Last week in startups - global
Uber closed its first day of trading as a public company worth $41.57 per share, down from its IPO price of $45. The company continued to decline in after-hours trading.
Funding
Recruiting company humanpredictions landed $1.16 million from investors. The round was led by Network Ventures. The company wants to help hiring managers fill their shortages of tech roles, from software engineers to data scientists. The company claims it wants to discover “hidden tech talent outside of LinkedIn” by using data and machine learning.
Real estate startup Reali raised a $9 million “Series B2,” adding to its initial round of $20 million. The way Reali works is to hire its own licensed real estate agents, who are salaried and not paid on commission. Buyers and sellers pay a flat rate of $5,000 to $10,000 depending on the price of the property, rather than a several percentage commission.
Toronto-based Lane, which calls itself a workplace experience platform, said it would use a $2.5 million funding to expand into the U.S. The five-year-old company raised the money from Alate Partners, Panache Ventures and Colliers/Techstars. Lane said its modular technology integrates with an existing building “to create a tailor-made workplace experience that dramatically increases the overall ROI of any office with the use of a technology-driven assistant.” Its goal is to streamline traditional building management by “providing instant access to software, services, and amenities.”
Mint House, which wants to help business travelers have a more “tech-rich” experience, announced a $15 million Series A led by Revolution Ventures.
The New York-based company promises “tech-forward accommodations,” including a mobile app for check-ins and messaging with customer service.
It partners with landlords or business developers and leases between 20 to 200 units in a building with the goal of providing “amenity-rich, apartment-style accommodations with the brand consistency of top-tier hotels.”
Acquisitions
With respect to acquisitions, we have the famous media streaming service Netflix acquire Story Bots. Netflix signed StoryBots creators, brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, to an overall deal to expand the entertainment and educational series for pre-school kids.
Trends
Definitely the Google I/O 2019 conference. The conference reinforces the gravitation towards AI and ML-based solutions in the coming years. Smarter lens, smarter maps, smarter phones, smarter assistant - this year Google has gone ten steps ahead with its artificial intelligence capabilities.
What else? As the silicon valley giants like Facebook and Twitter move towards privacy, so does Google. Google placed a big emphasis on user privacy in this keynote. It’ll now be easier for users to access their Google security settings from their smartphone and from there quickly delete their web history and app activity. The firm will also process more user data on the device without uploading it to its own servers.
That’s a wrap from our end. See you next Monday with more news on funding, acquisitions, mergers, and trends around the globe. Until then, tune in to our recent episode of Mind the Gap to check out the brand story of Zappos where we uncover the journey of how Zappos practices customer-centricity in its true sense. Tweet out to Freshchatapp to let us know what you think! Have a great day!
