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Saturday, 30 November 2019
Facebook complies with Singapore's fake news law and adds a label that is visible to local users, under the users' post, saying the post contains false info (Fathin Ungku/Reuters)
Fathin Ungku / Reuters:
Facebook complies with Singapore's fake news law and adds a label that is visible to local users, under the users' post, saying the post contains false info — SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Facebook (FB.O) said on Saturday it had issued a correction notice on a user's post at the request …
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As the new year beckons European investors start moving into new roles
As the Holiday Season approaches, new jobs for players in the tech ecosystem beckon. And this is no less true for investors. Two notable moves have recently happened that are worthy of note in the European scene.
The first is that GR Capital, a pan-European VC, is opening an office in London and has lured Jason Ball, who, earlier this year, left Qualcomm Ventures where had been European Managing Director for over a decade. Bad spent ten years as a mentor at Seedcamp and individually invested in more than ten companies. He was understood to be looking for new challenges, either building a new fund or joining another – so now we have our answer as to what he decided.
Founded in 2016 by Roma Ivaniuk in Ukraine, GR Capital specializes in late-stage VC investments. It has over $70M under management and has invested in Lime, Azimo, WeFox, McMakler, Glovo and Meero among others. The fund has traditionally been known for investing in Eastern Europe, but with a London office and the extremely well-networked Ball under its belt, we should be hearing more from them on the wider European scene in future.
Ivaniuk said in a statement that the move “means we can now drive our pan-European business activities from the continent’s most important VC hub, London.”
Ball said “We see a huge opportunity here to connect the dots between West and East. The London ecosystem is an exciting offering for investors in Eastern Europe, which in turn presents unique R&D and growth opportunities for portfolio companies.”
Meanwhile, Jon Bradford was most recently a partner of Motive Partners and a UK investment pioneer — having founded the Springboard Accelerator that merged with Techstars to become Techstars London, as well as helping to co-found F6S and Tech.eu. But he is also on the move, now joining Dynamo Ventures as its newest partner.
Bradford will be joining Dynamo on a full-time basis having previously been an advisor who helped launch the debut fund. He has invested in over 100 startups over the last decade including Apiary, Hassle, Tray.io, Flitto (that recently IPO’ed in Korea), Sendbird and Chainalysis. Dynamo is a US-EU based seed fund focused on B2B startups in supply chain and mobility. It has invested in 20 startups across the US and overseas, investing in including Sennder (Berlin), Skupos, Stord, Gatik and LEAF Logistics.
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Startups Weekly: Chinese investors double down on African startups
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about Airbnb’s issues. Before that, I noted Uber’s new “money” team.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you’re new, you can subscribe to Startups Weekly here.
China’s pivot to Africa
Three African fintech startups; OPay, PalmPay and East African trucking logistics company Lori Systems, closed large fundraises this year. On their own, the deals aren’t particularly notable, but together, they expose a new trend within the African startup ecosystem.
This year, those three companies brought in a total of $240 million in venture capital funding from 15 different Chinese investors, who’ve become increasingly active in Africa’s tech scene. TechCrunch reporter Jake Bright, who covers African tech, writes that 2019 marks “the year Chinese investors went all in on the continent’s startup scene” — particularly its fintech projects. Why?
“The continent’s 1.2 billion people represent the largest share of the world’s unbanked and underbanked population — which makes fintech Africa’s most promising digital sector,” Bright notes. “In previous years, the country’s interactions with African startups were relatively light compared to deal-making on infrastructure and commodities. Chinese actors investing heavily in African mobile consumer platforms lends to looking at new data-privacy and security issues for the continent.”
Active Chinese investors in Africa include Hillhouse Capital, Meituan-Dianping, GaoRong, Source Code Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, BAI, Redpoint, IDG Capital, Sequoia China, Crystal Stream Capital, GSR Ventures, Chinese mobile-phone maker Transsion and NetEase.
Here’s more of TechCrunch’s recent coverage of Africa startup activity:
- PalmPay launches in Nigeria with $40M
- African fintech startup OPay gains $120M from Chinese investors
- Chaka opens up global investing to Africa’s most populous nation
- Kenya’s Twiga Foods eyes West Africa after Goldman investment
- Africa can list more gazelles at home than unicorn IPOs abroad
VC Deals
It was a short week (Happy Thanksgiving, by the way). But here’s a quick look at the top deals of the last few days.
- Indian scooter rental company Bounce raises $150M
- Second hand clothes marketplace Vinted nabs $141M at $1B+ valuation
- Instagram founders join $30M raise for Loom work video messenger
- Trouva, an online marketplace for independent boutiques, gets $22M
- Forest Admin raises $7M to help you build admin channels
- Foodvisor raises $4.5M to track what you eat using AI
- Cocoon, a new app for staying in touch with friends and family, raises $3M
- Ear-piercing startup Studs raises $3M from First Round Capital and more
- Beer loving commerce startup TapRm raises $1.5M
M&A (VR edition)
Last week, Facebook announced it was buying Beat Games, the game studio behind Beat Saber, a rhythm game that’s equal parts Fruit Ninja and Guitar Hero. Heard of the company? Maybe if you’re a gamer, but if you’re readying this newsletter because of your interest in VC, this company may not have come across your radar.
Why? It’s one of virtual reality’s biggest successes today, but it’s just an eight-person team with no funding.
“I’m really proud that we were able to build the company with this mindset of making decisions based on what is good for the game and not what is the most profitable thing,” Beat Games CEO told TechCrunch earlier this year. Read about Facebook’s acquisition here and an in-depth profile of the small team here.
Equity
If you like this newsletter, you will definitely enjoy Equity, which brings the content of this newsletter to life — in podcast form! Join myself and Equity co-host Alex Wilhelm every Friday for a quick breakdown of the week’s biggest news in venture capital and startups.
This week, we discussed Weekend Fund’s new vehicle, Cocoon’s new friend-tracking app and the unfortunate demise of a startup called Omni. You can listen here.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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An overview of crisis in India's telecom sector, after a Supreme Court ruling that sided with the government saddled mobile carriers with $13B in fresh debt (Nallur Sethuraman/Reuters)
Nallur Sethuraman / Reuters:
An overview of crisis in India's telecom sector, after a Supreme Court ruling that sided with the government saddled mobile carriers with $13B in fresh debt — (Reuters) - India's telecoms sector has been rocked by a Supreme Court ruling last month that sided with the government in a dispute …
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Friday, 29 November 2019
With chips like Threadripper 3960X and 3970X, AMD is now comfortably beating Intel in the high-end desktop/workstation CPU market, and is getting further ahead (Steve Dent/Engadget)
Steve Dent / Engadget:
With chips like Threadripper 3960X and 3970X, AMD is now comfortably beating Intel in the high-end desktop/workstation CPU market, and is getting further ahead — When AMD launched its third-generation Zen 2 Ryzen processors earlier this year, Intel had to be sweating.
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Advanced Navigation raises $13M Series A for a range of products largely based on AI-enabled inertial navigation systems, which mostly do not rely on satellites (The Robot Report)
The Robot Report:
Advanced Navigation raises $13M Series A for a range of products largely based on AI-enabled inertial navigation systems, which mostly do not rely on satellites — Advanced Navigation today said it has raised $13 million in a Series A round to fund a “significant” global expansion …
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Interview with the Internet Society CEO, as he tries to defend the sale of the .org top level domain registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital (Kieren McCarthy/The Register)
Kieren McCarthy / The Register:
Interview with the Internet Society CEO, as he tries to defend the sale of the .org top level domain registry to private equity firm Ethos Capital — Inside the decided mind of Andrew Sullivan — Interview El Reg has quizzed Andrew Sullivan, the president and CEO of the Internet Society …
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iOS apps could really benefit from the newly proposed Security.plist standard (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
iOS apps could really benefit from the newly proposed Security.plist standard — Security.plist was inspired by the already-existing and highly popular security.txt standard. — Earlier this month, security researcher Ivan Rodriguez proposed a new security standard for iOS apps, which he named Security.plist.
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