'Strategic finance platform' Mosaic raises $25M Series B

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Wednesday, March 30, 2022

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 Image Credits: Co-founders left to right: Bijan Moallemi, Joe Garafalo and Brian Campbell / Mosaic

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.

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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 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.) Read More Image Credits: Paolo Farinella / Getty Images

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.

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Child-friendly Amazon Glow video chat projector now available across the US

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, March 29, 2022! Haje and I are now flying solo with the newsletter. It will be all hands on deck today and tomorrow as we listen to startups pitch at the YC Demo Day, so look out for a deluge of stories over the next two days. Don't forget to join us Wednesday for the DeFi & The Future of Programmable Money online event, and then at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 14. A very warm welcome to Jacquelyn Melinek, who is joining our crypto desk and comes careening out of the starting blocks with her coverage of the largest DeFi hack we've seen so far. Great story and welcome aboard! – Christine Image Credits: Glow

The TechCrunch Top 3 HackerRank will test your coding skills: The competition for talent is fierce out there, so how do you know that your potential new hire has what it takes? HackerRank raised $60 million to continue developing its recruiting tools to not only answer that question, but also enable developers to practice their coding and interview skills. Electric buzzing after reaching unicorn status: If you are like most of us working from home, accessing the tools and equipment that would normally be waiting for us in the office — with an IT person at your beck and call — now involves a little more logistical effort. Electric secured $20 million to put it over the $1 billion valuation mark to manage much of that work for IT. DAO for human behavior?: Jacquelyn was also busy writing about decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, thankfully describing what they are and where enthusiasts see them being used in the future — think pooling funds or decision-making.

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Startups and VC It's the most wonderful tiiiime of the yeaaaaaar – Y Combinator hasn't quite gotten to 1,000 companies per batch yet, but its Demo Day comprises 424 startups from 42 countries – so as you might imagine, it's still a pretty intense time at TechCrunch Towers. YC's Demo Day showed off 32 startups from India (the accelerator has funded almost 200 Indian startups to date), with heavy focus on fintech. Africa was represented as well, with more than 18 Nigerian startups and an additional six from the rest of the continent. And some great news if you're a mere millionaire, rather than part of the exclusive Tres Comas club: Anita reports that Equi is willing to sneak you in the back door to your own personal little family office. Other goings-on across the startup ecosystem: Pinecone is building a database system especially for data scientists and just raised $28 million to add some growth rings. Kenya-based Churpy added $1 million to the coffers in a bid to help businesses deal with accounts receivable challenges across Africa. In Latin America, Migrante is helping gig workers secure transportation and just closed a $30 million round of financing plus an $80 million line of credit to continue its growth in Venezuela and add Colombia and Mexico to its service area. Cloaked is taking "new phone, who dis?" to a whole new level, with identities (emails and phone numbers) generated on the fly to ensure privacy. It collected $25 million from investors to continue its journey through the shadows. If LambdaTest (and its fresh injection of $45 million) has its way, software testing is about to get a lot easier, as the BrowserStack competitor builds an "AWS for testers." Urban greenhouse company Gotham Greens is preparing for some growth of its own: It announced plans to double its square footage to 1.2 million square feet. That's a lot of leafy greens, you guys. Kaiyo (formerly Furnishare), gives secondhand furniture a new lease of life and raises $36 million to expand to California and the rest of the U.S.

2 reasons why demo days are dead Demo days are a showcase for tech media, but does this performative Silicon Valley tradition still benefit founders and investors? In a guest post for TC+, 22 Ventures co-founder and chair Michael Redd shares two factors that make demo days less relevant: Many startups sign funding deals before the big show, and founders are more interested in working with value-add investors. “Simply getting rid of demo day won't help founders find, or let investors offer, that value,” Redd writes. “What we need is to better understand why demo day falls short and how to source deals on a much more intimate level.” (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: Martin Harvey / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Sony unveils revamped PlayStation Plus: To keep up with competitors, Sony combined its PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now services into one subscription gaming product. The newest part of this is the addition of two more expensive tiers to join the lowest tier, and the three are priced in monthly, quarterly and yearly increments. Users in Asia will get first access before it is rolled out through the rest of the world. Amazon Glow connects family members one story at a time: After six months of invite-only, Amazon is now opening up the purchase of its Amazon Glow remote calling/projector device to anyone. The company created the device as a way for children to connect with distant family members. Want to know what it's like to use it? Check out what Greg Kumparak had to say when he tested out the device back in December. TikTok, GIPHY partner on video creation tool: TikTok has a new in-app creation tool called TikTok Library that will initially be populated by GIPHY content. As TechCrunch reports, there's a bit of irony here, with TikTok "leveraging the content from a company Facebook had once acquired for $400 million (and is now being asked to divest) to better the short-form video app that's since become one of the social giant's biggest threats." In addition, we point out that TikTok not going into much detail about possible future partners for the library suggests all of this is still pretty early.

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Citing 'global market uncertainties,' Sea flatlines Shopee India

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Alex Wilhelm, Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps Monday, March 28, 2022

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, March 28, 2022! Alas, I knew this day was coming, and here it is. Christine and Haje are taking over my bits of Daily Crunch from here on out, though I will be back occasionally to fill in when they are on break. Not that I am leaving TechCrunch. Not a bit of it. I'm off to work on TechCrunch+ as my main project, so am leaving you in their very capable hands. As an addendum, Walter will keep writing the TechCrunch+ section, which I am very thankful for. It's been a super huge treat to write for you here for so many months. Hugs, and good luck! — Alex Image Credits: Andre Malerba / Bloomberg / Getty Images

The TechCrunch Top 3 Sea's Shopee closes India operations: Singapore's Sea is closing down its Shopee e-commerce business in India, but not for the reason you may think. While the announcement follows India's decision to ban Sea's popular title "Free Fire" in the country last month, TechCrunch reports that the company is insisting the reason is "global market uncertainties." The Shopee site was not even a year old. Apple wins an Oscar: If you watched the Oscars last night, you surely walked away with one takeaway: that AppleTV+ was the first streaming service to win best picture. Nothing else from the event stood out at all, no sir. Nothing. There are no tweets, takes, or other content discussing any other Oscar happenings. Just that Apple beat Netflix to the pinnacle of Oscar-dom. Is the startup slowdown here? We are a few days removed from a deluge of Q1 2021 startup data, but there are some vibrations that we can feel indicating that, yes, the funding market is slowing down. A lot? It's too soon to say. Even more, a slowdown from all-time records doesn't indicate a correction, let alone a startup recession. There's still money flowing, and funds that raised huge capital pools still have to allocate it, slowdown or not.

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Startups and VC Elon Musk may be threatening to spool up his own social media platform, but Amanda today eloquently argues why it's too early to whine about it on Twitter. "When it comes to Musk actually following through on his wacky Twitter ideas, his track record isn't great," she drily concludes. It looks like French accelerator The Family is going through a bitter family feud, suing one of its co-founders for alleged forgery and "diverting €3 million that was supposed to be invested in several startups" Latitud is aiming to become "the operating system for every venture-backed company in Latin America," and just raised $11.5 million from Andreesen Horowitz and NfX to continue working toward that vision. Egyptian platform Eksab raised $3 million to scale its fantasy football — that's ⚽ — platform across MENA and Africa. Freelancer marketplace Malt expanded its appeal and geographic reach by acquiring consulting marketplace Comatch. Longtime DCM partner Kyle Lui joins Bling Capital as its second general partner. That buzzing you can hear in the treetops might just be Treeswift, which is using drones to keep an eye on forests and raised a $4.8 million round of financing to do so. Keeping abreast of what's happening in the brain, brain.space remakes the EEG, aiming to make brain-wave measuring as easy as putting on a VR headset. Healthcare continues to be a challenge – and staffing of a rapidly evolving workforce is part of that. Lantum got a $15 million injection to help ease that particular pain. Oh, and don't miss Natasha's Startups Weekly newsletter, where, this week, she's digging into how we're trying to re-invent startup accelerators again and again.

Use RevOps to develop a customer-led approach to B2B sales Employees are hired to do one specific job, which is why even early-stage startups can become siloed. Companies that find ways to integrate their sales flow and customer success operations have an advantage, writes Erol Toker, founder and CEO of Truly.co. “Optimizing your unique path to better connect with customers requires having a cross-discipline team that's focused solely on that objective and sees the client as their guiding star,” Toker says. “We call that RevOps." (TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Read More Image Credits: malamus-UK / Getty Images

Big Tech Inc. Pinterest adds $1.2M to its creator fund: Compiling a creator fund is a move that platforms make to engender more users to fashion stuff for their website or app. That's the basics. Pinterest has a smaller creator fund than some rivals, but it has had a welcome focus on getting money to underrepresented folks. TechCrunch reports that the former startup has earmarked an "additional $1.2 million in a combination of cash grants, ad credits and other creator resources for underrepresented groups." More of this, please. Spotify makes finding new podcasts easier: Spotify is in the news a bit at the moment, rolling out a new podcast discovery tool – tied to its $50 million acquisition of Podz last summer – and shutting down its services in Russia over the country's draconian "false news" laws, which bans takes on Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine that contradict Russian narratives. Apple's Netherlands fine reaches max: Not sure if Apple is sighing in relief as its penalty fines, following an antitrust order about payment technology for dating apps, reached the maximum of $55 million. This is after Apple adjusted its most recent offer, with TechCrunch reporting the amended proposal "should result in definitive conditions for dating-app providers." The company could face more fines if regulators don't agree. SpaceX halts manufacture of Crew Dragon capsules: For those of you worried that SpaceX was going to continue to make new Crew Dragon capsules, you need not fear. Instead, the company says four is enough and will concentrate on refurbishing its current fleet, which we report is "the only reusable vehicle used by NASA to shuttle astronauts to and from ISS." PayPal's Happy Returns service now free: PayPal Checkout merchants can now take advantage of the Happy Returns return and exchange portal software for free. Ulta Beauty is spearheading the move by rolling out Return Bars at its 1,300 locations. Since PayPal's 2021 acquisition of the software and logistics service, the number of Return Bars has grown to over 5,000. TikTok testing a feature so you never lose a video again: Sometimes you are just not ready to watch a video, but when you go to find it, you can't. This has been such a problem that users have posted their own workarounds. Well, TikTok hears you and is now testing a "watch history" feature for your "For You" page so you can recover any of the antics you missed.

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Frontend Developer at WynHouse Software (Anywhere) Developer Advocate at DeepSource (San Francisco, CA, USA) Software Developer at GOVERNMENT BRANDS HOLDCO INC (Northport, AL, USA) Engineering Manager at Airplane (United States) Senior Full Stack Engineer at Paccurate (Boston, MA, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

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