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When you are able to navigate a world that is designed for you, it’s easy to avoid thinking about how the world is designed for you. But it can be different if you are disabled.
At TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3, we will examine the importance of ensuring accessible product design from the beginning. We’ll ask how the social and medical models of disability influence technological evolution. Integrating the expertise of disabled technologists, makers, investors, scientists, software engineers into the DNA of your company from the very beginning is vital to the pursuit of a functioning and equitable society. And could mean you don’t leave money on the table.
Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice for a wide-ranging discussion as we attempt to answer these questions and further explore inclusive design with Cynthia Bennett, Mara Mills and Srin Madipalli.
Cynthia Bennett is a post-doc at Carengie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, as well as a researcher at Apple. Her research focuses on human-computer interaction, accessibility and Disability Studies, and, she says on her website, spans “the critique and development of HCI theory and methods to designing emergent accessible interactions with technology.” Her research includes Biographical Prototypes: Reimagining Recognition and Disability in Design and The Promise of Empathy: Design, Disability, and Knowing the “Other.”
Mara Mills is the Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University and a co-founder and co-director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Mills research focuses on sound studies, disability studies and history. (You can hear her discuss the intersection of artificial intelligence and disability with Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute and Minderoo Research Professor at NYU, and Sara Hendren, professor at Olin College of Engineering and author of the recently published What Can a Body Do: How We Meet the Built World, on the TechCrunch Mixtape podcast here.)
Srin Madipalli is an investor and co-founder of Accomable, an online platform that helped users find accessible vacation properties, which he sold to Airbnb. His advocacy work focuses on disability inclusion iBe sure to snag your tickets here for just $5 here.n the workplace, as well as advising tech companies on accessibility.
Make sure you can join us for this conversation and more at TC Sessions: Justice on March 3. Secure your seat now!
Robinhood has shown an impressive ability to raise enormous amounts of capital in the past few weeks to ensure it has the funds needed to allow users to trade and, presumably, provide it with enough cash until it goes public. Raising $3.4 billion so quickly is an extraordinary feat.
But how the company managed to get investors to wire money with such alacrity has been a curiosity; what about Robinhood was so compelling that giving it a multi-billion dollar injection was such an obvious decision?
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We got a whiff of it when we parsed Robinhood’s Q4 2020 payment for order flow (PFOF) data, which showed the discount trading service growing nicely from its Q3 results. Robinhood’s PFOF revenue growth had slowed in sequential terms in the third quarter of 2020, but the final quarter iced near-term concerns that the unicorn’s growth days were behind it.
But then the company gave us a little more, a few charts that I think better explain why Robinhood was able to raise so much money so quickly.
Equities and options volumes go up
The reason why Robinhood was able to raise lots more cash very quickly was because the company’s PFOF revenue driver likely went into overdrive during the mess that was the GameStop period, This is somewhat obvious, as many people were trading.
But thanks to a new chart from the company posted on its own blog, we now know that Robinhood’s PFOF incomes were likely spiking to all-time highs.
Here’s the chart the company published, which I have loosely marked with quarterly intervals. Per Robinhood, the green line is “Robinhood equities and options trading volumes over a longer time horizon, through last week:”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/05/how-the-gamestop-stonkathon-helped-robinhood-raise-3-4b-last-week/
Tickr, an app that allows UK consumers to make financial investments based on their impact on society and the environment, has secured £2.5m ($3.4m) in funding lead by Ada Ventures, a VC which focuses on ‘impact’ startups. The cash will be used for product development, expanding the user base, and eventually taking Tickr into other European countries from its current UK base.
As well as investing, the platform allows customers to spend their cash via partnerships with impact-oriented compares, and offset their carbon footprint through a subscription. The core business model is £1 p/m per customer, plus 0.30% on assets above £3,000. Additional products, like carbon offsets, for example, are charged as a separate additional subscription depending on the tier selected.
The startup says it is approaching 100,000 users in the UK and is reaching a millennial audience 90% of which have ‘never invested before’ (they say) and these users are investing £250 per month on average.
Tickr App
The app is not billed as a trading app, with quick ‘in and outs’ but about building wealth whilst investing in a diversified portfolio of high impact companies. Its competitors include MoneyBox, but Tickr says it is “100% pure impact focus” by contrast. The vast majority of Europeans don’t invest in markets so this could be a good opportunity for the product.
Founders Tom McGillycuddy and Matt Latham spent 8 years working in investment management but say they became disillusioned by the jargon, high fees and indifference to causes such as the environment.
Over text interview, McGillycuddy told me: “We also realized there was zero consideration for the underlying impact of the investments people were making; it was purely about the return. Coming from Wigan and Liverpool, we were the first people in our families to be exposed to this world, and it didn’t seem right.” The pair moved into impact investing and subsequently went on to launch Tickr in 2018.
India is restoring 4G internet services in Jammu and Kashmir, a senior government official said Friday evening, 18 months after cutting internet access in the Muslim-majority state in an attempt to curb the spread of potential backlash over its decision to strip the region of its special status in August of 2019.
Rohit Kansal, principal secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir government, said 4G internet services were being restored in the entire region. India lifted ban on internet and some social media services in two districts (of 20) of the state last year but maintained speed restrictions and time limits, after Supreme Court ruled last year that an indefinite shutdown of the internet in the state was unwarranted and demonstrated “abuse of power” by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government.
The internet ban in Jammu and Kashmir was by far the longest by any democracy.
In August, New Delhi told Supreme Court that it will start offering high-speed internet in one district of Jammu and one of Kashmir valley on a “trial basis.” Critics have said that ban on internet has cost citizens of Jammu and Kashmir hundreds of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars.
Raman Jit Singh Chima, a senior international counsel and Asia Pacific Policy director at Access Now, a nonprofit internet advocacy organization, said today’s move was welcoming, but “let’s be clear — the previous shutdown was excessive, mindless repeated. Glad that all Jammu and Kashmir residents will soon have internet restored, denied to them in violation of their rights under the Indian Constitution.
Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, celebrated the news, adding “For the first time since Aug 2019 all of J&K will have 4G mobile data. Better late than never.”
This is a developing story. More to follow…
Dublin-based Frontline Ventures has released details of its new €70 million ($83.8M) Frontline Seed fund III which will be aimed at European B2B startups. The new fund will bring Frontline’s total funds under management to €250 million, deployed out of its offices in London, Dublin and San Francisco. Backers of the fund include the European Investment Fund (EIF), Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) and Irish banking giant AIB, along with 10 tech angels, largely post-exit entrepreneurs, from Europe and the US.
The new fund has already begun to invest in early-stage companies, and is aiming at investing in up to 45 companies over the next four years. Investments will range from €250,000 to €2.5 million. It follows Frontline’s recent new $70m US-based growth-stage fund, Frontline X, which is geared to US startups wanting to expand to Europe and the EU region, given that Ireland is an EU member, and well placed to benefit from the ramifications of Brexit.
William McQuillan, Partner, said the fund would invest about 50 percent of the fund into new early-stage companies. The remaining funds will be delayed for later investments in existing portfolio companies.
It’s McQuillan’s view that, with Europe having 26 percent of all the global B2B software market and the US at 50 to 55 percent, Europe has plenty of growth opportunities.
The new seed fund launches at a time when US VC firms are putting down roots in Europe, such as Sequoia which opened an office in London last year, and more recently General Catalyst. In May of 2020, Frontline invested in Irish HQ’d company Evervault alongside Kleiner Perkins, Index and Sequoia.
Seventy percent of Frontline’s seed portfolio companies have raised capital from US VCs since 2012, and Frontline partners have experience with companies such as Google, Twitter, SurveyMonkey, Airtable, and Yammer.
In a statement, McQuillan said, “When we looked at the data back in 2012 – at the very start of Frontline – it was painfully clear that European entrepreneurs lacked the infrastructure and support to build a global business out of Europe. Today, Europe rightfully finds itself on top-tier US investors’ target list, but global expansion remains an important challenge to solve. As a team, we’ve pooled all of our experience and resources into helping our founders cross the Atlantic. Seed Fund III will be an extension of our work – to help founders get off the ground – and go global.”
Frontline’s more notable investments include Linked Finance, Clearbanc, and Currencyfair. The Frontline X growth fund has invested in the Series B of TripActions; People.ai’s $100 million Series C; and Clearbanc’s $50 million Series B.
Notable exits include Logentries, which was acquired by Rapid7; Orchestrate, acquired by CenturyLink; and Pointy acquired by Google in 2020.
