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Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm with $16.5 billion in assets under management, has poured millions into an edtech startup that sells virtual STEM lab simulations to institutions.
Copenhagen-based Labster, which sells virtual science laboratory simulations to schools, announced today that it has raised $60 million in a Series C round led by the prominent Silicon Valley firm, including participation from existing investors GGV Capital, Owl Ventures and Balderton Capital. Labster has now raised $100 million in total known venture capital to date.
Like many edtech companies, Labster has found itself centered and validated as the pandemic underscores the need for remote work. In April, Labster signed a contract to bring its services to the entire California Community College network, which includes more than 2.1 million students. Months later, the startup brought on $9 million in equity funding to bring GGV’s Jenny Lee onto the board and expand its Asia operations.
“A16z is very excited about investing in technology companies that have a big impact and potential to become massive global successes’,” CEO and co-founder Michael Bodekaer Jensen said. “The fact that Labster is a platform innovating learning at scale is really what attracted them.”
The new capital will help Labster increase its staff, grow into new regions that include Latin America and Africa, as well as invest in new product development to better support teachers.
Jensen says that today’s raise, which is singularly larger than any capital Labster has raised prior, “dramatically increased” the valuation of the company. Jensen did confirm that Labster has not yet hit the $1 billion mark in terms of valuation, nor did he comment on whether the startup had hit profitability or not.
What Jensen did share, though, is that he thinks Labster’s new capital brings the startup one step closer to two big goals: serve 100 million students in the next few years, and become a platform to “enable anyone in the world to customize and build their own simulations on their platform.”
“We’re not a content company,” the co-founder said. “We’re a platform for immersive learning.”
Currently, Labster sells its e-learning solution to support and enhance in-person courses. Based on the subscription an institution chooses, participants can get differing degrees of access to a virtual laboratory. Imagine a range of experiments, from understanding bacterial growth and isolation to exploring the biodiversity of an exoplanet. Along with each simulation, Labster offers 3D animations for certain concepts, re-plays of simulations, quiz questions and a virtual learning assistant.
Image Credits: Labster
Jensen is hinting that the startup might finally be able to move past pre-determined learning tracks and into the world of customizable immersive learning. Other startups, including Inspirit, are also aiming to bring the creativity associated with games such as Minecraft or Roblox to the day-to-day schoolwork of students around the world.
With platform ambition, Labster is pausing its virtual reality efforts, which requires acquiring headsets at scale.
“VR is good for learning, but we need to make sure that we understand and provide services and solutions that work with the hardware that institutions already have and are available,” he said, adding that many institutions have been unable to afford headsets for all students. The fact that Labster is stepping away from virtual reality and framing itself as an immersive learning environment is more than a branding decision, but suggests that the future of scalable edtech might look less like goggles and more like a customizable web page.
“In the early days there was definitely a little naïve entrepreneurial mindset to build it and suddenly all teachers will come,” Jensen said. “[VR] was in no way as revolutionary as we hopped and thought of.”
New investments for the startup include Labster Portal, which is a dashboard for teachers to understand how individual students are using the immersive simulations and what lessons make sense to embed together. The company is also focused on landing partnerships with institutions, on either a country or state-wide level or district-level. Jensen says that the bigger the contract, the bigger the discount because it saves them money on onboarding costs. Labster recently signed a deal to bring its technology to the entire country of Denmark.
Labster currently has more than 2,000 colleges, universities and high schools on its platform.
“Post-COVID, the growth will slow,” Jensen said. “When we have conversations with institutions we are increasingly talking about post-COVID and continuing how we can further use Labster in new and innovative ways.”
Uptime, the self-described “knowledge hacking” app, has raised $16 million in seed funding, after officially launching on iOS in January.
Positioned as a “micro-learning” platform,” Uptime presents five-minute “knowledge hacks” from books, courses and documentaries. The idea is to let you quickly “grasp ideas and insights from trusted authors, instructors, and creative minds,” without spending too much of your precious time. In return, content creators — from those on The New York Times bestseller list to the most relevant courses and Academy Award-winning documentaries — get a new way to reach audiences who may go on to purchase the full works.
In other words, chalk this up as part content aggregator and discovery, and part lead generation for the actual content creators. Built, of course, for the short attention spans of millennials and Gen Z. Or so the pitch goes.
“Hacks are presented in a unique visual story format, designed to be inspirational and make learning effective, fun, engaging, and shareable – all verified by a team of experts,” explains the company. “At the end of each Hack, the user is presented with the option to buy the book, watch the full documentary or sign up for the course from the original source”.
Image Credits: Uptime
The seed funding comes from Uptime’s founders — serial entrepreneurs Jamie True and Jack Bekhor, who previously founded LifeWorks (acquired in 2018 for $325 million), and former YouTube and Facebook executive Patrick Walker — alongside other private investors. They include Lord David Alliance, ex-CEO of Tesco Sir Terry Leahy and unnamed members of private equity firm Thomas H Lee (THL).
“The global edtech market was valued at around [over] $89 billion last year, with people spending hundreds of dollars on online courses, building up their soft skills and watching documentaries,” says Uptime’s Patrick Walker. “It’s a huge opportunity for educational content creators but for customers, it leads to information overload and it can be hard to cut through and find the quality in what feels like an oversaturated market.
“With Uptime, we wanted to create something that could be a one-stop shop for knowledge. Instead of sifting through bestseller lists, endless sites of digital courses, and video platforms for documentaries, Uptime presents the best content from only the most trusted experts, organisations and sources. People can select the topics they’re interested in and gain access to the key elements of the content in snackable, easy-to-watch visual stories, audio and text”.
Uptime’s founders say the platform is aimed at anyone who wants to learn but only has a short amount of time, energy and/or limited resources to do so. “It’s perfect for Gen Z, millennials, parents, anyone with an interest in enhancing their personal or career prospects, and a desire to fill their time with constructive and uplifting content,” says Walker.
One criticism that could be levied at an app like Uptime is that it is another example of a parasitic aggregator, essentially monetising other people’s work. Its makers argue the opposite, and say that the app is actually helping to deliver a new audience to a creator’s work by providing a taster.
“At the end of each Hack, there is a link for people to go on and purchase the book, course or documentary, thereby delivering new audiences to creators,” adds Walker. “The authors and creators we’ve reached out to are extremely enthusiastic about their work being on Uptime. We’ve had support from the likes of Lily Cole, Oobah Butler and Dr Tara Swart… The idea is that everyone can benefit from Uptime; the users and the content creators”.
Snap has partnered with ShareChat’s Moj app to integrate its Camera Kit into the Indian app as the American social giant looks to accelerate its growth in the world’s second largest internet market.
This is the first time Snap has partnered with an Indian firm for its Camera Kit technology, which unlocks a range of augmented reality features, the two companies said. (Snap has partnered with a handful of firms including Triller for Camera Kit collaboration globally.)
Moj creators will be able to use Snap’s AR technology from within the app, while some of the lenses their creators produce will be made available to Snap users, executives with the firms told TechCrunch in an interview.
Wednesday’s move comes amid an ongoing fundraise effort by ShareChat, which operates Moj and is a popular social network in India that caters to users in over a dozen local languages, which is in talks with Google, Snap, Twitter and other investors, TechCrunch reported last month.
Ben Schwerin, SVP of Content and Partnerships at Snap, said in an interview that today’s collaboration is the beginning of a relationship between the two firms, but declined to comment on any investment talks.
Schwerin said the collaboration with Moj will enable Snap to expand the reach of its AR technology to more users in India. Snap, which for years struggled to make inroads in India, has seen an impressive growth in the country in recent quarters. Its app had about 80 million monthly active users in India in the month of December (according to mobile insight firm App Annie, data of which an industry executive shared with TechCrunch), up from about 25 million a year ago.
ShareChat has amassed over 160 million monthly active users in India, while its Moj app, which was launched after New Delhi banned TikTok in June last year, had about 80 million users in September last year, according to the startup.
Moj, which has released 30 Snap-powered lenses for its community at the launch, will develop over 400 lenses in the coming years, some in collaboration with Snapchat Official Lens Creators in India, it said.
“There’s going to be an incredible selection of AR lenses that are customized and localized for Moj’s audience, and we think there’s going to be lots of innovation and usecases that we couldn’t have seen on Snap alone,” said Schwerin.
Gaurav Mishra, SVP of Product at ShareChat, said in an interview the partnership will enable Moj users to engage much more deeply with the community and stand above the crowd. He declined to share how much resources ShareChat was planning to deploy for the creation of lenses. Both the firms declined to disclose financial terms of the deal.
Hardik Shah, who works at SuperFan Studio, one of the largest AR creative firms in India, told TechCrunch the proliferation of Snap’s AR tech will improve the quality of lenses and filters most people in India have access to.
“Brands need to realise that ‘What Disney characters are you’ is very 2019 and should be discarded as an idea in 2021. It’s OK not to do an AR Experience than going ahead with outdated and stale production,” he said.
This is a developing story. More to follow…
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/10/snap-partners-with-sharechats-moj-to-roll-out-camera-kit/
Alexa von Tobel has always felt strongly that too many people are shut out of the stock market. She felt this as a 23-year-old who didn’t have $5,000 to open a brokerage account. She felt it while building LearnVest, a financial planning startup she launched in 2009 and sold in 2015 to Northwestern Mutual for what she says was ultimately $375 million. In fact, von Tobel — who two years ago launched her own venture firm with fellow entrepreneur and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker — cares so much about the yawning gap between investors and non-investors that she has written books about how to take control of one’s money. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, she is also a certified financial planner.)
Little wonder that in late January, for a podcast that von Tobel routinely hosts for Inc., she interviewed Robinhood Vlad Tenev about the company’s quest to make investing accessible to all and how it had shaken up the brokerage landscape in the process. Neither foresaw what would happen days later, when a Reddit community of amateur investors didn’t try to occupy Wall Street so much as turn it upside down by using Robinhood, in part, to drive up the share price of companies like GameStop and AMC Theatres — then unwind those positions. As a 21-year-old college student who lost $150,000 over the course of several days told the outlet Vice, “This whole thing has numbed me to money.”
What happened? Education, in the view of von Tobel, who says it never became an integrated part of bigger picture. While the GameStop saga has “brought a lot of new learnings and new things that people have to process and consider,” paramount among these is the inadequate financial training that Americans receive.
“I want the tools to be democratized, where everyone can get equal access to the financial system,” said von Tobel in a lively chat with us late last week that you can hear here. “But I also want equal education, and that’s where we’re woefully falling behind as a society. It’s not taught in high schools, colleges, or grad schools. Very few schools even teach the basics.”
The issue only grows more important to address each year, she says. People are living longer, and they’re more responsible than ever for their financial well-being. Meanwhile, because of innovations in fintech, including at Robinhood — which became wildly popular very quickly precisely because it dispensed with many of the barriers to participating in the stock market — there is little to keep someone from making lousy decisions with outsize consequences.
So what’s to be done? For starters, she suggests that society begin to place as much emphasis on financial health as physical wellness. “If you’re close to having a major health crisis, doctors do a really good job of saying, ‘Here’s all the things that you need to do to protect yourself; here’s what needs to happen. The same needs to exist in the financial world.”
It will take a number of stakeholders, she believes. One of these is “platforms – all of them — that provide you with [financial] tools and resources, so you can understand the kind of risks you’re taking on [to the extent] that they can provide it.”
Another, she said, is regulators, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Created in 2010 to safeguard consumers in banking, mortgage, credit card and other financial transactions, the CFPB’s very constitutionality was called into question by the Trump administration, yet its guidance is sorely needed, suggests von Tobel. (“Regulation is always a step behind, and that’s a little bit of what we’re feeling” as a society right now.)
Of course, the third and biggest stakeholder of all is the U.S. educational system, says von Tobel, adding that “you need all three, working in unison” in order to have real impact.
As for any structural changes in the meantime that von Tobel thinks should happen — according to CNBC, for example, Robinhood is preparing to lobby against a trading tax that’s been floated as a way to dampen some of the frenzied activity seen in recent weeks — she declines to “pontificate too much.”
Still, she said she thinks that “getting a Citadel and everyday Americans on equal footing is where we want to end up,” and she isn’t without hope that we’ll get there.
For example, she thinks crypto is “here to stay” and that the infrastructure being created around it will be positive for innovators as well as end users. She’s also expecting “self-driving wallets” that pay bills and make investments to become the new normal, and she thinks they could minimize some of the financial distress we might continue to see otherwise.
Considering the chaos of late, the latter almost sounds too easy, but the “wallet is simply a math equation every day,” she says. “If you have so much [money] available free, where should it go? What’s the most optimal place? It’s a math equation that updates every single hour, and I do think elements of it will be self-driving based on your goals and what you want to accomplish.”
As she puts it, “I can’t wait for the day that that actually exists in a way where it automates on its own. I do believe that’s the future.”
Fintech startup Klarna is turning its mobile app into a banking app in Germany. Customers living there can now open a consumer bank account and get a Visa debit card.
For now, Klarna is launching bank accounts for a limited number of users. The company expects to roll it out more broadly in the coming months.
What you get is a full-fledged bank account with a German IBAN to receive money, set up direct deposits and debits. The debit card works with Google Pay and Apple Pay. You get two free ATM withdrawals per month.
With today’s launch, Klarna wants to build a financial super app. Klarna started as a payment method for e-commerce websites. It lets you pay for expensive goods over multiple installments. Merchants get paid when the initial transaction occurs, with Klarna transparently managing credit lines for customers.
With the company’s mobile app, you can track your past purchases and your upcoming payments. The app also lets you access a marketplace of stores, track deliveries and set up price-drop notifications.
But you couldn’t get a full overview of your finances with this data. Adding a bank account provides full visibility in everything that lands on your bank account and leaves your bank account.
It could open up some new opportunities for credit lines. For instance, if you pay in store for something really expensive with your Klarna card, you could receive a notification that suggests spreading out your expense over three months.
Klarna also plans to add savings goals and savings accounts. The startup has already launched savings accounts in Sweden. It offers flexible and fixed-term savings accounts.
Klarna has built its own core banking system, which means that it doesn’t rely on a banking-as-a-service partner to manage your bank account. It’ll compete with other digital banks in Germany, such as N26 and Vivid Money.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/09/klarna-launches-bank-accounts-in-germany/
