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A lot of entrepreneurs are incredible idea generators and hackers; they have a knack for seeing something that’s broken or something that could be better and creating a solution around that. The problem is this: It’s rare that even very good features make good companies.

It’s rarer still that companies built on a feature make for VC-investable companies with the potential for VC-scale returns. A lot of no-code products fall into this category.

So do you have a company or merely a feature? Let’s explore the red flags investors will look for to determine which bucket your startup falls into.

A nontrivial percentage of the companies that come to me for advice about how to make their pitch decks better have a problem far bigger than a subpar deck. Fundamentally, the idea doesn’t work as a VC-scale startup; and if that is true, it doesn’t really matter how good your idea is. You will never raise money because ultimately, the risk your would-be investors are taking is higher than the reward that is available for them to reap.

The red flags fall into three categories:

Your company is 100% dependent on another product or company.
Your company could very easily be put out of business if an incumbent adds your product as a feature of theirs.
The market size for this feature is too small.

Let’s take a closer look at all three scenarios, as well as how you can evaluate whether these conditions are true for your company.

Build a company, not a feature by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

A lot of entrepreneurs are incredible idea generators and hackers; they have a knack for seeing something that’s broken or something that could be better and creating a solution around that. The problem is this: It’s rare that even very good features make good companies.

It’s rarer still that companies built on a feature make for VC-investable companies with the potential for VC-scale returns. A lot of no-code products fall into this category.

So do you have a company or merely a feature? Let’s explore the red flags investors will look for to determine which bucket your startup falls into.

A nontrivial percentage of the companies that come to me for advice about how to make their pitch decks better have a problem far bigger than a subpar deck. Fundamentally, the idea doesn’t work as a VC-scale startup; and if that is true, it doesn’t really matter how good your idea is. You will never raise money because ultimately, the risk your would-be investors are taking is higher than the reward that is available for them to reap.

The red flags fall into three categories:

Your company is 100% dependent on another product or company.
Your company could very easily be put out of business if an incumbent adds your product as a feature of theirs.
The market size for this feature is too small.

Let’s take a closer look at all three scenarios, as well as how you can evaluate whether these conditions are true for your company.

Build a company, not a feature by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

HBO Max makes history tonight with its first-ever domestic live sporting event. Starting at 10 p.m. ET, U.S. subscribers can watch the U.S. Women’s Soccer National Team take on the New Zealand team, the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup co-host. The streamer will also air the follow-up match between the U.S. and New Zealand on January 20.

Along with live coverage of the matches, HBO Max will also give subscribers pre-game coverage and post-game as well as replays. The pre-game show begins at 9:30 p.m. ET.

It’s also important to note that both HBO Max subscription tiers aren’t including any ads, a Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Last week, the company announced its lineup of sports analysts which includes National Soccer Hall of Famers Julie Foudy, DaMarcus Beasley and Shannon Boxx, along with former U.S. Men’s National Team player Kyle Martino. Soccer commentator Luke Wileman will provide play-by-play alongside Foudy. Melissa Ortiz, a former pro soccer player, will report live from Wellington, New Zealand.

As previously announced, the U.S. Soccer Federation and Turner Sports, a division of WarnerMedia, closed an eight-year multimedia rights agreement, making TNT and HBO Max the exclusive English-language home to over 20 Women’s and Men’s National Team matches every year. The matches will all be simulcast on HBO Max, whereas TNT will broadcast several matches.

The deal doesn’t include the Women’s World Cup matches in 2023, which will be broadcast by Fox and Telemundo. However, it does include World Cup qualifiers, friendlies and competitions.

HBO Max will debut the U.S. Men’s National Team on January 25, when it livestreams the U.S. vs. Serbia game. The team will play against Colombia on January 28, which will be broadcast by TNT.

Winning streaming rights to U.S. soccer is a big deal for the company. The streamer isn’t known for sports, so a domestic live sports offering will help HBO Max better compete with rivals in the sports space, such as Paramount+, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.

