Category: Tech news

Rivian announced Friday that it has closed a $2.5 billion private funding round led by Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, D1 Capital Partners, Ford Motor and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc.

Third Point, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Dragoneer Investment Group and Coatue also participated in the round, according to Rivian.

“As we near the start of vehicle production, it’s vital that we keep looking forward and pushing through to Rivian’s next phase of growth,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said in a statement. “This infusion of funds from trusted partners allows Rivian to scale new vehicle programs, expand our domestic facility footprint, and fuel international product rollout.”

D1 Capital Partners founder Dan Sundheim said the firm is excited to increase its “investment in Rivian as it reaches an inflection point in its commercialization and delivers what we believe will be exceptional products for customers.”

Rivian has raised roughly $10.5 billion to date. The company did not share a post-money valuation.

The electric automaker, which now employs 7,000 and is preparing to deliver its R1T pickup truck in September, last raised funds in January. That round brought in $2.65 billion from existing investors T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., Fidelity Management and Research Company, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Coatue and D1 Capital Partners. New investors also participated in that round, which pushed Rivian’s valuation to $27.6 billion, a source familiar with the investment round told TechCrunch at the time.

The news comes just a day after Rivian confirmed it plans to open a second U.S. factory. It also follows Rivian’s decision to delay deliveries of its R1T truck and R1S SUV from this summer to September due to delays in production caused by “cascading impacts of the pandemic,” particularly the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips.

It takes a really specific consumer to buy an Android phone, yet use Apple Music. But the small overlap in that Venn diagram may be getting bigger. Last month at WWDC, Apple unveiled a free update for Apple Music subscribers that added lossless audio streaming and spatial audio with support for Dolby Atmos. Now, Android users can access these features too.

Last year, Google shut down its Google Play Music app (RIP) with the intent for users to migrate to YouTube Music. Some longtime Android fans are still unpleased about that decision and don’t feel that YouTube Music is up to par — but for audiophiles, these Apple Music updates might be what it takes to get them to switch. However, not all Android devices support Atmos yet.

Apple Music isn’t the only streaming platform ramping up its audio quality. On the same day that Apple announced its upgraded audio features at WWDC, Amazon Music also announced that it would support lossless streaming and spatial audio with Atmos functionality. Like Apple, Amazon offers these enhancements at no extra cost for subscribers. Spotify plans to launch a lossless audio feature as well, called HiFi, but it will be a premium add-on, rather than a free upgrade like Apple Music or Amazon Music. YouTube Music doesn’t yet offer a comparable feature.

Currently, Spotify leads the streaming industry with 158 million paid subscribers. For comparison, Apple Music had 60 million subscribers in June 2019, and Amazon Music had 55 million in January 2020, but both companies haven’t shared updated numbers since then; YouTube Music has at least 20 million paid users. Even on consumer-grade headphones, you can hear the difference between a lossless FLAC file and a compressed mp3 — but if you’re such a keen audiophile that you need to listen to master-quality audio, just get Tidal.

“It’s about focusing on the metric that directly reflects the value that your company and products bring to your customers,” growth marketer Maya Moufarek told us in an interview for one of our most popular marketing articles of the week. “For Airbnb, that may be the number of nights booked; for Spotify, minutes listened to. It’s all about simplifying your strategy into something that is digestible, memorable and applicable.”

In the interview, Moufarek speaks about the importance of Sean Ellis’ North Star metric, how she audits her clients, brand building and more.

Help TechCrunch find the best growth marketers for startups.

Provide a recommendation in this quick survey and we’ll share the results with everybody.

Marketing Cube founder Maya Moufarek’s lessons for customer-focused startups: Founder of growth consultancy Marketing Cube Maya Moufarek joins Miranda Halpern for an interview as part of the TechCrunch Experts series. Moufarek shares her advice for startups and explains why there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to marketing.

In growth marketing, creative is the critical X factor: Self-proclaimed “growth marketing nerd” and current Uber growth team member Jonathan Martinez breaks down how to be successful with creative testing. Martinez discusses how to do this when faced with the current privacy restrictions.

(Extra Crunch) Susan Su on how to approach growth as your startup raises each round: Managing Editor Eric Eldon recaps growth marketing expert Susan Su’s talk from TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising. Su goes through a sample qualitative growth model and the importance of always having a growth team.

(Extra Crunch) Silicon Valley comms expert Caryn Marooney shares how to nail the narrative: Senior Editor Matt Burns recaps Caryn Marooney’s talk from TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising. Marooney, current VC and former communications expert, touches on her RIBS method — read the article to find out what it stands for and how to apply it to your own narrative.

(Extra Crunch) Greylock’s Mike Duboe explains how to define growth and build your team: Editor Lucas Matney breaks down the TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising presentation from early-stage speaker Mike Duboe, partner at Greylock. This talk is split into 10 key points about growth, including tips on prioritizing retention, hiring for growth and more.

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Marketer: Illia Termeno, founder of Extrabrains

Recommended by: Anonymous

Testimonial: “T-shaped expertise with focus on strategy and long-term ROI.”

Marketer: Adam DuVander, EveryDeveloper

Recommended by: Karl Hughes, Draft.dev

Testimonial: “In addition to writing a book on developer marketing, Adam draws from deep experience as a developer and developer advocate to make sure his clients set a winning strategy in motion.”

Marketer: Jonathan Metrick, Portage Ventures

Recommended by: Matt Byrd

Testimonial: “Jonathan was truly transformative at Policygenius. Prior to his arrival, we were running a smart but disjointed marketing effort. Our messaging was inconsistent, and our approach to understanding channel efficacy was weaker than it could have been. Jonathan brought a growth mindset to the team, and built a hypereffective org in a short amount of time.”

Startups developing so-called deep tech often find it challenging to raise capital for various reasons. At TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising, two experienced investors spoke on the subject and advised startups facing a challenging fundraising path.

Pae Wu and Garrett Winther are both partners at SOSV and run the fund’s programs around biotech and hardware. SOSV doesn’t shy away from startups building complex technology, and because of this, Wu and Winther are well placed to advise on fundraising. They presented three key points targeting startups fundraising for deep tech applications, but the points are applicable to startups of any variety.

Before giving advice, the two acknowledged the nuances across the deep tech ecosystem and each industry. Their presentation is focused on general guidance applicable to nearly every startup.

Finding the right investor

The first point on Wu and Winther’s presentation sounds a bit self-serving but is based on solid advice. When building a deep tech startup, find the right investor, they said. This is general advice for startups, but according to these two, it’s even more important when building a company that might take longer for the investor to see a return.

In deep tech, it’s essential to think about founder-investor fit. And what we mean by this is understanding why an investor is even in VC in the first place. And what it is that’s driving you, the founder, to do what you do.

And so we look at this fit as a Venn diagram between founders who have a near maniacal devotion to wanting to solve a core systemic problem and investors that thrive on the unique risk profile that comes in deep tech. Because with deep tech, we’re talking about both technical risk, where maybe that insight that is core to the company merely proves that we’re no longer having to break any laws of physics to do whatever it is you’re trying to do. So there’s a big technical risk. (Timestamp: 6:09)

Set obtainable goals

Breakthrough technology hardly came from sudden breakthroughs. As explained in this presentation, it’s critical to set obtainable goals that lead to the desired outcome.

Electric aviation startup Wisk Aero’s request for a preliminary injunction against rival Archer Aviation was denied by a federal judge Thursday, the latest in an ongoing legal battle over whether Archer stole trade secrets in developing its flagship Maker aircraft.

A full written opinion has not yet been published. In a tentative ruling filed earlier this week, Judge William Orrick said Wisk’s “evidence of misappropriation is too equivocal to warrant a preliminary injunction.” Wisk filed for the injunction in May; if it had been approved, it would have effectively put an immediate halt to Archer’s operations.

Wisk submitted to the court 52 trade secrets it alleges were stolen and used by Archer, and the injunction would have prevented Archer from using any of them until a final decision was issued in the suit. It’s an extraordinary request and it makes sense that Orrick would need to see more certain evidence of misappropriation.

“There are some arguable indications of misappropriation, but given how equivocal the evidence is, Wisk is not entitled to the extraordinary remedy of an injunction,” Orrick said in the tentative ruling. “Because the merits are so uncertain, Wisk has also not adequately shown irreparable injury based on misappropriation. And the balance of hardships favors Archer because, without solid evidence of misappropriation, an injunction would gravely threaten its business.”

Wisk says the judge’s decision on the injunction has no bearing on the outcome of the case “and does not exonerate Archer in the least.”

“We brought this lawsuit based on strong indications of theft and use of Wisk’s IP, and the initial limited evidence gathered through the court process to date only confirms our belief that Archer’s misappropriation of Wisk’s trade secrets is widespread and pervades Archer’s aircraft development,” Wisk continued. “Following today’s ruling, Wisk will be allowed to begin collecting evidence in earnest.”

Wisk was established in 2019 as a joint venture between Kitty Hawk and Boeing, but its history with electric aviation stretches back much further. The company was originally founded in 2010 as Levt, which eventually merged with sister company Kitty Hawk. Wisk says it (as Kitty Hawk) zeroed in on a fixed-wing, 12-rotor design in 2016. It’s this design that’s the centerpiece of its debut aircraft, Cora.

Archer, by contrast, is newer to the field. Much of Wisk’s original complaint, filed in April, is predicated on the speed with which Archer is bringing its air taxi service to market. Archer also recruited many former Wisk engineers — including former employee Jing Xue, whom Wisk says downloaded nearly 5,000 files before his departure from the company, which it alleges he handed over to Archer.

When he was cross-examined, Xue pled the Fifth Amendment, invoking his right to not self-incriminate, citing an ongoing federal investigation.

Archer says Wisk has not brought forward any substantive evidence of the central claim of the lawsuit: that Archer received and used Wisk trade secrets. Wisk’s allegations are based on “conspiracy theories and outright misrepresentations,” Archer’s Deputy General Counsel Eric Lentell said.

“It is clear to us from Wisk’s actions in this case that after recognizing Archer’s momentum and pace of innovation, Wisk began abusing the judicial and criminal justice system in an attempt to slow us down to compensate for its own lack of success,” Archer co-founders Brett Adcock and Adam Goldstein said.

The court will hold a scheduling conference on August 11, where the judge will outline next steps for the case. A date for the trial has not been set.

The case is filed in the California Northern District Court under case no. 3:2021cv02450.

GM is issuing a second recall for 2017 to 2019 Bolt EVs over potential fire issues. The company says it plans to replace defective batteries, but until it can do so it’s advising Bolt customers to limit their charging up to 90 percent, and not to go below 70 miles of range. It’s also reiterating a recommendation from last week against parking indoors and leaving the car’s to charge overnight unattended. This latest recall follows a similar one from last November, where GM recalled more than 68,000 Bolts.

The company also suggests that Bolt customers visit their nearest Chevy EV dealer to get the advanced diagnostics software, which should alert them ahead of any future battery issues. Hyundai, which also sources batteries from LG Chem like GM, ended up replacing more than 75,000 batteries for its Kona EV.

