Thanks to smartphones and their downsized keyboards, autocomplete has become a nearly ubiquitous feature of how we write these days. To save us precious seconds composing and (at least in my fat-thumbed case) correcting words, our keyboards now prompt us with suggestions of what we’re trying to write to get the job done a little bit more easily. But email and messaging composing isn’t the only area where artificial intelligence and semantic analytics are being used in this way. Today, a startup that has built a platform that applies the concept to the world of coding is announcing a round of funding to expand its business.

Codota, an Israeli startup that provides an AI tool to developers to let them autocomplete strings of code that they are writing — intended both to speed up their work (it claims to “boost productivity by 25%”) and to make sure that it’s using the right syntax and ‘spelled’ correctly — has picked up $12 million, a Series A led by e.ventures, with participation also from previous backer Khosla Ventures, along with new investors TPY Capital and Hetz Ventures. The company has now raised $16 million in total, and it’s not disclosing its valuation.

The funding comes on the heels of Codota acquiring one of its bigger competitors, TabNine, out of Canada, late last year (announced only in March however) to expand the number of languages that it can support. It now says it supports all major languages, including Python, JavaScript, Java, C, and HTML; and it operates across a major integrated development environments such as VSCode, Eclipse, and IntelliJ.

The funding will be used to expand its reach into that existing range further, as well as to bring on more customers. Today, the list of those that are already using Codota’s tools is impressive. It includes developers from companies like Google and Amazon, as well as Netflix, Alibaba, Airbnb and Atlassian, amongst many others. It says its user base has grown more than 1,000% in the last year, number over 1 million developers using it monthly.

The funding news coincides with Codota launching a new version of its autocompletion for JavaScript that merges Codota’s semantic technology with TabNine’s textual tech.

The first two names in the customer list above list are particularly surprising, but they underscore what Codota has focused on and seems to be doing right. These two tech giants are AI powerhouses in their own rights; both build and ship formidable sets of tools for developers; and Google specifically is one of the names most synonymous with autocomplete by way of the tools it’s built for Gmail.

The reason Codota — which was founded in 2015 — has had traction, said co-founder and CTO Eran Yahav, is because in fact coding has been a tough nut to crack for semantics teams, despite their advances in other languages.

“Up until a couple of years ago it wasn’t feasible,” he said, noting that four streams of technology are coming together when building auto-completion for coding: high-quality open source code availability to feed the algorithms; advances in semantic analysis to extract insights at scale; machine learning advances that essentially bring ML costs down; and computational resources to run everything in the cloud to make it something everyone can use everywhere. With open source really booming, and everything else coming along, it’s been a perfect storm that Codota has seized, even as others are working on this too.

“Others have done this with varying degrees of success,” Dror Weiss, the other co-founder and CEO said. “I’m guessing and also know that others are doing the same.” Others include the likes of Kite, Ubisoft and Mozilla, and a number of others.

One aspect that Codota has been building that is particularly timely now is the ability not just to provide more precise coding assistance to developers, but to “learn” what is best practice in a particular environment or workplace (it offers both individual and enterprise tiers, and it’s the latter that provides this feature). This can be useful in any situation, but particularly today when developers are working at home and on their own, giving them instant help as if they were physically in the same space.

Notably, while so much AI seems bent on the idea of autonomous systems, Weiss said emphatically that this is not the intention short or even long-term.

“I don’t think we would be able to replace developers and I don’t think we would want to,” he said. “Our aim is to take the mundane and repetitive aspects and do that for them.” In that respect not unlike RPA in back-office functions. “It’s not high value to remember the syntax and the best practice. And even if you have smart compose [in consumer services] it may suggest sentences but can’t read your mind and tell you how you want to respond. So it’s very unlikely to replace you and respond how you would want to. That’s not even in our longest-term plan.”

e.ventures last year announced a $400 million fund for early-stage investments, and this seems to be coming out of that. With this round, the firm’s general partner Tom Gieselmann is joining the board.