HBO Max is also working on a live hockey offering, thanks to a multi-year rights agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL). Last year, Turner Sports closed the deal, giving TBS and TNT the rights to broadcast regular-season games as well as Stanley Cup Playoff and Stanley Cup Final games.

HBO Max subscribers in Brazil and Mexico have access to live UEFA Champions League matches.

HBO Max subscribers can now livestream U.S. national soccer games by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Google’s clock app for Android has plenty of sound options to set as an alarm. If you don’t like the default tone, you can use a song or a podcast from Spotify or YouTube Music (only if you have a premium subscription), too – and Google now also allows you to record a voice clip and set that as an alarm tone as well.

This feature was first noticed by Esper.io’s Mishaal Rahman. As he noted, this is a server-side push, so as long as you are using Clock app version 7.3, you should see this feature without updating the app.

Rahman also notes that this feature works only on Pixel phones or devices where users have sideloaded the Google Recorder app. But it’s possible that Google could roll out the voice clip as an alarm feature to all devices in the future, as long as they have a recorder app.

It could be a way to prank someone by changing their usual alarm tone with a recorded clip while they are looking away. Or a more productive use case would be to remind you of something right when you get up. But it would be freaky to hear your own voice first thing in the morning.

This new feature definitely joins the league of weird alarm apps. We have seen apps like Wakie, which lets you wake up strangers; Mircosoft’s Micimcker, which forced you to ape expressions to silence the alarm; or the Doomsday Alarm clock, which lets you set up apocalyptic scenarios to wake up.

Google’s Clock app now lets you record your own alarm sound by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

The great American sports car is going partly electric. Chevy pulled the wraps off the 2024 Corvette E-Ray, revealing a dual powertrain affair. A 6.2L Small Block V8 sits behind the driver in a mid-engine configuration. An electric motor is connected to the front wheels, providing AWD, and instant torque for improved off-the-line launches. Together they’re bringing the Corvette into the electric future.

Chevy says this Corvette is the quickest production ever made with a 2.5 second 0-60 time. That time upsets the current title holder, the monstrous 2019 Corvette ZR-1 that can hit 60mph in 2.85 seconds.

But this electrified sports car does not need to be plugged in to recharge. Instead, the battery is exclusively charged by regenerative braking and when the vehicle is coasting.

The dual-powertrain arrangement comes with more benefits. With both axles’s powered, the E-Ray features eAWD giving it better performance on the track and in adverse weather conditions. In addition, drivers can opt to drive only on battery power as long as the vehicle’s speed does not exceed 45 mph.

A single electric motor powers the front wheels. It produces 160 hp and 125 lb. ft of torque. Combined with the 6.2L V8, the E-Ray produces 655 hp.

The Corvette E-Ray isn’t the first sports car to look at two different powertrains for propulsion. The Polestar 1 used a similar affair but in a different configuration. The main difference is that the E-Ray allows drivers to drive on an electric motor.

Chevy says that the 2024 Corvette E-Ray will go on sale sometime in 2023. The MSRP starts at $104,295 for the coupe and $111,295 for the 1LZ convertible model.

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Chevy announces the fastest Corvette yet, the electrified 2024 Corvette E-Ray by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

Uber has expanded an agreement with Hertz to get thousands of ride-hailing drivers behind the wheel of an electric car — this time in Europe.

The two companies announced that Hertz will make up to 25,000 EVs available to Uber drivers in European capital cities by 2025. The announcement comes about 15 months after Uber and Hertz kicked off a partnership in North America to make up to 50,000 Tesla vehicles available for rent to Uber drivers in the United States.

The European deal will offer drivers a bit more choice, according to Uber, making a range of EVs including Tesla and Polestar available to drivers. The Europe program will begin this month at Hertz’s London base and eventually expand to Paris, Amsterdam and other capital cities in the region.

The Uber-Hertz deal has a two-fold aim. It helps Hertz in its goal to build one of the largest fleets of rental EVs globally and it gets Uber closer to becoming a “zero emissions platform” by 2030.

And so far, at least by Uber’s account, the program has proven popular. The company said that to date, nearly 50,000 drivers in the United States have rented a Tesla through this program, completing more than 24 million fully-electric trips and over 260 million electric miles.

Uber’s goal for all of its trips to be “zero emissions” by the end of the decade will require more than just a deal with Hertz. The company’s Uber Green program, which is in more 1,400 cities in North America, incentivizes drivers to use all-electric and hybrid vehicles. Uber integrated the program into its Uber Pass membership service to give members 10% off on “green” trips, the same discount provided for a standard ride.

Uber has also partnered with automakers charging network providers, and other EV rental and fleet companies to provide further incentives, including Ample, Avis and EVgo.

Uber drivers in Europe gain access to Tesla, Polestar and other EVs through Hertz by Kirsten Korosec originally published on TechCrunch

In the coming decades, Africa will be a significant growth market for mobile games driven by the proliferation of technology adoption among the continent’s youthful population. And as gamers in sub-Saharan Africa increase to over 180 million in the next five years, per a report, startups such as South Africa-based Carry1st are strategically positioning themselves for this successive growth phase in the industry.

Since its launch in 2018, Carry1st, a publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa, has raised funding from investors such as Google via its Africa Investment Fund and Avenir Growth Capital.But more impressive is its backing from top-tier funds focused on web3 and gaming: Andressen Horowitz (a16z), Konvoy Ventures – and now Bitkraft Ventures, the lead investor in its newly announced $27 million pre-Series B round. Both a16z and Konvoy participated in this financing round, including TTV Capital, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital and Kepple Ventures.

“We now have, in our minds, the three best funds that focus on gaming and web3. And so it just adds even more resources, perspective, and assistance to help us achieve our goals,” chief executive officer Cordel Robbin-Coker told TechCrunch in an interview.

Last January, Carry1st announced a $20 million Series A extension round, which followed the $6 million it raised in May 2021 from several investors, including Riot Games, the developer and publisher behind the most-played PC game globally, League of Legends. Sometime last year, Carry1st and Riot Games strengthened that investment by signing a partnership where the South African outfit agreed to pilot local payments for the American video game developer starting in 2023. In other words, Carry1st will act as Riot’s payments partner in Africa.

Robbin-Coker, on the call, said the partnership leverages Pay1st, the gaming startup’s monetization-as-a-service platform used for the company’s games and that of third-party publishers.

In 2018 when Carry1st launched, it was a game studio that conceptualized, developed, and launched mobile games (starting with Carry1st Trivia). While the company still makes its games or recently began acquiring games to improve, relaunch and publish at scale (Mine Rescue and Gebeta), Carry1st also exclusively licenses third-party games. Pay1st is the embedded finance platform that helps the startup make revenue from both categories: owned games and third-party games, of which Riot Games is one of its clients.

“The partnership [with Riot Games] is our big initiative this year because we built all these cool tech around payments and digital commerce, and we leveraged it only for our games,” remarked the CEO, who founded Carry1st with Lucy Hoffman and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu. “But we figured that we may as well leverage the opportunity to partner with awesome big game companies that maybe aren’t yet ready to license their games to us fully but would like to make more money in the region and understand how profitable Africa can be for them.”

Meanwhile, the CEO mentioned on the call that the four-year-old gaming startup has other partnerships, including a “large game licensing deal that we’re excited about.” In addition to the Riot Games collaboration, Carry1st is also building on the momentum of a successful partnership with Call of Duty®: Mobile in South Africa that happened in the last quarter of 2022, where Carry1st, acting as a local partner, instructed and directed the video games franchise on ways to achieve scale in South Africa during a three-month pilot test.

