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| | | SPACs uniquely solve the funding problem for the most ambitious type of technology startup — those that needs huge amounts of money and potentially decades to realize deep-tech breakthroughs. That means we need to all get comfortable with them, despite the current backlash cycle. Or so argues Matt Johnson, who has seen both the finance and tech sides of the matter. As the CEO of a quantum computing startup, and as a former managing director at Apollo Management* (a private-equity firm that is, coincidentally now in the process of buying the entity that owns TechCrunch), he has lots of detailed reasons why: By merging with a blank-check company, startups can secure enough financing to continue building for many years while preserving the focused, streamlined culture that allowed them to get this far in the first place. When properly applied, SPACs also have the potential to take emerging technologies out of the hype cycle and serve as an accelerant for development and commercial viability, enabling new industries to crystallize faster and strengthen supply chains. For proof of how this is playing out, we just have to look at SPAC IPOs from companies driving the launch of new and capital-intensive industries such as electric vehicles, next-generation batteries and power generation, and aviation/mobility technologies like electric-powered commuter aircraft. Love them or hate them now, we might all want to invest in the future. More details further down! Eric Eldon Managing Editor, Extra Crunch (subbing in for Walter again) Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: SAP | | SAP CEO Christian Klein was appointed co-CEO with Jennifer Morgan in October 2019. He became sole CEO just as the pandemic was hitting full force across the world last April. He was put in charge of a storied company at 39 years old. By October, its stock price was down and revenue projections for the coming years were flat. That is definitely not the way any CEO wants to start their tenure, but the pandemic forced Klein to make some decisions to move his customers to the cloud faster. That, in turn, had an impact on revenue until the transition was completed. While it makes sense to make this move now, investors weren't happy with the news. There was also the decision to spin out Qualtrics, the company his predecessor acquired for $8 billion in 2018. As he looked back on the one-year mark, Klein sat down with TechCrunch to discuss all that has happened and the unique set of challenges he faced. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Forerunner Ventures / Oura | | Forerunner General Partner Eurie Kim and Oura CEO Harpreet Rai joined us on Extra Crunch Live to discuss the process of taking Oura to the next level — and beyond — as the product found a second (or third) life during the pandemic through partnerships with sports leagues like the NBA. And as we're wont to do, we asked the pair to take a look at a handful of user-submitted pitch decks. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Klaus Vedfelt / Getty Images | | Domm Holland, co-founder and CEO of e-commerce startup Fast, appears to be living a founder's dream. His big idea came from a small moment in his real life. Holland watched as his wife's grandmother tried to order groceries, but she had forgotten her password and wasn't able to complete the transaction. He built a prototype of a passwordless authentication system where users would fill out their information once and would never need to do so again. Within 24 hours, tens of thousands of people had used it. Shoppers weren't the only ones on board with this idea. In less than two years, Holland has raised $124 million in three rounds of fundraising, bringing on partners like Index Ventures and Stripe. Although the success of Fast's one-click checkout product has been speedy, it hasn't been effortless. For one thing, Holland is Australian, which means he started out as a Silicon Valley outsider. Holland talks about how he built his network, why it's important — not just for fundraising but for building the entire business — and how to avoid the mistakes he sees new founders make. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: erhui1979 / Getty Images | | The number of SPACs in the deep tech sector was skyrocketing, but a combination of increased SEC scrutiny and market forces over the past few weeks has slowed the pace of new SPAC transactions. The correction is an inevitable step on the path to mainstreaming SPACs as an alternative to IPOs, but it won't cause them to go away. Instead, blank-check vehicles will evolve and will occupy a small and specialized — but important — part of the startup financing landscape. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Bryce Durbin | | It's only been three years since they hit the streets, but Revel's blue electric mopeds have already become a common sight in New York, San Francisco and a growing number of U.S. cities. However, Revel founder and CEO Frank Reig set his sights far beyond building a shared moped service. In fact, since the beginning of 2021, Revel has launched an e-bike subscription service, an EV charging station venture and an all-electric rideshare service driven by a fleet of 50 Teslas. We caught up with Reig to talk about what he learned from building the company, how Revel's business strategy has evolved and what lies ahead. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: KTSDESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images | | Divvy, a Utah-based corporate spend unicorn, is considering selling itself to Bill.com for a price that could top $2 billion. For the fintech sector, it's big news. Corporate spend startups including Ramp and Brex are raising rapid-fire rounds at ever-higher valuations and growing at venture-ready cadences. Their growth and the resulting private investment were earned by a popular approach to offering corporate cards, and, increasingly, the group's ability to build software around those cards that took into account a greater portion of the functionality that companies needed to track expenses, manage spend access and, perhaps, save money. It makes sense to see Bill.com decide to take on the yet-private corporate spend startups that are playing the field; why not absorb a growing customer base and fend off competition in a single move? To get a better handle on how the startups that compete with Divvy feel about the deal, TechCrunch reached out to both Ramp CEO Eric Glyman, and Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Huber & Starke / Getty Images | | It's an entrepreneur's market in digital health today, with startups raising record-breaking funding at soaring valuations and debuting on public markets to eager investors. The massive influx of capital to healthcare should not be surprising; the pandemic has made it starkly clear that digital health is the future of healthcare. To that end, we should anticipate additional healthcare exits worth more than $1 billion in the near term. Which again, is great for entrepreneurs — as long as they understand how hard it is to build a unicorn in healthcare. Today, becoming a unicorn requires founders who are long on vision and operational experience. During the pandemic, lots of investors jumped in to invest in digital health for the first time. But we've been investing for more than a decade. Here are four instrumental strategies to building a unicorn in digital health that we know work. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Matthias Kulka / Getty Images | | There's no shortage of commentary around the chief marketing officer title these days, and certainly no lack of opinions about the role's responsibilities and meaning within a company. There's a reason for that. CMO is the shortest tenured C-suite role — the average tenure of a CMO is the lowest of all C-suite titles at 3.5 years. That's because the chief marketing officer's role is increasingly complex. Qualifications require broad, strategic thinking while also maintaining tactical acumen across several functions. There's a big disparity in what companies expect from CMOs. Some want a strategist with an eye for go-to-market planning, while others want a focus on close alignment with sales in addition to brand awareness, content strategy and lead generation. Other companies want their CMO to emphasize product marketing and management. Ask 10 CMOs how they define their role and you'll get 10 different answers. Here, a tenured CMO shares his honest take on what the role actually means, plus the key attributes of today's modern CMO. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Nigel Sussman | | People have been discussing the importance of expanding opportunities for women in venture capital and startup entrepreneurship for decades. And for some time it appeared that progress was being made in building a more diverse and equitable environment. The prospect of more women writing checks was viewed as a positive for female founders, a cohort that has struggled to attract more than a fraction of the funds that their male peers manage. All-female teams have an especially tough time raising capital compared to all-male teams, underscoring the disparity. Then COVID-19 arrived and scrambled the venture and startup scene, creating a risk-off environment during the end of Q1 and the start of Q2 2020. Following that, the venture world went into overdrive as software sales became a safe harbor in the business world during uncertain economic times. And when it became clear that the vaunted digital transformation of businesses large and small was accelerating, more capital appeared. But data indicate that the torrent of new capital has not been distributed equally — indeed, some of the progress that female founders made in recent years may have eroded. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: wildpixel / Getty Images | | While mergers and acquisitions may be the right strategic path for many businesses, organizations tend to underestimate the role in-house legal teams play in a large-scale strategic transaction until the company is firmly entrenched in a deal. While the CEO and board might fully appreciate the counsel of the legal team, the ability of the legal team to earn the support of the business — from product and development to marketing and HR — is critical to a smooth, efficient closing and post-close integration process. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images / Getty Images | | Uber followed Lyft in reporting its Q1 2021 earnings this week. And like its rival, its results take a little bit of work to understand. We parsed them as a pair so that we understand what's going on at the ride-hailing and food-delivery giant. Let's start with the big numbers: Uber's revenue missed sharply, while its profitability beat expectations. How did investors vet Uber's performance? The company's stock is off around 4% in after-hours trading. Surprised by the revenue miss? Shocked by the profit beat? Startled by the sharp drop in the value of Uber's stock? Let's unpack the numbers. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Nigel Sussman | | Let’s examine the buy now, pay later (BNPL) market, mostly through the lens of PayPal's first-quarter results. PayPal's BNPL results are impressive — and not just to your humble servant, but to other fintech watchers as well — which begs the question: Can the platform effect that the PayPals of the world bring to bear suffocate a growing slice of the startup market? Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Richard Drury / Getty Images | | As the COVID-19 lockdowns cascaded around the world last spring, companies large and small saw demand slow to a halt seemingly overnight. Enterprises weren't comfortable making big, long-term commitments when they had no clue what the future would hold. Innovative SaaS companies responded quickly by making their products available for free or at a steep discount to boost demand. But these free offerings didn't go away as lockdowns loosened up. SaaS companies instead doubled down on freemium because they realized that doing so had a real and positive impact on their business. In doing so, they busted the outdated myths that have held 82% of SaaS companies back from offering their own free plan. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: GIPhotoStock / Getty Images | | Shortening the diagnostic odyssey of rare diseases and reducing the associated costs was, until recently, a moonshot challenge, but is now within reach. About 80% of rare diseases are genetic, and technology and AI advances are combining to make genetic testing widely accessible. Whole-genome sequencing, an advanced genetic test that allows us to examine the entire human DNA, now costs under $1,000, and market leader Illumina is targeting a $100 genome in the near future. Read More | | | |
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