Browsing Tag: Startups

One of China’s most ambitious artificial intelligence startups, Megvii, more commonly known for its facial recognition brand Face++, announced Wednesday that it has raised $750 million in a Series E funding round.

Founded by three graduates from the prestigious Tsinghua University in China, the eight-year-old company specializes in applying its computer vision solutions to a range of use cases such as public security and mobile payment. It competes with its fast-growing Chinese peers, including the world’s most valuable AI startup, SenseTime — also funded by Alibaba — and Sequoia-backed Yitu.

Bloomberg reported in January that Megvii was mulling to raise up to $1 billion through an initial public offering in Hong Kong. The new capital injection lifts the company’s valuation to just north of $4 billion as it gears up for its IPO later this year, sources told Reuters.

China is on track to overtake the United States in AI on various fronts. Buoyed by a handful of mega-rounds, Chinese AI startups accounted for 48 percent of all AI fundings in 2017, surpassing those in the U.S. for the first time, shows data collected by CB Insights. An analysis released in March by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence found that China is rapidly closing in on the U.S. by the amount of AI research papers published and the influence thereof.

A critical caveat to China’s flourishing AI landscape is, as The New York Times and other publications have pointed out, the government’s use of the technology. While facial recognition has helped the police trace missing children and capture suspects, there have been concerns around its use as a surveillance tool.

Megvii’s new funding round arrives just days after a Human Rights Watch report listed it as a technology provider to the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, a police app allegedly used to collect detailed data from a largely Muslim minority group in China’s far west province of Xinjiang. Megvii denied any links to the IJOP database per a Bloomberg report.

Kai-Fu Lee, a world-renowned AI expert and investor who was Google’s former China head, warned that any country in the world has the capacity to abuse AI, adding that China also uses the technology to transform retail, education and urban traffic among other sectors.

Megvii has attracted a rank of big-name investors in and outside China to date. Participants in its Series E include Bank of China Group Investment Limited, the central bank’s wholly owned subsidiary focused on investments, and ICBC Asset Management (Global), the offshore investment subsidiary of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

Foreign backers in the round include a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, and Australian investment bank Macquarie Group.

Megvii says its fresh proceeds will go toward the commercialization of its AI services, recruitment and global expansion.

China has been exporting its advanced AI technologies to countries around the world. Megvii, according to a report by the South China Morning Post from last June, was in talks to bring its software to Thailand and Malaysia. Last year, Yitu opened its first overseas office in Singapore to deploy its intelligence solutions to partners in Southeast Asia. In a similar fashion, SenseTime landed in Japan by opening an autonomous driving test park this January.

“Megvii is a global AI technology leader and innovator with cutting-edge technologies, a scalable business model and a proven track record of monetization,” read a statement from Andrew Downe, Asia regional head of commodities and global markets at Macquarie Group. “We believe the commercialization of artificial intelligence is a long-term focus and is of great importance.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Alibaba-backed facial recognition startup Megvii raises 0 million

SoFi is one of the leading fintech startups to emerge from San Francisco and breach the financial markets. Originally started as a way to better finance student debt, it has since expanded to include products targeted at personal loans and home loans.

Today, the company announced a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) product focused on the gig economy. GIGE, which trades on Nasdaq, is an actively managed fund advised by Toroso Investments that allows investors to capitalize on this hot sector of the economy. Toroso offers a range of services around creating and managing ETFs.

The company also announced the creation of an ETF focused on high-growth stocks. That ETF, which trades as SFYF on the NYSE, is designed to identify and capture the growth of the top 50 of the 1,000 largest publicly traded issues.

It has formerly used that growth focus to create two ETFs, targeting 500 high-growth companies under the trading name SFY and a product it called “SoFi Next 500 ETF,” which trades under SFYX, both of which have no management fees.

SoFi’s SFYF fund is composed specifically of public companies that show the strongest growth on three key metrics: top-line revenue growth, net income growth  and forward-looking consensus estimates of net income growth.

For its GIGE fund, SoFi defines the “gig economy” as a group of companies that “embrace and support the workforce in which employment is based around short-term engagements that allow for flexibility and personal freedom and temporary contracts.”

