WP Pro Online

Consumer tastes are always shifting, but while traditional soft drink giants continue to dominate in the beverage space, many smaller players are finding success in developing soft drink-like offerings that also have a healthier function.

Some venture capitalists say most beverage companies won’t end up being big players, but Poppi, a prebiotic soda brand, is joining companies like Olipop to prove they can be successful in a global functional soda category expected to be valued at $173 billion by 2025.

The company’s drinks combine real fruit and apple cider vinegar and have less than five grams of sugar and 20 calories. The ingredients target digestion aid, immunity and glowing skin.

When we last caught up with Poppi co-founder Allison Ellsworth, it was when the Dallas-based company raised a $13.5 million round in 2021. At the time it was about a year old, had nine flavors and had achieved a presence in more than 7,500 retail locations, including Target, Safeway, Kroger, Publix, Whole Foods and Amazon.com.

“A big change is the functional pop fast-growing category,” Ellsworth told TechCrunch. “Last year, we were at proof of concept, but now we are past that. We are seeing real revenue growth, real penetration and real trial. It’s been exciting to see. We’re here to play and a hot new brand.”

Indeed, the company had 148% revenue growth over the past 12 months and also saw online sales increase 250%, Ellsworth said. Poppi is also somewhat of a TikTok sensation, garnering more than 1 billion views so far.

She also said that what has set the company apart from its competitors is Poppi’s distribution approach of establishing a direct store delivery network. That was one of the first pieces of advice Rohan Oza, co-founder and managing partner of CAVU Consumer Partners, who has been an investor in Poppi since its first day, gave to Ellsworth and her co-founder husband, Stephen, back in 2020.

“By the end of January, we will have pieced together, in the U.S., a full DSD network where no other brand of our size has done this,” Ellsworth said. “Now, we have our cans in the refrigerated section, on the shelves and doing a pallet drop in the lobby of retailers. That has made a major difference we can see.”

All of that growth is why Oza decided to double down on additional funding, Ellsworth added.

That new cash infusion is a round of $25 million led again by CAVU. Poppi has now raised more than $40 million in total. Ellsworth declined to divulge the company’s valuation, but did say it was an increase over the company’s previous round.

It’s also back with a lot of changes, including new additions to the executive team this year. CEO Chris Hall (no relation to the reporter who wrote this) came to the company in May after 15 years at Talking Rain Beverage, most recently as chief executive of the Sparkling Ice brand for the past five years.

Meanwhile, Lana Buchanan joined as chief marketing officer after serving in various vice president roles at Anheuser-Busch and Campari, while Chuck Czerkawski joined as CFO. Ellsworth said Czerkawski had taken Essentia Water through an exit in 2021, and would “help to get us on the road to profitability.”

Poppi still has nine flavors, but has doubled its reach to more than 20,000 locations and is poised to reach 30,000 doors next year, Ellsworth said.

The company launched during the height of the pandemic in March 2020 and dealt with aluminum shortages and the like, but now has been able to staff up, put an executive team in place and, as Ellsworth put it, “invested in the right people so we are a well-oiled machine.”

That new capital will go into building brand equity — “getting more cans in hands,” she added.

Next up, Poppi is exploring club retailers, like Costco and Sam’s Club, working on how to sell in multipacks and developing some new flavors, with the potential for two to come out next year. The company launched a Cherry Limeade flavor earlier this year.

“We will continue to lean in on the traditional soda flavors,” Ellsworth said. “We see Poppi as a soda for the next generation, and we see people wanting to drink it everyday because it tastes good and is a soda replacement.”

Poppi raises a can to fresh capital to support its functional beverage growth by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Thetrillion-dollar construction industry is often tarred with the inefficiency brush, accused of failing to move with the times and ignoring digitization in favor of legacy tools. But there is plenty of evidence that things are changing, with countless startups raising large sums of cash to help the construction industry modernize.

Venture capital (VC) funding in U.S. construction tech startups alone reportedly hit $1.3 billion in the first half of 2022, representing a 44% increase on the previous six months. In tandem, a slew of new funds and initiatives have emerged to support a fresh swathe of entrepreneurs, with Building Ventures recently closing a new $95 million fund for construction tech and real estate startups, while Agya Ventures announced a $32 million fund. Brick & Mortar Ventures, meanwhile, launched an early-stage accelerator billed as the “Y Combinator of construction tech.”

It’s against that backdrop that German VC firm Foundamental today unveiled its new fund, targeting $85 million at early-stage construction tech startups globally and building on the early success it has seen from its inaugural $65 million fund which closed back in 2019.

Exits and unicorns

Foundamental said it has seen four exits and one unicorn over the past three years, with the likes of Procore acquiring Indus.ai and Faro buying Holobuilder, while India’s Infra.Market hit a hefty 2.5 billion dollar valuation last August.

On top of that, Foundamental says that seven of its 64 investments have hit a $100 million-plus run-rate, while 81% have gone on to raise subsequent funding.

Founded out of Berlin in 2018, Foundamental counts three general partners, each focused on distinct regions. Patric Hellermann covers Europe, while Shub Bhattacharya is all about Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Adam Zobler targets North America.

“Construction is the biggest, undisrupted market in the world,” Zobler said in a statement. “It’s a 12 trillion-dollar market — 10% of the world’s GDP — which employs one in fourteen workers globally. Yet the construction and built-world industry is massively inefficient, and it’s getting worse.”

With its latest fund, Foundamental says that it’s looking to double-down on emerging regions such as Latin America, while focusing on “historically neglected verticals” that impact everyone, including housing, skilled labor, and public / private infrastructure. It noted that it’s aiming for a “larger portfolio” of around 40-50 companies, and plans to invest across pre-seed, seed, Series A and Series B rounds, with check sizes maxing out at around $3.5 million.

“The time to invest is now,” Zobler continued. “Technology that fundamentally reshapes the world of construction and the built environment is needed now more than ever — and it can drive great returns — but is currently underserved and underfunded.”

While Foundamental touted the fund’s limited partners (LPs) as “global names from the building and construction ecosystem,” it said that it wasn’t at liberty to reveal who they actually are.

Foundamental closes $85M fund for early-stage construction tech startups by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Privileged access management (aka PAM) provides the ability to control access to sensitive parts of your technology environment. Rather than giving everyone access to these resources (or conversely, no one), you should be able to apply permissions granularly.

But it is challenging without the right tools. Common Fate, an Australian startup from a couple of former cyber security consultants, wants to help with an open source tool and an early access cloud service.

Today, the company announced a $3.1 million seed investment.

Co-founder Fraser Ricupero says the company provides engineers with quick access to the tools they need. “We exist to ensure that employees in organizations, namely, engineering teams and security professionals within the organization, can get access to the correct level of internal services,” he said.

That could be cloud infrastructure services or critical applications like 1Password, GitHub, Salesforce and other SaaS applications. “And it’s about getting the correct level of access that they need to do their job when they need it and in a secure fashion,” he said.

Co-founder Chris Norman says that when they were working as consultants prior to starting the company, the two founders saw the need for a product like this. “We’ve seen through our own backgrounds as consultants, a real proliferation of internal access and a proliferation of over privileged access and the folks that we’re talking about, these engineers, they need this access at a very high velocity to build applications and serve users for the digital products that they’re building,” Norman said.

He says they differ from other PAM products on the market because of their focus on developers. “We differ in the sense that we are developer- and practitioner- first and developer-focused, and for us this means directly integrating with internal command line tooling, and a huge focus on command line user experience,” he said.

The company has an open source tool called Granted, and it’s launching an early access program for the SaaS version of the product.

With 7 employees, the plan is to keep it lean for the time being with just one open rec at the moment for a community success engineer, but when it comes to hiring, the founders understand the importance of diversity. “We are very much aware of those issues in technology, and seemingly these issues are considerably more pronounced in cloud security,” Ricupero said.

“From the research that we’ve done internally, we see that diverse teams perform better quite simply. And one of the hiring criteria [for the open role] is we need to ask ourselves is the candidate bringing a new perspective and background to our team, or is it just more of the same? So obviously, we’re looking for a diverse mix of talented people within our company,” he said.

Today’s $3.1 million investment was led by Work-Bench with participation from Haystack Ventures and Essence VC.

Common Fate wants to make it easier to manage privileged access for developers by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

The European Commission has announced a draft decision on US adequacy, paving the way for a replacement EU-US data transfer deal to be adopted next year.

The draft adequacy decision for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), as it’s called, can be downloaded here.

The Commission’s draft is a key step in years of tortuous bilateral process which the EU’s executive body and US counterparts hope will finally bring legal certainty to transatlantic exports of EU personal data — which have been shrouded in risk after earlier agreements were invalidated by the bloc’s top court, back in July 2020 and October 2015, over the legal disconnect between European privacy rights and US surveillance powers.

Resolving that schism has been — and remains — the key sticking point for EU-US data transfers. It means any new deal on transatlantic data transfers will undoubtedly face legal challenges to test whether this fundamental clash has really been resolved.

But even just getting a replacement agreed on paper, after the last two deals were torn up by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), has been a major effort and challenge.

Yesterday the EU’s justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, told aPolitico event that he hoped the new pact would be finalized before July next year — and he gave it a ‘7 or 8 out of 10’ chance of withstanding legal challenge. So even the Commission is not 100% on this surviving.

In a statement accompanying the announcement of the draft decision today, Reynders said:

Today’s draft decision is the outcome of more than one year of intense negotiations with the US that I led together with my US counterpart Secretary of Commerce Raimondo. Over the past months, we assessed the US legal framework provided by the Executive Order as regards the protection of personal data. We are now confident to move to the next step of the adoption procedure. Our analysis has showed that strong safeguards are now in place in the U.S. to allow the safe transfers of personal data between the two sides of the Altlantic. The future Framework will help protect the citizens’ privacy, while providing legal certainty for businesses. We now await for the feedback from the European Data Protection Board, Member States’ experts and the European Parliament.

In another supporting statement, Věra Jourová, Commission VP for values and transparency, added:

Our talks with the US have resulted in proposing a Framework that will further improve safety of personal data of Europeans transferred to the US. It builds on our good cooperation and progress we have made over the years. The future Framework is also good for businesses and it will strengthen Transatlantic cooperation. As democracies, we need to stand up for fundamental rights, including data protection. This is necessity, not a luxury in the increasingly digitalised and data driven economy.

Keenly watching developments will be a number of tech giants — including Meta, which is at risk of a suspension order being slapped on its EU-US data transfers following a long-running complaint that’s still grinding through the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) enforcement procedures (so it’s a race against time to see which will arrive first); Google, whose analytics product has been hit with warnings by DPAs around the bloc over illegal transfers of personal data; and Microsoft, whose cloud-based productivity suite 365 is under GDPR review by German DPAs that’s further complicated by the data transfers issue, to name three high profile examples.

But the transfers issue of course touches thousands of companies that rely on exporting personal data from the EU to the US and have been left in legal limbo since the demise of Privacy Shield.

Negotiations between the EU and the US to replace the most recently defunct Privacy Shield deal took until this March to arrive at a political agreement, and until October before US president Joe Biden signed an executive order (EO) to implement the replacement data transfer agreement.

The signing of the EO handed the baton back to the Commission — and now it’s produced a draft adequacy agreement, as the bloc dubs such deals, based on the text signed by the US administration (and accompanying regulations issued by the US Attorney General Merrick Garland), which implemented into US law the agreement-in-principle signed by the EU and US back in March.

The next stage in the process is a review of the draft decision by other EU institutions, including the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and a committee of EU Member States, along with scrutiny by members of the European Parliament. However the final decision to adopt adequacy is up to the Commission alone — so today’s draft decision marks a significant step along the road to sealing a new deal.

“US companies will be able to join the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework by committing to comply with a detailed set of privacy obligations, for instance, the requirement to delete personal data when it is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected, and to ensure continuity of protection when personal data is shared with third parties,” the Commission writes. “EU citizens will benefit from several redress avenues if their personal data is handled in violation of the Framework, including free of charge before independent dispute resolution mechanisms and an arbitration panel.

“In addition, the US legal framework provides for a number of limitations and safeguards regarding the access to data by US public authorities, in particular for criminal law enforcement and national security purposes. This includes the new rules introduced by the US Executive Order, which addressed the issues raised by the Court of Justice of the EU in the Schrems II judgment: Access to European data by US intelligence agencies will be limited to what is necessary and proportionate to protect national security; EU individuals will have the possibility to obtain redress regarding the collection and use of their data by US intelligence agencies before anindependent and impartial redress mechanism, which includes a newly created Data Protection Review Court. The Court will independently investigate and resolve complaints from Europeans, including by adopting binding remedial measures.”

“European companies will be able to rely on these safeguards for trans-Atlantic data transfers, also when using other transfer mechanisms, such as standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules,” the Commission added.

All that said, how long the reupped deal will last remains to be seen.

The EU-US Privacy Shield survived less than four years before the CJEU struck it down. And a third challenge over the same issue may not take so long to arrive at a high level legal reckoning.

In a statement on the Commission’s draft decision announcement, noyb, the privacy and digital rights not-for-profit advocacy group founded by Max Schrems — whose surname has become synonymous with successful challenges to EU-US data transfer deals — predicts the DPF will fail in front of the CJEU.

“The CJEU required (1) that US surveillance is proportionate within the meaning of Article 52 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR) and (2) that there is access to judicial redress, as required under Article 47 CFR. Updated US law (Executive Order 14086) seems to fail on both requirements, as it does not material change the situation from the previously applicable PPD-28. There is continuous ‘bulk surveillance’ and a ‘court’ that is not an actual court. Therefore, any EU ‘adequacy decision’ that is based on Executive Order 14086 will likely not satisfy the CJEU,” noyb said in a press release.

Its analysis of the deal-in-principle between the two sides, based on the text of the US EO, is that changes “seem rather minimal” and the agreement “underperforms when it comes to the protection of non-US persons”, as it puts it — hence it’s predicting the third deal won’t pass muster with the CJEU either.

Commenting in a statement, Schrems added: “We will analyze the draft decision in detail the next days. As the draft decision is based on the known Executive Order, I can’t see how this would survive a challenge before the Court of Justice. It seems that the European Commission just issues similar decisions over and over again — in flagrant breach of our fundamental rights.”

Still, not everyone deeply involved in data protection is so down on this ‘third time less unlucky’ attempt to nail down an EU-US data transfers deal.

Hamburg’s Data Protection commissioner put out a somewhat positive-sounding statement on the contents of the EO last month — welcoming how, for the first time, US secret service activities would be subject to “a proportionality proviso” — and also welcoming the US’ seeming willingness to (at least) limit the scope of government data collection — while also hitting out at what it dubbed “knee-jerk” criticism of the agreement.

At the same time, though, it emphasized that thorough scrutiny of the deal will be required to determine whether crux elements — such as how US secret services will interpret ‘proportionality’; and the functioning of the data protection court — will actually meet the CJEU’s requirements or not. Notably, it also described it as “problematic” the fact that US bulk collection (aka “the instrument of mass surveillance”) is expressively retained.

It will certainly be interesting to see what the EDPB makes of the DPF.

A thumbs down from the Board — which the Commission confirmed has received its draft decision so it can now begin working on its opinion — would be highly indicative of legal troubles ahead. But a more positive verdict from the EDPB would of course be a very different story.

A spokeswoman for the Board told us it will not be issuing a statement at this stage of the process.

She also said the timeframe for the EDPB adopting an opinion on the draft decision is not clear. “At this moment, we cannot say when this will be. No deadline is foreseen under the GDPR but the European Commission can decide to set a deadline,” she added.

For its part, noyb said it does not expect the new pact to be finalized before spring 2023. Once that happens, it notes that users will be able to challenge the DPF via national and European courts — thereby setting a new clock ticking on fresh regulatory risk.

The Commission will also monitor the functioning of the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework — via a process of “periodic reviews” — which it will conduct itself, with input from European data protection authorities, and along with the competent US authorities.

“The first review will take place within one year after the entry into force of the adequacy decision, to verify whether all relevant elements of the US legal framework have been fully implemented and are functioning effectively in practice,” it noted.

The Commission has also produced a short Q&A offering more detail on its draft decision.

EU confirms draft decision on replacement US data transfer pact by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

News that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested yesterday in the Bahamas set the technology world alight.

After the dramatic implosion of FTX’s crypto empire, which resulted in the loss of hundreds of millions of invested capital and billions of paper wealth, many in the larger crypto community were incensed that he was not instantly arrested.

Now, with Bankman-Fried in custody and a complaint in hand, it is clear that the former startup executive had not purchased political protection, something alleged by humble anonymous Twitter accounts and the man who recently bought the social service alike.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Legal folks will carefully dissect the complaint and provide more capable commentary on its aggregate claims. This morning, we’re going to take a different angle. What matters is that the FTX empire was, effectively, bullshit. It was, per the complaint, built on fraud.

This matters for startups because information about how other companies are doing is scarce and competition is intense. That means the leading startups’ business results carry outside influence — they become the cultural leaders in their market. When it turns out a screaming success was no more than smoke and mirrors, it means that a key signal in the tech startup market was actually quite specious.

Ah, so SBF’s FTX was all BS by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

Paytm will spend up to $127 million to repurchase it shares, the company’s board approved on Tuesday, as the Indian financial services firm looks to calm investors after a tumultuous period that has wiped about 60% value from its shares this year.

The Noida-headquartered firm, which went public late last year, made the proposal last week, a move that saw its shares gain momentum. The share ended the day at 538.4 Indian rupees, or $6.53.

The board members “unanimously” approved the firm’s proposal to buyback fully paid-up equity shares at a price not exceeding 810 Indian rupees ($9.82) and spend $103 million excluding taxes and other expenses in repurchasing the shares, Paytm disclosed in a stock exchange filing.

Buybacks are not uncommon and are generally seen as a way companies could reward their shareholders. Many firms have ramped up repurchasing their shares this year, taking advantage of the falling prices in the public markets globally. But it’s not common among loss-making firms.

“Over the last year, there is clear business momentum, and we are ahead of our plans. Looking at the monetisation opportunities in our core payment and credit business, we feel confident to generate healthy revenues and cash flows to invest in sales, marketing and technology. We value our shareholders and their journey with us in the public markets. I believe that a buyback at this stage will be immensely beneficial for our stakeholders and will drive long-term shareholder value,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive of Paytm, said in a statement.

Paytm will have to use money from its books to repurchase the shares. Indian law prevents the firm from using the proceeds from the raise from the IPO for buybacks. In a statement earlier Tuesday, Paytm said it maintains “surplus liquidity,” and has ensured that all its cash requirements have been “adequately budgeted.”

“The management is confident of strong operational performance and remains focused on building long-term value for its shareholders,” it said. Paytm had about $1.116 billion in the bank at the end of September.

Paytm’s arch-rival PhonePe, which is also not profitable and generates significantly lower revenue, is in later stages of deliberations to raise about $1 billion from majority shareholder Walmart and others, including General Atlantic, at a valuation of $12 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter. Indian news outlet MoneyControl first reported about the funding talks last month.

Paytm, which was valued at $16 billion in a private fundraise in 2019, currently has a market cap of about $4.2 billion.

India’s Paytm to buy back shares by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Apple has expanded its iPhone 14 Emergency SOS satellite feature to France, Germany, Ireland and the U.K. after initially launching it in the U.S. and Canada last month. The service, which was first announced in September, enables users to message with emergency services while outside of cellular and Wi-Fi coverage.

Emergency SOS via satellite can be activated by a long press on the power and volume buttons or by rapidly pressing the power button five times. Users will then see an interface that will help them get a connection. Then, users will see a short questionnaire that is designed to help them answer vital questions with a few simple taps, which is transmitted to dispatchers in the initial message, to ensure they are able to quickly understand a user’s situation and location.

“Following the questionnaire, the intuitive interface guides the user where to point their iPhone to connect and sends the initial message,” Apple explained in a press release. “This message includes the user’s questionnaire responses; location, including altitude; iPhone battery level; and Medical ID, if enabled. The questionnaire and follow-up messages are relayed directly via satellite to relay centers staffed by Apple‑trained specialists who can call for help on the user’s behalf. The transcript can also be shared with the user’s emergency contacts to keep them informed.”

Additionally, if users want to reassure their friends and family of their whereabouts while traveling in an area with no cellular or Wi-Fi coverage, they can now open the Find My app and share their location via satellite. To do so, you just have to open the “Me” tab, swipe up to see “My Location via Satellite” and select “Send My Location.”

Emergency SOS via satellite is free for two years starting at the time of activation of a new iPhone 14. Apple hasn’t said what the service will cost after that period. It’s worth noting that Emergency SOS via satellite and Find My via satellite require iOS 16.1 or later.

Apple says it plans to expand support for Emergency SOS via satellite to additional countries next year.

Apple’s iPhone 14 Emergency SOS via satellite feature is now live in France, Germany, Ireland and the UK by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Microsoft is sunsetting an experimental research project that uses audio-based technology to help visually-impaired people navigate and gain a stronger awareness of their surroundings.

However, the company also revealed that it will release the code under an open source license for other developers to use.

The technology giant first debuted Soundscape back in 2017, essentially setting out to help people become “more comfortable with unfamiliar places” using 3D audio cues.

The project birthed an iOS app back in 2018 to showcase the fruits of the project so far. Using the iPhone’s built-in sensors, the Soundscape app reads out points-of-interest as the user walks by, or notable roads and intersections that can help them figure out exactly where they are. It’s less turn-by-turn navigation, and more “here is where you are now,” with users able to configure specific audio beacons to appear at locations relevant to them.

While it’s common for companies to wind down research projects that, for many at least, showed some potential, it’s not always the case that the company releases the code for third-parties to build on. The company explained why it’s doing this in a Q&A detailing the the project’s transition:

As we evolve our research portfolio, it is natural to end or transition some projects. We feel the community can benefit from the novel experiences we developed for the Soundscape research project, and that is why we are releasing the code as open-source software.

From January 3, 2023, Microsoft will be removing the Soundscape app from the App Store and will be releasing the underlying code on GitHub for others to pick up and run with.

Existing installations of the app will continue to work through June next year.

Microsoft to sunset Soundscape 3D audio app and open-source the code by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Consumers are all about being able to make purchases fast and easy, but some merchants don’t have the engineering or product teams to code for all of that.

This is where Pack comes in. The San Diego–based company does most of the coding for merchants and delivers it via a front-end headless commerce platform for Shopify merchants so they can create a more seamless customer experience.

Working in a headless environment means you can tinker with the front end of your website — for example, the look, feel and function of the site — without disturbing the back end, which is where the payments, order details and fulfillment live.

Since being founded in 2019, Pack has built some of the first headless storefronts in North America and now works with e-commerce brands, including Truff, Liquid I.V., Cuts Clothing and Prima. The company said since Cuts began working with them, customer conversions grew by 200% year over year.

Cory Cummings, Pack co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch he worked in e-commerce for a decade building Shopify themes from scratch. That’s how he found that much of the work involved “shoving data into places where it didn’t feel right,” like in a platform versus front end. Merchants were left wondering why it was confusing to develop their storefronts.

Pack is playing in a similar space with startups like Popup, fabric, Swelland Shopistry, but Cummings said that unlike other headless companies that try to do more than just storefronts, Pack just wants to do front end.

“We put the guard rails in place so Instead of having to be a tech company or sign up for a bunch of different integrations, they can just do Pack,” he said. “We give them everything they need to be successful.”

Today, Pack announced $3 million in seed financing to grow the company, secure strategic partnership and add to its team of engineers, product, design and go-to-market capabilities. This brings the company’s total fundraising to date to $6 million.

The company is working with nearly 20 midmarket and enterprise-level customers and has a lot of growth in the pipeline, Cummings said. It spent the last year investing in its product and feature development, and this year has seen 470% growth in the product.

“We definitely have an aggressive roadmap to build out features,” he added. “It’s important to us that when people go headless, it is easier for them to have control over their infrastructure. Plus, we have a Shopify focus today, but we want to look at back end verticals and integrate those in the future.”

Meanwhile, Norwest Venture Partners led the round and was joined by existing investor Alpaca and new investor Vanterra Ventures.

Scott Beechuk, partner at Norwest Venture Partners, told TechCrunch that a “major shift is happening in the world of retail,” and with that, more retailers want to move away from the “tightly bound, inflexible e-commerce platforms.”

“Park is unique in this market in that they are entirely focused on customer experience, presentation layer and the content that powers that,” Beechuk added. “Others focus on users or front-end, but also do orchestration or back-end, which dilutes the overall offering.”

Pack delivers with headless commerce approach to faster online shopping by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch