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PayPal acquires a cryptocurrency startup, Apple discontinues the iMac Pro and McAfee sells its enterprise business. This is your Daily Crunch for March 8, 2021.

The big story: PayPal acquires Curv

This deal will grow PayPal’s cryptocurrency team by bringing on Curv, a startup working with exchanges, brokers and over-the-counter desks to help their users store crypto assets securely and access their wallets without requiring additional hardware.

The larger company already supports the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, and it says it plans to launch new crypto-related products in other countries and in Venmo. Calcalist was the first to report the acquisition, and it said that the deal price was between $200 and $300 million, while another source tells TechCrunch that the price was less than $200 million.

The tech giants

The iMac Pro is being discontinued — Apple will stop selling the all-in-one once the current stock is depleted.

McAfee sells enterprise biz to Symphony Technology Group for $4B — McAfee President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Leav said the company has decided to direct its resources to the consumer side of the business.

Google unveils $25M in grants aimed at empowering women and girls — Google.org’s new Impact Challenge, unveiled on International Women’s Day, is aimed at addressing systemic barriers and inequities.

Startups, funding and venture capital

UK challenger bank Starling raises $376M, now valued at $1.9B — Starling, which competes against incumbent banks, as well as other challengers like Monzo and Revolut, says it’s already profitable.

Cosi raises €20M for its ‘full-stack’ approach to short-term rentals — The company signs long-term leases with property owners, then furnishes those apartments itself to “control” the interior design experience.

Swiss maker of meat alternatives Planted will expand and diversify with $18M Series A — With new kebabs and pulled-style faux meats available and steak-like cuts in the (literal) pipeline, Planted has begun to set its sights outside central Europe.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

From electric charging to supply chain management, InMotion Ventures preps Jaguar for a sustainable future — A look at InMotion Ventures, the independent investment and incubation initiative set up by Jaguar Land Rover.

Olo’s IPO could value the company north of $3B as Toast waits in the wings — Olo, the New York-based fintech startup that provides order processing software to restaurants, shared its initial IPO price range this morning.

White-label voice assistants will win the battle for podcast discovery — Listeners have never had so many choices for smart and compelling podcast content, with new exciting shows emerging daily.

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

Everything else

Announcing the agenda for TC Early Stage — Operations & Fundraising — You’ve got questions. TechCrunch Early Stage will have answers for you on April 1 and 2.

A glimpse inside the minds of tech’s DEI leaders — We spoke with Uber Chief Diversity Officer Bo Young Lee and Netflix VP of Inclusion Strategy for Product Wade Davis about the work that still needs to be done.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Zapier, a well-known no-code automation tool, has purchased Makerpad, a no-code education service and community. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

TechCrunch has covered Zapier often during its life, including its first, and only fundraising event, a $1.2 million round back in 2012 that tapped Bessemer, DFJ, and others. Since then company has added more expensive tiers to its service, built out team-focused features, and recently talked to Extra Crunch about how it scaled its remote-only team.

In an interview Monday with Zapier CEO Wade Foster told TechCrunch that his company now has 400 workers, and crossed the $100 million ARR mark last summer.

The Makerpad deal is its first acquisition. TechCrunch asked Makerpad founder Ben Tossell about the structure of the deal, who said via email that his company will operate as a “stand-alone” entity from its new parent company.

The deal doesn’t seem prepped to upend what the smaller startup was working on before it was signed. “Ultimately,” Tossell wrote, “Makerpad’s vision is to educate as many people as possible on the possibilities of building without writing code.”

Foster seems content with that focus, describing to TechCrunch how he intends to let Makerpad operate largely independently, albeit inside a set of editorial guidelines.

TechCrunch asked the Makerpad founder why this was the right time to sell his business. He said that the pairing would help his team take the no-code world further than it could alone, also noting that the deal was a “no-brainer” over “alternative routes such as VC funding.”

The acquisition was partially driven by a single tweet. This one, in fact. According to Tossell, the CEO of Zapier reached out after reading it, leading to conversations and a deal. Foster expanded on the story during a call, saying that he had long followed Tossell’s work and that the two had met previously at dinners. The tweet wound up in his Slack, he said, so he reached out to the Makerpad founder, and from there it was a pretty quick ramp to a deal.

The two companies have seen rapid growth in recent quarters. Foster detailed to TechCrunch how small businesses have become increasingly reliant on his company’s service in the post-COVID world, with Zapier seeing strong SMB adoption after the pandemic hit. Given the digital transformation’s acceleration, that’s a trend that likely won’t slow soon. And Tossell told TechCrunch that no-code has already “grown bigger than [he] had imagined it could,” with his company seeing users expanding 4x in just under the last year.

Zapier, perhaps one of the largest success stories in the broad swath of technology products that we might call the no-code world, now has an attached community that could help directly add users to its service, and perhaps indirectly by making the aggregate pool of no-coders larger over time.

The no-code space has been active in recent months, as has its sibling niche, the low-code market. The latter has seen recent rounds in the nine-figures, as some corporations turn to low-code tools to help the more quickly build internal software. The no-code world has its own successes, like Zapier’s nine-figure revenues.

Foster was neutral on more acquisitions, neither closing the door on them when TechCrunch asked, but not opening it any wider at the same time. On the SPAC question, however, the CEO was a bit clearer. That’s a no.

After having spoken to a grip of no-code, and low-code founders and investors in recent months, it seems clear that the broader business market is coming around to low-code services, and that smaller companies have been quick adopters of no-code tooling. As low-code tools become increasingly abstracted from coding, and no-code tools add functionality, perhaps we’ll see the two related categories merge.

As an early-stage founder, how do you identify the right investors? Or know how to hire the best possible team to set up your company for growth? Should you bootstrap, and if so, how do you do it successfully? How do you nail virtual pitch meetings? What about product market fit? Board construction and good governance? How do you make sound financial decisions both for your company and yourself?

You’ve got questions. TechCrunch Early Stage will have answers for you on April 1 & 2.

At the virtual event, we’re bringing together some of the most seasoned operators in the fields of legal, recruiting, product, data security, and sales to help you find your way through a tactical quagmire to the bright light of success at the end of the tunnel.

Of course, the show will cover more than operational challenges. We also have many, many sessions around fundraising, from how to think about raising your Series A to how to get an investors attention.
If you’re in the midst of building a company, this show is worth making time for. Plus, audience members will be able to ask their own questions to our expert speakers in each and every breakout session.

Finding Your Product Market Fit with Sean Lane (Olive AI)

Olive AI founder and CEO is no stranger to the pivot. Hear how he practiced patience in the search for product market fit, how he knew it when he finally found it, and tactics he used to build on it.

Sponsored by Perkins Coie: Creating and Protecting IP Value in Connection with VC Financings

How do venture capital investors value formal Intellectual Property (IP) rights in connection with a decision to fund a technology or life sciences start-up? How do they conduct IP due diligence? How do investors and founders, post-funding, ensure their start-ups are pursuing an IP strategy that optimizes exit valuation for all? Perkins Coie partners Michael Glenn (Patent Prosecution) and Matt Oshinsky (Emerging Companies Venture Capital) will be joined alongside a seasoned venture capitalist to discuss these and other questions regarding safeguarding IP rights and maximizing the value of all technology development activities.

How to Get an Investor’s Attention with Marlon Nichols (MacVenture Partners)

Marlon Nichols is an expert in early-stage investments, having invested in countless successful ventures such as Gimlet Media, MongoDB, Thrive Market, PlayVS, Fair, Wonderschool and Finesse. Right now, there is more seed stage fundraising than ever before, and Marlon will speak on how to get noticed by investors, how to grow your business and how to survive in the crowded, competitive space of tech startups. He will provide insights on how to network, craft a great pitch and target the best investors for your success.

Sponsored by Mayfield: Scientist Entrepreneurs – Scaling Breakout Engineering Biology Companies

Biology as technology will re-invent trillion dollar industries and enhance human and planetary evolution. In this session, two early-stage investors and company builders, Arvind Gupta and Ursheet Parikh, will be in conversation with a leading author and seed investor Po Bronson, Managing Director of IndieBio. They will share their playbook on scaling start-ups touching upon three seminal areas which influence trajectory – fundraising, hiring, and product design. Their insights will draw on their experience with companies including ingredients-as-service leader Geltor which raised a $91 million Series B in 2020, CRISPR platform Mammoth Biosciences whose dream team includes co-founder Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, and Endpoint Health, started by the founding team of GeneWEAVE (acquired by Roche) and former YC Bio Partner Diego Rey, which is designing a new class of therapeutic products that focus on hospital conditions that kill as many people as cancer.

How to Nail Your Virtual Pitch Meeting with Melissa Bradley (Ureeka)

The rules of the pitch meeting have changed. Instead of traveling across the country, wasting time in planes, trains and automobiles, founders can take upwards of 30 meetings in a day from the comfort of their home. Entrepreneur and VC Melissa Bradley will outline how to make the most of that half hour on Zoom and lock in the next one.

Sponsored by Merus Capital: An M&A Playbook for Startup Founders: Lessons from Google and Microsoft

One of the most important decisions a founding team can make is when to consider selling the company to a strategic buyer. In this session, learn the tactics for approaching acquirors, avoiding common pitfalls and maximizing the likelihood of achieving an eye-popping valuation. Hear from Sean Dempsey, founding partner of Merus Capital who spent 10 years leading acquisitions for Google and Microsoft, and Dave Sobota, VP of Corporate Development at Instacart and former M&A leader at Google.

10 Things NOT To Do When You Are Starting a Company with Leah Solivan (Fuel Capital)

With voices across the internet giving their two-cents on how to run a great business. Fuel Capital’s Leah Solivan, who was CEO at TaskRabbit for 8 years, will share a list of things that a founder should NOT do. Avoid the pitfalls that could break your momentum, or worst case, your company and ask Solivan your own questions.

Sponsored by Dell for Entrepreneurs: Why Founders should adopt OKRs now?

Execution is key to a start-up’s survival and growth especially when it comes to fast-moving software and technology products. Being in the tricky intersection of investors, customers and employees, a founder needs to balance priorities, align teams and create a visionary product that works. Moreover, in this age of hyper feedback loops and changing business models, the founder has to be agile enough to absorb and quickly react to changes in the product roadmap and consumer needs. OKRs – a toolkit used majorly by engineering and product teams is more than relevant now for founders of all kinds to embrace. Join the session to learn the history of OKRs, what they are about, and witness case studies of successful real-life adoption.

How To Get Into An Accelerator with Neal Sales-Griffin (Techstars)

Accelerators provide an incredible launch pad for early stage startups, offering a built-in network, accessible advisors, and of course, capital. But first, you’ve got to be accepted. Hear Techstars Neal Sales-Griffin outline how to get into an accelerator and make the most of the experience.

Sponsored by Brainbase: Naming & Protecting Your Company’s Intellectual Property with Brainbase

You have an idea for a game-changing product or service – what do you call it? Once you’ve picked a name, how do you make sure nobody else is using it? Is the domain and Twitter handle available? Brainbase makes it easy for anyone to file a trademark without a lawyer, and instantly own your brand across all channels. In this session, Brainbase co-founder and CEO Nate Cavanaugh will explain the importance of owning your company’s trademark, both for brand protection and for fundraising due diligence.

4 Things To Think About Before Raising a Series A with Bucky Moore (Kleiner Perkins)

Founders looking to raise Series A capital know that it’s an entirely different ball game than seed stage funding. Hear Kleiner Perkins partner Bucky Moore outline the most important ways to mentally prepare for heading into Series A fundraising.

Sponsored by B Capital Group: Nailing the little things: How startups can achieve operational excellence from “Day one”

The early days of launching a company can be a whirlwind for founding teams as unexpected challenges and opportunities require flexibility, agility and speed. But implementing a few key operating best practices and processes early can be a crucial part of a startup’s success or failure when it prepares for rapid growth. Join partners from B Capital Group, a multi-stage global investor, to learn about the most important things you can do to set your startup up for success early in your journey, and what will be most important to investors as you raise your Seed, A and B funding rounds. Speakers include Howard Morgan, Chairman of B Capital Group and co-founder of First Round Capital, and Partners Karen Page (formerly of Box) and Gabe Greenbaum (formerly of Pritzker Group).