“I’ve been following the developer tools market for over 20 years and believe Codota has distinguished itself as the dominant player in terms of community, product, and technology,” he said in a statement. “We are proud to support Dror and Eran on their mission to transform software development and make coding easier and more efficient for individual developers and teams within the enterprise.”

French startup Shine is adding a new option today. If you think there’s a chance that a client is not going to pay your next invoice, you can insure that invoice to avoid any bad surprise.

Shine is building a challenger bank for freelancers and small companies. It lets you send and receive money in a separate business account, pay with a MasterCard, create invoices and stay on top of administrative tasks.

It also helps you get started as the startup can fill out all administrative paperwork to register yourself as a freelancer. You also get notifications to remind you that you should pay your taxes and more. Starting accepting freelancing jobs can be confusing and Shine can help you with that.

Shine has a built-in invoicing tool. It lets you add a client and generate an invoice directly in the mobile app. After that, you can send a link to your client. You get a notification when your client opens the invoice. They can download a PDF and get your bank details to pay you.

And yet, many clients often wait until the last minute to pay an invoice. It can be a month or two after finishing a job, which means that they also forget about outstanding invoices.

In a few weeks, Shine users will be able to create an invoice and insure it before sending it. It costs you 2% of your total amount on your invoice. There’s no subscription fee, it’s a one-off process.

If your client hasn’t paid you after the due date, Shine will reach out to your client again to try to get the payment. If that doesn’t work, you can file a claim with the partner insurance company.

In that case, if the company is still operating, you get paid 100% of your invoice. If the company has collapsed, you get 90% back. (Of course, that’s without taking into account the 2% fees you already paid.)

BuyMed, a Vietnamese startup that wants to fix Southeast Asia’s complex pharmaceutical distribution networks, announced today it has raised $2.5 million in pre-Series A funding. Investors include Sequoia Capital India’s Surge early-stage accelerator program, and Genesia Ventures. Returning investor Cocoon Capital also participated.

Founded in 2018, BuyMed operates Thuocsi.vn, a pharmaceutical distribution platform in Vietnam. Over the past 12 months, the company says it has tripled its annual revenue, and now plans to add new product lines, including cosmetics, medical devices, supplements and medical services, with the goal of becoming a “one-stop marketplace” for supplies needed by healthcare providers in Southeast Asia.

BuyMed verifies suppliers on its platform, improving safety and reducing the risk of medications making its way into the grey market (or unofficial distribution channels). The startup currently has 700 verified suppliers, distributors and manufacturers on its platform, who serve over 7,000 healthcare providers.

In a press statement, Genesia Ventures general partner Takahiro Suzuki, said, “There is still a tremendous opportunity for growth and improvement in Vietnam’s pharmaceutical supply chain and we believe that BuyMed’s founders have the experience, execution and operational management necessary to tackle this problem.”

BuyMed Co-founder and CEO Peter Nguyen formerly served as a consultant for companies like Eli Lilly, Roche and Siemens, helping them create more efficient operations and supply chains.

Nguyen told TechCrunch that there are no major multi-brand distributors in Vietnam, so most pharmaceutical manufacturers and brands need to set up their own networks. This means the process of getting medications and other pharmaceutical supplies to healthcare providers is highly-fragmented.

There are roughly 200 domestic manufacturers in Vietnam, in addition to imported brands, and their products are handled by over 3,000 distributors. While about 2% of pharmacies in Vietnam are part of a franchise or chain, the vast majority are independent. This means distributors need to serve over 40,000 independent pharmacies and about 5,000 independent clinics.

Nguyen added that fragmentation is similar in many other Southeast Asian markets, giving BuyMed an opportunity to expand across the region.

Thuocsi.vn’s usage has grown over the last 60 days, as more Vietnamese pharmacies source from online channels. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, BuyMed has expanded its platform so more of its partners can sell online, and added safety measures like frequent warehouse and office sanitization and a no-contact drop-off and cash collection system.

Icebreaker.vc, the Finnish venture capital firm that backs “pre-founders” and pre-seed to seed-stage startups, has launched a second fund, with a first close of €50 million.

That’s already significantly larger than Icebreaker’s first fund (which closed at €20 million) and reflects the VC’s geographical expansion. In addition to Finland, where Icebreaker claims to be the most active institutional investor by number of deals, the firm is also active in Sweden and Estonia.

In an email exchange, Icebreaker co-founder and Partner Riku Seppälä told me that despite the coronavirus crisis, most of the firm’s LPs from Fund I have invested in this second fund, along with several new LP. “It’s great to see them take the same view as we are; things must go on and this is a great time to start building and investing in pre-seed-stage technology companies in Europe,” he says.

Seppälä also shared some of Icebreaker’s progress to date. He says that via “Fund I” the VC has invested in 38 companies over the last 3 years, which he believes means it has done the most pre-seed investments of any fund in Finland, Sweden and Estonia over that time period.

It typically invests between €150k and €800k in teams that have “deep domain expertise” and are building globally competitive tech companies.

“Within these 3 years and 3 months, we’ve invested €5.8 million in initial investments [with the remainder being deployed in later rounds] and the companies have managed to raise €28 million in total in private follow-on equity funding from investors in 21 rounds”.

Breaking this down further, Seppälä says that so far Icebreaker has a 65% success rate for companies being able to raise seed rounds. “90% of those within 18 months from our initial investment,” he tells me.

Examples of Icebreaker startups that have raised further funding include Hoxhunt (€2.5 million led by Dawn Capital), Kodit.io (backed by Speedinvest, Adevinta, FJ Labs and All Iron), Klaus (€1.7 million led by Creandum), Flowhaven (€4.75 million led by GFC), and Aibidia (€4.2 million led by GFC).

This report from Crunchbase examines the layoffs at startups since the outbreak of Covid-19 began. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links. Tech Posts Cloud Stocks: Upwork Improves...

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In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: Rendezvous Online with Sramana Mitra 3.24.20

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Security startups to the rescue.

As we continue to ride out the pandemic, security experts are closely monitoring the surge of coronavirus-related cyber threats. Just this week, Google’s Threat Analysis Group, its elite threat hunting unit, says that while the overall number of threats remains largely the same, opportunistic hackers are retooling their efforts to piggyback on coronavirus.

Some startups are downsizing and laying off staff, but several cybersecurity startups are faring better, thanks to an uptick in demand for security protections. As the world continues to pivot toward working from home, it has blown up key cybersecurity verticals in ways we never expected. To wit, identity startups are needed more than ever to make sure only remote employees are getting access to corporate systems.

Can the startups take on the giants at their own game?

THE BIG PICTURE

Another payments processor drops the security ball

For the third time this year, a payments processor has admitted to a security lapse. First it was Cornerstone, then it was nCourt. This time it’s Paay, a New York-based card payment processor startup that left a database on the internet unprotected and without a password. Worse, the data was storing full, plaintext credit card numbers.

Anyone who knew where to look could have accessed the data. Luckily, a security researcher found it and reported it to TechCrunch. We alerted the company; it quickly took the data offline, but Paay denied that the data stored full credit card numbers. We even sent the co-founder a portion of the data showing card numbers stored in plaintext, but he did not respond to our follow-up.

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: Rendezvous Online with Sramana Mitra 3.17.20

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Since moving to the United States, I’ve come to appreciate and admire the United States Postal Service as a symbol of American ingenuity and resilience.

Like electricity, telephones and the freeway system, it’s part of our greater story and what binds the United States together. But it’s also something that’s easy to take for granted. USPS delivers 181.9 million pieces of First Class mail each day without charging an arm and a leg to do so. If you have an address, you are being served by the USPS — and no one’s asking you for cash up front.

As CEO of Shippo, an e-commerce technology platform that helps businesses optimize their shipping, I have a unique vantage point into the USPS and its impact on e-commerce. The USPS has been a key partner since the early days of Shippo in making shipping more accessible for growing businesses. As a result of our work with the USPS, along with several other emerging technologies (like site builders, e-commerce platforms and payment processing), e-commerce is more accessible than ever for small businesses.

And while my opinion on the importance of the USPS is not based on my company’s business relationship with the Postal Service, I want to be upfront about the fact that Shippo generates part of its revenue from the purchase of shipping labels through our platform from the USPS along with several other carriers. If the USPS were to stop operations, it would have an impact on Shippo’s revenue. That said, the negative impact would be far greater for many thousands of small businesses.

I know this because at Shippo, we see firsthand how over 35,000 online businesses operate and how they reach their customers. We see and support everything from what options merchants show their customers at checkout through how they handle returns — and everything in between. And while each and every business is unique with different products, customers operations and strategies, they all need to ship.

In the United States, the majority of this shipping is facilitated by the USPS, especially for small and medium businesses. For context, the USPS handles almost half of the world’s total mail and delivers more than the top private carriers do in aggregate, annually, in just 16 days. And, it does all of this without tax dollars, while offering healthcare and pension benefits to its employees.

As has been the case for many organizations, COVID-19 has significantly impacted the USPS. While e-commerce package shipments continue to rise (+30% since early March based on Shippo data), it has not been enough to overcome the drastic drop in letter mail. With this, I’ve heard opinions of supposed “inefficiency,” calls for privatization, pushes for significant pricing and structural changes, and even indifference to the possibility of the USPS shutting down.

Amid this crisis, we all need the USPS and its vital services now more than ever. In a world with a diminished or dismantled USPS, it won’t be Amazon, other major enterprises, or even Shippo that suffer. If we let the USPS die, we’ll be killing small businesses along with it.

Quite often, opinions on the efficiency (or lack thereof) of the USPS are very narrow in scope. Yes, the USPS could pivot to improve its balance sheet and turn operating losses into profits by axing cumbersome routes, increasing prices and being more selective in who they serve.

However, this omits the bigger picture and the true value of the USPS. What some have dubbed inefficient operations are actually key catalysts to small business growth in the United States. The USPS gives businesses across the country, regardless of size, location or financial resources, the ability to reach their customers.

We shouldn’t evaluate the USPS strictly on balance sheet efficiency, or even as a “public good” in the abstract. We should look at how many thousands of small businesses have been able to get started thanks to the USPS, how hundreds of billions of dollars of commerce is made possible by the USPS annually and how many millions of customers, who otherwise may not have access to goods, have been served by the USPS.

In the U.S., e-commerce accounts for over half a trillion dollars in sales annually, and is growing at double-digit rates each year. When I hear people talk about the growth of e-commerce, Amazon is often the first thing that comes up. What doesn’t shine through as often is the massive growth of small business — which is essential to the health of commerce in general (no one needs a monopoly!). In fact, the SMB segment has been growing steadily alongside Amazon. And with the challenges that traditional businesses face with COVID-19, more small businesses than ever are moving online.

USPS Priority Mail gets packages almost anywhere in the U.S. in two to three days (average transit time is 2.5 days based on Shippo data) and starts at around $7 per shipment, with full service: tracking, insurance, free pickups and even free packaging that they will bring to you.

In a time when we as consumers have become accustomed to free and fast shipping on all of our online purchases, the USPS is essential for small businesses to keep up. As consumers we rarely see behind the curtain, so to speak, when we interact with e-commerce businesses. We don’t see the small business owner fulfilling orders out of their home or out of a small storefront, we just see an e-commerce website. Without the USPS’ support, it would be even harder, in some cases near impossible, for small business owners to live up to these sky-high expectations. For context, 89% of U.S.-based SMBs (under $10,000 in monthly volume) on the Shippo platform rely on the USPS.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about the USPS’s partnership with Amazon, how it is to blame for the current situation, and how under a private model, things would improve. While we have our own strong opinions on Amazon and its impact on the e-commerce market, Amazon is not the driver of USPS’s challenges. In fact, Amazon is a major contributor in the continued growth of the USPS’s most profitable revenue stream: package delivery.

While I don’t know the exact economics of the deal between the USPS and Amazon, significant discounting for volume and efficiency is common in e-commerce shipping. Part of Amazon’s pricing is a result of it actually being cheaper and easier for the USPS to fulfill Amazon orders, compared to the average shipper. For this process, Amazon delivers shipments to USPS distribution centers in bulk, which significantly cuts costs and logistical challenges for the USPS.

Without the USPS, Amazon would be able to negotiate similar processes and efficiencies with private carriers — small businesses would not. Given the drastic differences in daily operations and infrastructure between the USPS and private carriers, small businesses would see shipping costs increase significantly, in some cases by more than double. On top of this, small businesses would see a new operational burden when it comes to getting their packages into the carriers’ systems in the absence of daily routes by the USPS.

Overall, I would expect to see the level of entrepreneurship in e-commerce slow in the United States without the USPS or with a private version of the USPS that operates with a profit-first mindset. The barriers to entry would be higher, with greater costs and larger infrastructure investments required up-front for new businesses. For Shippo, I’d expect to see a much greater diversity of carriers used by our customers. Our technology that allows businesses to optimize across several carriers would become even more critical for businesses. Though, even with optimization, small businesses would still be the group that suffers the most.

Today, most SMB e-commerce brands, based on Shippo data, spend between 10-15% of their revenue on shipping, which is already a large expense. This could rise well north of 20%, especially when you take into account surcharges and pick-up fees, creating an additional burden for businesses in an already challenging space.

I urge our lawmakers and leaders to see the full picture: that the USPS is a critical service that enables small businesses to survive and thrive in tough times, and gives citizens access to essential services, no matter where they reside.

This also means providing government support — both financially and in spirit — as we all navigate the COVID-19 crisis. This will allow the USPS to continue to serve both small businesses and citizens while protecting and keeping their employees safe — which includes ensuring that they are equipped to handle their front-line duties with proper safety and protective gear.

In the end, if we continue to view the USPS as simply a balance sheet and optimize for profitability in a vacuum, we ultimately stand to lose far more than we gain.

For pre-seed startups, precarious times are baseline until they secure their first customer, first hire and first check. But no matter how built-in turbulence might be for a pre-seed founder, we’re entering a period where stresses are amplified and outlooks are unpredictable.

In light of the new market conditions, a harder fundraising market and slower expected growth, Charles Hudson (founder and general partner of Precursor Ventures) is urging his portfolio companies to reassess their futures with a refreshingly human question: “Are you excited and prepared to run this company for the next two years?

If not, you might want to do something else. Why? Because if a super early-stage company manages to survive the COVID-19 era, making it out the other end, it’s not clear that they’ll be venture-ready when markets recover. As Hudson put it, “there’s never been a better time to maybe fold.” That’s because, he explained, startups that merely survive won’t be judged merely against their peers that also survived; they will also compete with brand-new startups for capital and companies that didn’t need to hunker down during lean times.

It’s possible to make it through, but it won’t be an easy path.

TechCrunch spoke with Hudson earlier this week as part of our ongoing Extra Crunch Live series that brings leading founders and investors to our (virtual) stage. Between our editors and journalists and the best questions from the audience, we’re working with guests to understand the new world that we find ourselves in. That we’re hosting these events virtually instead of in-person is testament to our changed reality.

But the chat was far from all gloom; Hudson is bullish on a number of things. Niche publications with subscription economics? Yes. Social services targeting particular audiences? Yep! Precursor is still cutting checks into net-new deals, and while it’s wrapping up its second main fund and first opportunity fund, the firm is also raising a new, larger capital pool.

The conversation ran the full hour we had set aside for it, meaning we had to condense some later discussions about fintech and the new trade-off between growth and profit, but we did get to diversity in venture and startups in the future, and what impact a recession might have on both (it’s a bigger possible impact than you’re considering).

Hit the jump for the best Hudson takeaways and the full audio recording from the session. Head here if you need Extra Crunch access; there are some trials for just a few bucks, so everyone can access the chat. Let’s go!

Raising a fund in the COVID-19 era