SoFi’s new funds add value to investors primarily through providing 1) access to industry disruptors at 2) an earlier-stage point in their growth cycle.

In recent years, more and more investors have been trying to get a piece of the hottest tech companies earlier with a growing number of traditional institutional investors now dipping their toes into startup and tech investing.

Furthermore, a number of platforms and funds were launched to support the high-demand for access to some of the top public and private companies and major disruptive trends, including funds focused on themes such as artificial intelligence, big data, cybersecurity or the next manufacturing revolution.

SoFi argues that its GIGE fund offers compelling value due to the speed at which it offers investors access to new equity issues, as the fund is structured so that most post-IPO companies can join the GIGE within 31 days of IPO, relative to the 60-90 days traditional passive funds that often have to wait to add a newly IPO’d company.

Additionally, because SoFi’s GIGE fund is actively managed, SoFi is also offering fund investors access to experienced asset managers and an alternative to algorithmic, machine-led passive funds that have increasingly dominated the capital markets.

“Our members are excited by high-growth and gig economy companies because these companies are in many cases part of their lives,” said SoFi CEO Anthony Noto in a press release. “We’re giving our members a way to get started investing by buying what they know and investing in themselves.”

The announcement is the company’s latest step in its attempt to further establish itself under the new guard of CEO Anthony Noto, formerly of Goldman Sachs, who replaced former head Michael Cagney in 2018, as the company looks to move further away from dark clouds in its past established by lawsuits, sexual harassment claims, FTC penalties and chunky rounds of layoffs. In the past week, the company also announced that CMO and former COO, Joanne Bradford, will be leaving the company at the end of May, though the split was reportedly long-planned and amicable.

The launch of SoFi’s new investment products also comes just weeks after the company was reportedly in discussions to raise $500 million from the Qatar Investment Authority.

To date, SoFi has raised roughly $2 billion in venture capital, according to data from Crunchbase, with backing from a number of Silicon Valley and Wall Street heavy hitters, including SoftBank, Silver Lake Partners, Morgan Stanley, Founders Fund and a host of others.

Already at a valuation of nearly $4.5 billion, according to PitchBook, SoFi appears well on its way to an eventual IPO. Noto, however, noted in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance that “an IPO is not a priority at this point” for SoFi as the company remains focused on executing on a high-quality sustainable growth path.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | SoFi launches gig-focused ETF

HeyJobs, a three year-old Berlin startup that helps large employers scale recruitment, has raised $12 million in Series A funding.

The round is led by Notion Capital, with participation from existing investors Creathor Ventures, Rocket Internet’s GFC, and newly re-branded Heartcore Capital.

Founded in 2016 and launched the following year, HeyJobs aims to tackle the recruitment problem European employers are facing due to steep declines in available workforce as the so-called the “boomer” generation nears retirement (this is seeing Germany alone losing 500,000 workers annually, apparently).

The HeyJobs platform leverages machine learning in an attempt to make high skilled recruitment more scalable. It promises to match talent with job profiles and draw in the best candidates via targeted marketing and a “personalized application and assessment flow”.

“We use a fully automated technological approach to help candidates find jobs and companies find employees,” says HeyJobs co-founder and CEO Marius Luther.

“For example, we deploy multiple machine learning algorithms to find the right potential candidates for a specific role (asking ‘who are the most likely candidates for an intensive care nurse role in East London?’). Our technology then makes sure candidates see the job proposal on channels such as Facebook, Instagram, job platforms and across the web”.

In addition, Luther says that HeyJobs’ personalized assessment ensures that the company only delivers high quality, hireable candidates to employers, something he dubs as “predictable hiring” at scale.

“Our clients are typically the talent acquisition teams of employers with high volume recruitment needs,” he explains. “In Germany, 8/10 largest employers (by headcount) are our clients. Typical industries would be logistics (i.e. DPD, UPS), retail (i.e. Vodafone) & hospitality (i.e. h-hotels, Five Guys). However our real customer is the non-academic job seeker who is looking for a job that will help him/her live a more fulfilling life — be it by being paid more, switching to better employment conditions or finding a job closer to home”.

