Africa’s logistics startup space has gained another multi-million-dollar round with global backing.

Kenyan company Sendy — with an on-demand platform that connects clients to drivers and vehicles for goods delivery — has raised a $20 million Series B led by Atlantica Ventures.

Toyota Tsusho Corporation, a trade and investment arm of Japanese automotive company Toyota, also joined the round.

Sendy’s raise comes within six months of Nigerian trucking logistics startup Kobo360’s $20 million Series A backed by Goldman Sachs. In November, East African on-demand delivery venture Lori Systems hauled in $30 million supported by Chinese investors.

Those companies have plotted Africa expansions into each other’s markets and broader Africa. With its latest round, Sendy ups its competitive stance in the continent’s startup logistics space. The company plans to expand to West Africa in 2020, CEO Mesh Alloys told TechCrunch on a call.

Alloys co-founded Sendy in 2015 with Kenyans Evanson Biwott and Don Okoth and American Malaika Judd. The startup currently has offices in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, with 5,000 vehicles on its platform that move all sorts of goods, according to Alloys.

Sendy offers services for e-commerce, enterprise, and freight delivery for a client list that includes Unilever, DHL, Maersk, Safaricom and African online retailer Jumia.

The company uses an asset-free model, with an app that coordinates contract drivers who own their own vehicles, while confirming deliveries, creating performance metrics and managing payment.

On Sendy’s business and revenue model, “We take a percentage of each transaction. We also facilitate services for drivers like insurance, health insurance, vehicle financing, vehicle servicing and fuel credits,” said Alloys.

The company plans to use its Series B funding for new hires and to upgrade its tech. “Getting better operational efficiency is super key, so we’ll invest…in engineering teams and data teams…and deploying talent to improve the services that we give our customers,” said Alloys.

Sendy’s $20 million round includes an R&D arrangement with Toyota Tsusho Corporation, whose investment comes from a venture arm the company established for Africa, called Mobility 54.

“We’ll look at optimizing the kind of trucks that perform well in this market… they’ll also look at setting up vehicle services centers in partnership with us,” said Alloys.

Asia Africa Investment, Sunu Capital, Enza Capital, Vested World and Kepple Capital joined lead investor Atlantica Ventures on the $20 million round — which brings Sendy’s total funding to $29 million, according to Alloys.

Formed in 2019, Atlantica Ventures is a relatively new Africa focused VC fund co-founded by Washington, DC based Aniko Szigetvari. She confirmed the fund’s lead on Sendy’s Series B and that Atlantica Ventures will take a board seat and work on strategic planning and execution with the company.

On how Sendy will outpace rivals such as Kobo360 and Lori Systems, Alloys points to the startup’s platform. “Our customer service is superior and that’s driven by our technology… I think we’re miles ahead of our competition today when it comes to tech,” he said.

Whoever surges ahead, Africa’s top business hubs — Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana — stand to gain from the innovation VC spending and startup rivalry bring to the on-demand goods delivery sector.

Though logistics services aren’t included in the World Bank’s ease of doing business country rankings, they’re known to be costlier in Africa than many parts of the world.

In the early days of online commerce development on the continent — due to a lack of viable 3PL options — pioneering e-commerce startups Jumia and Konga were forced to burn capital by forming their own delivery services.

Years later, after Jumia listed on the NYSE and expanded to multiple countries in Africa, fulfillment costs related to delivery remain one of the company’s largest expenses.

Lowering logistics expenses for businesses in Africa is central to Sendy’s mission, according to Alloys.

“We’re organizing a marketplace using technology so companies can efficiently deliver to their customers while reducing overall costs,” he said.

4. Choose your desired color by clicking on one of the choices available. If you want to create a custom color, you can click on the "+" sign to see additional options. 

Click the "+" to see more color options. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

How to change the color of an event on your Google Calendar

While changing your Google Calendar color will change all of the events in your calendar to that color, you can choose to change the color of individual events by following these steps. 

1. On the Google Calendar homepage, locate the event that you want to change the color of and click on it.

2. From the popup menu, click "Edit," which looks like the outline of a pencil. If there is no pencil, then it's an event that can't be edited.

Click the pencil icon to edit an event. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

3. On the event's edit screen, click on the small colored circle next to the calendar's name, and choose your new color. 

Select the color that you'd like to use for this event. Jennifer Still/Business Insider

4. Click "Save" to save your options. 

4. Search for "five-minute timer," or whatever length timer you desire. If you already have a URL handy, paste it into the search bar and click the video thumbnail when it appears.

5. Alternatively, you can also open a new tab, find a specific timer video on YouTube, and copy and paste that video's URL. You can also use a video from your Google Drive.

Select where you'd like to insert a video from. Devon Delfino/Business Insider

6. Click "Select."

7. Resize and reposition the video as desired.

Repeat this process for as many slides as you need. Remember, though, that the video on your slide will be visible to everyone you're giving the presentation to as well.

Your timer video. Devon Delfino/Business Insider

When you give your presentation, you'll need to click the video to start your countdown timer. Or, you can set it to autoplay when the slide appears in your presentation:

1. Right-click the video and select "Format options."

Click "Format options." Isabella Paoletto/Business Insider

2. In the side menu that appears, click "Video playback."

3. Check the box that's labeled "Autoplay when presenting."

Click the box next to "Autoplay when presenting." Isabella Paoletto/Business Insider

The team behind Product Hunt is launching a new social network called YourStack, a platform aiming to connect people that are passionate about products and help them discover what things their friends love.

“It’s super simple, you just search through and create a stack of products you love,” Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover tells TechCrunch. “We wanted to make sure it wasn’t just software, but also games and books and beauty products, you name it.”

YourStack’s catalog doesn’t have every product under the sun, but if it’s a tech object, startup service, app or direct-to-consumer thing, chances are you can “stack” it. Once you add it to your profile, you can write a quick little descriptor and also share some tips and tricks you’ve learned about the product in question.

Product Hunt was acquired by AngelList just over three years ago, and since then Hoover and company have grown the platform into a go-to hub for makers looking to launch tech products. The team of 20 is now splitting their time between Product Hunt and YourStack, hoping that the new venture can lead to a platform that’s more centered on people and the products they use. While a social network based entirely around the multi-national brands that people love is something I’d love to hear Bernie Sanders’ thoughts on, it’s clear there’s an open opportunity here.

Social media platforms like Instagram have given influencers a huge platform for paid product endorsements, but because there’s so much schilling, consumers can’t put a ton of trust in the recommendations. Platforms like Twitter have been great for this inside the tech industry, but there’s no UI for it, so you sort of have to be at the right place at the right time, and, furthermore, the tech folks who have these great product insights are too busy being thought leaders.

If YourStack takes off, who knows what it could eventually become, but the goal seems to be to let users gain access to more personal product recommendations. On the product creator side, Hoover believes YourStack could give some great qualitative data that allows makers to understand how customers are using what they’ve built.

The product is in beta right now with a waitlist that’s already a few thousand users deep, but Hoover says the goal right now is to gather feedback.

“With a lot of social products, you don’t know how people are going to use them when they first start,” Hoover tells TechCrunch. “We actually had a very similar approach when we launched Product Hunt, where we let more and more people onto it each day and that was really effective in letting it slowly grow rather than leading people to a bad experience.”

Jeff Bezos’ phone was hacked. And if the richest person in the world is vulnerable, chances are good that your startup could get hacked, too.

The good news is that, as a tiny company, you’re not a big target. But as soon as you hire your first employee, it’s time to think about adopting basic security practices to ensure that you’re less vulnerable. Nothing is perfectly secure on the internet, but you can mitigate risk.

When you have fewer than 10 employees, you don’t want to use a single sign-on service like Okta. Solutions that work great for companies with tens of thousands of employees are not practical because they’re not designed for you.

As a basic rule, you want things to be simple by design. Relying on fewer services will reduce your attack surface, and if people can follow rules without even thinking about them, your organization will be less vulnerable. You might be great at spotting phishing attempts and securing your own accounts, but your startup is only as secure as your least-savvy employee. Most security issues come from human error.

Labor markets, particularly those in the tech industry, are incredibly lopsided against employees. Companies screen, interview, and negotiate with thousands of candidates per year, while employees may only go through recruiting a handful of times in their lives. Inevitably, they can select the wrong positions, pick the wrong managers to work with, and end up with a salary well below market rate.

New York City-based Free Agency wants to become the advocate of choice for this high-priced talent. Taking its cue from Hollywood and the sports world, the growing startup wants to identify great workers and offer them the career counseling, interview guidance, and salary negotiation prowess to let them do their best work — and at the right wage.

The company, which was founded last year by Sherveen Mashayekhi and Alex Rothberg, exclusively told TechCrunch that it has now reached 100 “Free Agents” on its platform, and it also announced that it has netted a combined $5.35 million in seed investments led by Resolute Ventures and Bloomberg Beta last year.

The way Free Agency works is simple. In exchange for the service’s help in finding and negotiating a career change, the startup takes 5-10% of its client’s first-year salary at their new company. As an example, given that median tech salaries at top companies have hovered around $200,000, that would be a fee of $10,000-$20,000.

That may sound exorbitant, but for the founders of Free Agency, it is anything but. They believe that many employees regularly fail to find the most ideal companies to work for and to negotiate the best salaries, which means that a significant amount of money is being left on the table by their potential clients.

“Our business model keeps us incentive-aligned with the candidate, driven by outcomes rather than upfront fees,” Mashayekhi, who is CEO, explained to me. “But it’s also important to note that Free Agency is, philosophically, also aligned with what employers want. Happy candidates who feel fairly paid will remain at their jobs longer and contribute more productivity. We help make happy candidates.”

Free Agency is in many ways a parallel to the rise of income-share agreements (ISAs) in the edtech world, which my colleague Eric Peckham has written about extensively in recent months. In lieu of tuition, some new education startups are using ISAs as a way to guarantee better employment outcomes for students while limiting their debt burden. Their growing popularity has spawned significant investor interest.

Today, Free Agency is barely one year old with just about 11 employees on the payroll. Longer term though, it wants to manage the budding careers of tech workers in much the way that Hollywood agents often do — finding new projects to work on, helping its talent develop their own skills, brands, and thought leadership, and helping them network with key decision-makers so they get called upon when great new opportunities arise.

“Today, we’re focused primarily on the job search inflection point, but Free Agency is really a career-long partner. You’ll see us continue to add ways to help our Free Agents succeed along 5 or 10 years of partnerships through intentional career management,” Mashayekhi said.

Talent agents exist in industries like Hollywood, book publishing, and sports because the talent themselves often don’t want to take on the burdens of managing their own careers. Film directors and baseball pitchers want to practice and hone their craft, not spend hours negotiating with studio execs and club owners. Agents also are more up-to-date on industry salary trends, and also where new opportunities are arising. Plus, they often work with talent managers to optimize all the ancillary revenues that comes from these careers (product endorsements, speaker engagements, etc.)

Furthermore, these industries have extremely strong superstar income patterns, where top talent can easily make tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a career.

While the tech industry has traditionally not had agents, tech talent is increasingly having similar superstar properties. Star engineers, product managers, and designers can make tens of millions of dollars across salary and equity packages, and often have a range of ancillary revenue sources from consulting engagements with VC firms to lecture circuit payments. Even better, new talent is often making six-figures, whereas the early years in an entertainment or sports career is often focused on securing any paying job.

What remains to be see is whether engineers will willingly give up a segment of their income in order to get better career help. Certainly Free Agency is not the first company that has tried to tackle this emerging field. 10x Management is a talent agency that has focused on vetting top freelance developers, and was profiled in The New Yorker a few years ago. Other startups have also entered the space over the past decade.

Free Agency believes it has the timing and service quality to win this market. While it is early days, much like the excitement around ISAs in education, I expect models like Free Agency to increasingly become popular as a way to manage our careers, and this is one startup worth paying attention to in the coming years.

In addition to Resolute and Bloomberg, Ludlow Ventures, Background Capital, Parker Thompson, Will Oberndorf, Amrit Saxena, Jenny Fielding, Greg Schroy, Gordon Wintrob, and Orrick LLP also joined the round as investors.

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