Technology startups in the holy city of Jerusalem need more venture capital money if they're going to be as successful as their Israeli rivals in nearby Tel Aviv.

With just a handful of investors on the ground in the city, it can be hard for some of the local tech startups to raise the money they need to grow their business and take it to the next level, according to Ben Wiener, a venture capitalist in Jerusalem.

When asked if there's enough capital in Jerusalem to support the city's startups, the investor said: "Of course not. There needs to be more."

Jerusalem's legal status is disputed: Israel has declared it its capital — but the ongoing, decades-old Israeli-Palestian territorial conflict means that most other countries do not recognise this claim. Many (including the UK) locate their Israeli embassies in Tel Aviv — Jerusalem's western coastal neighbour that enjoys the lion's share of the Israeli tech industry's attention.

Investors have been slow to invest in Jerusalem startups since the early 2000s, according to Wiener. "We as Jerusalem earned a bias against us for over a decade because we didn’t produce anything good," he said. "It’s only now in the last couple of years that that’s started to change."

Jerusalem — a place of pilgrimage and worship for Jews, Christians, and Muslims since the biblical era — struggled to create a thriving tech scene in the 2000s for a number of reasons, residents say.

Elie Wurtman, the founder of Jerusalem-based VC firm Pico Partners, believes that the city's startup scene suffered as a direct result of the second Intifada (the Palestinian uprising that began in late September 2000 and ended around 2005) combined with the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2002.

During the Intifada, bombs were going off across Jerusalem on a weekly basis, and "it was impossible to get on a bus and know that the bus would arrive safely at its destination," a Jerusalemite told Business Insider.

But today the city is more stable both politically and economically. As a result, it's home to an increasing number of startups, Wiener claims. He says that he's seen over 600 early stage software startups since launching his venture capital company, Jumpspeed Ventures, three years ago. So far, he's invested several million dollars across 11 Jerusalem startups through his fund, he says.

Aharon Horwitz, the founder and CEO of Jerusalem startup AutoLeadStar, which helps companies boost their online sales by monitoring customer browsing behaviour, agreed that Jerusalem's growing startup scene would benefit if there was more venture capital for founders to tap into on their doorstep.

Even as Jerusalem startups bemoan a lack a funding in their city, a number of Tel Aviv startups have found themselves on the radar of investors in Silicon Valley and Asia, with Tel Aviv battery storage firm StorDot raising money from the likes of Samsung Ventures and Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

Tel Aviv startups may have received much of the limelight in recent years — but it's worth remembering that Jerusalem is where Mobileye, arguably Israel's biggest tech company, was created.

Founded in 1999, the visual recognition company IPO'd on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 at a valuation of $5.3 billion (£4 billion). Since the IPO the company has gone from strength to strength and today the firm has a market cap of $9.11 billion (£7 billion).

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The former chief of staff for Rothenberg Ventures has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the troubled venture capital firm, alleging that the company failed to provide employees with their final paychecks, according to court filings.

The lawsuit, filed Friday by Katie Fanelli in San Francisco, claims that the company violated California labor codes "by failing to provide the employees with their final paycheck and thereby denying them payment for all hours worked."

The complaint also alleges that the firm failed to pay vested paid time off, expense, or any overtime.

Fanelli worked there for a little over a year, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The firm has been the talk of Silicon Valley, as the small venture-capital firm led by charismatic 32-year-old Mike Rothenberg essentially imploded in August.

The firm, which had had about $50 million under management, ran out of operating money, and all its employees except its lawyer were put on unpaid leave as of mid-August, according to a report by Backchannel. That report and former employees who have spoken to Business Insider portrayed Rothenberg as a lavish spender, at times employing multiple personal assistants and entertaining associates in luxury boxes at sporting events. 

One employee who spoke to Business Insider dismissed the idea that Rothenberg put people on unpaid leave, telling us the situation was more akin to being "unemployed."

The venture firm, which has renamed itself Frontier Tech Ventures, could face other legal actions as well.

The company admitted to its investors that the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into the company, according to an email obtained by Business Insider, although such inquiries do not automatically mean that any further action will be taken. At issue is how the company managed its money.

The SEC also asked people familiar with the company to speak to the FBI and the US Attorney's office, a person close to the matter told Business Insider, which could mean that more investigations are being considered. 

We've reached out to the firm for comment and will update this post if we hear back.

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GoEuro, a travel platform that allows customers to search and book trains, buses and flights across Europe, has raised $70 million (£54 million) in a bid to accelerate product development and growth.

The funding round, led by Silver Lake Kraftwerk and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is one of the biggest European funding rounds of 2016 so far.

It comes less than a year after GoEuro raised a $45 million (£35 million) round and total investment in the company now stands at $146 million (£113 million). Other investors in the four-year-old startup include Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, as well as venture capital firms Atomico, Battery Ventures, Lakestar, and NEA.

Headquartered in Berlin, GoEuro's 180 employees are aiming to unify and standardise Europe's ground transportation to make it more like the air industry.

The company claims that its platform allows customers to book the fastest, cheapest and best travel options by train, bus and flight to any city, town or village in Europe.

Naren Shaam, CEO and founder of GoEuro, said in a statement: "Our objective is to connect every single location on the map with a click of a button. After three years of intensive work, we’ve managed to attract 10 million users a month, integrate more than 5 million routes across Europe, 12 countries, 500 partners and sell tickets to millions of customers from more than one hundred countries.

"This new investment from such experienced investors will allow us to scale into many new markets and go deeper into the ones we already have, as well as accelerate development of the world’s most comprehensive reservations platform for trains, buses and flights."

The company claims it is now poised to join the small circle of European start-ups seen to have the potential to become multi-billion dollar companies.

Mood Rowghani, general partner at Kleiner Perkins added: "GoEuro provides an essential service to travellers across Europe and has grown tremendously to become a part of consumers’ daily lives. Naren is an exceptional entrepreneur with a unique ability to marry big ambitions with strong business acumen. We are delighted to partner with him to achieve GoEuro's mission of becoming the world's largest travel booking service."

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Adi Soffer Teeni, the manager of Facebook Israel, issued a stark warning to entrepreneurs in so-called "Startup Nation" last week as the country's tech scene continues to gain attention around the world.

Speaking at the DLD Innovation conference, Teeni said Israel's position as the number one spot for innovation outside Silicon Valley isn't as secure as some people might think it is.

