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TikTok stars Charli and Dixie D’Amelio have been working to translate their social media success into a business empire with help from their parents, Marc and Heidi. In addition to brand deals and sponsorships, the famous family has been investing in startups through a new VC fund 444 Capital, and this past fall announced plans to launch their own fashion, beauty and lifestyle businesses, as well. Among the first of these new ventures is a women’s footwear line which is now on track for a May 2023 launch, Marc D’Amelio confirmed in an interview on a panel at theConsumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

The panel, which took place at the Variety Entertainment Summit on Friday, revealed how heavily Marc was involved in the management of the D’Amelio family empire, as he handled answering most of the interviewer’s questions about the upcoming branded products and other D’Amelio family ventures. At one point, Dixie even complimented her father’s business-savvy, explaining that “Charli and I always went to my dad for advice on deals and even long-term friendships,” and how “trusting him has been the best thing for both of our careers.”

The D’Amelio Brands initiative was launched with $6 million in seed funding and includes Autograph co-chairman and Whip Media co-founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt as an investor and co-founder. Other investors include Apple SVP Eddy Cue, Lions Gate CEO Jon Feltheimer, Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, and Clothia CEO Elena Silenok. United Talent Agency, which reps the D’Amelios, is also a backer.

The company will have its first board meeting at the end of January, Marc noted.

At CES, Marc explained how merchandise was “low-hanging fruit,” and, when the new products launch, all the family’s intellectual property will be owned by them.

“We didn’t try to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “We saw other creators and other people come out and own their brands 100%. So we started this company called D’Amelio Brands where the main focus is finding ideas, concepts, and products that we’re passionate about and basically incubating them — and start to create things that we own with our investors 100%.”

“We started a footwear company the under the D’Amelio last name, which will be launching in May 2023,” he added. (Earlier reports had said the debut D’Amelio brands had been set to launch by the end of 2022.) Dixie added that the family was already “pretty far along” in the design process with regard to the new brand initiative, adding that the family attends “almost every meeting” together.

The interview only briefly touched on what to expect from the business itself. Marc noted the new footwear brand will include a head designer who was previously a top designer at Jessica Simpson footwear (Lauren DiCicco), who was also from the family’s hometown back in Connecticut. Plus, Marc referenced his own history in the fashion industry, having been an independent rep in years past, he said. He also had a showroom in New York as well as his own clothing brand before his daughters’ fame took things in another direction.

Despite the plan to try to spin up a D’Amelio brand empire, Marc confirmed the family would continue to do brand sponsorship deals for third parties working with their agents at UTA. To date, the D’Amelio sisters have worked with brands like Dunkin’ and Sabra hummus, and have a clothing line with Hollister.

However, Marc explained that the idea with D’Amelio Brands was to set the family up for a future where they could find financial success outside of the content creation business.

“…Doing content creation for brands and endorsement deals, you start to get into a hamster wheel,” he said. “They’re not movie stars. They’re not doing a movie and then taking time off. It’s ‘what’s the next deal, what’s the deal, what’s the next deal?’ I think what we’re trying to do is — I’m trying to create businesses that will work; that the girls can start incubating, plant the seed. And then I would love to have it where it can survive without any of us.”

For the time being, however, the D’Amelio family is staying busy, and the D’Amelio Brands initiative is only one of several projects the family is involved with. Dixie, for example, is working on her music and just landed a song in the current season of “Gossip Girl.” The family is also starting on Season 3 of their reality show on Hulu, in a deal also brokered by UTA.

Dixie admitted they’ve had a “lot of back and forth feelings” about doing the series but ultimately believes that its ability to raise awareness about mental health issues, as related to social media fame, was worth the effort.

“We do enjoy doing it because we film the videos, and then we put our phones down. My family and I all talk a lot about mental health and how important that was. To be able to share that journey on the show has been amazing,” said Dixie. “And that’s probably something I love the most — being able to talk to people about — not just, ‘oh, doing TikTok hurts my mental health’ but…being able to realize other people relate to that has made me feel good,” she said.

D’Amelio family’s new footwear line to launch May 2023 by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Private equity giant Vista Equity Partners has announced plans to take Duck Creek Technologies private in a $2.6 billion deal.

Boston-based Duck Creek, a SaaS-based software provider for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance sector, went public back in 2020, initially hitting a market cap of around $5 billion. After peaking at around $7 billion in early 2021, Duck Creek’s fortunes have fallen somewhat, with its valuation plummeting to below $2 billion over the past year, with a closing price of around $13 per share as of Friday.

Vista’s $19 per-share offer represents a 46% premium on Duck Creek’s most recent market closing price, and a 64% premium on its volume-weighted average price (VWAP) over the previous 30 days, equating to $2.6 billion which Vista said it will pay in an all-cash transaction.

Enterprising

It’s worth noting that Vista has been at the center of some of the biggest enterprise deals over the past year, including Citrix which Vista partnered with Evergreen/Elliott on to acquire for $16.5 billion. Vista also snapped up automated tax compliance company Avalara for $8.4 billion, while it sold disaster recovery company Datto for $6.2 billion.

Specific to today’s announcement, Vista also has some history in the insurance software space, having acquired the likes of Applied Systems, Eagleview, and Vertafore over the past couple of decades.

“Vista has an established track record of partnering with leading enterprise software businesses within the insurance industry and related verticals,” Vista managing director Jeff Wilson said in a press release. “We are excited to work with the Duck Creek team as we look to build on their best-in-class platform and solutions, which serve many of the world’s leading P&C insurance carriers.”

Vista said that it expects to conclude the transaction in Q2 2023.

Vista Equity Partners to acquire insurance software company Duck Creek for $2.6B by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

TechCrunch Live hosted a special, in-person event at CES featuring a long conversation with Ecobee CEO and founder Stuart Lombard. This was our first in-person TechCrunch Live, and I can’t wait to do more. We talked about a lot — how a startup can maximize CES, build delightful products, and how hardware startups can raising money.

Nest loomed large over a part of this interview. While Lombard and Ecobee claim to have produced the first web-connected thermostat, Nest, launched four years after Ecobee, defined the standard. After Nest burst from stealth in 2011, it forced Ecobee to retool its smart thermostat. As Lombard admits, Nest changed the trajectory of Ecobee. “[The Nest thermostat] taught us the difference between wanting to be good and actually being good,” he said, adding later, “It really forced us to retool and think about what it means to be great.”

And the early Ecobee products were not great. “We made a lot of compromises along the way,” Lombard said, showing off Ecobee’s first product to the TechCrunch Live cameras. The differences between the first Ecobee and the first Nest are striking: Where the Nest is constructed out of sleek metal and shiny glass, the Ecobee is all plastic. Sure, it worked well but it lacked the same appeal as the first Nest. He says, in short, as a startup, customers need to love your company and products.

I hear this sentiment a lot on TechCrunch Live. Great products delight in surprising ways. Where the Ecobee offered similar functionality, Lombard admits it wasn’t until the Nest hit the market that Ecobee developed a world-class user experience and design.

I hope you can take the time and watch the show. It’s embedded below, and it’s a must-hear for hardware startups. Trust me, this is one of the best TechCrunch Live events.

Watch the entire show right here.

Show Outline

On CES:

What’s it like for a hardware startup to be at CES?
What should a hardware startup aim to accomplish CES?

Founding Ecobee: Developing a market segment and competing against Nest:

How can a household goal turn into a company?
How does Stuart feel Nest changed Ecobee, and how can founders best utilize competition, especially in marketing?
What does it feel like when your company finally finds product market fit?

How Ecobee is still winning:

Why is it hard for hardware companies to raise capital?
Why Ecobee took a significant investment from Amazon, and what advice does Stuart have for founders talking to Amazon?
How does Ecobee keep up with changing consumer expectations?

