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A new study from Mount Sinai researchers published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Medical Internet Research found that wearable hardware, and specifically the Apple Watch, can effectively predict a positive COVID-19 diagnosis up to a week before current PCR-based nasal swab tests.
The investigation dubbed the ‘Warrior Watch Study,‘ used a dedicated Apple Watch and iPhone app and included participants from Mount Sinai staff. It required participants to use the app for health data monitoring and collection, and also asked that they fill out a day survey to provide direct feedback about their potential COVID-19 symptoms, and other factor including stress.
During the course of the study, the research team enlisted “several hundred health care workers” to participate, and collected data over several months, between April and September. The primary biometric signal that the study’s authors were watching was heart rate variability (HRV), which is a key indicator of strain on a person’s nervous system. This information was combined with information around reported symptoms associated with COVID-19, including fever, aches, dry cough, gastrointestinal issues, loss of taste and smell, among others.
The Warrior Watch Study was not only able to predict infections up to a week before tests provided confirmed diagnoses, but also revealed that participants’ HRV patterns normalized fairly quickly after their diagnosis, returning to normal roughly one to two weeks following their positive tests.
As to what the study could lead to in terms of actual interventions, the study’s authors note that it can help anticipate outcomes and isolate individuals from others who are at risk. Most importantly, it provides a means for doing so remotely, allowing caregivers to anticipate or detect a COVID-19 case without even doing a physical exam or a administering a nasal swab test, which can help take precautionary measures in high-risk situations when cases are suspected, possibly preventing any spread before someone is highly contagious.
The study is ongoing, and will expand to examine what else wearables like the Apple Watch and their onboard sensors can tell us about other impacts of COVID-19 on the health of care workers, including what factors like sleep and physical activity can have in association with the disease.
“Seed rounds are up!” “Seed rounds are higher valued than ever!” “There were 10% less VCs investing in seed rounds last year!” !!!!!!!!1
We’ve all seen these stories, and we’re fine connoisseurs of them here at TechCrunch, for sure. Trend data about VC investing are always enticing to startup founders and investors, since they affect so much of the strategy and planning of building a company. If seed rounds are becoming more elusive, maybe skip on that last hire, extend the runway, and try to gain some revenues. If Series A is the new bottleneck, well, invest more in product and growth so you don’t slam into the capital wall. If money is raining down from the sky, double the team, double growth marketing spend, and go blitzscale.
It’s key market intelligence, and important. Which is why it is so frustrating that the aggregate data on VC rounds is so, goddamn bad.
Here’s a friendly reminder: there are no comprehensive datasets on VC rounds, at least in the United States) And the data quality has only gotten worse over time, particularly at the seed stage.
It’s a theme I have been harping on for years now. SEC Form D filings, which form the backbone of most trend data of VC investment rounds, have been disappearing for years now.
As I described in my analysis from way back in 2018, the biggest reason is also one that isn’t very visible: a transformation in the culture among lawyers from a culture of “always file” to a culture of avoiding filings if at all possible.
That cultural change has been driven by founders and investors who want to keep their startups stealthy and their competitors in the dark about where their finances are. Plus, founders can avoid the spectacle of salespeople beating down their door when they find out the startup has cash in the coffers.
When I talked to lawyers about how to delay filing a Form D, all gave the standard perfunctory response about the necessity of filing — until we went off-the-record. Then, lawyers opened up about how much they skirt around SEC securities regulations. As one lawyer essentially put it, there’s what the law says is required, and then what the SEC ever bothers to enforce. No one in Silicon Valley has ever been charged with a crime related to skipping out on a Form D filing, or even paid a fine that anyone seems to have any memory of.
One lawyer at the time described to me a prototypical conversation he has with founders. He doesn’t tell them not to file their Form Ds. Instead, he says that almost none of their peer founders will file securities paperwork, and thus, if they do follow the law, they would be at a competitive disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of founders follow the directed course.
While it might seem like the law is the law, what’s far more important than what is written in the law or SEC regulations is how the law is interpreted, which is really about the sociology of attorneys. Years ago, I was talking to a securities attorney about company valuations. He was describing to me how East Coast-based securities lawyers at the time would blanche at some of the valuation tricks that West Coast / Silicon Valley lawyers would use with startups. You can follow the law closely, and you can follow the law loosely — and neither group is altogether breaking the law.
A change in legal culture driven by founders is one aspect of the dilemma facing VC investment trend surveyors. Another, particularly at the seed stage, is the complexity of rounds today.
As my colleague Alex Wilhelm wrote this morning in The Exchange newsletter, alternative investment models are having a large effect on aggregate VC data. Rolling rounds, convertible notes, SaaS securitization products, crowdfunding, and other mechanisms have massively transformed the seed-stage investing world from the ol’ write-a-check-and-buy-equity approach. While some of these forms of investment trigger filings requirements, many of these models are so new that lawyers have been willing to skip filings given the paucity of case law associated with the regulations.
Finally, you can generally avoid a Form D by filing in the relevant state jurisdictions of the company and its investors. As much as securities law may seem federal (we talk about the SEC a heck of a lot more than the California Department of Financial Protection & Innovation), the reality is that much of securities law is still practiced at the state level. What that means is that startups can use state filings in lieu of federal filings, and those are essentially invisible since literally no one besides me and a few other journalists in the world read state securities filings.
Take for instance a cool company I covered a little while back called Hebbia, which is reinventing search on the desktop. They raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round led by Floodgate with a lot of other great investors. Now, go to the SEC search page and look for the Form D. Nothing. But if you go to the California DFPI, you will find three filings submitted on September 21, 2020 for a $1.2 million total round. There’s your filing.
Even late-stage companies can mostly go without any Form D filings. Take DoorDash, for instance, which just had a monster IPO last year. If you search through the SEC database for “DoorDash Inc,” you will find nary a Form D filing for any of the company’s 11 venture rounds that Crunchbase identifies. The first filings with the SEC are for its originally confidential Draft Registration Statement to go IPO in early 2020. Now, if you head over to California’s database again, you will find filings going back to 2016, which I presume is the five-year limit for the site’s search function.
Using state filings is not wrong, illegal, or unethical — it’s just the standard way to do business today. But few industry datasets go beyond federal Form D filings to take into account every state’s database for securities filings. There are 50 states, and many of them (looking at you Florida) are all but impenetrable to researchers and investigators.
So if the legal culture around filings has changed, more rounds are using alternative investment models, and startups aren’t filing federally, what are analysts supposed to do?
Well, they try to compensate for this sparsity by augmenting the dataset they have with publicly reported information from sites like TechCrunch, Twitter conversations, self-reported data from startups, surveys of lawyers and accountants and more to attempt to statistically estimate how many rounds were actually conducted given the limited information they have on hand. For example, if lawyers report a 15% uptick in rounds, we can guesstimate roughly how many rounds took place in a given year.
At least, that’s the idea. Unfortunately, there really is no way to measure the inaccuracy of this approach, since there is no administrative dataset to compare our estimations to.
What percentage of rounds go undisclosed? It’s impossible to count something we can’t count, but my guess covering the industry is something on the order of 50-60% of seed rounds, a third of Series A/B rounds, and a declining percentage the later a company goes (at a certain point, Form Ds solve a lot of problems for companies when it comes to securities paperwork and mitigating legal risk).
Even the government doesn’t have data better than us. Take a story from last week in the Wall Street Journal about how the Department of Justice is investigating startups that took money from Chinese investors. The DoJ isn’t taking advantage of some secret database to identify all the investors that are hidden from the general public. They don’t know themselves! From the article:
Startup investments are exempt from many of the disclosures required from public companies. Last year, Cfius launched a new confidential tip line to help surface deals. In some cases, companies have alerted Cfius to a rival’s connections with foreign investors, said startup executives and lawyers.
(That last bit is just so juicy – a good reminder that we have a Secure Drop if you want to similarly slam a rival).
Ultimately, VC investment trend data is interesting and key market intelligence, and it might be — at a very high level — directionally right. There are just huge constraints on the ability of market researchers and data companies to comprehensively analyze the market in an accurate way. Everyone tries their best, but the reality is that if startups don’t have to disclose their investor data, there’s literally no other source for the information.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/09/psa-most-aggregate-vc-trend-data-is-garbage/
Spotify this morning confirmed it’s testing a new, synced lyrics feature in the U.S. market, following a report from Engadget. Though the streaming music service today offers live lyrics in a number of markets — 27, in fact, including its recent launch in South Korea — it has not offered lyrics in the U.S. for many years. Instead, Spotify here runs the “Behind the Lyrics” feature provided in partnership with Genius, which offers a combination of lyrics and trivia about the song being played.
Reached for comment, Spotify said the new Lyrics feature rolled out as a test for some users in the U.S. starting today.
“We can confirm we’re currently testing our lyrics feature to a select number of users in the U.S.,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning.”
The company declined to share additional details about its plans, but did note that its U.S. partner on the new Lyrics feature is Musixmatch — a service that already powers Spotify’s lyrics feature in various non-U.S. markets.
This is not the first time Spotify has run a lyrics feature in the U.S., to be clear. The streaming service had originally worked with Musixmatch from 2011 through 2016, before ending that relationship to instead partner with Genius. But despite ongoing user demand for lyrics’ return, Spotify never brought the feature back to the U.S.
In more recent years, however, Spotify rekindled its relationship with Musixmatch. Last year, it announced the launch of real-time lyrics in, then, 26 worldwide markets across Southeast Asia, India and Latin America. This had been the first time lyrics were offered in 22 of these 26 markets, as only Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Mexico had some form of prior lyrics support via other providers.
Spotify’s ongoing lack of support for lyrics in the U.S. has given its streaming music competitors an advantage. Amazon Music, for example, allowed users to view lyrics as songs played and tied the feature to its Alexa voice platform, so consumers could ask Alexa to search for songs by lyrics. Meanwhile, the updated version of Apple Music that rolled out with iOS 12 in 2018 included a way to search by lyrics, instead of just artist, album or song title. It later added live, synced lyrics with the launch of iOS 13. Siri can also respond to commands that involve lyrics.
Musixmatch additionally confirmed it has partnered with Spotify on the new U.S. test.
“Musixmatch is keeping growing at a fast pace thanks to our continued investment we’ve made [over] a decade. We’re focused now on bringing more data to continue enriching the audio experience globally,” Musixmatch CEO and founder Max Ciocciola told TechCrunch.
Because the lyrics feature is only a test, you may not see it yourself in the Spotify app, due to its limited availability. Spotify has not said if or when the test may be expanded.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/09/spotify-confirms-its-finally-testing-a-lyrics-feature-in-the-u-s/
Once upon a time, the idea of 3D-printed homes felt like a thing of the future.
But as housing gets less and less affordable — especially in ultra-expensive markets such as the Bay Area — companies are getting creative in their quest to build more affordable homes using technology.
One of those companies, Oakland-based Mighty Buildings, just raised $40 million in Series B funding for its quest to create homes that it says are “beautiful, sustainable and affordable” using 3D printing, robotics and automation. It claims to be able to 3D print structures “two times as quickly with 95% less labor hours and 10-times less waste” than conventional construction. For example, it says it can 3D print a 350-square-foot studio apartment in just 24 hours.
The four-year-old startup’s efforts caught the eye of Khosla Ventures, which co-led the financing along with Zeno Ventures.
Ryno Blignaut, an operating partner at Khosla, believes that Mighty Buildings — which launched out of stealth last August — has the potential to cut both the cost and carbon footprint of home construction “by 50% or more.”
The company takes a hybrid approach to home construction, combining 3D printing and prefab (meaning built offsite) building, according to co-founder and COO Alexey Dubov. It has invented a proprietary thermoset composite material called Light Stone Material (LSM) as part of its effort to reduce the home construction industry’s reliance on concrete and steel.
The material can be 3D printed and hardens almost immediately, according to the company, while also maintaining cohesion between layers to create a monolithic structure. Mighty Buildings can then 3D print elements like overhangs or ceilings without the need for additional supporting formwork. That way, it’s able to fully print a structure and not just the walls.
Robotic arms can post-process the composite, which combined with the company’s ability to automate the pouring of insulation and the 3D printing gives Mighty Buildings the ability to automate up to 80% of the construction process, the company claims.
Khosla was drawn to the Mighty Buildings’ innovative approach.
“We believe in dematerializing buildings and non-linearly reducing the amount of cement and steel used, thereby reducing the cost of construction in order to increase affordable access to housing together with improved sustainability,” Blignaut wrote via email.
Mighty Building’s use of 3D printing, advanced manufacturing techniques, modern robotics and “new lighter and stronger materials” gives it an edge, he added.
Since its launch, the company has produced and installed a number of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and is now taking orders for Mighty Houses — its newest product line that will range from 864 to 1,440 square feet at an estimated cost of $304,000 to $420,500. (Similarly sized houses in some parts of the Bay Area can sell for upwards of $1 million).
The units are created with a 3D-printed exterior panelized shell while certain elements — such as bathrooms for example — are prefabricated in the company’s 79,000-square-foot production facility in Oakland.
For now, the company is only building in California, but Dubov says it’s open to exploring other markets as its factory can be replicated.
Also, Mighty Buildings plans this year to market its Mighty Kit System and a new fiber-reinforced material for multi-story projects as part of a planned B2B platform for developers. In fact, the company already has secured contracts with developers for its single family housing product line. It also plans to use the new capital in part to scale its production capacity with increased automation.
Ultimately, Mighty Building’s vision is to provide production-as-a-service, with builders and architects designing their own structures and then developers using Mighty Factories to produce them at scale.
Mighty Buildings is not the only startup doing 3D-printed homes. Last August, Austin-based ICON raised $35 million in Series A funding. The company also aims to reinvent building affordable homes with the use of 3D printers, robotics and advanced materials. The biggest difference between the two companies, according to Dubov, is that ICON does primarily onsite construction while Mighty Buildings prefabricates in a factory.
More than a dozen other investors also participated in Mighty Building’s latest round, including returning backers Bold Capital Partners, Core Innovation Capital and Foundamental and new investors including ArcTern Ventures, Abies Ventures, Modern Venture Partners, MicroVentures, One Way Ventures, Polyvalent Capital and others. Mighty Buildings was also included in Y Combinator’s Top companies list, all of which have valuations over $150 million (although the company declined to reveal its current valuation).
For its part, Khosla’s Blignaut believes that buildings are “a big part of our urban landscape and a large consumer of resources.”
“Construction and building account for more carbon emissions in the U.S. than transportation or industry,” he said. Other portfolio companies addressing such challenges include Ori Living, Vicarious, Katerra and Arevo.
Jüsto, an online supermarket based in Mexico City, announced Tuesday it has raised $65 million in a Series A round led by General Atlantic.
The amount is sizable for a Series A in general, but supersized for a LatAm startup. In fact, according to PitchBook data cited by General Atlantic, the round represents the largest Series A raised in Latin America in the past decade.
Existing backers also participated in the round, including Foundation Capital and Mountain Nazca.
Ricardo Weder, former president of Cabify (a large ridesharing company operating in Latin America, Spain and Portugal) founded Jüsto in 2019 with a mission to “disrupt the Latin American grocery industry.” It claims to be the first supermarket in Mexico with no physical store. Customers can buy their groceries directly from the website or via the app and Jüsto delivers the order to the customer’s location of choice.
The concept is clearly resonating with consumers as Jüsto saw impressive growth in 2020 with a 16-fold increase in revenue.
Jüsto prides itself on working directly with fresh produce suppliers so that it can offer “the freshest” fruits, vegetables, meats and fish in the market. It also offers a variety of products such as pantry staples, personal hygiene and beauty, home and cleaning, drinks and pet-related items.
The startup only sells items from local suppliers, with whom it prides itself on developing fair trade agreements (“Jüsto” means fair in Spanish). It also uses artificial intelligence to forecast demand and to try to reduce food waste at its micro-fulfillment centers. The company’s approach results in “competitive prices, lower transaction costs, and improved convenience to consumers by eliminating intermediaries in the supply chain,” according to the company.
Looking ahead, Jüsto plans to use its new capital to expand across Mexico and Latin America as a whole, enhancing its last-mile logistics infrastructure and marketing initiatives.
Luis Cervantes, managing director and head of Mexico City for General Atlantic, believes Mexico is at an inflection point in its transition to a digital economy.
“We see Jüsto as leading the way in the high-growth online grocery space with its technology-centric, mission-driven approach,” he said in a written statement. “Under Ricardo’s leadership, we believe Jüsto is positioned for significant expansion as it disrupts and transforms the legacy grocery value chain.”
Jüsto marks General Atlantic’s fifth investment in Mexico since 2014. Since then, General Atlantic has invested nearly USD $1 billion in what it describes as “high-growth” Mexican companies.
The financing brings Jüsto’s total raised to over $100 million. Other investors include FEMSA Ventures, S7V, Elevar Equity, Bimbo Ventures, Quiet Capital, Sweet Capital, H2O Capital and SV LatAm Capital, among others.