"I do think we are second to the Valley but the gap is big and we need to acknowledge that," Teeni told an audience of approximately 300 founders, developers, and investors. "We need to be humble, and we need to understand that in order for us to continue to deliver the innovation that we bring, we need not to be sassy. Not to think everything that happens here will continue to be magic. "

She added: "This is serious stuff. This [tech] is literally the future of Israel in my opinion. What we need to understand is a big part of what we have today is down to the fact that we didn’t have any other choice.

"Israel became 'Startup Nation' originally because of our grandparent's generation. But now the new generation of 'Startup Nation' is about building big businesses that have millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of users all over the world. Europe is starting to build small 'Startup Nations' and we need to keep the gap. That’s the goal."

Indeed, cities such as London, Berlin, Stockholm and Paris have developed their own thriving startup ecosystems that have spawned a number of successful tech companies in recent years. London, for example, was home to more than 13 tech startups in 2015, with a valuation in excess of $1 billion (£770 million).

Teeni said in order to ensure Israel stays out in front, entrepreneurs in the country need to focus. "This is [done] by having mature management," she said. "This is [done] by understanding that this is not just about technology. This is about building businesses."

Facebook opened an office in Israel around three years ago and today the company has a "small" research and development team on the ground as well as another team that engages with those in the Israeli tech ecosystem.

Other companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple and Intel also have a significant presence in Israel, with each of the multinationals choosing to use engineers in Israel to develop many of their most important products.

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Wheelys, made up of over 550 bicycle carts and quasi-employees, is quietly becoming one of the world's fastest growing café chains. With mobile locations in 65 countries — more than Starbucks — it's pushing against the notion that a café needs to stay in one place.

"Inspired by Airbnb and Uber's new way of doing business, we wanted to find a way of bypassing the old laws of the industry by not buying physical space," Wheelys co-founder and CEO Maria De La Croix tells Business Insider.

Anyone can start their own Wheelys café and buy a bike cart, which is tricked out with a sink, storage, a register, an umbrella, espresso machines, and juicers. All that gear allows cart owners to serve coffee, chocolates, and pastries rain or shine. 

The carts have a lot of moving parts. If a customer orders a coffee, the bike's owner lifts a module's compartment and slides out a platform for a row of pour over brewers.

Wheelys, which launched in Stockholm in 2014, has only 10 employees at its offices in Stockholm, the US, and China. But people all over the world have bought its bikes. In 2015, Wheelys was backed by Y-Combinator, an incubator for emerging tech companies. And in August, it raised over $940,000 on the Swedish crowdfunding platform FundedByMe.

Since the chain launched, it has doubled its number of locations every six months, and De La Croix says it plans to continue to keep expanding at that pace.

This month, it opened a new assembly plant, where the team makes the bikes. The latest rendition of the solar-powered bike includes seven retractable modules, so owners can transform their café into a juice bar, ice cream shop, or place for crepes whenever they choose.

Wheelys' ultimate goal is to challenge legacy coffee shops and cafés, like Starbucks.

There are approximately 12,000 Starbucks in the US, and in many large cities like New York and Los Angeles, it feels like there's one on every corner. It's becoming increasingly difficult for new independent cafés to compete, De La Croix says. Depending on location, a startup café's monthly rent costs can be a couple hundred thousand dollars or more.

A Wheelys bike, on the other hand, starts at a flat fee of $7,000 without the monthly rent. Add-on modules, which can make items like juices or crepes, cost an additional $450 to $3,000. The bikes' owners need to purchase the items from Wheelys and the chain sets the prices (which De La Croix says are "a bit higher than mid-range"), but the owners keep all of their profits. Over half the products are organic or fair-trade.

De La Croix says her company's main advantage over traditional cafes is in the bike's portability. The employees manning the bikes can pedal where the customers are, rather than sitting in one location.

"For instance, the train station might be the perfect place to sell coffee during rush hour in the morning, but not during lunch time," she says.

Going forward, Wheelys hopes to empower young people to start up cafés even if they don't have the funds to launch a physical space.

"We're enabling passionate people to operate their own cafés on unused grounds," De La Croix says.

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As co-founder and co-CEO of my own startup, I’ve gained a bigger appreciation for business people that make unpopular but good decisions.

I have to make those kinds of decisions myself every single day. It’s never easy, and a part of me always wonders whether I made the right choice.

That being said, I truly believe brilliant leaders should always take action, even if they’re not 100% sure of the outcome. Inaction can often lead to even bigger problems.

As an example, these three CEOs showed off their leadership chops and saved their companies by making unpopular decisions.

James E. Burke & Tylenol tampering

In 1982, contaminated Tylenol capsules resulted in 7 deaths, including that of a 12-year-old girl.

In September of the same year, someone tampered with the packaging and laced the medicine with cyanide in Chicago.

A month later in California, Tylenol was laced with a different poison, strychnine.

Four years later, another woman died from cyanide poisoning in extra-strength Tylenol.

These chilling incidents seriously undermined the safety of Johnson & Johnson’s products.

But former CEO James E. Burke’s response actually earned him a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in 2000.

Instead of hiding from the negative press or shifting blame, Burke got in front of the crisesby:

• Recalling all Tylenol sold in October 1982
• Offering coupons to reimburse customers
• Stopping all advertising for Tylenol after the incidents
• Spreading awareness of the issue to doctors’ offices, hospitals, and trade groups
• Pushing for the development of the tamper-proof packaging we use today
• Discontinuing capsules after 1986 for ensured safety

When asked about the recall, Burke said that he listened and was sympathetic. “I was still very concerned that this was not the right solution, either from the point of view of the public or from the point of view of my company’s business,” he said.

Many considered the recall an overreaction until 75 cyanide-laced capsules were found.

Johnson & Johnson suffered immediate losses of at least $100 million and a 7% drop in stock price. But they quickly recovered and regained 30% of the market. Thirty years later, Johnson & Johnson remain a trusted brand in households everywhere.

Anne Mulcahy & Xerox’s cloud of bankruptcy

When Anne Mulcahy became CEO and chairperson of Xerox in 2001, she was getting on a sinking ship with all the odds stacked against her.

Mulcahy replaced an ousted CEO who only lasted 13 months on the job, and Xerox was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Yet Mulcahy was able to transform Xerox by:

• Cutting annual costs and letting go of 22,000 employees
• Investing in research and development of new products and services
• Grooming new leaders prepared for the modern, hyper-competitive market

And, despite her critics, it worked. In 2000, Xerox lost $273 million. In 2001, when Mulcahy was hired, it had over $17 billion in debt. Yet by 2003 it had $91 million in profits.

Mulcahy is known for her direct management style. She spent the first 90 days on the job flying to various offices and listening to anyone who had a perspective on what was wrong with the company.

Instead of investing overseas to compete in markets where Xerox was losing, she cut those markets off completely. And instead of focusing on their most profitable products, she pivoted towards developing new technology.

Mulcahy’s abrupt ascent to leadership taught her the value of a long-term succession plan. The conversation about who would be her successor took place her first year as CEO.

By grooming candidates with the potential to lead the company early, she was able to give her successor, Ursula Burns, space and opportunity to prove herself. While she was CEO, Mulcahy gave Burns increasing amounts of responsibility. In 2009, Ursula Burns’ transition into the role was seamless, and she managed to keep the ship afloat during her tenure.

David Neeleman & JetBlue’s customer relations disaster

Everyone knows that customers are the lifeblood of any company.

But sometimes even the best companies mess up.

In February 2007, JetBlue dropped the customer relations ball.

Fortunately, the sincere and passionate apology of David Neeleman, former CEO and co-founder of JetBlue, may have saved the company.

A week of ice storms and freezing temperature on the east coast in February 2007 canceled many airlines’ flights, but only JetBlue had to stop their operations.

In total, 130,000 JetBlue passengers were severely inconvenienced and underserved. Some passengers were even stranded in planes on tarmacs for as long as 11 hours. It was utter chaos.

Other airlines smoothly dealt with the storm, so why did JetBlue fail so badly? Because they:

• Made decisions based on potential profit and not on customer comfort
• Unlike other airlines that canceled flights, JetBlue decided to wait out the storm to save money. 

• Grew too quickly and failed to build up the infrastructure to deal with emergencies

• JetBlue lacked proper communications systems, which left pilots and flight attendants in the dark, and had an undersized reservation system. 

• Stretched their employees thin to keep costs low
• Many employees weren’t trained to deal with weather emergencies.

Neeleman immediately took ownership of the disaster and apologized everywhere he could, including YouTube. He drafted a customer bill of rights to hold JetBlue financially accountable to their passengers.

He was still fired, but JetBlue was largely forgiven because of David’s accountability.

JetBlue has bounced back since their 2007 troubles and rank highly with customers. They proved to everyone that they were willing to work to regain trust. In 2012, JetBlue also had the lowest rates of canceled flights. Most recently in 2015, they ranked first in customer satisfactionamong passenger airlines.

Good leaders make hard choices

These three CEOs understood the importance of accountability and good long-term vision. They understood that customers are more likely to respect and forgive companies that apologize for their mistakes and take clear steps to rebuild trust

Ultimately, they were willing to do something unpopular in the short term because they knew that, in the long run, it would be the right thing for their company. I think all business leaders (myself included) can learn a lot from them.

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Three weeks ago, a highly-watched insurance startup called Lemonade opened for business in its first state, New York.

Its goal is to upend the property insurance industry with something it calls peer-to-peer insurance.

Lemonade didn't expect to sell any policies right away, and was delighted that within the first 48-hours it sold 142 of them, a 15% conversation rate of people who visited the site, CEO Daniel Schreiber tells Business Insider. (If it's added any more customers since then, Schreiber wouldn't tell us.)

Lemonade landed in the public eye in December after it raised a whopping $13 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital and a prominent Israeli VC, Aleph.

Schreiber says it was the largest startup seed round of 2015 and "it was the largest seed in the history of Sequoia."

"Insurance is much more capital intensive than Pokemon Go," he said. "You do need to have money."

More impressively, Schreiber and his cofounder, Shai Wininger, raised the cash without a demo app or even so much as a slide deck presentation. 

The meeting with Sequoia was "just two guys and an idea. It helps that we are two relatively seasoned entrepreneurs, not 19 years old. We had a credible thesis. We were thoughtful about the [business] model. It was talking it through," he said. "For Sequoia, the opportunity was pretty compelling."

Last summer, the company also landed another round of investment of an undisclosed amount from the venture fund of insurance company XL Group, a Lloyd's of London syndicate, who is now both a reinsurance partner and investor.

A 'social good'

There are a few reasons the VCs were so excited.

They liked the experience of the cofounders. Schreiber, who describes himself as a recovering lawyer, had been a general manager at SanDisk, then a president at wireless charging company PowerMat, the wireless charger for Samsung devices. 

Wininger was a cofounder at Fiverr, a big Israeli startup success story.

And they liked that they were going after the trillion-dollar property insurance industry.

"Insurance has been unspoiled by innovation in 100 years," Schreiber said, adding that the average age of the largest incumbents is 95 years old.  

On top of that, insurance is "very broken. It’s one of the least trusted sectors of the economy. It ranks very low in all customer satisfaction."

He added, "Most Americans don't believe they get paid what they deserve. Most consider insurance a necessary evil rather than a social good, even though its very much a social good. It's a community coming together to protect the less fortunate."

Turning insurance into charity

Lemonade sells rental insurance policies for as little as $5 a month and home insurance for as low as $35/month (your policy rates may vary). Its business is conducted entirely online via an app. There are no human insurance brokers. And Schreiber has no plans to use them — ever, he says.

Instead, a bot called Maya calculates your policy rates for you.

The VCs also liked that one of the previous online insurance companies, Esurance, sold to Allstate for $1 billion back in 2011.

But where most insurance companies pocket the money you pay as profits, less any claims paid, Lemonade takes a straight 20% cut of the policy rate as its share. And if you pay in more than your group uses as claims for the year, Lemonade donates the money to a charity of your choice (from your kid's school to an established charity).

"We don’t make money denying claims. If money is left over, we don’t want to be tempted and we don't want you do be tempted either. Consumers do embellish claims," Schreiber said.

So when they do pay a claim, they remind the policy holder that the leftover money is going to a charity the person cares about.

Since Lemonade is organized around charities, the "peer-to-peer" group, the people who are collectively paying into the pool from which your claims are drawn are others that are donating to that same charity. 

If there's not enough money in the kitty to pay for your claim, the company has some top-notch reinsurance partners, including Lloyd's of London, to cover it. This has gained Lemonade a top financial rating, even though it only publicly lays claim to less than 200 total customers so far.

"We’ve taken on the full-stack of insurance, becoming an insurance company, which is kind of nuts,"Schreiber says. "And we're doing it in New York, the toughest state. New York is the most highly regarded, exacting and regulated state for insurance. If you can pass muster with New York, hopefully we can move quickly in the remaining states."

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Israel is poised to launch a dedicated immigration visa for tech entrepreneurs "within weeks," according to Avi Hasson, the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Economy of the State of Israel.

Several hundred entrepreneurs from around the world will be welcomed to Israel — often dubbed the "Startup Nation"— under the new visa, said Hasson during an interview with Business Insider at his office in Tel Aviv on September 26.

"We need more people to come in and generate," said Hasson at the DLD Innovation conference the following day. "We're working with the Immigration Authority and the Ministry of Finance to set up a fast track to bring in entrepreneurs from abroad."

Israel's entrepreneur visa has been in the pipeline for more than a year, based on a report from The Jerusalem Post which was published last October.

Hasson added: "We will be launching a new programme in the next few weeks: a visa for entrepreneurs."

Before being handed a visa, the overseas entrepreneurs must first of all complete a stint at one of 12 accelerators and incubators in Israel. This will apparently help them to navigate their way around Israel's tech ecosystem, according to Hasson. "After that, you get a visa to set up company and work here for five years," he said.

Hasson, who is also keen to get more ultra orthodox Jews and women into tech in Israel, was unable to specify exactly how much the visas will cost but he said they should be less than $1,000 (£817).

But some in the Israeli tech ecosystem think that more entrepreneurs is the last thing that the country needs. Moshe Hogeg, cofounder and president of luxury smartphone company Sirin Labs, said the Israeli government should be focusing on trying to attract more highly-skilled engineers, adding that startups have to compete with Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook when it comes to hiring.

Hogeg said there's more of a need for an engineer visa than there is for an entrepreneur visa. "We're not building big companies, we're building small companies," he said. "The average exit in Israel is $30 million (£25 million). It's tricky. Right now engineers are very hard hard to get."

Israel also has 4,000 so-called "specialist visas" for highly skilled people across a variety of industries, with 1,000 of those available to people working in tech.

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NOW WATCH: The internet can’t decide whether this purse is white or blue

It's easy to tell the difference between a motorcycle and car, right? One has two wheels, one has four.

Except that there are now plenty of vehicles available that have three wheels.

There's the Can-Am Spyder, the Campagna Motors T-REX, and the Polaris Slingshot, to name a few. There's also the Elio, which recently paid a visit to out New York office.

Soon to join the party is the all-electric Arcimoto SRK (those aforementioned rides all run on gas), effectively a $12,000 tandem three-wheeler motorcycle that can be outfitted with a fully enclosed "cabin" or converted to delivery van duty.

I've samples the T-REX and the Slingshot, which run on gas, as does the Spyder. Obviously, the SRK is something different.

It might be the ultimate city vehicle. And we checked it out:

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Arcimoto swung by our Manhattan office for a curbside briefing and test drive. It was a lovely day. The Oregon-based startup has thus far taken about $8 million in funding and has worked through 8 prototypes of its vehicle.

They brought a pair of SRKs — one red and one blue.

That's Mark Frohnmayer, the founder. He's an entrepreneur who sold his previous company, GarageGames, before starting Arcimoto.

Sequoia, a multibillion-dollar venture capital firm and an early investor in the likes of Apple and Google, shut down a dedicated fund for startups in Israel at the end of last month.

Sequoia Israel — a Sequoia subsidiary that raised five funds to invest specifically in Israeli startups, with the last two funds in the region of $200 million (£154 million) — was folded into Sequoia's US operation in Silicon Valley. That means any money that was left in Sequoia Israel's funds will now be added to Sequoia's US funds. 

At the time, Business Insider reported that the closing of the fund could "raise a few eyebrows" in the so-called "Startup Nation" and lead to questions about the calibre of the young tech companies that are coming out of the country but it turns out that the move may have been motivated by different reasons.

Sequoia never publicly explained why it chose to shut down its Israel fund but a Jerusalem-based tech investor gave his take on the events.

Elie Wurtman, managing partner at early stage VC fund Pico, highlighted that a number of Silicon Valley venture capital companies have shut down their Israel funds or folded them into their larger US funds in recent years.

"I think it’s a cultural thing," said Wurtman, who used to invest millions of dollars through a dedicated Israel fund that was established by Benchmark Capital, only to be shut down several years later.

Nothing beats Bill Gurley

"I think the true benefit of the Silicon Valley funds are the Silicon Valley partners. I think it was doing a disservice to companies here [in Israel] to have the international brand without the international partners. I have a great network of people in the US and Europe and elsewhere. But it’s not the same as Bill Gurley sitting in Sand Hill Road."

Google's venture capital arm, Google Ventures, or GV as it now likes to be known, made a similar move last year when it folded its European fund into its US fund.

Setting up regional offices allows VC funds to "have the flare of the brand without the real deal," said Wurtman, before going on to say: "I think the local investors can better service the companies."

Sequoia and Benchmark will continue (and are continuing) to invest in Israel's new technology companies, despite not having dedicated funds anymore, according to Wurtman. "I don’t think that’s changed," he said. "I don’t think Silicon Valley or the East Coast funds have pulled out of Israel. It’s just that they’re not franchising their names any more. That’s a nuance which I think is important and probably healthier for the industry. My interpretation is it brings the relationships with the companies closer to Sand Hill Road."

Sequoia did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

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After leaving DocuSign in May, its longtime Chief Financial Officer Mike Dinsdale is joining DoorDash to jump on a hypergrowth startup once again. 

"I took five months off from May until now and really tried to think about which companies are going to be relevant for the next 20 years, how the world is changing, and where do I want to put myself next. DoorDash just stood out to me," Dinsdale said.

His hire comes at a key point for the three-year-old food delivery startup.

DoorDash says it is now cash-flow-positive in its early markets, but is reinvesting the money into continuing to grow against a burgeoning set of deep-pocketed competitors like Amazon and Uber. 

In the past year, it's launched six new markets and now covers more than 250 cities across the US.

However, that growth still needs to keep pace with a crowded delivery space, where competitors like Postmates, Amazon, Uber, Caviar, Eat24, and GrubHub all fight to deliver food. Often, that competition means discount codes and subsidizing delivery rates.

Dinsdale doesn't see his competition's cash piles as deterrents to DoorDash's growth even if Uber has raised close to $15 billion compared to DoorDash's total of $187 million.

"They have not raised billions to attack what we're doing. They've raised billions to build out their driver network," Dinsdale said. "At the end of the day, it comes down to the same prioritization and focus across the company and it's our sole focus to win in this market, and I think that's where we end up beating them. And by the way, we are beating them in most markets."

There's "no question" that DoorDash will go public in the future, but it won't be the next financing the company does, Dinsdale said. Instead, his job is to make sure DoorDash is well-funded and building the company in a way that it will become profitable naturally.

"Maybe one of the most important things for businesses like this is just the ability to raise money, and I raised over $500 million at DocuSign over four rounds," Dinsdale said. "The ability to do that is important in a CFO for companies that are building out marketplaces. You have a curve that becomes profitable over time but certainly breaking into markets does cost money and as does continuing to develop products."

SEE ALSO: Airbnb's head of global operations has left the company

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It’s looking more and more like mobile apps have peaked. Yes, new hits spring up every now and then, and yes, some of them have become critical aspects of the average person's life. But a few familiar names have a stranglehold over both downloads and revenue, and the amount of time people spend using those apps is stagnant.

Things usually change, but for now, most people simply buy a new phone, download the usual suspects (with maybe a few games), then call it a day.

This chart from Statista further suggests the app market has cooled. Citing recent research from CB Insights, it shows how the percentage of new, venture capital-backed startups using the word “app” in their company descriptions has steadily declined over the past three years. It’s still the top keyword overall, but it’s stopped growing.

Now, this isn’t a 1:1 thing. Many of these startups still do make apps. But as CB Insights suggests, those apps themselves aren’t necessarily the point — they’re just an expected part of any modern business.

So what could be the next big boom? Well, CB Insights’ data seems to agree with Google and Facebook: There’s been a notable rise in companies interested in “machine learning,” “artificial intelligence,” and “virtual reality.”

SEE ALSO: Sony is dependent on PlayStation, and that’s why it’s so hopeful for its new VR headset

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Travel booking site Skyscanner, arguably Scotland's biggest and best-known tech startup, just got some fairly major competition from Silicon Valley.

Google is updating its little-known Google Flights service over the next few weeks so that it tells you when you should book in order to get the cheapest fare, The Telegraph reports.

After the update has been rolled out, a notification will be displayed on Google Flights results letting customers know how likely it is that the flight prices will change in the coming days. More information on how much flights are likely to rise can be obtained by tapping the notification.

The update will come in particularly useful for anyone that's booking flights in the coming weeks, according to The Telegraph. However, those that want to keep an eye on flight prices over a longer time period can set up email alerts that will inform them when prices are expected to change.

Google is basing its pricing on data from previous years so it won't be 100% accurate but it'll still give you a rough idea of what to expect.

The move is a deliberate attempt by Google to take on smaller businesses like Kayak and Scotland's Skyscanner, which raised £128 million in January to fuel its expansion around the world and help it to take on larger rivals.

The financing made Skyscanner one of only two Scottish "unicorns," which is the term given to a tech company when its valuation passes the $1 billion mark. The other Scottish unicorn is FanDuel— a fantasy sports platform that allows you to create fantasy teams and enter them into leagues where you can win cash prizes.

At the time of the financing, Skyscanner CEO and cofounder Gareth Williams, said: "Skyscanner has enjoyed high double-digit growth rates for some years now, and has been profitable since 2009.

"This success is thanks to our 1,200 direct partner relationships, the trust of the 50 million travellers who use us every month, our technology and the dedication of our teams to deliver the best experience for travellers possible. This financing round and our recent new hires allow us to build fantastic further tools for travellers."

When Business Insider asked Skyscanner if it offers anything similar, a spokeswoman for the company said: "We do, in two ways. We have a Price Alert feature, which alerts to price drops and increases on a particular chosen route. We also do an annual Best Time to Book campaign – there’s a real trend to when flights are cheapest. Details here."

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For $9.99 per month — less than one museum ticket — New York startup Electric Objects wants to beam art from galleries and museums into your living room.

The company announced its newest product, a 23-inch digital canvas called the EO2, on October 18. The device is designed to show static or animated artwork on a 1080p matte screen, which can be controlled from your smartphone or desktop. The screen, which is surrounded by an aluminum frame that's 21.75 inches tall by 12.9 inches wide, retails for $299.

The EO2 connects to your home Wi-Fi network, and comes with a connected app that lets owners choose which images to display. They can upload their own images, or browse an array of offerings and user-submitted art playlists on Electric Objects' platform. From there, they can freely switch between images as desired or put them in a slideshow rotation. Call it a Chromecast for art.

Electric Objects founder Jake Levine tells Business Insider that he hopes the device will make art more accessible to people who either don't go to museums or are sometimes unsatisfied with the experience. While there's value in seeing art in person, there's no comparable digital analogue.

"The connection between artist and viewer has escaped the art world for the last 10 years while every other industry has been transformed by the internet," he says. Electric Objects wants to erase that gap by forging a connection from creators to viewers on its platform.

"We have artists who live in Brooklyn and produce something, and within minutes it's up on the wall on someone's kitchen in London," Levine says.

Electric Objects' newest feature is an optional $9.99-a-month "art discovery service" called Art Club, which the company bills as a thoughtfully curated series that's updated every week. The subscription gives users access to work from museum collections — Electric Objects gives access to free pieces from five museums, including LACMA, the National Gallery of Art, and the Getty — and exclusive original artwork. The company has an ongoing program that commissions artists to create series of five or six works for the platform. In the future, Electric Objects also plans to provide access to live-streamed performance art shows or painting sessions. 

This isn't far from Netflix's model — the company also offers subscribers access to a wide array of content for a monthly fee, and pays studios to make original creative works exclusively for the platform.

Levine says his customers have been pleased with how seamlessly the viewing experience translates from gallery to home. One customer told him that she and her husband and kids were taking turns displaying different artworks and reading about them.

"That should be a museum director's dream," Levine says, "to be able to take that experience and educational mission of the organization and take it into the daily lives of their members. And it's thrilling to see that happen."

As a display, the EO2's functionality isn't much different than, say, a large-scale digital picture frame that you can order on Amazon for a similar price. But the relative cheapness of the EO2 for its size beats out the competition. Meural and Blackdove offer similar digital canvases with their own artist networks, but theirs are bigger and pricier — 32 x 21 inches for $595 and 42.4 x 24.6 inches for $999 respectively.

But at $299, Electric Objects could be an easy, affordable way to put a rotating art gallery inside your home.

SEE ALSO: 7 science-backed reasons you should make art, even if you're bad at it

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Venture capitalists and corporates aren't the only ones funding new tech startups as they look to become the next Google or Facebook.

High net worth individuals and angel investors are also ploughing millions of dollars into new ideas in the hope that one day they'll become billion dollar businesses.

Many of those individuals happen to be famous, and analysts at research firm CB Insights have rounded up the 22 most active celebrity investors for a new list that was published Wednesday.

Approximately half of the individuals on the list hail from the music industry, while others have made a name for themselves in TV and movies, sports, or fashion. Those on the list have backed some big names including the likes of Spotify, Airbnb, Box, and Lyft.

In order to create the list, CB Insights looked at celebrity startup investment data going back to 2007.

22. Snoop Dogg has backed cannabis startups FunkSac and Eaze.

21. "Iron Man" star Robert Downey Jr has put money into subscription box service Loot Crate and Masterclass, a site that offers interactive video courses taught by big names including athletes, actors, and singers.

20. Pop star Justin Bieber has put money into music streaming service Spotify and selfie app Shots.

Debbie Wosskow, the CEO of home sharing platform Love Home Swap, and Anna Jones, the former CEO of publisher Hearst Magazines UK, are raising a £10 million venture capital fund to invest in female entrepreneurs in the UK.

The duo announced their new AllBright fund on Monday, saying it will help to address the funding gap that currently exists between male and female led companies.

Wosskow told Business Insider that a number of high net worth individuals and angels have already contributed towards the £10 million fund but was unable to provide an exact figure. The company hopes to make up the remainder from other limited partners (LPs) between now and the end of the year.

In April, analysts at tech research firm CrunchBase found that just 10% of the world's VC money currently goes to female founders.

In addition to the VC fund, AllBright is launching a crowdfunding platform in the next two weeks so members of the public can back female-founded companies, with investments of £100 and upwards. There will also be an "AllBright Academy" at some stage, which will provide female founders with online courses and mentoring sessions.

"The VC fund alone doesn't cut it because you can't get the scale, no matter how big the fund is," said Wosskow, who is chairman of AllBright. "But the fund, plus the crowd, and the academy will do it."

Wosskow, an angel investor herself that has backed the likes of Kate Unsworth's smart jewellery firm Vinaya, was keen to stress AllBright is for companies of all shapes and sizes, not just those in tech.

"This isn’t about tech," she said. "The statistics on women-led business are just so crap. We felt like we needed to do something to change the conversation."

Wosskow, who was tasked by the UK government with writing a report on the sharing economy in the UK, was also keen to highlight that AllBright isn't "anti-men," pointing to several male employees on the AllBright team.

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Multi-billion dollar startup Magic Leap, which is building a cutting-edge augmented reality headset, is currently in a legal battle with the engineer who started its first Silicon Valley office.

Court filings reveal new secrets about the company, including a west coast software team in disarray, insufficient hardware for testing, and a secret skunkworks team devoted to getting patents and designing new prototypes — before its first product has even hit the market.

The company believes that Adrian Kaehler and Gary Bradski, two VPs at Magic Leap, tried to rip off its technology and talent to start a new robotics startup. 

Kaehler and Bradski, who sued the company for wrongful termination earlier this year, say that Magic Leap unfairly robbed them of their shares in Magic Leap and broke their employment contracts.

Magic Leap countered by suing the pair for misappropriation of trade secrets in Northern California District Court. 

While the suit could soon be settled — a settlement conference is scheduled for Friday — documents and emails filed in the case reveal a major disconnect between the Florida-based Magic Leap and its satellite offices in Silicon Valley. 

A $4.5 billion startup

Magic Leap is one of the most mysterious and hyped startups in tech.

The company has raised a massive amount of venture money — $1.39 billion — from nearly every top technology investor, including Google, Alibaba, KPCB, and Andreessen Horowitz. It has not yet shipped a product, and people who have tried the prototypes are required to sign legal documents that prevent them from discussing them.

Magic Leap's still unrevealed product will be a set of AR glasses, according to testimony in the lawsuit. The glasses will be attached to a smartphone-sized computer, according to a source with knowledge of Magic Leap's product. 

The highly anticipated augmented reality glasses will superimpose computer images into the real world. (As opposed to virtual reality, which immerses the viewer in a computer-generated world.)

The company was reportedly valued at $4.5 billion in February. 

Magic Leap declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Kaehler declined to comment through his attorney. Bradski could not be immediately reached. 

Disgruntled employees

Earlier this year, Bradski told Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz that he wanted to form a new startup focusing on cutting-edge robotics with his friend Kaehler, and planned to try to hire Magic Leap employees from its West Coast office. Then in May, the pair found they were no longer Magic Leap employees — or even advisors — and their access to email was cut off.

Then came the dueling lawsuits. 

Magic Leap paints Bradski and Kaehler, who worked on software for Magic Leap, as disgruntled employees, even producing an email that Bradski sent to Kaehler in August 2015 from his Magic Leap work email address: 

“Like Jobs, R has a reality distortion field. Unlike Jobs, R’s is more like a bad high, just leaves you feeling tired with a vague headache in the morning and is not productive."

In this note, R likely refers to Rony Abovitz, the CEO of Magic Leap, and compares him unfavorably to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was known for being difficult to work with. 

Abovitz says that Bradski and Kaehler were planning to start their startup for a year before they quit. "Dr. Bradski did not tell me what his future plans were going to be, and led me to believe that he was excited about being at Magic Leap," Abovitz wrote. 

Magic Leap's lawyer, David Lundmark, implies that Bradski wanted more power in the company, and was primarily worried about his personal income, even though he personally chose the location for the company's Mountain View and Sunnyvale offices. 

"Dr. Bradski told me more than once that he did not have confidence in the leadership or processes of Magic Leap," Lundmark wrote. "Dr. Bradski expressed to me a lack of confidence in the proposition that certain compensation-related milestones, such as a secondary offering and bonus program, were going to happen in a timely manner."

He notes that when Kaehler received his bonuses and liquidated stock in a secondary offering, he put a sticky note on his monitor that said "gone for two weeks." 

Sunshine state of mind

Magic Leap is unusual among high-value tech startups because it's based in Plantation, Florida, where its CEO, Rony Abovitz, grew up and lives. Most tech startups are concentrated in Silicon Valley, New York, or a handful of other tech hubs like Boston, Seattle, or Austin, Texas.

Bradski had a good reputation before joining Magic Leap — he founded OpenCV, an open-source computer vision library in wide use, and previously founded a robotics startup that was bought by Google. He founded the West Coast office for Magic Leap in 2013, growing it to over 100 employees.

According to Bradski's testimony, as well as other sources close to the company, the Florida location has made it hard to recruit and retain software talent, especially in artificial intelligence. Bradski claims he had to promise hires not to move them to Florida.

"It was difficult to recruit top people in the deep net field to Magic Leap, since everyone external wanted to live in New York or Silicon Valley, but Magic Leap's base of operations is in Florida," Bradski testified in writing. "We lost several deep net hires that I thought would be key leaders because of this." One of those hires ended up at Google Brain, Google's artificial intelligence research group, according to the court documents.

Once the Silicon Valley office was established, there was plenty of friction between it and headquarters.

"What is not recognized ... is just how many hours I spent in 'worker therapy' with so many employees who expressed deep dissatisfaction with the 'us v. them' mentality that existed in the way the Florida executives tried to absentee manage the California talent," Kaehler wrote in testimony. 

"From my familiarity with the spectrum of engineering work being done in the company, the majority of the best work was being done on the West Coast," he continued. 

"I spent a lot of time dealing with convincing disgruntled and frustrated employees to stay," Bradski wrote. One carrot that he used was a Magic Leap-scheduled secondary market stock buy, which would allow employees to turn their options into cash. 

In an private email to an investor uncovered by Magic Leap, Bradski explains that he will try to help hire and retain employees at the Mountain View office, but "hell, many are leaving anyhow." 

Sources also tell Business Insider that Abovitz's attention is primarily focused on Florida operations. 

So why is Magic Leap based in Florida instead of Silicon Valley?

One theory, posited by Kaehler: "It seemed to me and was expressed to me by many employees in various language that the East Coast operation existed for the pleasure of senior people who preferred to live in that [income] tax-free state," he wrote in testimony seen by Business Insider. 

Not enough glasses 

Access to Magic Leap's glasses is closely controlled, and testers must sign a legal non-disclosure agreement promising not to talk about them before they can get a demo of how they work.

Magic Leap employees in California don't have enough prototypes to do their work, according to the suit. 

"Through Summer 2014, Magic Leap's actual hardware team based in Florida seemed to be having difficulties making AR headsets for use by Magic Leap personnel," Bradski wrote.

He says his personal project could not get started until the company "built enough of its AR glasses for most employees to regularly use them day-to-day."

"We were hardware starved in Magic Leap West until the day I left," he writes, and says that at one point he asked Florida for "30-50 more headsets" to get "common headset usage started" at Magic Leap's West Coast office.

"This hardware has still not arrived as far as I know," he wrote. In a legal filing, Abovitz says that Magic Leap is completing its manufacturing plant. 

A secret skunkworks team

Last fall, Magic Leap assigned Bradski to a new skunkworks team.

Other leaders of the "N+1" team include Brian Schowengerdt, founder and Chief Science Officer, and Neal Stephenson, famous sci-fi author and chief futurist at Magic Leap.

We previously reported that Stephenson and Schowengerdt are not located at the company's Florida headquarters, and work out of a satellite office in Seattle.

"Magic Leap’s N+1 projects look to 'invent the future,' by developing the future applications of Magic Leap’s technology," Abovitz wrote. 

According to an email sent by Abovitz, the N+1 team was focused on filing patents, creating prototypes, and potentially publishing scientific papers. 

However, Bradski saw the new assignment as something of a demotion, and he complains in the suit that he did not have enough staff underneath him to do these special projects.

Before he left, Bradski focused on building a deep learning team as well as working on embedded hardware for computer vision. 

A settlement conference between the two former Magic Leap VPs and the company is scheduled for later this week. 

Know anything about Magic Leap? Email the author at kleswing@businessinsider.com. Anonymity guaranteed.

SEE ALSO: Magic Leap is so stealthy that its engineers use a secret code for their notes

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Priya Guha, a former representative for the UK government, has been appointed as the leader of a new London startup space.

Guha, who was previously British Consul General in San Francisco, will head up the RocketSpace tech campus in Angel, which is due to open in Spring 2017.

Founded in the US in 2011, RocketSpace has accommodated more than 1,000 tech companies since it was born, including 17 unicorns — the term given to tech companies when their valuation exceeds $1 billion (£820 million).

Uber, for example, moved into RocketSpace's San Francisco building a month after it opened when the taxi-hailing company had just eight employees. European tech companies like Spotify, Blippar, and SuperCell have also done stints at RocketSpace.

"The UK has such a great and diverse tech ecosystem, building on traditional strengths like financial services, cutting-edge research from the UK's top universities and a forward looking entrepreneurial culture," Guha told Business Insider. "Having worked for five years to support the growth of UK tech from Silicon Valley, it is a privilege to be able to continue that important work from this side of the Atlantic."

The RocketSpace London campus will be able to accommodate 1,500 members and startups will be able to grow their teams to 100 people before they're asked to move out and into their own office. RocketSpace is yet to decide how much it will charge members. 

In her role, Guha will aim to "plug UK startups into the RocketSpace ecosystem" and bridge the gap between the UK and Silicon Valley to support members' international growth.

Duncan Logan, founder and CEO of RocketSpace, said in a statement: "Priya has a tremendous track record working with technology companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Her cross-border experience and deep relationships make Priya a valuable leader and advocate for our members as we join one of the world’s leading tech ecosystems."

Guha served as a British diplomat for 20 years across India, Spain and the U.S. She became Britain’s first female Consul General to San Francisco when she was appointed in 2011.

Eileen Burbidge, partner at Passion Capital and chair of Tech City UK, added: "In her diplomatic career, Priya was a champion for Britain, for British business, for technology, and for entrepreneurs. This is a brilliant appointment by RocketSpace, and I've no doubt that Priya will be a great advocate for the organisation and its members."

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The future of London startup DripApp, which allows people to pay for discounted drinks in certain London coffee shops via an app, hangs in the balance after easyJet founder Sir Stellios Haji-Ioannou withdrew an investment offer.

The aviation mogul was preparing to invest up to £500,000 in DripApp at a £2 million valuation, according to Ruben Grigri, the cofounder of DripApp, which takes a commission when any of its 30,000 users places a drinks order through its mobile app.

But Grigri told Business Insider on Tuesday that the billionaire withdrew his investment offer after the UK voted to leave the EU — a decision that cost easyJet £40 million in four weeks due to the crashing pound.

Haji-Ioannou was initially willing to invest the full £500,000 that DripApp needed if the company agreed to some sort of rebrand that brought DripApp closer to easyJet's own brand, according to Grigri. That is likely to have involved adopting easyJet's distinctive orange in DripApp and possibly renaming the startup to "easyCoffee" or "easy" something else, which DripApp wasn't too keen on. Haji-Ioannou was also willing to invest £250,000 in DripApp if it refused to rebrand.

"On the day of the Brexit, easyJet lost 42% of its valuation," said Grigri, who says he met Haji-Ioannou on three separate occasions, including once at his home in Monaco. "So I said: 'Ok it’s not a good moment to chase him.' So we didn’t chase him for one or two weeks, because I knew he was very busy.

"After the Brexit, he didn’t want too much conversation. He said: "OK I’m happy to invest but you have to go to the easy brand. I can’t go to a lot of negotiation because I’m very busy right now.' So the conversation went very cold. He was like you accept this or you don’t. We declined it."

After rejecting the offer, DripApp attempted to raise £200,000 on crowdfunding platform Seeders but it terminated the campaign after just three days because there wasn't enough interest. "It wasn’t a good idea to be honest," said the French entrepreneur.

In contrast to companies like YPlan, which went through $37 million (£30 million) before selling to Time Out for less than £2 million, DripApp hasn't spent that much money. "We only raised £100,000 more than a year ago and we [the cofounders] personally invested £10,000 each so we spent £120,000," said Grigri. "So it’s not that bad to be honest."

Spelling out one of DripApp's main issues, Grigri said: "A lot of people are using the app to discover coffee shops but they’re not paying [for drinks with it]."

In a bid to cut costs, the startup has moved out of a WeWork coworking space and there are just a handful of people working on the app full time.

Now DripApp is looking for potential buyers and there are two or three interested parties, according to Grigri.

"We would love to pursue the app but we really need some money," said Grigri. "We were planning to add food items so you could get like a croissant or something at the same time but we need the money to pay the developer.

But the founders of the company aren't giving up on coffee altogether. They've built a website called DripHub, which is targeted at coffee shop owners. The website, which launched last Friday, sells coffee, cakes, and pastries from reputable brands, as well as things like cups, payment terminals, and iZettle devices.

A spokesman at EasyGroup, the holding company controlling the "easy" group of companies, said: "We don’t comment on investment discussions."

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Early Metrics wants to be the Moody's or Standard & Poor's of the startup world.

The company claims to be the world's first ratings agency for startups. But unlike the global players it aspires to be, Early Metrics does not rate the credit-worthiness of businesses but instead looks at its growth potential, rating the business out of 100.

CEO and cofounder Antoine Bascheira told Business Insider at Early Metric's London office that it assess startups across 50 criteria centered around 3 key pillars: the founding team, the core technology, and the size of the market it's addressing. The test criteria were drawn up with help from tech experts, psychologists, and investors.

Bascheira says: "If you are the startup side, it's a free service, we spend 20 hours on your company and we give you free feedback on what are the areas you have overscored or underscored on in comparison to the wider industry."

Early Metrics, founded 2 years ago, has rated over 700 startups across 16 industries are grades startups against their peers to give them an idea of where they rank.

Bascheira says: "You've got this kind of unbiased free feedback that is very, very valuable in an ecosystem where everyone is telling you you're great — your family, your friends — or you're crap — more the VC and investors. You've got most of the time very contrasting and biased feedback.

"For the entrepreneur, it's more valuable to have feedback from someone who has no interest in your company, if you succeed or fail that is not our problem. 95% of companies use [the Early Metrics rating] as the second page of their investment deck for example or when they send a commercial proposal to a large corporate."

But Early Metrics service is not really for entrepreneurs — it is for businesses.

The idea was sparked by the realisation that more and more big corporates were looking to either invest in or partner with innovative new startups to make sure they weren't overtaken by the pace of change in the technology market.

Early Metrics works with big names including HSBC, Santander, Visa, Johnson and Johnson, Renault, and Airbus.

Bascheira says: "They come to us and say look we have discovered Company X, we are going to introduce you because we want you to rate Company X because we want to decide whether or not we move forward. It's more or less due diligence.

"The second model is: HSBC tells us we are interested in, for example, blockchain companies, payment, asset management, insurtech — they give us their innovation criteria and every month we give them companies rated for them and that are relevant. In that instance, we are giving them very qualified deal flow."

It's a combination of hard skills but also soft skills [that makes a good startup].

Early Metrics charges upwards of £1,500 for the individual ratings services and upwards of £2.500 a month for its deal flow service. 90% of its more than 100 clients have both, Bascheira says.

So how does a startup do well on the Early Metrics test to impress the head of innovation at, say, HSBC or Visa? Baschiera says: "What has been odd is to find that it's a combination of hard skills but also soft skills [that makes a good startup].

"Of course, technical background, previous experience, education are key points, but if you don't have soft skills, such as a capacity to self-asses, capacity to convince, compatibility between the skills of the founders — all these elements that we call "weak signals" are key to the success of a team. This is where we had to work with not only with technical people but also psychologists and HR to say how do we assess the capacity to self-assess?

"An entrepreneur that thinks he is always right and thinks the market is just bad, this is a key bad point and I don't know one VC who is ready to invest in an entrepreneur who will not change his value proposition."

Early Metrics started in Paris (Baschiera and cofounder Sébastien Paillet are French) but expanded to London relatively quickly. The company recently opened an office in Israel to help source deal flow — corporate clients want an international overview, Baschiera says.

"If you want access to the Israeli ecosystem, you need to be there," Baschiera says. "If you don't have good connections, you can't penetrate the market."

Given that Early Metrics are surveying so much of the startup market in London, has Baschiera noticed any discernible impact from the Brexit vote so far?

"Brexit, it's very much a macroevent," he says. "Startups at the first stage of their life are generally operating in a microenvironment. I don't see a strong impact in the short-term.

"The issues are one, the pound, which is very bad. [And] for some companies in fintech — all those in wealth management and asset management that rely on passporting — they can be hit if the UK loses financial passporting. Of course, they want to move to Paris, or Dublin, or wherever they can still do these types of activities. But it's just for these types of companies I think."

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