Betaworks Studios, the brainchild of New York City seed-stage venture capital fund Betaworks, has amassed the support of WeWork, or The We Company, as they now call themselves.

JLL Spark Ventures and the co-working giant have led co-led a $4.4 million investment in the membership-based co-working club described as a supportive community for builders. Betaworks Ventures and BBG Ventures also participated in the funding for Betaworks Studios, which previously raised a pre-seed round led by BBG.

Launched in 2018, Betaworks Studios offers entrepreneurs, artists, engineers and creatives a place to work on projects and accumulate a network, similar to a WeWork hub.

In separate news, Betaworks Ventures today filed to raise a $75 million sophomore fund.

Founded in 2008 by John Borthwick, Betaworks operates an investment fund, an accelerator and builds companies internally with spinouts including Giphy, Digg and Bit.ly. The idea for Betaworks Studios was to expand its resources and network to the greater entrepreneurial community.

Borthwick brought on Daphne Kwon, the former chief financial officer of Goop, to run the studio arm, which charges $2400 per year or $225 per month.

Betaworks says its studio has hosted some 11,000 people for meetings and speaking events. It currently has only one club location in New York City’s Meatpacking District but plans to open additional studios with the fresh cash.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | WeWork backs New York tech clubhouse Betaworks Studios

DoorDash launched a new initiative today called Kitchens Without Borders, which it says is designed to promote business owners who are immigrants and refugees.

It’s starting out with 10 restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area: Besharam, Z Zoul Cafe, Onigilly, Los Cilantros, Sabores Del Sur, West Park Farm & Sea, Little Green Cyclo, Afghan Village, D’Maize and Sweet Lime Thai Cuisine.

The entrepreneurs behind each of these businesses is profiled on the Kitchens Without Borders site. Their restaurants will also get promoted within the DoorDash app, and they’ll receive $0 delivery fees for up to six weeks.

A DoorDash spokesperson told me the initial 10 participants were selected from 60 applicants, and that the program will be expanding to include other restaurants across the country in the coming months.

This announcement comes a month after DoorDash announced that it had raised another $400 million in funding. The company also drew criticism earlier this year for its driver compensation practices.

In a blog post, CEO Tony Xu said he has a personal connection to the program:

For one, I’m an immigrant. I moved to this country from China when I was five, and my mom ran a Chinese restaurant with the purpose of creating a better life and fulfilling her dream of becoming a doctor. I worked alongside her as a dishwasher and saw firsthand what it takes to make it in this country. Over the course of 12 years, she eventually saved up enough money to become the doctor that she wanted to be and opened up a medical clinic, which she has now been running for the past 20 years.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | DoorDash launches a new program highlighting immigrant and refugee business owners

Lyft raised more than $2 billion Thursday afternoon after pricing its shares at $72 apiece, the top of the expected range of $70 to $72 per share. This gives Lyft a fully diluted market value of $24 billion.

The company will debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange Friday morning, trading under the ticker symbol “LYFT.”

The initial public offering is the first-ever for a ride-hailing business and represents a landmark liquidity event for private market investors, which had invested billions of dollars in the San Francisco-based company. In total, Lyft had raised $5.1 billion in debt and equity funding, reaching a valuation of $15.1 billion last year.

Lyft’s blockbuster IPO is unique for a number of reasons, in addition to being amongst transportation-as-a-service companies to transition from private to public. Lyft has the largest net losses of any pre-IPO business, posting losses of $911 million on revenues of $2.2 billion in 2018. However, the company is also raking in the largest revenues, behind only Google and Facebook, for a pre-IPO company. The latter has made it popular on Wall Street, garnering buy ratings from analysts prior to pricing.

Uber is the next tech unicorn, or company valued north of $1 billion, expected out of the IPO gate. It will trade on the New York Stock Exchange in what is one of the most anticipated IPOs in history. The company, which reported $3 billion in Q4 2018 revenues with net losses of $865 million, is reportedly planning to unveil its IPO prospectus next month.

Next in the pipeline is Pinterest, which dropped its S-1 last week and revealed a path to profitability that is sure to garner support from Wall Street investors. The visual search engine will trade on the NYSE under the symbol “PINS.” It posted revenue of $755.9 million last year, up from $472.8 million in 2017. The company’s net loss, meanwhile, shrank to $62.9 million last year from $130 million in 2017.

Other notable companies planning 2019 stock offerings include Slack, Zoom — a rare, profitable pre-IPO unicorn — and, potentially, Airbnb.

Updating.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Lyft prices IPO at top of range

Two years ago, former Amazon product manager Xiao Wang stood on the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco and made the case for a platform meant to help couples apply for marriage green cards, a complex process made worse by bureaucracy and red tape.

Called Boundless, the startup had spun out of Seattle startup studio Pioneer Square Labs and raised a $3.5 million seed round. Now, Foundry Group’s Brad Feld has led a $7.8 million Series A in the startup, with participation from existing investors Trilogy Equity Partners, PSL, Two Sigma Ventures and Founders’ Co-Op.

“Families have really only had two choices, they could spend weeks or months trying to figure this out on their own, or they can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on an immigration attorney,” Wang, Boundless co-founder and chief executive officer, told TechCrunch. “What we are trying to do is basically give everyone access to the information, the tools and the support that was previously only available to those that could afford high-priced attorneys.”

Boundless charges $750 for its online green card application support services, which includes ensuring families correctly complete applications and have access to an immigration lawyer to review those applications. The fee comes at a major discount to the costs of an immigration lawyer and streamlines a process that can be delayed months when errors are made. The startup also offers a recently launched $395 naturalization product meant to assist eligible green card holders with their U.S. citizenship applications.

Wang founded Boundless in 2017 after helping build Amazon Go, the e-commerce giant’s line of cashierless convenience stores. Wang is an immigrant, having relocated to the U.S. from China when he was a child.

“We spent almost five months of rent money on an immigration attorney because the stakes were so high and we only had one shot,” Wang said. “We wanted to make sure we were doing it right. This is a story that is echoed by millions of families every year; this is such an important part of them starting a new life in a new country.”

Wang, after three years at Amazon, realized he could use his technology background and data prowess to build an information platform supportive of these millions of families.

“This is exactly what tech and data is meant to do,” he said. “I believe there is a moral obligation for tech to be used in meaningfully improving people’s lives.”

Boundless plans to use this investment to expand its team and product offerings, as well as build out its content library, which Wang said is rapidly becoming the go-to place for immigrants navigating the legal labyrinth that is the U.S. green card and citizenship process. Its resources page, which includes straightforward guides, a number of forms and more, counts 300,000 unique visitors per month.

“We hold their hand through the entire process,” Wang said. “We want to be the single source of information and tools for all family-based immigration.”

Wang and his team also hope to shine a brighter light on immigration policy. In late 2018, as part of its effort to be louder advocates for immigrants, Boundless, alongside Warby Parker, Foursquare, Foundation Capital and more, published an open letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security opposing its proposed “public charge” immigration regulation, which would allow for non-citizens who are in the country legally to be denied a visa or a green card if they have a medical condition, financial liabilities and other disqualifiers.

“The stakes for making sure your application is correct have never been higher; the government has far more leeway to be able to deny applications,” Wang said. “While we can’t speed up the government processing times, we can make meaningful improvements to helping families gather all the materials they need to send in the right information.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Boundless gets .8M to help immigrants navigate the convoluted green card process