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Welcome to Extra Crunch Friday | | | Housing costs were already a problem in many places around the world, and particularly in startup hub cities. But overall supply has dropped even further during the pandemic in many countries, as people who could spread out from cities to suburbs and beyond. One solution is to build more housing. It seems obvious, but the construction industry is challenged at a basic level by job shortages, and aging workforce and static productivity levels. Can construction automation help with these problems? Yes, in some ways, writes Champ Suthipongchai of Creative Ventures. However, as with so many other industries that tech is trying to impact, the market is naturally fragmented and full of existing stakeholders. Automation has to work with where the industry is at, even if it promises to solve its problems. The solutions may not even be heavy on the robots — better management, analytics and scheduling tools could make huge differences in this new decade as they reach the market. Take a closer read, further down. Thanks for reading! Eric Eldon, Managing Editor, Extra Crunch (subbing in for Walter!) | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Nigel Sussman | | In the never-ending stream of venture capital funding rounds, from time to time, a group of startups working on the same problem will raise money nearly in unison. So it was with OKR-focused startups toward the start of 2020. How were so many OKR-focused tech upstarts able to raise capital at the same time? And was there really space in the market for so many different startups building software to help other companies manage their goal-setting? OKRs, or "objectives and key results," a corporate planning method, are no longer a niche concept. But surely, over time, there would be M&A in the group, right? During our first look into the cohort, we concluded that it felt likely that there was "some consolidation" ahead for the group "when growth becomes more difficult." At the time, however, it was clear that many founders and investors expected the OKR software market to have material depth. They were right, and we were wrong. A year later, in early 2021, we asked the same group how their previous year had gone. Nearly every single company had a killer year, with many players growing by well over 100%. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: petdcat / Getty Images | | Tech innovation is becoming more widely distributed across the United States. Among the five startups launched in 2020 that raised the most financing, four were based outside the Bay Area. The number of syndicated deals on AngelList in emerging markets from Austin to Seattle to Pittsburgh has increased 144% over the last five years. And the number of startups in these emerging markets is growing fast — and increasingly getting a bigger piece of the VC pie. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Guido Mieth / Getty Images | | Almost two centuries ago, gold prospectors in California set off one of the greatest rushes for wealth in history. Proponents of socially conscious investing claim fund managers will start a similar stampede when they discover that environmental, social and governance (ESG) insights can yield treasure in the form of alternative data that promise big payoffs — if only they knew how to mine it. ESG data is everywhere. Learning how to understand it promises big payoffs. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch | | Dear Sophie, My company is looking to hire a very talented data infrastructure engineer who is undocumented. She has never applied for DACA before. What is the latest on DACA? What can we do to support her? —Multicultural in Milpitas Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Nigel Sussman | | The IPO parade continued this week as India-based food-delivery unicorn Zomato filed to go public. The Zomato IPO is incredibly important. As our own Manish Singh reported when the company's numbers became public, a "successful listing [could be] poised to encourage nearly a dozen other unicorn Indian startups to accelerate their efforts to tap the public markets." So, Zomato's debut is not only notable because its impending listing gives us a look into its economics, but because it could lead to a liquidity rush in the country if its flotation goes well. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Donald Iain Smith / Getty Images | | With the United States moving all-in on massive infrastructure investment, much of the discussion has focused on jobs and building new green industries for the 21st century. While the Biden administration's plan will certainly expand the workforce, it also provides a massive opportunity for the adoption of automation technologies within the construction industry. Despite the common narrative of automating away human jobs, the two are not nearly as much in conflict, especially with new investments creating space for new roles and work. In fact, one of the greatest problems facing the construction industry remains a lack of labor, making automation a necessity for moving forward with these ambitious projects Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: fourSage / Getty Images | | Even though in-person drinks and coffee walks are on the horizon, virtual fundraising isn't going away. Now, it's imperative to ensure your virtual pitch is as effective as your IRL one. Not only is it more efficient — no expensive trips to San Francisco or trouble fitting investor meetings into one day — virtual fundraising helps democratize access to venture capital. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Xuanyu Han / Getty Images | | There’s a growing need for basic data literacy in the tech industry, and it's only getting more taxing by the year. Words like "data-driven," "data-informed" and "data-powered" increasingly litter every tech organization's product briefs. But where does this data come from? Who has access to it? How might I start digging into it myself? How might I leverage this data in my day-to-day design once I get my hands on it? Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Nigel Sussman | | The first three months of the year were the most valuable period for fintech investing, ever. Where did the fintech venture capital market push the most money in Q1, and why? Let’s dig in. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: PM Images / Getty Images | | Why can we see all our bank, credit card and brokerage data on our phones instantaneously in one app, yet walk into a doctor's office blind to our healthcare records, diagnoses and prescriptions? Our health status should be as accessible as our checking account balance. The liberation of healthcare data is beginning to happen, and it will have a profound impact on society — it will save and extend lives. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Nigel Sussman | | With the Coinbase direct listing behind us and the Robinhood IPO ahead, it's a heady time for consumer-focused trading apps. Mix in the impending SPAC-led debut of eToro, general bullishness in the cryptocurrency space, record highs for some equities markets, and recent rounds from Public.com, M1 Finance and U.K.-based Freetrade, and you could be excused for expecting the boom in consumer asset trading to keep going up and to the right. But will it? There are data in both directions. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: cnythzl / Getty Images | | The red-hot market for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, has "screeched to a halt.” As the SPAC market grew in the past six months, it seemed that everyone was getting into the game. But shareholder lawsuits, huge value fluctuations and warnings from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have all thrown the brakes on the SPAC market, at least temporarily. So what do privately held tech companies that are considering going public need to know about the SPAC process and market? Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Image Source / Getty Images | | Once the uncool sibling of a flourishing fintech sector, insurtech is now one of the hottest areas of a buoyant venture market. Zego's $150 million round at unicorn valuation in March, a rumored giant incoming round for WeFox, and a slew of IPOs and SPACs in the U.S. are all testament to this. It's not difficult to see why. The insurance market is enormous, but the sector has suffered from notoriously poor customer experience, and major incumbents have been slow to adapt. Fintech has set a precedent for the explosive growth that can be achieved with superior customer experience underpinned by modern technology. And the pandemic has cast the spotlight on high-potential categories, including health, mobility and cybersecurity. This has begun to brew a perfect storm of conditions for big European insurtech exits. Read More | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Busakorn Pongparnit / Getty Images | | The recent movement toward data transparency is bringing about a new era of innovation and startups. Those who follow the space closely may have noticed that there are twin struggles taking place: a push for more transparency on provider and payer data, including anonymous patient data, and another for strict privacy protection for personal patient data. What's the main difference, and how can startups solve these problems? Read More | | | |
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