While it may sound alarming — GM’s recalls were triggered by five Bolt fires between 2017 and 2019 — it’s worth noting that gas cars typically cause around 150 fires a day, according to a FEMA report. Still, EV makers need to prove they can responsibly deal with potential issues before they can hurt more people (and before it leads to more negative sentiment towards electric vehicles).

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Engadget.

If you’ve started using Snapchat more regularly this year, you’re not alone. At yesterday’s Q2 earnings call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel announced that the platform grew both revenue and daily active users at the highest rates it has achieved in the last four years. Snapchat now has 293 million daily active users, growing 23% since last year.

Snap went public in 2017 with a $24 billion valuation, but not long before then, the ephemeral photo sharing app experienced a massive hiccup: Instagram cloned their then-unique Stories feature. After Instagram Stories launched, Snapchat’s growth slowed by 82%. Then, when Snapchat redesigned its app’s interface, Kylie Jenner tweeted that she didn’t use the app anymore, causing the company’s valuation to drop by $1.2 billion.

But Snapchat held on and made a comeback. Its revenue reached an all-time high of $911 million in Q4 of 2020, then went down to $770 million the following quarter. Now, Snapchat’s revenue in Q2 of 2021 surpasses its previous high to reach $982 million.

The app’s Q2 growth could be attributed to the return of advertisers who scaled back their spending during the height of the pandemic, as well as the retention of users that flocked to the app while in lockdown. Like many social media platforms, Snapchat grew its revenue and user base during the pandemic, but this isn’t just a matter of re-engaging users with an app that they grew out of. As TikTok exploded on the scene and the creator economy boomed, Snapchat kept up by creating Spotlight, a TikTok clone, and investing in the applications of augmented reality.

“We made significant progress with our augmented reality platform this quarter,” Spiegel said. “More than 200 million Snapchatters engage with AR every day on average, and over 200,000 creators use Lens Studio to build AR Lenses for our community.”

Last month, Snapchat went viral for its Cartoon 3D Style Lens, which makes you look like a character in a Pixar movie. Spiegel specifically mentioned this lens as a feature that “highlighted the power of Lenses to go viral both inside and outside of Snapchat.” But beyond fun face filters, Snapchat has been using AR to woo e-commerce partners. The app has developed AR experiences for Walt Disney World, Smile Direct Club, Zenni Optical, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Ralph Lauren and more. This includes try-on capabilities for watches, jewelry, eyewear, handbags, makeup and even clothing. At its Partner Summit in May, Snapchat revealed an update that lets users scan friends’ outfits to find shopping recommendations for similar styles.

“We have a lot more work ahead to build out our technology and increase AR adoption, but we are thrilled with the results that our partners are seeing as we invest in our long-term camera opportunity,” said Jeremi Gorman, Snap’s chief business officer. “We are confident in our long-term opportunity, and are excited to double down on shopping and commerce via augmented reality.”

In March, Snap acquired Fit Analytics, a Berlin-based startup that helps shoppers find the right-sized apparel and footwear when shopping online. Combined with Snap’s investment in AR, could we eventually use AR to see which size of clothing to order? The application of that sort of technology would need to be handled sensitively, especially as the rates of eating disorders in teens are on the rise.

Beyond e-commerce, Snapchat has sought out strategic partnerships with entertainment companies like HBO Max and Universal Music Group and doubled down on its Spectacles, glasses that create AR experiences. Of course, Facebook is working on AR glasses too. But for both companies, Snap’s recent successes show the rising adoption and value of AR experiences.

 

Monarch, a subscription-based platform that aims to help consumers “plan and manage” their financial lives, has raised $4.8 million in seed funding.

Accel led the round, which also included participation from SignalFire, and brings the Mountain View-based yet fully distributed startup’s total funding since its 2019 inception to $5.5 million.

Co-founder and CEO Val Agostino was the first product manager on the original team that built Mint.com. There, he said, he saw firsthand that Americans with a greater understanding of financial matters “needed software solutions that went beyond just tracking and budgeting.” 

“They needed help planning their financial future and understanding the tradeoffs between competing financial priorities,” he said.

Monarch aims to help people address those needs with software it says “makes it easy” for people to outline their financial goals and then create a detailed, forward-looking plan toward achieving them. 

“We then help customers track their progress against their plan and automatically course correct as their financial situation changes, which it always does,” Agostino said.

Monarch came out of private beta in early 2021 with apps for web, iOS and Android, and is priced at $9.99 per month or $89.99 per year. The startup intentionally opted to not be ad-supported or sell customers’ financial data.

These approaches are “misaligned with users’ financial interests,” Agostino said.

“We felt that a subscription business model would best support that ethos and align our users’ interests with our own,” he added. Since launching publicly, Monarch has been growing its paid subscriber base by about 9% per week.

Monarch launched during the pandemic, the uncertainty of which carried over into people’s financial lives, believes Agostino.

“As a result, we saw a lot of people make use of Monarch’s forecasting features to compare different ‘what if ‘scenarios such as switching jobs or moving to a different city or state,” he said.

Earlier this month, TechCrunch reported on a company with a similar mission, BodesWell, teaming up with American Express on a financial planning tool for its cardholders. Agostino said that Monarch is similar to BodesWell in that both startups help customers map a financial plan and future. 

“The difference is that Monarch also has a full suite of PFM tools, such as budgeting, reporting and investment analysis,” he said. “The benefit to the consumer is that because Monarch is connected to your entire financial picture, we can help you actually stay on track with your financial plan and/or update the plan in real time if needed.”

Accel’s Daniel Levine said that until he came across Monarch, he was “somehow still a Mint customer despite its obsolescence.”

Over the past decade, the landscape for financial products has expanded dramatically, with more people having brokerage and crypto accounts, for example, Levine said.

In his view, Monarch stands out for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s a subscription product.

“One thing I always hated about Mint was when it would suggest the objectively wrong credit card for me,” Levine said. “It has all of my transaction data, it should tell me the card with the best rewards for me. Monarch is set up to never compromise what’s best for the user in favor of advertising.”

Secondly, Monarch’s aim is to serve as the infrastructure for its customers. To do that, it needs to monitor all of someone’s finances. 

“They need to track checking, credit cards, brokerage, real estate and crypto,” he said. “Monarch is committed to doing that. It’s an incredibly painful problem and even though Monarch is a new entrant in the space, I think they’ve clearly separated themselves on that dimension.”

News that China’s government may force domestic tutoring-focused companies to go nonprofit is taking a huge bite out of the value of several technology companies. Bloomberg notes that the value of companies like New Oriental Education & Technology Group and TAL Education are tumbling in light of the news, which would constitute merely the latest salvo against tech companies in the autocratic country.

New Oriental’s Hong Kong-listed shares fell 44.22% in after-hours trading after the nonprofit news broke, while NYSE-shares of TAL are off an even sharper 51.75% in pre-market trading. With Yahoo Finance listing a roughly $13.8 billion market cap for TAL ahead of its impending declines at the market open, billions of equity value are about to get deleted. The list goes on: China Online Education Group is off 39.97% in after-hours trading, for example.

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A new decision by China’s government to exert more control over a sector of its domestic economy should not surprise. And we shouldn’t be shocked that online tutoring is in the country’s targets; today’s news is a follow-up to prior regulatory action in the sector from earlier in the year.

As China has become synonymous with edtech startups in recent years, the news impacts more than just public companies. The expected rules change may also hit a host of private, venture-backed companies.

For example, what will happen to Yuanfudao? The company was valued at $15.5 billion last year, offering what TechCrunch described as “live tutoring, an online Q&A arm and a math-problem-checking arm.” Will the company see its wings clipped?

Or how about Zuoyebang, which raised $1.6 billion in a single round last year? TechCrunch wrote that Zuoyebang offers “online courses, live lessons and homework help for kindergarten to 12th grade students.” Is it in trouble as well?

All this comes on the same day that shares in Zomato began to float, with the Indian online food delivery company seeing its shares close up nearly 65% in their first day’s trading. TechCrunch has viewed the Zomato IPO as a possible bellwether for the larger Indian startup market, and the results augur well for other growth-focused, loss-making unicorns in the country.

GudangAda, a Jakarta-based marketplace that brings wholesalers closer to retail stores and other buyers, announced it has closed a Series B of more than $100 million. The company says the round was oversubscribed, passing its initial target of $75 million. The funding was led by Asia Partners and Falcon Edge, with participation from Sequoia Capital India, Alpha JWC and Wavemaker Partners.

This brings GudangAda’s total raised so far to about $135 million. Its last funding was a $25.4 million Series A last year, led by Sequoia Capital India and JWC Alpha Ventures.

Founded in January 2019, GudangAda is now used by half a million SMEs and covers 500 cities in Indonesia. Before raising its Series B, it had already grown to $6 billion in net merchandise value on $35 million of funding. Principal manufacturers and distributors on the platform range include food products company Sido Muncul, seasoning maker Sasa and British multinational consumer goods group Reckitt Benckiser.

Founder and chief executive officer Stevensang spent more than 25 years in Indonesia’s fast-moving consumer goods and retail industries before starting GudangAda. Over the past 10 years, Stevensang told TechCrunch that logistics costs in Indonesia have increased to among the highest in the world, impacting the whole supply chain, especially SME buyers.

GudangAda helps lower operational costs by connecting principal manufacturers, distributors and retailers, and handling almost all aspects of B2B buying, including deliveries. Its mobile app includes a point-of-sale system and it can also be used to manage orders, track logistics and make payments.

Stevensang said GudangAda focuses on several things to make buying inventory easier for SMEs. One is optimizing inventory turnover to increase working capital for businesses on the platform. The company also provides market research and data for products and gives retailers a large selection of goods. Being connected to multiple suppliers on the same platform also lets small retail stores that sell a large selection of items, but don’t have the buying volume to order directly from distributors, to purchase inventory at competitive costs.

To keep logistics costs down, GudangAda partners with third-party vehicle and warehouse providers to build its coverage throughout Indonesia. For its logistics partners, it provides transportation and warehouse management systems to help them digitize their operations.

GudangAda also partners with banks to provide working capital for SMEs, enabling them to apply for loans using their data on the platform.

The funding will be used to expand GudangAda’s product categories, which now include fast-moving consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, packaging, homeware and stationery. It also plans to develop AI-based tools that can provide personalized recommendations for merchant customers. For example, during COVID-19, the platform suggested how much disinfectants a store should stock.

In a statement, Falcon Edge co-founder Navroz D. Udwadia said, “GudangAda is definitively the largest SME e-commerce marketplace in Indonesia with best-in-class metrics. Our research and conversations with stakeholders (principals, wholesalers and retailers) has given us confidence on GudangAda’s distinctive ROI and value addition to the entire ecosystem.”

When Aruna’s founders first met at university, they wanted to find a way to use their studies in information technology to help family members who were running small fisheries. Indonesia is one of the world’s largest fisheries producers, but the industry is very fragmented. This means fisheries, especially small ones, deal with fluctuations in demand and price instability. Aruna was created to bring them closer to customers like restaurants and exporters, the way farm-to-table startups are aggregating the agricultural supply chain.

Aruna announced today it has raised $35 million in Series A funding led by Prosus Ventures and East Ventures Growth Fund, with participation from SIG and returning investors including AC Ventures, MDI and Vertex Ventures. Aruna says this is the largest Series A investment to date in Indonesia’s agritech and maritime sector.

The company works primarily with small fisheries (or ones that have boats with about one to two metric tonnes of capacity) and focuses on sustainability, helping suppliers adhere to the United Nations Goal 14’s targets. These include preventing overfishing, protecting coastal ecosystems and giving small-scale fisheries access to more resources and markets.

Aruna was founded in 2016 by Farid Naufal Aslam, Indraka Fadhlillah and Utari Octavianty, who met while studying information technology administration and management at Telkom University. Fadhlillah and Octavianty came from families in the fishing industry, and the three wanted to create something that would solve some of the challenges they faced.

“This was the main idea, but the bigger thing we saw at the time was the advantage of Indonesia’s position as a large agricultural country with big potential in the seafood industry,” Aslam told TechCrunch.

According to the World Bank, Indonesia is the world’s second largest fisheries producer. The sector creates about $4.1 billion in annual export earnings and supports more than 7 million jobs.

But Aruna’s founding team saw two major problems while analyzing coastal communities. The first one was market access and getting fair prices for seafood. The second was access to working capital.

To solve the first issue, Aruna was built to shorten the supply chain, which Aslam said can have six or seven layers between fisheries and buyers like restaurants, markets or exporters.

Buyers make purchase orders through the platform, which are then distributed to fishery communities that Aruna organizes to focus on particular types of seafood. This helps them predict demand, guarantee return business and prevent overfishing.

Aruna also built a logistics network that includes more than 45 collection sites, or warehouses where seafood is delivered by fisheries for quality checks, processing and packaging. Aruna’s warehouses are a combination of facilities that it owns or runs with partners. Deliveries are performed by third-party logistics providers.

The platform currently has about 20 product categories and will use its funding to expand into more. Its commodities include high-value products like lobster, which are shipped by exporters to markets like Malaysia, Singapore, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada and the United States.

One of Aruna’s main requirements for fisheries on the platform is sticking to its sustainability process. According to the World Bank, one of the biggest issues facing Indonesia fisheries is overfishing, which hurts marine biodiversity. Aruna team members work with fisheries to standardize their equipment so they comply with government regulations and chose locations that are not overfished.

By focusing on a few types of seafood each, fisheries that work with Aruna are better able to ensure the quality and traceability of their products, and manage pricing fluctuations.

The second problem Aruna is working on is lack of access to working capital. To help fisheries get low interest, collateral-free loans for equipment and other things they need for their businesses, Aruna partners with financial institutions and fintech companies. When an Aruna fishery applies for a loan, the platform is able to provide transaction data collected on the platform for credit scoring.

The company also announced today that it has appointed Budiman Goh as its president, and Octavianty as its chief sustainability officer. Its funding will be used to expand to new areas in Indonesia, hiring data analytics and tech development, including IoT devices to help perform quality checks.

Aruna plans to focus on Indonesia for the near future because of the large number of fisheries in the country.

“Currently we have 21,000 fishermen on the platform, yet there are about 2.7 million fishermen in Indonesia, so there is a lot of room to grow,” Aslam said.

In a statement, Sachin Bhanot, Prosus Ventures’ head of Southeast Asia investment said, “Having built a robust supply chain and technology infrastructure steeped with deep industry knowledge and expertise, we believe Aruna is uniquely positioned to service the growing global demand for sustainable fishery product, while supporting the livelihood of local fishermen.”

 

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Hello and welcome to Extra Crunch for July 21, 2021. It’s been a good day for crypto fans, with major coins seeing some recovery from recent lows. Bitcoin and ether remain depressed on a seven-day time frame, however. And the stock market is up today. What more can we ask for on a Wednesday? Well, how about a huge run of startup and tech news? We can do that! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Clubhouse leaves beta: Clubhouse, the buzzy live-audio startup that captivated the technology world earlier this year, is out of beta. The move feels a hair late given the work that Twitter has done with its Spaces product, but is welcome all the same. Data indicates that Clubhouse is having a moment in India, a key tech market as Daily Crunch has discussed ad nauseam.
• Tumblr goes pro: Feeling like a comeback story? Tumblr certainly does. After winding up as part of Yahoo thanks to a $1.3 billion deal, and later part of Verizon after the company (and still TechCrunch’s parent company’s parent company) bought the online portal giant, it got sold to Automattic for a song. Now it wants to join the creator economy boom by allowing its users to put up paywalls. We’re here for it — the internet would be more fun with a healthy Tumblr in the mix.
• Byju’s comes to America: Indian edtech superstar Byju’s is coming to the U.S. on the heels of its newly announced $500 million deal for Epic, what TechCrunch described as a “California-headquartered reading platform.” The edtech market is hot, something that we’ve long known. Duolingo’s IPO is also in the mix, as is a recent $24 million round for Sololearn, a startup that wants to take the Duolingo model and apply it to learning to code.

Startups/VC

We have lots to chat about today from the world of startups thanks to the supercharged venture capital cadence around the world. Up top, if you are keeping tabs on the Robinhood IPO, our latest notes are here. Now, let’s talk tech upstarts and private capital, starting with some fintech updates.