To that end, HeyJobs says it is now serving over 500 enterprise clients including United Parcel Service, PayPal, FiveGuys, Vodafone, and Securitas. The company generates revenue via a range of business models, from subscription to per-hire success fees.

“The cost per hire is typically a fraction of what clients would pay job boards on a per-post basis or what they would pay to staffing firms on a per hire basis,” adds the HeyJobs CEO.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | HeyJobs, a ‘talent acquisition’ platform out of Berlin, raises M Series A

Indian edtech startup CollegeDekho, which helps students connect with prospective colleges and keep track of exams, has raised $8 million in Series B round.

The new financing round for the four-year-old Gurgaon-based startup was led by its parent company Girnarsoft Education and London-based private equity investor Man Capital, which also participated in the startup’s Series A round last year.

Ruchir Arora, founder and CEO of CollegeDekho told TechCrunch in an interview that the startup will use the capital to expand its presence in more schools and also begin connecting students with international educational institutions. The startup, which has raised $13 million to date, will also ramp up its research and development efforts.

CollegeDekho, hindi for search for college, maintains a website that helps students identify the right career choices for them. The website has a chatbot that answers some of the questions students have while logging their responses and other website activities such as the kind of colleges they are searching for on the platform, their preferred location and budget.

Arora said the startup, which also has about 3,000 call centre representatives and counsellors, builds profiles of students to make college recommendations. He said each month the site observes more than five million sessions from students. Last year, more than 8,000 students used CollegeDekho to take admission in a college.

Parents in India, a country of 1.3 billion people with not the best literacy record, see education as an upward mobility for their children. Each year, more than six to seven million students go to a college. But because of a range of factors that can include cultural stigma, many students end up choosing wrong path and thus don’t excel in college. Indeed, many students ultimately don’t pursue the subject they are best suited for, Arora said, and that’s where CollegeDekho aims to make an impact.

Most high school students in India often gravitate toward engineering or medical college, as a result of which, each year India produces many engineers and doctors who struggle for years to find a job. Arora said his startup looks at more than 2,000 career paths a student could pursue.

What works in favor of Arora is that the country will continue to turn out millions of students each year who will be looking to go to a college soon. It also helps that CollegeDekho is operationally profitable, Arora said, adding that it generates about $3.2 million in revenue in a year. Any additional cash that the startup raises will go into its expansion, he said.

CollegeDekho charges a nominal fee from students, and also takes a cut when they join a college. More than 36,000 educational institutes are listed on CollegeDekho. The startup also works with more than 400 colleges to conduct an exam for direct admission, and there too it earns a cut.

India’s education market, estimated to be grow to $5.7 billion by next year, has emerged as a lucrative opportunity for startups and VCs alike. Bangalore-based Byju’s, which helps millions of students in India prepare for competitive exams, raised $540 million from Naspers and others late last year. Unacademy, which like Byju’s offers online tutoring to students, has raised more than $38.5 million to date.

A legion of other education startups today are vying for the attention of students in the nation. Noida-based AskIITians, not much far from the offices of CollegeDekho, aims to help school-going students prepare for medical and engineering exams. Extramarks, also based in Noida, operates in the same space as AskIITians. Reliance Industries, owned and controlled by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, bought 38.5 percent stake in the startup three years ago.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | India’s edtech startup CollegeDekho raises million to connect students with colleges

In 2019, it’s estimated that every minute there are 150 new websites coming online. While many of these won’t be long-term ventures, a large percentage will eventually find themselves looking to organic search engine traffic to grow their reach.

This invariably leads people to the task of keyword research; uncovering the search terms most likely to result in prospective customers.

With increased competition it’s imperative you don’t just focus on the traditional sources of keyword inspiration that every other business uses.

In the past year alone I’ve personally helped hundreds of business owners grow search engine traffic to their websites. This responsibility drives me to succeed in one key area: Finding relevant search terms to target that their competitors have likely missed.

In this article, I will highlight some of the most overlooked ideas and sources of data to reveal words and phrases relevant to your business that are high in intent but lacking in competition.

If you can find the keywords your audience are searching for, but your competitors haven’t found, you can leverage a huge advantage to increase traffic and engagement on your content.

Table of Contents

1. Be Open to Talking About Your ‘Best’ Competition
2. Use [Brand Alternatives] Search Terms to Gain Visibility
3. Find Content Opportunities in the ‘People Also Ask’ Box
4. Use Public Wikipedia Stats to See If a Term Is Worth Targeting
5. Quora’s Ad Platform Reveals Popular Search Terms Without Spending a Penny
6. Wikihow’s Public View Counts Are Great for Tutorial-Based Content Inspiration
7. Bonus Tip: ProductHunt Dominate ‘Alternatives’ Keywords: Make Sure You Have a Listing There
8. To Recap

1. Be Open to Talking About Your ‘Best’ Competition

Google is constantly improving their ability to understand searcher intent. That is, they know what people are looking for and the results that will satisfy those searches.

When it comes to any industry that offers products or services, one of the most common search queries is often some variation of “best [industry] [services / products]”.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Keyword research in 2019: Modern tactics for growing targeted search traffic

As medical devices move to networked technologies, securing those devices becomes increasingly important.

Regulators, seemingly late to the threat that unsecured medical devices posed, only began requiring protections for medical devices like pacemakers and insulin pumps two years ago, and since then new technology companies have leapt into the breach to begin providing security services for the healthcare industry.

Most recently, MedCrypt, a graduate from the most recent batch of Y Combinator companies, raised $5.3 million in a new round of funding, from investors led by Section 32, the investment firm founded by former Google Ventures partner Bill Maris.

Joining Maris’ firm were previous investors Eniac Ventures and Y Combinator itself.

“Internet-connected medical technology is entering the market at light speed, calling for devices to be secure by design, which leads to a heightened level of patient safety at all times,” said MedCrypt chief executive Mike Kijewski in a statement.

Securing patient data has been a longtime requirement for health technology companies, but both patient records and hospital networks are dangerously vulnerable to cyberattacks.

In 2018, more than 6 million patient records in the U.S. were exposed thanks to network intrusions and cyberattacks, according to the publication Health IT Security. And those were just in the 10 largest security breaches.

The healthcare industry has only managed to achieve 72% compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule for protecting patient data, according to an April report from CynergisTek.

Investors have recognized the problem and are investing more into companies focused on the healthcare market specifically. MedCrypt’s competition for these security dollars include companies like Medigate, which raised $15 million earlier this year.

While Medigate focuses on network security, MedCrypt is focused on securing devices themselves. Both security functions are critical, according to investors.

“With regulators appropriately taking a hard look at medical device security and the sheer growth in the number of devices being added to already complex clinical networks,” there is a significant opportunity for companies tackling medical device security, according to a statement from Dr. Jonathan Root, who has led several IT-enabled healthcare investments for USVP.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | As concerns over medical device security rise, MedCrypt raises .3 million

Shape Security has been helping big companies stay safe from fraudulent activities like password reuse and bot traffic on their publicly facing websites and apps. The company now wants to help smaller companies have that same type of protection, and today it announced a new cloud service called Connect aimed at that market.

“We’re an enterprise-focused company that protects the majority of large U.S. banks, the majority of the largest airlines, similar kinds of profiles with major retailers, hotel chains, government agencies and so on. We specifically protect them against automated fraud and abuse on their consumer-facing applications — their websites and their mobile apps,” Shuman Ghosemajumder, Shape Security CTO explained.

The company has taken that same type of protection and packaged it for smaller businesses. “What we’re doing with the new product, which is called Connect, is automating those aspects which we have provided with the high-end [product], and are making it easier to deploy and run,” Ghosemajumder said.

He said that they get protection against the same kind of high-end, automated fraud that the large enterprise customers get, as well as protection against DDoS attacks, scraping and so on.

