minute,” co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve told me.

Alan managed to meet its goals and international expansion finally started to take off. Many startups try to raise when they’re in a strong position. You shouldn’t wait until you have your back against the wall and that’s exactly what’s happening here.

“We thought it was the right time and we had multiple term sheets. Even though valuation is really good we first looked at a partner that has a really long-term vision,” Samuelian-Werve said.

With today’s funding round, the company can iterate on its core product — health insurance — and everything that makes Alan a superapp — a single app that lets you access several services. In France, employees are covered by both the national healthcare system and private insurance companies. Alan sells its products to other companies so that their employees are automatically covered by Alan contracts. It’s a sort of B2B2C play.

9,400 companies have opted for Alan in France, Belgium and Spain — the company’s home market remains its main market. Clients include WeWork, Deliveroo, JustEat, Vitaliance and Big Mamma. By 2023, Alan wants to reach 1 million members.

In order to gain more customers, Alan is betting on three pillars — product innovation, customer satisfaction through additional services, and expansions to new verticals and markets.

When it comes to product innovation, Alan has designed a modular insurance builder. Small companies can subscribe to Alan in a few clicks. Big companies can tweak every single parameter to build the right insurance package for them.

After that, the company tries to make it easy to manage your health insurance. You’ll soon be able to automatically manage sick leaves, change the employee affiliation status, etc. As for employees, the company has always promoted a transparent offering. For instance, you should know how much you’re going to pay out of pocket when you see a doctor. You can see a map of doctors around you and how much they charge on average. This way, there’s no surprise.

Alan also tries to reimburse you as quickly as possible. If it’s a straightforward claim, the startup tries to analyze and categorize your claim as quickly as possible and then issue an instant SEPA transfer. Seventy-five percent of claims are reimbursed and available on your bank account in less than an hour.

These core product features definitely contributes to customer satisfaction. But Alan is expanding beyond insurance products with several additional services that should increase retention. For instance, you can chat with a doctor, get medical advice for your baby’s health, get a free meditation app subscription, start a telehealth appointment via a partner, talk with someone about your mental health, etc.

Those services contribute to turning Alan into a superapp for your health. Essentially, as soon as you’re insured by Alan, you become a member and can access all those services without additional charges.

Eventually, Alan plans to launch a personal care guidance service to help you contact the right healthcare professional based on your health issue. In Spain, Alan can already book appointments for you.

Finally, Alan plans to reach new customers through aggressive expansion goals. The company plans to hire 400 people within the next three years and expand to other industries with tailor-made insurance products, such as retail, wholesale and manufacturing.

While the company is still going to focus on France, Belgium and Spain in the near future, it is looking at opportunities across Europe. So let’s see where Alan is going to expand next.

On my run to Boulder on Saturday, I listened to The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. My run was about four hours long, which was roughly the time it took to listen to this spectacular book. The quick summary from Wikipedia follows:

Kaku explores the history of unification theories of Physics starting with Newton’s law of universal gravitation which unified our experience of gravity on Earth and the motions of the celestial bodies to Einstein’s general relativity and quantum mechanics and the Standard Model. Kaku dubs the final Grand Unified Theory of relativity and quantum gravity The God Equation with an 11-dimensional String theory as the only self-consistent theory that seems to fit the bill.

I knew a bunch of the history Kaku covered, but he did it in a clear and beautiful way that built up to a bunch of contemporary theory that I couldn’t have explained prior to listening to the book. M-theory is still a complete mystery to me, but at least I understand the linkage to Trisolarans and their sophons a little better.

This morning, I had an email from Tom Keller pointing at a recent APOD from 4/16/21. It was additive to my experience running on 4/17 and listening to Kaku’s book.

Explanation: Light rays from accretion disks around a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes make their way through the warped space-time produced by extreme gravity in this stunning computer visualization. The simulated accretion disks have been given different false color schemes, red for the disk surrounding a 200-million-solar-mass black hole, and blue for the disk surrounding a 100-million-solar-mass black hole. That makes it easier to track the light sources, but the choice also reflects reality. Hotter gas gives off light closer to the blue end of the spectrum and material orbiting smaller black holes experiences stronger gravitational effects that produce higher temperatures. For these masses, both accretion disks would actually emit most of their light in the ultraviolet though. In the video, distorted secondary images of the blue black hole, which show the red black hole’s view of its partner, can be found within the tangled skein of the red disk warped by the gravity of the blue black hole in the foreground. Because we’re seeing red’s view of blue while also seeing blue directly, the images allow us to see both sides of blue at the same time. Red and blue light originating from both black holes can be seen in the innermost ring of light, called the photon ring, near their event horizons. Astronomers expect that in the not-too-distant future they’ll be able to detect gravitational waves, ripples in space-time, produced when two supermassive black holes in a system much like the one simulated here spiral together and merge.

You know nothing Jon Snow.

The post We Know So Much. And So Little appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

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Say it louder for the people in the back: As tech grows bigger by the minute and venture capital adds dollar signs by the day, a startup hub’s success is not an either/or situation. The next Silicon Valley is a tired narrative, when in reality startups look, innovate and create differently all over the world.

On that note, my colleagues spent the past few months digging into the market in Detroit, Michigan:

The StockX EC-1 How StockX became the stock market of hype

While StockX is the startup darling that may have put the region in the generalist spotlight, I soon learned that the sneaker marketplace company wasn’t at all where the city’s story started and ended. Instead, it started a little more at ground level.

Detroit techies consistently point to billionaire Dan Gilbert, the co-founder of Quicken Loans and the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, as the reason behind the region’s startup growth. It made me immediately wonder if all it takes to create a startup ecosystem is deep pockets.

Turns out it’s a little more complicated than that.

Gilbert has poured at least $2.5 billion into rehabilitating buildings in the core of Detroit. Then he invested in the companies that took office space in those buildings, the restaurants that would feed those new families in the area and the retailers that would fill up the side blocks. It wasn’t one check by one billionaire, but instead a measured and consistent approach to try to reestablish Detroit as a city of innovation within the United States.

I think one founder put it best: “there are a lot of people who hate him, but the reality is that, while he wasn’t the only billionaire in town, he’s the only one who heavily invested in Detroit.”

Beyond Gilbert, the vitalization is spread throughout different sectors. There’s a 12-year-old early-stage venture firm that was one of the first to ever bet on mobility as an investment thesis; there’s a thriving garden startup; and there’s a hardware company that, despite remote work, is finding space to scale:

Detroit’s native son, billionaire Dan Gilbert, makes the case for his townHardware is still hard in the Motor CityBuilding tech for worker safety, Guardhat Technologies is a company that could only come from DetroitA quick peek inside Fontinalis, one of Detroit’s best-known young venture firms

We’ll continue exploring emerging tech hubs, so throw us suggestions as we virtually (and one day physically) road trip across the country.

 

In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about Tiger Global, IPOs and a few exciting upcoming events. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ to hang during the week.

Tiger Global has a spending problem

This week on Equity, we talked about Tiger Global’s aggressive investment approach and what it could mean for early-stage firms and founders.

Alexa Von Tobel outlines how founders should manage personal financesHow Pilot charted a course of raising not too much money

Here’s what to know: One of the reasons Tiger Global is feeling spendy is that it just closed one of the biggest venture funds ever. In 2020, the firm closed $3.75 billion in capital commitments. In 2021, it nearly doubled its own record, with $6.7 billion raised for its latest fund.

And if you don’t believe me, below is a list of just some of the New York-based firms’ recent activity:

HighRadius’ $300M Series CCityblock Health’s $192 million Series C6sense’s $125 million Series DGroq’s $300 million financing event Outschool’s $75 million Series CTiger Global goes super aggressive in India

Crypto’s Coinbase moment

Cryptocurrency trading giant Coinbase went public this week. The company opened at $381 per share, valuing the exchange at nearly $100 billion. It was a massive exit for the company, which underwent scrutiny last year when it banned politics at work.

Here’s what to know: It’s fairly obvious that Coinbase’s successful IPO was a big moment for fintech and crypto startups, as well as the decentralized finance movement. My colleagues Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim dug into how the crypto ripple effect could look from the perspective of a few venture capitalists. There are too many good bits for me to choose an excerpt, so read it for yourself here, and a take sneak peek below:

So while there is an ocean of bullish sentiment that the Coinbase listing will lead to rising venture capital investment into crypto startups, there’s also some caution to be had; how much of the growing market that Coinbase can capture and control is not yet clear, though IVP’s Loverro was very bullish during our interview about the company’s expanding feature set — things like staking Tezos, or buying Uniswap. Its backers think that Coinbase is well-positioned to absorb future market upside in its niche.

Around TechCrunch

As always, we have a ton of exciting events coming up. Here’s just a taste:

Tamika Butler, Remix’s Tiffany Chu and Revel’s Frank Reig to discuss how to balance equitability and profitability at TC Sessions: MobilityGreylock GP Mike Duboe to discuss growth, growth and more growth at TechCrunch Early Stage in July

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

Pakistan temporarily blocks social media

Republican antitrust bill would block all Big Tech acquisitions

Can the tech trade show return in 2021?

Garry Kasparov launches a community-first chess platform

Seen on Extra Crunch

What’s fueling hydrogen tech?

Billion-dollar B2B: cloud-first enterprise tech behemoths have massive potential

For startups choosing a platform, a decision looms: build or buy?

Building customer-first relationships in a privacy-first world is critical

The IPO market is sending us mixed messages

Best,

N

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After years of sustained growth, the pandemic supercharged the outdoor recreation industry. Startups that provide services like camper vans, private campsites and trail-finding apps became relevant to millions of new users when COVID-19 shut down indoor recreation, building on an existing boom in outdoor recreation.

Startups like Outdoorsy, AllTrails, Cabana, Hipcamp, Kibbo and Lowergear Outdoors have seen significant growth, but to keep it going, consumers who discovered a fondness for the great outdoors during the pandemic must turn it into a lifelong interest.

Social media, increased environmentalism and high urbanization were already fueling a boom in popularity. There was a 72% increase in people who camp more than three times a year between 2014 and 2019, mostly spurred by young millennials, young families with kids and nonwhite participants.

But 2020 was a different animal: After months of shelter-in-place orders, widespread shutdowns and physical distancing, outdoors became the only location for safe socializing. In South Dakota, the Lewis and Clark Recreation Area saw a 59% increase in visitors from 2019 to 2020. In the pandemic year, consumers spent $887 billion on outdoor recreation according to the Outdoor Industry Association, more than pharmaceuticals and fuel combined.

And it’s going to continue to grow. Hiking equipment alone is supposed to reach a $7.4 billion market size by 2027, a 6.3% compound annual growth rate. Camping and caravanning is having an even more drastic moment. Without international travel, vacations shifted from flights to exotic resorts to domestic road trips, self-contained rentals and camping. In 2020, the market for camping and caravanning was almost $40 billion and is predicted to rise 13% to just over $45 billion this year.

After the initial and extreme drop-off in engagement early as national parks closed, private camping sites shut down and domestic travel ceased, many outdoor startups have had a breakout year. Outdoorsy, the peer-to-peer camper van rental marketplace, said it saw 44% of all bookings in the company’s history in 2020.

Campsite booking platform Hipcamp said it sent three times as much money to landowners in 2020 as compared to 2019. And it’s not just experienced outdoor veterans taking advantage of the work-from-home lifestyle: in 2020, Cabana, a camper van rental startup, said 70% of its customers had never rented a camper van or an RV before and another 26% had only done it once.

But a report commissioned by the Outdoor Industry Association showed that the most popular outdoor activities were ones that people could do close to home, not the traveling kind Hipcamp, Cabana and Outdoorsy traffic in. The three most popular outdoor activities for newbies: walking, running and bicycling.

But the pandemic did create a small boost for camping, climbing, backpacking and kayaking; fueled by an increase in women, younger, more ethnically diverse, urban and slightly less wealthy people pushing into the outdoors. This class of outdoor startups will need to engage the new demographic shift to capitalize on the pandemic’s outdoor boom because, according to the report, a quarter of those who started new outdoor activities during the pandemic don’t plan on continuing once it’s over.

Startups are increasing accessibility to the outdoors

But getting into the outdoors can be overwhelming: there’s gear to buy, skills to learn, exploring unfamiliar areas and the added stressor of safety. Outdoor startups are working to lower the barrier to entry to help grow their businesses.

“I think anytime you have like 2,000 articles with two dozen tips on how to use a product, that tells me that it is really, really too hard to use,” said Cabana founder Scott Kubly. “To me, that says there’s nothing but friction in this process. If you want to build something that’s mainstream, you need to make it super consistent and really easy to use.”

Kubly said only half a percent of the U.S. population takes a rental van or RV trip each year. Planning an outdoor adventure can be time-consuming — choosing a location, finding an open campsite, planning meals and water, and figuring out dump stations for trash or septic. That planning is multiplied tenfold if you are going for a road trip or backpacking and need to find new places every other night.

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