“It [South Africa] is a promising market for them, and they were eager to have a local partner to help them navigate and help to execute a pilot over three months last year. We hope that will lead to, you know, even deeper engagement and even sort of bigger and better prospects for that franchise, not just in South Africa but potentially across the continent,” he added.

The pre-Series B financing will see Carry1st drive growth in all these areas: develop, license, and publish new games, as well as expand Pay1st. Per the company’s statement, the funding round is coming off the back of a successful year which saw the first game from its CrazyHubs gaming accelerator – the accelerator Carry1st launched in partnership with CrazyLabs, one of its six partner studios – become the number 1 downloaded game in the U.S. for a few days last July, according to data.ai. The game, The President, is loosely based on afictionalized Donald Trump andwas developed by Nairobi-based Mekan Games.

Games like The President have seen Carry 1st’s revenues grow by 10x over the year. Other areas where the gaming startup has also experienced growth include Carry1st Shop, its online marketplace for virtual goods, which according to the company, allows customers across Africa to pay for content and 100+ products across 120 different payment methods, including bank transfers, crypto and mobile money.

“What we found, particularly in countries like Nigeria, South Africa, and Morocco, was that there was a massive appetite for digital content, especially with the ability to pay for it in with local payment methods and, more importantly, in local currency, which is unique or unusual because most of the online purchases are denominated in dollars,” said the CEO. He stated that Carry1st was the gaming startup’s fastest-growing product last year as users and revenues surged fivefold.

In the TechCrunch interview last January, Robbin-Coker mentioned that the South-African based Carry1st was exploring the possibility of developing infrastructure to support play-to-earn gaming in Africa. It’s a plan still in motion – according to the chief executive, Carry1st is developing a beta platform dubbed Play1st, where gamers interested in web3 games can discover games, review them within communities, and display achievements and rewards – however, with less zest given how the appetite for web3 games have cooled off within the past year.

Speaking on the investment, Jens Hilgers, the founding general partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, said: “Africa is home to the largest population of young people in the world, and this upcoming generation will grow up digitally native with videogames as their primary entertainment preference. We have full conviction in Carry1st’s impressive founding team and their vision of building out foundational infrastructure and localized content, ensuring that gaming and interactive entertainment in Africa will thrive.”

African gaming startup Carry1st raises $27M from Bitkraft Ventures and a16z by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch

Starbucks will become available for delivery via DoorDash across all 50 U.S. states by March, in an expansion of a partnership with the delivery service announced last year. In September, Starbucks and DoorDash first entered a partnership that would allow customers to order Starbucks items for delivery from their local stores using the DoorDash app. The companies initially tested delivery in select cities, including Atlanta, Sacramento, and Houston. Later, the pilot expanded to other cities, including Seattle, Portland, and New York.

Today, DoorDash announced the Starbucks delivery service will now arrive in more markets, including Northern California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and others ahead of the nationwide launch.

The move signals Starbucks is finding traction with delivery orders, as DoorDash is not its first delivery partner. Ahead of the DoorDash partnership, Starbucks leveraged Uber Eats for delivery services. The companies began working together in 2018 with a Miami pilot before expanding nationally. By partnering with another delivery provider, the coffee chain is making its products accessible to a wider audience, as not everyone prefers to use Uber Eats as their main delivery app. It could also help the chain find a way to survive a shift to remote work, which reduced the in-person orders from commuters.

“As customer behaviors evolve, we continue to innovate the Starbucks Experience to connect with them through meaningful and valuable digital experiences,” said Brooke O’Berry, Starbucks senior vice president of digital experiences, in a statement. “Our partnership with DoorDash allows us to provide our customers with another convenient way to enjoy Starbucks wherever they are. Delivery continues to be a significant growth opportunity for Starbucks, and we’re excited to reach more customers by partnering with DoorDash, a company known for their best-in-class service,” O’Berry added.

To order Starbucks for delivery, customers won’t use the Starbucks app itself as they would for a mobile pick-up order.

Instead, they’ll use the DoorDash app on iOS or Android, just as if they were ordering from a local restaurant. The app will allow customers to customize their drinks just as they would at Starbucks itself, including being able to choose the amount of syrup, type of milk, and espresso roasts. Starbucks says around 95% of its core menu items will be available through DoorDash.

Of course, ordering yourself a coffee for delivery may not make sense because of the delivery and service fees involved, in addition to the tip. But for customers with a DoorDash membership, the delivery fees are waived. Plus, the service could be a more useful way to handle group orders, like those for staff in a workplace, instead of sending out a person to pick up the coffee orders.

“Our partnership with Starbucks connects even more neighborhoods across the United States with their favorite beverages and bites,” said Sanjay Kotte, head of strategic partnerships at DoorDash, in an announcement. “When you combine the quality of Starbucks handcrafted beverages and food with the logistics power and geographic scale of DoorDash, the result is extraordinary for coffee lovers nationwide,” Kotte said.

In recent months, DoorDash has been working to develop its platform to become more than just a way to order meals from local restaurants. Though a partnership with Walmart wound down last summer, the company has since launched new features like a way for DoorDash drivers to pick up consumers’ e-commerce returns and other packages for drop off at UPS, FedEx or USPS locations. It also introduced a way to combine orders, or “double dash,” by allowing customers to order food and alcohol from different locations on one order.

However, like other tech companies, DoorDash has been hit by the economic downturn, resulting in the layoffs of 1,250 people in November as a cost-cutting measure. The company said it had not been “as rigorous as we should have been” in managing its team growth. DoorDash, similar to many e-commerce players, had grown significantly during the pandemic as customers stayed home and ordered in. But those trends reversed as lockdowns ended and restaurants opened back up for business.

Still, the market for food delivery remained ripe, even after the pandemic impacts lessened. Last year, for example, Amazon took a 2% stake in DoorDash rival Grubhub to offer restaurant delivery through Grubhub+ to Prime customers. This year, however, customers are cutting expenses, including ordering food delivery. The Wall Street Journal reported orders on apps like DoorDash, UberEats and Grubhub were down 5% year-over-year in October and November — the slowest two-month growth since the pandemic.

DoorDash’s stock popped on the news of the Starbucks partnership expansion, and is now up 2% in today’s trading.

DoorDash expands Starbucks partnership with plans to reach all U.S. states by March by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Over the years software pricing has shifted from rigid seat licenses for on-prem legacy software to subscriptions with tiered pricing, as software shifted to the cloud in the early part of this century. The latter helped transform the way we think about pricing and revenue.

Amberflo founder and CEO Puneet Gupta thinks there is a better way to think about software pricing, not based on seats or subscription tiers, but actual usage. That requires a pricing infrastructure to meter all of the different interactions with the product. Gupta started Amberflo to build that tooling to put granular metered pricing within reach of any company.

Today, the company announced a couple of milestones. For starters, it has raised a total of $20 million including a previously unannounced $5 million seed round and a new $15 million Series A. In addition, the company is making the Amberflo platform generally available today.

Gupta saw the metering idea in action when he worked at AWS from 2011-2014, and the idea stuck with him that it was an approach that many companies could benefit from. “I had a chance to build these services [when I was at AWS], and I saw this internal shared services thing called metering. Whenever we built a service, we had to connect to the metering stack. That’s where I became aware, and for me, it was an eye opener,” he told TechCrunch.

In 2020, Gupta started Amberflo to build a metering stack as a service that any customer could tap into. He thinks it should be particularly attractive for product led growth (PLG) companies. “If you are one of those PLG companies, we are providing you with a cloud native, next generation platform that gives you the tools to be effective within that. And then specifically, the tool allows to launch your own usage-based pricing model,” he said.

While we are used to seeing companies meter software to understand things like application performance, page loads or software anomalies, this is specifically designed to measure resource usage. With this kind of metering, companies can then track usage at a granular level down to every transaction, API call or resource used.

Gupta thinks this could transform the way we think about pricing because it gives you the data on which to base your pricing in a very precise way with documentation to back it up. It also gives you the information on exactly how many people are using the software, something that he says you don’t typically see in subscription pricing because there’s little motivation to know the usage once you sell a certain number of licenses.

“In the subscription world, nobody tracks usage. Companies are actually disincentivized to track usage. If I’ve signed you up for 100 users, and you paid me for the 100 users upfront for the first 12 months, why would I track it and tell you that only 36 people have been using it for the first three months into the product? I’m not going to do that,” he said.

He says, usage pricing also gives companies a way to continue working with customers, who might otherwise churn. As Gupta points out, in the subscription world there is the binary of choice of being subscribed or unsubscribing, whereas with usage-based pricing, the customer could dial back usage instead of giving up the product altogether, and he sees that as a big advantage, especially in times like these where CIOs are looking for non-essential products to cut.

The startup currently has a dozen employees, but plans to quadruple in size in the next year with the new funding helping to fuel that growth. As he adds employees to the company, he is trying to build a diverse workplace, but admits it’s challenging.

“It is something we think about, and we pay attention to, but to be honest with you, we don’t have that kind of leverage and luxury right now to sort of institutionalize it as a matter of process,” he said. He added that the company is bringing in its first recruiter this week, which could help, and one of its investors, Norwest Venture Partners, has talked to him about building diversity as a core value, and he plans to take it seriously as the company grows.

The $5 million seed was led by Homebrew, while the $15 million Series A was led by Norwest Venture Partners. Operator Collective also participated.

Amberflo wants to transform SaaS pricing with metered usage by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

Royal Mail CEO Simon Thompson has confirmed that a cyberattack is to blame for the ongoing disruption at the U.K. postal giant.

The admission comes almost a week after Royal Mail first said it was hit by an unspecified “cyber incident” that left the British mail service unable to dispatch items to overseas destinations.

“We’ve confirmed that we’ve had a cyberattack,” Thompson told a U.K. parliamentary committee on Tuesday in response to questions from lawmakers. Thompson added that while the mail service believes that no customer data was compromised in the attack, the organization is prepared for that situation to change and has already notified the U.K. data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, as a precaution.

Thompson — who gave evidence to lawmakers during a session about Royal Mail’s ongoing dispute with its union workers — declined to comment on specifics of the cyberattack, claiming that discussing details of the incident would be “detrimental” to the ongoing investigation. Thompson said that the postal service continues to experience disruption to its international export services following the cyberattack.

Royal Mail has yet to confirm when this disruption is likely to end — compounded by existing backlogs and delays that have arisen from strike action — but Thompson said a “workaround” should be available soon.

“For export parcels and letters through our postal services… we are no longer able to provide that service,” he said. “The team have been working on workarounds so that we can get the service up and running again,” and said the Royal Mail will have “more news to share” soon.

There remains plenty of unanswered questions about the Royal Mail’s cyberattack, such as the nature of the incident and who is responsible.

Some media reports have claimed that Royal Mail was the target of ransomware that compromised machines used to print customs labels for parcels sent to overseas destinations. A public-facing representative for LockBit, a ransomware group accused of launching the attack on the postal service, initially denied involvement, and pointed blame to other hackers using the gang’s leaked ransomware builder software. Brett Callow, a ransomware expert and threat analyst at Emsisoft, shared a post from the LockBit representative seemingly admitting that a LockBit affiliates were responsible for the attack.

TechCrunch has yet to verify LockBit’s involvement, and Royal Mail has not been listed on the gang’s dark web leak site. When reached by email, Royal Mail spokesperson Mark Street declined to comment.

Royal Mail CEO confirms cyberattack downed UK postal service by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch