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Inflow, a company developing a platform to manage ADHD using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) techniques, has raised $11 million in a Series A round of funding.

ADHD, or “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” is a condition impacting as much as 10% of the global population. Symptoms vary, but typically involve inattention, hyperactivity, anxiety, and impulsivity.

Founded out of London in 2020 by Levi Epstein, Seb Isaacs, and Dr. George Sachs, Y Combinator (YC) alum Inflow has developed a self-help app designed to help people manage their ADHD through daily exercises and challenges around habit development, ADHD-focused mindfulness techniques, community support, and more.

In terms of costs, Inflow offers an initial free 7-day trial which runs into a monthly or annual subscription, the latter costing around $200 per year.

Trials

Inflow was developed “by people with ADHD for people with ADHD,” according to the company, and its founding team includes Dr. George Sachs, a clinical psychologist with more than a decade’s experience treating ADHD in children and adults. Sachs and Co. published a peer-reviewed feasibility and usability study of the app back in August, and plans are currently in place for a broader randomized control trial (RCT) to determine the efficacy of Inflow in terms of outcomes.

“To ensure the usability and feasibility of the Inflow app, since launching, we have preliminary results through open study testing that members have experienced a decrease in ADHD symptoms and impairment by following Inflow’s approach,” Sachs said in a statement. “It’s encouraging and edifying to see how providing these techniques to those with ADHD, directly and easily through our app, is making a difference to their lives.”

Inflow fits into a broader trend that has seen self-therapy startups flourish, and there are a number of companies out there already focused on addressing different facets of ADHD spanning diagnosis, coaching, and telehealth — including Done,Cerebral, Brili, Tiimo, and Elemy. But Inflow cofounder Seb Isaacs is adamant that Inflow stands out from the crowd due to a more all-encompassing approach. Indeed, the company recently expanded into telehealth with the acquisition of Lina Health back in November.

“We’re building a holistic approach for people with ADHD that encompasses all aspects of their care journey, and we are the only company doing this,” he said.

Inflow announced a $2.3 million seed round of funding last January, and with another $11 million in the bank the company said that it plans to double down on product development and bolster its headcount.

“Diagnosing and treating ADHD can be a long and costly process, and living with the symptoms can be extremely challenging,” Isaacs continued. “We want to help our members make significant improvements to their quality of life by giving them the tools to better understand themselves, and implement coping strategies that actually work.”

Inflow’s Series A round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Hoxton Ventures and Route66 Ventures.

Inflow, a platform for managing ADHD through cognitive behavioral therapy, raises $11M by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

OpenAI this week signaled it’ll soon begin charging for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot that can write essays, emails, poems and even computer code. In an announcement on the company’s official Discord server, OpenAI said that it’s “starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT” as one of the ways to “ensure [the tool’s] long-term viability.”

The monetized version of ChatGPT will be called ChatGPT Professional, apparently. That’s according to a waitlist link OpenAI posted in the Discord server, which asks a range of questions about payment preferences including “At what price (per month) would you consider ChatGPT to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?”

The waitlist also outlines ChatGPT Professional’s benefits, which include no “blackout” (i.e. unavailability) windows, no throttling and an unlimited number of message with ChatGPT — “at least 2x the regular daily limit.” OpenAI says that those who fill out the waitlist form may be selected to pilot ChatGPT Professional, but that the program is in the experimental stages and won’t be made widely available “at this time.”

Despite controversy and several bans, ChatGPT has proven to be a publicity win for OpenAI, attracting major media attention and spawning countless memes on social media. Some investors are implementing ChatGPT in their workflows. Ryan Reynolds enlisted ChatGPT to write an ad for Mint Mobile, the mobile carrier he part-owns. And Microsoft will reportedly incorporate the AI behind ChatGPT into its Office suite and Bing.

ChatGPT had over a million users as of early December — an enviable user base by any measure. But it’s a pricey service to run. According to OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, ChatGPT’s operating expenses are “eye-watering,” amounting to a few cents per chat in total compute costs. (ChatGPT is hosted in Microsoft’s Azure cloud.)

OpenAI is under pressure to turn a profit on products like ChatGPT ahead of a rumored $10 billion investment from Microsoft. OpenAI expects to make $200 million in 2023, a pittance compared to the over $1 billion that’s been invested in the startup so far.

Semafor reported this week that Microsoft is looking to net a 49% stake in OpenAI, valuing the company at around $29 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft would receive three-quarters of OpenAI’s profits until it recovers its investment with additional investors taking 49% and OpenAI retaining the remaining 2% in equity.

OpenAI has an unusual corporate structure, operating under a “capped-profit” model that limits backers’ returns to 100 times their investment — or possibly less in the future.

OpenAI begins piloting ChatGPT Professional, a premium version of its viral chatbot by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

There’s long existed a divide in the world of computer hacking between those who are taking a malicious approach to crack a system, and those who are using the same techniques to understand the system’s vulnerabilities, help fix them, and at the same time to fight against the malicious actors. Today, Hack the Box, one of the startups that’s built a platform to help cultivate more of the latter group with a gamified approach, is announcing $55 million in funding to expand its business after racking up 1.7 million users.

The funding is being led by Carlyle, with Paladin Capital Group, Osage University Partners, Marathon Venture Capital, Brighteye Ventures, and Endeavor Catalyst Fund also participating. The UK startup is not disclosing valuation at the moment. But for some context, according to PitchBook, the startup, based out of England but with offices in New York and with founding roots out of Greece — where it also has an office — had raised just over $24 million since being founded in 2017 (with about $15 million of that in equity: the company says it’s now raised about $70 million). Its last valuation, previously updated in 2021 after it raised $10.6 million, was a very modest $52 million.

“Modest” because the scale of what the company has achieved is pretty impressive. The 1.7 million community members that use the platform cover both individuals who have joined HTB on their own steam to learn skills and get certifications, as well as some 1,500 enterprises, universities, governments and other organizations that have sent their teams to HTB to be put through their paces.

The company says it currently runs some 450 “hacking labs” across more than 300 machines. Similar to companies like Kahoot (which works in a very different environment to be clear, K-12 education and corporate training) the idea with HTB is that it’s learning environment is built around gamification, simulations with avatars and narrative scenarios that are designed to throw users into what are are built to mimic classic cyber hacks of varying and increasing sophistication. It also has a “pro lab” tier that takes on typical network configurations, such as Active Directory or fully-patched environments, to test and train people on different attacks and approaches around common enterprise tools and scenarios. Penetration testing, misconfigurations, and evading endpoint protections are among the situations that are thrown at users.

On top of this, in addition to its training platform for individuals and teams, it offers a careers platform, where those looking to hire ethical hackers, or ethical hackers looking for work, can connect.

HTB is not the first nor only company to build cyber training around a gamified environment. US Cyber Games, built in conjunction with U.S. government organizations, is built out as a mass-player environment that is used to identify and train would be white-hat hackers. (It also has a careers service.) HTB is actually one of the US Cyber Games’ sponsors and supporters. Others like SafeTitan, Phished and Immersive Labs offer a range of approaches both for technical teams as well as employees to help raise awareness. The latter is not a category currently addressed by HTB, although it’s an obvious area into which it might grow.

“Our mission is to create and connect cyber-ready humans and organizations through highly engaging hacking experiences that cultivate out-of-the-box thinking,” said Haris Pylarinos, the CEO and co-founder, in a statement. “The game in cyber has changed with defensive, reactive and recovery postures not being fit-for-purpose in the face of an ever-increasing and ever-evolving wave of sophisticated attacks. A new proactive offensive & defensive approach is needed to take the fight to cybercriminals rather than waiting to be hit. From individual security professionals to companies, this means adopting a ‘hacker mindset’, learning to think and act like an attacker. This is the kind of mindset that we cultivate through Hack The Box.”

Something we have been regularly returning to on TC at the moment is the fact that funding has become a lot harder to come by in certain segments of tech. HTB is in one of the categories that is continuing to see attention, not least because security breaches certainly have not slowed down with the rest of the economy. That’s one reason why investors would back those in the field that are scaling and have so far done so with relatively little outside capital.

“The demands on security and IT professionals have never been greater. An industry-wide talent shortage and an exponentially growing number of cyber threats place great importance on professionals and organizations to maintain best-in-class security practices,” Constantin Boye, a director at Carlyle, in a statement. “Hack The Box is a pioneer in constantly providing fresh and curated training and upskilling content, in a fully gamified and intuitive environment, enabling individuals and organizations to tackle real-world hacking problems. We are excited for the next stage of Hack The Box’s evolution and are proud to be part of this journey.”

Hack the Box, a gamified cybersecurity training platform with 1.7M users, raises $55M by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter is making the algorithmic timeline named “For You” the default feed on iOS. If you are getting a sense of déjà vu, you are not dreaming. The company has tried to pull this stunt previously only to give the option to switch back to a chronological timeline after a lot of backlashes.

So what’s different this time? The Elon Musk-led company is now showing both algorithmic and chronological feeds side-by-side. Users can switch between them by swiping on their phone screens. Until now, users had to tap on the sparkle icon in the top right corner to switch between the “Home” and “Latest” timelines. Twitter is justifying its latest change by saying that users can now easily swipe between the renamed “For You” and “Following” timelines.

But the flaw with this design is that users will see the algorithmic timeline by default and eventually they might use the chronological timeline less.

Another annoying thing about this change is that if you use pinned list on your account for alternative timelines, you will now need to swipe more to switch between these lists.

We can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Musk tweeted last month that the “main timeline should allow for an easy sideways swipe between top, latest, trending, and topics that you follow.”

Last month, Twitter noted that it was taking steps to show more tweets from people you don’t follow in your timeline. At the time, the company said that this change would contribute to showing the “best” content on the platform to everyone.

Twitter is not the only guilty party in pushing algorithmic feeds. TikTok already shows users an algorithmic feed, also named “For You,” by default when users open the app. Instagram has been pushing suggested content to users as well. While the company gives users the option to switch to a chronological or a favorites feed, there is no setting to set one of these timelines as the default timeline. But Instagram is not stopping there. Last year, Mark Zuckerberg said that the company is planning to double the amount of recommended content by this year’s end.

Making an algorithmic timeline the default feed is not the only change the company is bringing. Musk said Twitter is building features for people to change font size, and add styles like bold, italic, and underline. He noted that the goal for this is to have users “publish long-form content natively” on the platform.

Twitter makes algorithmic timeline default on iOS by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

The app ecosystem’s nonstop growth finally slipped this past year. An annual review of the app economy by mobile analytics firm data.ai (previously App Annie) found that consumer spending on mobile apps declined for the first time in 2022 after seeing 19% year-over-year growth the year prior. Consumer spending dropped by 2% in 2022, the report said, reaching $167 billion. Meanwhile, downloads grew by 11% year-over-year to 255 billion while hours spent in Android app apps alone grew 9% to reach 4.1 trillion.

The new analysis, found in the firm’s annual “State of Mobile” report is based on consumer spending across all app stores, including third-party Android app stores in China. It shows the impact of a down economy on what, until now, has largely been a growth industry where every year saw apps raking in more money than the year before.

“For the first time, macroeconomic factors are dampening growth in mobile spend,” noted data.ai CEO Theodore Krantz, in a statement about the firm’s new findings. “Consumer spend is tightening while demand for mobile is the gold standard,” he added.

In years past, mobile games drove much of consumer spending on apps, but as subscriptions became a more popular way to generate revenue from non-game apps, that gap has narrowed.

As it turned out, non-game apps have proven to be more resilient in a down economy, data.ai found, possibly because consumers view apps as more essential than games. In 2022, spending on games dropped 5% to $110 billion, while spending on non-game apps increased 6% to $58 billion — the latter, driven by streaming subscriptions, dating apps, and short-form video apps.

Another angle that demonstrates the disproportionate impact the economy had on games is by looking at how many games in 2022 surpassed either $10 million, $100 million, or $1 billion in revenues. This year, the number of games in each of those categories fell by 1%, 4% and 33%, respectively.

In total, 1419 apps and games topped $10 million annually in 2022, 224 topped $100 million and just 10 topped $1 billion.

Ahead of data.ai’s report, Apple on Tuesday released its own 2022 App Store metrics which touted a record $320 billion in money paid to developers since the App Store’s founding. While some back-of-the-napkin math suggested consumer spending may have slowed on its platform, it’s not possible to come up with exact figures because app developers, as a group, no longer pay Apple a 30% commission on in-app purchases. Some indie developers may have qualified for an Apple small business discount. Plus, Apple offers different commission structures for apps providing access to media and those run by some news publishers (as does Google).

Though data.ai’s report shows tha consumer spending clearly took a hit in 2022, other areas of the app economy saw growth, including daily time spent per user which grew a modest 3% year-over-year to reach 5 hours per day in top mobile markets — or as much as 1/3 of daily waking hours, the firm notes.

Among the top ten markets analyzed, several topped 5 hours per day, including Indonesia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and South Korea. Meanwhile, time spent grew the fastest over four years in Saudi Arabia, Australia and Singapore at 68%, 67%, and 62%, respectively.

Consumers tended to spend most of their time in 3 app categories, which accounted for half the time spent on mobile: Social Media/Communication (19.5% of total time); Entertainment/Short Video (17% of total time); and Entertainment/Video Sharing (12.7% of total time).

The first category — Social Media/Communication — includes WeChat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Telegram, LINE, and Discord, while the Entertainment and Short Video category is where you’ll find TikTok as well as Kwai, Vido Video, Baidu Haokan, and Snack Video. The last category of Entertainment and Video Sharing includes long-form video like YouTube, YouTube Kids and bilibili.

Mobile ad spending also grew 14% year-over-year to reach $336 billion in 2022, though data.ai warns this growth will slow in the face of economic headwinds. Short-form video apps, like TikTok and YouTube, are expected to drive much of this ad spend as social networking platforms decline.

Downloads climbed in 2022 as well, including an 8% year-over-year rise in game installs to reach 90 billion, and non-game downloads reaching 165 billion, up 13%. Popular genres driving this trend included Simulation Driving, Hypercasual Simulation, and Simulation Sports in games. App downloads were driven by personal loan apps (up 81%), Buy Now, Pay Later apps (up 47%), Coupons & Rewards app (up 27%), and Budget & Expense trackers (up 19%).

However, both the crypto trading and investing app categories saw their app downloads drop by 55% year-over-year.

The full report takes a deeper dive into other mobile trends in 2022, including those impacting sectors like finance, retail, social, video, food & drink, travel, health & fitness/sports, and more. Gen Z trends are highlighted as well, such as their commitment to video, user-generated content, mindfulness apps, and their interest in friend-finding apps like Yubo, Hoop and Bumble (which has a friend-finding feature).

Data.ai also revealed the year’s top apps across downloads, consumer spend and monthly active users.

Last year, TikTok was the top app by downloads and spending, but Facebook was top by monthly active users.

2022 delivers a bit of a twist as Instagram edged out TikTok for the No. 1 spot by downloads, though the other two categories’ No. 1’s remained the same. And while much has been said about Meta’s decline this year, its apps are still holding their own by active users — Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger hold the top four spots on the list by monthly actives.

Video and dating apps continue to pull in the most revenue, with Tinder and Disney+ still highly ranked, behind TikTok — which was also the top app social app by consumer spending. The report noted that TikTok also this year bacme the second non-game app to top $6 billion in all-time consumer spending — only Tinder has seen higher revenues. This year, TikTok reached the top spot with more than $3 billion in consumer spending.

The app economy slowed for the first time in 2022, with consumer spend down 2% to $167 billion by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Project Eaden, a Berlin-based food technology company, believes it has cracked the code for producing whole cuts of plant-based meat alternatives using a proprietary fiber spinning technology.

Investors think so too, adding €2.1 million (about $2.3 million) of additional funding to a previous seed round so that Project Eaden can continue development and accelerate the launch of its first product, a plant-based steak, this year.

Materials scientist David Schmelzeisen, mymuesli founder Hubertus Bessau and ex-Zalando manager Jan Wilmking founded Project Eaden in early 2022.

The pre-revenue company is using bio fibers, the building blocks of most animals and plants and a key component in the creation of meat cuts, as the center of its technology, Schmelzeisen explained to TechCrunch.

Project Eaden produces edible plant-based protein fibers, similar to those already being used by the textiles, aerospace and automotive industries, that mimic the texture and appearance of animal meats. The fibers start out thin, like thread, and increasingly are built upon and wound around spools and fed into a machine that bundles the fiber together into the finished product.

Schmelzeisen says this type of technology yields a better-tasting product that looks and acts like traditional meat; for example, it is juicy.

“The major thing is texture,” he added. “We create fibers which have several material components so that when you bite through each of the million fibers, you have this kind of bite resistance that real meat has when you chew it. It makes a real difference. We believe we have a unique chance to build an outstanding company, from a unique technology angle and to create something that is cool.”

U.S. regulators are still developing how the alternative protein industry will be labeled and monitored. Meanwhile, with scalability and cost being some of the biggest challenges to mainstream production of alternative proteins, Schmelzeisen believes the fiber technology is more scalable and can be used beyond traditional meat, like chicken, pork and beef, but also to make fish and seafood. In addition, it is less costly than other methods of producing alternative proteins, like extrusion, which extracts moisture to create a “lump” of plant-based protein that can be shaped into various meat-like products.

Project Eaden is one of a handful of companies utilizing fiber spinning technology and attracting venture capital for its approach. Last March, Tender, formerly known as Boston Meats, raised $12 million for its fiber technology that it uses to create both plant-based and cell-cultivated proteins.

The new portion of capital was driven by Creandum, Magnetic and Atlantic Food Labs and closed in December. Including the seed extension, Project Eaden has raised €10.1 million (about $10.8 million) in seed funding to date.

A previous round of €8 million was raised last June from a group of investors, again led by Creandum, and included Atlantic Food Labs, Shio Capital, Trellis Road and a group of angel investors, including former Rügenwalder Mühle managing director Godo Röben.

“Eating meat is associated with excessive land and water usage and unsustainable levels of greenhouse gas emissions,” Carl Fritjofsson, general partner at Creandum, said in a statement. “But, for most people, it’s simply too much of a pleasure to give up on. Until today, existing plant-based options haven’t solved this dilemma, as they lack compelling taste, texture and look despite higher prices. Project Eaden has the potential to become the industry’s game changer.”

The majority of the financing will go into technology development, including building up Project Eaden’s R&D and food grade materials teams and partnering with culinary experts that will debut the product once it is ready. Additionally, the company is refurbishing a manufacturing space so that it can produce its own product at scale, Wilmking said in an interview.

A future round of funding will accelerate the plant build, Schmelzeisen said. The company is currently at a stage where a laboratory is set up and will begin prototype production soon, with plans to be able to go to market toward the end of this year.

Looking into the future, plans are for the company to move from prototype manufacturing to a highly automated production facility, and then potentially into more facilities and or partnerships, Schmelzeisen added.

Project Eaden’s fiber technology poised to spin threads into whole cuts of ‘meat’ by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok has revolutionized the way people consume and share information. Now a startup called Vylo wants to take the short video format a step further and lets users share their thoughts about sports, current affairs, and other categories of news by filming themselves talking.

My first reaction to the idea was: why does one need to share news comments via video clips? Can’t it just happen in the text-based comment section of The New York Times or other news websites?

Tyler Reynolds, founder and CEO of Vylo, believes the future of news lies in videos. “We’re looking forward to building the kingdom of news and discourse and what news platforms will look like very shortly in the future,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch.

Developed by a team in the U.S., the Netherlands and Ukraine, Vylo combines news aggregation and video-driven social media. Its home tab features a stream of news compiled from major publications and curated by an in-house team. Under each story is an option to add one’s video response. For those who don’t feel comfortable showing faces, audio is an option, too.

A big VC name is vouching for Vylo. Kleiner Perkins Fairchild Fund IV led the startup’s $2 million pre-seed round that has recently closed. Other investors from the round included Brian Cornell, CEO of Target; Ryan Howard, a 3x Major League Baseball All-Star; Curt Shi from Welinder Shi Capital; 8808 Ventures, the venture firm of Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse; among other angel investors.

One of the appeals of video-based news discussion is that it adds a human touch, Reynolds argued. “You and I and eight other friends go out to lunch and we’re talking about everything from COVID to Joe Biden to travel to whatever because we’re each other’s trusted sources. There’re these moments that we have all the time… We could recreate those moments with a tech platform.”

User-generated video commentary is nothing new, but Reynolds thinks the barrier of entry is too high on existing channels like YouTube, where users need to first eloquently and succinctly sum up the news. With Vylo, on the other hand, creators can simply give their two-minute take on a news piece item that already exists on the app, an aspect that the founder believes lowers the bar for news commentary.

In effect, Vylo is visualizing the response section on traditional news sites and democratizing video commentary.

The “social” aspect of Vylo is the “Trending” tab that displays popular video and audio comments, which are ranked by their “insightfulness”, similar to how readers upvote comments on traditional news websites. For a more personalized news digest, users can create their own “Newsstand” by following various outlets and topics. Comments are vetted by the third-party content moderation provider Hive before going live.

Break from the past

Twitter has long been the world’s digital public square, but as Elon Musk turns the social media giant upside down, upset users are leaving in droves.

Nonetheless, Vylo doesn’t plan to be a Twitter alternative like Mastodon. “It’s like a bunch of dogs chasing tails,” said Reynolds. “Everyone’s focused on the here and now. But our tech and tech platforms will evolve. We have no interest to be a Twitter competitor. We are looking much further into what’s the future of these things.

“One important note is the factor of people showing their faces and showing their voices. That’s something that we really aren’t afraid to be rolling out now because it’s going to be a mainstay very soon,” he added.

“I think the future of news is decentralized,” suggested Shi from Welinder Shi Capital, pointing to the participatory nature of Vylo. “The young generation doesn’t really get their news from news sites anymore. They are on Twitter and Instagram, but these platforms aren’t primarily for news, so there is a gap to be filled.”

Vylo launched its public beta version a few weeks ago and has drawn over 500 users. Monetization is not something on its imminent agenda, but when the time comes, the startup is weighing a few options, including an ad-free user subscription, a revenue-sharing model with content creators, and helping paywalled publications drive subscriptions from which it can take a cut.

Kleiner Perkins-backed Vylo thinks the future of news is video commentary by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Carta, the 11-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit whose core business is selling software to investors to track their portfolios, has sued its former CTO, Jerry Talton, who the company says was fired “for cause” almost three weeks ago, on Friday, December 23.

In its lawsuit, Carta is suing Talton for damages, citing “his wrongful and illegal acts as an executive of Carta” and suggesting he both betrayed the company and sexually harassed its employees despite being given a role that came with “hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary and benefits, and substantial equity awards.”

On first read, it sounds like a company throwing the kitchen sink at a would-be whistleblower whose tactics were ham-handed (and illegal, says Carta).

Specifically, according to the complaint, Talton was put on administrative leave in October of last year after submitting a letter to Carta’s board of directors, flagging various “problems” with the company’s culture.

Carta says Talton’s leave was meant to enable the board to “facilitate” an “independent” investigation, but that during that period, the company discovered that Talton had preserved audio recordings of workplace-video meetings with Carta’s general counsel without her knowledge. How? According to the complaint: “[D]uring a confidential mediation involving a female former Carta employee (a mediation to which Talton was not a party), on November 8, 2022, Carta’s General Counsel April Lindauer was copied on an email from Talton to that former employee and her counsel, seemingly by mistake, stating ‘I think you should read the whole thing’ and including a transcript of an audio recording between Talton and Lindauer from September 27, 2022. The email also included an indication that the audio recording was uploaded to the file-sharing platform, DropBox.”

Oops.

The company says it subsequently demanded that Talton return all recordings and transcripts and other Carta property to Carta and that he also provide copies of all recordings and transcripts to “company-authorized investigators.”

Talton, who Carta believes “also surreptitiously recorded at least two members of Carta’s Board of Directors, as well as Carta’s Founder and CEO, and other Carta executives and employees,” said no.

We reached out to both Carta and Talton earlier this evening for comment; neither had responded as of our publication time.

A spokesperson separately told the San Francisco Business Times that Carta cofounder and CEO Henry Ward is serving as interim CTO until the position is filled.

The lawsuit appears likely to damage both parties.

Toward the end of Carta’s long list of accusations against Talton, Carta says that Talton both sent and received “sexually explicit, offensive, discriminatory and harassing messages with at least nine women including during work hours and on Carta’s systems,” and that Talton sought and obtained “benefits and privileges to which he was not entitled, including without limitation, misuse of his corporate credit card for personal matters, and repeated attempts to book travel outside of company policy.”

Before Carta, Talton — who has a PhD in computer science from Stanford and two degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — spent a year-and-a-half as an engineering manager at Slack. He also co-founded a since-shuttered software startup that was seed funded by NEA and Andreessen Horowitz, and spent two years as a research scientist at Intel, according to LinkedIn.

He joined Carta as a director of engineering in 2018 and was promoted to CTO in 2020.

Carta meanwhile has previously been flagged for having a”culture” problem. In 2020, the company’s former VP of marketing sued Carta, accusing the outfit of gender discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination and of violating the California Equal Pay Act. (We featured that case here.) Soon after, four employees spoke on the record with the New York Times, telling the outlet that when they voiced concerns about the way the company is run, they were sidelined, demoted or given pay cuts.

The problem appears to extend to the company’s treatment of some of its customers. Several who TechCrunch interviewed over the last couple of months have expressed dissatisfaction with Carta and the service they have received from its representatives. One, a fund manager who is in the midst of transitioning off the platform currently, told this editor last week that his team had “four different account managers in the less than a two-year engagement at Carta; it certainly didn’t help with continuity and understanding of our fund and needs.”

A separate fund manager who we interviewed last week complained of a “lack of communication internally,” saying that it’s “like working with four service providers.” Carta will “ask you for a document that they have on file and should know that they have on file,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to keep track; that’s why I’m paying for fund administration. They’ll tell you to check out ‘the portal’ and the portal is terrible.”

It’s “miserable,” this person added. “It’s like a tech-first solution to a service industry and I think they need an awakening.”

Carta has roughly 2,000 employees, judging by its LinkedIn profile, though that number is presumably lower in reality. Carta laid off 16% of its employees during the height of the pandemic; last month, according to a conversation posted to the anonymous professional network Blind, Ward told employees that another layoff was in the works.

Carta has raised $1.1 billion altogether from investors, according to Crunchbase. It announced its eighth and most recent round of funding in August 2021: a $500 million Series G that was led by Silver Lake and valued the company at $7.4 billion.

In addition to Silver Lake, some of its biggest backers include Spark Capital, Social Capital, Menlo Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

Pictured above: Carta cofounder and CEO Henry Ward; he incubated the company, originally called eShares, with serial entrepreneur and longtime investor Manu Kumar.

Carta, previously sued for gender discrimination, is now suing its former CTO by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

There are some mega-trends playing out across developed-world workforces that startups are picking up on. There’s the digitisation of healthcare, the ‘platforming’ of employee services, and the macro effects of older employees, combined with the cost of living crisis for new parents.

Founded in London in 2018, Peppy offer services around menopause, fertility, pregnancy and early parenthood to a corporate customer base, which then offers it for free to employees. The twist is that those services are largely individualised, with personal video consultations and the like.

Peppy was partly lucky and part prescient: the massive digitisation that occurred during the COVID-19 Pandemic threw employee services like this online, by necessity.

Employees using Peppy can access experts via a mobile app, with instant messaging, group chat, video consultations, live events, articles, videos and programs, as well as join communities.

Back in 2021 we covered how it had raised a $10M Series A led round by Felix Capital.

It’s now secured funding to expand in the US, with a $45m Series B led by AlbionVC. The round was joined by Kathaka, MTech Capital, Simplyhealth and Sony Innovation Fund. Previous investors Felix Capital, Hambro Perks, Outward VC and Seedcamp also participated.

Peppy started out addressing the oft-ignored issue of menopause support as an employee benefit. This was a fairly untapped area, which led it to gaining a lot of growth quite quickly (the global menopause market reached a valuation of $15.4bn, and is expected to continue growing at five percent annually through 2030, according to some estimates). In the US, around 6,000 women reach menopause every day.
Peppy now supports endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), conditions that each affect roughly one in 10 women in the US.

Dr Mridula Pore, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Peppy, said in a statement: “We’re on a mission to become a household name across the world and our Series B funding is just the start. We already dominate Europe’s employer-funded gender-based healthcare market.”

Peppy clients now include Accenture, Adobe, Canada Life, Disney, and Marsh McLennan.

Peppy secures a $45M Series B to expand its B2B2C health services platform to the US by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch

Virgin Orbit’s much-hyped launch from Cornwall, U.K. on Monday ended in failure, with the company announcing that the mission experienced an “anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit.

The “Start Me Up” mission attracted much attention; not only was it the company’s sixth launch, it was also billed as the first-ever space flight from the United Kingdom and the first-ever orbital launch attempt from the new Spaceport Cornwall, in southeast England. (Other U.K.-based rocket companies, like Orbex and Skyrora, are racing to be the first to conduct a vertical rocket launch from U.K. soil.)

But the anomaly may prove to be a very costly mistake for the company, which has been on shaky financial ground since going public in 2021. The first miscalculation occurred shortly after the company completed its merger with special purpose acquisition company NextGen Acquisition Corp. II at the end of 2021. Virgin Orbit only garnered $228 million in gross proceeds from the merger, falling far short of the projected $483 million the company projected it would receive from the transaction.

That shortfall was followed by dwindling cash reserves. In the company’s most recent quarterly earnings report, it said that as of September 30 it had $71 million cash on hand. The company then received a $25 million injection from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and $20 million from Virgin Investments Ltd. But even with these additional funds, it’s unclear if the company has enough financial runway without needing to seek additional capital.

The company’s previous financial projections have also raised eyebrows. While it’s not unusual for earnings presentations to contain fanciful forecasts, some of those issued by Virgin Orbit have stretched even the most ambitious imaginations. In 2021, the company estimated it would hit $2.1 billion in revenue by 2026. Given that each LauncherOne costs on average of around $12 million, that would mean the vehicle would need to fly a whopping 175 times per year. Keep in mind that SpaceX, far and away the world’s leading launch provider, just hit a record 61 annual launches last year. Virgin Orbit was essentially saying that it would be three times as successful, measured by launch cadence, than SpaceX in just five years.

This is not to say that Virgin Orbit has not had its successes. Indeed, out of the six launch attempts so far, four have been successful. That’s not a rate at which to scoff. But as is becoming more and more clear, at some point, all launch companies have to start making revenue. Otherwise it’s just burned cash, and not much to show for it.

Virgin Orbit’s botched launch highlights shaky financial future by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch