6 methods for reducing bias in candidate sourcing and screening

Steve Bartel Contributor

Steve Bartel is the CEO of Gem, a talent engagement platform backed by Greylock, Accel and ICONIQ.

Over the last several years, an increasing number of companies have pledged to hire a more diverse workforce and begun releasing their diversity numbers annually. The results have been a mixed bag at best.

With so many organizations saying that diversity hiring is among their top goals and making good-faith efforts to revamp their recruiting practices accordingly, our team wanted to better understand why the results have fallen short. What we found surprised us: Subconscious bias tends to have the strongest impact on historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the early stages of the interview process.

For example, the data revealed that while white candidates see higher passthrough rates at the very top of the funnel, Black and Hispanic/Latinx talent see higher passthrough rates across the remaining funnel stages: 62% of Black talent and 57% of Hispanic/Latinx talent are extended offers after on-sites, compared to just 54% of white talent.

This suggests that diversity is most often an issue in earlier stages of the interview process, driven at least in part by subconscious bias. Candidates from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups have to work harder to prove themselves than their white counterparts, despite seeing higher offer rates at later stages of the interview process.

Whenever you open a new role, start by asking the question: How do we ensure that our selection is based solely on criteria that’s relevant to the role?

To help address this issue, I’m sharing six strategies that recruiting teams can use to reduce bias in the early phases of the recruiting process, when candidates are both entering and progressing through interviews.

Rethink the criteria for your open roles

Research has found that many things people list on their LinkedIn profile or résumé have very little, if any, correlation with their future work performance.

For example, requiring or being predisposed to four-year degrees from certain institutions biases you toward privilege. Screening for leadership experience can also be racially biased, due to lower representation of non-white people at the executive level.

To avoid this, whenever you open a new role, start by asking the question: How do we ensure that our selection is based solely on criteria that’s relevant to the role?

From there, clarify which competencies and qualifications are absolutely necessary to success in the role, and rather than focusing on the candidate’s experience, education, or — if they’re early in their careers — GPAs, ask yourself what about their history suggests problem-solving skills, cognitive ability and a growth mindset.

Limit access to information that could cause bias

Daily Crunch: Intel will reportedly buy cloud-optimization startup Granulate for $650M

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, March 31, 2022!

It’s a beautiful day in our neck of the woods, and we have a great lineup of news for you today, so let’s goooooo.

Grab your calendar and add these two: We’re doing a Data and Culture Transformation event on April 26 for the big data aficionados, and now is your last chance to buy discounted tickets for our in-person TC Sessions: Mobility event on May 18 and 19, as well as the virtual event on the 20th.

Don’t worry, it’s Thursday. The weekend is almost here. You can do it; we believe in you. – Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• SEC looks at another EV SPAC: In today’s abbreviation news, several Faraday Future executives find themselves subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission amid the agency’s look at electric vehicle companies that went public via special purpose acquisitions companies. The SPAC itself is not under the microscope, but instead alleged inaccurate statements the company made to investors. It’s OK, I’m sure Faraday Future did its best — everyone makes a miSPAC now and then.
• Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna, Klarna chameleon: Buy now, pay later company Klarna is showing us just how versatile it can be and that it won’t be left out of a good opportunity. Its new open banking application programming interface, Klarna Kosma, helps companies plug into bank accounts and seems to be an answer to Visa announcing it will acquire Tink.
• Are startup layoffs looming?: It’s a question Alex Wilhelm had us pondering today. Valuations are high, but traction is not a-matchin’ for some companies that he called “paper unicorns” (spectacular phrase by the way). Could all this mean we may see layoffs from companies that were able to rake in large amounts of dough, but not able to make the doughnuts? Stay tuned.

Startups and VC

We get a teensy bit excited whenever Y Combinator does a set of demo days. I recommend that you read all our coverage this week, obvz, but if you want a quick summary, read part 1 and part 2 of our “everything you need to know” posts, make yourself a cup of coffee, and follow that up with our favorite startups part 1 and part 2, then pour yourself an adult beverage and wrap it all up with Devin’s irreverently irresistible (and irrationally ironic) review of his favorite YC logos.

‘Tis the season for new venture funds, apparently. Freestyle closed its sixth fund, adding $130 million of dry powder to invest, while Gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC) has a $110 million block of cash in the form of its second to deploy into the crypto universe.

Docker was on the ropes for a little while, there, but hooo boy did it make a comeback. The company just announced a whale of a round, raising $105 million of fresh capital on a $2 billion valuation.

More stories of up, up, and away:

• Speaking of mono-racked fantasy horses, women’s leadership network Chief saddled up and rode its unicorn status into its continued future of developing women in leadership in the course of its $100 million Series B round.
• Kenya’s social commerce platform Tushop is strapping on some rocket fuel for growth, raising $3 million.
• 66% of Egyptian adults don’t have access to formal financial services. Khazna raised $38 million to help address that gap for low- and middle-income earners.
• Famously filthy business, real estate, but French startup Deepski raised $166 million to improve measurement and impact of ESG data across the industry.
• The Great Resignation is having some interesting effects across the job market, and Pursuit spotted an opportunity. It raised a $10 million fund to create a self-sustaining job training service with a really interesting business model.
• Getting your customer data hacked is a surefire way to lose goodwill, and Antimatter raised a $12 million Series A to help avoid that sort of thing.
• Pivoting from video conferencing to higher-end video production, BoxedUp brings the sharing economy to a previously untapped market.
• Freelancers are a squirrely bunch at the best of times (as freelancers ourselves, we can say that with utmost confidence), and managing them can get real quixotic. Archie aims to make things easier for managers, and just closed $4.5 million to do so.
• Space is complex, and as much fun as Kerbal is, it doesn’t cut it for commercial simulation of space missions. Slingshot Aerospace believes it can do better, and just landed a $25 million Space Force contract to build a digital twin of the inky night sky.
• Datanomik is bringing open banking to LatAm, with dLocal and AstroPay execs at the helm.
• Wouldn’t it be great if you could predict the future? Black Crow AI raised $25 million to help e-commerce folks figure out what its users are most likely to buy.
• Not a big fan of injections, needles to say, I was pretty psyched to learn about NovaXS Biotech’s push to make injection therapies needle-free.

5 things first-time founders must remember when working with VCs

Image Credits: Carol Yepes (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Nothing beats experience like experience, which is why we were happy to run a column written by Zach DeWitt, winner of the 2013 TechCrunch Meetup and Pitch-off.

DeWitt, who became a VC after selling Drop, Inc. to Snapchat in 2016, shares five essential lessons for first-time founders wandering in the wilderness in search of an investor who’ll be “a true partner.”

There’s an inherent power imbalance when asking a stranger for money, but “VCs should work to earn your trust,” writes DeWitt.

“In many ways, it’s like finding the right spouse.”

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

5 things first-time founders must remember when working with VCs

Big Tech Inc.

• Microsoft goes deeper into process mining: What is process mining? Don’t worry, reporter Kyle Wiggers (who is rounding out his first week with us) tells you all about what that is. He also says Microsoft’s latest acquisition of process mining company Minit “comes at a time when the broader business process automation industry, which remains flush with cash, heads toward general consolidation.”
• Intel also gets in on the M&A: We noted last year, when Israel-based Granulate received funding, that it seemed like the network management space was seeing some consolidation. Well, that was confirmed earlier today when Intel said it acquired Granulate “to continue extending both its operations in Israel and the tools that Intel provides to customers to better manage traffic on Intel-powered kit.”
• New research sheds light on Viasat hack: The cyberattack that took down the U.S.-based satellite communications provider’s service in Europe was deemed “likely the result of destructive wiper malware” that originated in Russia, we report. The identity of the hackers is still unknown.
• The strike that turned into a potential lawsuit: Meta and its subcontractor, Sama, are in the hot seat in Kenya, facing some legal action that alleges poor working conditions. Reporter Annie Njanja describes allegations against the companies by former Sama contractor Daniel Motaung, who claims that contractors like him weren’t told what their jobs would be, but that it ended up being content moderation where they looked at some pretty graphic content for a long time, but were not often granted time to compose themselves or offered support when it became too much. Sama is denying any wrongdoing.

Co-founders of Ukrainian startup Delfast discuss navigating through a crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic taught the world how to work from home, but Russia’s war in Ukraine has taught the employees at Delfast, a Ukrainian e-bike startup, how to work from bomb shelters, while on the move and under threat of violence. 

The usual priorities of a startup – securing venture funding, researching and developing new products, finding product-market fit – haven’t exactly been put on hold, but they are now much lower on Delfast’s to-do list. Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in late February, Delfast’s top priority has been to see its Ukrainian team of 30 safely evacuated from the most dangerous parts of the country. 

When not focusing on sales, marketing, R&D and customer support, Delfast’s smaller team of seven employees based in Los Angeles has been pleading with U.S. politicians and the European Commission to supply Ukraine with anti-aircraft missiles and fighter jets that could help Ukraine gain back some control over its air space, and, hopefully, put a stop to this war. 

Delfast’s co-founders, Daniel Tonkopi and Serhiy Denysenko, say they have always believed in safeguarding the future. When they founded Delfast in 2014, originally as a delivery company, Tonkoply and Denysenko knew that providing couriers with green transportation options would be critical to the company’s operations. 

The most important thing for an entrepreneur, and in general for any leader, is to protect the team and be completely honest with them during a tough time. Daniel Tonkopi, co-founder of Delfast

The founders soon realized that a bike with the power, range and battery life their couriers needed didn’t exist, and so they set out to build one. In 2017, backed by a Kickstarter campaign that saw the company raise $165,000, the startup began manufacturing a bike to fit its needs – one that promptly won the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest distance traveled on an electric motorbike on a single charge.

More recently, the Delfast Top 3.0 e-motorbike won Forbes’ fastest e-bike of the year in 2022 after the company announced some serious upgrades to the vehicle during CES. 

We spoke with Delfast’s co-founders to discuss what it’s like running a startup during a war, how the startup is considering breaking into new business verticals, and the importance of always having a Plan B. 

The following interview, part of an ongoing series with founders who are building transportation companies, has been edited for length and clarity. 

Note: Serhiy Denysenko’s answers were translated from Ukrainian by a member of Delfast’s team for TechCrunch. 

TC: Serhiy, you’re on the ground in Kyiv. What’s your day-to-day like?

Denysenko: Every morning starts with a check-in on Slack with all the colleagues. It’s important to keep in touch and know that everyone is fine, or as fine as is possible right now. 

Besides my work as a COO, I’ve been helping with volunteering, getting supplies and medicine to people, and this is something that pretty much every Ukrainian is now doing. I had my family relocated to Hungary, so I feel more or less safe, and I’m just trying to work as much as possible and do my best in every possible area, whether that’s supporting the company or supporting Ukraine in general. 

How are you managing your team through this crisis? What’s changed?

Denysenko: We got used to working remotely during Coronavirus times, so we have our task tracker, where everyone can see his or her task. Every Monday, we have an online Zoom meeting. Previously we only had these meetings at the executive level, but now during the war, we are gathering all together, just to see each other’s faces and ask how they’re doing, how’s everyone feeling. Just to talk with everybody. 

Microsoft acquires process mining vendor Minit to grow its automation offerings

Signaling its ambitions in the process automation market, Microsoft has acquired Minit, a Bratislava, Slovakia-originated process mining technology vendor, for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today. Microsoft says that the purchase will “further empower” it to “help … customers digitally transform” by creating a more complete picture of their processes — and identifying which of those processes are ripe for automation.

“Minit currently enables businesses to transform the way they analyze, monitor and optimize their processes. Minit’s solutions have helped businesses gain deep insights into how processes run, uncover root causes of operational challenges and help mitigate undesired process outcomes,” Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights, wrote in a post on Microsoft’s corporate blog. “[With Minit, our] customers will be able to better understand their process data, uncover what operations look like in reality, and drive process standardization and improvement across the entire organization to ensure compliance at every step.”

Microsoft dipped its toes into process mining with the launch of new features in Power Automate in 2019 and the acquisition of Softomotive, an RPA software provider, a year later. But with Minit, the tech giant is doubling down on a software category that could be worth over $11 billion by 2030, according to a report from Polaris Market Research.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the whole of the Minit team will join Microsoft — or, indeed, whether the company will remain spread across its current locations. (Minit is now headquartered in Amsterdam, with satellite offices in London and New York.) But CEO James Dening said that customers shouldn’t expect a change in the level of support they’re currently receiving.

“We are looking forward to what it means to become part of an industry leader like Microsoft and what that brings us — how we can use that scale and excellence to continue to deliver great solutions to our customers,” Dening wrote in a blog post on Minit’s website. “It has been a privilege to lead the company for the last year, and I’m excited to continue my journey with the team, as part of what I consider to be the world’s leading software company.”

In a statement, Microsoft spokesperson Zara Huang told TechCrunch that the Minit team will move into the Microsoft Process Insights team and that there will be “no change” to the current work location of Minit team members. Microsoft is in early stages of determining how Minit will be integrated into its offerings, she said, and the companies will share more details when they’re available.

Minit, which was founded in 2015 by Rasto Hlavac and had raised €10.3 million (~$11.40 million) prior to the acquisition, is one of an expanding number of startups developing process mining tools aimed at enterprise clientele. Process mining, also known as task discovery, involves spotting root cause workflow issues and bottlenecks by pulling data from systems including desktop, email apps and workflows. It’s a key part of robotic process automation (RPA), a technology that promises to automate monotonous, repetitive tasks traditionally performed by human workers while at the same time generating logs to identify potential cost savings.

As Protocol’s Aisha Counts notes, process mining has traditionally been done by system integrators who map out processes by analyzing manual workflows. Process mining software is designed to digitize the approach in a way that reduces the expense, time and effort involved.

Underlining the appetite for process mining technologies, Celonis, a data processing company, earlier this week acquired Minit competitor Process Analytics Factory, which coincidentally integrates with Microsoft’s Power BI analytics platform. Just in the past several years, RPA vendor Automation Anywhere acquired process discovery and mining startups FortressIQ, Process Gold\ and StepShot; Blue Prism released a task mining solution called Capture; and rivals including ABBYY and Kryon have expanded their process mining offerings.

Celonis pushes into Microsoft ecosystem with $100M Process Analytics Factory acquisition

“You know the process space is hot when even Microsoft, with its vast resources, has to buy its way in. I’m sure Microsoft is seeing the same trends that we saw, which drove the combination of FortressIQ and Automation Anywhere,” Pankaj Chowdhry, EVP of discovery at Automation Anywhere and formerly CEO of FortressIQ, told TechCrunch via email. “Customers are starved for process data to help them navigate their transformation journeys and any vendor that doesn’t have best-in-class process capabilities will find itself challenged to offer a compelling solution to their customers.”

Microsoft’s Minit acquisition comes at a time when the broader business process automation industry, which remains flush with cash, heads toward general consolidation. SAP acquired German process automation company Signavio in January 2021, just before ServiceNow got into the RPA segment with the buyout of India-based Intellibot.io. IBM acquired process mining software company MyInvenio in April. And Salesforce’s MuleSoft and Microsoft followed suit with the purchases of automation tech providers Servicetrace and Clear Software, respectively.

“Process mining, discovery and task mining has seen a lot of transformation with many acquisitions in the last year. [It] now appears to be maturing as a market and becoming commoditized under major automation platforms,” Saikat Ray, Gartner senior research director, told TechCrunch via email. “Gartner sees an emergence of automation platform vendors offering process mining and task mining as embedded capabilities, along with RPA.”

Updated at 4:15 p.m. ET, March 31, with quotes from Microsoft and Automation Anywhere.

All eyes are on Swvl as it starts trading on a SPAC combination

Mass transit and shared mobility provider Swvl went public today in a landmark moment for Egyptian and Middle Eastern tech ecosystems. It’s also a test for the company going public despite a market that’s been unfriendly toward combinations with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, of late. 

The Egypt-born and Dubai-based company has listed its shares at $10 on the Nasdaq through a merger with U.S. women-led blank check company Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital. The planned merger, which will see Swvl offer 20-30% of its total shares, was announced last July.

Following closing, the combined company, now “Swvl Holding Corp,” will trade under GMBT and GMBTW today before switching to SWVL and SWVLW on April 1.

Swvl is the first company launched from Africa and the second Middle Eastern company to list on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger. Anghami, an Abu Dhabi-based music streaming platform, did so last February when it listed with Vistas Media Acquisition at a $220 million valuation.

Egyptian ride-sharing company Swvl plans to go public in a $1.5B SPAC merger

Swvl raised $121.5 million in private investment in public equities (PIPE) for this transaction. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Teklas Ventures, Chimera, Agility, and Luxor Capital Group are some of its other investors. The company is currently valued at $1.5 billion.

In February, one of its investors, Atalaya Capital, pulled out of the transaction. And in a filing, Queen’s Gambit announced the termination of forward purchase agreements worth $100 million in SPAC shares and an extra $2 million via a private placement.

“The forward purchase agreement was done with a group, and it was just access to additional capital,” Queen’s Gambit Capital founder and CEO Victoria Grace told TechCrunch when asked if the termination affects the deal.

“Its termination doesn’t affect the valuation of the company or anything around our fundamental deal, which is Queen’s Gambit merging with SWVL, so the valuation [stays] the same,” she said.

Investors withdrawing their interests and dollars from SPACs is not peculiar to Swvl. It’s a usual occurrence — for instance, when BuzzFeed went public last December, 94% of the $287.5 million raised by the SPAC was withdrawn — particularly as the SPAC hype gives way in the face of an underperforming market and tighter regulation.

Despite the seeming setback, there’s good news for Swvl. According to CFO Youssef Salem, the company has an additional $160 million from proceeds and a $470 million committed equity facility with B. Riley Principal to access over the next few weeks if certain conditions are met, he said.

Swvl was founded by Mostafa Kandil, Mahmoud Nouh and Ahmed Sabbah in 2017. The trio started the company as a bus-hailing service in Egypt and other ride-sharing services in emerging markets with fragmented public transportation.

Its bus-hailing services enable users to make intra-state journeys by booking seats on buses running a fixed route. Swvl offerings have expanded beyond bus-hailing services, though. Now, the company offers inter-city rides, car ride-sharing, and corporate services in the 10 cities it operates in across Africa and the Middle East.

The partnership between Swvl and Queen’s Gambit came from a mutual interest from both parties.

While searching for a company to acquire, Swvl fit the blank-check company’s criteria: strong business fundamentals, mobility and logistics (one of its core verticals), and an ESG ethos around women and affordable transportation.

On the other hand, Swvl — off the back of raising over $170 million in venture capital, expanding to over 16 countries across Latin America, Asia and Africa; hiring executives from Facebook, Uber and Optimus; and acquiring Shotl, Viapool and door2door — was on a quest for global dominance in the mobility space.

A SPAC with Queen’s Gambit was the most suitable option for it from a financial standpoint, and both parties feel strongly about the sustainability angle around transport — Swvl claims it has prevented approximately 289 million pounds of carbon emissions since its inception.

The company plans to expand into several countries over the next six months, including Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, and the U.S.

In the meantime, all eyes will be on the company’s performance as it officially starts trading tomorrow in a cooling SPAC market and a generally unsettled public market. 

“There’s a softness in the market, but as long as the company operates and delivers results, maybe today, people don’t pay attention to it, but they will in months ahead,” Grace said about the worrying SPAC and public markets.

“I think the market will change just like it always does and people go back to fundamentals at how we look at company’s performances. For Swvl, they have been beating every single number that was ever presented to us. And that’s what makes me super excited about this. And that’s the type of target you want to partner with.”

Almost everything you need to know about SPACs

The how and why of raising OT security capital

Matt Gatto Contributor

Matt Gatto is a managing director at Insight Partners. He focuses on high-growth software and SaaS businesses across infrastructure, healthcare and enterprise applications, and also has experience with leveraged buyouts.

Last year was huge for the cybersecurity market, fueled by rising incidents of cyberattacks, particularly ransomware that disrupted services and held companies hostage.

The numbers are striking: Investments in the space more than doubled from the year before to $29.3 billion, according to a recent report by investment bank Momentum Cyber. Two recent funding rounds, in November and February, even exceeded $1 billion. A record 286 M&A deals, worth $77.5 billion, were made, and 14 deals of those were over $1 billion each. This year is off to a promising start with Google’s $5.4 billion acquisition of Mandiant in March.

The market is responding to the evolving threat landscape. As new types of attacks arise, security vendors respond with new tools in what has become a cat-and-mouse game. This dynamic has driven the market for decades, but things are heating up now that the stakes are higher with hits on critical infrastructure and the U.S. supporting Ukraine in the Russian invasion.

One security area that has been seeing particular interest of late is operational technology.

Many attacks last year targeted companies that provide basic necessities of life, and consumers felt the pain. In February 2021, someone gained unauthorized access to the water treatment system in Oldsmar, Florida, and tried unsuccessfully to add more lye to the water supply.

And last May, drivers on the East Coast panicked when they couldn’t get gasoline after a ransomware attack disrupted Colonial Pipeline’s distribution network. That month, a ransomware attack on Brazilian meat supplier JBS resulted in beef shortages in South America, North America and Australia. JBS ended up paying $11 million in ransom.

The transportation industry has also been hit hard in recent years, seeing a 186% increase in weekly attacks from 2020 to 2021, and a 900% increase in maritime attacks since 2017. Recent incidents include attacks on the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the CSX Class I freight railroad.

Critical infrastructure attacks and regulation

All these attacks on critical sectors have led to a slew of federal action plans and regulations affecting the water sector, pipeline operators and other critical industries.

In one example, the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Systems Sector-Specific Plan cites a number of elevated risks, including cyber and aging equipment, in guiding industry efforts to strengthen infrastructure security and resilience.

As Russian attacks on Ukraine have intensified, the U.S. government is increasingly concerned about Russia launching cyberattacks on American businesses, especially critical infrastructure. On March 15, President Joe Biden signed into law the Cyber Incident Reporting Act, which requires critical infrastructure providers to report cyberattacks to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within 72 hours and ransomware payments within 24 hours.

Then, on March 21, the president reiterated earlier warnings, citing “evolving intelligence that the Russian government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks.”

Then the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed indictments on March 24, charging four Russians who worked for the Russian government with hacking operational technology (OT) of companies in the energy sector around the world over six years.

Legacy equipment in a modern world

For decades, cybercriminals focused on stealing information they could monetize, but now that OT environments are increasingly connected to the Internet, bad actors are trying to shut down infrastructure and conduct cyber-physical attacks like in Oldsmar.

The advent of ransomware and targeted attacks on critical infrastructure have changed the game and are putting operational technology security in the spotlight. At the end of the day, OT security is a national security issue.

Daily Crunch: ‘Strategic finance platform’ Mosaic raises $25M Series B

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Wednesday, March 30, 2022! It’s day two of Y Combinator’s Demo Day, which means that the TechCrunch team has been looking at more than 400 startups over two days.

If you’ll forgive us, our brains are dripping out of our ears as we stare vacantly in the middle distance after some information overwhelms – but one thing’s for sure: It’s hella exciting times in startup land and across the ecosystem.

Dive in; the water is non-fungible, COVID-free, and will probably launch a corporate credit card before long. – Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• ‘From tiny to mighty’: Fintech reporter Mary Ann Azevedo hit it out of the park today with some financial news. First, she wrote about Cross River Bank, which secured a giant round of $620 million that put its valuation at over $3 billion. This is not shocking due to the amount of venture capital being pumped into the sector. However, Cross River was not only an early recipient of fintech funding, getting $30 million back in 2016, but has been profitable since 2010.
• Helping CFOs manage high growth: Mary Ann’s other story was about a couple of Palantir alums out to provide tools for CFOs of high-growth companies. Mosaic raised $25 million in Series B funding from Founders Fund to continue developing what the company calls a “strategic finance” category to get all departments within a company talking about finance. When you are growing, knowing your financial status is certainly important.
• Dyson wants you to mask up: Reporter Brian Heater wins “headline of the day” for his story about, you guessed it, Dyson’s new wearable air purifier.

Startups and VC

It’s day two of Y Combinator Demo Day, and the TechCrunch team is back on the case, sifting the sparkly from the meh for your reading pleasure. Lucas examined the crypto startups plotting out their plans for world domination, and we took a separate look at the fintech companies and AI companies that stuck their heads over the parapet as well.

If you have wild dreams of raising funding from Y Combinator yourself, pop along to our Early Stage conference in a couple of weeks, where Y Combinator’s Dalton Caldwell is doing a “how to get into YC” presentation. If you really want to submerge yourself in demo days, check out today’s excellent episode of our “Equity” podcast as well. I mean, with a title like “Demo days definitely amplify a brand, but not the one you think,” how could you not?

In exciting hardware news, Boston Dynamics is starting sales of Stretch. It’s not as cute as the dog-shaped robot, but probably more helpful for maneuvering around a warehouse.

Come with me, and you’ll be, in a world of pure imagination:

• Good news for lovers of ShhTech – Minut raised a chunk of cash for privacy-forward noise monitors so your neighbor’s Airbnb guests can dial it down a bit.
• Bored of range anxiety as you whoosh around in your EV? Coreshell is rethinking batteries with a small change to the manufacturing process that increases existing battery capacity by a third.
• A propos EVs: Flux Marine just raised $15 million to help you stick to the rivers and the lakes you are used to with its electric outboard engines.
• I can only assume that Brian was channeling his inner John Lennon, gently humming “all we are saying is give bees a chance” as he takes a closer look at Beewise.
• Skiff is working on end-to-end encrypted workspaces for the security-forward among us.
• A good day for the cybersecurity nerds: In addition to Skiff’s round, we have Cyberpion collecting $27 million to help protect businesses from external attacks.
• And finally, all good things come in threes: Wing Security raised $26 million to help companies monitor and bolster their SaaS security across the myriad solutions that go into building a modern business.

How to make a teaser trailer for your startup pitch

Image Credits: Paolo Farinella / Getty Images

When you have an opportunity to sell an investor on your idea, it will likely be via a video call, not across a table or desk.

Considering how many pitch calls investors take on a daily basis, “this new pitching model presents a new problem for founders,” says Flint Capital partner Andrew Gershfeld, whose firm reviews approximately “1,500 online pitches per year.”

To cut through the noise, he recommends that founders create a “teaser trailer” to share with their network before they begin approaching angels and VCs.

According to Gershfeld, “since we’re not getting the same in-person meeting opportunities, this is how founders can hook investors’ attention.”

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

How to make a teaser trailer for your startup pitch

Big Tech Inc.

• Get your groove on with friends: Spotify’s latest update for its Blend playlist creation tool lets you see where your music tastes overlap with a friend and then provides you with a common playlist.
• Google’s been busy: If you haven’t checked in with Google in, oh, about a day, we have some news for you. The first is that Google Workspace customers who are also Markdown fans got some good news in an update that Google Docs can now automatically convert Markdown formatting to rich text. Next, we go over to Chrome OS, which is launching a new version of its operating system — the 100th, to be exact. One of the changes you will notice is the launcher, which we report now leaves space for other windows. Lastly, Google rolled out improvements on its search safety and how it will handle “personal crisis” queries.
• EU wants products to last longer so they don’t end up in landfills: As the shift to a circular economy gains speed, the European Union is laying out some plans for ecodesign with a goal of products lasting longer so that they can be either reused or recycled.
• WhatsApp gives a voice to 7B messages: Reporter Manish Singh admits to never having used WhatsApp to send a voice message — and found that he is in the minority. The communications giant said an average of 7 billion voice messages are transmitted through its app every day, and to celebrate, it’s adding some new features, like pausing during a message and being able to listen to it before hitting “send.”
• Visa joins the NFT movement: The trend of NFTs has certainly hit the world of e-commerce, and credit card giant Visa wants in on the action. Its new NFT creator program aims to help small businesses get into the digital economy through a one-year immersion program.

Apploi raises $25M to address the healthcare hiring crunch

Healthcare has a hiring crises. Nearly 20% of medical workers have quit their jobs during the pandemic, according to a recent Morning Consult survey. Some studies estimated the healthcare system’s burnout cost at about $4.6 billion a year before the spread of COVID-19, a number that has likely risen.

Organizations have increasingly ramped up benefits and hiring in an effort to address the challenges. But they still face roadblocks, including overly long onboarding and vetting for employees.

Adam Lewis pitches the platform he founded eight years ago, Apploi, as the solution. Originally aimed at a hirers and job seekers across a range of industries, Apploi has since narrowed its focus to healthcare as it looks to stand out in a sea of HR startups.

Image Credits: Apploi

Investors are rewarding the pivot with an infusion of fresh capital. Apploi today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series B round led by m]x[v Capital with participation from Defy and Underscore, bringing the company’s total raised to $38 million.

Pivoting to healthcare

When Lewis spoke to TechCrunch in 2015, he framed Apploi as a way to allow service industry workers to “put their best foot forward” with tools to share videos of their personality and skills. The company offered mobile-, web- and kiosk-based apps designed to help users submit multiple applications while providing companies “with the data that they need to make informed decisions.”

Apploi is decidedly more employer-focused, now, having invested in a suite of hiring and onboarding tools tailored for healthcare companies. For example, Apploi can assist with the collection, monitoring and updating of staff credentials with reminders to keep nurses’ and caregivers’ licensures up to date. Digital employee records integration helps recruiters reconnect with past applicants, while built-in messaging (for email and text) and interview scheduling ostensibly simplifies the hiring process.

“Early on, we noticed very unique challenges existed in healthcare — an industry that has significant demand. Because of this, in 2018, the company decided to focus exclusively on the healthcare industry, in helping organizations provide the best care to the most vulnerable populations by hiring and retaining the right people,” Lewis told TechCrunch via email. “The company offers an end-to-end software-as-a-service platform to help healthcare organizations recruit, onboard, credential and manage high-volume hires, particularly nurses and nursing aids.”

Apploi also keeps tabs on the conversion rates of job posts, showing where candidates are coming from and can track job post-performance across social sites or follow candidates throughout a recruiting workflow. Beyond this, Apploi can kick off screenings and walk candidates through steps including license verification, background checks and miscellaneous paperwork tasks before extending an offer.

Apploi’s tools are all very exhaustive — at least from the outside looking in. And there’s plenty of venture capital in the health tech industry, with Silicon Valley Bank reporting that health tech companies raised $39.7 billion in 2021. But the trick for Apploi going forward will be continuing to differentiate itself from vendors like Lantum, Vivian Health (formerly NurseFly) and Incredible Health.

Lewis asserts that Apploi is already accomplishing this, pointing to its 2020 acquisition of healthcare credentialing platform Healthgig. Apploi, whose workforce numbers over 100 people, has 6,000 customers and claims that revenue grew 130% in 2021.

“The additional funding will allow us to develop additional healthcare-specific functionality throughout our whole suite of products to ensure a tailored and superior end to end experience,” Lewis said, “as well as increasing our sales and marketing functions across the country … Our product is adored by customers with 99.6% monthly retention.”

The best logos of YC’s Winter ’22 cohort

Hundreds of companies presented at Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 Demo Day event, and I looked at pretty much all their logos. There’s a lot of solid ones, a few clunkers and a handful of really nice ones. Here’s a list of the latter for your pleasure and edification.

I haven’t put these in any order — in fact the order they appeared in when I put the images in the post was a complete surprise. Let’s go!

Circular: With a shape specified right there in the company name, you’d think they’d go full circle, so to speak, but this loopy spiral thing is a way better choice in my opinion. The company does recycling, if I remember correctly, so the idea of a more complex loop, and connecting one end to another, is apropos. Not only that, but by doing it this way you hide a C in there as well. The cranberry (mulberry?) color is a solid choice too. Wait… I just realized it’s the Life360 logo rotated about 40 degrees. Well, there’s nothing new under the sun, it seems, and honestly this one is better. Admittedly not the best start for the list, but I didn’t pick the order.

Itchy: I like this particular configuration of the letters in a sort of sticker format, but elsewhere they do the type differently. But the idea everywhere is one of slight disorder and unease, which is of course also suggested by the name. Since they make a cream for irritated skin, it’s a frank acknowledgement of the problem, refusing to dance around it with a medical or aspirational name. Unusual, but potentially smart branding choice for a skin-care company.

Reality Defender: There were a few fingerprint or biometric-type logos in this batch, but this is the best one. It shows identity, impersonation and protection all at once, leaving the specific interpretation up to the viewer. I have to hand it to the artist for picking the right “quadrant” of a fingerprint to be able to suggest facial features without looking too weird. Plus it “goes” left to right, which helps it track.

Stablegains: This is a great logotype. Aligning the letter cuts to the same degree makes for a cohesive look, but they didn’t take it too far, letting the G’s descender and various other tails stay natural. It’s also a good typeface for a logo at this size, where you can see the unusual styling of the curves on the letters. From a distance it just looks bouncy but a bit sharp, and after only a few seconds you have something really recognizable.

Plover Parametrics: Putting an animal in the logo is always a risk, since it can easily be too cute or too detailed, drawing too much attention. Plover does it just right with a little bird that’s not only well drawn and, with its little legs, recognizable as a shore bird, but simultaneously forms the stem of the P and defines its negative space without interfering. I doubt it’s the first bird-based P logo out there, but this is a nice one. I wonder if they should have aligned the tail horizontal with the horizontal from the bottom of the P curve… nah. It would make the bird too flat.

BBy: This soft, cute droplet simultaneously suggests motherhood, babyhood, caring and liquid; quite a feat. The color I imagine is meant to suggest skin, and it does to a certain extent, but you always have to be careful with that, as using one skin tone excludes others.

Vance: This is a simple one, but a V is best for directional logos — in this case up and to the right, suggesting profits, while the green suggests go, money and all that positive stuff. The thick ribbon-like V slash is also different enough from the thin V in the type that it doesn’t seem redundant. I’d go with a more geometric font though. (And once you see the logo as a mint-licorice candy corn, you can’t unsee it. Sorry!)

Nimbus: Stacking and gradients were common in this batch, and Nimbus was my favorite of them. The cloud icon is incredibly common these days and has its own connotations, but the proportions of this particular stack and gradient, with the thick line work, make it seem more substantial and cohesive. The type is good too, mirroring the lines of the logo and also making the whole thing soft and fluffy. You know… like a cloud. But you got that already because it’s a good logo!

Kable: First of all, love the type. And it was the right decision (if it was one) to join the K and A (and what an A!) and control the white space. The bouncing or curving ribbons/chevrons are interesting and form a nice K shape, though it is a bit busy. I wonder if it could be simplified or condensed a bit to make it seem less tangled.

Enlightra: A little form meets function here. I’m not in love with the type but I think the logo does a lot once you know the company is doing laser-based data transfer. The spike is right out of a spectrogram and the waves coming out of it are like Wi-Fi, so it’s a frequency that’s sending data… all wrapped up in a nice little circle. That’s clever, though it helps to understand what they do first.

Paycrunch: I’m not completely sold on this one, but this is one logo that, if the app takes off, will be immediately recognizable from a distance. In a way it’s just a weird F… but the tilt helps your mind see it differently. Sometimes when you have that two-letter synthesis option, you just have to commit and hope simplicity pays off.

Forest: I just like the proportions on this one. I’m not sure it suggests a forest at all, but it does do homes and clouds, which is more to the point anyway. The house position and the door are very slightly off-center, which combined with the smallest circle emphasizes the perspective while staying totally flat. Details matter!

Spinach: The color choices here are great, and these shapes all stand out despite each being a close muted shade to its sibling. The S is suggested elegantly and creatively, and along with the name the viewer is also reminded of leaves and fruit, food servings and portions (a halved head of lettuce and two tangerines… see it?). I can’t remember what this company does but that’s probably intentional. (Actually, it’s something about doing remote meetings, so… unsure.)

There you have it! Pretty good logos, right? You can check out our more substantial coverage of the companies in this batch here.

Legendary hackers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek talk cybersecurity and autonomous vehicles at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022

Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek shook the automotive industry in 2015 by remotely hacking a Jeep Cherokee driven by Wired reporter, and willing participant, Andy Greenberg. The notorious hack caused Fiat Chrysler, Jeep’s parent company, to recall 1.4 million vehicles and pay $105 million in fines to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration.

The warning might have been a wake-up call to the industry, but it didn’t slow the rise of the connected car. 

Today, the “connected car” is commonplace and delivers a long list of services to the driver and passengers, from internet connectivity and vehicle monitoring to safety warnings and the ability to buy goods and services while on the go. And it has crept beyond the passenger vehicle into the emerging autonomous vehicle industry, too. 

Perhaps it’s not surprising then that automotive cyberattacks have grown in frequency — up more than 225% in 2021, compared to 2018. It’s a trend that has caused a boon in the automotive cybersecurity market, which is predicted to reach $5.3 billion in 2026. 

This is why we’re thrilled to announce that Miller and Valasek — undisputed leaders in the industry who both hold top security roles at GM’s self-driving vehicle subsidiary Cruise — will join us onstage at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 to discuss the dynamic and rapidly changing realm of automotive cybersecurity. The two-day event is scheduled for May 18 and May 19 in San Mateo, California, and will feature the best and brightest minds building and investing in the future of transportation. 

A distinguished security engineer, Miller — whom Foreign Policy called “one of the most technically proficient hackers on Earth” — designs and implements cybersecurity features for the company’s autonomous vehicles. 

Prior to joining Cruise, Miller served as a computer hacker at the National Security Agency, and he consulted and worked for the computer security teams at Twitter, Uber ATG and Didi Chuxing.

As the director of security engineering at Cruise, Valasek oversees vehicle, infrastructure and application security. He also has extensive experience in reverse engineering and exploitation research. Prior to joining Cruise, Valasek served as security lead at Uber and earlier as the director of vehicle security research at IOActive.

Don’t miss a wide-ranging conversation about the road that led Miller and Valasek from that Jeep Cherokee to Cruise, what needs to happen before the public trusts driverless vehicles, the type of threats they’re seeing, industry trends and what they’ve learned since 2015.

TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 breaks through the hype and goes beyond the headlines to discover how merging technology and transportation will affect a broad swath of industries, cities and the people who work and live in them. Register today before prices increase April 1!

Why Nigeria leads the way in YC’s participation in Africa

It’s not a coincidence that TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history. Many of those companies are Nigerian, and when we look at venture capital data, we can see why. The country had an incredible 2021 as the most active venture capital scene in Africa, collecting more than $1.8 billion, or 34% of the $5 billion raised across the continent, according to Partech, a pan-African VC firm that also tracks investments.

The country has posted steady progress in the last three years as the leading African startup market. In 2019, startups based in Nigeria attracted $747 million, or 37% of Africa’s total VC investment. Those numbers decreased to $307 million, or 21% of the continent’s total, the following year, though 2020 was a venture capital year much impacted by outside forces.

YC W22 batch nets 24 African startups, including 18 from Nigeria

Thanks in part to a global boom in venture capital activity last year, Nigeria became the first African country to singlehandedly cross the billion-dollar mark while also collecting bragging rights as the preferred destination for mega-investors like Tiger Global and SoftBank.

Y Combinator is paying attention

The ample optimism in Nigeria’s tech community and belief that better days are ahead are unsurprising, despite questions around investors’ due diligence and the eyebrow-raising valuations of some of the nation’s startups.

Speaking of valuations, no seed-stage company in the country is better priced than those in the Y Combinator club. Yesterday, the accelerator graduated its first startup batch featuring its newly revamped terms. The new “standard deal” at YC now features more capital, and prices for Y Combinator graduates are reportedly greater than ever. (Keep in mind that only 10% of the current Y Combinator batch had monthly revenue of more than $50,000 when they were accepted into the program.)

Apart from revenue thresholds, the accelerator shared another interesting statistic concerning Nigeria. With 18 startups, it is the first African country to have the third-largest representation when categorized by country. That’s a milestone for Nigeria, yes, but also an indication of how quickly the African startup scene has developed in a short period of time.

Flutterwave backs UK fintech Dapio in $3.4M round for its contactless payments play

Dapio, the U.K.-based cashless payment solutions provider for businesses, today announced that it has raised $3.4 million to fuel the launch of its “Tap to Pay” solution for Android users in the U.K. and Europe.

African payments giant Flutterwave co-led the growth round with Techstars. Daniel Gould, venture partner at Asymmetry Ventures, and PactVC participated.

Formerly Paymob — not to be confused with the Egyptian payments processor of the same name — Dapio allows businesses to accept cashless payments in-store as its technology converts the back of any Android smartphone into a direct card reading terminal.

For micro-businesses and solo enterprises, especially those run by migrants, it isn’t easy to invest in hardware and buy point-of-sale systems because of how expensive and clunky they can be. And this affects how they can take payments from customers.

There are an estimated 3.2 million of these kinds of businesses in the U.K. And away from the fact that these systems are hard to purchase, this segment, which makes up 75% of all businesses in the U.K., are underserved by traditional payments providers.

“I entered the U.K. a few years ago and I always struggled with getting financial services, like insurance, opening bank accounts, starting accepting payments,” co-founder and CEO Kosta Du told TechCrunch in an interview.

“I exactly understand this pain, and how difficult it is to go to a bank and to go through the exact procedure that is applied to a big enterprise. It’s a problem my wife also faced when having to send wire transfers to pay clients because these microbusinesses were not eligible for big machines. And I just thought there should be a more elegant solution for solopreneurs and micro-businesses to make payments.”

Du, alongside his co-founder Grigory Gurbanov, proceeded to start Dapio in 2019. And in the years that have followed, to this point where it has raised some money, the company has engaged with various financial institutions to obtain licenses to operate a mobile app that replaces card machines.

Dapio’s launch is a sign of where the U.K. payments scene is currently — where contactless payments aided by NFC technology has exploded, making up a quarter of all payments in the country.

It’s even catching on globally, as Apple is planning to launch Tap to Pay in the U.S. But Dapio is solely targeting the Android market which accounts for 42% of the U.S. mobile market, 46% in the U.K. and 71% globally.

According to the company, its ‘Tap to Pay’ mobile app, which will be launched this spring, will allow any business to instantly accept contactless payments with the tap of a card or mobile phone. Its current partners include ZmBIZI and Payment Plus.

“If you are starting a business or an entrepreneur, you might need to go to a bank, open a bank account, ask for a machine that costs about $300. But what we invented is just a mobile app sitting on your phone,” said Du.

“You as a business owner or solopreneur when you need to choose to charge a payment, you just basically open the app while the customer’s card is placed behind the phone.”

Image Credits: Dapio

With various players offering contactless payments, such as Zilch and Nomod and others enabling Apple Pay as one of their payment options, how does Dapio plans to stand out from the crowd?

“The key differentiator between us and other players is that we’re keen to go through embedded finance. We don’t only want to reach out to businesses directly, instead, we want to embed our payment acceptance feature inside existing applications of fintechs, POS vendors, banks and telcos who will integrate our tech to all of their business clients,” said the chief executive.

Dapio has up to 20 merchants currently testing out its product. CEO Du said by the time Dapio finally goes live with the few partnerships secured, it would’ve onboarded more than 3,500 merchants onto the platform.

And as ZmBIZI and Payment Plus power the technology behind Dapio’s expansion across the U.S., U.K. and Europe, co-lead investor Flutterwave will be integral for when it wants to expand into Africa and the Middle East.

A Flutterwave investment outside the shores of Africa was hardly expected considering it had only made one public investment in Ivorian fintech CinetPay and appeared set on making further investments to consolidate its presence on the continent. But even so, the fintech unicorn is also particular about penetrating advanced markets and thus, investing in startups there as it has done with Dapio is part of a long-term play CEO Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola described in a February interview.

“We want to change our focus from just Africa to emerging markets and eventually the U.S., the U.K., Europe. Our goal is to ensure that our infrastructure powers those corridors,” he said.

Commenting on why Flutterwave backed his company, Du added, “The key point for us is that we are enabling payment acceptance for micro and small businesses, that is what drives the recent economic trends. Flutterwave, seeing this, really wanted us to be a part of their bigger vision.”