Fintech

• Lending startup Upgrade embraces crypto: Back in 2019, TechCrunch took note of Upgrade, a consumer lending startup from LendingClub founder Renaud Laplanche. Today the startup rolled out a credit card with bitcoin rewards. If you need a few more satoshis worth of $BTC and want to build credit, this might be for you.
• No-code + Payments = WhenThen: WhenThen’s no-code payments service is not struggling to explain itself to investors, its latest $6 million round indicates. Its service, TechCrunch reports, allows customers to “autonomously orchestrate, monitor, improve and manage all customer payments and payments ops.” The no-code element likely means it’s a bit more friendly to the non-developers out there. We grade this idea neat out of 10.
• $118M more for corporate spend management: Here in the U.S., the corporate spend wars have Ramp versus Airbase versus Brex on the front lines. But that doesn’t mean that the popular model of fusing corporate cards and software to help companies manage their overall dispensation of funds is fully figured out. Especially in a global context. And now Spendesk has a fresh €100 million in its own accounts to spend taking on the EU market. I wonder what service it will use to track those costs?

Software

• Sequoia Capital India backs Outplay: The new $7.3 million investment will bolster the startup’s efforts to “help outbound sales teams scale their campaigns.”
• Say hello to what may be the future of spreadsheets: Spreadsheet.com wants to flip the idea of turning spreadsheet usage into targeted apps on its head. Instead, the startup wants to put apps in your spreadsheets. And its general release is coming this October.
• Aussies want to help D2C brands kick the Big Tech habit: Now flush with $5.3 million in new capital, Sydney-based Okendo wants to help “brands scale the quality of their first-party data and loosen their reliance on tech advertising kingpins for customer acquisition and engagement.” If they can manage that, hats off.

Closing our startup coverage, a few final notes. Pangaea has raised $68 million for its men’s personal care brands. That is cool. But don’t get it mixed up with Providence, Rhode Island-based Pangea, a recent Y Combinator grad that has some news coming up. More on that soon.

If you want a deeper dive into the latest in hot business books, the Equity team recently sat down with one of the authors of “The Cult of We” to chat all things WeWork.

These simple metrics will tell you if your startup is ready to scale

There’s a temptation inside early-stage startups to claim that the go-to-market strategy is fully operational. In reality, GTM is a stark numbers game, and even with a solid plan in place, it can be easily foiled by common problems like turf battles and poor communication.

Finding GTM fit is a milestone for any startup that can include anything from expanding the engineering team to launching your first media buy. But how do you know when you’ve reached that magic moment?

“You have to consider three metrics: gross churn rate, the magic number and gross margin,” says Tae Hea Nahm, co-founder and managing director of Storm Ventures.

High churn means customers aren’t delighted, low gross margins mean poor unit economics, and that so-called magic number?

“You can calculate it by taking new ARR divided by your marketing and sales spending,” according to Nahm. “But keep in mind that the magic number is a lagging indicator, and it may take you a few quarters to see a positive result.”

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• Remember Alexa? Amazon still wants you to build for it: Amazon’s voice assistant still wants developers to build for it, something that they may do. To entice more developer love, Amazon released a slew of new features for the service. Frankly, given the slow pace of growth in intelligence we’ve experienced with Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google’s “OK Google” setup, we are gently skeptical.
• Can Ford, Argo and Lyft make self-driving taxis work? Recall that Google’s Waymo taxi service both exists and operates, albeit in micro compared to the riding networks that Uber and Lyft sport. Now Ford, a car company; Argo, a self-driving concern; and Lyft, a ride-hailing effort, “plan to launch up to 1,000 self-driving vehicles on Lyft’s ride-hailing network in a number of cities over the next five years, starting with Miami and Austin.”

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this survey along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you.

If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this interview Miranda Halpern did with Maya Moufarek, founder of Marketing Cube: ”Marketing Cube founder Maya Moufarek’s lessons for customer-focused startups.”

Rivian electric vehicle charging stations are coming to yet another state park system. The EV startup said it would install its so-called “waypoint” chargers at all of Tennessee’s 56 state parks, just four months after announcing a similar agreement with the state of Colorado.

It’s the next step in Rivian’s plans to build out its network of more than 10,000 Level 2 AC chargers by the end of 2023. Installing chargers at state parks and other far-flung locales is a key facet of Rivian’s brand strategy: to position itself as an eco-friendly automaker for the outdoorsy type regardless of whether they own a Rivian vehicle. The waypoint chargers will be open to the public and accessible to all electric vehicle brands with a J1772 plug.

As part of the agreement with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Rivian will design and install the chargers at no cost, and cover all servicing, maintenance and upgrades for 10 years. The automaker said it will also cover any needed utility upgrades associated with the charger installations — for example, improvements to electrical service panels or transformers.

Rivian could start installing chargers as early as this fall. The Level 2 chargers can provide up to 11.5 kilowatts of power. That roughly translates to adding up to 25 miles of range every hour for both the R1T pickup truck and the R1S SUV. While waiting hours for a battery refill isn’t ideal for chargers located along highways and busy thoroughfares, Rivian says these sites will allow drivers “to top up on miles while enjoying a day trip or an overnight campout.”

Charging will initially be provided at no cost, though the automaker noted that future costs could be dependent on how the state decides to recover electricity costs.

Rivian Waypoints are separate from the company’s so-called Adventure Network, its plan to build more than 3,500 DC fast chargers exclusively for Rivian customers. Those chargers will be able to provide up to 140 miles of range in around 20 minutes.

Rivian founder RJ Scaringe has been open about his desire to develop a charging network inclusive of hard-to-reach places — a notable difference from a company like Tesla, whose proprietary network of Superchargers is located in more conventional and even high-end places.

“We’re excited about the opportunity to create Rivian charging locations that aren’t on the interstate, that help draw you or enable you to go to places that normally are not the kinds of places that invite or welcome electric vehicles because of charging infrastructure,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec. “We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how you can essentially create these curated drives where, depending on your point of interest, you can pick different paths. If you want to stop midway through the trip for a one-mile, two-mile or five-mile hike, you know, here’s a route that you want to take and here’s a charging location right next to it.”

As longtime TechCrunch readers know well, Michael Arrington co-founded TechCrunch and Crunchbase, as well as the venture fund CrunchFund, which was later renamed Tuesday Capital. But In 2017, Arrington announced that he was shifting gears and becoming a full-time crypto investor, and despite a volatile ride since, he isn’t looking back, seemingly. As he said during an interview late last week from his new home in Miami, “I like reinventing myself and I think more people should do that.”

On the heels of a new fund announcement last month, we decided to catch up with Arrington to learn more about the hedge fund firm he has been building in recent years with longtime business partner Heather Harde; longtime investor-entrepreneur Ron Palmeri; and Ninor and Ninos Mansor, brothers whose crypto firm merged with Arrington’s Arrington XRP Capital in 2019.

Our chat has been edited for length and clarity below. You can hear that longer conversation here.

TC: You recently moved to Miami. Why?

MA: I visited Miami earlier this year for the first time in a couple decades and was here just for fun on a vacation. Part of it might have been that it was one of the first times I’ve been out and social since COVID. Part of it might just be it’s actually wonderful here in the winter. I think it was February when I came. But we just fell in love with the city and got to know the mayor, got to know some people here. A lot of my friends, particularly from New York and San Francisco, had already moved here, and it just felt very welcoming. The city’s government seems to care about its citizens and wants them to be happy, or at least not explicitly trying to make them unhappy. So we came back to look at houses a couple times [and] moved here pretty quickly.

A number of venture firms have recently relocated to Miami — is there a kind of Sand Hill Road forming anywhere?

What I’ve learned so far is that there are three areas of Miami that people live in. The first is downtown Miami, which is very centrally located and where business gets done. Another area south of that is where all the schools are, and it’s more suburban, and that’s where we live. The last area is Miami Beach where all the fun happens.

If you’re a young entrepreneur, just trying to figure out where you’re going to make your mark, they all seem to be located downtown. A lot of the really wealthy entrepreneurs are in Miami Beach, and then people who have kids are generally down south.

Is the process of meeting with founders any different in Miami than in California?

Since I’m doing crypto now, it’s still a lot of Zoom meetings with Asia and Europe and Russia and all over the world. But there are a lot of in-person meetings here. I’ve already been to a few events here. It’s very much like Silicon Valley was in 2005 when I was starting TechCrunch. It’s a small community, people are very [helpful to one another].

People who haven’t followed your career might wonder why you veered so directly into crypto when you did. 

I started it just because it was new and I like reinventing myself and I think more people should do that. I think a lot of people become very good at something, and then keep doing that, and stop exploring the world. Even though some VCs I know are multibillionaires, they just keep doing [the same thing]. And it’s like, well, you’ve made all the money, why not just explore something else?

My career has always been a series of reinventions. TechCrunch was one of those reinventions. So for me, this is just the next step. And I’m 50. Now, I plan on doing this right now for the rest of my career, but we’ll see in five or seven years if something else takes my fancy.

?When you announced your first crypto fund, there were some twists. It was a hedge fund, not a venture fund, and it was denominated in the crypto currency XRP, created by Ripple Labs. Why hitch your wagon to XRP, and what is your relationship with Ripple exactly?

As I was getting into crypto, I was talking to Brad Garlinghouse, who was CEO at the time, and he told me that some people had approached him about maybe doing a venture fund or a hedge fund that was funded by Ripple. And I said, ‘Well, that’s interesting, because I’m thinking about raising a fund.’ And so we explored it. Ultimately, we realized it didn’t work for tax reasons. Ripple holds a lot of XRP, and they do different things with it to try to make the ecosystem for XRP more robust, but if they were to put a sizable amount of XRP into a new fund, that’s a tax-free exchange, but as soon as a fund invests it, then that underlying XRP would be taxed at capital-gains rates based on a zero basis and it would just be a huge tax bill.

At that point, I started talking to some non-tax foundations about doing the exact same thing. And it does work with the foundations because they don’t have to pay taxes and gains, and so a couple of foundations in Silicon Valley contributed a relatively large amount of XRP to us for our first close. And that provided the foundation of our fund. We went from there and took other LPs who put in money, or bitcoin or whatever, but that started with them. So we owe a lot to Ripple and to XRP. And we’ve been very loyal to them.

Why structure it as a hedge fund?

The reason why we wanted to create a hedge fund was we wanted to be able to recycle capital indefinitely. We make private investments very much like a venture fund. But we also have a pretty large active team based in Asia, and when you’re trading the venture fund, if you buy bitcoin and then you sell bitcoin, that’s it, you’re done. You return whatever you got from the sale to investors, and that’s it.

Now, there’s nuance to that. Venture funds usually can recycle 25% of their capital, for example, and over time, some of the newer venture funds and crypto funds have actually gotten to the point where they can recycle indefinitely for a period of time [and] look a lot more like hedge funds. But at the time we created our fund, that wasn’t state of the art.

Ripple has been battling with the SEC since the agency filed a lawsuit in December accusing the company of violating federal securities laws. What do you make of what’s happening?

I don’t understand it. The SEC basically let Ripple do its thing for half a decade before they said anything. And it’s odd to me that at some point, on [former SEC chief] Jay Clayton’s last day in office [as he was returning last year to private practice], they filed a lawsuit. So I don’t know if it’s political, I don’t know if it’s personal, I literally just don’t know. And I have no idea how this is going to come out. It hinges on whether or not XRP is a security. And that depends on securities laws that were created in the ‘40s. Frankly, I think it’s all bullshit. But who knows?

You’ve talked openly about having a terrible year in 2018. Your fund lost a lot of its value as the broader crypto market collapsed. You narrowly avoided entering into a death spiral. Where have you made the most money as a crypto investor?

Yeah, bitcoin and ETH fell 80%. I think XRP fell 90%, something like that. We fell 42% that first year, so it was bad — 42% first year out the door is not good. But we beat the market. And so one of our main LPs actually reupped in December of 2018 and gave us another $30 million in XRP that we ended up using mostly to buy bitcoin at $3,500 and that provided a foundation of bitcoin in our fund that we hold even until today.

When bitcoin is doing terribly, historically it’s been a wonderful time to buy it, and that will remain true until it isn’t true anymore. So we remain very bullish in down markets and very cautious in up markets. It’s not clear to me what market we’re in right now. We think we’re in the middle of an up market with a pause here for 60 or 90 days.

Why do you think we’re in the middle of an up market?

One of the things we look at are the derivatives markets — so people longing and shorting and there’s a bunch of interesting derivatives markets with bitcoin and ETH and others; there are these perpetual futures contracts where people are betting and you see the longs and the shorts stack up. And right now we’re seeing a lot of shorting in different ways of bitcoin. When that happens, you can have short squeezes, which tend to drive the price way up. So when the market gets super, super short, we get very, very bullish, because you can see squeezes happen and drive the price up as people are liquidated and have to buy to cover their positions. You see that all the time. It happens the other way, too. Sometimes the market gets very, very long, and you see long squeezes, and when that happens, we get nervous and we start to hedge our positions there.

You’re watching the derivatives markets. Are you also participating in them?

We don’t get too exotic. A lot of the really exotic stuff is on unregulated exchanges with fairly serious counter-party risk and it’s fine if you’re doing bets of $100,000. It’s definitely not fine if you’re doing bets of $30 million to $40 million at a time, which we sometimes do.

You’ve done well by stocking up on bitcoin; where have you seen the biggest losses?

So we’re doing some equity investments, and it’s indistinguishable from venture investing … but most of our deals are in tokens that we’re purchasing well before they’re released … these token deals tend to mature much more quickly than equity deals. Sometimes, it’s a year or two but usually it’s a much shorter time frame. We had a deal 50x this year like a month after we invested. They tend to fail faster and succeed faster. So we’ve had losses all over the place.

But our venture side, our losses are much smaller than they should be, so that worries me. It worries me that it’s not sustainable, because of course it isn’t, and so we were worried about that. We’re trying not to make long-term investment decisions based on short-term success. But the real losses just come in the wild swings of the market. I mean … last year, we had well over $1 billion in assets under management and that has taken a dramatic haircut in the last several weeks … it’s just part of crypto’s volatility.

You’ve got other funds cooking. You recently announced you were launching a $100 million fund for bets on projects building on the Algorand blockchain.

That fund is just getting its legs under it now.

Why index so heavily on Algorand?

Algorand is a layer-one coin, and that means it’s a network coin that has infrastructure to allow third parties to create new companies and protocols on the coin. And the founder Silvio [Micali] is literally, like, Einstein-level brilliant, and he has come up with what he thinks is a way to have your cake and eat it, too [in terms of developing a network that’s both decentralized and where transactions can happen quickly], and we believe he’s right.

Just before we hopped on this call, Dogecoin’s founder, Jackson Palmer, published a streak of tweets in which he accuses the crypto industry of all the things that already worry people about it. He says he believes that “cryptocurrency is an inherently right wing hypercapital capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificial enforced scarcity.” Have you seen these? Do you think there’s some truth to what he’s saying here?

I haven’t looked at these specific tweets yet, but based on what you just said, I don’t disagree entirely. Crypto — Bitcoin in particular — is fundamentally anti-statist. It’s trying to rip the idea of money away from the state in the name of economic freedom, and people either agree with that or disagree with that.

I’m a libertarian and it just happens to fit my world worldview perfectly. But there are tons of statists in crypto and tax avoidance is hard. As an American, it’s pretty darn hard to avoid crypto taxes at this point, and I certainly don’t even try. I just pay the taxes and smile and go on my way. But there are a lot of people who are in crypto for the money and not for the politics of it, and that’s fine. I’m not sure they see the ultimate outcome of Bitcoin being what I see it as.

There are a lot of multibillionaires who control large parts of crypto, but I think that’s why we need to see more and more people get into crypto, so that that [wealth] gets distributed among more people as well.

[Note: Arrington’s firm just today published a research report on Algorand. We also talked about his newest investment, we discussed a separate “yield fund” he is trying to put together right now, and much more. Again, you can listen to that interview with Arrington here. Worth mentioning: this editor has never worked for or alongside Arrington; I joined TechCrunch in 2015; he left in 2011 after a somewhat famous spat with AOL, which had acquired TechCrunch a year earlier.)

The move follows an executive order issued last week by the White House urging the agency to secure consumers’ rights to fix their own gadgets.