Browsing Tag: Startups

As the healthcare industry moves to value-based care, physician practices and health networks need to shift the things they bill for. Now it’s about maxing out patient “care” rather than the number of procedures physicians can perform.

In this move to a more high-touch, rapid communication world where doctors need to take (and document) every step to ensure that their patients stay on their medication, come in for their routine check-ups and receive follow ups on their initial visits, a service like Stellar Health that provides a checklist for practitioners looks really attractive to investors.

Indeed, the company is announcing a $10 million investment led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from previous investors Primary Venture Partners.

The two-year-old company did not say in a statement when the round closed, but it has been expanding significantly without the infusion of additional capital. It already is selling services in networks across 11 states. The new money will take the company’s operations to more states around the country and double the size of its team, according to a statement. By the end of 2020, Stellar Health expects to have customers managing care for at least 100,000 patients through its platform, according to a statement. 

“Stellar Health has the potential to transform healthcare by increasing the number of providers who successfully adopt value-based care models,” said Sri Chandrasekar, partner at Point72 Ventures. “They have developed a sophisticated and intuitive platform to drive VBC in the U.S. and we are excited to help them build on that momentum.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | A programmatic approach to managing healthcare services nets Stellar Health million

UpKeep, a mobile-first platform for maintenance and operations collaboration, has today announced the close of a $36 million Series B financing round. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Emergence Capital, Battery Ventures, Y Combinator, Mucker Capital and Fundersclub.

UpKeep was founded by Ryan Chan. Chan worked at Trisep Corporation, a chemical manufacturing company, before founding UpKeep and saw first-hand how plant maintenance was handled. Despite the fact that the plant had purchased software for facilities maintenance and operations, most of the data was written down on pen and paper before being input into the system because that software was desktop only.

The idea for UpKeep was born.

UpKeep meets maintenance workers where they are, which could be just about anywhere.

With any maintenance job, from changing a lightbulb in an office building to repairing a complicated piece of machinery on the floor of a manufacturing plant, there are usually three parties involved: the requester, the facilities manager, and the technician.

Before UpKeep, the requester would either send an email to the facilities manager or perhaps use some other software to let them know of the problem. The facilities manager would prioritize the various requests of the day and send out technicians to resolve them.

Technicians have to log plenty of information when they’re out on the job, but this usually involved writing this info down on paper and then returning to a desk to input the data into the system.

With UpKeep, the requester can use the app itself to notify the facilities manager of problems, or send an email that flows directly into the UpKeep system. Facilities managers use UpKeep to prioritize and assign issues to their team of technicians, who then receive the work orders right on UpKeep.

Instead of logging information on paper, these technicians can take pictures of the problem and note the parts they need or other details of the job right in the app. No duplication of effort.

UpKeep operates on a freemium model, allowing technicians to manage their own work for free. Collaborative use of the product across an organization costs on a per user on both an annual or monthly basis. The company offers various tiers, from a Starter Plan ($35/month/user) to an Enterprise Plan ($180/month/user).

Higher tier plans offer more in-depth reporting and analysis around the work that gets done. Chan explained that these reports are not necessarily about tracking people, though.

“Yes, we track technicians and it’s a tool to manage work done by people,” said Chan. “But a manufacturing facility really cares much more about the equipment. They can use UpKeep to manage things like how many hours of downtime a piece of equipment has, etc. It’s more targeted toward the actual asset and the equipment versus the person completing their work.”

Chan said that around 80 percent of the company’s 400,000 users are on the free version of the app. Some brands on the app include Unilever, Siemens, DHL, McDonald’s, and Jet.com. Chan said UpKeep saw a 206 percent increase in revenue in 2019.

Important to the company’s future, UpKeep is working with OSHA and a group called SQF (Safe Quality Food) to offer templates around best practices during the pandemic. Now, maintenance workers and facilities staffs have a whole new checklist around sanitation and safety that many businesses are just getting up to speed on. UpKeep is working to make these new practices easier to adopt by providing those checklists directly to facilities managers.

This latest funding round brings UpKeep’s total funding to $48.8 million.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | UpKeep raises million Series B to help facilities and maintenance teams go mobile

Krishna Rangasayee, founder and CEO, at SiMa.ai, has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He decided to put that experience to work in a startup and launched SiMa.ai last year with the goal of building an ultra low-power software and chip solution for machine learning at the edge.

Today he announced a $30 million Series A led by Dell Technologies Capital with help from Amplify Partners, Wing Venture Capital and +ND Capital. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $40 million, according to the company.

Rangasayee says in his years as a chip executive he saw a gap in the machine learning market for embedded devices running at the edge and he decided to start the company to solve that issue.

“While the majority of the market was serviced by traditional computing, machine learning was beginning to make an impact and it was really amazing. I wanted to build a company that would bring machine learning at significant scale to help the problems with embedded markets,” he told TechCrunch.

The company is trying to focus on efficiency, which it says will make the solution more environmentally friendly by using less power. “Our solution can scale high performance at the lowest power efficiency, and that translates to the highest frames per second per watt. We have built out an architecture and a software solution that is at a minimum 30x better than anybody else on the frames per second,” he explained.

He added that achieving that efficiency required them to build a chip from scratch because there isn’t a solution available off the shelf today that could achieve that.

So far the company has attracted 20 early design partners, who are testing what they’ve built. He hopes to have the chip designed and the software solution in Beta in the Q4 timeframe this year, and is shooting for chip production by Q2 in 2021.

He recognizes that it’s hard to raise this kind of money in the current environment and he’s grateful to the investors, and the design partners who believe in his vision. The timing could actually work in the company’s favor because it can hunker down and build product while navigating through the current economic malaise.

Perhaps by 2021 when the product is in production, the market and the economy will be in better shape and the company will be ready to deliver.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | SiMa.ai announces M Series A to build out lower-power edge chip solution

Sketchfab is enabling multiplayer mode today with a new Sketchfab for Teams feature. The startup lets you share 3D models with other people in your company so that they can view, edit and download models. It could be particularly useful for companies working on augmented reality products, video games or even e-commerce websites with 3D configurators or visualizations.

Sketchfab has been working for years on a 3D model viewer for web browsers. It now works really well on both desktop and mobile. You can also import and export 3D models in many different file formats in order to reuse them in your favorite tool or engine — Sketchfab can convert files for you. That’s why 3D artists have been using the platform to share their work but also to sell 3D models, just like on a stock photography site.

The new team feature is essentially a sort of Google Drive specifically tailored for 3D — instead of opening spreadsheets and documents, you open 3D models. For instance, people working in marketing or communications could use 3D models to showcase products.

Even if your company uses a cloud storage system, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, to share files across the organization, people who are not 3D designers don’t necessarily want to use Blender to check if it’s the right file. Combining a shared drive with Sketchfab’s viewing and sharing tools becomes a compelling use case.

Like traditional cloud storage systems, you can manage permissions on a file-by-file basis. For instance, you could allow someone in your company to edit a 3D model while the rest of the team can only view the item. It works pretty much like the sharing menu in Google Docs.

You can also use Sketchfab for Teams with external collaborators. You can invite contractors to upload 3D models to your Sketchfab account or, if you’re a 3D designer, you can share 3D assets with a client to let them review your work. And if you want to share your 3D assets publicly, you can embed models on your website or use it in a 3D configurator.

The other advantage of switching to Sketchfab for Teams is that you get a central repository for all your 3D files. You can search, filter your assets by polycount, format and size, inspect 3D models in your browser and convert assets to multiple file formats.

Sketchfab recently launched another feature that could become quite popular on e-commerce website. The company added an AR button in its viewer, which lets you use your iPhone or Android phone to view a 3D object at scale through your camera before buying it.

Thanks to recent iOS and Android updates, you don’t need to install an app. It leverages the USDZ and glTF file formats that are natively supported by iOS and Android, respectively.

The company is launching Sketchfab for Teams with clients paying for the Enterprise plan. Eventually, the startup plans to roll it out to customers with a more limited feature set (Premium and Business customers).

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Sketchfab launches team platform to share and collaborate on 3D models

The current state of our COVID-19 world has underscored more than ever before the need for reliable delivery and e-commerce services: consumers sheltering in place are shopping more than ever online and getting items brought directly to their homes; and retailers urgently need platforms that can help them manage, sell and bring their goods to those people via the web — for many now the only way they can do business. And businesses that are helping make those transactions work are doubling down.

DispatchTrack, which provides a platform for last-mile deliveries, specifically to help companies mimic Amazon-like experiences for themselves by planning and tracking deliveries more easily, has closed a $144 million investment, its first-ever funding after scaling up as a bootstrapped startup to support more than 60 million deliveries per year.