How to Build Your Early Team for Future Growth with Sarah Smith (Bain Capital Ventures)

More than your investors, or even you as a founder, your early employees will have a tremendous influence on the trajectory of your company. You hire them, and often times, they hire everyone else. Hear Bain Capital Ventures partner Sarah Smith talk through how to recruit a top-notch early team that sets your startup up for future growth.

Contracts, Cap Tables and other Legal Questions with Dawn Belt (Fenwick)

No matter the industry, your startup requires legal help. Whether it’s building out the cap table, writing up contracts, understanding the laws around hiring or simply feeling secure with a TOS. Whatever the question, Fenwick & West partner Dawn Belt has the answer.

Finance for Founders with Alexa von Tobel (Inspired Capital)

As a founder, you not only have to master your company’s finances, you also have to tackle your own personal finances. Managing your money as a founder comes with a unique set of questions (see: QSBS). Leveraging her expertise from LearnVest and as a Certified Financial Planner, Alexa will share financial planning best practices so founders can remove this layer of stress from the pressure of building a business.

Leadership Culture and Good Governance with David Easton (Generation Investment Management)

David Easton is a growth-stage partner at Generation Investment Management with portfolio companies that include Asana, Andela, Gusto, and Docusign, among others. Easton will talk through how to choose your board and foster a leadership culture that keeps sustainable, good governance top of mind.

Building and Leading a Sales Team with Ryan Azus (Zoom)

Contrary to popular opinion, even the very best products don’t sell themselves. Salespeople do. Hear from Zoom’s Chief Revenue Officer, at the helm of the company’s sales team during the biggest period of growth of any software company ever, lay out how to build a stellar sales team.

The All-22 View with Eghosa Omoigui (EchoVC Partners)

Improving line of sight and dynamic field of play aperture is rarely discussed but hugely important. Great founders, operators and investors have an understanding of playbooks on both sides of the ball. We’ll talk through learnings and some ideas on how to build muscle memory and skillsets so that founders never lose perspective when it’s time to make a big decision.

And we’ll also have some great sessions from our partners too!

Creating and Protecting IP Value in Connection with VC Financings brought to you by Perkins Coie

How do venture capital investors value formal Intellectual Property (IP) rights in connection with a decision to fund a technology or life sciences start-up? How do they conduct IP due diligence? How do investors and founders, post-funding, ensure their start-ups are pursuing an IP strategy that optimizes exit valuation for all? Perkins Coie partners Michael Glenn (Patent Prosecution) and Matt Oshinsky (Emerging Companies Venture Capital) will be joined alongside a seasoned venture capitalist to discuss these and other questions regarding safeguarding IP rights and maximizing the value of all technology development activities.

Scientist Entrepreneurs – Scaling Breakout Engineering Biology Companies brought to you by Mayfield

Biology as technology will re-invent trillion dollar industries and enhance human and planetary evolution. In this session, two early-stage investors and company builders, Arvind Gupta and Ursheet Parikh, will be in conversation with a leading author and seed investor Po Bronson, Managing Director of IndieBio. They will share their playbook on scaling start-ups touching upon three seminal areas which influence trajectory – fundraising, hiring, and product design. Their insights will draw on their experience with companies including ingredients-as-service leader Geltor which raised a $91 million Series B in 2020, CRISPR platform Mammoth Biosciences whose dream team includes co-founder Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna, and Endpoint Health, started by the founding team of GeneWEAVE (acquired by Roche) and former YC Bio Partner Diego Rey, which is designing a new class of therapeutic products that focus on hospital conditions that kill as many people as cancer.

Using Fast Feedback to Make Higher-Confidence Decisions and Accelerate the Dev Process brought to you by UserTesting

We’ll discuss how to use fast feedback methodologies to make high-confidence product decisions based on objective customer data in real time, without slowing the dev process. Quickly diagnose problems, settle disputes, reduce the risk of rework, and iterate faster. This session will include real-world case studies.

