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Squarespace announced this afternoon that it is going public. The online website creation and hosting service is a venture-backed entity, having raised Series A and B rounds in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Those deals were worth a combined $78.5 million, according to Crunchbase data.
But Squarespace is perhaps best known for its epic 2017-era $200 million secondary round that General Atlantic financed. A secondary round is a transaction in which an external party buys share from existing shareholders, instead of the company issuing new equity. Some private companies execute secondary transactions when they do not need additional capital, but are also not near a liquidity event.
The 2017 transaction fits well with the company’s now-impending 2021 IPO.
At the time TechCrunch reported that the company had revenues of around $300 million and that it was profitable.
By filing, Squarespace joins a growing list of companies pursuing the public markets in recent months. At the end of 2020 C3.ai, DoorDash and Airbnb listed. To kick off 2021, Affirm and Poshmark listed to great effect. Coinbase has filed, Robinhood is a hot IPO prospect, and now Squarespace is throwing its hat into the ring.
The Squarespace filing is private, which means that we are waiting for a future public S-1 from the company. Here’s its own words on the current state of affairs:
Squarespace, Inc. today announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The registration statement is expected to become effective after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.
As Squarespace is a software company, a cloud company and a company with a hand in the e-commerce space, we can only presume that it will suffer from a stultifying lack of investor interest when it does file, price and list.1 After all, we’ve not seen a hot software IPO for weeks.
Hat’s off to Squarespace for freeing us from the news doldrums. We’re going back to our nap now.
1This is sarcasm.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/27/squarespace-files-privately-to-go-public/
On Wednesday, Apple announces that it had banked $111.4 billion of revenue in a single quarter, beating investor expectations and blowing past its previous all-time revenue record. Investors yawned with the stock down slightly in after-hours trading following the report’s release.
It’s a big number but it also bested analyst’s forecasts for Apple’s first quarter. Apple beat investor expectations on both earnings per share and revenues, delivering much more than the expected $103.3 billion in revenues and $1.68 EPS versus the $1.41 the Street had expected.
As meme stocks like GameStop and AMC see 100%+ stock gains, it’s a sober reminder that for the rest of the broader public market it’s business as usual and investors have big expectations for massive tech stocks that have seen their market caps and stock prices reach new heights in recent months. Despite the lack of a shock adjustment from the earnings report release this afternoon, Apple’s share price has risen more than 23% since it released its last earnings report in late October.
Apple’s revenue gains from Q1 represented 20 percent year-over-year revenue growth, but a big chunk of that growth came from a single region: China. Quarterly revenues in the region were up nearly 57% eclipsing $21.3 billion compared to $13.6 billion in the same quarter last year.
In terms of revenues via product vertical, iPhone of course reigned supreme with $65.6 billion in sales compared to $56 billion in sales during the same quarter last year. Due to a later-than-usual release timeline for Apple’s latest iPhones, this quarter encapsulates a more substantial swath of the early sales for the device.
It wasn’t just a big quarter for iPhone, iPad sales growth exceeded that of Mac, nearly pushing the category above the other with $8.7 billion in Mac sales and $8.4 billion in iPad sales. Wearables, Home and Accessories grew to $13 billion and Services reached new heights at $15.8 billion.
We’ll be updating with details from the earnings call.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/27/investors-dont-seem-that-impressed-by-apples-111-billion-quarter/
The furor surrounding GameStop and its stock price has consumed social media, business television, and the hopes and dreams a many retail investors. It has even convinced some folks that causing short-term economic damage to a few hedge funds is similar to shaking up the global financial market.
It isn’t, but a lot of folks are doing some downright risky things with their personal capital all the same. And some of them are making those investments — bets, let’s be honest — on platforms that have lowered barriers to buying and selling stocks by cutting trading fees to zero. Apps and services like Robinhood, Public, M1 Finance, and Freetrade.
After noting reports that some traditional brokers were limiting access to GameStop and other so-called meme stocks, TechCrunch was curious what the newer, app-based investing services were doing for their own users.
A spokesperson for M1 Finance, a Midwest-based consumer fintech player that offers a basket of banking and investing services — more on its growth here and here — told TechCrunch via email that it wasn’t taking “specific” steps regarding individual stocks.
But the company also provided a statement from its CEO, Brian Barnes. In his comment, Barnes drew a delineation between investing, and trading, which he likened to a casino, adding that his firm “question[s] whether short-term trading is predictable, sustainable, or repeatable.”
It isn’t for nearly anyone, of course. Barnes went on to say that his company thinks that “ownership of great companies and assets at reasonable prices that compound for long periods of time is the most straightforward and repeatable way to build wealth,” and that they have focused their company more around that ethos, “forego[ing] the mania of the moment.”
Turning to the well-known Robinhood, an impressive 2020 growth story, TechCrunch asked the same question regarding warnings or other guardrails for users concerning certain equities.
In an email a Robinhood spokesperson directed TechCrunch to a comment that its CEO, Vlad Tenev, made on CNBC earlier today:
Like other brokerages do, we monitor volatility and we take steps as appropriate like raising the margin requirements. I do think it’s wrong to assume though that most of our activity is characterized by trading of volatile stocks. As I’ve said before, most of our customers are what’s called buy and hold. They deposit and buy over the long term.
Robinhood changed margin requirements for GameStop and AMC Entertainment to 100%, TechCrunch understands. And like M1, Robinhood doesn’t allow users to short equities. So, there’s that.
Something notable about the companies we are discussing is that not a one of them wants to be labeled as the place where folks like to trade a lot. Which amuses me as cutting fees to zero, which they have largely done, is at once a great way to democratize investing, and, also, a great way to encourage folks to trade more frequently. And as the apps and services that offer free trading often make money when users trade (read this), their chatter about their users being focused on buying and holding always rings slightly thin.
Anyhoo, some apps are going as far as adding warnings. Public, a company that TechCrunch recently covered, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company has added “‘High Risk’ safety labels” to the meme stocks that are causing so much ruckus.
As Public has long had a stated focus on building community over trading — which led to us having a question or two about when it is going to kickstart its monetization plans; the company did just hire a CFO, so more to come there we presume — which makes this move appear in concert with its general ethos.
And, finally, UK-based Freetrade. TechCrunch has covered the service before, making it a good company to rope into this group. Per the company, Freetrade restricts small-cap stocks to the subscription tier of its service, which should limit access amongst its user base to GameStop and other memetic equities.
The company also stressed that it does not offer options or “any other form of leveraged derivatives” and has made “huge investment in investor education and financial literacy.”
So there’s a general bent towards either building products that are not tuned for day-trading in silly stocks, or providing some protection against users’ worst instincts amongst the cohort of companies that have also made it inexpensive to trade. There’s tension there, akin to this.
But they can only do so much. People are dumb, and it’s not looking like that’s going to get much better anytime soon.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/27/how-trading-apps-are-responding-to-the-gamestop-fustercluck/
You’d be forgiven for being underwhelmed by the output from SoftBank Robotics thus far. The firm’s best-known product to date is almost certainly Pepper, a humanoid robot designed for greeting and signage that grew out of it 2015 acquisition of French robotics company, Aldebaran.
There’s also the matter of the investment firm’s acquisition and eventual sale of Boston Dynamics. The deal certainly went a ways toward accelerating the company’s go-to-market approach, but Boston Dynamics changed hands fairly quickly, when it was sold to Hyundai late last year (SoftBank maintains 20%).
The latest wrinkle in SoftBank’s robotic ambitions is nothing if not interesting. The firm announced today that it is joining forces with Iris Ohyama. The Japanese brand, which will hold a 51% stake in the venture (with SoftBank controlling the remainder), is best known for its home goods. The company makes a broad range of products, that includes, as Reuters put it, “everything from rice to rice cookers.”
You’ll be able to add robotics to that list, soon enough. The newly formed Iris Robotics has set an extremely aggressive goal of $965 million in sales by 2025. In a joint press release, the company noted Covid-19-related concerns as a major catalyst in the launch of the division. Certainly that makes strategic sense. There’s little question that the past year has kickstarted serious interest in robotics and automation.
The first couple of products from the venture don’t appear especially ambitious out of the gate, however. To start, it seems they’ll be rolling out “Iris Editions” of a pair of existing devices: Bear Robotics’ restaurant robot Servi and cleaning robot, Whiz.
Here’s a quote from SoftBank Robotics CEO (forgive the Google translate),
With the urgent need to realize the new normal in the corona virus, various new expectations are being placed on robots. This strong partnership with Iris Ohyama is a huge step forward for the expansion and penetration of robot solutions. Taking full advantage of the strengths of both companies, we will respond quickly to the challenges facing society.
Certainly the technical ambitions seem more modest than what the folks at companies like Boston Dynamics are currently working on, but Iris Ohyama seems well positioned to make some headway in the home robotics category to start.
In 2020, nearly $24 billion in venture capital poured into companies creating new technology products or innovative business models for the real estate market.
While things like smart home apps and digital mortgage financing services make life easier for upmarket renters and homeowners, none of these technologies help improve the day-to-day struggles of the vast majority of low-income families.
Many of these emergent technologies could be adapted to become “housing tech” solutions — focused on financial resilience, fresh food access, healthcare access and workforce development — which have the potential to transform the lives of our most at-risk populations.
You can make money while serving the public good.
Consider this: Nearly eight million Americans have slipped into poverty since May, according to a study released by Columbia University. Before the COVID-19 crisis hit, approximately half of all American households struggled to pay rent; a problem that is growing larger by the day as pandemic job losses continue to mount.
About 23.5 million people — half of whom are low income — live in food deserts where access to affordable, healthy food is limited or nonexistent. And good health care is almost impossible to access, let alone pay for, if you are poor.
As the global crisis continues to lay bare the deep inequities in our society, it’s clear that we need new ways of thinking to address these systemic issues. Investment in technology innovation in the affordable housing area could help solve these problems.
Local governments and nonprofits are doing what they can. In 2015, New York launched Urbantech NYC to uncover new technology solutions to urbanization problems faced by government, businesses and urban residents, tackling issues related to food, water, medicine, waste management and other problems.
In 2019, Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit, partnered with MetaProp, a leading proptech venture capital firm, to invest in housing tech companies that are developing technology innovations to help families find an affordable place to live.
These efforts are commendable, but it is not enough. The housing tech movement needs more champions.
First, we need a more patient venture capital source, with a better understanding of underserved communities. Most venture capital firms fund what they know, and unfortunately few understand the affordable housing community, which is largely minority with female heads of household. But pay attention: There are lucrative opportunities here.
Affordable housing property managers tend to invest far more in social services for their tenant population than market rate property managers considering the coolest new piece of technology. You can make money while serving the public good.
Second, housing tech is in desperate need of an accelerator. The tech is out there, but most entrepreneurs don’t know how to “sell” to this specific customer base, which they must do if they want to create viable businesses that will attract venture capital. There are numerous existing technologies ready for an accelerator to take to the next level. These are a few of our favorites:
- Financial Resilience. Low-income people who live in affordable housing are often burdened with confiscatory payday loans and check-cashing services. Many don’t have banking relationships and pay rent in cash. The Lifesaver app helps households, especially those without banking relationships, navigate financial services and become more financially resilient. Earnin allows people to access their pay, with no fees, as soon as they work the hours without waiting for the payday to arrive. Research shows that people who take these short-term loans from nonpredatory lenders actually find themselves more financially stable in following months.
- Fresh Food Access. Cheetah, a wholesale grocery delivery app, has placed community fridges as fresh-food pantries. Via, a transit-on-demand provider, partnered with LA Metro and First 5 LA to subsidize food delivery during the pandemic, especially to women-led households with little children.
- Healthcare Access. Roundtrip provides booking for affordable nonemergency hailed rides, wheelchair vans and other specialized medical transports. Healthify offers a database of vetted and curated community resources, as well as information about the social determinants of health. Emerging software apps that facilitate telemedicine could also expand access to necessary health care.
- Workforce Development. Skilling America is a new workforce platform from Goodwill that improves placement, retention and promotion rates, and most people using the platform are doing so on their smartphones.
An accelerator could also connect housing tech to affordable housing owners and property managers looking for ways to magnify the impact of the social services available on site. The top 50 owners of affordable housing developments have the reach to connect tech developers with almost a million households.
These owners and property managers could act as leadership ambassadors of collaborative efforts among tech developers, venture capital investors and potential housing tech users.
We work every day with the inspiring stakeholders in the affordable housing community, as well as local governments and tech entrepreneurs looking to bridge this digital divide. This isn’t a pie- in-the-sky vision. The future is here and the call to action is now.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/27/vc-investment-in-proptech-can-yield-profits-and-change-lives/
