Let’s Do This is a YC alumni startup form 2018 which is a marketplace for endurance events, from a 5k fun run or an IronMan triathlon. It’s now raised a $5M seed round with Serena Williams and Usain Bolt participating. The round was led by Pete Flint (Partner at NFX, formerly Trulia, LastMinute).
Other investors include YCombinator, Shasta, Index, and FJ Labs. Other angels were Paul Buchheit (YC, Gmail), Yuri Sagalov (YC, AeroFS), Simon Nixon (MoneySupermarket), Tim Thackrah (Elmsleigh), Paul Radcliffe (Marathon World Record Holder) and Andy Philips (Booking.com).
The platform lists 30,000 races of all distances and disciplines and claims to be the largest marketplace for endurance events in the world, offering key information about the races and exclusive booking perks for members such as free cancellation protection.
They have recently agreed a partnership with Hearst to power all race listings across Runner’s World, Men’s Health and Women’s Health in the US and the UK.
Serena Williams, the 22 time Grand Slam Champion, said in a statement: “I’ve seen first-hand the incredible impact these events can have on making people fitter, healthier and happier. I love that Let’s Do This is not only making events like these more accessible but also helping to support athletes of all different fitness levels. Women are especially less likely to participate in marathons and obstacle races, so it’s really important there’s a platform encouraging people to step out of their comfort zones and make a positive difference in their lives.”
In a statement Flint said: “This is a $30bn global market with enormous growth potential and already 100 million people crossing a finish line in the US each year. In just 18 months they’ve gone from launch to building the world’s best online marketplace to find, learn about, and book your next race. With over 30,000 events across the US, UK, and Australasia, this team is just getting started.”
Usain Bolt, World Record holder in the 100m, 200m and 4 x 100m, said: “Throughout my career I’ve been lucky enough to inspire people to follow their dreams, get off the couch and get exercising. That’s what attracted me to Let’s Do This. It’s a company that is totally committed to changing the world and inspiring more people to get out there. Like me, their team doesn’t believe in limits and is totally committed to being the best in the world. It’s a really natural fit with what I care about and what I believe in so I am very happy to be supporting their mission to inspire more people to have epic experiences.”
The company was founded by childhood friends Alex Rose and Sam Browne who got into the space at University. Their team consists of people from Facebook, Google, Oracle, Deliveroo or SkyScanner.
Railsbank, the open banking and compliance platform co-founded by CEO Nigel Verdon, who previously founded Currencycloud, has raised £10 million in Series A funding.
The new injection of capital will be used for further expand beyond Europe, including the U.S., Australia and South East Asia. The latter includes a new office in Singapore where a small team has already been assembled.
Backing Railsbank’s Series A is Moneta Capital, which led the round, alongside CreditEase, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Singapore Life. A number of existing investors also participated including Firestartr.
In a call with Verdon, who was talking to TechCrunch from Singapore, he explained that the new office is part of a strategy that will see Railsbank ride the next wave of fintech innovation, which he says is happening in South East Asia and where the playbook from London and New York 2011 is being repeated.
“In 2011, [we] saw the emergence of the finTech 1.0 scene with people like Currencycloud (which I also founded), TransferWise, Betterment, Bank Simple etc,” he tells me.
“This was enabled by the opening up of regulation as the macro trend. We currently see [a] similar regulator macro trend in SE Asia emerging and also the macro trend of tech companies being the distributors of financial products driven by access to cheap smart phones by firms like Xiaomi”.
To that end, Railsbank is positioning itself as a “utility” on which other companies — spanning fintech upstarts, challenger brands, to incumbent banks that want to re-factor their tech — can build and sell various financial services or add fintech features to their products.
“Just like the water company – reliable, safe and works 24×7 and priced at utility pricing,” Verdon says of Railsbank, likening it to what Amazon has done for data centres with AWS. “Railsbank is a utility for the compete financial services backend: platform, connectivity, operations, scheme memberships (e.g. Visa), regulation, and compliance”.
As an example of what the Railsbank platform is capable of, Verdon described how SingLife was able within 2 days to develop a completely working digital banking app with a own debit card and support for bank transfers, including dedicated account numbers and sort codes etc.
This, he tells me, is made possible because the Railsbank platform and API provides all of the tech, compliance and integration “hooks” required to build a full banking experience.
Meanwhile, although the startup continues to count other fintech startups as customers, Verdon says Railsbank is also working with brands offering financial products (e.g. supermarkets, travel, retail) and what he dubs “old fin”: companies looking to replace their own costly tech with a platform solution.
“We are also working with banks to provide a complete utility infrastructure and payments/card/ops rails to reduce their… operational costs,” he tells me.
Tala, a Santa Monica, California-headquartered startup that creates a credit profile to provide uncollateralized loans to millions of people in emerging markets, has raised $110 million in a new financing round to enter India’s burgeoning fintech space.
The Series D financing for the five year-old startup was led by RPS Ventures, with GGV Capital and previous investors IVP, Revolution Growth, Lowercase Capital, Data Collective VC, ThomVest Ventures, and PayPal also participating in the round.
The new round, which takes the startup’s total fundraising to $215 million, valued it above $500 million, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Tala has also raised an additional $100 million in debt, including a $50 million facility led by Colchis in last one year.
Tala looks at a customer’s data on texts and calls, merchant transactions, overall app usage, and other behavioral data through its Android app to build their credit profile. Based on these pieces of information, it provides instant loans in the range of $10 to $500 to customers.
The loans are approved within minutes and disbursed via mobile payment platforms. The startup has lent over $1 billion to more than 4 million customers to date — up from issuing $300 million in loan to 1.3 million customers last year, Shivani Siroya, founder and CEO of Tala, told TechCrunch in an interview.
The startup, which employs more than 550 people, will use the new capital to enter India, Siroya, who built Tala after interviewing thousands of small and micro-businesses, said. In the run up to launch in India, Tala began a 12-month pilot program in the country last year to conduct user research and understand the market. It has also set up a technology hub in Bangalore, she said.
Shivani Siroya (Tala CEO) at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017
“The opportunity is very massive in India, so we spent some time customizing our service for the local market,” she said.
According to World Bank, more than 2 billion people globally have limited access to financial services and working capital. For these people, many of whom live in India, securing a small size loan is extremely challenging as they don’t have a credit score.
In recent years, several major digital payment platforms in India including Paytm and MobiKwik have started to offer small loans to users. Traditional banks are still lagging to serve this segment, industry executives say.
Tala goes a step further and takes liability for any unpaid returns, Siroya said. More than 90% of Tala customers pay back their loan in 20 to 30 days and are recurring customers, she added.
The startup also forwards the positive credit history and rankings to the local credit bureaus to help people secure bigger and long-term loans in the future, she added.
Tala, which charges a one-time fee that is as low as 5% for each loan, relies on referrals, and some marketing through radio and television to acquire new customers. “But a lot of these users come because they heard about us from their friends,” Siryoa said.
As part of the new financing round, Kabir Misra, Founding General Partner of RPS Ventures, has joined Tata’s board of directors, the startup said.
Tata will also use a portion of its new fund to expand its footprint and team in its existing markets — East Africa, Mexico, and the Philippines — and also build new solutions.
Siroya said the startup has identified some more markets where it plans to enter next. She did not disclose the names, but said she is eyeing more countries in South Asia and Latin America.
Well, that didn’t take long. Just three months after raising $50 million in Series A funding, e-scooter rentals startup Voi Technology has added another $30 million to its balance sheet. The new round sees existing investors Vostok New Ventures, Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe and Raine Ventures participate again, alongside new investors Project A and Creandum.
The inclusion of Project A won’t be entirely new news to close readers of TechCrunch. Based on my own sources, I reported that the Berlin-based early-stage VC was in the running in late October, and it was a surprise not to see the firm on the list of backers when VOI announced its Series A a month later. This new round sees those loose ends tidied up nicely.
A number of angel investors also participated. They include Cristina Stenbeck (Kinnevik), Justin Mateen (co-founder of Tinder), Keith Richman (board member, Grubhub), Jeff Wilke (Amazon), Sujay Jaswa (founder of WndrCo), Sujay Tyle (CEO Frontier Car Group), Diego Piacentini (Former Head of International Business, Amazon) Christian Leone (founder of Luxor Capital) and Spencer Rascoff (ex-CEO of Zillow).
Voi says the new capital will be used to ramp up expansion across Europe and invest in R&D. The company is also now claiming to be the leading “home-grown” e-scooter rentals company in Europe — as opposed to U.S.-founded Lime and Bird. In seven months, Voi says it has garnered a customer base of over 400,000 riders, who have taken a total of more than 750,000 rides.
Taxify has also announced its entrance into e-scooter rentals, and Silicon Valley’s Bird and Lime not only operate in Europe but have received substantial investment from three of Europe’s top venture capital firms. Index and Accel have backed Bird, and Atomico has backed Lime.
Staying on message, Voi says that key to its success to date is working collaboratively with city authorities across the continent, including developing a Code of Conduct in Stockholm “to help the city’s multiple scooter-sharing operators work more safely and efficiently together”. However, that didn’t stop Voi having its license temporarily revoked in Madrid, alongside Lime and Wind after a change in the law required a change in the way e-scooter firms operate. It returned to the Spanish city in February.
Meanwhile, the company says its strongest markets so far are in the Nordics. Namely, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Lund, Uppsala and Copenhagen, most of which it says will reach profitability in Q1. The e-scooter rental service is also live in Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Malaga, Zaragoza, Murcia, Lisbon and Faro. Today also sees a launch in Oslo, with Helsinki and other cities launching later this month. Italy, Germany, Norway and France are named as near-future expansions.
Since tether (USDT) bolstered the idea of a working stablecoin over the last few years, there’s been a variety of different types of stable cryptocurrencies that are usually pegged to the U.S. dollar. However, there’s one particular stablecoin that’s been a hot topic of discussion lately called dai, a coin that’s backed by ethereum locked into a smart contract.
The following is an overview of how dais are created within a network called the Maker DAO and why some cryptocurrency enthusiasts seem to like the concept better than its fiat alternatives. But there’s also a slew of critics who dislike the Maker project for a multitude of reasons that could theoretically hurt a few individuals’ dreams of the perfect stablecoin backed by crypto assets.
The Ethereum network has a popular decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Maker, which is now well known for creating a cryptocurrency-backed stablecoin called dai. The Single-Collateral Dai (SCD) system, launched in December 2017, allows anyone to leverage their ETH in order to create a stablecoin that keeps price valuation down to around $1 most of the time. Over the last 14 months of operation, the Maker DAO has become the most popular Ethereum-based system in 2019. At the time of publication, there’s more than 1 percent of the entire ETH supply in circulation locked up into the Maker system as there’s 2.1 million ETH used as collateral.
The Maker team consists of CEO Rune Christensen, CTO Andy Milenius, President Steven Becker and roughly 18 other leaders. The community is relatively small but has been growing since the project’s inception. Maker and the stablecoin dai community have a blog, a chat forum, and its own subreddit where individuals discuss the nascent ecosystem. At press time, dai is ahead of the stablecoin GUSD with the 55th largest market capitalization of around $89.3 million.
There are two fundamental differences between Maker’s dai and other stablecoins like USDC, GUSD, and USDT. For one, dai is not backed by fiat reserves held in a bank like a great majority of its stablecoin peers. The other difference is that fiat systems are collateralized by the company’s word and third-party audits while the transparency of dai can be seen onchain at all times. Basically, dai holds stability because ETH is locked into a contract used in a system called a Collateralized Debt Position (CDP). A user wanting to acquire dai sends the ETH to a CDP and can withdraw dai from there.
However, the collateralization ratio uses a method called overcollateralization (OC), which helps lower the system’s exposure to risk and keeps the credit (dai) through Maker’s autonomous feedback mechanisms. OC requires more funds than a typical dollar for dollar trade in order to obtain dai. The ratio of ETH collateral needed in order to acquire dai is fixed at 1.5:1 at all times, but users can purchase dai on the open market too.
There is currently 2.1 million ETH locked into Maker contracts that produce dai.
Critics of Maker, Overcollateralization, and a Stablecoin Unmediated by the Legal System
Maker and dai have become a popular subject among cryptocurrency supporters largely because some people like the concept of a liquid stablecoin for certain use cases as well as the idea dai is backed by crypto. However, there are some critics of the Maker protocol and the dai stablecoin it produces. Some skeptics believe the project could fall victim to the same scenario that happened to the Ethereum network’s first DAO which saw the loss of $50 million in June 2016. At the time, users exploited the DAO’s code enabling them to take one-third of the DAO’s funds to a subsidiary account. Another critique of Maker DAO explains that the OC scheme and paying the contract back with the equivalent amount of dai is well known. However, what the organization hasn’t explained yet “is that you also need to pay a stability fee in MKR,” Bennett Tomlin said last June.
“Also [dai] cannot always be collateralized in excess, because if there is a black swan event that destroys the value of ethereum that is no longer true,” Tomlin’s research details.
Tomlin’s study called a “Deep Look at Maker DAO and Dai and MKR” adds that the Maker’s creators explain in the white paper that in the event of a “black swan” crash the organization will dilute the “pooled ether.” The author’s post explains, “Why someone would trust this, I do not know — The developers are obviously aware of this risk, but it seems to be ignored.” Tomlin’s report also details that the biggest hurdle for the Maker team is the government-specific entities that regulate the U.S. financial activities. “Better watch out for the SEC, the CFTC, and the rest of the alphabet soup,” Tomlin warned.
A Multi-Collateral Dai and Other Chain’s Creating a Stablecoin
Despite some concerns, the Maker DAO continues to rake in lots of ethereum in order to create the world’s first working consumer-grade stablecoin based on the collateralized crypto assets. The project’s roadmap calls for a Multi-Collateral Dai system which will at some point be able to collateralize the dai stablecoin with other cryptocurrencies. On Nov. 6, 2018, the development team detailed that the code for Multi-Collateral Dai was published and contracts have been deployed to the system’s testnet.
Additionally, there has been talk of other cryptocurrencies following suit with the dai idea. Just recently the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) community discussed the creation of a stablecoin built on the BCH chain. The BCH network has been recently experimenting with token creation but something like dai on BCH would require some different elements. By and large, the Ethereum community seems to appreciate the Maker protocol and dai stablecoin and so far it has brought some more traction toward that ecosystem.
What do you think about the Maker protocol and the dai stablecoin? Let us know your thoughts on this subject in the comments section below.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. Bitcoin.com does not endorse the Maker DAO or dai stablecoin. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned companies, creators, associates, or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com and the author are not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Maker DAO, Dai, Makerscan.io, and Pixabay.
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Women’s health has long been devoid of technological innovation, but when it comes to fertility options, that’s starting to change. Startups in the space are securing hundreds of millions in venture capital investment, a significant increase to the dearth of funding collected in previous years.
Fertility entrepreneurs are focused on a growing market: couples are choosing to reproduce later in life, an increasing number of female breadwinners are able to make their own decisions about when and how to reproduce, and overall, around 10% of women in the US today have trouble conceiving, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Startups, as a result, are working to improve various pain points in a women’s fertility journey, whether that be with new-age brick-and-mortar clinics, information platforms, mobile applications, wearables, direct-to-consumer medical tests or otherwise.
Although the investment numbers are still relatively small (compared to, say, scooters), the trend is up — here’s the latest from founders and investors in the space.
VCs want to help you get pregnant
Clue, a period and ovulation-tracking app, co-founder and CEO Ida Tin talks at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2017 (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch)
This fall, TechCrunch received a tip that SoftBank, a prolific venture capital firm known for its nearly $100 billion Vision Fund, was investing in Glow, a period-tracking app meant to help women get pregnant. Max Levchin, Glow’s co-founder and a well-known member of the PayPal mafia, succinctly responded to a TechCrunch inquiry regarding the deal via e-mail: “Fairly sure you got this particular story wrong,” he wrote. Glow co-founder and chief executive officer Mike Huang did not respond to multiple requests for comment at the time.
Needless to say, some semblance of a SoftBank fertility deal got this reporter interested in a space that seldom populates tech blogs.
Femtech, a term coined by Ida Tin, the founder of another period and ovulation-tracking app Clue, is defined as any software, diagnostics, products and services that leverage technology to improve women’s health. Femtech, and more specifically the businesses in the fertility and contraception lanes, hasn’t made headlines as often as AI or blockchain technology has, for example. Probably because companies in the sector haven’t closed as many notable venture deals. That’s changing.
The global fertility services market is expected to exceed $21 billion by 2020, according to Technavio. Meanwhile, private investment in the femtech space surpassed $400 million in 2018 after reaching a high of $354 million the previous year, per data collected from PitchBook and Crunchbase. This year already several companies have inked venture deals, including men’s fertility business Dadi and Extend Fertility, which helps women freeze their eggs.
“In the last three to six months, it feels like investor interest has gone through the roof,” Jake Anderson-Bialis, co-founder of FertilityIQ and a former investor at Sequoia Capital, told TechCrunch. “It’s three to four emails a day; people are coming out of the woodwork. It feels like somebody shook the snow globe here and it just hasn’t stopped for months now.”
Dadi, Extend Fertility and FertilityIQ are among a growing list of startups in the fertility space to crop up in recent years. FertilityIQ, for its part, provides a digital platform for fertility patients to research and review doctors and clinics. The company also collects data and issues reports, like this one, which ranked businesses by fertility benefits. Anderson-Bialis launched the platform with his wife, co-founder Deborah Anderson-Bialis, in 2016 after the pair overcame their own set of infertility issues.
Anderson-Bialis said he has recently fielded requests from seed, Series A and growth-stage investors interested in exploring the growing fertility market. His company, however, has yet to raise any outside capital. Why? He doesn’t see FertilityIQ as a venture-scale business, but rather a passion project, and he’s skeptical of the true market opportunity for other businesses in the space.
Ceros allows marketers to create animated, interactive content — but don’t call it a content marketing company.
“We think content is just a dry, bland, over-leveraged, oversaturated space,” said founder and CEO Simon Berg. “The goal is not to hack the system, the goal is to make a great experience for your customers.”
That’s why he describes Ceros as a platform for creating experiences. The company is focused on powering beautiful, well-designed graphics and web pages, instead of blog posts or white papers that mostly exist to snare search traffic.
Ceros is announcing today that it’s raised $14 million in Series C funding.
Ceros previously raised $19.5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The new round was led by Greenspring Associates, with participation from Grotech Ventures, CNF Investments, Sigma Prime Ventures, StarVest Partners, Greycroft and Silicon Valley Bank.
“Ceros is well known for empowering marketers to think creatively, but we have also come to know Ceros as a highly capital efficient business, which is a refreshing change in the burn-rate happy world of digital,” said Greenspring’s John Avirett, General Partner in a statement. “We’re confident that this investment will catalyze Ceros’ continued growth while enabling their team to opportunistically pursue acquisitions that enhance the core product and further penetration of key markets.”
“What we’ve continued to work on over the last seven years is to comply with laws of physics that are laws of internet, whilst giving as much creative freedom as possible,” Berg said. “We want to put the creative and the design piece first.”
The company says it’s now working with more than 400 customers, including well-known brands like United Airlines and Red Bull, as well as publishers including Condé Nast and Vice, plus sports teams like the Baltimore Ravens and Detroit Lions.
“Both in terms of the revenues that we’ve reached and the clients that we’ve worked with … you never really ‘arrive,’ but I feel like we’ve reached a critical milestone,” Berg said.
