The rise of the internet has given every company the chance to be a global company. But as a founder, growing from your garage to the worldwide markets can be tricky business.

That’s why we’ve assembled a panel of top-tier experts to talk through the peaks and pitfalls of scaling strategies at Disrupt Berlin in December.

I’m very pleased to announce that Holger Seim, founder and CEO of audio startup Blinkist, Karoli Hindriks, founder and CEO of Jobbatical, and prominent Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn will be joining us at the show, which runs December 11 and December 12.

Holger Seim founded Blinkist in 2012. The learning service condenses the information and knowledge found in nonfiction books and repackages that info into small text or audio packets. The company charges $12.99/month for a subscription, with a steep discount for those who pay annually. Today, Blinkist has customers in more than 150 countries. Seim brings experience from his time at Deutsche Telekom, where he focused on digital growth and partnership initiatives.

Karoli Hindriks, CEO and founder of Jobbatical, brings a wealth of experience on the topic of scaling, not only from growing her own startup’s footprint, but by the very nature of the company itself. Jobbatical offers reliable relocation for folks joining high-growth tech companies, handling the nitty gritty of immigration on behalf of employers, including visa documentation and residence permits. Hindriks, a native of Estonia, also led the launch of seven television channels in Northern Europe, including National Geographic channels and MTV. In short, Hindriks knows how to cross borders, from tech talent to products.

Last, but certainly not least, we’ll have Sophie Alcorn, founding partner of Alcorn Immigration Law, to round out the panel. The firm was one of the fastest-growing immigration law firms in Silicon Valley. Alcorn can help founders understand the complexities of immigration and how they can leverage different immigration options to secure key talent. Alcorn can also inform investors of the things to look out for when ensuring founders can legally build companies in the U.S.

Join us in Berlin at TechCrunch Disrupt to hear more from our experts on how to scale your company globally. Tickets are available right here.

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Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Learn how to scale your startup globally at Disrupt Berlin

The founders of Seattle-based Modus cold-emailed Pete Flint, the founder of Trulia and a current managing partner at the venture capital firm NFX, for months, to no avail. In a last-ditch effort, Alex Day, Jai Sim and Abbas Guvenilir sent one more message to the investor whose real estate listings tool sold to Zillow in 2014 for $3.5 billion. They were at a coffee shop below his San Francisco office, was he interested in meeting?

Fortunately for them, he was.

Modus co-founders Abbas Guvenilir (left), Jai Sim, Alex Day (right)

Modus, a real estate startup focused on title and escrow services, is today announcing a $12.5 million Series A financing co-led by NFX’s Flint and Niki Pezeshki of Felicis Ventures. Liquid 2 Ventures and existing backers, including Mucker Capital, Hustle Fund, 500 Startups, Rambleside and Cascadia Ventures, also participated in the round.

“The first revolution in online real estate was transforming the research experience, the next revolution in the industry is transforming the transaction,” Flint said in a statement.

Modus launched in 2018 with a focus on Washington (state) real estate opportunities. The startup, led by former employees of a nearly defunct lunch delivery company, Peach, has developed software to help both agents and home buyers navigate the home closing process, which, unlike many other real estate experiences, has yet to receive a boost of innovation from startups building in the sector. That’s why Modus started with an emphasis on escrow services, though the team’s long-term vision, they explain, is to power all real estate transactions.

“When you think about communication, you think of Gmail; when you think of traveling, you think of Uber. We want to be synonymous with home closing,” Sim, the company’s executive chairman, tells TechCrunch.

Day, Modus’ chief executive officer and former head of expansion at Peach, says Modus has ambitions of becoming a sort of operating system for real estate, or “like what Stripe is for payment processing, we want to become for real estate transactions.”

Since closing its Series A financing in May — the team waited until now to make its financing information public — Modus has increased its headcount to 50 employees across product, engineering and operations. Their goal now is to provide their software to home buyers in 15 to 20 states over the next two years. To support expansion efforts, Modus plans to raise a Series B in the second or third quarter of next year.

Modus previously raised $1.8 million in seed funding.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Trulia founder Pete Flint backs real estate startup Modus