The company is best known for stopping the act of credential stuffing, a sophisticated kind of strike where attackers continually try to get onto a website or app using stolen usernames and passwords. In addition, they tend to use a variety of computers and IP addresses to mask the attack. In fact, Sumit Agarwal, who is co-founder and chief operating officer at Shape, coined the term when he was working at the Department of Defense in a previous position before he helped launch the company.

A product like Connect can help expand Shape’s market by moving beyond the large enterprises that have been its primary target up until now. While it provides a similar level of service, it delivers it in a way that makes it easier for these smaller organizations to consume, while still enabling them to take advantage of the advanced security techniques that would typically be out of their reach.

Shape Security was founded in 2011, but spent several years developing the core product before emerging from Stealth in 2014. It currently has 300 employees and has raised $132 million, according to Crunchbase data. The most recent round was $26 million in November.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Shape Security’s latest product protects smaller businesses from credential stuffing

After spending a decade working at international design and branding agencies, Kristine Arth launched her own independent branding agency called Lobster Phone last April. Since then, she’s launched 22 brands under her unofficial tagline “I don’t sleep.” Lobster Phone, however, is all about creating iconic brands with bold personality, which Kristine passionately delivers to her clients. We spoke to Kristine about her branding philosophy, the story behind the name Lobster Phone, and why she loves working with founders.

On working with founders:

“My specialty is people, honestly. I don’t find that I focus in any category, field, or particular segment of an industry is my focus. My specialty is working with people and understanding their background because entrepreneurs have a very different outlook on life. They will climb that mountain at all costs, and I feel very similarly. My sign is Capricorn, I’m a goat. So I will always climb to the top of that mountain. I feel very in line with entrepreneurs in that way because I want to help them do their best work.”

On common startup mistakes:

“Entrepreneurs will come to me and say, “I want a logo, I want a campaign, I want this.” And I will say, you need a brand, you need strategy, you need a foundational promise to sell to your clients. And with that foundational brand strategy and a flexible brand, we’ll get what you want. The common mistake is to come with a solution versus coming in with the problem.”

Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup brand designers and agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.

The Interview

Yvonne Leow: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into branding?

Kristine Arth: I originally thought I was going to be a ceramist. I went to school at Columbia in Chicago, and studied ceramics for about half a semester before I discovered the computer lab, and was like “Oh my God, everything is happening so fast there, this is amazing. It’s for me.” So I quickly moved into graphic design and never looked back. I started in advertising and marketing, and worked in Chicago for about 10 years at Leo Burnett, Wunderman, and then moved out to San Francisco to start fresh. Fuseproject, a top industrial design and branding agency, reached out to me, had me come in for an interview and the rest is history.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Verified Expert Brand Designer: Kristine Arth

Founded in late 2013, OnePlus did the impossible, coming seemingly out of nowhere to take on some of the biggest players in mobile. The company has made a name by embracing a fawning fan base and offering premium smartphone features at budget pricing, even as the likes of Samsung and Apple routinely crack the $1,000 barrier on their own flagships.

OnePlus’ history is awash with clever promotions and fan service, all while exceeding expectations in markets like the U.S., where fellow Chinese smartphone makers have run afoul of U.S. regulations. The company’s measured approach to embracing new features has won a devoted fan base among Android users.

Over the past year, however, the company has looked to bleeding-edge technology as a way forward. OnePlus was one of the first to embrace In-Display fingerprint sensors with last year’s 6T, and has promised to be among the first to offer 5G on its handsets later this year.

CEO Pete Lau formed the company with fellow Oppo employee Carl Pei. The pair have turned the company into arguably the most exciting smartphone manufacturer in the past decade. OnePlus has big plans on the horizon, too, including further expansion into the Indian market and the arrival of its first TV set in the coming year.

At Disrupt SF (which runs October 2 to October 4), Lau will discuss OnePlus’ rapid accent and its plans for the future.

Tickets are available here.

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Source: Tech Crunch Startups | OnePlus CEO Pete Lau will discuss the future of mobile at Disrupt SF

Sitting silently with your eyes closed isn’t fun, but it’s good for you… so you probably don’t meditate as often as you’d like. In that sense, it’s quite similar to exercise. But people do show up when prodded by the urgency and peer pressure of scheduled group cycling or aerobics classes. What’s still in the way is actually hauling your lazy butt to the gym, hence the rise of Peloton’s in-home stationary bike with attached screen streaming live and on-demand classes. My butt is particularly lazy, but I’ve done 80 Peloton rides in four months. The model works.

