Browsing Tag: Startups

With roughly one million customers across Brazil and a new round of financing, the mobile phone insurance provider Pitzi now finds itself with a $100 million valuation.

The size of its latest round, which was led by QED Investors and included commitments from existing investors like Thrive Capital and Valiant Partners, was undisclosed.

PItzi acts as a reseller for insurance companies to offer products around mobile phone insurance across Brazil. Founded in 2012, the company’s mobile handset insurance offerings were a service that was in the right place at the right time, as low-cost handsets caused the market in Latin America’s most populous country to explode.

Pitzi previously raised $20 million from investors, including Thrive, Kaszek Ventures, Flybridge and DCM. Even with the company’s success, cell phone insurance in Brazil stands at 4%, compared with global standards of more than 40%. This despite the fact that there are more than 200 million phones in Brazil alone.

“Today, only 4% of smartphones here are protected but we’re driving that towards 90% in the coming years and using those phones to unlock even more transformation in the space,” said Daniel Hatkoff, founder and CEO of Pitzi, in a statement.

The investment by QED Investors puts Pitzi in some pretty good company when it comes to Latin American financial technology startups. Other Latin American investments in the firm’s portfolio include the multibillion-dollar credit card startup, Nubank; the personal finance lender, Creditas; the business lender, Konfio; and the rental financing company Quinto Andar.

As a result of the investment, Bill Cilluffo, a former president of Capital One International and a general partner with QED, will take a seat on the company’s board of directors, according to a statement.

For Hatkoff, the cell phone is a window into other products and services in the insurance industry thanks to the ways the device has transformed so many experiences for the emerging Brazilian middle class.

“The smartphone will be profoundly transformational in Brazil, allowing the emerging middle class to finally emerge and do things it never imagined possible,” said Hatkoff. “As market leaders, we at Pitzi are obsessed with unlocking the Brazilian consumer’s ability to use their phones in ever more powerful ways. Cell phone protection is just the beginning.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Brazilian mobile phone insurance technology startup Pitzi is now worth over 0 million

As the UK continues on its slow march to leave the European Union, a London-based startup that enables companies to work internationally has raised a huge round of funding from a strategic backer to expand its business. Ebury, which provides foreign exchange, money transfer and other currency services to small and medium businesses and their banking partners, has picked up £350 million (about €400 million, or $452 million) led by Spanish banking giant Santander. With the deal, Madrid-based Santander will become a majority shareholder at 50.1% but notes that Ebury will continue to operate as an independent entity.

Ebury and Santander said that the funding will be used to support Ebury’s growth, and specifically to scale its customer base in Latin America and Asia, while at the same time bolting on more modern services to Santander’s offerings as it seeks both to expand its revenues from existing customers and take on new ones.

Santander said that it has 4 million SME customers globally, and currently more than 200,000 of them do international business, while Ebury is already operating 19 countries and covers 140 currencies, with annual revenue growth of 40% in each of the last three years.

But putting to one side 4 million businesses, even providing services to 200,000 customers would be a big step up for Ebury: the company said that last year it processed £16.7 billion in payments for just 43,000 clients.

Santander said that its investment gives it a 50.1% stake in the company, but it is not disclosing total valuation. On a straight percentage, it would work out to about £700 million, or $902 million, but it sounds like the deal includes both primary and secondary investment — “£70 million will be new primary equity (approximately €80 million) to support Ebury’s plans to enter new markets in Latin America and Asia,” the companies note — and that could change the numbers. Santander is optimistic and said it expects a return on its invested capital in Eubury of higher than 25% in 2024.

Ebury’s existing investors and co-founders and management will also invest in the transaction. Past backers include 83North (formerly Greylock Israel) and Vitruvian Partners, among others. Founded in 2009, it has to date raised $134 million.

Services that Ebury currently provides include currency transfer and exchange, but it looks like there will be  more down the line. Just last month, Ebury announced that it had acquired another fintech called Frontierpay, which specialises in international payroll solutions. The deal is still going through regulatory approavals.

Many have lamented the fact that startups out of Europe find it hard to scale and grow and need to look to markets like the US for that kind of funding and support — often relocating in the process. Fintech is one of the big areas that bucks this trend.

Adyen built and still operates its successful online payments business out of the Netherlands; Revolut, Monzo and a wave of other so-called ‘challenger banks’ are revisiting what it means to provide banking services to consumers and businesses; and TransferWise — itself a major player in currency transfer services focusing both on individuals as well as businesses — are among the many that have scaled internationally out of Europe and have valuations in the billions.

Indeed, it’s competition from the likes of TransferWise that may have spurred Santander to invest in Ebury.

If bringing Ebury’s technology to the Santander platform will give the legacy bank a better way of competing in a market that’s seeing a lot of challengers at the moment, it also gives Ebury a stronger underpinning for those skeptical of doing business with a newer startup.

“Combining a big bank with nimble fintech means we can offer our clients the best of both worlds: they can benefit from our technology and high- quality service safe in the knowledge that they are counterparty to one of the world most important financial institutions,” said Juan Lobato and Salvador García, co-founders of Ebury, in a joint statement. “It is an exciting time for Ebury, we have just completed our first acquisition, and the new capital from Santander and our existing shareholders will allow us to invest in new ways to serve SMEs trading internationally and continue the growth in our business while keeping our entrepreneurial culture.”

Santander is not a stranger to making strategic investments in financial technology startups to grow its business, specifically by integrating or co-marketing those services alongside its own. It made an early strategic investment in Sweden’s iZettle, a Square competitor, that brought the startup into Latin America, and specifically as a co-provider of services to Santander’s customers in the region. Although it looked like iZettle could eventually get gobbled up by Santander, in the end, it was acquired by PayPal for $2.2 billion.

As with the iZettle investment, the focus for Santander here is on providing more services for SMEs, a huge sector that is fragmented and often overlooked and underserved against the bookends of mass-market consumer services and high-touch, high-end large enterprise services. The gap in turn becomes an opportunity.

“Small and medium-sized businesses are a major engine of growth around the world, creating new jobs and contributing up to 60% of total employment and up to 40% of national GDP in emerging economies,” said Ana Botín, Group Executive Chairman of Banco Santander, in a statement. “SMEs are becoming increasingly global and Santander is the best positioned bank to play a leading role to help them access global trade finance. By partnering with Ebury, Santander will deliver faster and more efficient products and services for SMEs, previously only accessible to larger corporates.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Ebury nabs £350M for foreign exchange and currency services for SMEs, Santander takes 50.1% stake

Heads up, startuppers. We’ve entered the final week of early bird pricing on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019. Place your procrastination on hold, because the deadline to save as much as €500 comes to an abrupt halt on 8 November at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Do yourself a saver-favor and buy your early-bird pass to Disrupt Berlin today.

We have two days packed with startup goodness waiting for you, and that includes our slate of speakers from every part of the early-stage startup ecosystem. Whether you want to learn more about raising funds, telling your startup story or learning more about advanced tech trends we’ve got you covered.

Here’s just a quick sample of the great speakers and discussions we have on tap. Check out the Disrupt Berlin agenda to find even more awesome topics and events.

What does it take to raise a Series A: Venture capital funds have boomed this decade, but raising money is still hard for young companies. Join us as Suranga Chandratillake (Balderton Capital), Jessica Holzbach (Penta) and Louise Dahlborn Samet (Blossom Capital) discuss what today’s investors look for in teams, metrics and products.

How to Win Customers and Influence Markets: Every startup is a story and the best stories can change the world. Three of Europe’s finest alchemists of allusion — Colette Ballou (Ballou PR), Joanna Kirk, (Joanna Kirk PR) and Katy Turner (Multiple) — will share their tips on how to be a signal in a world of noise.

Are We There Yet? Inside the Tech that Will Help AVs be Better Chauffeurs: Clare Jones, chief commercial officer of What3Words, will talk about the role of mapping and geolocation in autonomous vehicles and how this tech is already rolling out in human driven cars.

You certainly don’t want to miss the Startup Battlefield. This life-changing pitch competition has launched 857 startups that have gone on to collectively raise nearly $9 billion. Companies like Vurb, TripIt, Dropbox, Mint and more. Come and cheer on this year’s cohort and see who takes home the Disrupt Cup and the $50,000 prize. Who knows, you may see a unicorn in the making.

That’s the tip of the proverbial startup iceberg, folks. Disrupt Berlin offers so many ways to move your business to the next level, and you may as well save as much money as you can doing it?

You have one last week to grab your wallet, beat the deadline and save. Buy your early-bird pass to Disrupt Berlin before 8 November at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). We’ll see you in Berlin, baby!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Final week to score early bird passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019

Curve, the London-based “over-the-top banking platform,” has added support for Samsung Pay in the U.K., making it easy for Samsung smartphone owners to pay using their mobile phone, regardless of who they bank with.

The new feature is enabled by Curve’s ability to consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card. This means that once you register your Curve card with the Samsung Pay app, you can link any of your other Mastercard and Visa debit or credit cards too.

That’s potentially quite significant for Samsung customers because of the lack of Samsung Pay support from many of the major banks who prefer instead to build NFC-enabled payments into their own banking apps.

Unlike Apple, which tightly controls the iPhone’s NFC technology and therefore arguably forces banks to work with them, the NFC tech in Samsung and other Android phones can be accessed by third-party developers. This means there is less incentive for banks to support competing NFC apps, including digital wallets such as Samsung Pay and Google Pay.

Related to this, I’m hearing from sources that Curve may be adding support for Google Pay in the coming weeks. Apple Pay is also known to be in the works. The company declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the roll out of Samsung Pay follows Curve’s $55 million Series B round announced in June, which valued the company at $250 million. At the time, Curve said it would use the new capital to continue adding more features to its platform and for further European expansion.

Like a plethora of fintech startups, Curve wants to turn your mobile phone into a financial control centre that re-bundles disparate financial products or functionality to offer a single app to help you manage “all things money.”

However, rather than building a new current account — as is the case with the challenger banks such as Monzo, Starling and Revolut — Curve’s “attack vector” is a card and app that lets you connect all of your other debit and credit cards so you only ever have to carry a single card.

Now with Samsung Pay support, for NFC-enabled purchases you only need to carry your Samsung phone.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Curve, the ‘over-the-top’ banking platform, adds support for Samsung Pay

Welcome back to Max Q, our weekly look at what’s happening in space and space startup news. This week was a bit more quiet than usual coming off of the amazingly over-packed International Astronautical Congress, but there were still some big moves that promise a lot more action to come before they year’s over – particularly in the race to fly American astronauts to space on a rocket launched from American soil once again.

There’s also startup news, including how an entirely different kind of race – one to make stuff in space – could be a foundational moment that opens up entirely new areas of opportunity for entrepreneurs big and small.

1. SpaceX’s crucial parachute tests are going well

SpaceX needs to nail one key ingredient before its Crew Dragon missions can proceed apace with people on board. Actually, it has to nail quite a few, but parachutes are a crucial one, and it has been developing the parachutes that will help Crew Dragon float back safely to Earth for years not.

The third iteration is looking like the one that will be used for the first Crew Dragon missions with astronauts, and luckily, that version three system has now completed 13 successful tests in a row. That’s approaching the kind of reliability it needs to show to be used for the real thing, so this is good news for the current goal of putting astronauts on board early next year.

2. SpaceX and Boeing ready key milestone tests

SpaceX has another key test for Crew Dragon coming up as early as this week – a static fire of its capsule abort engines. This is a key test because the last one didn’t go so well. Also, Boeing will be doing their pad abort test as early as this week as well, which sets things up nicely for a busy time next year in crewed spaceflight.

3. How in-space manufacturing could prompt a space business boom

Launching stuff to space is expensive and really limits what you can do in terms of designing spacecraft and components. There’s been efforts made to reduce the costs, including SpaceX and Blue Origin pursuing reusable rocketry, but just building stuff up there instead of launching it could unlock much deeper cost savings – and new technical possibilities. (ExtraCrunch subscription required)

4. Changing the economics of satellite propulsion

Satellite propulsion has, until very recently, been almost entirely a bespoke affair, which translates to expensive and generally not accessible to startup companies who actually have to worry about stuff like burn rates. But Morpheus Space has a new “Lego-like” system for offering affordable, compact and scalable propulsion that can serve pretty much any satellite needs.

5. Dev kits for small satellites

Small satellite business is booming, and Kepler wants to make sure that developers are able to figure out what they can do with smallsats, so it’s offering a developer kit for its toaster-sized IoT communications satellites. Cooler than the Apple TV dev boxes that were on offer once upon a time.

6. Northrop Grumman launches ISS resupply mission

The ISS is getting a shipment of supplies and scientific material courtesy of a resupply cargo capsule launched by Northrop Grumman on Saturday. One thing on board is twelve containers of read wine, courtesy of startup Space Cargo Unlimited. I’ll have more info about that on Monday, so stay tuned.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Max Q: SpaceX and Boeing gear up for commercial crew mission tests

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about how SoftBank is screwing up. Before that, I noted All Raise’s expansion, Uber the TV show and the unicorn from down under.

Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.

Uber Head of Payments Peter Hazlehurst addresses the audience during an Uber products launch event in San Francisco, California, on September 26, 2019. (Photo by Philip Pacheco / AFP) (Photo credit should read PHILIP PACHECO/AFP/Getty Images)

The sheer number of startup players moving into banking services is staggering,” writes my Crunchbase News friends in a piece titled “Why Is Every Startup A Bank These Days.”

I’ve been asking myself the same question this year, as financial services business like Brex, Chime, Robinhood, Wealthfront, Betterment and more raise big rounds to build upstart digital banks. North of $13 billion venture capital dollars have been invested in U.S. fintech companies so far in 2019, up from $12 billion invested in 2018.

This week, one of the largest companies to ever emerge from the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem, Uber, introduced its team focused on developing new financial products and technologies. In a vacuum, a multibillion-dollar public company with more than 22,000 employees launching one new team is not big news. Considering investment and innovation in fintech this year, Uber’s now well-documented struggles to reach profitability and the company’s hiring efforts in New York, a hotbed for financial aficionados, the “Uber Money” team could indicate much larger fintech ambitions for the ride-hailing giant.

As it stands, the Uber Money team will be focused on developing real-time earnings for drivers accessed through the Uber debit account and debit card, which will itself see new features, like 3% or more cash back on gas. Uber Wallet, a digital wallet where drivers can more easily track their earnings, will launch in the coming weeks too, writes Peter Hazlehurst, the head of Uber Money.

This is hardly Uber’s first major foray into financial services. The company’s greatest feature has always been its frictionless payments capabilities that encourage riders and eaters to make purchases without thinking. Uber’s even launched its own consumer credit card to get riders cash back on rides. It’s no secret the company has larger goals in the fintech sphere, and with 100 million “monthly active platform consumers” via Uber, Uber Eats and more, a dedicated path toward new and better financial products may not only lead to happier, more loyal drivers but a company that’s actually, one day, able to post a profit.

VC deals

• IoT security startup Particle grabs $40M Series C
• Video news business Brut launches in the U.S. with $40M
• Crunchbase nabs $30M to become the ‘LinkedIn for company data’
• Muy raises $15M to expand its cloud kitchen concept
• Modus raises $12.5M for Pete Flint and others
• Quill gets $12.5M Series A to compete with Slack
• Fem tech business Inne secures $8.8M
• Oliver Space raises $6.8M to furnish your apartment
• Forecast raises $5.1M for its AI-powered project management software
• Capital gets $5M to help startups secure venture debt financings

Meet me in Berlin

The TechCrunch team is heading to Berlin again this year for our annual event, TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, which brings together entrepreneurs and investors from across the globe. We announced the agenda this week, with leading founders including Away’s Jen Rubio and UiPath’s Daniel Dines. Take a look at the full agenda.

I will be there to interview a bunch of venture capitalists, who will give tips on how to raise your first euros. Buy tickets to the event here.

Listen to Equity

This week on Equity, I was in studio while Alex was remote. We talked about a number of companies and deals, including a new startup taking on Slack, Wag’s woes and a small upstart disrupting the $8 billion nail services industry. Listen to the episode here.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast and all the casts.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Startups Weekly: Understanding Uber’s latest fintech play

Software development companies tackling services for niche industries, like commercial real estate subcontracting, continue to find Los Angeles to be fertile ground for development.

The latest company to raise funding from a clutch of investors is BuildOps, which raised $5.8 million in seed financing from some big names in the Los Angeles tech ecosystem.

Led by Fika Ventures, with additional investments from MetaProp VC, Global Founders Capital, CrossCut Ventures, TenOneTen, IGSB, 1984 Ventures, L2 Ventures, GroundUp, NBA all-star Metta World Peace, Oberndorf Enterprises, Wolfson Group and scouts from Sequoia Capital, the new financing will be used to support the company’s continued growth.

BuildOps sells software that integrates scheduling, dispatching, inventory management, contracts, workflow and accounting into a single software package for commercial real estate contractors with staff ranging from a few dozen to several hundred employees.

Software for the service industry is nothing new for Los Angeles entrepreneurs. The unicorn ServiceTitan hails from the greater Los Angeles area and a number of other software as a service businesses are calling the greater Los Angeles area home.

It’s hard to argue with the size of the commercial construction market. Over the past three years, commercial construction spending grew from $626 billion to $807 billion, according to data provided by the company. And while most large vendors — architects, general contractors and property management companies — have some project management software, the fragmented group of subcontractors that provide services to those customers has remained resistant to adopting new technologies, the company said.

The firm was co-founded by former ServiceTitan developer Neeraj Mittal; Microsoft, Nextag, Swurv and Fundly former executive Steve Chew; and Alok Chanani, who previously founded a commercial real estate company and was a former commander of a transportation unit of the Army in Iraq.

“At BuildOps, we are on a mission to bring a true all-in-one solution on the latest technology to the people who keep America’s hospitals, power plants and commercial real estate running. We are privileged to be working closely with some of the country’s top commercial contractors,” said Chanani.

That sentiment is echoed by Liquid 2 Ventures managing partner and former National Football League superstar, Joe Montana .

“Liquid 2 Ventures has an investment thesis in supporting America’s working class and I just love the idea of making their lives far easier and better. You have one solution that does it all and talks seamlessly to every single part of their business from parts to ordering to inventory and more,” said Montana in a statement. “There are very few world-class technology solutions for commercial subcontractors like this and we believe in the founders.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Los Angeles-based BuildOps, subcontracting software for real estate, raises .8 million

If you work for someone else, you likely know the drill: in comes that annual email reminding you that it’s time for unconscious bias or sexual harassment training, and if you could please finish up this mandatory module by this date, that would be terrific.

The email — not to mention the programming itself — is straight out of “Office Space.” Little surprise that when Anne Solmssen, a Harvard-trained computer scientist, happened to call a friend recently who was clicking through his own company-sponsored training program, his answer to how it was going was, “It’s more interesting when I have baseball on.”

Solmssen has some other ideas about how to make sexual harassment training far more interesting and less “cringe-worthy.” Indeed, she recently joined forces with Roxanne Petraeus, another Harvard grad, to create Ethena, a software-as-a-service startup that’s promising customizable training delivered in bite-size segments that caters to individuals based on how much they already know about sexual harassment in the workplace. The software will also be sector-specific when it’s released more widely in the first quarter of next year.

The company first came together this past summer led by Petraeus, who joined the U.S. Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to help defray the cost of her Ivy League education and wound up spending seven years in the U.S. Army, including as a civil affairs officer, before co-founding an online meals marketplace, then spending a year with McKinsey & Co. to get a better handle on how businesses are run.

Petraeus says that across her experience, and particularly in the Army, she had “great leaders” who were “thoughtful about their [reports’] development goals and what was happening in their personal lives, and brought out the best in their people, rather than making them feel less than or marginalized.”

Still, she was aware that from an institutional standpoint, most harassment training is not thoughtful, that it’s a matter of checking boxes on an annual basis to ensure compliance with different state laws, depending on where an organization is headquartered. She marveled that so much of the content employees are consuming seems “designed for a 1980s law firm.”

Solmssen was meanwhile working for a venture-backed public safety software company, Mark43. She was getting along just fine, too, but when a friend put the two in touch on the hunch that their engineering talent and vision could amount to something, that instinct proved right. “I wasn’t particularly interested in starting a business,” Solmssen says. “But I fell in love with Roxanne and this idea.”

So how is what they’re building different than what’s currently available? In lots of ways, seemingly. For starters, Ethena doesn’t want employees to “knock it out all at once” in an hour or two of training at the end of each year. Instead, it’s creating what it calls monthly “nudges” that deliver relevant studies and questions — information that can then be used in an all-hands meeting, for example, helping to reinforce its goals.

It’s also focused on sending content and questions to people that’s iterative and that evolves based on how an individual responds. A new hire might answer very differently than a sponsor of other women within an organization, for example. It’s a stark contrast to to the black-and-white scenarios that every employee is typically presented. (Think: “Judy and Brian go to a bar after work.”)

These subtleties are a significant development, argues Petraeus, because “traditional training implicitly tells employees that spending time together outside of work is bad for mentorship. It’s why you hear questions like, ‘I just hired my first female analyst; can I get into an Uber with her when we’re traveling?’” Turning every mixed-gender occasion into a potential minefield is “not the message we should be conveying.”

Yet it’s a message that’s being absorbed. According to a survey conducted earlier this year by LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey, 60% of managers who are men are now uncomfortable participating in a common work activity with a woman, such as mentoring, working alone or socializing together. That’s a 32% jump from a year ago.

According to that same survey, senior-level men are now 12 times more hesitant to have one-on-one meetings with junior women, nine times more hesitant to travel together and six times more hesitant to have work dinners together.

Even the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission thinks sexual harassment training has gone wrong somewhere, noting that it hasn’t worked as a prevention tool in part because it’s been too focused on simply avoiding legal liability. In fact, a few years ago, a task force studying harassment in the workplace on behalf of the EEOC concluded that “effective training cannot occur in a vacuum – it must be part of a holistic culture of non-harassment that starts at the top.” Similarly, it added, “one size does not fit all: training is most effective when tailored to the specific workforce and workplace and different cohorts of employees.”

Toward that end — and with compliance in mind — Ethena is also modernizing the content it delivers, including as it pertains to dating at work, which definitely happens; and inclusivity around pregnant colleagues, who are quietly marginalized; and transgender colleagues, who can also find themselves feeling either misunderstood or overlooked by current sexual harassment training materials.

There’s also a heavy focus on analytics. If 60% of employees don’t know about a company’s policies around office dating, for example, or employees in an outfit’s marketing department appear to know less about an organization’s values than other departments, Ethena will flag these things so managers can take preventative action. (“Say there’s a new manager in the LA office where employees seem to be answering less consistently,” suggests Solmssen. “We can provide additional training to get that person up to speed.”)

For Petraeus — who is the daughter-in-law of retired general and former CIA director David Petraeus — the overarching goal is to kill off mandatory yearly training where the takeaway for many employees, the fundamental standard, is, “Can I go to jail for this comment?”

It’s too soon to say if Ethena will be successful. It’s only halfway through a pilot training program at the moment. But Solmssen and Petraeus are strong pitchmen, and they say their software will be available beginning in the first quarter of next year for $4 per employee per month, which is on a par with other e-learning programs.

The startup has also won the support of early backers who’ve already given the months-old outfit $850,000 to start hiring. Among those investors: Neo, a venture fund started last year by serial entrepreneur Ali Partovi; Village Global; and Jane VC, which is a fund focused on women-led startups.

Numerous angel investors have also written Ethena a check, including Reshma Saujani, who is the founder of the organization Girls Who Code, and a handful of military veterans.

As for the last group, “they’re not a group that’s typically represented in startup ventures,” observes Petraeus, “but in terms of leadership and thinking about how to get a diverse team oriented around the same goal,” they’re hard to match, she suggests.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | This startup is making customized sexual harassment training that it says employees won’t hate (or forget)

The husband and wife co-founders behind the direct-to-consumer cookware and dinnerware startup retailer OurPlace are big believers in the notion that the doorway to inclusive communities opens through the kitchen. 

Amir Tehrani, the company’s co-founder and chief executive spent, his life in the cookware and kitchen business, while his wife, Shiza Tehrani, is the co-founder of the Malala Fund, supporting educational initiatives for young women around the world, and Now Ventures, an impact seed investment fund based in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles-based company is taking Shiza’s belief in social missions and the power of entrepreneurialism to transform communities, and Amir’s knowledge of the multibillion-dollar cookware and dinnerware business, to create a consumer-focused business that celebrates the culture surrounding cooking and uses it as a way to educate and inform — all while selling high-end pots, pans, plates and glasses to an audience of socially conscious consumers.

The project has received its initial capital from some pretty high-end backers. So far, the company has raised $2.35 million in financing from investors, including the venture arm of Los Angeles’ startup retail giant, FabFitFun and Will Smith’s Dreamers VC.

Two of the new products available from startup direct to consumer cookware and dinnerware brand OurPlace

The company’s initial line of dinnerware and cookware is manufactured in China and its glassware is manufactured in Thailand.

But the two executives have plans to source its future collections from artisans living in emerging markets around the world. “Our next collection is sourced from Oaxaca,” says Tehrani. “The Oaxaca line… it’s artisans making things out of their home. They’re making everything by hand and there’s no sophisticated machinery to speak of.”

The challenge, says Amir Tehrani, is to help these artisans begin producing products at scale, while staying true to the artisanal nature of the products.

Ultimately, the idea is to educate and inform consumers about the cultural context behind the products they buy, according to the company’s two founders.

There’s also a financial incentive to launch a direct-to-consumer brand, the founders say. It’s an industry that has yet to be disrupted by the technological innovations that have reshaped so many other retail markets, they say… and one that’s equally as large as the mattress industry.

By 2021, the cookware and dinnerware market is projected to be $12.7 billion, according to a study by Freedonia Focus Reports. By comparison, mattresses are about a $14 billion market in the U.S.

And it’s a market that Amir Tehrani knows well. His grandfather founded TableTops Unlimited, one of the largest white-label suppliers of kitchenware, cookware and dinnerware in the U.S. That experience is what brought investors like FabFitFun to the table.

“They understand our capabilities around the family business and they want to help bring it to their community as well,” says Amir Tehrani. “Aside from what they were already doing around fashion and cosmetics the largest opportunity they weren’t already doing was around cookware.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Backed by Will Smith and FabFitFun, OurPlace brings cookware and dinnerware direct to consumers

After inking what sources said was a nine-figure deal with the world’s leading supplier of collagen proteins, Gelita, the cell-based collagen maker Geltor is in the market for at least $50 million in new funding, TechCrunch has learned.

According to people with knowledge of the company’s plans, the new funding could range from $50 million to as much as $100 million.

The money would be used to scale up the company’s collagen manufacturing capacity as it preps for the long-term Gelita contract.

Geltor is one of a slew of companies developing technologies to culture proteins at scale as a way to supplement and ultimately replace animal-based proteins in manufacturing.

While other companies pursue meat replacements using cultured products, Geltor is focused on another aspect of the supply chain: the collagen and gelatin additives that are typically made from the waste materials left over from the meat industry.

Traditionally, gelatin is made by boiling skin, cartilage and bones from animals. The material finds its way into any number of cosmetics and foodstuffs thanks to its ability to act as a thickening agent.

The markets for collagen and gelatin are worth a combined $9 billion dollars, which is a pretty sizable market for Geltor to tackle.

Just as importantly, should the meat replacement industry take off, then replacements will need to be found for the secondary markets that had been supplied by the waste streams for traditional meat processing.

Geltor already sells an animal-free collagen under the “Collume” brand as a marine collagen, and “HumaColl21,” which is a human collagen. Both products are used in the skincare market.

The agreement with Gelita marks the company’s first move into food and beverage additives.

“Gelita’s decision to invest in biodesign technologies is a prime example of our commitment to innovation and satisfying market needs,” said Hans-Ulrich Frech, Gelita’s global vice president of Business Unit Collagen Peptides in a statement last month. “This addition to GELITA’s collagen portfolio will complement the already robust portfolio of scientifically substantiated Bioactive Collagen Peptides^®, which are key ingredients in foods and nutritional supplements for their protein content and physiological benefits.”

Meanwhile, for Geltor, the deal further proves out the company’s thesis that protein manufacturing can be a big business outside of the meat market that attracted players like Memphis Meats, Future Meat Technologies and other companies developing cell culture replacements for traditional animal husbandry.

“This pact further solidifies our view that we have entered a new era in how proteins are being utilized to improve products that consumers around the world use every day,” said Alexander Lorestani, the chief executive of Geltor in a statement. “Today, the market is ready and eager for premium offerings of protein ingredients, and this is the need that Geltor is serving.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | After signing a big food additive deal, cell-based protein company Geltor is looking for at least M