5 investors discuss what’s in store for venture debt following SVB’s collapse

There are many questions around the implications of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse that won’t be answered for a long time. But there’s one question that many startups and investors are hoping will get answered sooner rather than later: What happens to venture debt?

SVB was one of the larger, if not the largest, providers of venture debt to U.S.-based startups. And now that First Republic Bank has also gone under, that question has spiraled, growing ever more complex.

Many startups rely on venture debt: it’s both a cheaper alternative to raising equity and can serve as a capital tool that helps companies build in ways that equity isn’t great for. For some companies in capital-intensive areas like climate, fintech and defense, access to debt is often the only avenue to growth or scale.

Thankfully, venture capitalists aren’t too worried about the SVB collapse’s impact on venture debt as a whole.

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TechCrunch+ surveyed five investors, all active across different fund sizes, stages and focus areas, to get the inside line on the state of venture debt. And all of them feel that even amidst the turmoil, venture debt will still make its way to the companies that are looking for it — it just might be a little harder for some to get it.

“With the fall of industry stalwarts like SVB and FRB, we suspect access to venture debt to be harder to come by and more expensive, as partners historically considered as “fringe” are not as flexible around factors like scale, or impose stricter covenants. We will see how Stifel, HSBC, and JPMorgan (with FRB) and First Citizens will act in the market,” said Simon Wu, a partner at Cathay Innovation.

Sophie Bakalar, a partner at Collab Fund, said that while the process and planning needed to raise venture debt will change, it is still a fantastic resource for growing companies.

“Venture debt has its advantages, more so than ever before,” Bakalar said. “It encourages founders to build rather than grow, which is a good thing when we think about the innovation that can last for decades.”

But the process and underlying business fundamentals needed to get venture debt are likely to change, several investors believe.

“Our prediction is that venture debt lenders will begin to rely less heavily on what the ‘loan to value’ of a business is, and instead start to focus on capital efficiency, ability to become profitable, etc.,” said Ali Hamed, general partner at Crossbeam.

Read on to learn how the rising cost of capital is affecting venture debt, what investors are doing to educate their startups about raising debt, and which kinds of startups are best suited to this form of financing.

We spoke with:

• Sophie Bakalar, partner, Collab Fund
• Ali Hamed, general partner, Crossbeam
• Simon Wu, partner, Cathay Innovation
• Peter Herbert, co-founder and managing partner, Lux Capital
• Melody Koh, partner, Nextview

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Sophie Bakalar, partner, Collab Fund

How have lending standards changed for startups looking to raise venture debt? (ARR growth, minimum cash balances, etc.)

The immediate answer is that our ongoing economic uncertainty has drastically changed today’s lending market, particularly for early-stage startups looking to raise venture debt, in terms of lending standards and the cost of the debt.

In terms of lending standards, there has been a focus on revenue growth and profitability. Lenders are looking for startups with a track record of consistent revenue growth as well as a clear path to profitability. For unprofitable companies, this also means scrutiny of unit economics, as lenders want to make sure the capital is used for value-accretive investment.

This means that startups with strong annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth rates and high gross margins are more likely to be approved for venture debt no matter the market condition. We have a saying in venture that good startups will always get funded, so there’s always an exception to this rule.

Secondly, we’re seeing lenders place more emphasis on minimum cash balances. Startups are expected to have a certain amount of cash on hand, typically enough to cover several months of operating expenses, to demonstrate their ability to weather any financial storms that may arise.

Today, this several-month emphasis is more like one-year-plus. In addition, in the prior “risk on” market, lenders were more likely to approve “covenant light” structures; in today’s environment, we expect and have seen lenders require stricter covenants.

Lastly, we’re seeing lenders take extreme caution to evaluate startups for venture debt based on the strength of their leadership team. Startups with experienced, proven management teams are seen as less risky than those with less experienced leadership, particularly in a market where there is so much uncertainty. A strong leadership team can vastly reduce [the impact of] a crisis if and when it arises.

In light of new market conditions, are there certain genres of startups that are no longer a fit for venture debt?

Venture debt has its advantages — more now than ever before. It encourages founders to build rather than grow, which is a good thing when we think about the innovation that can last for decades.

As far as market conditions and genres of startups, no one should be immune to it. Everyone should think carefully about how this financing model will help their company execute. The first piece of information a bank and/or regulator typically looks at is whether or not the company is generating income and represents low compliance risk. Fintechs are likely to have a harder challenge here.

We’re still actively investing in climate tech startups that have been focused on execution and solving problems. A few of these include startups that have implemented a venture-debt model.

In today’s environment, the cost of debt has increased significantly with the rise in interest rates. That’s an important factor for cash-burning startups to consider as they think about monthly interest payments and amortization of their debt over time relative to their income and other expenses.

How do you ensure startups feel confident about venture debt? How much education do present-day founders need regarding venture debt to make an intelligent choice for their startup? Is that more or less than in recent years?

For most startups, education and resources around this type of debt financing is always valuable, especially in today’s market. Founders whose financing plan includes venture debt should start modeling scenarios that assume they lose access to this debt. Even if that risk seems remote, it’s always good to be prepared.

In addition, we try to help founders sensitize and sanity-check their forecasts in light of the covenants and downside protections that lenders request. For example, if revenue doesn’t grow as quickly or margins are lower, we want founders to understand the potential downside scenarios and make sure they have an adequate buffer.

Venture debt can be a great extender for a growing, near-profitable startup, but it can be a drag on high cash-burning startups, especially if they perform below plan.

In a more conservative equity investing market, will tighter lending standards and more expensive debt be enough to limit startup dependence on loaned capital?

In addition to tighter lending standards, it is more likely in this environment that lenders will take more time to make decisions and evaluate startups. While lenders are leaning into the void in the market left by SVB, there is likely to be less capital available and, therefore, lenders will be able to more readily pick and choose at a slower, more deliberate manner than in 2020 and 2021.

5 investors discuss what’s in store for venture debt following SVB’s collapse by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

Here’s what I learned while leading a bootstrapped startup to $40M ARR

Mohannad Ali Contributor

Mohannad Ali is the CEO of Hotjar, which provides product experience insights software to small and medium-sized businesses.

Building a profitable business during a period of economic uncertainty is nothing short of intimidating. But contrary to popular belief, it’s not impossible. Bootstrapping a startup is one of the effective means of building a self-sustaining and successful business, especially as VC investments slow down.

If you’ve been considering bootstrapping, now is the time to commit. To help you set your business up to thrive during economic turbulence and beyond, I’d like to share some of the strategies that proved successful when building Hotjar, the company I lead. It all starts with creating a product, testing it and finding the right market fit.

The journey to $40M ARR

Building a business from the ground up comes with its fair share of learning experiences and missteps. But, one of the greatest challenges we were able to avoid was starting with a finished product. We decided before even coming up with a name, that the most important thing would be to start with a minimum viable product (MVP). In other words, the bare minimum required for someone to use it and get value out of it.

From previous projects, the team knew that waiting to finish the product and then releasing it would invite challenges. Had the team waited to finish the product and then attempt to collect feedback, we would have risked spending a long time moving in the completely wrong direction. Creating our MVP allowed us the flexibility to build and release as we learned, and it proved successful.

Since our founding in 2014, we’ve reached $40 million in ARR through bootstrapping. From there, it was off to the races.

Since our founding in 2014, we’ve reached $40 million in ARR through bootstrapping. From there, it was off to the races. We continued to see exponential product-led growth (PLG): When we officially launched, we had 27,562 users (including customers), and we were growing at a steady 10% per month with a PLG strategy.

The influence of the larger product insights market and our relationship with customers enabled us to move quickly and pivot regularly.

When beta testing, don’t start with a finished product

Product-led growth should play an important role in any business model for bootstrapped startups. If you’re depending on yourself to raise the funds from the ground up, your product should meet a specific demand in the market to essentially sell itself.

To create demand, even in a saturated market, listen to the people who matter the most — your target users. Developing and iterating your product based on feedback from target users is the best way to ensure you’re building something they will commit to.

It’s easy to rush product development, but starting with a finished product won’t do you any favors. Six months is an adequate time frame for beta testing, because it builds trust with a set of users who can provide constructive feedback to troubleshoot and advance the product.

One piece of feedback we received during beta testing that helped change the course of our business was a request to introduce sub/cross-domain tracking. In retrospect, this was an obvious improvement, but until our users asked for it, we hadn’t realized how common this need really was.

Here’s what I learned while leading a bootstrapped startup to $40M ARR by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch

Insurtech bolttech gets $196M at $1.6B valuation from investors like MetLife

Embedded insurtech is still hot, as the $196 million in funding landed by bolttech proves. The company, which started in Singapore but now has operations around the world, said it is now valued at $1.6 billion. The funding was led by Tokio Marine, Japan’s first insurance company, and life insurance leader MetLife through its subsidiary MetLife Next Gen Ventures. Other participants included new and existing shareholders, and Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional.

Bolttech earlier announced that Tokio Marine will lead its Series B funding round, which then valued the company at an up-round valuation of $1.5 billion. Group CEO Rob Schimek said the current funding is part of the same round. “Bolttech’s Series B is closed to new interest from the market, but we continue to engage with the investor community in case of future opportunities,” he told TechCrunch.

Founded three years ago, bolttech says its Series B funding is the largest straight equity Series B for an insurtech in the last year, and that its Series A round, announced in 2021, was also the largest ever for an insurtech.

Embedded means insurance or protection products that are embedded into the customer experience as they buy a product or sign up for a service. For example, someone purchasing a smartphone might be prompted to purchase a protection plan that that offers repair, device replacement or trade-ins.

Schimek said bolttech’s model uses a B2B2C approach, which means it connects more than 700 distribution partners around the world with 230 insurance providers, who offer 6,000 products to consumers.

Bolttech bills itself as one of the world’s leading embedded insurance providers. Its customers include LibertyMutual, PayMaya, Progressive, Lazada, Samsung and HomeCredit. It has licenses to operate throughout Asia, Europe and all 50 United States states. The startup currently quotes about $55 billion worth of annualized premiums.

Some examples of how bolttech’s embedded insurance works include device protection, which Schimek describes as a “hero product” for bolttech. Both white-labelled and cobranded protection products are offered to end-customers through partners like Samsung, Windtre, LG U+, BackMarket and HomCredit.

Device protection isn’t the only product bolttech offers. For example, it enables JKOPay in Taiwan and Maya in the Philippines to offer insurance marketplaces through their apps.

“Overall, we can help any kind of business—whether they are insurers, brokers, agents or non-insurance businesses like telcos, e-commerce, retailers, fintech—to embed insurance at the point of need for their customers,” Schimek said.

Bolttech launched in Singapore in April 2020 and was able to establish an international presence for several reasons. The key one was the partnerships it forged with 700 distribution partners and over 230 insurers around the world.

“We were very intentional about making sure that we have established the right partnerships for success in specific geographies. We generally follow our partners into a geography with business already established,” said Schimek. “We were also able to grow our international footprint as we established greenfield operations in several markets and completed a number of acquisitions that helped us accelerate our expansion.”

He added that bolttech now has 1,500 team members around the world, including insurance and tech experts, and that helps them find innovative new ways to distribute insurance products.

The Series B will be used on bolttech proprietary technology, with plans to pioneer the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in its operations and the insurance and protection value chain, including computer vision, generative AI/natural language processing, advanced analytics and robotic automation.

Schimek said bolttech also plans to enhance its insurance distribution tech, including its purchasing experiences and quoting engines, optimizing claims automation, fraud detection and inventory management.

Insurtech bolttech gets $196M at $1.6B valuation from investors like MetLife by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Entro raises $6M to for its end-to-end secrets security solution

Entro, a Tel Aviv-based startup that is building a security platform that helps enterprises manage and protect their secrets like account credentials, certificates and API keys, today announced that it has raised a $6 million seed round led by StageOne Ventures and Hyperwise Ventures.  A number of angel investors, including Trusteer and Transmit Security founders Rakesh Loonkar and Mickey Boodaei, as well as Imperva founder Amichai Shulman also participated in this round.

Today’s enterprises often have to manage thousands of secrets across an ever-growing number of services — and often, they don’t even know how many their employees have created. These secrets are also often scattered and secret scanners and similar tools exist to ensure that this information doesn’t leak, these tools don’t know anything about the context in which these secrets are used. If there is a secret exposed in a piece of source code that already had its privileges removed, then that’s not exactly a high priority for remediation, for example.

The company was co-founded by Itzik Alvas (CEO) and Adam Cheriki (CTO), who first met during their time in the Israeli security forces. Alvas previously worked at a healthcare company and then as a senior SRE manager at Microsoft, while Cheriki worked in a number of security positions at large tech companies like IBM, Javelin Networks, Symantec and Broadcom.

“Secrets were always a big issue for me and for [Adam] as well,” Alvas told me. “We dealt with it for a long time and in our previous positions we were responsible for secret security. We saw how secrets are being created and handled without any proper security oversight — and we decided to do something about it.”

Image Credits: Entro Security

He noted that the team built Entro specifically with CISOs and security teams in mind. The service provides these stakeholders with insights into how their secrets are stored, be that in vaults, collaboration tools, cloud environments and SaaS platforms. It then analyzes the secrets it finds, correlates them to workloads and provides users with a straightforward dashboard that helps them understand any potential issues.

“We spoke with more than a hundred CISOs and heard the same complaints over and over,” said Alvas. “Companies have no idea how many secrets they hold in
the cloud, where they are, who is using them, and most importantly, how to protect them.”

Typically, companies use a multitude of tools to manage and secure their secrets, including scanners like Gitleaks, vaults from the likes of AWS, Azure or HashiCorp, and secret scanners for CI/CD like Cycode or Aqua’s Argon.

Image Credits: Entro

One of Entro’s major differentiators, Alvas noted, is that it is an end-to-end monitoring solution. Because of this, the service can understand the context of where secrets are used and is able to help developers and security teams prioritize which issues they should focus on. The company’s service also integrates with a company’s existing vaults, CI/CD systems, tools like Confluence where developers may share credentials and others. Within a few minutes, Entro can provide businesses with a single pane of glass to identify and remediate the secrets that are potentially at risk.

“In recent years, we have witnessed how companies were devastated by secret-based cyber-attacks that were highly damaging. Today, R&D teams are forced to manage a growing number of secrets in their development and tend to spread them across different vaults, repositories, and services, while security teams are having an incredibly hard time combatting this problem. This is where Entro Security comes to the rescue,” said Nofar Schnider, principal at StageOne Ventures.

Cycode raises $56M Series B to help secure software supply chains

 

Entro raises $6M to for its end-to-end secrets security solution by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Jia, a blockchain-based lender of small businesses in emerging markets, raises $4.3 million seed

Jia, a blockchain-based fintech providing loans to micro and small businesses in emerging markets, has raised $4.3 million seed funding, and an additional $1 million commitment for on-chain liquidity, in a round led by early-stage backer TCG Crypto, with participation from a number of funds including BlockTower, Hashed Emergent, Saison Capital, and Global Coin Research.

Angel investors Packy McCormick, Not Boring founder, Anand Iyer of Canonical Crypto, Jared Hecht and Rory Eakin, the founders of fintech lending companies Fundera and CircleUp, also took part in the round.

The fintech plans to use the funding to double down on its operations in Kenya, and the Philippines, before exploring new markets in West Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Jia was founded last year by Zach Marks, Cheng Cheng, Ivan Orone, and Yuting Wang, all ex-Tala executives. The startup offers loans to borrowers, who receive tokens after repayment, that they can later redeem at a rate agreed upon based on Jia’s profits.

“The idea is to provide affordable financing for micro-businesses, and when they repay, they become owners by getting token rewards,” said Marks, Jia CEO and co-founder, adding that each token has a claim to a stream of revenues from Jia’s lending protocol.

Kenyan fintech Pezesha raises $11M backed by Women’s World Banking, Cardano parent IOG

The fintech currently packages the tokens as Jia points, which Marks says are claimable once the token-system is fully established. Meanwhile, borrowers can use them as security for lower interest rates, higher loan amounts, and more flexible loan terms.

Jia is trying to replicate the model of community finance (table-banking) groups, which are popular in markets like Kenya, where members, who are borrowers too, hold shares and earn from the groups.

The fintech has launched its first on-chain pool with Huma finance, an in-come backed decentralized finance protocol.

Jia provides loans of up to $5,000 to small businesses filling the gap currently left by digital lenders and loan apps that don’t offer credit of more than $1,000. Marks says this “makes it really difficult to really serve a proper business use case because if you want to grow, you need more money and for longer durations.”

Jia’s loan repayment period is based on the borrower, and can extend up to six months, and attract about 2% to 6% interest per month, depending on the borrower’s profile. Borrowers accessing inventory and invoice financing have up to three months to repay.

“So, the loans range in size from about $200 up to $5,000 …they are really competitively priced. We charge about a third the interest rate of the typical consumer fintech lender,” said Zachs.

Jia taps customers by integrating into the apps of its local partners, including Ilara Health, which supplies medical inventory to a network of over 2,000 small clinics.

“Ilara’s focus is on helping clinics grow. They sell the medicine, low-cost diagnostic devices. They don’t want to deal with credit risk on their balance sheet, and so we step to finance an inventory financing program for them. We get access to a bunch of proprietary data that Ilara has about these clinics, which helps us underwrite in a way that banks and other lenders can’t,” said Marks.

Jia is among the fintech companies working to bridge the access-to-finance gap which impedes the growth of businesses in markets like Africa. Data shows that while small enterprises make up 90% of Africa’s businesses, they face a $330 billion financing deficit. These businesses are required to have collateral, and meet a number of other time-consuming requirements before accessing loans from traditional lenders. Fintechs such as Jia are stepping in to bridge this finance gap.

“What is really exciting in what we’re doing is opening up the world’s capital to MSMEs, so they can receive affordable financing,” said Marks. “Jia is not just providing financing, we are providing a path to economic resilience and this opportunity to build wealth in a new way that hasn’t been done before.”

Jia, a blockchain-based lender of small businesses in emerging markets, raises $4.3 million seed by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Finnish VC firm Lifeline Ventures closes $163M fund for early-stage startups

Venture capital (VC) firm Lifeline Ventures today announced a fresh €150 million ($163 million) fund aimed at early-stage startups across Finland.

Founded in 2009, Helsinki-based Lifeline Ventures has invested in around 115 companies to date, with more than a dozen exits to its name including activity-tracking app Moves, which Facebook acquired back in 2014; food delivery company Wolt, which DoorDash snapped up in a $8.1 billion all-stock deal two years ago; and gaming giant Supercell, which Tencent doled out $8.6 billion for a majority stake in 2016. Lifeline Ventures has also backed unicorns such as open source enterprise infrastructure company Aiven, which hit a valuation of $3 billion last year.

Lifeline Ventures typically invests at the “angel” and seed-stage, with some follow-on investments in the Series A realm. While “angel” usually refers to wealthy individuals investing with their own cash, in this instance the company means that it sometimes backs companies at a super-early stage, before they have anything meaningful to show from a product perspective. Such investments have included mixed reality headset maker Varjo and smart ring maker Oura, which recently claimed a valuation of $2.55 billion.

“We invested in Oura ‘pre-PowerPoint’ — meaning we’ve been there before an actual product was ever made,” Lifeline Ventures founding partner Timo Ahopelto told TechCrunch.

With its new fund, the company says it will look to make investments ranging from anywhere between €150,000 and €2 million. And while the vast majority of its investments (95%, TechCrunch is informed) are aimed at domestic Finnish startups, it has been known to take stakes in companies hailing from elsewhere, including Germany, France, the U.K., and U.S. when invited to do so. 

Lifeline Ventures’ founding partners Petteri Koponen and Timo Ahopelto Image Credits: Lifeline Ventures

Sowing seeds

While VC funding has generally declined across all stages, data suggests that earlier-stage funding has been a little more resilient. Certainly, we’ve seen a spate of fresh early-stage funds emerging in Europe of late in the past few months alone. For example, London’s Playfair Capital closed a $70 million pre-seed fund, while France’s Emblem and Ovni Capital each announced new €50 million ($54 million) funds. Elsewhere, the U.K’s Amadeus Capital Partners partnered with Austria’s Apex Ventures for a €80 million ($87 million) fund targeted at early-stage deep tech startups.

“The early stage is the most recession-proof business, both for founders and investors, as you are likely to always grow faster than markets can go down,” Ahopelto said.

Lifeline Ventures’ latest fund represents its fifth to date, with its inaugural €29 million fund closing in 2012, followed by fund two in 2014 which amounted to €17 million; a €57 million fund three in 2016; and a €130 million fund three years later. While a lot has happened in the world since 2019, Ahopelto says that it’s pretty much business as usual from an investment perspective.

“Nothing has really changed for us in terms of investment strategy — we are still the first investors in many cases,” he said. “We’re still seeing lots of startups being founded, in Finland specifically. The ecosystem in Finland is in its early days and will grow two-to-three times in terms of quality and size during the next five to ten years. There is room for that sort of growth in Finland.”

Lifeline Ventures’ most recent investment was in Origin by Ocean, an Espoo-based startup working to rid the oceans of harmful algae by transforming it into functional goods spanning food, cosmetics, textiles, and more. And this is one area in particular that Ahopelto reckons will continue to thrive in the years ahead.

“We feel that climate startups will raise their heads even more as time passes,” he said. “Similarly, we will see more climate funds investing in the sphere.”

Finnish VC firm Lifeline Ventures closes $163M fund for early-stage startups by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Singapore’s Ora takes a vertically-integrated approach to telehealth

According to the founder of Singapore-based telehealth platform Ora, 90% of its patients are less than 39 years old and have not been treated for their conditions offline. That puts the onus on Ora to make sure its patients, mostly millennials who live in cities, have a good experience. Ora wants to perform with verticals focused on specific health issues, like women’s and men’s health and skincare. They also run an end-to-end platform that handles everything from consultations to prescription delivery and post-care.

Today, Ora announced it has raised $10 million in Series A funding, which it says is the biggest telehealth Series A round in Southeast Asia. The investment was co-led by TNB Aura and Antler, with participation from Gobi Partners, Kairous Capital and GMA Ventures.

This brings Ora’s total raised since its inception in 2020 to $17 million. Ora was founded by Elias Pour, the former CMO of Zalora, and says it has had uninterrupted >20% month-over-month growth since it launched last year.

Pour told TechCrunch that while working at Zalora, he “saw a very clear trend from customers investing in looking good, driven by fashion buys that allowed them to express themselves, to feeling good, which is connected to physical appearance such as skin, hair, weight and overall well-being.” He started looking for segments that were underserved and found a major opportunity in healthcare.

Ora founder and CEO Elias Pour

Pour added that Southeast Asia has one of the highest out-of-pocket health expenditures globally, so there didn’t need to be a behavioral change in order to convince people to move to direct payments. “People are already used to paying out of pocket for their healthcare costs, suiting this category well for DTC.”

Ora says it has delivered over 250,000 doctor consultations since its launch in 2021. It has an end-to-end model, meaning it covers consultations, pharmacy, medication delivery and post-purchase care. Ora monetizes with subscriptions, with subscriptions accounting for more than 70% of its revenue.

Ora is vertically-integrated, and currently operates three brands. The first, called Modules, is focused on online dermatology consultations and prescription skincare. The second, andSons, offers male health care, and the third, OVA, treats female reproductive healthcare.

The platform primarily treats a young clientele. The company says that 90% of its patients are first to condition, under 38 years old and have never been treated before online. Younger patients demand flexibility and speed, which is why Ora’s telemedicine model is attractive to them.

Pour said that one of the challenges healthcare providers face in Southeast Asia is the “large disconnect between the patient population,” which skews young, and the legacy experience of healthcare. He believes that over the next decade, about 80% of healthcare services will be brought online.

“Today, men and women in their 20s and 30s living in capital cities represent 36% of the total population. It’s the fastest growing segment, forecasted to represent half of the population in most markets by 2030,” he said. Pour added that Ora is “establishing a strong relationship with them at this early stage, to earn their trust, remaining relevant to address the healthcare needs they will have as they age.”

Pour said Ora differentiates from other telehealth players like Doctor Anywhere, Speedoc and Alodokter because it focuses on specific health issues. Ora is also combining prescription, OTC and strong consumer products to provide post-treatment service and clinical continuity.

Ora’s new funding will be used to expand into new markets and brings its brands to more than 1,300 retail stores.

In a statement, TNB Aura founding partner Charles Wong said, “[Ora’s] combined focus on specialized, and often taboo, healthcare verticals as well as a direct-to-patient approach has led the team to clearly differentiate itself while delivering market-leading unit economics that meet the tailored needs of patients across the full value chain.”

Should startups build or buy telehealth infrastructure?

Singapore’s Ora takes a vertically-integrated approach to telehealth by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

5 ways SaaS companies can level up their product-led growth

Christian Owens Contributor

Christian Owens is executive chairman and co-founder of Paddle, a payments infrastructure provider for SaaS businesses.

Following the valuation collapse of the last 12 months, the phrase “efficient growth” is reverberating around SaaS boardrooms worldwide. Every software leader is seeking to boost revenues, cut costs, and demonstrate a clear path to profitability.

Sitting at the heart of this conversation is product-led growth (PLG), a strategy that sees acquisition, monetization and retention of customers through a product lens, rather than through the hiring of expensive marketing, sales and success organizations.

With standout examples like Figma’s $28B acquisition by Adobe, ChatGPT’s two-month race to 100 million users, and Hubspot’s pivot to PLG that has helped drive almost $2B in revenue, most SaaS boards are seeking to understand how they can benefit from this proven sales motion. PLG is fast becoming a necessity, not a choice.

To find out what makes a fine-tuned and well-oiled PLG strategy, we analyzed data from more than 30,000 SaaS companies that generated more than $28B ARR collectively through the Paddle and ProfitWell platforms. Based on this data, I believe there are five key ways that software companies big and small can level up their product-led, efficient growth.

To find out what makes a well-oiled PLG strategy, we analyzed data from 30,000+ SaaS companies that collectively generated more than $28B ARR.

1. Fix the leaks in your funnel

With your product handling much of your customer acquisition and retention in a PLG setup, you’ll likely experience what is known as ‘delinquent’ churn – customers leaving your service involuntarily due to leaks in your funnel.

This can account for 20-40% of your overall churn rate and is usually to do with failed payments, meaning that leveling up your billing processes should be a top priority. Common ‘leaks’ in the funnel you should be keeping an eye on include:

• Insufficient customer funds, which is particularly common for payments made by credit cards with limits. To fix this, try retrying the payments – using smart technology to do so at a time when it’s more likely to be successful – or offer payment methods that can access multiple sources of funds like PayPal.
• Cross-border transaction failures, which sometimes happens due to different standards between banks. A strong solution is to bank locally where your customers are based, or to use a payment provider which already has local banking relationships.
• Currency conversations, which can often create fraud triggers. Selling to customers in their local currency is essential to prevent this: our data shows that doing so can increase payment acceptance rates by 1 to 11%.

2. Go hybrid or go home

Unsurprisingly, product-led growth motions let the product take center stage, with acquisition, conversion, retention, and expansion all being driven by the product itself. Instead of booking a demo with a sales team, customers are usually offered trials, freemium models and other self-serve calls to action, streamlining the acquisition process.

But that doesn’t mean sales isn’t important, especially as your company scales up. The industry is full of success stories in which small SaaS companies graduate from an exclusively product-led growth strategy to a sales-assisted, or sales-led growth motion (SLG). When they do this, their customer base shifts from individual users and small teams to larger businesses. Just look at the trajectory of some of cloud’s most successful names:

5 ways SaaS companies can level up their product-led growth by Walter Thompson originally published on TechCrunch

Bonus: An extra week to apply to Startup Battlefield 200

A big shoutout to the early-stage founders who missed the application window for the Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200) at TechCrunch Disrupt. We have exciting news just for you!

You procrastinators can thank your lucky stars, we’re giving you (a little) more time to get your application together.

Pro tip: Applying to and participating in SB 200 is 100% free. You have absolutely nothing to lose.

Extended Startup Battlefield 200 deadline

It’s time to stop kicking this task-can down the road. You have one extra week to apply to Startup Battlefield 200. Stop what you’re doing and get it done by May 31 at 11:59 p.m. PDT.

The Startup Battlefield 200 experience at TechCrunch Disrupt

Membership has its privileges. First and foremost, members of this cohort earn the coveted TechCrunch stamp of approval. It’s not readily given, and it holds weight in the startup (read: VC) community. Let’s review the other perks and benefits all SB 200 founders receive:

Full access to Disrupt: SB 200 founders attend Disrupt for free, receive four additional passes and VIP access to all the presentations, breakouts and roundtables.

Free exhibition space for the entire show: The SB 200 will be the only early-stage startups allowed to exhibit at Disrupt.

Investor interest and media exposure: Investors hunting for future unicorns and journalists looking for the next big story will beeline it for the exhibition floor to meet and greet the SB 200 founders.

Workshops and pitch training: SB 200 founders will be invited to exclusive workshops and master classes in the weeks running up to Disrupt. They’ll receive special pitch training from TechCrunch staff and one free year of TechCrunch+ membership.

Flash-pitch to an audience of investors and TC editors: That training will come in handy when you step onto the Showcase Stage. You’ll receive invaluable feedback, and you might find your way into an investor’s portfolio.

A shot at $100,000: TechCrunch editors will select 20 startups from the SB 200 to be Startup Battlefield finalists. Founders from those 20 companies will receive private pitch coaching, be featured in an article on TechCrunch and pitch live onstage in front of the entire Disrupt audience. The ultimate winner takes home the $100,000 equity-free prize.

Use this extra week wisely — it’s not nice to disappoint Saint Expeditus. Apply to the Startup Battlefield 200 by May 31 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. It has the potential to change your life, so shake a leg and show us what you’re building!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Bonus: An extra week to apply to Startup Battlefield 200 by Lauren Simonds originally published on TechCrunch

Spiff begins ‘massive overhaul of core sales commission engine’ following $50M Series C

Spiff, providing sales commission software, secured $50 million in Series C capital and the launch of Spiff Designer, its newest model builder for finance and revenue teams.

Salesforce Ventures led the round and was joined by a group of investors that included Lightspeed, Norwest, Kickstart Fund and Album. With the new investment, Spiff raised $117 million in total funding to date.

Spiff Designer offers hundreds of prebuilt commission models and features, like type ahead, error handling and testing, so that the sales professionals can manage their own commission programs without relying on developers.

It’s just one of the improvements and integrations, including within Salesforce, that Jeron Paul, founder and CEO of Spiff, discussed with TechCrunch nearly three years after covering its $10 million round.

A company born out of the global pandemic probably has some battle scars, but Paul said the past three years have “been an awesome learning journey” for Spiff. Over that time, the company grew 800% and though it has had product market fit for a while, he noted that now “there is this wonderful inflection point where you can really start to feel that you’re either not just meeting a problem that hasn’t been solved, but you’re actually starting to delight customers.”

“We’ve seen a lot of commission plans change,” Paul told TechCrunch. “Incentives end up driving a lot of the behavior of your go-to-market motion, so when you hit recessions, and whatever we’re in right now, that go-to-market motion changes a lot, which means your commission plans change a lot.”

Sales commission is a big market, so it’s no surprise that Spiff has come up against some competition in the past few years with other startups, including Palette, CaptivateIQ and Everstage, attracting venture capital attention. However, Paul said competitors and legacy offerings aren’t “able to be nimble and change quickly, or allow people to change their own commission plans.”

That approach seems to have paid off. Since its last raise in 2021, the company doubled its customers, which Paul said is nearing 1,000, while also doubling its workforce to about 275. In the past 12 months, Spiff grew its revenue 100%, though Paul notes much of that growth happened in the last quarter due to customer delays in closing deals.

Paul described Spiff as having gone through an evolution that took it from its origins as a fully custom-coded commission platform to a self-managed platform. With the funding, it will undergo a “massive overhaul of its core commission engine” as it moves toward the use of more artificial intelligence for an almost no-code or natural language offering for more ease in managing commission plans.

Spiff is working toward profitability, but Paul said he wasn’t ready to “completely take our foot off the gas.”

“Our goal here is to drive Spiff carefully toward becoming a more efficient business,” Paul said. “There’s a really rapid pace of innovation that you’re going to see, and Spiff has its eye on a very, very big prize.”

Where should sales sit in product-led companies?

Spiff begins ‘massive overhaul of core sales commission engine’ following $50M Series C by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

a16z-backed Rooms.xyz lets you build interactive, 3D rooms and simple games in your browser

A team of ex-Googlers is today launching a new digital creativity platform, Rooms.xyz, into beta testing. The startup, backed by $10 million in seed funding led by a16z, offers a browser-based tool for designing 3D spaces — or “rooms” — using drag-and-drop, editable objects or code, allowing users to express themselves through creative play as they design rooms, basic games or other interactive activities contained in these small, online spaces.

The idea is something in between a simple creation tool like Minecraft and a more advanced world-building platform, like Roblox. Or, as the company describes it, it’s like the “digital equivalent of LEGO.”

Image Credits: Rooms.xyz

The idea for Rooms was inspired by a combination of factors, explains co-founder Jason Toff — namely, that 3D model creation today was far too difficult.

Prior to Rooms, Toff spent ten years at Google, off and on, in product marketing and product management, including at YouTube, Area 120, and in VR/AR. Before that, he spent a couple of years at Vine as Product Manager, including after it was acquired by Twitter. And most recently, Toff worked at Meta, where he dabbled with new product experiments, like the zine maker E.gg and music-making app Collab, among other things.

After leaving his last position, Toff decided to take some time off, which he decided to fill by trying to learn how to make 3D models — something he always thought sounded like fun. As it turned out, however, the process was actually fairly complicated and involved the use of complex software. Around the same time, Toff’s six-year-old son had just started playing with Minecraft where designing with 3D models was easy, but it had to be done one block at a time.

This prompted the idea of something of a middle ground for 3D design, where the process would be nearly as straightforward as it was in Minecraft, but the building unit wasn’t a single block. Instead, in Rooms, you can search for, edit, and then add a fully-formed object to your space — like a door, a sofa, a table, a bed, a car, decor, a pet, or anything else you can dream up.

The interface allows you to change an object’s attributes and functionality, like the color, size, position, or style or what happens when you click it.

The project also takes inspiration from other projects Toff worked on at Google’s AR/VR division, like its VR and AR app-building service Poly (which became another Google causality in 2020), and the 3D modeling tool for VR, Blocks. Rooms’ co-founder Bruno Oliveira also worked on these projects at Google, which is how the two first met. Meanwhile, third co-founder and iOS engineer Nick Kruge, hails from Smule (where he was Director of Product Design) and Uber, in addition to Google, where he worked on YouTube mobile and YouTube Music.

“Basically, I set out for the company to make the digital equivalent of LEGO,” Toff explains. “The thought was, LEGO is one of these few things that kids love, adults love, and adults want their kids to play with,” he says. But LEGO has limitations due to its physical, printed plastic nature. It can be expensive and you can lose parts, for example, Toff noted.

Like a box of LEGOS, Rooms is meant for open-ended play where people use the objects to express themselves in some way — whether that’s building a tiny version of a real-world room, a dream room, or by creating some sort of interactive space, like a simple game or a musical instrument you can click to play, or something else.

The startup seeded its community with 1,000 Voxel 3D objects it commissioned from creators, which can be added and customized in your own space. Every room is also by default public and can be “remixed” — that is, used as a template or jumping-off point for designing your own.

Image Credits: Rooms.xyz

There’s an educational aspect to the software, too, as you don’t only have to interact with the objects via the user interface — you can also click to reveal the code. Rooms uses Lua, the same language that’s used for coding in Roblox. That could help to introduce younger users to coding concepts before moving on to Roblox’s more advanced editing tools.

While the rooms themselves are interactive and can be interconnected with one another, there’s not much more that can be done with them after the design is complete besides share their URL with others to show them off. A “camera mode” lets you take a photo or a smooth dolly shot, but the end result isn’t one-click publishable to social networks. Nor can users create avatars that can move or interact with others, or engage in chats.

“That was an intentional decision — in part, just to keep this as like safe as possible,” Toff explains. “Because as soon as you introduce chat…people can do terrible things,” he says.. Plus, he adds, there’s already too much focus on virtual personas and dressing up avatars and the team wanted wanted to pursue something different.

“For all I know, it could be a huge mistake that we don’t have any of that — and it may make sense to introduce some sort of social experience down the road,” Toff admits. “But for now, it’s all just like just a website or a game you play. It’s all individual.”

Image Credits: Rooms.xyz

Eventually, Rooms could monetize by selling objects for purchase, subscriptions, or licensing its software for education, but that’s all very much to be determined at this point. As the startup opens up to beta testing, the goal is to see how early adopters use the product and what they end up building or requesting, says Toff.

One area they’re exploring, however, involves the use of ChatGPT. Right now, they’ve created an object of a fortune teller (Zoltar!) which you can pose questions to that are then answered by the OpenAI chatbot, speaking as Zoltar would. Users can copy that code and use it for their own AI-enabled objects, editing the prompt within the code to change the way their object responds.

Also in development is an AI tool that would let users instruct the software to write code for the object they want and how it should behave.

For instance, you could tell it to make your object spin when clicked, and the AI would create the code you need. This functionality is not yet public, however.

The startup — Things Inc. — was founded in 2021, raising $8 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and $2 million from various angel investors, including Adobe’s Chief Product Office Scott Belsky and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, among others. After burning funds too quickly at first, the team downsized their 10-person team to just the three founders in order to maintain enough runway. Now, Rooms.xyz has somewhere around four-plus years, Toff says.

That could allow the company, which has been built via Unity, more time to launch on other platforms. Right now, an iOS app is in development that would serve as a companion for exploring the Rooms built by others. But the team also envisions expanding these creations to the AR/VR platforms from Apple and Meta in the future, too.

“We were like, ‘let’s get this beta out now,’ because once Apple comes out with its [AR/VR device], we’ll see what it does and then we can figure out how to integrate it,” says Toff. ‘All this was built in a way that it could be on a headset very easily,” he adds.

Rooms.xyz is open for beta testing and is free to use.

a16z-backed Rooms.xyz lets you build interactive, 3D rooms and simple games in your browser by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

This UK startup plans to radically shake-up the antiquated word of COPD measurement

In 1846, London surgeon John Hutchinson invented the spirometer, a thing you blow hard into, to measure the volume of air inspired and expired by the lungs. It’s a pretty basic idea. Incredibly, since then, the technology has barely evolved. Today, the modern spirometer doesn’t even measure the amount of CO2 expelled by the lungs, a crucial data point for assessing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Now a Cambridge, UK startup has come up with a radical new technology device that, it claims, is affordable, portable, requires minimal training, and also measures CO2.

Healthtech company TidalSense has now closed a £7.5m ($9.3m) fundraising round led by UK-based investors BGF and Downing Ventures.

The Cambridge-based company says its handheld medical device (N-Tidal) detects changes in lung function sensitively and enables quicker, more accurate and automated diagnosis of COPD. The ability to measure asthma problems is in the product road-map.

COPD is the third leading cause of death worldwide, causing 3.23 million deaths in 2019 according to the World Health Organization. And because of the rise in pollution levels across the world, it’s likely to get worse.

Despite the 1840s technology, the market for Spirometers is projected to be worth $616 Million in 2023 and is further poised to grow at a CAGR of 5.4%, to hit US$ 1042.3 million by 2033.

However, Spirometers are easily fooled when patients vary how hard they blow, and they cannot easily distinguish between different types of respiratory conditions or provide information on the severity of the condition. Plus it will also take about 30 minutes to test a patient with a Spirometer. In England alone, 200-250  per 500,000 of the population are awaiting a diagnostic test driving waiting times of up to 5-10 years. 

TidalSense says its N-Tidal device can measure a patient’s breathe in less than five minutes, and send the data to a Cloud-based platform via 2G networks.

Indeed, I tried the device out myself, and, sure enough, it measured the state of my lungs in (more like) less than 3 minutes.

TidalSense team

In an interview with TechCrunch, co-founder Dr Ameera Patel (pictured, right), CEO of TidalSense and an asthma sufferer herself, told me: “This hardware has been developed for eight years. There’s several patents on it now. The sensor measures every single molecule of carbon dioxide that comes out of your lungs. What we’ve discovered with collecting all this data is that we can tell really sensitively when your lungs are getting worse.”

She says the problem is that people don’t know when they’re symptomatic: “They don’t know when they’re getting sicker. This device will tell me immediately and I’ll know to increase my inhalers. It’s the difference between being able to manage your symptoms and suddenly landing in hospital because you had no data on the lead-up to things getting worse.”

The company says it has benchmarked the device on over 1000 patients, collecting over 2.3 million breaths from patients through clinical studies and trials.

“We’re getting really really high accuracies on diagnosing COPD because fundamentally, in COPD, your lung structure changes. From the data we built very accurate diagnostic tests, which we’re looking to commercialise with the funding,” Patel added.

Tim Rea, Head of Early Stage Investments at BGF commented in a statement that “this solution is a prime example of where advanced  machine learning techniques can be applied to deliver faster diagnostics, greater efficiencies and better patient outcomes.” 

This UK startup plans to radically shake-up the antiquated word of COPD measurement by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch

Jenfi raises more funding for its “growth capital as a service” platform

Jenfi, a “growth-capital-as-a-service” platform, can provide online businesses with revenue-based financing in a little as a day. The Singapore-based startup announced today it has raised $6.6 million in pre-Series B funding, led by Headline Asia. Participation came from returning investor Monk’s Hill Ventures, which led Jenfi’s Series A two years ago, ICU Ventures, Granite Oak, Korea Investment Partners & Golden Equator Capital and Atlas Ventures.

Since Jenfi’s inception four years ago, it has deployed more than $25 million in non-dilutive capital to about 600 companies. Its customers include Gushcloud, Ralali, Hello Health, Lamer Fashion, Buy2sell and Mystifly. The new funding will be used to grow its customer base in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, and expand into new markets in Southeast Asia, like Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. It will also enable Jenfi to refine its credit underwriting and risk assessment capabilities, including its proprietary risk assessment engine.

The fintech was founded in 2019 by Jeffrey Liu and Justin Louie, who exited from their previous startup, fitness marketplace GuavaPass, when it was acquired by ClassPass. Jenfi’s “growth capital as a service” model was developed after the two realized that online business owners, like e-commerce sellers, SaaS and consumer tech providers, often had trouble getting capital to fund their growth expenses from traditional financial institutions.

Jenfi co-founders Jeffrey Liu and Justin Louie

Businesses that apply to Jenfi can get financing ranging from $10,000 to $1 million to spend on marketing, inventory and growth campaigns. Liu told TechCrunch that aggregate sales generated by companies in Jenfi’s portfolio is now more than $150 million.

Decisions about what businesses to lend to are made with Jenfi’s proprietary risk assessment engine, which integrates into data sources like accounting software, payment gateways, e-commerce platforms, online marketplaces and digital advertising. This lets Jenfi continuously monitor its borrowers’ business activity, including revenue growth and marketing return on investment.

As Jenfi grows, it is adding more local market data sources, including selling management platform Haravan and POS management software KiotViet in Vietnam, and almost all banks in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Jenfi’s proprietary risk engine is one of the main ways it differentiates from other companies offering revenue-based financing to digital-native businesses, said Liu, because it means more comprehensive assessments of creditworthiness and tailored financing solutions.

Since its Series A was announced, Jenfi has deployed its first machine learning-assisted underwriting system, which Liu said enables it to make faster underwriting decisions, with better accuracy and less human involvement.

In the future, Jenfi will work with synthetic data to get a better understanding of client behavior and possible future outcomes. The company also plans to develop a tech platform to allow third-parties to use its proprietary scoring models in their own native infrastructure.

Another way Jenfi differentiates from competitors is the flexibility of its repayment plans, said Liu. They range from three to twelve months and are designed to flexible, taking the needs of each business in mind. Repayment amounts are based on a pre-determined percentage of revenue, but that varies widely depending on business type. For example, a high-margin software business may be granted a higher revenue share percentage than businesses in another sector.

The total amount of fees that a company pays depends on the credit score generated by its proprietary risk engine. Liu said rates are transparent and competitive, with no hidden fees or charges.

Jenfi’s plans for the near future include offering growth capital to more clients through the use of dynamic limits, which can be adjusted based on client needs and creditworthiness. It will also launch an on-demand financing product to cover recurring growth capital needs like variable monthly ad spend.

In a statement, Headline Asia partner Aki Okamoto and principal Jonathan M. Hayashi, said “We have been continuously conducting research on revenue-based financing, and have talked to almost every single player in this field in Asia. Jenfi absolutely stood out to us. Their technology, product, operation and traction are significantly better than their peers.”

Jenfi raises more funding for its “growth capital as a service” platform by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

ZestMoney founders resign as Goldman Sachs-backed fintech struggles to raise funds

Founders of ZestMoney have resigned from the startup, the latest twist in the fate of the Indian fintech whose ability to underwrite small ticket loans to first-time internet customers once drew the backing of many high-profile investors including Goldman Sachs.

Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma and Ashish Anantharaman, the founders of ZestMoney, informed employees about their decision on Monday.

“Over the last few weeks, we have done a lot of thinking and it has been hard for us to arrive at this conclusion,” wrote Chapman in an email seen by TechCrunch. “We have immense belief and faith in the potential that ZestMoney has. We will also ensure to provide full support to the incoming management team and do everything we can to support them for the next 4 months to ensure a smooth transition.”

The departures come weeks after a potential deal to acquire ZestMoney by PhonePe fell through. A lot was riding on that potential acquisition as ZestMoney has exhausted nearly all other funding sources in the past three quarters as investors grow cautious of funding late-stage lossmaking startups.

ZestMoney eliminated about 100 jobs at the startup last month and founders rushed to help those leaving land jobs elsewhere in the industry.

