In 2019, the global fertility services industry was estimated to be worth $14.8 billion with demand driven by the significant growth in the median age of first-time mothers, according to a Research & Markets report.

Gina Bartasi, founder and CEO of NYC-based fertility center Kindbody, has pointed to macroeconomic trends responsible for the industry’s consistent growth, such as the increase in single mothers by choice and the fact that “heterosexual couples are waiting to have children and waiting to get married, and more and more same-sex couples are having children, which is relatively new.”

Regardless of the increasing demand, disasters can disrupt fertility services: On March 17, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine directed U.S.-based fertility clinics to avoid initiating new treatments, push back nonemergency surgeries and shift care to telemedicine.

Now reopened, it’s undeniable that COVID-19’s national impact could alter the space as different types of crises have in the past. In looking back, we can find a better understanding of what the future holds.

After the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, a University of Louisville study found that there was “a prompt and significant increase in births and birthrates in the post-9/11 period” in New York City. Relatedly, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005 and created the nation’s costliest natural disaster, it was also one of five times since 1987 that frozen embryos were evacuated and protected during a natural disaster.

According to a study done by University of Wisconsin, “following Katrina, displacement contributed to a 30% decline in birth cohort size. Black fertility fell, and remained 4% below expected values through 2010. By contrast, white fertility increased by 5%.” The communities were so ravaged that the area’s Black population has remained substantially smaller.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Demand for fertility services persists despite COVID-19 shutdowns

After what felt like winter, investors say startup deals are back on — although the numbers suggest they never stopped. As Semil Shah of Haystack VC phrased it in a blog post, “It’s game on, pandemic or bust.”

This is good news for founders and big funds, but the investment landscape becomes more complicated when it comes to up-and-coming venture capitalists. “My impression of the current mood amongst traditional limited partners is that most have slowed down considerably in terms of net new investments, new relationships,” Shah told TechCrunch.

So rebound or not, we’re in a volatile time, and first-time fund managers are looking for unique ways to de-risk themselves.

One route: Put liquidity up high in your pitch deck. Moore Ventures, a new fund focused on investing in diverse teams working on sustainability, is experimenting with an unconventional fund structure. Instead of traditional ventures where returns come from multiple rounds of financing and an exit either through acquisition or IPO, Moore is concentrating on successful liquidity strategies throughout a portfolio company’s life.

Constant commercialization, if it works, could be music to a limited partner’s ears.

“Some will fall into the licensing model, some will be developing the product and then selling the design and manufacturing process to an existing company before expanding marketing and sales. Only if a company has the ability to expand its product base and scale will we plan to commercialize through the traditional company development process,” said Darius Sankey, a general partner at Moore Ventures.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | How first-time fund managers are de-risking

Does your elevator pitch lack traction? Could it do with a serious makeover? We’re here to help. Tune into Pitchers & Pitches, an interactive pitch-off and feedback session, on July 1 at 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT. This event is 100% free — simply register here to attend.

Pitchers & Pitches — part pitch-off, part masterclass — features startups (all exhibitors in Digital Startup Alley during Disrupt 2020) delivering their best 60-second pitch to a panel of judges. The panel for this session consists of two TechCrunch editors — Jordan Crook and Kirsten Korosec — and two VCs — Matthew Hartman of Betaworks Ventures and Dayna Grayson of Construct Capital.

The panel will critique each presentation, offer advice and suggest ways to forge a pitch for the ages. Take their tips, adapt them your specific situation and get ready to super charge your elevator pitch.

Note: The Pitchers & Pitches webinar series is free and open to all, but only companies that purchased a Disrupt Digital Startup Alley Package are eligible to pitch. We randomly chose these startups to compete on July 1st:

Cognidna – provides DNA insights on cognitive traits, helping parents make more informed educational decisions for their children.

Munch – a digital platform for restaurants designed to create better customer experiences.

Flexlane – an online wholesale marketplace that transforms the way local retailers in Asia buy for their stores.

Bitsensing – aims to design future safety in the era of Autonomous Vehicles.

What’s a pitch-off without a prize? One pitching startup will win a consulting session with cela. cela connects early-stage startups to accelerators and incubators that can help them scale their businesses.

And while the judges evaluate and provide feedback, it’s the virtual audience (i.e. you) who determines the ultimate winner. That said, everyone who attends the event comes away with a stronger pitch and stands a greater chance of catching investor attention. Win-win.

Keep your startup focused and on track. Register for Pitches & Pitchers and join us next week, July 1 at 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT. If you want to be eligible to pitch your startup at Pitchers & Pitches, purchase your Digital Startup Alley ticket and opt in to being considered for our fourth installment of Pitchers & Pitches.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Register for next week’s Pitches & Pitchers session

When we announced the formation of The TechCrunch List last week, we had no idea what response we would get to our proposal for founders to recommend their “first-check” investors. While plenty of founders over the years have told us that they wanted such a database to rely on or to refer to other founders who are raising for the first time, there is always something nerve-wracking about launching a new product and waiting for feedback.

Well, the TechCrunch community came through, since in just a few days, we’ve already received more than 500 proposals from founders recommending VCs who wrote their first checks and who have been particularly helpful in fundraising and getting a round closed.

If you haven’t submitted a recommendation, please help us using the form linked here.

The short survey takes five minutes, and could save founders dozens of hours armed with the right intel. Our editorial team is carefully processing these submissions to ensure their veracity and accuracy, and the more data points we have, the better the List can be for founders.

We’ve gotten quite a few questions about this new initiative, so we wanted to answer some common queries.

First check into each round: We want to know who wrote the first check that helped catalyze a round at each stage of a startup. So it’s okay to submit a name for each round.

Only one recommendation per early-stage round: We are holding the line on only allowing one name per round though. We realize that party rounds are not uncommon at the angel and seed stages, but a list of 30 people who all “led” a round is precisely what we are trying to avoid with the List. So keep the recommendations to one name, please, or if you can’t, it’s best not to recommend anyone at all.

Deadline: There is no single deadline. We intend to publish a first draft of the list in the next two-three weeks, so earlier submissions are more likely to be processed in time for the draft list. Our goal with The TechCrunch List is to make it an up-to-date and living product, and so we intend to update it regularly with new information as we learn it. So it’s a rolling deadline.

Founders only: While we certainly appreciate VCs offering to humbly submit their own names for consideration, we really want to hear from the founders themselves who did the fundraise. Feel free to reach out to your founders to submit — many firms have already done so if our early data is any indication.

People not firms: We are obsessed about moving beyond firm brand names and instead identifying individual partners on recommendations, since ultimately, founders work with a person and not a brand.

Weighting: We’ve been asked how we are “weighting” the submissions. The simple answer is that we are (mostly) not weighting them. In addition to fact-checking and verifying each submission, our main consideration is a basic assessment of a startup’s quality — what was the size of the round, has it raised any follow-on financing and any other public displays of performance. The TechCrunch List isn’t assessing investor quality (there are plenty of other lists in our industry for that), but rather assessing the willingness of an investor to write a “first check.”

Keep submitting those names, and reach out to us if you have any questions.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Raising VC is tough. Submit your investors today to our first-check database, The TechCrunch List

At a time when IT has to help employees set up and manage devices remotely, a service that simplifies those processes could certainly come in handy. Apple recognized that, and acquired Fleetsmith today, a startup that helps companies do precisely that with Apple devices.

While Apple didn’t publicize the acquisition, it has confirmed the deal with TechCrunch, while Fleetsmith announced the deal in a company blog post. Neither company was sharing the purchase price.

The startup has built technology that takes advantage of Apple’s Device Enrollment Program, allowing IT departments to bring devices online as soon as the employee takes it out of the box and powers it up.

At the time of its $30 million Series B funding last year, CEO Zack Blum explained the company’s core value proposition: “From a customer perspective, they can ship devices directly to their employees. The employee unwraps it, connects to Wi-Fi and the device is enrolled automatically in Fleetsmith,” Blum explained at that time.

Over time, the company has layered on other useful pieces beyond automating device registration, like updating devices automatically with OS and security updates, while letting IT see a dashboard of the status of all devices under management, all in a pretty slick interface.

While Apple will in all likelihood continue to work with Jamf, the leader in the Apple device management space, this acquisition gives the company a remote management option at a time when it’s essential with so many employees working from home.

Fleetsmith, which has raised more than $40 million from investors, like Menlo Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Upfront Ventures and Harrison Metal, will continue to sell the product through the company website, according to the blog post.

The founders put a happy face on the deal, as founders tend to do. “We’re thrilled to join Apple. Our shared values of putting the customer at the center of everything we do without sacrificing privacy and security, means we can truly meet our mission, delivering Fleetsmith to businesses and institutions of all sizes, around the world,” they wrote.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Apple has acquired Fleetsmith, a startup that helps IT manage Apple devices remotely

Startups don’t come with instructions — a fact that inspired us to create TC Early Stage 2020, a two-day online event packed with workshops designed specifically for early-stage startup founders. It’s the closest thing you’ll find to a blueprint for DIY success, and it all goes down on July 21-22.

Early-bird pricing remains in effect for just three more days. Buy your Early Stage 2020 pass before the offer expires on June 26 at 11:59 pm (PT) and you’ll save $50.

Early Stage 2020 offers more than 50 breakout sessions covering topics and issues that every pre-seed through Series A founder faces. You won’t just sit on your couch and listen — these workshops are engaging and interactive.

What keeps you up at night? What next step have you put off because you’re feeling paralyzed or uncertain? Whether it has to do with your pitch, term-sheet construction, fundraising, hiring practices, developing a tech stack, growth marketing or product management, you’ll get your burning questions answered.

We’re limiting these sessions to about 100 people each, they’re available first come, first serve, and they’ll fill up quickly. Buy your pass, check the growing list of workshops and sign up to secure the topics you want most. Videos of all the sessions will be available on demand to ticket holders after the event.

Here’s a glimpse of the great sessions waiting for you at Early Stage 2020.

How to raise a successful Series A with Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo: Raising money is all in the details, and no one knows those details better than Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo. Hear from these two seasoned experts about how to craft the perfect pitch deck — Hoffman will dive deep on his annotated LinkedIn Series B pitch deck, while Guo breaks down exactly what she looks for. With consumer and enterprise fields equally represented, these two should offer a wealth of strategic information around how to successfully raise a Series A.

How to draw up your first contracts and other legal tips with Moonshot Legal’s Adam Zagaris: Hear from James Alonso, partner at Magnolia Law, on the ins and outs of company formation and financing. Companies that are off to the races can learn from Adam Zagaris, partner at Moonshot Legal, as he breaks down the process of creating commercial contracts and managing transactions. This is a great 360-overview of the legal side of running a startup.

Take advantage of your professional blueprint and tune in to TC Early Stage 2020 on July 21-22. Take advantage of early-bird savings, buy your pass before June 26 at 11:59 pm (PT) and save $50 in the process.

Is your company interested in sponsoring TC Early Stage? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Source: Tech Crunch Startups | 3 days left to save on virtual founder workshops at TC Early Stage 2020

The productivity software space is filled with niche startups designing premium tools with very particular customers in mind. On the flip side, a growing class of startups is beginning to focus more on simplifying life for companies with subscription fatigue, offering more all-in-one platforms that handle several facets of workplace productivity.

ClickUp belongs to the latter camp, selling a $5 per month per user plan (billed annually), that people access to task management software, docs and wikis, chat, and integrations with a host of other popular tools. It’s a robust set of tools that is malleable depending on the task at hand.

“So, normally you have chat, that’s separate from your task manager, that’s separate from your docs and wikis, that’s separate from your OKR software.” CEO Zeb Evans tells TechCrunch. “So ClickUp is all of those applications in one, but also a highly flexible interface that allows for teams of all sizes and types to work on it.”

The startup tells TechCrunch that they’ve closed a $35 million Series A round led by Craft Ventures with participation from Georgian Partners. Craft’s David Sacks is joining the company’s board as part of the raise.

This is the startup’s first outside capital. Evans says the startup will use the funding to begin paid marketing and localizing the product to different languages and user geographies. Furthermore, the company’s leadership is looking to scale the team aggressively, hoping to grow from its current staff of 100 to 500 employees by year’s end.

Image Credits: ClickUp

The startup prides itself on iterating quickly and offering customers new features on a weekly basis, an element of the culture that Evans hopes it can accelerate by expanding the team. Today, the company is showcasing Remote Work OS, a bundle of tools that gives users a better snapshot of what everyone’s working on and how that work fits inside broader company goals.

The platform joins a host of other bottom-up productivity suites aiming to infiltrate companies one team at a time before scaling across them. Evans says the company has more than 100,000 customers and “millions” of users. Some of the teams currently using ClickUp sit inside orgs including Google, Nike, Uber, Airbnb, Netflix and Ubisoft.

On the pricing side, the company offers a free plan with limited storage and a $5 per month per user unlimited plan. From there, the startup offer features like single sign-on and automations inside a $9 per month per user business plan (also billed annually).

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Productivity platform ClickUp raises million from Craft Ventures

More than a year after Amazon announced that it would be lead a $575 million investment into UK food delivery startup Deliveroo, the country’s competition regulator, the CMA, has finally announced that it has provisionally cleared the deal, without any additional remedies (that is, requests to alter the terms), saying that it does not pose any threats to potential competition. The investment, which gives Amazon a 16% stake in Deliveroo, is now being opened up to views and feedback from interested parties one more time, due by July 10, before announcing its final decision on August 6.

The decision only relates to this investment, not to further financial tie-ups between the two, it added: “This decision reflects the 16% shareholding that Amazon is acquiring at the present time,” the CMA notes. “Were Amazon to acquire a greater level of control over Deliveroo, in particular by making a full acquisition of the company, this could trigger a further investigation by the CMA.”

Amazon and Deliveroo have not disclosed the value of its 16% stake, nor Deliveroo’s most current valuation. It was last valued at $1.92 billion in November 2017, and our sources tell us that the deal valued the company at around $2 billion (in other words, largely flat compared to its valuation in 2017) but that it’s likely that if it raised now it would probably be up at around $3 billion or more given business growth in recent months.

The deal comes about two months after the CMA initially indicated that it would be giving a nod to the investment, although — in a weird shift — in the interim period the reasons for approving it have changed.

Back in April, the CMA said that the impact of COVID-19 would have meant that without Amazon’s cash, Deliveroo would have gone bust. Now, however, it has changed its tune, saying that the impact of the health pandemic was not as strong as initially thought on the startup’s business.

Regardless, Stuart McIntosh, who chaired the CMA’s inquiry into the deal, noted other developments in the wider competitive landscape — remember that JustEat and Takeaway.com have now merged and will represent strong competition for Deliveroo and Uber Eats, the other big player — have meant that this deal will not have a negative effect on competition in the food delivery market, specifically competition between Deliveroo and Amazon themselves.

“The impact of the coronavirus pandemic, while initially extremely challenging, has not been as severe for Deliveroo as was anticipated when we reached our initial provisional findings in April,” he noted. “The updated evidence no longer shows that Deliveroo would exit the market in the absence of this transaction. This has required us to re-evaluate our initial provisional findings.

“We’ve carefully considered how this investment could affect competition between the two businesses in future. Looking closely at the size of the shareholding and how it will affect Amazon’s incentives, as well as the competition that the businesses will continue to face in food delivery and convenience groceries, we’ve found that the investment should not have a negative impact on customers.”

In a separate, much longer document detailing the CMA’s findings, it goes into a lot of detail of what competition between the companies on deliveries of food might look like — whether Amazon might ever re-enter into restaurant delivery, or whether Deliveroo might consider grocery delivery, and how having a stake in Deliveroo might impact Amazon’s taste for investing in a new operation. I have to admit, knowing what we know about the barrier to entry into food delivery, and how much consolidation is happening now, it seems like a red herring in terms of a line of inquiry, rather than asking what the impact might be for other large and smaller competitors, but that is where the CMA went:

“There is no evidence to suggest that Amazon is no longer interested in restaurant delivery or that it no longer expects it to be an important area providing benefits such as differentiation in its offering, flywheel effects for Prime, and enhanced logistical capabilities,” it notes.

The development caps off nearly a year of investigations by the Competition and Markets Authority, spurred initially by Labour MP Tom Watson, who had asked the CMA to either impose restrictions on the deal, or to block it outright, not just because of the impact it would have on the competitive landscape, but because of the trove of data Amazon would amass as a result of the deal,.

“It’s called surveillance capitalism,” he said at the time of Amazon’s approach to how it uses data from customers to build and sell products. “It’s a digital dystopia, and I shall be writing to the Competition and Markets Authority demanding they launch an investigation into this ‘investment.’”

The CMA then spent months looking into the numbers on the deal — which would have been Amazon’s only foray itself into ready-made food delivery in the UK, after it shut down its own homegrown effort, Amazon Restaurants, back in 2018 (around the time that it first started eyeing up Deliveroo). But that investigation took on several more twists in the last few months.

The first twist came in the form of COVID-19, which brought much of the economy to a grinding halt. While many have seen e-commerce and the sub-section of food delivery as two areas that could flourish — since people were significantly homebound and restaurants were closed — it appeared that in fact business seemed to be dragging, as people opted to reduce exposure even to contactless deliveries, leading to a big decline in demand.

That led the CMA to determine that “Deliveroo would have exited the market without [the Amazon investment], because of the negative impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on its business. The CMA considered that the imminent exit of Deliveroo would have been worse for competition than allowing the Amazon investment to proceed.”

However, Deliveroo made cuts (including 15% of staff) and on a closer examination, “Deliveroo’s finances shows considerable improvement in its financial position, reflecting, in part, changes which were not foreseeable during the early stages of the pandemic,” the CMA noted. This means that no Amazon deal would not have killed the company, so then attention turned to competition between the two businesses as a result of the investment.

The CMA said it surveyed 3,000 consumers, read submissions from third parties and examined internal documents from the two companies, and without going into detail of what kind of competition might ever exist in future between the two — especially considering that Amazon has already pulled out of food delivery in the UK — it determined that a deal wouldn’t preclude competition per se, based on Deliveroo’s interest in restaurant food delivery and Amazon’s existing business in grocery delivery, which in the UK currently includes both Amazon Fresh and a small Whole Foods footprint, but could potentially expand into more.

“This minority investment is good news for UK customers and restaurants, and for the British economy,” a Deliveroo spokesperson said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “As we have argued for the past year, since the beginning of the CMA’s investigation, the minority investment will enable British born, British bred Deliveroo to compete against well-capitalised overseas rivals and continue to innovate for customers, riders and restaurants. As the British economy recovers from the damage caused by COVID-19, a stable regulatory environment is critical. We therefore urge the CMA to conclude their review as swiftly as possible.”

More to come.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | UK’s CMA clears Amazon’s 16% Deliveroo stake, says COVID-19 impact less severe than initially thought

CapitalG, the growth equity arm of Alphabet, is doubling down on its bet on Aye Finance, an Indian startup that operates a digital lending platform for small businesses.

On Wednesday, the Gurgaon-based startup said it had raised $27.5 million in its Series E financing round led by CapitalG, which has also led one of its previous rounds. Existing investors LGT Lightstone, Falcon Edge Capital, A91 Partners and MAJ Invest also participated in the round, which brings the six-year-old Indian startup’s to-date equity funding to $91 million. According to a regulatory filing, Aye Finance is now valued at over $250 million.

Aye Finance caters to small businesses that need working capital but find it challenging or impossible to secure that from traditional lenders, such as banks. The startup said it had disbursed nearly $400 million to these businesses over the years.

Cutting checks to small businesses that banks won’t issue funds to is risky. Aye Finance, like scores of startups in South Asia such as Lendingkart, Capital Float, Indifi Technologies and InCred, says it utilizes statistical models and predictive analytics to determine the credit worthiness of borrowers.

The startup said it has helped more than 200,000 unorganized businesses to move to the formal lending ecosystem.

Sumiran Das, a partner at CapitalG and who also sits on Aye Finance’s board, said the startup’s use of “data science with physical presence in the field” and its underwriting methodology has positioned it to lead the market and tap the unaddressed demographic.

Sanjay Sharma, managing director at Aye Finance, said that the fact they have been able to close a major financing round at the height of a global pandemic “reinforces the value that our investors see in Aye Finance.”

“Difficult times are a true test of a good lender and we have already started showing significant improvements in the customer repayments in the past months,” he said, adding that Aye Finance has been able to secure more money than it needed to so that it has some financial cushion to steer through the pandemic.

The startup, which suspended disbursing capital to businesses in March, said it plans to resume lending small amounts of money to businesses starting next month to help them restart their operations. New Delhi announced a nationwide lockdown in late March, which forced most businesses to half their operations.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Alphabet’s CapitalG leads .5 million round in India’s Aye Finance