The funding is coming from a single, high-profile investor, Spectrum Equity. It is being termed by the company as an investment rather than an acquisition, although I’ll note here that PitchBook has also described it alternately as a leveraged buyout in its database.

DispatchTrack was founded in 2010 in San Jose by a husband and wife team — Satish Natarajan (now CEO) and Shailu Satish (now COO) — who also happened to work in tech, after the pair grew frustrated with how badly home delivery services worked for themselves.

DispatchTrack today works with retail and wholesale companies across a number of verticals including furniture and appliance businesses, food distributors, healthcare companies, consumer retailers, and building suppliers, as well as field service businesses and third-party logistics (3PL) providers that use DispatchTrack to power their services. The company equips its customers – including retailers, wholesalers, grocers, restaurants, food and beverage distributors, field service businesses, third-party logistics (3PL) companies and others

The platform itself is a kind of all-in-one logistics and delivery toolkit designed for ecosystems that include  physical storefronts, warehouses, drivers and end customers, which have a common thread running through them: the businesses are not fundamentally tech companies, yet may have staff who handle logistics; and they need technology to do their jobs — but don’t necessarily want to bring in more costly system integrators to develop or operate those systems on their behalf.

It includes features for managing routing and planning (including telematics and compliance), customer communication (including reservation systems for delivery slots), driver communication (via a mobile app), billing, social reviews, and omnichannel order tracking.

These services may not be the first that you think of when you consider products that you might buy to get delivered — you as a consumer are considering the product and its price and how fast you can get it, most likely — but they collectively constitute a huge part of the cost of providing the product, and typically are not done very well. (DispatchTrack cites CapGemini Research Institute that estimates that together they account for 41% of all supply chain costs.) It’s not the only company providing tools to fill these needs. Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, Amazon and many others also provide software to retailers, but DispatchTrack would argue that its solution is the more comprehensive and focused solely on delivery and logistics.

“We are thrilled to partner with Spectrum Equity in this new stage of our growth,” said Natarajan in a statement. “We built DispatchTrack to help businesses large and small provide superior delivery experiences, streamline operations and maintain coordination and transparency across all constituents in the last mile. With Spectrum’s support, we will continue our rapid pace of innovation and be able to bring best-in-class solutions to more businesses, industries and geographies.”

Choosing to pick up investment happened ahead of COVID-19 — it seems the first tranche of the funding was secured back in December 2019 — but it comes at a timely moment, when companies like Instacart are seeing all-time peaks of usage from customers who are no longer doing grocery shopping in physical stores because of the coronavirus outbreak. While DispatchTrack’s own trajectory was in place before now, this gives it an even stronger mandate to invest in growth.

“We look forward to supporting DispatchTrack’s commitment to solving complex problems by building elegant, powerful products that are easy to adopt, configure and scale,” said Vic Parker, MD at Spectrum Equity, in a statement. “The DispatchTrack platform is an exceptionally valuable solution for businesses that recognize the strategic imperative to optimize the delivery experience. We look forward to helping DispatchTrack transform the last mile for more businesses across categories and around the world.” Parker and Spectrum VP Adam Gassin are joining DispatchTrack’s board of directors with this investment.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | DispatchTrack, a last-mile logistics platform, raises 4M in its first-ever funding

PlayPlay, the Paris-based startup behind a video creation tool that enables comms, marketing and social media teams to produce high-quality video content “in minutes”, has raised €10 million in funding. Leading the Series A round is Balderton Capital, with participation from Point Nine, and Kerala Ventures.

Founded in 2017 by ex-Eurosport social media director Thibaut Machet, and former Eurosport colleagues, Aurélien Dayres and Clément Moracin, PlayPlay has set out to democratise video creation. The idea is to enable people without filming or editing skills to “harness the power of video” to inform and entertain audiences i.e. for content marketing and other business goal purposes.

“Video is the king of content on digital platforms (the most impactful, the most engaging etc.), but it’s very complex and expensive content to produce,” Machet tells me. “Thus, communications and marketing people know they should post more video, but they simply can’t. Today, they have only ‘bad’ options. Either they go through agencies that charge a lot and can create a lot of friction in the creation process. Or they can use online video makers, where the production value drastically drops, with very basic video quality, storytelling and branding”.

To solve this, PlayPlay’s design relies on three key pillars. First is the “extreme simplicity” of the product, which, Machete says, requires zero editing skills and no training. Second is the production quality of videos via PlayPlay’s motion design technology, which claims to reach agency standards in terms of animations, transitions, effects and so on. Third is “storytelling,” delivered through a library of 200 video templates designed for brands and organisations.

“There is a real ‘wahoo effect’ when people create their first video, usually, we hear them say ‘did I just create that by myself?!’, says Machet.

Typical PlayPlay customers are described as communication, marketing and social media teams in mid to large companies, brands and organizations.

“Big brands such as Axa, Heineken, and Orange use PlayPlay every day to feed their communities; their fans on Facebook and Instagram, stakeholders on Linkedin or employees on their website and intranets,” says the PlayPlay co-founder. “We also have clients using PlayPlay for their outdoor screen advertising (cities, shopping centres etc)”.

Although there are a myriad of video making tools at the lower end of the market, Machet says PlayPlay most directly competes with agencies that create high quality custom videos but are very expensive. In addition, there a few more high end tools, such as Wibbitz and Wochit.

“At PlayPlay, we offer the best of both worlds: a very simple product (no equivalent on the market) and the same video quality an agency offers,” he says.

Meanwhile, the SaaS business model is simple enough. Two pricing tiers are available. “Business” costs €200 per month/user. “Enterprise” starts at €500 per month/user. “Basically, for the price of one or two videos produced by an agency, our users can create unlimited videos for a year,” adds Machet.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | PlayPlay raises €10M to help brands easily produce ‘high quality’ video content

Construyo, a Berlin-based startup that offers a “holistic” project management service that connects the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, has raised €2 million in seed funding.

The round is led by Talis Capital, and follows €300,000 of previous backing from Florian Swoboda, founder of Liberty Ventures; Florian Leibert, founder of D2iQ, and Jan Kanieß, co-founder of Payone.

Founded in 2018 by Leonhard Jeub and Fabian Müller, Construyo’s mission is to bring the construction industry into the digital age. It does this with a mixture of project consultancy, project management software, and a marketplace/network of architecture, engineering and construction providers. The goal is to increase transparency, lower the cost, and increase efficiencies when renovating and building properties.

“Anyone who has built a house can tell how complicated and chaotic the process is,” says Construyo co-founder Leonhard Jeub. “There are many stakeholders involved and they are typically needed one after another. Nearly all projects struggle with inefficient sequencing of required services and an immense friction of information between everyone involved”.

For example, an architect might need information from a specialised engineer, but the engineer delivers that information weeks later. This then becomes a big problem as everyone further down the value chain is affected. Worse still, if the work subsequently carried out is based on an incorrect version of the plan, it can become pretty expensive.

To remedy this, Construyo has built a technology platform that connects homeowners and developers with “trusted professionals” from the AEC industry. “We capture all relevant information on a central platform, which allows for a smooth flow of data and information between professionals,” explains Jeub. “We leverage this data to help optimise project schedules, so projects can be finished on time and on budget. By allowing all stakeholders to communicate through our platform, we provide the single source of truth for construction projects”.

The idea is to provide a much greater level of transparency and connect different stakeholders so that they can more easily communicate with one another. In turn, there should be fewer delays, and lower costs, including those associated with building work overrunning.

With regards to competitors, Jeub concedes that there are other solutions that focus on matchmaking for the construction sector, but claims these still leave homeowners and developers left in the dark when it comes to managing their actual project. “Construyo provides end to end care to ensure that every project step becomes a success,” he says.

Meanwhile, the company’s revenue model sees it take a percentage of each transaction that is processed through the Construyo platform.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Construyo scores €2M to connect the architecture, engineering and construction industry

Small- to medium-sized businesses are one of the most important parts of Southeast Asia’s economy, but many have trouble securing growth capital from traditional financial institutions. Validus wants to fix the financing gap with its peer-to-peer lending platform, which connects accredited lenders with SMEs. The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised $20 million for its ongoing Series B+ round.

The funding was co-led by Vertex Growth fund and Kuok Group’s Orion Fund, which is managed by K3 Venture Partners. Returning investors in the round include FMO, the international development bank of the Netherlands; Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India; Openspace Ventures; AddVentures; and VinaCapital Ventures.

This brings Validus’ total raised to about $40 million since it was founded in 2015, including a $15.2 million Series B round announced last year.

After getting its capital markets services license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in December 2017, Validus launched services in Indonesia and Vietnam and says it has lent over $315 million to businesses so far. Its plans for its Series B+ round include expanding into Thailand during the last quarter of this year. Validus’ credit risk model analyzes information from invoices, contracts and cash flow.

Co-founder and COO Nikhilesh Goel says that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has seen more demand for short-term financing, with a 50% year-over-year increase for credit-approved unsecured loans over the past few months.

Despite the impact of the pandemic on small businesses, loan performance has held steady, he added, because Validus focuses on corporate vendor financing for SMEs whose end-buyers are large corporations or government-linked entities.

Validus also plans to provide financing to SMEs that are on the frontlines in the battle against COVID-19, including working capital for SMEs in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, and logistics and cleaning services.

“Through working closely with corporate partners and investors on the platform, we also aim to support SMEs who are pivoting their businesses to adapt to services and products that are required in this time,” Goel said. “In the last month, we have disbursed multiple such loans averaging $250,000 to $500,000, to support SMEs’ efforts in meeting the demand for face masks and other protective gear in short supply.”

In a press statement, MX Kuok of K3 Ventures said, “We are highly impressed by the leadership and depth of credit management experience at Validus. The team has demonstrated the unique ability to capture critical data points, combined with comprehensive machine learning capabilities, to identify high-potential SMEs that may have fallen through the gaps of the traditional banking model.”

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Southeast Asian lending platform Validus raises million for its Series B+ round

When Zach Sims first started pitching his coding startup, Codecademy, he framed it to investors as a corporate tutoring company. That was intentional, despite the fact that edtech is a $5 trillion business.

“It was much easier for investors to understand instead of an education company,” he said, noting that the industry has long been defined by tight budgets and slow sales cycles.

But, as millions adopt remote learning overnight, edtech’s reputation is changing — and investors are scrambling accordingly. The revitalization means that a new wave of edtech startups is upon us. We asked four entrepreneurs who have been working in this space to share what they think the next billion-dollar business will look like. While we’ve covered the investor side of edtech quite a bit, it was refreshing to hear from founders and executives who are on the ground making decisions:

• Matthew Glotzbach, CEO, Quizlet
• Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO and president, DreamBox Learning
• Darren Shimkus, general manager, Udemy for Business
• Zach Sims, co-founder and CEO, Codecademy 

How to sell: Classroom and outside the box

According to Matthew Glotzbach, CEO of Quizlet, “any edtech solution tailored toward schools and classrooms may find a significant headwind,” such as games or VR/AR headsets that need to be used within classroom settings. “Not because physical spaces are going away, but in this limited time, limited budget environment, teachers and administrators are going to spend their money on solutions that are more tailored toward distance.”

Startups should plan to be useful in both a pre-coronavirus and post-coronavirus world, likely hybridizing tech solutions that are useful for day-to-day classroom operations as well as remote learning.

How to reach scale: B2C or B2B? 

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | 4 edtech CEOs peer into the industry’s future

We recently interviewed Jon McNeill to learn more about his newest project, a startup studio called DeltaV Ventures. But we also wanted to hear about what it’s like to work inside of Tesla and Lyft.

McNeill spent two-and-a-half years as the carmaker’s president, heading up global sales, marketing, delivery and government relations before heading to Lyft in early 2018, where he served as COO for 18 months. (He left four months after the ride-hail company’s IPO last year.)

He shared his take on his experience at both places, and what, from each, he is using and eschewing at DeltaV. Our conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

TechCrunch: What was it like working with Elon Musk?

Jon McNeill: To me, it was fascinating. He’s the best practitioner of my craft as an entrepreneur. It’s hard to name another entrepreneur who has started four companies, all of which are worth more than $10 billion in market cap [and] several of which are worth more than $50 billion.

We were in hyper-growth mode, and there were no playbooks. Like, literally, when I started, the company had about $2 billion in annual run rate revenue, and three years later, it had $20 billion in annual run rate revenue. And there are no playbooks for that, so we were innovating constantly to either try to get ahead of that growth or just to keep up with it.

Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Former Tesla president and Lyft COO Jon McNeill on what both companies have gotten right and wrong