“We are proud of how far we have come on that journey and the advancement we made in truly democratizing credit availability in the country using our path-breaking technology. We are also immensely proud of the incredible team and the unique culture we have built at ZestMoney – which was only underlined to us in recent weeks as we saw how everyone came together in supporting each other during one of the hardest times a startup can go through,” wrote Chapman.

ZestMoney, which was valued at $445 million in its previous equity round last year, raised over $130 million from a range of investors including Ribbit Capital, Omidyar Network, Quona, Australia’s Zip, PayU, Xiaomi and Alteria Capital.

ZestMoney is among a handful of Indian startups that uses alternative data points to help build credit profiles on consumers, making them eligible to make their first online purchases.

India’s low credit card penetration has left a majority of the population without traditional credit scores, which banks rely on to evaluate creditworthiness before issuing loans. Furthermore, small loans do not yield significant returns for banks, disincentivizing them from issuing such financial products. In response, ZestMoney, alongside other emerging startups like Axio and LazyPay, has attempted to carve out a niche in a market traditionally dominated by financial giant Bajaj Finance.

Chapman said she and the other founders remain shareholders in ZestMoney.

ZestMoney founders resign as Goldman Sachs-backed fintech struggles to raise funds by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

VC funding of women climate tech founders is abysmal. Here’s how it could improve

The venture community has realized several things in recent years: Climate change isn’t going away, and there is a huge opportunity to invest in companies that promise to define entire segments of the future economy.

With a few hiccups along the way, venture dollars have begun to flow with increasing volume and regularity to climate tech startups over the last few years. That capital is adding up; since the start of 2021, climate tech startups have raised $88 billion, according to PitchBook data.

The sector’s potential is practically limitless: the problems presented by climate change will be with us for generations, meaning that solutions could build companies that last for decades, if not hundreds of years. And the slight dip in funding that the climate sector saw last year isn’t indicative of lost investor interest, nor are the slow-pacing Q1 figures; for many, not just those in climate tech, the market is slow.

But just like in other parts of the startup economy, those dollars are far from evenly distributed. Women founders have received just 6.9% of venture dollars in climate tech in Q1, according to Crunchbase, which is down from 8.9% in 2022.

It will take the perspectives and knowledge from all things and all people to tackle our changing planet. But while climate tech and its backers might be experiencing an awakening, founders who identify as women have yet to experience it.

Gender bias is still persistent

“The funding gap is astounding,” Emily McAteer, co-founder and CEO of Odyssey Energy Solutions, told TechCrunch+.

A key driver appears to be the discrepancy in round size between companies with male-only founders and those with mixed-gender or female-only founding teams.

VC funding of women climate tech founders is abysmal. Here’s how it could improve by Dominic-Madori Davis originally published on TechCrunch

TechCrunch Live events, but a podcast

TechCrunch Live had some amazing shows over the last few months. I know it’s hard to keep up. Every Wednesday, at 12:00pm PDT, the live event features top founders and investors talking through issues facing their industries right now. The interviews are lead by top TechCrunch Editors (and me). If you can’t make the live shows, they’re available on YouTube for viewing and the podcasts embedded here.

I’d love to have you watch the events live. You can register for this week’s show here.

Identity and identifying a good deal

Today’s interview was led by TechCrunch Global Managing Editor, Ingrid Lunden. Ingrid spoke to Rick Song, one of the co-founders of Persona, which built and offers a large suite of identity verification solutions to address the ever-growing issue of identity fraud. Joining Rick is Mark Goldberg of Index Ventures, a firm that made a prescient move to spot and back Persona early on.

Mark and Rick spoke to us about:

• How Persona keeps pace with AI Verification and Online Trust
• How Index Ventures is riding on the wave of the startup’s growth
• And the unique and complex issues that come to the public’s mind with AI

How Cambrian BioPharma is reinventing drug – and drug company – development

Matt Burns spoke to James Peyer, the co-founder of Cambrian BioPharma, and Maryanna Saenko, co-founder and partner at Future Ventures. Cambrian BioPharma is a new pharmaceutical startup with a revolutionary approach to developing and managing drug development age-related diseases.

What we’re most interested in, though, is how Cambrian’s executive team attracts and retains top talent. (Spoiler: They give them an oversized amount of equity compared to traditional pharmaceutical companies.)

James and Maryanna spoke to us about:

• Developing therapeutics for anti-aging in a way that works with the existing regulatory structure
• How James and Maryanna solve the ‘venture capital math problem’
• But first we spoke on moving research from academia to the real world and fighting misconception and buzzwords around longevity biotech

Who’s playing the long game in edtech?

Today’s interview was led by TechCrunch Senior Reporter and edtech expert, Natasha Mascarenhas. Natasha spoke to Sam Chaudhary, the founder of ClassDojo, who spent eight years building the edtech consumer app that focuses on student classrooms, before introducing a formal revenue model. Joining Sam is his investor Chris Farmer, the founder and CEO of SignalFire, a seed-stage venture firm that recently raised $900 million across four new funds.

Sam and Chris spoke to us about:

• How Sam played the long-game in edtech and what he’d do differently if he had to do it all over again
• Why SignalFire chose to navigate the edtech space, specifically the connection between kids and consumers
• How Chris sees investing in companies that aren’t rushing to monetize
• The “outsider advantage” and its tension with insider knowledge

Managing uncertainty with Habi and Inspired Capital

Matt Burns spoke to Brynne McNulty Rojas, who’s the co-founder and CEO of Habi, the hot real estate startup out of Colombia which reached unicorn status last year. Brynne founded Habi to bring modern home buying tools to low- and middle-class home buyers in her home country of Colombia. Now, with a valuation above $1 billion USD, Habi is a serious player in the LatAm home buying market where the majority of the homes for sale are not listed online. Joining Brynne in this conversation is Mark Batsiyan, a co-founder and partner at Inspired Capital.

Brynne and Mark spoke to us about:

• Habi’s growth and what it was like to work with US-based investors
• How Brynne built her team’s confidence during a period of uncertainty
• The value of transparency and sharing vulnerability
• And advice to founders raising in today’s market

AI innovation for in vitro fertilization with Root Ventures and Oma Fertility

Today’s interview was led by Neesha Tambe, TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield editor who’s also largely responsible for the hundreds of startups pitching and exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt. But she’s here today because of her personal experience with I-V-F. Neesha spoke with Oma Robotics o-founder Kiran Joshi and Root Ventures Partner Chrissy Meyer. Unlike many other fertility providers, Oma focuses on male infertility, and today we’re going to hear about a few things:

• Oma Fertility’s experience building a company in healthcare during a global pandemic
• How Root made the jump to virtual-first investments, which is now the new norm
• And how founders can craft their story and stand out in a crowded market

TechCrunch Live events, but a podcast by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch