Box beats Q4 expectations with revenue of $183.6M, up 12% YoY, says its achieved first full year of non-GAAP profitability; stock is up ~8% after hours — Etsy and Nutanix also reported better-than-expected results for the last quarter — Cloud content management company Box achieved …
Profile of Downdetector, a resource for determining website and platform outages; Downdetector relies almost exclusively on user reports since 2001 — Downdetector is a simple, ugly utility, which becomes a weird little life raft for displaced communities when their websites crash.
Enlarge / Image of anti-vaccine protestors in Connecticut's Legislative Office Building. They formed a prayer circle and said the Pledge of Allegiance and the Our Father before chanting “Healthy kids belong in school.” (credit: Twitter | Christopher Keating)
The battle over vaccinations ramped up in Connecticut this week as state lawmakers narrowly advanced a bill—with last-minute amendments—aimed at banning religious vaccine exemptions for children.
If passed, the measure will no longer allow parents to cite their religious beliefs as a valid reason not to provide their children with life-saving immunizations, which are otherwise required for entry into public and private schools and daycares.
The legislature’s public health committee passed the bill Monday in a 14-11 vote bu t not before making a last-minute amendment that would grandfather in children who already have such an exemption. As passed, the amended legislation would only apply to children newly enrolling.
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Online gaming platform Roblox, now home to 115 million largely Gen Z players per month, announced today it has raised $150 million in Series G funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Late Stage Venture fund. The company will also open a tender offer for up to $350 million of common and preferred shares, it says.
The company has previously offered stakeholders and employees liquidity through periodic secondary offerings, as it believes in its long-term potential. Roblox is also cash-flow positive, according to its CFO Michael Guthrie.
Others participating in the Series G include new investors Temasek and Tencent Holdings Limited, as well as existing investors Altos Ventures, Meritech Capital, and Tiger Global Management.
The funding comes at a period of significant growth for the gaming platform. Just last summer, it was being visited by 100 million users, topping Minecraft, and its developer community was on track to earn $100 million in 2019. Since then, Roblox has further invested in its developer business, with the launch of new tools for building more realistic 3D experiences and a marketplace where creators can sell their own development assets and tools to others, among other things.
Roblox offers a platform for its developers to build upon, similar to the App Store. Many of its most popular games are free, instead monetizing as players spend on in-game items using virtual cash called Robux. Some of its largest games now have millions of players apiece. Players on Roblox often do more than just focus on completing a goal or task — they go online to hang out with friends in a gaming environment.
In recent months, Roblox has also been working to take its platform further outside the U.S. including most notably China. Last year, Roblox entered a strategic partnership with Tencent in an effort to bring its platform and coding curriculum to the region, including by adding support for Chinese languages and running coder camps.
As of last year, Roblox was valued at $2.5 billion, with roughly half of U.S. children ages 9 through 12 playing on its platform, according to comScore. This remains true today. The company is now valued at $4 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. (TechCrunch additionally understands this to be true.)
Today, Roblox says its user base is spending a collective 1.5 billion hours per month on its service. And because it’s accessible across platforms, users often move from PC to smartphone to continue to play — a newer trend in online gaming, and one that’s also driving adoption of games like Fortnite, PUBG, and others.
“We are big believers in Roblox’s long-term vision, and are confident in backing the team as they enter this next inflection point,” said David George, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, of the firm’s investment. “Roblox is one of those rare platform companies with massive traction and an organic, high-growth business model that will advance the company, and push the industry forward for many years to come,” he added.
Roblox plans to leverage the new funds to continue its growth, including international; further build out its developer tools and ecosystem; and invest in engineering talent and infrastructure.
“We’ve stayed true to our vision of creating a safe and civil place where people come together to create, learn, and have fun, and it’s amazing to see what we’ve built together with our global creator community,” said David Baszucki, CEO and co-founder of Roblox, in a statement. “Looking ahead, we’re doubling down on our commitment to building the most advanced tools and technology to take our creators and players into the metaverse of the future.”
It seems like everyone wants student entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur First makes startups out of raw student material, for instance. Most countries want high-skilled students to stick around and make new companies. Only the U.K. likes to charge them a fortune for an education and then kick them out if they don’t earn enough. But I digress!
In its long march to gradually cover several aspects of the U.K.’s startup scene, Founders Factory has invested in Creator Fund, the student-led venture capital fund. It launches today in the U.K. but plans to spread abroad to unearth startup innovation within European universities. It will use a network of “student VCs” in university campuses to invest in new technology ventures and student founders.
The idea here is that students invest in their peers, offering an alternative route to growth for university-based startups.
So far it has people signed up in 14 U.K. universities and offers up to £30,000 investment per startup. Equity is determined on a “case-by-case” basis. Pretty paltry for the average startup, but a king’s ransom for the average student starting, I guess.
While Creator Fund thinks that “the best person to find and support the most promising student founders is their classmate next to them in the laboratory or classroom,” I have a feeling this might end up tying them in a few interesting knots that may end up in some conflicts of interest. We shall see.
The fund intends to make about seven investments over the next 12 months. The VC has already made an investment in Imperial College London-based, Refund Giant — a service that syncs with credit and debit cards to automatically issue fast, hands-free VAT refunds for travelers.
Jamie Macfarlane, founder and CEO, said in a statement: “In the US, many of the great tech companies were born on college campuses – Facebook, Google, Snapchat & Yahoo were all started by student founders. The UK has some of the world’s best universities and the same potential for students founders to be creating great businesses. For those high potential students to pursue this path, they need better access to three things – capital, business support and community. We, at Creator Fund, are delivering a new VC model specifically focussed on delivering this. We’re training students at top universities to find and invest in deals with their peers and give them the early-stage support they need. And creating a community where they look around and see other people taking this entrepreneurial path.”
Henry Lane Fox, co-founder and CEO of Founders Factory, added, “What Creator Fund is doing is very special. They are challenging the VC landscape and we are excited to be part of it. It is giving highly-educated students the skills to be the investors of the future and uncover the founders of tomorrow.”
Creator Fund launches with a mix of students from a wide range of backgrounds. Current members of the team include Richa Bajpai from India who has previously built a global CSR company that raised over £20 million and Toyosi Ogedengbe from Nigeria, who has built a platform to help investors deploy capital in West Africa.
At launch, Creator Fund has teams across 14 U.K. universities: Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, UCL, Kings, Imperial, LBS, Warwick, Newcastle, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Aberdeen and St Andrews.
Made Renovation, a new, San Francisco-based company, thinks it has found a profitable way to help homeowners get done something that busy general contractors in the Bay Area won’t otherwise make time for, which is bathroom remodels.
Why they typically pass on these: they have too many entire homes, or, at least, entire floors, to build for affluent regional homeowners who’ve kept the construction industry buzzing for years.
It’s a problem that founders Roger Dickey, who previously co-founded Gigster, and Sagar Shah, who previously founded Quad, think they can solve through technology, naturally. Their big idea: create bathroom templates that customers can customize but whose scope and costs are generally understood, line up these customers, then hire general contractors who are willing to focus only on these bathrooms.
It’s an idea that’s picking up traction with these GCs, says Dickey, who explains it this way: “General contractors generally see net margin of 3%” no matter the size of the job, owing to unforeseen hurdles, like pipes that suddenly need to be rebuilt, drains that need to be dug and materials that don’t ship on schedule.
In addition to timing issues, GCs are also often dealing with frustrated building owners who might underestimate a project’s costs, particularly in California, where construction bills often cause sticker shock.
Made Renovation sees an opportunity to make both the lives of GCs and homeowners easier. Through pre-negotiated pricing, volume and materials handling (it right now rents part of a warehouse where it receives goods), it’s promising GCs a “reasonable margin” so they can not only pay their crews but live a higher quality of life themselves.
Meanwhile, per the plan, customers need only choose from the company’s “modern” collection, its more traditional “heritage”design or its “artisan” collection — all of which can be customized — then sit back while their long-neglected bathrooms are remade.
Whether Made Renovation can pull off its grand vision is a giant question mark. The construction industry is nothing if not messy, and in addition to convincing GCs of its merits, Made Renovation — like any marketplace company — has to strike the right balance between customer demand and supply as it gets off the ground.
In the meantime, investors clearly think it has promise. Led by Base10 Partners and with participation from Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund and some individual investors, the company has already raised $9 million in seed funding across two tranches.
Part of that capital is on display right now in San Francisco, where Made Renovation today opened its doors to customers who want to check out its design ideas and, if all goes as planned, will begin lining up their own home improvement projects. Customers simply pick a collection, Made Renovation then puts together a “mood board” of materials from that collection, sends out a 3D rendering of what to expect, then goes into build mode with its GC partners.
As for what happens when that build goes awry, Dickey says Made Renovation has it covered. Most notably, while it guarantees the work to its own customers, the GCs with whom it works guarantee their work to Made Renovation.
Dickey also notes that while the startup “may lose money on some projects,” he stresses there are caveats that customers agree to at the outset. Among these, he says, “We can’t X-ray their walls and see if they don’t have wiring up to code. We don’t cover dry rot in walls.” Technology, suggests Dickey, can only do so much.
If you’re in the Bay Area and want to check out its new storefront, it’s on Chestnut Street in SF, in the city’s Marina district. The company hopes to perfect its model in the Bay Area, says Dickey, then expand into other regions. As for why Made Renovation decided to tackle one of the most challenging U.S. markets first, he suggests it’s the best way to test its mettle. “I like the idea of starting a company here, because if we can make it work here, I think we can succeed anywhere.”
PayPal is investigating unauthorized transactions affecting numerous German users; a researcher says hackers could be exploiting PayPal's Google Pay integration — All signs point to an attack exploiting PayPal's Google Pay integration. … Hackers have found a bug in PayPal's Google Pay integration …
Facebook says it will now ban ads that promise to cure or prevent COVID-19, or attempt to “create a sense of urgency” about it — - It is banning ads that mentioned it if they attempt to “create a sense of urgency” around the virus or promise to cure it.
Sources: autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai has raised around $500M in its latest funding round led by Toyota at a valuation of around $3B — HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Autonomous driving firm Pony.ai has raised around $500 million in its latest funding round, led by an investment …
New York Times : Despite banning TikTok on government devices, Taiwan isn't considering a US-style ban, saying the app is just one ba...
