Deals

Tocano, a spinout from Delft Technology University in the Netherlands which is working on an inkless printing technology, has closed a €1 million angel round to fund the next stage of its tech development and move a step closer to building its first commercial product.

The startup began as the graduate student project of co-founder Venkatesh Chandrasekar who, along with fellow student Van der Veen, founded the business in 2015, gaining early backing from the university.

The team now consists of eight employees and is part of the business incubator Yes!Delft.

Now it’s true there are already some ‘inkless’ printing technologies in use commercially. One we covered back in 2009 is Zink: A color printer which doesn’t require ink cartridges in the actual printer; but does require special Zink photo paper which has colored ink embedded in it. So an ‘inkless printer’, technically, but not actually ink-less technology.

Tocano’s tech — which it is branding Inkless — has a much cleaner claim to the name because it doesn’t involve having to use ink-saturated paper. Nor any other type of special paper, such as thermal-coated paper — which is another type of inkless printing already in use (such as for receipts).

Rather they are using an infrared laser to burn the surface of the paper — so carbonization is being used as the printing medium.

And they claim their technique is able to produce black and white printing with blacks as dark and stable as ink-based prints. Though, clearly, they’re still early in the development process.

Here’s a photo of their current prototype, alongside a sample of text printed with it:

The angel funding will be used to try to reach what they dub “a competitive printing performance”. After which they say they’ll need to raise more money to build the first product — so they’re already planning the next financing round (for the end of the year).

“With this money we can make our technology ‘development-ready’, which means that we can meet the required quality and speed performance requirements so that we can begin with the development of our first product”, says co-founder and CEO Arnaud van der Veen in a statement.

“[The] next round will either be financed by strategic partners or venture capitalists. The first meetings have already taken place.”

If they can successfully productize their laser carbonization technique the promise is printing without the expense, waste and limits imposed by ink refills plus other consumables.

“I always compare this to the transition from the analogue camera to the digital camera,” says van der Veen.  “Suddenly people were able to make unlimited photos and it was not needed to replace the films. Likewise, with our printing solutions, refill and replacement of ink and consumables will not be needed.”

Though quite how expensive the next-gen laser printer machines themselves will be if/when they arrive on shop shelves remains to be seen.

Tocano says its first product will be aimed at industrial users for packaging and labelling use cases — such as printing barcodes, shelf life data and product codes on packages and labels.

Its ambition is to range out after that, bringing additional printer products to market targeting other business users — and eventually even the consumer market.

“Our first product will fit [the packaging/labelling] market but after that we will make the technology accessible for production printers, office printers, consumer printers and receipt printers. In all these market we can offer the same advantages, a cheaper and more sustainable printer without any hassle with ink, cartridges or toners,” he adds.

from TechCrunch

SpaceX has authorized a new Series I round for 3 million shares in a new round that will be worth up to $507 million, according to a certificate of incorporation document filed in Delaware.

If all shares in this round are issued, the new round would value SpaceX at around $23.7 billion, according to the new filing provided by Lagniappe Labs, creator of the Prime Unicorn Index. We’ve previously reported that SpaceX was planning to raise around $500 million in a financing round led by Fidelity, helping provide a lot of liquidity for the company as it begins to ramp up its plans to grow its ambitious launch schedule. While the filing does not confirm that it has raised the full $500 million, it serves as another data point to support that the company has picked up an additional huge influx of cash. The 3 million shares are priced at $169, in the range that we previously reported mid March.

The FCC in March gave SpaceX the green light to launch a network of thousands of satellites to blanket the globe with broadband access. Each additional flight offers SpaceX an opportunity to not only prove out its efficiency as a launching company, but also that it can provide a wide array of companies with a potentially cheaper option to get equipment into orbit for purposes like providing broadband. SpaceX already runs plenty of missions to the International Space Station. SpaceX also won a $290 million contract with the U.S. Air Force to launch three GPS satellites.

SpaceX isn’t the only company that may end up providing a new generation of orbital launches, like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Virgin Galactic also successfully tested its rocket-powered spacecraft for the first time since 2014 earlier this week, and while the details on that launch are still very slim it shows that there’s a wide variety of companies that see potential in figuring out a lower-cost way to get equipment into orbit.

We also previously reported that there could be a secondary offering that could also total up to $500 million in shares. That would run through special purpose vehicles, according to what we’re hearing, which would give investors an opportunity to get some liquidity in the company as it looks to remain private a little longer with the new financing.

We reached out to SpaceX for a comment and will update the story when we get back.

from TechCrunch

Disrupt lands in San Francisco this September, and the agenda is shaping up to be absolutely amazing.

With new digs at Moscone West and expanded capacity, we expect Disrupt SF (September 5-7) to be the biggest and best conference TechCrunch has ever had. And, in large part, that’s credited to our incredible guests.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that GirlBoss Media CEO Sophia Amoruso, as well as Carbon CEO Joseph DeSimone and Adidas CMO Eric Liedtke, will be joining us on the Disrupt stage.

Sophia Amoruso

It’s been four years since GirlBoss Sophia Amoruso graced the Disrupt stage.

A lot has changed since then. Amoruso stepped down as CEO of Nasty Gal, which soon after filed for bankruptcy. She exposed her personal life, and faced harsh criticism, on a brief Netflix original series called GirlBoss.

But Amoruso is neither down nor out. The serial entrepreneur has started another venture by a familiar name. Amoruso described GirlBoss Media to investors as “Oprah for millennials and Supreme with boobs.”

Inspired by Amoruso’s memoir #GirlBoss, GirlBoss Media aims to motivate women to take action in their lives.

There’s something spectacular about falling off the horse and getting back up again, and we’re extremely excited to hear Amoruso tell her story in her own words on the Disrupt SF stage in September.

Bonus: We’re bringing in former TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis to conduct the interview, four years after she interviewed Amoruso at Disrupt NY 2014. Tsotsis is now the founder of an SF-based seed-stage fund called Dream Machine.

Joseph DeSimone and Eric Liedtke

You might not equate sneakers with technological advancement, but Carbon and Adidas could quickly prove you wrong.

Carbon, the 3D printing startup that has raised more than $420 million, has fundamentally changed manufacturing by creating a proprietary CLIP tech that speeds up the process of additive manufacturing by leaps and bounds.

Looking for proof of concept? Look no further than Adidas, who has invested in Carbon to help manufacture its 3D-printed Futurecraft sneakers. Carbon’s 3D printers (in relatively small numbers) are able to build out particularly impressive mid-soles, which feature 20,000 struts, a feat that would be far more difficult and exhaustive to accomplish through traditional manufacturing.

That said, Carbon is scaling quickly, with the duet planning to print shoes in the ‘hundreds of thousands of pairs’ this year, jumping to the millions by 2019.

Carbon co-founder and CEO Joseph DeSimone (winner of the $500K Lemelson-MIT prize in 2008) and Adidas Executive Board Member (global brands) Eric Liedtke (named 2017 CMO of the year in Germany) will join us on stage to discuss a range of topics, from upending traditional manufacturing to the relationship between incumbents and disruptive startups.

Disrupt SF runs from September 5 to September 7 at Moscone West. Tickets are available now.

from TechCrunch

Founded in 2010 as an online loyalty card service, Punchh has since grown into a marketing platform serving more than 115 restaurant chains, including Pizza Hut and Quiznos. Now it’s raised a $20 million Series B to expand into more retail verticals and increase the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in its cloud software. The funding was led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from returning investor Cervin Ventures.

Along with its angel and Series A financing, this brings Punchh’s total funding so far to about $31 million. The startup says its goal is to give brick-and-mortar stores the same level of data analytics as e-commerce giants like Amazon.

Punchh’s platform enables restaurants to digitize their customer loyalty programs and complements that with tools like Punchh Acquire, which is designed to help businesses turn casual customers into regulars by promoting offers through multiple channels, including email, SMS, social media, Apple Pay and eClub.

The company currently has 145 employees and is based in San Mateo, California, with offices in Austin, Texas and Delhi. This is Punchh’s first funding announcement in three years and the startup’s largest round of financing by far (it raised $9.5 million Series A in 2015).

Co-founder and chief executive officer Shyam Rao says the time was right for Punchh to raise again because it already serves many of the biggest restaurant chains, with 34,000 locations between them, and wanted to tap into demand from retailers in other verticals.

Punchh is now focusing on convenience stores, gas stations and health and beauty brands (clients already include Fantastic Sams hair salons and TruFusion, a chain of fitness studios). The company competes with other digital loyalty and marketing platforms like Stamp Me, LoyalZoo and Stocard. Rao says Punchh’s ability to create campaigns that target a very specific audience sets it apart from rivals. Punchh’s algorithms pulls together data from several sources, including event calendars, weather, local demographics and the purchasing history of individual customers, for what it describes as “micro-moment marketing.”

For example, if cold weather is expected over a holiday weekend, it might send offers for a discounted hot soup and tea set to mothers between the ages of 30 to 55. Punchh claims it increases spending at its customers’ restaurants by 10% to 20%.

“Imagine trying to manage that process of using mountains of data to build customer relationships and tailor every experience, at scale across hundreds of locations. That’s what Punchh does,” says Rao.

In a statement, Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures managing director said “Punchh is already a global leader in digital marketing solutions for restaurants, which alone would be a fantastic reason to invest in the company, but the scope of their technology goes far beyond just restaurants and encompasses all brick-and-mortar stores with a POS.”

from TechCrunch

East Meet East, a New York-based matchmaking service focused on connecting Asian people in the U.S., is expanding its focus to go after dating opportunities in Asia after it raised a $4 million Series A funding round.

The money comes from existing backer 500 Startups and new investors Asahi Medialab Ventures, DG Lab Fund (a joint effort from Japan’s Digital Garage and Daiwa Securities), Mobile Internet Capital, internet ad firm Septeni. The startup previously raised $1 million in November 2016.

East Meet Eat CEO Mariko Tokioka told TechCrunch in an interview that the company is testing a service in the Philippines with a view to expanding across other Southeast Asian markets, which could potentially include Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Indonesia. The immediate next step would be a fuller launch in the Philippines — which was selected due to its close following of U.S. culture — with the potential for local offices to open in the region further down the line.

Unlike its core product in the U.S. — which matches Asian men and women; men pay but women use the service for free — East Meet East’s Southeast Asia -based offshoot is aimed at matching people of all races, hence it is called West East Dating.

“Matching Asian people in North America is still our main product, but 60 percent of the world’s population is in Asia so in order for us to become a much bigger company and help more people find their life partner, it makes sense to enter Asia,” Tokioka explained to TechCrunch.

Beyond the expansion, the company is also working to enable smarter matching. That’s where DG Lab Fund — which is backed by well-known Japanese firm Digital Garage, which has worked with the likes of Twitter and Square — comes into play.

DG Lab is developing an artificial intelligence engine in partnership with companies — a number of which it has invested in — and East Meet East is among those that signed up to provide data that enables the AI engine to learn and develop. (Tokioka pointed out that data is anonymized when we raised the question.)

So, essentially, DG Lab gets more data to crunch to build its smarts, and East Meet East gets an enhanced AI system that will help its product work better for users, in theory at least.

“Matching and AI are undoubtedly a natural fit. Users are constantly acting and interacting on the matching platform, which provides an abundance of data for Love.AI to refine its learning,” DG Lab Fund partner Masahito Okuma said in a statement.

from TechCrunch

Billie, a New York-based startup that wants to fight the “pink tax” on goods marketed to women, announced today that it has closed a $6 million seed round. The funding was led by Silverton Partners, with participation from returning investors including Female Founders Fund and Lakehouse Ventures, and will be used to grow Billie’s team and increase inventory.

Launched in November by co-founders Georgina Gooley and Jason Bravman, Billie currently offers subscriptions for razors and other body products like shaving cream, body wash and lotion. The two told TechCrunch in an email that Billie was created because “shaving companies have traditionally been created for men and women have largely been an afterthought in this category.”

While many services and products aimed at women, including clothing, haircuts and essential toiletries, are often more expensive than similar (or even near-identical) goods marketed to men, razors and dry cleaning are “the two worst offenders,” said Gooley and Bravman. The price difference between razors is especially egregious because most use blades made by the same types of machines.

But many women already save money by buying “men’s” razors or using the Dollar Shave Club, the popular low-priced razor subscription service acquired by Unilever in 2016 for a reported $1 billion, so what does Billie offer them?

The startup’s founders say its razors, which were designed specifically for the company, shave larger areas more comfortably then razors designed just for facial hair, but still cost about the same as men’s razor subscriptions. Billie’s blade cartridges have rounded edges to fit in areas like armpits and are encased in shaving soap since shaving cream rinses off too quickly in the shower. There is also more space between each cartridge’s five blades to keep hair and lather from gunking it up. In addition to the Dollar Shave Club, Billie is up against Oui Shave, another women’s shaving product startup. Billie’s founders say one of its main differentiators will be offering much lower prices than its rivals.

In a prepared statement, Silverton Partners general partner Mike Dodd, who is joining Billie’s board, said the startup is “standing in front of a huge untapped market driven by two outstanding founders who have created a brand that speaks perfectly to this opportunity.”

from TechCrunch

WeWork is buying up one of its largest competitors in China after it announced a deal to acquire Naked Hub.

The deal was widely reported by Chinese media yesterday, but WeWork has now confirmed it through a blog post from its CEO Adam Neumann. Terms of the transaction are not disclosed but Bloomberg reported that it is worth around $400 million.

Naked Hub is an offshoot of China-based luxury resort company Naked Group that was started in 2015 by Grant Horsfield and Delphine Yip-Horsfield. The company is primarily anchored in China, with most of its locations in Beijing and Shanghai, but it has expanded into Australia, Hong Kong and Vietnam. All told, it claims to have 10,000 members across its 24 office locations.

Even though a deal to merge with Singapore-based JustCo was called off, Naked Hub had emerged as one of WeWork’s fiercest competitors in China with the ambition to continue that battle in Southeast Asia and other markets, as I wrote last year.

WeWork isn’t commenting at this point about how it plans to integrate the two brands, but its CEO Neumann paid tribute to the Naked Hub business.

“We have found an equal who shares our thinking about the importance of space, community, design, culture, and technology. Together, I believe we will have a profound impact in helping businesses across China grow, scale, and succeed,” he wrote.

“China-born naked Hub and WeWork may come from vastly different backgrounds, but there is more that binds us than separates us. The values we share toward creating a vibrant community for our members by using design, technology, and hospitality are core to how both companies are successful,” said Horsfield, Naked Group’s founder and chairman.

Naked Hub may be a growing threat to WeWork China, but it is far from the only major competitor. Unicorn Ucommune — which changed its name from URwork following a lawsuit from WeWork — is perhaps the largest profile Chinese challenger.

WeWork launched in China in 2016 via Shanghai. Today it said it has 13 locations in Greater China with plans to increase that to more than 40 by the end of this year. That’s a move that it said will quadruple its membership numbers in China from 10,000 to 40,000.

The deal is WeWork’s second acquisition of a competitor in Asia, its first being a deal to buy SpaceMob, a then 1.5-year-old company in Singapore, last year.

The company has been lining its pockets to fuel a big push into Asia.

Last year, the firm span out a WeWork China entity backed by $500 million from investors, while capital also went to WeWork Japan — a unit that investor SoftBank owns half of — and WeWork Pacific, its business focused on Southeast Asia and other parts of the region which also got a $500 million to spend. All of that capital was part of a $4.4 billion investment round in WeWork from SoftBank.

from TechCrunch

Cluno, a startup operating out of Munich that offers what it calls a “car subscription” service, has raised €7 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Acton Capital Partners, with participation from previous investor Atlantic Labs.

Founded in 2017 by the same team behind easyautosale, which exited to Autoscout24 in 2015, Cluno lets you subscribe to a car for a fixed and all-inclusive monthly fee as an alternative to car ownership or a more restrictive lease. It’s a similar proposition to Drover, the London startup that raised £5.5 million ‘seed’ funding last month.

“Our vision is to give people smarter access to unrestricted, personalised mobility,” says Cluno co-founder Nico Polleti. “We still see a lot of people who want to have their car in front of their home every day. But in a smarter way than today! Carsharing is not the answer for the mass market. That’s why car subscription or smart ownership solutions will completely change the way people get access to everyday mobility”.

The Cluno service works as follows: You visit the Cluno website and choose the vehicle you want to subscribe to for a minimum period of six months. You then pay a setup fee, and a fixed monthly fee dependent on the model you have chosen, which covers the vehicle, insurance, breakdown cover, tax, and maintenance. The idea is that the only cost you are left with is fuel. You are also free to upgrade or downgrade your car after six months or can pause/cancel the subscription altogether.

“Why do customers have to buy, finance or lease a car for several years?” asks Polleti rhetorically. “People’s lives and needs change and so should their cars. We take care of the whole process… Our customers subscribe and get a car “ready-to-drive” and home delivered”.

To that end, Polleti cites the startup’s main competition as “buying, financing or leasing a car,” and says that typical Cluno customers have usually considered traditional ways of accessing a car. “Then they find us and see the huge advantage of flexibility and an all-inclusive rate. I think, that’s the big difference and main reason to choose a Cluno car,” he says.

Dr. Christoph Braun, Managing Partner at Acton Capital, echoes this sentiment, noting that the notion of mobility is changing, and argues that technologies such as electric vehicles or self-driving cars will no longer be bought or leased in the traditional way.

“In just a few months, Cluno has created an attractive car subscription model that makes these new technologies easily accessible. While traditional leasing offerings are characterised by rigid contracts and lack of transparency, Cluno relies on a flexible model, digital-first customer experience with transparent all-inclusive pricing,” he says.

from TechCrunch

TravelTriangle, a startup that is digitizing travel agencies and travel bookings in India, has raised a $12 million Series C round led by Fundamentum.

The startup operates like a travel booking platform to allow holidaymakers to choose and secure their travel plans online. It also works with offline travel agents to help them offer services, such as tailoring a trip, to customers as they do when they walk into their offices in person. The company also offers a suite of back-office services designed for agencies to help bring them on to its platform and generate additional revenue.

The deal marks the first investment from Fundamentum, a new $100 million fund established by Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder and the former CEO of $33 billion IT services giant Infosys, and Helion Ventures partner Sanjeev Aggarwal .

When the fund launched last July, Nilekani told TechCrunch it is aimed at turning promising Indian startups into unicorns. Notably, Nilekani confirmed that Fundamentum has looked over some 50 deals before electing to back TravelTriangle.

Fundamentum led the round — and may perhaps hog the limelight a little given the circumstances — but the firm was joined by existing TravelTriangle backers SAIF Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and RB investments who also took part.

TravelTriangle closed a $10 million Series B in February 2017, since then it has seen its site traffic jump from two million to 2.5 million per month, while it has grown the number of active travel agents on its platform to “close to 700.”

Sankalp Agarwal, TravelTriangle’s CEO and one of three co-founders behind the business, told TechCrunch that the money will be spent on product R&D. In particular, he said, a recommendation engine is being developed that will help customers get holiday ideas based both on their own history and the type of trips and destinations that other customers who are similar to them have taken.

On that front, TravelTriangle is also working to broaden its selection of destinations that it offers from the current total of 65. That means finding new partners outside of India.

Agarwal said, too, that a chunk of the new capital will towards marketing campaigns aimed at growing Travel Triangle’s brand and generating awareness among consumers.

He said there’s no immediate plan to focus on expanding the business overseas. He did acknowledge, though that already the service has picked up some overseas customers — particularly in Sri Lanka — and that, as an online platform, it would be possible to replicate overseas.

Most likely, international expansion would be something that is two to three years away, he added, as Travel Triangle is aiming to reach double-figures of market share within India’s travel industry. Outbound tourism alone is tipped to reach $45 billion by 2022, according to research, while in-country travel accounts for the majority of trips.

from TechCrunch

Retail has been revolutionized over the last decade, with brands like Casper and Warby Parker offering high-quality goods at lower costs simply by selling them through the internet.

Koio, a relatively new high-end sneaker brand, is looking to get in on the new retail wave, and the company has some fresh cash to do it.

Koio has just announced the close of a $3 million Series A funding led by Action Capital, with participation from Brand Foundry Ventures, Winkelvoss Capital, actor Miles Teller and director and producer Simon Kinberg, among others.

Koio was founded Chris Wichert and Johannes Quodt, who were sick of spending so much on high-end leather sneakers. The brand focuses on making nice shoes available at a relatively lower price while maintaining high quality products. Most of Koio’s shoes run for around $250.

The company works with a Chanel factory in Italy for all manufacturing, and no piece of the production is outsourced.

But what’s more interesting to consumers is that Koio’s strategy includes collaborations. The company has partnered with tattoo artist Jonboy, surfer Lindsey Davis, and even Game of Thrones for limited run sneakers, all of which have sold out quickly.

Koio launched in late 2015, and saw 400 percent YOY growth in 2017. The company has also started launching pop-up shops, with one in NYC and one launching today in Los Angeles.

“It’s really important to us that we build Koio in an authentic and sustainable way and that our authenticity is transparently communicated to customers in the digital age,” said Wichert.

from TechCrunch