An M&A Playbook for Startup Founders: Lessons from Google and Microsoft brought to you by Merus Capital

One of the most important decisions a founding team can make is when to consider selling the company to a strategic buyer. In this session, learn the tactics for approaching acquirors, avoiding common pitfalls and maximizing the likelihood of achieving an eye-popping valuation. Hear from Sean Dempsey, founding partner of Merus Capital who spent 10 years leading acquisitions for Google and Microsoft, and Dave Sobota, VP of Corporate Development at Instacart and former M&A leader at Google.

Why Founders should adopt OKRs now? brought to you by Dell for Entrepreneurs

Execution is key to a start-up’s survival and growth especially when it comes to fast-moving software and technology products. Being in the tricky intersection of investors, customers and employees, a founder needs to balance priorities, align teams and create a visionary product that works. Moreover, in this age of hyper feedback loops and changing business models, the founder has to be agile enough to absorb and quickly react to changes in the product roadmap and consumer needs. OKRs – a toolkit used majorly by engineering and product teams is more than relevant now for founders of all kinds to embrace. Join the session to learn the history of OKRs, what they are about, and witness case studies of successful real-life adoption.

Naming & Protecting Your Company’s Intellectual Property brought to you by Brainbase

You have an idea for a game-changing product or service – what do you call it? Once you’ve picked a name, how do you make sure nobody else is using it? Is the domain and Twitter handle available? Brainbase makes it easy for anyone to file a trademark without a lawyer, and instantly own your brand across all channels. In this session, Brainbase co-founder and CEO Nate Cavanaugh will explain the importance of owning your company’s trademark, both for brand protection and for fundraising due diligence.

Nailing the little things: How startups can achieve operational excellence from “Day one” brought to you by B Capital Group

The early days of launching a company can be a whirlwind for founding teams as unexpected challenges and opportunities require flexibility, agility and speed. But implementing a few key operating best practices and processes early can be a crucial part of a startup’s success or failure when it prepares for rapid growth. Join partners from B Capital Group, a multi-stage global investor, to learn about the most important things you can do to set your startup up for success early in your journey, and what will be most important to investors as you raise your Seed, A and B funding rounds. Speakers include Howard Morgan, Chairman of B Capital Group and co-founder of First Round Capital, and Partners Karen Page (formerly of Box) and Gabe Greenbaum (formerly of Pritzker Group).

This year, we’ve added a pitch-off on day 2 of TC Early Stage, showcasing interesting startups from a variety of sectors. All-star judges will give their feedback live. You don’t want to miss it! And if you’re interested in pitching, you can still apply to pitch by tomorrow, March 9.

Of course, TC Early Stage dual event ticket holders will get access to both events (April 1-2 and July 8-9) and have access to 2x the content that comes out of the event live or on demand. Plus, you can take advantage of additional savings with Early Bird pricing on dual event tickets until March 26!

Mercenary CEOs know all too well that this is about the most bang you can get for your buck. Period. Grab get your ticket now and save up to $100!

Cosi Group, a Berlin-based startup offering an alternative to boutique hotels and managed short-stay apartments, is disclosing €20 million in new investment.

Backing the round is Vienna-based Soravia, a leading real estate group in German-speaking countries. Existing investors Cherry Ventures, e.ventures, Kreos Capital and Bremke followed on, along with a number of individual investors. They are described as including the founders of Flixbus, Travelperk, Comtravo, and Cosi’s own founders.

Cosi says it will use the fresh capital to accelerate international expansion in Europe, implement a new brand, and launch a “new strategic business unit” soon.

Originally described as a tech-enabled or “full-stack” hospitality service that competes with well-run boutique hotels or traditional local managed apartments, the company signs long-term leases with property owners, and then furnishes those apartments itself to “control” the interior design experience. It claims to have digitised, and where possible, automated its processes in order to scale and maintain quality of service throughout the guest journey, from initial contact to loyalty.

Christian Gaiser, CEO of Cosi, tells me the startup has not only been able to mitigate the pandemic — which has seen major restrictions in travel, including countries going into full lockdown — but actually thrive. That’s because Cosi was able to tap “new demand channels” which aren’t reliant on holiday travel or short business trips.

Described as “mid-stay” (guests that stay for 1 month or longer), examples include people who arrive in a city and need a home for 1 or 2 months until they find a longer term apartment, citizens who need to get away from shared apartments (perhaps to be less at risk or to work from home), or families who are building or renovating a house that faces construction delays due to the pandemic.

“Thus, we were able to reach over 90% occupancy and managed to operate our locations on a cash flow positive scale,” adds the Cosi CEO. “Lesson learned for us: Even when almost all your demand channels dry out, you still can do a lot if you focus on what you can control. We simply activated new demand channels”.

In addition, he says the pandemic has accelerated a shift in demand preferences, seeing “big hotel bunkers” become less popular versus individual apartment style accommodations.

Meanwhile, Cosi has also seen a “massive boost in supply,” with lots of takeover opportunities in the hotel space, especially for underperforming hotel properties. And since office space demand has contracted dramatically, the company is receiving offers to convert office space for use as mid-stay accommodation.

“On the back of our strong Covid performance, we’ve built a lot of trust among the real estate community and receive more and more offers,” says Gaiser. “Prices for supply have fallen sometimes dramatically, depending on the city, due to these factors”.

To that end, Cosi currently has 750 units under contract, with 1,500 more under negotiation.

Adds the Cosi CEO: “Now is exactly the right timing to double down on Cosi’s growth from a long term perspective. When everyone is scared/shocked, you can win big if you have a clear plan. Our investors bought into this plan, as we have demonstrated that our business model is resilient and we also have the capacity to navigate the ship both in good but also in rough waters”.

In the nearly ten years since it launched as a whole animal butchery out of a storefront in East Nashville, the founders of Porter Road have wanted to herd America’s meat industry down a new path.

Now the company has $10 million in financing from investors including L37 Ventures, River Park Ventures, Middleland, FJ Labs, Kelvin Beachum along with previous investors MAX Ventures, Tribeca Venture Partners, and Slow Ventures to bring that mission to a broader swath of the country.

Since the company bought its own slaughterhouse back in 2015 and expanded to e-commerce in 2018 it has been shipping its selections of lamb, beef, pork, chicken and sausages from local farms to tables across the U.S.

The new money will be used to scale the company’s sustainable agriculture and its pasture-raised meat for the direct-to-consumer business, its shop in Nashville, and for wholesale distribution to restaurants around the country.

It’s going to expand its operations in Princeton, Ky with a new USDA processing facility that’s 4.5 times larger to meet new demand. That move will create 80 new jobs in the small town and is part of a broader agricultural renaissance in Kentucky.

“It’s easy to back founders who are as comfortable on the manufacturing line as they are in the boardroom, and who see the world differently and have the deep domain expertise to execute on that vision,” said L37 Partner Randall Ussery in a statement. “They have spent years perfecting the Porter Road way which no company nor incumbent can replicate overnight. They are a category killer in the meat industry and have built a moat around their brand.”

Porter Road delivery box of a selection of its steaks, sausages and bacon. Image Credit: Porter Road

One indication of the ways in which Porter Road differs from its larger competitors is in the way it handled the COVID-19 pandemic at its facilities.

Due to its limited production schedule and measures like staggered break times, mask requirements and social distancing rules, the company was able to avoid having any outbreaks at its facilities, according to the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Chris Carter. “We had a handful of people who got sick, but [COVID-19] didn’t spread in Princeton,” said Carter.

And despite the push for more plant-based diets, Carter says that his company’s focus on pasture-raised animals and whole animal butchery should appeal to folks who care about sustainable production. “We care about our farmers and we care about the way our animals are raised,” said Carter. “That’s the whole point of what we’re doing… Porter Road is about animal utilization. It’s about honoring the life of an animal so we find an outlet for every single piece.”

Porter Road is expanding its product line into cooking tallow and fats, and cross cut bones for bone marrow dishes, Carter said.

“The food system is broken and in need of a substantial change. Today’s consumer is demanding a deeper level of connection to their food and can see past misleading labels and buzzwords,” said  Carter, in a statement. “We are delivering trust, transparency, and flavor so no one has to compromise, all while supporting our farmers.”