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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.
Eniac Ventures, a seed firm with a focus on New York startups, is announcing its fifth fund totaling $125 million.
Eniac’s four general partners — Hadley Harris, Nihal Mehta, Vic Singh and Tim Young — have been making seed investments together for more than a decade, and they’ve known each other for even longer, having first met at the University of Pennsylvania. Singh described the firm as “one of the OGs” in seed investing, while Mehta said, “Consistency has been our superpower.”
The size of Eniac’s funds has grown dramatically over the past decade, from its $1.6 million first fund in 2010 to its $100 million fourth fund in 2017. However, Mehta said the team approached the latest fund with $125 million as both a goal and a “hard cap.”
The larger funds allow Eniac to make more investments, and to lead rounds as the definition of a seed deal has expanded. (The firm says it can invest anywhere from $350,000 to $3 million in a single round.) At the same time, GP Hadley Harris emphasized that Eniac will remain focused on seed deals rather than Series As, and that it wants to remain “really collaborative, so that we never need to take more than half the round.”
Eniac’s general partners usually only two or three investments each per year, which Harris said is “quite a bit less than average seed fund.”
“We always want to be the investor of record in the companies that we invest in, leading or co-leading these rounds,” he continued. “And we want to have the bandwidth to be partners with them in the early stages of their journey. We think the only way to do that is concentration.”
Eniac’s portfolio now includes more than 120 companies, with 50-plus exits. Recent successes include mobile messaging company Attentive (which raised a $230 million Series D last fall), podcasting startup Anchor (acquired by Spotify) and online retailer Boxed (which recently partnered with one of Asia’s largest brick-and-mortar companies, Aeon).
While Eniac initially billed itself as a mobile-focused firm, it now invests across software-as-a-service, developer platforms, consumer and deeptech. Harris said they’re not pointing to any specific industries or trends that they’re focused on because, “We want to be balanced between thesis-driven and opportunistic … The theses that we tend to focus on tend to be on a per-partner basis and change pretty quickly.”
The firm is headquartered in New York, with an office in San Francisco. Hadley said New York-based startups remain a priority, while at the same time, “We also believe that great founders can be anywhere and we’re more and more interested in distributed teams.”
Singh added that despite the hype around other emerging startup hubs, “A lot of the founders we partner with in New York are staying in New York. They have not left.”
They might hire team members elsewhere, he said, but there’s a high bar for remote employees. And if a startup wants to be fully distributed, “You have to be fully remote and distributed first. You can’t go distributed later; you have to very intentionally build the organization in that way from the start.”
As for the team’s longevity, I noted that it also has a potential downside from a diversity perspective, especially since all four of the founding GPs are men. However, the firm has recently promoted two other team members — Vice President of Finance and Operations Anna Nitschke and Investor Kristin McDonald — who Singh noted “votes on deals with us” and “feels as if she has an equal say in how the firm is run.” And the firm plans to hire six new team members this year.
If you want to hear more from the firm’s partners, I’ll be interviewing them on Superpeer (another recent Eniac investment) tomorrow, February 10, at 2:30pm Eastern.
Just over a year ago in our coverage of the 2019 venture capital market, we noted that “United States-demarcated angel and seed deals dipped in 2019.” Our reporting concerning the Q1 2020 venture capital market had a similar tone, noting that “domestic seed rounds, in slow decline since peaks in 2017, have sharply fallen since Q3 2019.”
The same theme continued in the second quarter. Widening our lens to global seed data, own we wrote that “global seed and angel deals […] were down from 4,256 rounds in Q2 2019 worth $3.7 billion to 1,791 rounds worth just $2.3 billion in Q2 2020.”
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Of course, the second quarter of 2020 was the middle of the storm when it came to the temporary decline in venture capital confidence. So, what about Q3? One source noted, as we wrote at the time, that the “percentage of U.S. VC deals that were for rounds of $5 million or less was the lowest since at least 2010.” Another data source showed a slight rebound in domestic seed rounds, but it was a rare positive data point.
Then came Q4 2020 data and a full-year look at the market. We wrote that in “the U.S., seed deal count was high in 2020, around 5,227,” per that day’s data source.
Weird, right?
The Exchange leans on PitchBook, CB Insights, the NVCA, Silicon Valley Bank and Crunchbase along with other more focused data sources for its raw inputs. I’m not citing individual sources in the above (you can find them at the links) to avoid appearing to be cross with any particular entity; that’s not my goal.
Instead, I’m curious how we can have so many different seed data signals in the same year. This is a question I’ve had for some time, as whenever I’d report that seed deal volume in any particular part of the world was looking light — Europe, for example — investors would tell me, in polite tones or with sheer incredulity, that the seed data in question did not match their lived realities.
Investors were seeing a hot seed market, while data often showed a flat-to-down seed market. So, what’s going on?
SAFEs could be to blame
Thanks to angel investor and Twitter bon vivant Trace Cohen, I think we have a good idea of what’s to blame for discrepant data and reality when it comes to seed and earlier dealmaking. Per Cohen, could SAFEs be to blame?
SAFEs, or Simple Agreements for Future Equity, are a method of raising capital that is quick and cheap. Y Combinator invented them back in 2013, and they’ve become rather popular amongst seed deals over time.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/09/are-safes-obscuring-todays-seed-volume/
