Vacasa, a provider of vacation rental management services akin to Airbnb, has agreed to acquire Wyndham Vacation Rentals from Wyndham Destinations.

Portland-based Vacasa will pay Wyndham a total of $162 million, including at least $45 million in cash at closing and upwards of $30 million in Vacasa equity.

Vacasa, founded in 2009, has raised $207.5 million in venture capital funding to date from investors such as Assurant Growth Investing and NewSpring Capital.

Its acquisition of Wyndham Vacation Rentals will bring a number of brands, including ResortQuest, Kaiser Realty and Vacation Palm Springs, under its ownership and will expand its portfolio to include 9,000 new properties.

“We are excited to partner with the pioneering company in the short-term rental industry that helped make vacation homes popular for so many families around the world,” Vacasa founder and chief executive officer Eric Breon said in a statement. “Combining Wyndham Vacation Rentals’ decades of operational excellence with Vacasa’s next-generation technology will deliver the industry’s best vacation rental experiences.”

The deal comes amid a period of growth for the Oregon business, which says it expects to bring in more than $1 billion in gross bookings and roughly $500 million in net revenue in the next year.

The acquisition, announced this morning, is projected to close this fall.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Vacasa to acquire Wyndham Vacation Rentals for 2M

Just yesterday, we experienced yet another major breach when Capital One announced it had been hacked and years of credit card application information had been stolen. Another day, another hack, but the question is how can companies protect themselves in the face of an onslaught of attacks. Confluera, a Palo Alto startup, wants to help with a new tool that purports to stop these kinds of attacks in real time.

Today the company, which launched last year, announced a $9 million Series A investment led by Lightspeed Venture Partners . It also has the backing of several influential technology execs, including John W. Thompson, who is chairman of Microsoft and former CEO at Symantec; Frank Slootman, CEO at Snowflake and formerly CEO at ServiceNow; and Lane Bess, former CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

What has attracted this interest is the company’s approach to cybersecurity. “Confluera is a real-time cybersecurity company. We are delivering the industry’s first platform to deterministically stop cyberattacks in real time,” company co-founder and CEO Abhijit Ghosh told TechCrunch.

To do that, Ghosh says, his company’s solution watches across the customer’s infrastructure, finds issues and recommends ways to mitigate the attack. “We see the problem that there are too many solutions which have been used. What is required is a platform that has visibility across the infrastructure, and uses security information from multiple sources to make that determination of where the attacker currently is and how to mitigate that,” he explained.

Microsoft chairman John Thompson, who is also an investor, says this is more than just real-time detection or real-time remediation. “It’s not just the audit trail and telling them what to do. It’s more importantly blocking the attack in real time. And that’s the unique nature of this platform, that you’re able to use the insight that comes from the science of the data to really block the attacks in real time.”

It’s early days for Confluera, as it has 19 employees and three customers using the platform so far. For starters, it will be officially launching next week at Black Hat. After that, it has to continue building out the product and prove that it can work as described to stop the types of attacks we see on a regular basis.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Confluera snags M Series A to help stop cyberattacks in real time

Welcome to this transcribed edition of The Operators. TechCrunch is beginning to publish podcasts from industry experts, with transcriptions available for Extra Crunch members so you can read the conversation wherever you are.

The Operators features insiders from companies like AirBnB, Brex, Docsend, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Carta, Slack, Uber, and WeWork sharing their stories and tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.

This week’s edition features Christiana Rattazzi, Head of Technology Marketing at WeWork, the leading coworking company that has raised over $8 billion and has a valuation of $47 billion and a rumored IPO impending. Also joining the show is Elenitsa Staykova, VP of Marketing at Brex, another fast-growing unicorn, recently valued at over $2 billion, that is the leading provider of credit cards to startups and tech companies.

In this episode, Christiana and Elenitsa explain how marketing works, how to get into and succeed in the field of marketing, and how founders should think about hiring and managing the marketing function. With their experiences at two of tech’s biggest and most innovative marketers, WeWork and Brex, this episode is packed with broad perspectives and deep insights.

Image via The Operators

Neil Devani and Tim Hsia created The Operators after seeing and hearing too many heady, philosophical podcasts about the future of tech, and not enough attention on the practical day-to-day work that makes it all happen.

Tim is the CEO & Founder of Media Mobilize, a media company and ad network, and a Venture Partner at Digital Garage. Tim is an early-stage investor in Workflow (acquired by Apple), Lime, FabFitFun, Oh My Green, Morning Brew, Girls Night In, The Hustle, Bright Cellars, and others.

Neil is an early-stage investor based in San Francisco with a focus on companies building stuff people need, solutions to very hard problems. Companies he’s invested in include Andela, Clearbit, Kudi, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Solugen, and Vicarious Surgical.

If you’re interested in starting or accelerating your marketing career, or how to hire and manage this function, you can’t miss this episode!

The show:

The Operators brings experts with experience at companies like AirBnB, Brex, Docsend, Facebook, Google, Lyft, Carta, Slack, Uber, WeWork, etc. to share insider tips on how to break into fields like marketing and product management. They also share best practices for entrepreneurs on how to hire and manage experts from domains outside their own.

In this episode:

In Episode 4, we’re talking about marketing. Neil interviews Christiana Rattazzi, Head of Technology Marketing at WeWork, and Elenitsa Staykova, VP of Marketing at Brex.

Neil Devani: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Operators, where we learn from the people building the companies of tomorrow. We publish every other Monday and you can find us online at www.operators.co. I’m your host, Neil Devani, and we’re coming to you today from Digital Garage here in downtown San Francisco.

Joining me is Eli Staykova, Vice President of Marketing at Brex. Brex is the corporate credit card for start-ups, one of the fastest companies to reach a billion dollar evaluation, having launched barely two years ago, and its customers include Y Combinator, Flexport, SoFi, and many, many other startups.

Also joining us is Christiana Rattazzi, the head of enterprise technology marketing at WeWork. WeWork, with almost 10 billion dollars in financing to date, also counts major corporations and startups among its hundreds of thousands of customers. The firm is reportedly the largest leaseholder in New York, London, and Washington DC and has a footprint in almost a hundred other countries.

Eli and Christiana, thank you for joining us. Just to start, if you can share with our listeners about yourselves, a little bit about where you’re from and how you got into marketing, that’d be great.

Christiana Rattazzi: Happy to lead off. I’m actually from the Bay Area, go Warriors and I was pre-med through college and really thought I was going to go to med school and as I started studying for the MCAT, really discovered that that was what the path was going to be like.

One where you spend a lot of time in the library and maybe you weren’t up for it later and I wasn’t sure I wanted to sign up for that but I wanted to be at a company and being able to speak about a product that I was passionate about. And so that got me into cleantech, as I started my career, actually in cleantech, in marketing because I really loved to write and I love to tell stories.

So that was the beginning of my career and it’s been a great ride since then.

Devani: And what about yourself?

Eli Staykova: I came to the Bay Area in 2006 so I’ve been living here for the past thirteen years, it’s been quite the ride. I came here for the business school at the GSB, Stanford, and I started my career in finance, so I worked for IFC, International Finance Corporation, then for UBS in their LBO group, and I thought that you know after that I would stay in finance.

However, after Stanford I decided to work and live here in San Francisco and it’s so hard to be in the Bay Area not working in tech so I eventually joined the tech world. I work for Apple in their corporate finance team and I recently made the switch back in February at the new company Brex.

Devani: Very cool. These are two very exciting companies, two companies that do a lot of marketing, probably have very sophisticated marketing operations at least that’s what I would assume from the outside.

For the folks who are listening, who maybe don’t know much about marketing, can you help us understand at a very high level, the marking operation in your company. What are the different departments or roles, the different things that are just the nuts and bolts of how it works?

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | ‘The Operators’: Experts from WeWork and Brex talk marketing – Getting the most bang for your buck

Vymo, a New York-headquartered startup that operates an eponymous mobile-first service to help salespeople manage their leads and get more work done, has raised $18 million in a new financing round to expand its footprint in the U.S. and other markets.

The Series B round for the six-year-old startup was led by Emergence Capital, a VC firm that focuses on enterprise cloud firms. Existing investor Sequoia India also participated in the round. Vymo has raised more than $23 million to date.

Vymo serves as a CRM (customer relationship management) solution and also works with other popular CRMs such as Salesforce. The service helps salespeople automatically capture their business calls, visits, messages, emails, calendar and the engagement levels to better track and manage their leads, Yamini Bhat, co-founder and CEO of Vymo, told TechCrunch in an interview.

The ease is crucial for salespeople. “CRMs have existed for more than a decade. But they still see under 15% to 20% day-to-day adoption,” Bhat explained. “Salespeople don’t actively log their activities into the CRM, which creates management challenges. People don’t know which deal will close and when it will close.”

Research and advisory firm Gartner said in a report that “field representatives aren’t going to ‘live’ in [sales force automation systems]…that ship has sailed.” In contrast, more than 75% of Vymo’s registered users log in and take actions on the app every day. Vymo’s offering also looks at a salesperson’s activities to identify what is working best for them and makes recommendations for “high-value activities” to other members based on that.

Vymo, which employs about 100 people, has amassed over 40 enterprise customers, including life insurance firms AIA Group and AXA, in seven nations. More than 100,000 salespeople use Vymo’s service. The startup will use the fresh capital to expand its business in many parts of the world and also begin operations in the U.S. market, Bhat said.

“With its exceptionally high user adoption metrics and steadily expanding user base — 100,000 salespeople at over 40 global enterprises and counting — Vymo is delivering transformational value. It’s the kind of company we at Emergence love partnering with — one that stands to drastically improve the day-to-day work lives of millions of people,” Jake Saper, a partner with Emergence Capital, who joins Vymo’s board as part of the financing, said in a statement.

Shailesh Lakhani, managing director of Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said, “As early partners, we’ve seen Vymo grow rapidly across all metrics, but most importantly in avid adoption by mobile-first workers at some of the largest global enterprises. Vymo is uniquely positioned to become the standard by which sales and distribution is run in these institutions.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Vymo raises M to help on-the-go salespeople do more

NakedPoppy co-founders Jaleh Bisharat and Kimberly Shenk are an impressive duo. Bisharat, the startup’s chief executive officer, is a commanding presence and a bona fide marketing savant. The perfect compliment to Shenk, a reticent and data-focused chief product officer.

Together they’re building a cosmetics startup, NakedPoppy, where people can purchase high-quality “clean” makeup, or sustainable, ethically-made and cruelty-free products produced without harmful chemicals. It launches today with $4 million in venture capital backing from top investors, including Cowboy Ventures (the seed-stage fund led by Aileen Lee), Felicis Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Maveron, Polaris Ventures and Slow Ventures.

“Conventional makeup is considered hazardous waste by the EPA,” Bisharat tells TechCrunch. “You can look better and go clean.”

But NakedPoppy isn’t just another website for buying makeup. Like all companies today, it’s a tech company. NakedPoppy’s patent-pending personalization algorithm helps customers quickly find makeup that matches or complements their skin tone. To do this, customers are asked to complete a three-minute assessment and submit a photo of their wrist, which is used to pinpoint their base skin color.

“I’m not the person that is up to trends or is keeping up with the YouTube stars,”  NakedPoppy’s product chief Shenk tells TechCrunch. “When I walk into Sephora my stomach drops … I am the kind of woman that wants to set it and forget it. Just give me the right thing and let’s move on.”

Bisharat adds that NakedPoppy targets the busy woman: “The one for whom it’s not entertainment to go shopping for makeup.”

The NakedPoppy team hopes its algorithm expedites the makeup shopping process for those who view the task as a chore not a hobby. Accounting for skin type, skin color, skin undertone, age, eye color, hair color, allergies, sensitivities and more, the startup presents each customer a filtered and tailored list of the 400 items its carries, ranging from lipsticks to foundation to blush and more. Cosmetic chemists screen all NakedPoppy products to ensure they were made with only clean ingredients.

Alongside its official launch, NakedPoppy is announcing its debut original product: Liquid eyeliner. The product was screened and tested by a number of clean beauty experts and even a VC: “This is a hero product, no doubt about it,” BBG Ventures’ managing partner Susan Lyne said in a statement. Lyne, of course, is a NakedPoppy angel investor. “Most eyeliners start drying out after a few weeks and get harder to apply. This one is still as supple as the day I got it. It looks natural, lasts all day and washes off easily with soap. It’s pretty perfect.”

For the record, I tried out the NakedPoppy eyeliner too and can attest to its greatness.

NakedPoppy co-founders Jaleh Bisharat (CEO, left) and Kimberly Shenk (CPO, right).

The women behind NakedPoppy, as I alluded to earlier, know what they’re doing. In fact, I’d go as far as to say they could’ve paired their marketing and data science expertise to build just about anything. Makeup, however, was their shared passion.

“For us, it’s a personal passion and an area of information asymmetry, like most people know that with the food you eat, you should try to eat organic or as healthy as you can, but you’d be surprised how few women — they just assume the FDA protects them,” Bisharat said. “The idea is to educate the world and help women move toward new solutions.”

Bisharat got her start in marketing two decades ago. Shortly after the e-commerce giant went public, she served as the vice president of marketing at Amazon . A career peak for many, Bisharat went on to lead marketing efforts at OpenTable, Jawbone, UpWork and, most recently, Eventbrite, where she met Shenk.

Before moving into the private sector, Shenk got her start as a data scientist in the U.S. Air Force, ultimately ending up as the director of data science at the now-public ticketing and events business, Eventbrite .

Bisharat and Shenk remained mum on what marketing tactics they’ll deploy to capture the attention of potential customers. Will they partner with social media influencers to spread the word? Double down on Instagram ads? Open brick-and-mortar shops? They wouldn’t say. Additional original products are definitely in the works, though, as is a foray into skincare and ultimately, a full-fledged dive into all self-care products.

The hope is to making buying clean makeup easy. Historically, the big makeup brands have been owned and operated by one of a dozen or so large companies dominating the space. Increasingly, however, direct-to-consumer brands and startups, most notably Glossier, have attracted customers that prioritize ease-of-access.

As the beauty industry adjusts, an influx of digital-first upstarts, NakedPoppy included, will be poised to steal market share from the long-reigning giants. Perhaps NakedPoppy’s push toward transparency in ingredients and production will encourage the big brands to do the same.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | NakedPoppy launches curated beauty marketplace for wellness junkies

The company called Blockchain is mostly known for its cryptocurrency wallet. Today, the company is also launching an exchange so you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies without going through a third-party exchange.

The company’s exchange is called The Pit, and is focused on mainstream adoption and ease of use. It is available in 200 countries, with support for a handful of cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies.

When it comes to depositing money in your account, The Pit currently supports USD, EUR and GBP via bank transfers. You can then buy and sell a handful of crypto assets — BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC, USDT and PAX.

Behind the scenes, Nicole Sherrod has been heading the product for a year. She worked at TD Ameritrade and E*Trade in the past. And the company has opted for dedicated servers instead of a more traditional public cloud infrastructure, such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.

The startup is waving trading fees for the first 30 days. After that, in addition to spread, you’ll pay 0.24% in taker fees if you trade less than $100,000 per month, and 0.14% in maker fees. Fees get lower after that threshold, but you should probably consider an OTC desk for large transactions.

That’s 0.01 percentage point lower than Coinbase Pro fees, 0.02 percentage point lower than Kraken fees if you trade less than $50,000 per month and on par with Kraken fees if you trade between $50,000-$100,000. Binance fees are lower, but I don’t think The Pit and Binance address the same market.

Integration with Blockchain wallets will foster adoption compared to other companies starting an exchange from scratch. Blockchain users have created 40 million wallets so far. And those users can connect to The Pit using their Blockchain account. The company has developed a new Blockchain Connect API for this feature.

Disclosure: I own small amounts of various cryptocurrencies.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Blockchain (the company) launches an exchange (The Pit)

Techstars, a startup accelerator founded in 2006, has plans to double down on international growth with a new investment.

SVB Financial Group, the holding company of Silicon Valley Bank, led the $42 million round in Techstars, with participation from Foundry Group.

With $500 million AUM, Techstars is both a fund deploying capital to early-stage upstarts and an operating business nearing $100 million in annual revenue. Its latest equity investment, announced this morning, will fuel the latter, helping Techstars accelerate its global expansion efforts.

“Expect to see Techstars continue to expand more rapidly, not just in North America and Europe, but also throughout Asia, Latin America, Australia and more,” Techstars founder and co-chief executive officer David Cohen tells TechCrunch.

Cohen adds the company will also use the fresh funds to grow Techstars Studio, where it builds and launches its own companies; Techstars Ecosystem Development, which helps communities grow and sustain startup economies; Techstars Talent, where it lists available startup roles and more.

Techstars currently runs 49 accelerator programs in 35 cities in 16 countries. Known for backing a number of companies, including Plated, ClassPass, SendGrid and PillPack, Techstars invests roughly $80 million into 490 new startups per year.

“We have a model that is working consistently,” Cohen adds. “We’re helping entrepreneurs succeed all over the world. In turn, this is creating a better future for everyone. We owe it to entrepreneurs everywhere to bring the power of the Techstars network to their doorstep. We believe that talent is equally distributed around the world, but the opportunity is not. It’s on us to continue to grow our network for the benefit of current and future generations of entrepreneurs around the world.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Techstars nabs M to expand its global presence