Hi, all, hope you’ve had a terrific Tuesday.
Quick mention: we want to manage your expectations waaay down as we’ll be running around TechCrunch’s Disrupt event for the rest of this week and tied up with related evening events. We should have some interesting coverage for you coming out of the whole thing and also lots of typos and missing sections, is our guess. Brace yourselves.:)
Also! We’re exceedingly happy to announce a bit more about our upcoming StrictlyVC event, taking place on November 13th in San Francisco. Newly joining the agenda: Jim Collins, the founder and CEO of Kitchen United, the Pasadena-based, GV-backed “cloud kitchen” company that’s either crazily or smartly — depending on your perspective — competing in the same space that one of the world’s toughest entrepreneurs, Travis Kalanick, is hoping to dominate both in the U.S. and abroad.
If you want to better understand this fast-growing (and controversial) new industry, you won’t want to miss this conversation with Collins, who we’re thankful can make it up to San Francisco for the evening.
Collins joins Facebook’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos, who we’re also very excited to hear from and who will be sharing his thoughts about the state of big tech, the upcoming presidential election, and much more with New York Times cybersecurity correspondent Sheera Frenkel.
Seats are available here. Thanks again to the enterprise-focused venture firm NextWorld Capital for generously playing host to us all, and to the boutique public relations and strategy firm KCPR for raising its hand to partner with us on this one as a sponsor. We’ll have more details about what’s coming together soon …
Top News
U.S. data released today signaled the weakest manufacturing sector in a decade, with the manufacturing sector already slipping into a recession during the first half of the year, says Bloomberg.
Perhaps not *entirely* unrelated: Resale prices for Manhattan apartments have tumbled the most in more than eight years, pushed down by buyer demands for discounts in a market swamped with choices, says a new real estate report covered by Bloomberg. Jonathan Miller, owner of the appraisal firm Miller Samual, suggests the slide in prices will probably continue, “because things are confusing. The economy is confusing. Washington is confusing. There’s no way we’re out of the woods yet.”
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Massive Fundings
NoBroker, a five-year-old, Bangalore, India-based real estate property operator, has raised $50 million in a new funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from earlier backer General Atlantic. The company, which closed its previous financing round in June, has now raised $121 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.
Rapyd, a three-year-old, London-based mobile-first financial network that works with e-commerce retailers, lending firms, bank, and remittance providers, among others that use its API to enable checkout, funds collection, and fund disbursements (among other things), has raised $100 million in funding. Oak HC/FT led the round and was joined by Tiger Global Management, Coatue, General Catalyst, Target Global, Stripe, and Entrée Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Relativity, a four-year-old, L.A.-based company that’s 3D printing entire rockets, has closed on $140 million in fresh funding led by Bond Capital, the new fund cofounded by Mary Meeker, and Tribe Capital. Other participants in the round include former Tiger Global Management partner Lee Fixel, CAA founder Michael Ovitz, Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff, Republic Labs, and actor-musician Jared Leto. The company has now raised $185 million since its founding. TechCrunch has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Aero, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based air travel startup that aims to match travelers who are going to the same destination and place them on direct (private) flights, has raised $16 million in funding. Expa, the startup studio cofounded by Uber cofounder Garrett Camp, is one investor, along with GGV Capital. TechCrunch notes that Camp had previously invested in another private jet startup, BlackJet, which later shut down. More here.
Bnext, a three-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based mobile-first bank, has raised $25 million in Series A funding co-led by DN Capital, Redalpine and Speedinvest, with participation from earlier backers Founders Future and Cometa among others. TechCrunch has more here.
ePassi, a 12-year-old, Helsinki, Finland-based mobile payment system for employee benefits, has raised €41.5 million co-led by Bregal Milestone and First Fellow Partners. More here.
Pitch, a nearly two-year-old, Berlin-based company whose presentation software hopes to take on Microsoft’s PowerPoint, has raised $30 million in fresh funding. Thrive Capital led the round, with participation from Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, along with Rahul Vohra, the founder of Superhuman. TechCrunch has more here.
Smaller Fundings
7shifts, a five-year-old, Saskatchewan, Canada-based labor management platform for restaurants, has raised $6 million in funding led by Napier Park Financial Partners, with participation from Relay Ventures and Conexus Credit Union. More here.
Atom Finance, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based investment research platform, has raised $10.6 million in Series A funding led by General Catalyst. Other investors in the round include Greenoaks, Global Founders Capital, Untitled Investments, Mail.ru, and numerous individual investors, including former Stripe employee Lachy Groom. Business Insider has more here.
Cloosiv, a two-year-old, Charlotte, N.C.-based startup aiming to provide smaller coffee shops a mobile ordering solution that can compete with those of the mega coffee chains, has raised $1 million in seed funding from Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham and numerous other individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Jobpal, a three-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based maker of enterprise recruitment chatbots, has raised €2.5 million ($2.7 million) in pre-series A seed funding, including from InReach Ventures and Acadian Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Naborly, a 3.5-year-old, Bay Area-based platform for residential tenant screening to landlords and house owners, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding. First Round Capital led the round, joined by Liquid 2, Village Global VC, Assurant Insurance and Third Prime. VentureBeat has more here.
SenSat, a four-year-old, London-based company developing a platform that uses mapping drones to produce engineering grade survey data, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by the Internet giant Tencent Holdings, with participation from Sistema Venture Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Unagi, a nearly two-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup that’s selling foldable, lightweight electric scooters for less than $1,000, has raised $3.15 million from Menlo Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
Ursa Major, a nine-year-old, Waterbury, Vt.-based natural skin care brand, has raised $5 million in funding led by Fenwick Brands, with participation from Finn Capital Partners. More here.
Workona, a two-year-old, San Mateo, Ca-based work management platform, has raised $6 million in funding, including from Manu Kumar’s K9 Ventures and from August Capital. More here.
Rapyd, a three-year-old, London-based mobile-first financial network that works with e-commerce retailers, lending firms, bank, and remittance providers, among others that use its API to enable checkout, funds collection, and fund disbursements (among other things), has raised $100 million in funding. Oak HC/FT led the round and was joined by Tiger Global Management, Coatue, General Catalyst, Target Global, Stripe, and Entrée Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Relativity, a four-year-old, L.A.-based company that’s 3D printing entire rockets, has closed on $140 million in fresh funding led by Bond Capital, the new fund cofounded by Mary Meeker, and Tribe Capital. Other participants in the round include former Tiger Global Management partner Lee Fixel, CAA founder Michael Ovitz, Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff, Republic Labs, and actor-musician Jared Leto. The company has now raised $185 million since its founding. TechCrunch has more here.
New Funds
Valor Ventures, a 4.5-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based, early-stage venture capital firm, just held a first close on roughly $8 million in capital commitments for a second fund that’s targeting $25 million altogether. Valor’s founder, Lisa Calhoun, was reportedly the first woman to raise a venture fund in the state of Georgia, closing her first fund, which she began investing in 2016, with $5 million in capital commitments. More here.
Exits
PayPal has received the green light from China’s central bank to acquire a 70 percent stake in GoPay, a small Chinese payments provider that’s akin to a much smaller PayPal. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. PayPal says this makes it the first foreign firm licensed to provide digital payment services in China. CNN has more here.
Tesla has acquired DeepScale, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based startup that uses low-wattage processors to power more accurate computer vision. The apparent idea is to improve Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system and deliver on CEO Elon Musk’s vision to turn its electric vehicles into robotaxis. DeepScale had raised more than $18 million from investors, including Autotech VC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock and Trucks VC. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.
IPOs
Airbnb is still leaning toward a direct listing versus and IPO when it goes public next year. More here.
Youdao, a Chinese online education platform has filed plans to raise $300 million in an IPO on the NYSE. The move comes at a time when U.S. exchanges are taking a closer look at Chinese IPOs, notes Reuters. More here.
People
Inside Adam Neumann‘s WeWork was a wild culture, according to 20 current and former employees and business partners who talked with Business Insider. More here.
Adina Tecklu has joined Khosla Ventures as a principal from Canaan Partners, where she worked as an associate for roughly three years. More here.
The hottest ticket in L.A. right now is apparently an invitation to one of the periodic and wide-ranging dinners hosted by Peter Thiel. One recent guest describes Thiel as charming, clever, and contrarian but also likens him to Petyr Baelish, known as Littlefinger, on “Game of Thrones.” More in Vanity Fair.
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Essential Reads
The Verge today published highlights from two hours of leaked audio from a recent Q&A session that Mark Zuckerberg hosted for Facebook employees who are concerned about the company’s future. Facebook says it didn’t leak this itself, but you have to wonder if maybe indirectly it really did. You can read his comments here. You can read Senator Elizabeth Warren’s subtweets about the leak afterward here.
According to Bloomberg, four payments companies that have joined Facebook as founding members of the Libra Association — Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Stripe — are suddenly unsure about whether to officially sign on to the cryptocurrency project owing to concerns they might damage their relationships with regulators. More here.
UPS wins an important round in the drone delivery wars: According to the WSJ, it just received the first-of-its-kind federal approval to start setting up a fleet of unmanned aircraft to deliver health supplies and eventually consumer packages potentially throughout the U.S. More here.
Detours
What would happen if you jumped into stomach acid (on the off chance that you’ve wondered about this).
Enhancing human-dog communication through a talking vest for dogs.
Retail Therapy
A floating 19-room inn that enables up to 38 guests to traverse Japan’s Seto Inland Sea at one time.