Now that model is coming to mindfulness with the launch of Journey LIVE, a subscription iOS app offering live 15-minute group meditation classes. With sessions starting most waking hours, instructors that interact with you directly and a sense of herd mentality, you feel compelled to dedicate the time to clearing your thoughts. By video and voice, the teachers introduce different meditation theories and practices, guide you through and answer questions you can type in. Each day, Journey also provides a newly recorded on-demand session in case you need a class on your own schedule.

” ‘I tried Headspace’ or ‘I tried Calm .’ With a lot of the current meditation apps, people go on but they drop off very quickly,” says Journey founder and CEO Stephen Sokoler. “It means that there’s an interest in meditating and having a better life but people fall off because meditating alone is hard, it’s confusing, it’s boring. Meditating with a live teacher who can connect with you and say your name, who makes you feel seen and heard makes a huge difference.”

Journey subscriptions start at $19.99 per month after a week-long free trial. That feels a bit steep, but prices drop to $7.99 if paid annually with the launch discount, or you can dive in with a $399 lifetime pass. The challenge will be keeping users from abandoning meditation and then their subscription without resorting to growth hacking and annoying notifications that are antithetical to the whole concept. Journey has now raised a $2.4 million seed round led by Canaan and joined by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Betaworks and more to get the company rolling.

Sokoler’s own journey could set an example of the possibilities of sticking with it. “Meditation changed my life. I was fortunate enough to move to Australia, find a book on Buddhism, and then I had the willpower to start practicing meditation every day,” he tells me. “I lost 85 pounds. People ask me how I lost the weight and they expect me to say a diet like keto or Atkins, but it was because of the program I was in.” Suddenly able to sit quietly with himself, Sokoler didn’t need food to stay occupied or feel at ease.

The founder saw the need for new sources of happiness while working in employee rewards and recognition for 12 years. He built up a company that makes mementos for commemorating big business deals. Meditation proved to him the value of developing inner quiet, whether to inspire happiness, calm, focus or deeper connections to other people and the world. Yet the popular meditation apps ignored thousands of years of tradition when meditation would be taught in groups that give a naturally ethereal activity more structure. He founded Journey in 2015 to bring meditation to corporate environments, but now is hoping to democratize access with the launch of Journey LIVE.

“You could think of it as a real-life meditation community or studio in the palm of your hand,” Sokoler explains. Instructors greet you when you join a session in the Journey app and can give you a shout-out for practicing multiple days in a row. They help you concentrate on your breath while giving enough instruction to keep you from falling asleep. You can see or hide a list of screen names of other participants that make you feel less isolated and encourage you not to quit.

Finding a market amidst the popular on-demand meditation apps will be an uphill climb for Journey LIVE. While classes recorded a long time ago might not be as engaging, they’re convenient and can dig deep into certain styles and intentions. Calm and Headspace run around $12.99 per month, making them cheaper than Journey LIVE and potentially easier to scale.

But Sokoler says his app’s beta testing saw better retention than competitors. “If you’ve ever been to the New York Public Library, there’s so many books versus going to a local curated bookstore where something is right there for you. This is much more approachable, much more accessible,” Sokoler tells me. “There’s a paradox of choice, and having so many options makes it hard for people to stick with it and come back every single day.”

With our phones and Netflix erasing the downtime we used to rely on to give our brain a break or reflect on our day, life is starting to feel claustrophobic. We’re tense, anxious and easily overwhelmed. Meditation could be the antidote. Unlike with cycling or weightlifting, you don’t need some expensive Peloton bike or Tonal home gym. What you need is consistency, and an impetus to slow down for 15 minutes you could easily squander. We’re a tribal species, and Journey LIVE group classes could use camaraderie to lure us into the satisfying void of nirvana.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Journey launches its real-time group ‘Peloton for Meditation’