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In fundraising, a founder’s greatest challenge is not selling any particular product or strategy. Instead, it is often unwinding and re-aligning the investor’s biases.

The competition is not your market competitor or incumbent. More often, it is the investor’s set of operating heuristics, many of which are quickly influenced by market conditions.

Fundraising in healthcare, especially in a macro environment like the one we’re in, is an opportunity to differentiate and take control of the narrative. When markets start to dip, most companies hunker down and focus on surviving. In moments like these, healthtech companies can take advantage of the status quo gettting upset and rise to the top of a crowded field, signaling to the market why they are the horse to bet on.

Reframe the macro view

When the market seems to be trending downward, it’s an opportunity for founders to take control of the narrative and re-frame how investors view market conditions based on a deep analysis of their sector.

Broadly compared to other industries, healthcare often remains resilient during times of economic distress. When everything is going well, it’s easy to forget and even easier to underappreciate the acyclicality of the healthcare market as a whole. But a quick look at data from the Bureau of Labor shows that employment in the sector continued to grow during the last recession, a testament to how robust the sector is.

While employment may not be a comprehensive barometer for all healthcare activity, the demand for real solutions to real pain points in healthcare will continue to be inelastic. If you’re in services, frame your business around this labor demand; if you’re developing solutions for software, operations and RCM, leverage this growing gap between the need and the adoption of technology.

In this environment, funds will be looking for acyclical markets to invest in. This is an opportunity for you to capture this capital pool.

Get granular

In a market inundated with “digital health” startups and “infrastructure solutions,” it’s vital to differentiate yourself.

Move beyond generic labels that no longer tickle the interest of healthcare investors, and instead map out the progression of your company in three acts, from seed to IPO, even if you’re already a late-stage company:

5 tips for healthcare startups fundraising in a down market by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok has announced that it’s expanding its audience controls feature, giving creators the ability to restrict their videos to adult viewers. Prior to this expansion, the adult-only audience controls feature was only available for TikTok Live. Now, the company is bringing the feature to its short-form videos as well.

“We’ve started to bring our audience controls feature to creators of short-form video and will expand the feature globally over the coming weeks,” TikTok wrote in a blog post. “To be clear: our policies still fully apply to creators who use this feature, and we will remove content which contains nudity and other violations of our Community Guidelines.”

As is the case with adult-only livestreams on TikTok, the 18+ restriction setting for videos isn’t a way for creators to display adult content, as the content is still subject to the app’s policies. TikTok instead sees the setting as a way for creators to prevent minors from encountering content that’s aimed toward an adult audience or may be uninteresting to them. When TikTok rolled out adult-only livestreams, the company said the setting could be used for creators who want to share comedy content that is better suited for people above the age of 18. Or, creators may want to talk about a difficult life experience and would feel more comfortable knowing the conversation is limited to adults.

The expansion of the audience controls setting comes as TikTok previously said it wanted to start identifying which content is appropriate for younger and older teens versus adults. TikTok had said it was developing a system to identify and restrict certain types of content from being accessed by teens and that it would start asking creators to specify when their content is more appropriate for an adult audience. We are now seeing this in practice with the app’s audience controls feature.

TikTok has also announced that it’s launching the next iteration of its of its borderline suggestive model, which automatically identifies sexually explicit, suggestive or borderline content. The next iteration of TikTok’s borderline suggestive model is expected to be better at detecting such content.

These announcements are part of TikTok’s broader push toward ramping up safety features for teens on its app. Last year, TikTok rolled out Content Levels to prevent certain content with more mature or complex themes from reaching teens. As part of these efforts, TikTok says it has prevented teen accounts from viewing over one million overtly sexually suggestive videos in the last 30 days alone.

Child and teen safety is an area where TikTok has faced significant scrutiny, not only from regulators and lawmakers, but also from parents. For instance, last year a group of parents sued TikTok after their children died after attempting dangerous challenges they allegedly saw on TikTok.

TikTok begins rolling out the ability for creators to restrict videos to adult viewers by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Apple is increasing service charges for battery replacement of out-of-warranty iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks starting March 2023. The price rise ranges from $20 to $50 for different kinds of devices.

The change was spotted by Reddit users, who pointed out that Apple had silently mentioned this change on the repair pages for these devices.

“The current out-of-warranty battery service fee will apply until the end of February 2023. Effective March 1, 2023, the out-of-warranty battery service fee will be increased by $20 for all iPhone models prior to iPhone 14,” the company mentions on the iPhone battery replacement and repair page.

Here is a quick breakdown of the extra amount you will need to pay for battery replacement for a device that’s not covered by warranty starting in March:

iPhone 13 and prior: $20 (total price: $89)
iPad Pro 12.9” (5th generation and prior), iPad Pro 11” (3rd generation and prior), iPad Pro 10.5”, iPad Pro 9.7”, iPad mini (6th generation and prior), and iPad Air (5th generation and prior): $20 (total price: $99 to $119)
All MacBook Air models: $30 (total price: $159)
All MacBook Pro models: $50 (total price: $249)

For reference, iPhone 14’s battery’s battery replacement price is $99, which is higher compared to older models.

This change is global and local price rises may vary. For instance, the UK will charge GBP 20 for an iPhone battery change, while France will charge EUR 24.

The service charge increase won’t affect AppleCare or AppleCare+ subscribers or folks who rely on third-party repair services.

Notably, Apple opened up its self-service program for US-based iPhone users last April, which allows people to get and replace parts without any external help.

While the price increase in service charge for battery replacement is not ideal, it will still lease a new life to your device so you don’t have to spend money on a new gadget.

Apple is increasing battery replacement service charges for out-of-warranty devices by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch