It’s no secret that it’s hard to make the economics work at rideshare companies. That may explain the success to date of HopSkipDrive, a six-year-old, L.A.-based company that pairs drivers with both families but also, crucially, school districts. Specifically, the now 100-plus person company has deals in place with school districts in 13 markets across eight states where it works with more than 7,000 contractors.

All contractors, says cofounder and CEO Joanna McFarland, must have at least five years of childcare experience before they are allowed to drive for the startup.

Interestingly, McFarland says the school systems’ most burning need is to ensure the safe arrival of both homeless and foster children, whose numbers in the U.S. have reached an astonishing 2.5 million and 440,000, respectively. On the heels of a brand-new funding round, we asked her what’s going on and why.

TC: You’re just announcing $22 million in new venture backing, congratulations. I wonder if your story was harder to tell investors than it might have been a year ago, when they were more bullish on car-share companies.

JM: We’ve never considered ourselves comparable to Uber or Lyft. We’re really caregivers on wheels, providing a very different service. We work with families, but we also contract with school districts and counties, and that has a strong path to profitability. We can predict supply and demand; we’re [enjoying] contracted revenue. It’s very different.

TC: How do you describe the market opportunity?

JM: U.S school districts spend $25 billion a year on transportation, yet only one-third of kids take a bus to school, so it’s expensive and inefficient and meanwhile districts are being asked to do more with less.

Particularly challenging for them are children with specialized needs or homeless children who are moving around a lot but have the same right to get to school. It’s hard to re-route school buses, so we help schools with alternative transportation. Once we’ve contracted with them, we’re available, including to pick up a student who might be in foster care and moved to a new place at 10:30 at night. We can still pick them up the next morning.

TC: There are thousands of homeless children attending San Francisco schools. Are you serving other markets where housing prices are forcing more families on to the streets? 

JM: Unfortunately, there’s a large and growing population in a lot of places. Districts might not even know how many students are homeless or in foster care because their situations can change so significantly throughout the year. It might start with 500 students at the beginning of the year and end with 1,000. Because it fluctuates so much, it puts a ton of demand on these transportation directors to figure it out.

We’re partnered with L.A. County, for example, and it has the largest child welfare system in the country, with 88 districts and between 20,000 and 30,000 kids in foster care at any one time. It’s not a great statistic for L.A., but it’s the reality.

TC: And it’s one driver, one child?

JM: Sometimes there will be two or three kids. We can do carpools. If there are group homes, we’ll take them to their different schools.

TC: What do your contracts look like then with these school districts?

JM: We dictate the ride price, then it’s really on as as-needed basis. They pay for what they need. We talk with them about their needs last year and this year and that does help us tremendously with supply and demand.

TC: How much of your business is coming from school partnerships versus from families that hire your company to take their kids to soccer games?

JM: Our business for families is growing organically, there’s such a need for it, but 70 percent of our revenue comes from [school districts].

TC: Your drivers are 1099 workers, so presumably they are working for other ride-share or other gig-economy companies? How busy can you keep them?

JM: They are contractors. Because they must have five years of caregiving experience and because of the vetting we do, 90 percent of them are female,  and they love what they do because they’re driving in communities where their kids grew up and they’re tied to the mission of what we’re doing.

We have some overlap with other gig companies, but with [HopSkipDrive] there’s safety on both sides of the platform, meaning they are driving kids, they aren’t driving late at night, they aren’t driving anyone who is drunk. They also have control over where they drive and when, based on personal preferences. They can choose some rides before school so they can take care of an elderly relative or grandchildren. They can see rides that are available up to a week in advance and select which ones they want depending on their schedule. Many are semi-retired and not looking for full-time income.

TC: How can parents be certain their kids are safe?

JM: We have a dual authentication process so drivers confirm a code word with the child and another piece of information that the child will know. Parents can track the rides in real time. We also have tech that monitors rides and can detect anomalies and provide support as needed. For example, they know via GPS and sensors if a driver is hitting traffic or has stopped owing to a flat tire and can react proactively, whether it is to send another car (in the case of a flat tire) or let the school and parents know that the child will be late. We designed the whole system for when a passenger may not have a phone.

TC: Why start this company?

JM: I started in finance then went into product management, working for tech companies. But as I was working, I was also growing my family, and I couldn’t get my son to karate at 3 o’clock. It was so frustrating. I didn’t need a nanny; I just needed to get him to karate.

All the moms I knew had their own version of this transportation story. [At a school function] I suggested we put our money in a pot and hire a driver, and another mom said, ‘How do we do that?’ She’s one of my cofounders.

Pictured above from left to right: HopSkipDrive cofounders Carolyn Yashari Becher. Joanna McFarland, and Janelle McGlothlin

When Fair laid off 40% of its staff in October, CEO Scott Painter promised it wasn’t shuttering leasing services to on-demand fleets. But just one week later, he stepped away from the role of CEO and was replaced by Adam Hieber, a CFA from Fair investor SoftBank. Today, according to two sources, Fair announced at an all-hands meeting that it would end its Fair Go program that helped Uber drivers lease cars on short-term (by the week) deals, as the company pushes for profitability. The program will cease in April. Uber now confirms the news to TechCrunch, and now Fair has directly confirmed the news to us as well:

Due to an unexpected increase in insurance premiums that would have significantly raised prices for Fair’s rideshare drivers, we will wind down our weekly rideshare service over the coming months,” a spokesperson said. “We are working to minimize the disruption for Fair’s rideshare drivers, including notifying these customers of the status of their subscription in the coming weeks. We are working closely with Uber and exploring options with third parties to provide alternative customer mobility options to ensure a seamless transition for them, as well as continuity in Uber’s vehicle supply. We are thankful for our loyal Fair rideshare drivers and are disappointed we can no longer operate the business in a cost-effective way for our customers.

Uber drivers who want to lease a car for a month or longer can still do so through Fair. The current program that is being wound down allowed Uber drivers to lease for increments of a week at a time. From what we understand, the program comprised as much as half of Fair’s business with Uber at its peak.

Formerly valued at $1.2 billion after raising more than $2 billion in equity and debt financing from SoftBank and Lightspeed, Fair laid off 40% of its staff in October. It had bought Uber’s XChange leasing program in early 2018. The deal lets drivers lease an Uber-eligible car with subscriptions to roadside assistance and maintenance for as low as $130 per week with a $500 start fee.

But Uber sold the leasing program because it was unprofitable and adding to its losses at a tough time for the rideshare giant. As additional fees stacked up, Fair didn’t fare much better operating it.

A source tells us Fair Go was profitable. It was an important focus for the company as it retooled its subscription services for traditional drivers. Another source says at one point Fair Go was adding about 250 to 300 car leases per day and had thousands of active leases.

But Fair Go was facing higher insurance rates from carriers, which make sense, as Uber drivers can be on the road far, far longer than traditional car owners.

Rather than trying to pass those fees along to drivers — many of whom are already cash-strapped — Fair told employees it would cease to lease to Uber drivers. That’s a respectable choice, as it could have pushed Uber drivers into debt if they didn’t fully comprehend what their total costs would be.

Attempts to reach Fair for comment were complicated by many of its in-house PR team no longer being with the company. An agency representative provided the statement above after publishing time.

An Uber spokesperson confirmed the shut down of Fair Go, telling TechCrunch that “Unlocking options for vehicle access so drivers can earn with Uber remains a top priority. We’re thankful for Fair’s collaboration, and their contributions to our vehicle rental program. We’re continuing to invest in rental partnerships, and building more flexibility beyond hourly, weekly, and monthly options available today.” 

Uber — which continues to operate at a loss and is in no hurry to take on its own rental or leasing operations — said it remains committed to offering rental options to drivers through partnerships with Hertz, Avis, ZipCar and Getaround, and they may be able to work with Uber drivers formerly renting from Fair.

As for those who want longer-term leases, Painter said they could continue getting their vehicles via Fair in its ongoing Uber relationship.

“As evidence of our prioritization on discipline and sustainable growth leading to profitability, we are exiting the weekly rental business,” he told TechCrunch. “Fair remains committed to our partnership with Uber and to providing a flexible ownership alternative through our traditional month to month product, which is performing well and still represents the majority of our business.”

Painter, who co-founded Fair with Georg Bauer and a number of others, took on the role of executive chairman of Fair.com when he stepped away from the CEO position at the end of October — a role he remains in while Hieber sits in the CEO role on an interim basis.

During the layoffs in October, Painter maintained that the action was proactive, and not in response to SoftBank pressure.

“SoftBank is a big shareholder and supporting my focus, and that is the reality right now,” Painter said at the time. “Leaning on us is not the term,” he added in response to our questions of whether SoftBank pressured it to make these changes. “They are supporting us — there is a big difference,” he stressed.

The surprise CEO change one week later, and today’s news about Fair Go, points to a different unfolding of events that speaks to the pressure SoftBank itself is under.

The news is the latest low point for the SoftBank portfolio in the wake of the WeWork implosion. That’s caused potential repeat LPs for SoftBank’s massive Vision Fund to tighten their purse strings and other late-stage investors to focus on sustainable unit economics.

Heavily-capitalised, mature startups have been left scrambling to cut their burn rates, often through layoffs, and to shift business models in a push for profitability.

SoftBank’s portfolio, which may have trouble raising on good terms after what many saw as inflated valuations propped up by the megafund, has been hit the hardest. This week TechCrunch broke the news that Flexport was laying off 3% of staff, or 50 employees.

Other SoftBank-funded company layoffs include Zume Pizza (80% of staff laid off), Wag (80%), Getaround (25%), Rappi (6%) and Oyo (5%).

And there may be more to come: Activist investor Elliott Management, which now owns more than $2.5 billion of SoftBank shares, has reportedly started talks with the company over a range of issues, including better corporate governance and more transparency and management around investments.

Updated with confirmation from Fair, a further comment from Scott Painter, who was not ‘removed’ but stepped away from the CEO role, and a correction that Uber will continue offering car rentals through partners but not leasing as we originally printed.

As the national conversation pushes companies to reexamine the HR processes suppressing sexual harassment and bias reporting, tech startups are looking to find a way to smooth out the process and encourage communication.

LA-based AllVoices is building an encrypted communications platform for offices that allows employees to anonymously send complaints to their human resources department that can then follow-up and track the cases in an easy-to-use dashboard. CEO Claire Schmidt tells TechCrunch that her company has just closed a $3 million seed round with funding from Crosscut, Greycroft, Halogen Ventures, Vitalize VC and others.

Schmidt, most recently a VP at 20th Century Fox, started AllVoices after finding inspiration in Susan Fowler’s Uber blog post to create a platform that allowed employees at companies to anonymously offer feedback and file reports about internal toxicity. Schmidt says existing processes used for reporting can leave victims of harassment hesitant to come forward and fearful of the risk of damaging their career paths.

“We’re using this really outdated process, we’re basically telling people, ‘Okay, just come in and tell someone in HR, and hope for the best,’ ” Schmidt told TechCrunch in an interview. “And to me that seemed especially unfair to the most vulnerable people in any given work environment because they’re junior, they don’t have as much job security — they’re viewed as more expendable.”

Employees at companies that use AllVoices can log into a mobile app and anonymously submit reports and receive text notifications when they’ve gotten a response from the company, a streamlined process that Schmidt hopes can encourage people to “report in real time.” HR people don’t see names or any other identifying information and AllVoices doesn’t know the name of the employee either, with all communications being encrypted.

“We do encrypt all of our data in storage, in backup, in transit, at rest — at every level,” Schmidt says.

Sixty days after a complaint is made, AllVoices sends a notification to the employee asking whether they were aware of any action being taken by the company and how satisfied they were with it. The startup then aggregates that data and provides it back to the company so they can get a clearer sense of their own responsiveness.

AllVoices isn’t the only startup tackling this issue; in 2018 we profiled Spot, which is also building an anonymous reporting platform. AllVoices’ platform goes beyond streamlining processes for sexual harassment; the startup has modules for general feedback, ethics and compliance issues, culture problems, diversity and inclusion concerns and harassment and bias complaints.

The startup has also aimed to make a free version of its product so that employees at companies that haven’t integrated AllVoices can still make anonymous complaints by entering in an email for someone in their HR department. Schmidt hopes that the free service will serve their broader mission and help them onboard new customers.

AllVoices says they now have nearly 50 companies using the platform, including Instacart, GoPro, Wieden+Kennedy, The Wing and FabFitFun.

Time to mark September 14-16 on your calendar for the startup extravaganza that is TechCrunch’s Disrupt San Francisco 2020. Registration for our flagship, 10,000-person event is officially open, and pass prices will never be lower. Super early-bird passes are now available, and if you reserve your seat today, you can save up to $1,800.

There are many different pass types to make Disrupt SF as accessible as possible for every budget. We have passes designed for founders and investors, and if you don’t fit in either of those buckets, the Innovator pass is the one for you. Or if you’re a founder ready to exhibit on the show floor, grab a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package.

As always, we’ll feature big names speaking from the Disrupt Stage. Last year, attendees heard from Evan Spiegel (Snap), Sebastian Thrun (Kitty Hawk), Aaron Levie (Box), Shan-Lyn Ma (Zola), Jess Lee (Sequoia), Bob van Dijk (Naspers), Chris Dixon (a16z) and Cyan Banister (Founders Fund) — to name just a few. Even tech-savvy celebrities like Ang Lee, Will Smith and Stephen Curry (SC30 Inc./Golden State Warriors) felt the thrill of speaking at Disrupt.

We’re building our agenda now, and we can’t wait to tell you about the speakers who will rock your world, so keep checking back.

This year, we’re doubling down and expanding programming on the Extra Crunch Stage. We’re talking essential how-to content designed to help early-stage startup founders succeed — nuts-and-bolts information from people who know their slice of the startup scene inside-out. They’ll take the Extra Crunch Stage to share their hard-won insights with you and take your questions.

We’ll divulge this year’s speakers and presenters over the coming weeks and months, but these examples of Extra Crunch sessions from Disrupt SF 2019 will give you a sense of the topics and experts you can expect:

What else can you expect? The Startup Battlefield pitch competition with its $100,000 prize, workshops, Q&A sessions and hundreds of early-stage startups and sponsors exhibiting in Startup Alley. Plus, we’re adding some new networking events and revamping our CrunchMatch networking platform — we’ll reveal more details soon.

Disrupt San Francisco 2020 takes place on September 14-16 at Moscone West. Registration is now open, and this is your chance to score the best price on passes. Buy your super early-bird passes now and get ready to Disrupt!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Nuro, the autonomous delivery startup that raised $940 million in financing from SoftBank Vision Fund last year, is the first company to receive a driverless exemption from the federal government.

The exemption granted by the the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is for Nuro’s newest — and until Thursday, unseen — low-speed electric vehicle called the R2 that will be used for local delivery service for restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses. It’s a milestone for Nuro, as well as the autonomous vehicle industry, and signals how the federal government might regulate this technology.

The R2 will soon join Nuro’s fleet of self-driving Prius vehicles in Houston, making deliveries to consumers on public roads, the company said. This deployment follows Nuro’s partnership in 2018 with Kroger to pilot a delivery service in Arizona. The pilot, which initially used Toyota Prius vehicles, transitioned to the R1 delivery bot.

Nuro’s second-generation low-speed delivery vehicle was designed to be unmanned and operates exclusively using an automated driving system. Without a human driver, the vehicle doesn’t need some of the traditional and federally required features found in passenger cars, such as side-view mirrors or a transparent windshield.

“Since this is a low-speed self-driving delivery vehicle, certain features that the Department traditionally required — such as mirrors and windshield for vehicles carrying drivers — no longer make sense,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao said in a statement.

The federal exemption allows the vehicle to operate without three features: side-view mirrors, windshield and a rear-view camera that shuts off when driving forward. This exemption is different from the one that GM is currently pursuing for its self-driving unit Cruise. That vehicle, which is not considered a low-speed vehicle, has a much longer list of exemptions.

The process was lengthy, even for those three exemptions. Nuro has been working with NHTSA for three years and submitted its application for an exemption in October 2018.

“What you have to prove is that even if the exemption is granted the vehicle will be at least as safe as other vehicles that are fully compliant,” Nuro’s chief policy and legal officer David Estrada said.

The new R2 delivery bot has a more narrow vehicle profile and rounded contours where the side mirrors would otherwise be placed. This design feature will create additional room for bicyclists and other “vulnerable road users,” Nuro said.

The R2 is equipped with lidar, radar and cameras to give the “driver” a 360-degree view of its surroundings. However, that required another exemption, Estrada explained. NHTSA’s exemption also allows the R2 to operate its rear-view cameras even as it moves forward. New passenger vehicles must have a backup camera that switches off once the human driver begins moving forward (to avoid distraction). Without a human on-board, those concerns are moot, Nuro argued. 

There are conditions to this exemption. Nuro has the exemption for two years on a conditional basis and is required to submit reports on the AV driving system and provide proper notice to communities where the R2 will be deployed. The exemption allows Nuro to produce and deploy no more than 5,000 R2 vehicles during the two-year exemption period.

The R2, which was designed and assembled in the U.S. in partnership with Michigan-based Roush Enterprises, has a more durable custom vehicle body than its predecessor and a pedestrian-protecting front end that absorbs energy and can collapse inward to better protect those outside of the vehicle, according to the company.

The vehicle also has redesigned doors and a larger exterior screen for customers to interact with the vehicle and unlock the storage compartments. It also has 65% more capacity than the R1 and its compartments  have temperature control to keep perishable goods fresh, including groceries or meals.

Snafu Records is bringing a new approach to finding musical talent — founder and CEO Ankit Desai described the Los Angeles-headquartered startup as “the first full-service, AI-enabled record label.”

It’s a world that Desai knows well, having spent the past five years working on digital and streaming strategy at Capitol Records and Universal Music Group. He argued that there’s still a vast pool of musical talent that the record labels are ill-equipped to tap into.

“If there’s some girl in Indonesia whose music the world is dying to hear, they’re never going to get the chance,” he said. “The bridge to connect her to the world doesn’t exist today. The music business is entrenched in a very old way of working, finding artists through word-of-mouth.”

There are other companies like Chartmetric creating software to help the labels scout artists, but Desai said, “I used to be the one buying the service. What always ended up happening was that we were trying to put 21st century technology into a 20th century machine.”

The machine, in other words, is the record label itself. So he decided to create a label of his own — Snafu Records, which is officially launching today.

The startup is also announcing that it has raised $2.9 million in seed funding led by TrueSight Ventures, with participation from Day One Ventures, ABBA’s Agnetha Fältskog, Spotify’s John Bonten, William Morris’ Samanta Hegedus Stewart, Soundboks founder Jesper Theil Thomsen, Headstart.io founder Nicholas Shekerdemian and others.

The Snafu approach, Desai said, uses technology “to essentially turn everyone listening to music into a talent scout on our behalf.”

The company’s algorithms are supposedly looking at around 150,000 tracks from unsigned artists each week on services like YouTube, Instagram and SoundCloud, and evaluating them based on listener engagement, listener sentiment and the music itself — Desai said the sweet spot is to be 70 or 75% similar to the songs on Spotify’s top 200 list, so that the music sounds like what’s already popular, while also doing just enough to “break the mold.”

This analysis is then translated into a score, which Snafu uses to go “from this firehose of music, distill it down to 15 or 20 per week, and then the human [team] gets involved.”

The goal is to sign musicians as Snafu artists, who then get access the company’s industry expertise (including advice from the label’s head of creative Carl Falk, who’s written songs for Madonna, One Direction and Nicki Minaj) and marketing support in exchange for a share of streaming revenue. Desai added that Snafu will share more of the revenue with artists and lock them in for shorter periods of time than a standard record contract.

Asked whether streaming (as opposed to touring or merchandising) will provide enough money for Snafu to build a big business, Desai said, “Economics-wise, streaming sometimes does get a bad rap sometimes. It’s a bit misunderstood — there’s still just as many artists making really, really good numbers through streaming, it’s just a different kind of artist.”

And while Snafu is only officially launching today, it has already signed 16 artists, including the Little Rock-based duo Joan and the jazz musician Mishcatt, whose song “Fade Away” has been streamed 5 million times in the five weeks since it was released.

“There’s a major opportunity for Ankit and the Snafu team to build a new innovative and enduring music label at the intersection of technology and deep industry expertise,” said Hampus Monthan Nordenskjöld, founding partner at TrueSight Ventures, in a statement. “The music industry is going through a tectonic shift and we’re extremely excited to work with Snafu as they redefine what it means to be a music label in the 21st century.”

Deepnote, a startup that offers data scientists an IDE-like collaborative online experience for building their machine learning models, today announced that it has raised a $3.8 million seed round led by Index Ventures and Accel, with participation from YC and Credo Ventures, as well as a number of angel investors, including OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Figma’s Dylan Field, Elad Gil, Naval Ravikant, Daniel Gross and Lachy Groom.

Built around standard Jupyter notebooks, Deepnote wants to provide data scientists with a cloud-based platform that allows them to focus on their work by abstracting away all of the infrastructure. So instead of having to spend a few hours setting up their environment, a student in a data science class, for example, can simply come to Deepnote and get started.

In its current form, Deepnote doesn’t charge for its service, despite the fact that it allows its users to work with large data sets and train their models on cloud-based machines with attached GPUs.

As Deepnote co-founder and CEO (and ex-Mozilla engineer) Jakub Jurových told me, though, he believes that the most important feature of the service is its ability to allow users to collaborate. “Over the past couple of years, I started to do a lot of data science work and helped a couple of companies scale up their data science teams,” he said. “And again and again, we run into the same issue: people have real trouble collaborating.”

Jurových argues that while it’s easy enough to keep two or three data scientists in sync, once you have a bigger team, you quickly run into issues because the current set of tools was never meant to do this kind of work. “If I’m a data scientist by training, I spend most of my time doing math and stats,” he said. “But then, expecting me to connect to an EC2 cluster and spin a bunch of GPU instances for parallel training is just not something I’m looking for.”

When it started this project in early 2019, the Deepnote team decided to put Jupyter notebooks at the core of the user experience. That is, after all, what most data scientists are already familiar with. It then built the collaborative features around that, as well as tools for pulling in data from third-party services and scheduling tools for kicking off jobs inside of the platform at regular intervals.

Deepnote is already quite popular with students. Jurových also noted that a lot of teachers already use Deepnote to publish interactive exercises for their students. Over time, the company obviously wants to bring more businesses on board, but for the time being, it is mostly focused on building its product. Given its collaborative nature, the team also believes that the service will naturally grow through word of mouth as people invite others to collaborate on products.

“Data science is overdue for the benefits of tools that are cloud and collaboration native,” said Accel partner Vas Natarajan. “This is a fast-growing, dynamic market that’s demanding a successor to incumbent tools. Jakub and his team are building powerful software to modernize data science workflow for teams.”

The new funding will mostly go into hiring and building out the product, with a focus on the overall user experience. Even within the data science community, there are a variety of use cases, after all, and an NLP engineer has different needs from a computer vision engineer.

Netskope has always focused its particular flavor of security on the cloud, and as more workloads have moved there, it has certainly worked in its favor. Today the company announced a $340 million investment on a valuation of nearly $3 billion.

Sequoia Capital Global Equities led the round, but in a round this large, there were a bunch of other participating firms, including new investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and PSP Investments, along with existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Accel, Base Partners, ICONIQ Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Geodesic Capital and Social Capital. Today’s investment brings the total raised to more than $740 million, according to Crunchbase data.

As with so many large rounds recently, CEO Sanjay Beri said the company wasn’t necessarily looking for more capital, but when brand name investors came knocking, they decided to act. “We did not necessarily need this level of capital but having a large balance sheet and a legendary set of investors like Sequoia, Lightspeed and Accel putting all their chips behind Netskope for the long term to dominate the largest market in security is a very strong signal to the industry,” Beri said.

From the start, Netskope has taken aim at cloud and mobile security, eschewing the traditional perimeter security that was still popular when the company launched in 2012. “Legacy products based on traditional notions of perimeter security have gone obsolete and inhibit the needs of digital businesses. Today’s urgent requirement is security that is fast, delivered from the cloud, and provides real-time protection against network and data threats when cloud services, websites, and private apps are being accessed from anywhere, anytime, on any device,” he explained.

When Netskope announced its $168.7 million round at the end of 2018, the company had a valuation over $1 billion at that time. Today, it announced it has almost tripled that number, with a valuation close to $3 billion. That’s a big leap in just two years, but it reports 80% year-over-year growth, and claims to be “the fastest-growing company at scale in the fastest-growing areas of cybersecurity: secure access server edge (SASE) and cloud security,” according to Beri.

The next natural step for a company at this stage of maturity would be to look to become a public company, but Beri wasn’t ready to commit to that just yet. “An IPO is definitely a possible milestone in the journey, but it’s certainly not limited to that and we’re not in a rush and have no capital needs, so we’re not commenting on timing.”

Route planning sounds like it’s a problem for big logistics companies like Amazon, FedEx and UPS, but in reality, it’s something every small business with more than a few mobile employees deals with. OptimoRoute, which today announced that it has raised a $6.5 million Series A round led by Prelude Ventures, is tackling exactly this problem. Built by a team of former Google and Yelp engineers, the service allows businesses to set their specific constraints and then automatically creates daily routes for their drivers, no matter whether they are doing deliveries or cleaning pools.

What makes OptimiRoute stand out from some of its competitors in this space isn’t just its often significantly lower prices but also that it offers drivers and customers a mobile experience that includes live tracking and ETAs and the ability to change routes in real time as necessary. With OptimoRoute, companies can plan for specific days of the week or up to five weeks in advance. The company is also currently testing a pickup and delivery system for both passengers and goods, as well as support for multi-day long-haul routes.

As the company’s co-founder and CEO Marin Šarić told me, route optimization is obviously a popular academic problem. “On the one side, you do have these academic problems that are very proof of concept and minimalistic,” he said. “And then, in the commercial space, you have software that is running — in our estimation — algorithms that have been well known in the previous century, literally, you know there’s even things from the 80s. […] We at OptimoRoute really worry about the real-world constraints of what it means to build an effective schedule.”

OptimoRoute takes into account a number of variables (how much material can fit into a van, hourly wages, skills needed to perform a certain repair, etc.) and lets companies choose different priorities for optimizing their routes.

“We’re really focused on trying to make this technology available for everyone and this is appreciated even by very senior experienced logistics managers because they can focus on problems they’re trying to solve as opposed to working around hiccups with the software,” explained Šarić.

Currently, OptimoRoute has about 800 customers that range from small businesses to large energy companies like Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline, which manages the routes of more than 300 maintenance technicians with the help of the service. By reducing the mileage employees have to drive, users not only see increased productivity from their employees but, as Šarić noted, also reduce their overall carbon footprint.

The team spent a lot of time on developing the basic algorithms that power the service. The team, though, expected that a lot of its users would be very sophisticated logistics managers, but it turned out that there was a lot of demand from small and medium businesses, too.

“Prelude is excited to help OptimoRoute expand its reach and further develop its offerings for a multitude of mobile workforces,” said Victoria Beasley, partner, Prelude Ventures . “We strongly believe that OptimoRoute is set to have a huge impact on the route optimization market, saving time, money and resources, while also reducing carbon footprint, for their many diverse clients.”

Today’s 471st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting NOW, on Thursday, February 6, at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join. PASSWORD:...

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There’s a new launch startup in the mix called Astra, which has been operating in semi-stealth mode for the past three years, building its rockets just a stone’s throw from the heart of startup central in Alameda County, Calif. Astra’s approach isn’t exactly a secret — its founders didn’t set out to hide anything and industry observers have followed its progress — but CEO Chris Kemp says he’s not particularly bothered about flying under the radar, so to speak.

Yes, the company had a somewhat splashy mainstream public premiere via a Bloomberg Businessweek profile on Monday, but that was more by virtue of writer Ashlee Vance’s keen interest in the emerging space economy than a desire for publicity on the part of Kemp or his cohorts. In fact, the CEO admitted to me that were it not for Vance’s desire to expound on the company’s efforts and a forthcoming attempt at winning a $12 million DARPA prize for responsive rocketry, Astra would still be content to continue to operate essentially undercover.

That’s just one way in which Astra differs from other space startups, which typically issue press releases and coordinate media events around each and every launch. Kemp, a former NASA CTO, and Adam London, an aerospace engineer who previously founded rocket miniaturization startup Ventions, designed their rocket startup from the ground up in a way that’s quite different from companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab.

“I’ve never been to one of our launches,” Kemp told me, referring to two test launches that Astra flew previously, both of which technically failed shortly into their flights. “Because I don’t think the CEO, or frankly any of our employees, should be anywhere near the rocket when it launches; we should automate everything. As much as possible, let’s put the rockets where they need to launch from, which might be an island on the equator, and it might be way up north near the poles, but let’s not add cost by putting a huge spaceport with fixed fortification in a very expensive place where it’s very hard to get to.”

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As the insuretech space fills up, a new entrant is joining the fight.

Y Combinator -backed Goodcover is launching today to take on the likes of big insurance, as well as insurance startups like Lemonade, Jetty, Hippo and Zebra.

The company offers renters insurance in California. The twist? Goodcover returns unclaimed premiums to policy holders at the end of the year.

Here’s how it works. Goodcover operates as a managing general agent, which means they write the policy, set the pricing and build their own risk assessment model, but partner with insurance carriers to hold the back-end capital and write on their book. This differs from Lemonade, which is its own insurance carrier, but is similar to Hippo and many other new insurtech startups.

The first priority of the company, according to co-founder and CEO Chris Lotz, is to use technology to bring down the cost of insurance in the first place. That means eliminating paperwork, sales agents and expensive acquisition tactics used by big insurance. Statista reports that GEICO, Progressive and State Farm alone spent upwards of $3 billion on advertising in 2018.

But tech is also used to rethink the insurance model. Here’s what the company said in its launch blog post:

Old models say the number one indicator you’ll make a claim is having a prior claim, and charge you accordingly, even when you were not at fault. Models designed with the Member in mind determine whether a claim is likely to reoccur, or whether mitigation has actually reduced risk and warrants a lower price. Good technology empowers us to build this new data into our models, keeping prices as low as possible for as many people as possible.

Lotz says that USAA was actually a part of the inspiration for Goodcover. Lotz worked at AIG for eight years before starting the company, inspired by the USAA’s member-first mentality. Lotz looked to model Goodcover after USAA, the insurance co-operative for military service members and their families, which has no outside agents, pays a dividend and uses technology to both keep costs down and offer quality policy coverage.

Goodcover takes a 20% cut up front. The other 80% goes to Goodcover’s partners: KnightBrook Insurance (primary carrier), Transatlantic Reinsurance (reinsurance), North American Risk Services (claims services) and Milliman (actuarial services).

The majority of that 80% goes toward indemnity, or paying out claims, with some going toward loss adjustment expenses (paying the human that goes and checks out or works on the claim), carrier fees and reinsurance premiums. These portions of the revenue are where partners like KnightBrook and Transatlantic Reinsurance make their money.

Whatever is left over is passed on to the policy holders. Lotz says that that number is expected to range from 5% to 10%. However, in a case where reinsurance premiums are applied (if, for example, a major earthquake were to destroy multiple Goodcover-insured apartment buildings), there may not be extra cash left over. In that case, Goodcover will take on the extra cost, eliminating the dividend to policy holders but also not costing them any extra.

“This isn’t about charging everyone and then giving 50% back,” said Lotz. “It’s a guarantee that we’re not overcharging you in the first place.” The company claims that it saves renters 45% on their renters insurance.

Goodcover has raised a total of $2 million in funding from Fuel Capital, YC, Liquid 2, Box Group, several angels and Transatlantic Reinsurance, one of their insurance partners.

The company has plans to continue expanding, though insurance is regulated at the state level, which could make that a more tedious process. Lotz explained that starting in California was very purposeful, as regulatory approval is relatively difficult to secure in such a consumer protection-heavy state. The company is also interested in introducing home owners insurance.

Insurance is a crowded market, with startups racing to rethink the model, employ tech to advance the product and update the value proposition for a millennial audience that may be new to insurance. But in an industry that hasn’t changed much in over a century, and which has lost the trust of the consumer, it makes sense that startups are scrambling to stake their claim.

Today’s 471st FREE online 1Mby1M Roundtable For Entrepreneurs is starting in 30 minutes, on Thursday, February 6 at 8 a.m. PST/11 a.m. EST/5 p.m. CET/9:30 p.m. India IST. Click here to join....

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Moteefe, the e-commerce platform for on-demand production of merchandise has raised $5 million in Series A funding.

Leading the round is Gresham House, and Force Over Mass Capital. It brings total funding to date to $12.5 million, and will be used to expand into new geographies including Australia and LATAM. The U.K. company also plans to launch new products for large retailers and invest in scaling its operations.

Launched in early 2016, Moteefe provides an “end-to-end” technology solution for entrepreneurs, influencers, and (micro) retailers wanting to design, create and sell customised products, such as printed t-shirts or engraved jewellery. The platform enables brands to design merchandise and sell it via their own white-labelled Moteefe store, or through their own site or app or other marketing channels.

Put simply, you upload your design to the Moteefe site and the company takes care of printing, the store, payments, customer service and fulfilment globally. Moteefe then takes a small commission on sales. However, unlike some traditional marketplaces, users can launch their own store with their own domain, maintaining the customer relationship and data.

“Launching and scaling a global e-commerce business is extremely complex and requires access to a wide variety of capabilities,” says co-founder and CEO Mathijs Eefting. “We provide a complete end-to-end solution that takes care of everything from e-commerce sites and payments up to (on-demand) production, fulfilment, and support at global scale. Everyone can start and scale their own business globally within a matter of minutes, [with] no upfront costs or inventory risk”.

Eefting says that at the heart of Moteefe’s offering is on-demand production. Typically referred to as Print-on-Demand (POD), the company works also with a range of other production methods via its network. “Since POD is difficult to implement — it requires completely different back-end and front-end processes — we have built an interface that allows anyone to leverage the functionality and start building/growing their own retail brands around the world within minutes for free”.

This has seen Moteefe build its own proprietary production software that instantaneously centralises orders via merchant sites. It then routes those orders on a per order basis directly into the production lines of its partners.

“It takes into consideration end-consumer location, partner inventory levels, capacity, quality and costs,” explains Eefting. “This enables us to deliver 10,000s of products on a daily basis anywhere in the world with a 1-2-day turnaround time”.

On competitors, the Moteefe CEO reiterates that the company isn’t a marketplace like Teespring, Red Bubble, Zazzle, or Café Press, which he says are leveraged mainly by creatives and designers uploading their own artwork onto the marketplace, and earning a small commission when someone purchases a product with their design. “They are not building a business, they’re simply monetising their creativity,” he explains.

Instead, Eefting says Moteefe is empowering brands and companies to take advantage of global on-demand production. “Our users own their brand, client relationship and marketing channels –- we provide the white label store and fulfilment technology”, he adds.