Fundraising for hardware

Why Stuart advises startups to look at their customer list for investment opportunities.
Why a company should aim for longevity in fundraising
Why the easiest time to pitch a VC is before you have anything to sell.
Why Ecobee tried to go public through a SPAC in 2020.

Ecobee CEO and Founder speaks to TechCrunch Live about CES, Nest, and finding product market fit by Matt Burns originally published on TechCrunch

E-commerce in Southeast Asia is very fragmented, with consumers having their choice of marketplaces, e-commerce sites and social commerce. Many prefer to buy from large marketplaces, says FLIK co-founder Ahmad Gadi, because those platforms offer promotions and cashback deals. But for direct-to-consumer brands, marketplaces aren’t the best way to get consumer data or foster brand loyalty. That’s where FLIK’s unified payment solution comes in. It saves buyers’ checkout information across retail sites in FLIK’s merchant network, making buying easier and leading to higher conversion rates. For brands, it means more control over consumer data and less platform fees.

Based in Jakarta, FLIK announced today that it has raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from East Ventures, with participation from Init-6, GMO VenturePartners and Saison Capital.

Before founding FLIK, Gadi’s previous startups included Pawoon, a point-of-sale platform that enables businesses to accept digital payments.

Gadi told TechCrunch that FLIK’s team is experienced in the payments and merchant business, both offline and online. “We thought that checkout is a very strategic area to build products on, because it is actually the point of entry for money into the business,” he said. “As online sellers in this region are becoming more savvy, they would want to be able to optimize their online business more deeply. We see an opportunity to unify checkout experience because this has always been an area that is difficult to solve outside the typical centralized platforms such as marketplaces.”

Because e-commerce and checkout methods are currently so fragmented, it’s hard for brands to consolidate data, Gadi added. By using FLIK, they can gain access to information like potential product upsells that can be offered at checkout based on shoppers’ browsing behaviors, and what types of discounts and promotions they are most interested in.

FLIK works with e-commerce sites built with platforms like WooCommerce and Magento, plus social media channels like Instagram shops and chat applications. It can also be embedded into blog articles to turn them into mini e-commerce sites.

FLIK plans to add more services, including product discovery, price comparison, rewards and post-purchase services like refund and returns processing. Shoppers can download its app to keep track of their purchases and offers.

Gadi says FLIK is currently positioned in a blue ocean space because other players in the D2C enabler space focus on Shopify-like storefront builders. FLIK, on the other hand, focuses on the checkout layer and building a network of shoppers. “Unifying all the fragmented checkout experiences on the web means we could work with all these D2C enablers out there to provide a consistent and optimized checkout layer on top of their existing platforms.”

FLIK’s unified checkout solution gives Southeast Asian sellers more control over data by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

In many ways, 2022 was a year of growth for the cloud technology space. Unpredictable macroeconomic developments saw many organizations thinking about and preparing for greater wins in the years to come instead of right away.

In 2023, much of this preparation could come to fruition as the growth achieved in 2022 contributes to a stronger economy and rapid advancements, particularly in tech.

Global IT spending is projected to climb by 5.1% to $4.6 trillion in 2023, according to Gartner, driven by a 11.3% increase in investments in cloud applications to $879.62 billion. What does this kind of increased spending and investment mean for organizations? C2C Global, a Google Cloud customer community, has identified five cloud trends to watch in 2023.

AI and ML tech adoption will rise

Every organization wants to harness the many and varied capabilities of AI and ML technology. Some want to use their data to enhance analytics and build predictive models, and others want to automate repeatable processes.

Currently, many AI and ML models require extensive testing and training before they can be implemented at scale across large organizations hosting petabytes of data or serving wide customer bases. In fact, C2C’s researchhas found that only 47% of respondents are currently using AI and ML. However, these technologies ranked high among the ones that respondents hope to adopt in the future.

The promise of these technologies is too significant to ignore. As models are refined, and training and testing become more reliable and automatic, organizations will come to rely on these technologies more.

5 cloud trends to track in 2023 by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch