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These 16 companies just became the first unicorns of 2018 by landing valuations of $1 billion or more

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MedMen

Amid the tech landscape, unicorns are few and far between.

Last year, CB Insights tallied the odds of becoming a unicorn  a company valued at $1 billion or more  at under 1%. 

But already, within the first few months of 2018, a total of 16 companies have overcome those odds and crossed the billion-dollar valuation mark. These companies, which were originally rounded up in a recent report by Pitchbook, are working to transform industries like transportation, medicine, entertainment, data analysis, and farming. 

While most of the companies to reach unicorn status are located within the US, China was a notable contender with four companies making the list, and Romania celebrated its first unicorn to date, a robotic automation company called UI Path. 

Here's the full roundup of 2018's freshly-minted unicorns:

Canva is an Australian company that provides graphic designers with an intuitive platform.

Year founded: 2012

Total raised: $96 million

Currently valued at: $1 billion

What it does: Canva complements graphic design projects with easy-to-use design software and a comprehensive selection of graphic elements like stock photos and fonts.

 

 



The Chinese company Meicai created an app that connects farmers to restaurants.

Year founded: 2014

Total raised: $477 million

Currently valued at: $2.8 billion

What it does: Meicai, which translates to "buy vegetables," runs its application on inexpensive cellphones so that Chinese farmers can distribute fresh produce to restaurants in their area.

 



Caocao Zhuanche is a Chinese-based ride-share company that operates a fleet of electric and hybrid cars in China.

Year founded: 2015

Total raised: $380 million

Currently valued at: $1.6 billion

What it does: Caocao has been fighting its way into China's colossal ride-share market. The company offers taxi hailing services, car rental services, and private car touring options. 

 



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A star Silicon Valley investor who sold her startup for $200 million reveals the jarring tactic she had to use to make men pay attention to her pitches

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Jess Lee

  • Sequoia Capital investing partner Jess Lee said that she used an effective tactic to command investors' attention when she was raising capital for her former company, Polyvore.
  • The tactic involved startling all the men at the beginning of pitch meetings by slamming a stack of magazines down loudly on the desk.
  • Along with a group of female founders and investors, Lee is offering practical guidance to female entrepreneurs through the project Female Founder Office Hours.  
  • One of Lee's top tips to female entrepreneuers is to enter their pitch meetings with confidence. 

Before Jess Lee became the first female investing partner at Sequoia Capital, she was a successful entrepreneur. Lee cofounded Polyvore, a fashion e-commerce company that was acquired by Yahoo for about $200 million.

But in Polyvore's early days, Lee struggled to raise money for it. 

Lee would often find herself walking into a room full of disinterested male investors. In order to capture their attention and shake her nerves, she began her pitch meetings with a jarring tactic.

In an interview with Business Insider, Lee said that she would hold a stack of Vogue magazines tucked under her arm. Without warning, she'd slam them down on the table and announce: "There is $100 million worth of advertising in these magazines."

She'd pause, then continue, "Now, imagine that on the internet."

When it comes to raising capital, making an impression in a board meeting filled with potential investors can be integral to a company's success. 

Laurel Touby, a New York-based entrepreneur and managing partner at Supernode Ventures, said that commanding a room is key to a successful pitch. However, Touby said many female founders she meets with often lack confidence in these situations. 

"Too often, a woman will walk into the room and her body language will detract from her presentation," said Touby. "She'll speak softly or mumble, or she won't express herself as someone who is expected to be heard and listened to."

Now that she's an investor, Touby admits a founder's demeanor often has a direct effect on her interest in investing in their company.

"Unfortunately, I've only invested in a few female-founded companies," said Touby. "I feel turned off when a founder doesn't seem forceful. Being too gentle is a strike against anyone, whether you're a woman or a man, particularly when you're forcing your way into someone's pocketbook."

Female Founder Office Hours

Another founder, Binti CEO Felicia Curcuru, said she's used the same theatrical entrance Lee employed when walking into pitch meetings in the past. Binti specializes in developing software for foster care programs.

"When I was getting capital for a seed round, I'd walk into the room, and again and again, it would be filled with all male investors," Curcuru told Business Insider. "I wanted to show them that I was in charge, so I brought a prop along."

Curcuru's prop was a massive book filled with pages and pages of foster care and adoption paper work.

"I wanted to show investors how terrible the current process for foster care and adoption is," said Curcuru. 

As she entered the room, Curcuru would hurl the book down on the table and announce,"This is what the current process for adoption and foster care is right now."

Not only did Curcuru end up raising capital, but she found that her forceful entrance had a memorable impact. "Even people who hadn't sat in on the round would know who I was," she said. "They'd say, 'Oh, you're the girl that slammed the binder.' It made an impression."

Now, Cucuru and Lee are teaming up to offer this kind of practical advice to other female startup founders. The project, called Female Founder Office Hours, pairs women with mentors who can offer guidance on how to build and manage a company, raise capital, and create an effective pitchdeck. 

Since November, Lee said the project has received interest from close to 1,500 women.  While the amount of interest has been overwhelming, Lee said it didn't surprise her. 

"I'm a former female founder, and so, no, I'm not surprised," said Lee. "Starting a company is so hard and there's so much inside baseball knowledge on how to fundraise that I wasn't surprised people were crying out for that kind of help."

One of the project's primary goals is to increase the percentage of venture capital backing for female founders by 10%, said Lee. On Thursday, Female Founder Office Hours announced the addition of more than 120 female founders to its resource base. The group includes CEOs and founders from companies like Glossier, Brandless, Houzz, Shippo, and Stitch Fix who will help guide female founders.

Entering a room with confidence is among the top tips Lee said she offers to new founders. Another piece of advice Lee emphasizes is the importance of female founders surrounding themselves with like-minded women.

"It's so important to have a community of founders for empathy and social support," said Lee.

"We need to get more women out there. Women are perfectly capable of building great companies, and we can get there by helping each other."

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NOW WATCH: Google, Apple, and Amazon are in a war that no one will win

8 ‘Shark Tank’ companies that didn’t land a deal but are still doing incredibly well

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Throughout its nine seasons, the show "Shark Tank" has averaged four to nine million viewers. It's the biggest public platform that an entrepreneur could hope for, and just a 10-minute pitch on the show can translate to huge sales. Household names like the Scrub Daddy and Tipsy Elves all got their start after successfully striking deals on the show, but even companies that walked away without deals have done well, if not better than companies that did. 

The founders of these companies took their "Shark Tank" rejections in stride, using them as learning lessons to nonetheless make millions in sales. Money from the judges would've been nice, but it turns out the national exposure can be just as valuable. 

Check out the 8 companies that you'll be surprised didn't get deals on "Shark Tank" 

The Bouqs Co.

Online flower delivery service The Bouqs Co. left the Tank in 2014 without an investment, but Robert Herjavec kept them in mind three years later when he was planning the flowers for his wedding. Herjavec eventually ended up investing after getting a firsthand glimpse into the process behind creating the beautiful arrangements. Co-founder and CEO John Tabis said that there were several days in 2017 when the company sold $1 million in flowers in a day. It's now valued at $43.1 million. 

Shop flower bouquets at The Bouqs Co.



Ring

This smart video doorbell gives homeowners peace of mind about who's at their door, whether they're at home or not. When Ring founder Jamie Siminoff appeared on the show, he valued his company, then called DoorBot, at $7 million.

Since then, it's counted prominent investors like Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers,Qualcomm Ventures, Goldman Sachsand Richard Branson among its supporters. Most recently, Amazon bought Ring in a deal worth over $1 billion, a testament to its versatile capabilities beyond home security.

Ring Wi-Fi Enabled Video Doorbell in Satin Nickel, $134.99, available at Amazon



Kodiak Cakes

The co-founder and COO of Kodiak Cakes, a natural food brand that makes whole grain, protein-rich breakfast options, went on the show seeking a $500,000 investment for 10% of their business. Though the Sharks all liked the taste and nutritional benefits of these pancake mixes, none of them agreed with the valuation. 

Now, it's the fastest-growing pancake mix brand in the US, growing 80% year-on-year and approaching $100 million in revenue. 

Kodiak Cakes Power Cakes Pancake, Flapjack and Waffle Mix (3-Pack), $14.97, available at Amazon

Kodiak Cakes Power Cakes Unleashed Flapjack On the Go Baking Mix (12-Count), $20, available at Amazon

 



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Silicon Valley's newest investor is a guy who raised $3 million to start ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Capital — named after the shrugging emoji tattooed on his wrist

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Niv Dror

  • AngelList's former head of marketing Niv Dror has launched his own $3 million venture capital fund called Shrug Capital, stylized as  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Capital.
  • The fund has received investment from influential Silicon Valley VCs like Founders Fund's Cyan Banister and Andreessen-Horowitz partners Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon.
  • Dror told Business Insider that the shrug emoticon, which he had tattooed on his left wrist two years ago, is among his favorite keyboard shortcut responses.


In October 2016, Niv Dror  then an editor for product editorial site Product Hunt  tattooed the shrug emoticon onto his left wrist. Less than two years later, Dror has left his position as head of marketing at AngelList to start his own venture capital fund. Like Dror's tattoo, the fund's name draws inspiration from the shrugging emoticon's conjectural figure.

Dror's $3 million fund, called Shrug Capital — also stylized as ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Capital — has attracted interest from several influential Silicon Valley VCs, including Cyan Banister of Founders Fund and Andreessen-Horowitz partners Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon.

In an interview with Business Insider, Dror said that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Capital all started from a tweet he posted last November. "If I ever raise a venture fund I'm calling it:  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯," Dror wrote at the time.

Managing director of Brainard Capital, Owen Brainard, tweeted back: "First step to raising a venture fund is saying 'If I ever raise a venture fund...'" 

Dror said that Brainard's response planted the first inkling of possibility in his mind that he could raise his own fund. "I've always wanted to be a venture capitalist," said Dror. "But I never considered that I could raise my own fund." 

Two months after first tweeting about the idea, Dror said he gave Brainard a call to ask if he'd like to invest in Shrug Capital. Brainard agreed, becoming the fund's very first investor.

Dror said the plan is to create a portfolio of consumer-based companies that he's excited to "talk about for more than an hour with a non-tech audience." Dror said that his experience working with tech products at companies like Product Hunt and Meerkat provides him with insight into consumer-focused startups. 

Dror's vision for the fund solidified over a recent deal with gameshow trivia app HQ Trivia. "I wanted to invest any amount in HQ," said Dror. "I knew that if I could get into HQ, it would help me raise the fund and get access to competitive deals."

As for the inspiration behind the firm's name, Dror said that the shrug emoticon has long been his go-to keyboard shortcut response. "I use the shrug emoticon very often," said Dror. "It's much easier than taking a position."

Despite being named after a doubtful emoticon, Dror said that his fund means serious business, and that the name has received positive feedback from investors.

"Founders love it," Dror said. "I got an email from a founder a few days ago who said, 'I can't wait to have a shrug emoticon on the cap table.'"

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NOW WATCH: The top 10 games coming in 2018

4 direct-to-consumer kitchen startups that are changing the way we shop for cookware and knives

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material main

Cooking is not a skill that we simply enter the world knowing. We gain the know-how from a variety of sources — cookbooks, classes, parents, friends, cooking shows — but it can still be complex and confusing.

In a similar way, that's how most of us shop for and use cookware: bumbling around somewhat nervously, trying to make sense of the different materials and uses, and collecting tools from parents and roommates that have seen countless kitchens before our own. Sure, you can throw out your old pots and pans and start from scratch, but if you want high-quality, well-constructed cookware, you often have to pay up first, spending hundreds of dollars on name brands. 

You're not alone in these struggles, and just in the past few years, new companies have emerged to lend you a helping hand in the kitchen — many offering products for half the price of traditional top brands.

They all understand that the joys of food, cooking, and eating become even sweeter when your kitchenware lasts a lifetime but doesn't take a lifetime to pay off. Made with the best materials and processes available, these knives, pots, pans, and tools perform impressively well and are perfect for passionate home cooks like you. 

If you're looking to upgrade your kitchen tools and cookware without breaking the bank, look no further than these 4 new direct-to-consumer kitchen companies. 

SEE ALSO: 15 highly rated kitchen tools on Amazon that make meal prep easier

Made In: Putting top US craftsmanship in front of enthusiastic home cooks.

Shop cookware at Made In here and read our review of Made In here

Background and founders: Chip Malt and Jake Kalick wanted to create a company that gets people excited about cooking in the kitchen and offers exceptional cookware made from the best sources. They found their quality standards met by American manufacturers and often use customer feedback to influence product design and release decisions. 

What it sells: 

Materials and construction: Made in the US by manufacturers with more than 150 years of cookware experience, the pans and pots have a five-ply construction of thick stainless steel and aluminum. They're induction-compatible and dishwasher- and oven-safe. The nonstick pan is PFOA-free. 

Additional info to know:



Material: Whittling your kitchen tools down to the basics, with style.

Shop kitchen tools at Material here and read our review of Material here

Background and founders: Eunice Byun and David Nguyen hated the clutter of their kitchens, which were filled with hand-me-downs, poor-quality tools, unnecessary accessories, and unsophisticated color palettes. When they asked themselves, "What would we want in our own kitchens?" they answered: simple, sleek, and carefully-designed tools made from world-class materials, for half the price of premium brands.

What it sells: 

  • The Fundamentals ($175), a kitchenware essentials set consisting of an 8" knife, paring knife, tongs, wood spoon, metal spoon, slotted spatula, all contained in an angular wooden base. Available in two handle colors and two wood colors. 
  • 8" Knife ($75), a strong, well-balanced, and sharp chef's knife. Available in two handle colors. 

Materials and construction: All the products are made in a region of southern China known for its expertise in knife-making and kitchenware manufacturing. The knives are made from three layers of Japanese stainless steel: the outer two are corrosion-resistant while the inner one is a high-carbon steel.

Additional info to know:

  • Free shipping
  • 60-day return policy 


Misen: The Kickstarter darling that has expanded past knives.

Shop knives and cookware at Misen here and read our review of Made In here

Background and founders: Misen's name comes from the term "mise en place," which describes how chefs set up their stations before service. In a similar way, Josh Moses and Omar Rada wanted to prepare people with the right tools to cook better. They launched with their first product, the Misen Chef's Knife, on Kickstarter and raised over $1 million in one month. 

What it sells: 

Materials and construction: The knives are made with a a high-carbon Japanese stainless steel. They have a sloped bolster for better comfort and control, and edge angles of 15° instead of the standard 25° for a sharper cutting face. The cookware, made in China, features a five-ply construction of thick stainless steel and aluminum. It is also induction-compatible and dishwasher- and oven-safe.

Additional info to know:

  • Shipping starts at $5 
  • 21-day return policy 
  • According to its website, a Lifetime Sharpening Program is in the works 


See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The age you're most likely to start a successful company isn't what you might think

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bill-gates-startup-founder-age

  • Many people think of young examples — like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates — when they think of successful startup founders.
  • New research shows that these cases are more the anomaly than the status quo — the average age of the most successful founder is about 42 years old.
  • Among the top 0.1% highest-growth startups the age increases to 45 years old. 
  • While founders in their 40s tend to have the highest rate of growth, researchers found that youth does have an advantage when gaining funds from venture capitalists, who are more likely to base their investments on appearance than on data. 

Company founders can be as young as in their teens or as old as in their 80s. But is there an ideal age you should be when you start a company? It turns out there is, and it's older than you may think.

Those are the results of surprising new research by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Rather than surveying a representative sample of entrepreneurs or asking experts' opinions, an NBER research team actually assembled Census Bureau data and looked at hundreds of thousands of successful startups, especially those with rapid growth.

What they found was not what you might expect. Bill Gates started Microsoft at 20. Steve Jobs was 21 when he and Steve Wozniak started Apple. So you might logically think that the most successful fast-growth companies are started by very young founders who are unfettered by convention and unwritten rules, able to take risks, and unafraid to shake up the old order.

But that isn't true. In fact, the researchers found, the average age of a successful startup founder is about 42. When it comes to high-growth super-successful startups, the average age is even older. When researchers looked at the top 5% of rapid-growth startups, they found the average founder age was 42.1. Narrowing their focus to the top 1%, the average age was 43.7. When they looked at the top 0.1% of fast-growing startups, founder age went up to 45. Contrary to popular belief, they concluded, youth is a disadvantage when it comes to creating a high-growth startup.

But there is one time when youth is an advantage in the startup world — when you're pitching your company to VCs. The youngest successful founders were those who had received funding from New York City-based venture capital firms, although even then their average age was 38.7 — old enough to have been Mark Zuckerberg's parent when he started Facebook from his dorm room at 19.

Wait a sec. Aren't VCs supposed to be looking for the highest-growth startups? Isn't that their mantra? They're all but certain to lose money on the majority of companies they fund, so don't they need those high-growth successes to make the endeavor worthwhile? Why are they funding startups whose founders are still too young to deliver the high growth VCs crave?

Because, whatever they may say, VCs aren't using data to make their funding decisions, as TechCrunch notes. Instead, they're going by look and feel, and the look they're going for is typified by Mark Zuckerberg: young, white, male, privileged, and from an elite university. VCs implicitly admit that they're ignoring the data with the often-repeated comment that they bet on the founder, not the business. This is why female founders still receive only about 2% of the funding VCs provide, even though the data shows that startups founded by women have greater odds of success. 

VCs' disdain for data is ironic, given that the most successful startups — think Google, Facebook, and especially Amazon — seem to owe their phenomenal growth to their practice of carefully gathering data and to strictly following that data wherever it leads them. Perhaps one day VCs will start doing the same. In the meantime, it's nice to know that if you're in your mid-40s, it might be tough to get venture capital funding — but if you start a business there's a good chance it will do just fine.

SEE ALSO: A star Silicon Valley investor who sold her startup for $200 million reveals the jarring tactic she had to use to make men pay attention to her pitches

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When Amazon first started, one comment could disqualify a job candidate immediately (AMZN)

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Jeff Bezos Amazon

  • Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos used to disqualify job candidates who talked about work/life balance, according to "The Everything Store" by Brad Stone.
  • The glorification of working yourself to the bone is typical of tech startups, especially those in the early stages.
  • Amazon is especially well-known for its culture of overwork.
  • But there are signs that Silicon Valley's culture may be changing.


In the early days of Amazon, there was one quick way for job candidates to eliminate themselves from the running: Talk about wanting work/life balance.

That's according to "The Everything Store," a 2013 bestselling book by Brad Stone that traces Amazon's journey to become one of the world's most powerful companies, and CEO Jeff Bezos' journey to become one of the world's most powerful people.

Bezos' former glorification of an all-work-all-the-time mentality is pretty typical for tech startups, especially those in the early stages. This was the mid-90s, when Amazon was a fledgling startup, not the behemoth on the brink of becoming a trillion-dollar company that it is today.

The internal mantra at Uber, for example, used to be "work smarter, harder, and longer." (Now it's just "smarter" and "harder.")

In 2017, Wired reported on a heated Twitter exchange, initially between tech investor Blake Robbins and venture capitalist Keith Rabois, over whether working harder (and harder) is always the key to success. Rabois urged Robbins, who extolled working "smarter" over harder, to "read a bio of Elon [Musk]. Or about Amazon," implying that these tech moguls worked around the clock to achieve success. Venture capitalist David S. Rose agreed with Rabois: "Entrepreneurship is all-in."

Former Amazon employees talk about logging 80-plus-hour workweeks

Amazon is especially well-known for its culture of pushing people to their limits. A 2015 New York Times article called out the company's "bruising workplace" in its headline. Former employees told The Times about logging 80-plus-hour workweeks; one said "The joke in the office was that when it came to work/life balance, work came first, life came second, and trying to find the work/life balance came last."

Amazon quickly responded to the Times article with a post on Medium, suggesting that Times reporters took some startling anecdotes out of context and "misrepresented" the company.

Business Insider previously reported that hundreds of reviewers on the website Glassdoor had posted about the lack of work/life work/life balance in their careers at Amazon.

For example: "Extreme hours and horrible work/life balance. Be prepared to work a minimum of 12 hours everyday and up to 15-16 hours for months on end," a current area manager in Haslet, Texas wrote. "Upper management doesn't respect your work/life balance and mandatory overtime is a constant thing."

Still, some reviewers applauded the work/life balance they experienced while working at Amazon. For example, a senior sales consultant in Charleston, South Carolina, wrote: "Of all the organizations and previous roles I've experienced so far in my career, Amazon has set the bar for work-life balance."

Meanwhile, a 2015 study, published in the Journal of Corporate Finance and highlighted in The Wall Street Journal, found that Amazon had lower ratings of work/life balance than other tech companies did, based on Glassdoor reviews.

Yet the tide may be turning throughout the tech industry. As Business Insider's Steve Kovach wrote in an op-ed, Silicon Valley is starting to recognize its overworking problem.

Arianna Huffington, for example, CEO of Thrive Global and an Uber board member, said at an Uber all-hands meeting that employees don't have to be "always on." She added that "when you're always on you're depleted, you are distracted," and "not as creative" as you are when you're well-rested.

Bezos has publicly addressed the topic of work/life balance before. In 2017, he told TechCrunch that he prefers the phrase "work-life harmony" better than "work/life balance," noting that "work/life balance implies there's a strict tradeoff."

In an interview with Thrive Global, Bezos said, "If I'm happy at work, I'm better at home  —  a better husband and better father. And if I'm happy at home, I come into work more energized  —  a better employee and a better colleague."

SEE ALSO: A day in the life of the richest person in history, Jeff Bezos — who made $6.44 billion in one day and still washes the dishes after dinner

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NOW WATCH: Google, Apple, and Amazon are in a war that no one will win

How a pair of 20-something brothers from Lithuania are shaking up the luxury watch scene

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  • Filippo Loreti is Kickstarter's most funded watch brand ever, and one of the platform's 20 most successful initiatives to date across all categories.
  • Every watch Filippo Loreti makes is purchased online and shipped directly to the customer, a direct sales model that cuts out middlemen and greatly reduces overall costs.
  • What strikes me most about the trio of Filippo Loreti watches in my collection is the fact that, although ostensibly similar, each piece has a look and feel all of its own.
  • Nearly all under $300, these watches are more than worth their price.

To quote vaunted 19th Century French novelist Victor Hugo, "There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come." And though today I'm writing primarily about the upstart luxury wristwatch brand Filippo Loreti, it's not in reference to that watchmaker that I invoke this famed quote. (Wristwatches have been commonplace for more than a century, after all, and are hardly a novel concept.)

In this case, the "idea" in question is the use of online crowdfunding to help launch and scale a product or service. And even more specifically, I'm referring to Kickstarter, the luminary of the slate of new public-benefit corporations that help raise capital for ventures that would likely never have lifted off via traditional business growth models.

For if anyone has ever made good use of Kickstarter, it's Lithuanian-born brothers Danielius and Matas Jakutis, who were in their mid-20s when they launched their first Kickstarter campaign back in 2015.

Their funding goal for their fledgling watch brand Filippo Loreti was $20,000. Within a single month, they raised almost a million dollars. Then, the next year, as the second line of Filippo Loreti watches was unveiled, the company commenced another round of online fundraising. This time, they raided more than five million dollars, again in less than a month. These wildly successful crowdfunding sessions would mark Filippo Loreti as Kickstarter's most funded watch brand ever, and as one of the platform's 20 most successful initiatives to date across all categories.

Jakutis Brothers

For the consumer, what this crowdfunding success would ultimately mean is the ability to buy watches for which other brands might charge $1,000 or more between $225 and $315 in most cases. Even their priciest watches currently sells for $609, a bargain in the luxury timepiece category. With quick cash in the coffers, Filippo Loreti could devote less time (and expense, ironically) to raising funds or to establishing partnerships and marketing materials, and could instead get down to the production of chronometers.

Unlike other luxury watch brands, the pieces the company makes won't be seen in jewelry store display cases or in the pages of catalog. Every watch Filippo Loreti makes is purchased online and shipped directly to the customer, a direct sales model that cuts out middlemen and greatly reduces overall costs. In fact, according to Filippo Loreti's own website, the markup costs associated with wholesalers, retailers, advertising, and other expenses associated with traditional luxury watch sales result in a customer paying as much as a 4,000% increase in sale price over production costs. With that figure in mind, you can appreciate how a wristwatch can sell for just a few hundred dollars yet can still be called a luxury item.

PA VM BlackG 1.1

I own and wear three Filippo Loreti watches, so you can consider me something of a lightweight collector, but I'll posit that I'm quite familiar with the brand. What strikes me most about the trio of Filippo Loreti watches in my collection is the fact that, although ostensibly similar, each piece has a look and feel all of its own.

My Filippo Loreti watches include the Venice Moonphase Silver, the Venice Moonphase Rose Gold Blue, and the Venice Moonphase Black Gold. Each has a case measuring 40 mm across and nine mm thick, each features a single dial on the right side of the body, and each has a band made of fine Italian leather. On each face you will find three small subdials that track the date, day of the week, and month, and a richly illustrated moonphase set behind a half-moon-shaped cutout. There is an hour hand and a minute hand, though no second hand. The bands are fastened with a simple metal buckle.

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As noted, for all their similarity, these three watches look strikingly different and work with different outfits for different occasions. I could wear the Moonphase Silver with faded jeans and a T-shirt, while the Moonphase Blue Gold would look just fine sneaking out beneath a French cuff shot forth from a tuxedo jacket. The Black Gold watch would look at home accentuating a business suit or resting on the bar at an upscale, well, bar.

While I have not had any of my Filippo Loreti watches long enough to see how they last over the years (and neither has anyone else; this brand is brand new in the scheme of things), I can tell you this:

So far, at well under $300, these watches are more than worth their price.

View the entire Filippo Loreti catalog on their website here.

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A startup that uses artificial intelligence to discover new drugs just landed a $2 billion valuation

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Ken portrait

  • UK-based biotech unicorn BenevolentAI just raised $115 million at a $2 billion valuation.
  • The company uses artificial intelligence to help discover new drugs to treat conditions like Parkinson's disease and rare cancers. 
  • Applying artificial intelligence to drug discovery — which can often be a long, expensive process — has started attracting more attention from investors.

BenevolentAI, a UK-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to discover new treatments just raised $115 million.

The funding, which came from existing investors including Woodford Investment Management, values the six-year-old company at $2 billion, a unicorn status held by only a few biotech companies

Applying artificial intelligence to drug discovery — which can often be a long, expensive process — has started attracting more attention from investors. In March, TwoXar, a startup that uses its software to discover new experimental drugs for other companies, raised $10 million and Atomwise, which designs drugs that companies can then test out, raised $45 million in its series A round in MarchIBM's Watson AI has also been used in drug discovery.

To see how that works, picture a pharmaceutical company on the hunt for new drugs to develop. Traditionally, that company would seek to figure out the science behind a particular disease, working to find disease targets it could then design drugs to go after. This can be a lengthy process involving a lot of lab work and uncertainty over whether the drug will work when it is tested in animals. And often, the scientists working on it have a very specialized understanding of a particular disease that influences how they approach the problem. 

Ideally, BenevolentAI's technology can amplify that information, opening up the possibility of finding more experimental drugs. The company's CEO Ken Mulvany compared it to an algorithm developed at Stanford that was able to deduce a person's sexuality more accurately than people could. Mulvany said that humans often miss signals that AI can pick up on, which could be helpful in finding new approaches to treating diseases. 

"We only know to look for the things that we know, rather than the actual signal that's in there," Mulvany told Business Insider.

To start, BenevolentAI  focuses in on a particular disease — so far, that's been around diseases of the central nervous system and rare cancers, as well as some work with Parkinson's disease —  then finds drug targets with its technology, and goes on to test it out in their labs. To date, the company has about 20 drugs in the works. The hope that some of these will pan out and make it through the clinical trial process factors into the company's high valuation.  

"I think the assumption from investors is that some will make it because the AI is changing the risk profile because we're getting better by predicting what may work what may not," James Chandler, BenevolentAI's vice president of corporate affairs told Business Insider. 

The funding will be used to keep developing the drugs the company has discovered, along with potentially expanding BenevolentAI's technology to other fields including energy and agriculture. 

SEE ALSO: A startup that uses software to discover new drugs just raised $10 million

DON'T MISS: A British AI startup poached a longtime Google scientist to head up its new US office

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NOW WATCH: A $700 billion investor explains why traders should brush off an ominous market signal that's flashing

Allbirds, the startup behind 'the world's most comfortable shoes,' recently released new sneakers made from trees — here's what they feel like

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Stone Runner

  • Sneaker startup Allbirds became famous for their cloud-like, super comfortable Merino wool sneakers.
  • The direct-to-consumer brand has a deep commitment to sustainability, and as such, has released a new line of sneakers made from Eucalyptus pulp — called the Tree collection. 
  • The collection features two styles, the Runners and the Skippers, and we tried them to see if they're just as comfortable as the originals
  • Spoiler alert: They're amazing. 

Chances are you've heard about Allbirds, the internet-famous $95 sneaker made from a soft, almost cashmere-like Merino wool. 

Currently, Allbirds makes two styles of shoes — the wool "Runners", and the wool slip-on "Loungers." We've tested both of them before, and our team universally feels that they're pretty much the most comfortable shoes out there (read our review on the wool Loungers here and the Runners here). In fact, a recent Insider Picks survey showed that Allbirds was one of our readers' favorite products that they have purchased as a result of an article we wrote. 

There are a lot of reasons people like these shoes beyond just how comfortable they are. They're also relatively affordable at $95 a pair — a low price they're able to maintain as a direct-to-consumer retailer — and they're easy to clean with a simple spin in washing machine. But for some, the biggest draw is the fact that the company maintains a deep, unshakable commitment to sustainability.

Its this commitment that led the brand to develop and introduce a new and even more sustainable set of shoes made from trees — or more specifically, from a textile engineered using Eucalyptus pulp.  

Allbirds_2057_Shot_23_NavyTreeRunner_W_3646

According to Allbirds, this new material uses 5% of the water and one-third of the amount of land when compared to traditional footwear materials. The brand also committed to using the "most rigorous sustainable forestry standard, Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, to protect trees, wildlife, and people."

Naturally, considering that Merino wool prices have been steadily climbing, we wondered if the production of these shoes was intended to offset the increased cost of producing their wool line. After all, Allbirds is beloved in part because their shoes have maintained a steady and reasonable price since the very start. But the brand assured us that the idea for new, sustainable textiles had been in the works since before they even launched their original Runners in 2016. 

We spoke with the founders of Allbirds, Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger, who told Business Insider that they've always envisioned Allbirds as a sustainable material innovation company. "For us, it was about creating a brand that challenges the status quo and redefines what it means to make something 'better.'"

Allbirds_2057_Shot_2_RoseTreeSkipper_W_0289 (1)

The new line, aptly named the "Tree collection," includes two styles — the Runners, which we already know and love, and a pair they call the "Skippers," which are basically a thinner-soled boat sneaker. This new textile has more breathability, which Allbirds says was a response to costumer concern:

We are always listening to our customers, and heard from them that there are moments when they needed a different type of experience than Wool. We developed Tree to address these situations and create a more comfortable warm-weather experience.

The new material creates a cooling effect by wicking moisture away, making them perfect for summer, and the price has stayed consistent at $95 a pair. The makeup of the insoles has stayed consistent, so you can still expect the same comfort level of their classic pairs. The new women's styles come in navy, stone, and rose, and the men's styles come in navy, stone, rose, and cloud (a very light blue).

As long-time fans of the brand, Allbirds gave our team the chance to test out the Tree Runners and Tree Skippers in advance of the launch. Keep reading to find a breakdown of each of our experiences with the new styles (spoiler alert, they're still really, really great). 

Read our reviews below:

Navy Runner

Mara Leighton, Insider Picks reporter:

"Allbirds is one of my favorite companies to shop from because they have always exceeded expectations on comfort, quality, and style. In other words, they’ve earned my trust as a valuable buy. I don’t feel bad dropping money on a new pair of shoes from them because I know I will wear them until they borderline disintegrate — and I will be glad every time I put them on. It sounds like an exaggeration, but they’re really that comfortable.

I tried the Tree Runner in navy, which is actually a nice dark green-blue in person (less bright than a true teal), and — again — Allbirds has exceeded my expectations. They’re crazy comfortable, the silhouette is flattering and close-fitting, and I love the smooth but texturized upper. The stylistic contrast of the thick laces is a really nice touch, and the semi-muted color means they go with basically anything.

The sole feels familiar (it’s the same structured, wool-lined insole found in my loungers) and supportive, but the upper is even more breathable than my other pairs.

While I wouldn’t buy Allbirds if they weren’t consistently making the most comfortable shoes I own, I also love that they’re using sustainable materials (and encouraging innovation). They feel ridiculously good on, and any conscious consumer can feel great about buying them."

Rose Skipper

Connie Chen, Insider Picks reporter:

"I wear my wool Runners regularly and am always more than happy to talk about how wonderful and comfortable they are to anyone who’s curious, so I was excited to learn about this new launch from one of my favorite brands. Itching for the feel of summer, I opted for the Stone Skippers, which are a modern twist on the classic boat shoe.

Again, Allbirds’ use of a surprising material has proven to be successful. I never would have guessed that the textile was made from eucalyptus pulp, but it provides an interesting, eye-catching texture that’s more unique than that of a traditional boat shoe. Eucalyptus is known for its cooling properties, so I appreciate that the Skippers offer the ideal casual summer look while also keeping my feet cool in warm weather. The neutral, sandy color of the Stone ones reminded me of the beach and can really match with any color you wear on top.

Like Mara said, slipping my foot in felt soft and familiar since the shoe has the same wool-lined insole and heel cup of Allbirds’ other offerings. I’m also almost certain that these Skippers are more comfortable than the Runners, which is an impressive feat."

Allbirds_Tree_Bonsai_TR_RN_cloud_HERO

David Slotnick, Insider Picks senior reporter:

"I tested out the Tree Skipper in Kauri Stone, and think I’ve found the perfect summer shoe. They feel like a combination of a boat shoe and a sneaker — I’ve never found the former very comfortable, but sneakers can be warm or restrictive during summer. The Tree Skipper is lightweight and breathable, and, to my delight, feels like a nice, properly-supportive shoe that would be equally fitting for walking around a city during vacation, or wearing on the way to the beach or on a boat. I can tie the laces to keep them on as I walk — even if I walk quickly or run — although I can kick them off without untying them if I want to."

Shop all styles from the Allbirds Tree collection here.

Shop women's styles here.

Shop men's styles here.

 

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We took a 1,000-horsepower electric luxury sedan for a spin on the streets of Silicon Valley

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Lucid Air

We have driven, reported on, road-tripped, and talked about our fair share of electric and hybrid vehicles at Business Insider. These are exciting times for a technology that was born more than 100 years ago, but only started to gain steam in the last 20 years with the Toyota Prius.

Electric-vehicle sales reached a milestone in 2017, crossing the one-million-vehicle threshold for that year. Nearly 200,000 of those plug-in vehicles— up from about 159,000 in 2016.

That growth has spurred a whole new class of EVs from investor-funded startups. While many of these companies poach engineering and design talent from big-name automakers, the new companies themselves have never mass-produced a car before. It might be a stretch to call it an automotive renaissance, but it's starting to look that way.

Still, one thing remains the same — it is incredibly difficult to start a car company. Tesla CEO Elon Musk probably knows this better than anyone. Tesla is the first American automaker to go public since Ford Motor Company in 1956, but it took Tesla and its stakeholders nearly two decades and many hundreds of millions of dollars to get there.

Lucid Air

And as we have learned in the last couple years from the scandal-plagued electric-car startup, Faraday Future, the business of designing and building cars can easily lose traction if just enough things go sideways.

Nevertheless, a handful of electric-car startups in California are undeterred, and they are vying to bring the next mass-produced luxury electric vehicle to market.

Lucid Motors is one of those companies. Founded in 2007 under its former name, Atieva, the Newark, California-based company began developing its first electric vehicle in 2014.

The car, called Lucid Air, debuted in late 2016 as a 1,000-horsepower electric luxury sedan that Lucid said would rival Tesla's highly successful Model S.

Among other investors, Lucid is also backed by Venrock — the same venture capital firm that led Apple's Series A round in 1978.

A company spokesman told Business Insider Lucid has raised several hundred million dollars to date. The spokesman declined to give specific dollar figures. Lucid was preparing to close its Series D round fundraiser in January.

The Lucid Air will be the first vehicle out of the company's stable when it goes into production in 2019, the company said. Lucid invited Business Insider to check out a nearly finished representation of the car at its headquarters.

Scroll down to see how it went:

SEE ALSO: Tesla's largest US Supercharger station has a plush, private customer lounge in the middle of a folksy California town — take a look inside

DON'T MISS: We drove the all-new $644,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom to see the future of automotive opulence — here's what it was like

The Lucid Air is almost surreal when seen outside in natural light. It's not a complete stretch to say it looks like a road-bound spacecraft.



Everything from the windshield forward evokes a nearly seamless aesthetic. It has a quietly commanding presence.



Quiet because it's electric, of course. The Air will be available with a battery pack that boasts about 240 miles of range on a full charges, or an optional pack that's expected to deliver up to 400 miles of range.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

8 common mistakes startup founders make, according to former executives at Facebook and Foursquare

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Oceans Venture Group

  • Startup founders get gobs of cash, but little guidance.
  • Three former executives with experience working at companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Foursquare are providing a mentorship program that's tailored to the startup set, called Oceans.
  • Here, they break down the most common mistakes they see founders making. 

In the past few years, startups have received an unprecedented influx of capital.

While entrepreneurs might have an easier time getting funding, they're often confronted by problems that aren't solved by money. Indeed, so much interest from investors can actually cause more problems. 

One new program called Oceans is hoping to guide startup founders in building successful companies. Founded by three tech veterans, who between them have experience working early on at companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Foursquare, Oceans is attempting to help entrepreneurs steer clear of common mistakes.

In an interview with Business Insider, Ocean co-founders Josh Rahn and Steven Rosenblatt outlined the errors that they see entrepreneurs making most often.

Here's the top eight mistakes they said they see the most:

They're chasing high valuations instead of building real businesses.

"This is a really slippery slope," said Josh Rahn, a former group agency lead at Facebook. Rahn said that most  of the founders he speaks with are focused on solving funding problems, rather than fixing the flaws within their companies. 



They try to do too many things at once.

While being an entrepreneur can often require dabbling in many different roles, Rahn said that founders should always play to their strengths. "It's not about being mediocre at three things, it's about gaining expertise in really individual areas of focus," said Rahn. "When you do that and you scale that, you can conquer just about anything."



They hire the wrong people.

Rahn said that entrepreneurs should never underestimate the importance of putting the right person in the right role. Rahn, who said he's hired close to three hundred people in his former position at Facebook, said that bringing mediocre people onboard can destroy a product, even if that product is inherently great. However, said Rahn, this works the other way, as well: "The best people on the best teams can still make a mediocre product spectacular." 



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This couple wants tourists to pay $6 a day to store their luggage with a total stranger

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Vertoe

Husband and wife Neha and Sid Khattri were on the final leg of a four week vacation when they found themselves in an inconvenient predicament: The Khattris had plans to visit LA's beaches before their flight home to New York, but had nowhere to leave their bags for the day. 

Saddled with a month's worth of luggage, they decided to find a place to ditch their three oversized suitcases before heading to the beach. However, this quickly turned into what Neha Khattri described as a "mad scramble." Their Airbnb host declined to watch the bags for a few extra hours. The airline wouldn't take the bags early, either.

"It ruined our day," Neha told Business Insider.

In a moment of desperation, they decided to ask a local shopkeeper if they wouldn't mind watching the bags for a few hours in exchange for quick cash. They agreed — for the price of $20 per bag. $60 later, the Khattris had solved their problem, but were somehow more upset than ever.

The couple decided to vent their frustrations into an entrepreneurial endeavor. Two years later, they launched Vertoe, the short-term luggage solution that the Khattris wish would have existed when they took their getaway.

Vertoe has a booking process similar to that of Airbnb: The company connects shopkeepers with extra space to travelers in need of a short term storage spot. You can book your bags on Vertoe from anything between one hour to one month. (The company offers discounts for anyone storing their belongings for longer than a week.)

Vertoe's daily rate is $6 per bag, whether you leave your luggage for two hours or for the entire 24. "We didn't want to make bookings in hourly segments because we thought people would find it too stressful," said Neha. 

The only catch is that you're leaving your belongings with people you don't know. Most of the businesses that use Vertoe are mom and pop shops located in high-traffic neighborhoods, or stores in areas close to bus stations and airports with a little extra space to spare. However, Neha said that Vertoe has a strict vetting process that includes interviewing each shopkeeper, an inspection of the store, and a two week probation period.  Since Vertoe's launch in 2016, Neha said that they've only had to remove one shopkeeper. "He wasn't very nice to people," she said. 

As another precautionary measure, Vertoe requires security cameras to be installed at each business's location and covers up to $3000 per bag in insurance costs. So far, Vertoe is only available in New York, but the company has plans to expand to more cities throughout the US. 

Here's how Vertoe works: 

To book your bags on Vertoe, go to the company's website and select a time and location when you'd like to drop off your bags. As a trial run, I made a booking for the earliest time available, which turned out to be 30 minutes out. I set my location for JFK Airport and said that I needed storage for only one hour.



While most of the last minute options near JFK were about 10 miles away, there was one option that was less than a mile and a half away from the airport.



Vertoe keeps the name of the business private until you book and enter you credit card information. But as you can see here, the site does tell you how close that business is to your destination.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Silicon Valley's biggest problem is that there's 'too much money,' says former Facebook executive

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miley cyrus throwing money

  • It's easy for Silicon Valley startups to find money, which is causing problems of its own, say former Facebook and Foursquare execs.
  • Startups who take venture capital. often find that their investors don't have time to help them grow their companies in a meaningful way. 
  • And even when investors do give advice, it might be colored by the fact that they have a financial interest in the startup. 

Silicon Valley's growing wealth might not always be a good thing for startups.

In an interview with Business Insider, Josh Rahn, an early Facebook employee who helped the company hire nearly 200 people, said that the tech industry's increasing affluence might actually be quashing innovation.

"Cash is the commodity," said Rahn. "There's too much money."

Rahn has joined with other former Silicon Valley executives to form Oceans, a mentorship program for fledgling entrepreneurs. 

If nothing else, says Rahn, it's stretching the venture capitalists of the world very thin: They're involved with so many companies, that they don't have much time or attention to lend their expertise and advice to any particular one in a meaningful way. 

"Investors are too short on resources to be helpful to portfolios," said Rahn.

Steven Rosenblatt, the former president of Foursquare and an Oceans cofounder, agreed and called the abundance of money a "glaring" problem in Silicon Valley. Rosenblatt said that several founders had told him that their investors would try to solve their company's problems by simply applying another cash infusion. 

"The reality is that money isn't the hard part anymore," said Rosenblatt. "Now it's harder to find skilled people to help founders solve big business problems."

One early-stage startup founder who asked not to be identified told Business Insider that this sentiment resonated with him as well. "Too many investors have too much money," he said. The founder said that in the past, he had advised other early-stage founders to seek out smaller firms for their first rounds of investment.

"There's so many people trying to invest in seed stage companies, and investors don't have enough time to spend with their portfolio companies," he said. 

Whereas entrepreneurs may have looked to their investors or board members in the past for guidance, founders are discovering that their investors are increasingly strapped for time, which leaves them with nowhere to turn when making tough business decisions. 

"It's so hard to build a company," the founder said. "There's so much responsibility. People want to turn to their investors because it makes sense, but they can't."

But even when those larger-scale investors do work with startups, Rahn said that money can complicate the relationship between investor and founder. 

"The flipside is that when investors give money, they don't necessarily want to give honest feedback to the founder about issues or problems within the company," said Rahn.

SEE ALSO: 8 top reasons why startups fail, according to early Google and Facebook employees

Join the conversation about this story »

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Tech startups in China are hiring women to socialize with male programmers and give them massages

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china programming motivator

  • The New York Times reports that Chinese startups are hiring women to be "programming motivators."
  • The job requirements include socializing with male workers and giving them massages, and employees are chosen based on their physical attributes.
  • The practice has drawn criticism in a country where beliefs about gender roles are rigidly ingrained.


Tech startups in China are trying to lure more female employees. But they're not looking for women to work as coders, engineers, and designers.

Instead, The New York Times reports that some companies are hiring what they call "programming motivators"— a controversial job title whose responsibilities include socializing with male workers, buying them breakfast, and giving them massages.

According to Sui-Lee Wee at The Times, the practice has drawn criticism in a country where attitudes toward gender equality are rigidly ingrained.

At least seven startups are currently looking for programming motivators, according to The Times, although that number has decreased after some companies faced backlash for their job listings. One of those companies was retail giant Alibaba, which deleted an ad seeking female employees with "recognizably good looks."

Such language is commonplace in Chinese job listings, which often discriminate by gender and require specific physical attributes for female applicants, according to a Human Rights Watch article cited by The Times. Wee writes that some companies, including Alibaba and Baidu, boast about the presence of "beautiful women" at their companies to attract top male talent.

Chinese laws against gender discrimination are vaguely worded and hardly enforced, The Times reported.

Shen Yue, a programming motivator who works at Chainfin.com, told The Times that male employees will often vent to her about frustrations with their job — something they'd feel less comfortable doing around male peers. She's also expected to give massages to stressed-out coders and arrange social functions for the company. 

"They really need someone to talk to them from time to time and to organize activities for them to ease some of the pressure," she told The Times.

Some of the requirements for the job, a human resources executive at Chainfin told The Times, are having a contagious laugh, being able to apply makeup, being over 5 feet 2 inches, and having "five facial features that must definitely be in their proper order."

According to the article from Human Rights Watch, an Alibaba ad from 2015 mandated that applicants' "appearance should be distinct, does not need to be exceptional, but should be impressive enough to computer programmers," and suggested the programming motivators should resemble Sola Aoi, an adult film star. The requirements of the job included “waking up computer programmers and engineers every morning" and "giving positive affirmations to their work and encouraging them."

In 2015, An HR manager at another company told Trending in Asia, a Facebook page run by a state-run news outlet, that the presence of the female motivators has increased job efficiency among the largely male workforce.

Read the full article at The New York Times »

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NOW WATCH: How 'leftover' women in China are changing its culture


A Silicon Valley biotech hub that offers startups $250,000 in funding explains the ‘secret sauce’ to success

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memphis meats

  • Silicon Valley's startup scene is highly competitive, with more than 33,000 existing startups and new ones sprouting up daily.
  • Arvind Gupta is the founder of a fast-growing biotech incubator that funded meat alternative startup Memphis Meats, which is now backed by Bill Gates and Richard Branson.
  • Gupta's accelerator IndieBio gives startups $250,000 in seed funding as part of a 4-month incubation program. He looks for three main traits in a startup before he commits.

Arvind Gupta, the founder of a fast-growing Silicon Valley biotech incubator called IndieBio, couldn't care less about a startup's lofty vision for the future.

IndieBio funded Memphis Meats, a lab-grown meat startup founded by Uma Valeti that now has backing from Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Twitch cofounder Kyle Vogt, and Elon Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk. Two food giants — Tyson Foods and Cargill — are other notable backers. The startup burst onto the Silicon Valley startup scene — which now numbers more than 33,000 — in 2015.

The most important piece of advice Gupta gave Valeti involved dissuading him from focusing too much on his dreamy long-term vision of reducing waste and saving the planet from climate change. Instead, Gupta frequently encouraged him to talk about the goals his company had already accomplished, such as making real meat without a single farm animal.

It is an approach that Gupta encourages with all of the startups in his ecosystem, which is now in its third year and sixth class of companies.

"Your pitches won't sell your company," Gupta told Business Insider during a recent meeting at IndieBio's headquarters in San Francisco's Civic Center district. "Don't talk about what you're going to do. Talk about what you've done."

The startups that Gupta has helped fund range from drug companies to startups focused on lab-grown meat. Most recently, IndieBio welcomed a spate of early-stage companies focused on neuroscience, including NURO, a Canadian startup that's creating a brain machine interface for locked-in patients, and Neurocarrus, which is focusing on a non-opioid drug for severe pain.

Here are the highlights that Gupta looks for in a startup. Together, he said these items form the basis of what he calls IndieBio's "secret sauce" for startup success.

Home in on a niche issue

Memphis MeatsStartups often have ambitious goals — from linking our brains to our computers to regenerating limbs — but focusing too much on long-term aspirations can cripple a team's progress, Gupta said.

"Saying you're just going to show up on Mars is a great dream, but you need to solve a lot of smaller issues first," Gupta said.

Instead of paying too much attention to a far-off target, Gupta advises finding a discreet problem and homing in on a creative, valuable solution to that. With Memphis Meats, for example, the ultimate goal was reduced waste. But the smaller problem was meat that doesn't require barn houses full of animals.

Give the hardest workers the most equity

One of the most powerful lessons Gupta learned early on with IndieBio was that if the people who aren't putting in the most work aren't also getting the most equity, it can squelch their chances of success.

One company he funded several years ago, for example, got a complex term sheet from an investor. Rather than agreeing on a solution, the team argued over the details until they eventually split up. He said the main problem was that the people who'd worked the hardest at making their product a reality weren't valued the most within the company. As a result, they had no real voice and couldn't lead the company toward the best solution.

Create something with real value

Besides ensuring your company is ideologically focused and financially balanced, Gupta said a startup needs to create a product that generates value for consumers.

With that in mind, he encourages companies to talk to potential investors about what they've already accomplished and showcase the products they've already produced, rather than discussing a dreamy vision for the future of the planet.

"Once you start talking about what you've done, you get insight," Gupta said. "The next questions you need to ask yourself are, 'How does that insight translate into a product? And how does that product create real value for people?'"

Memphis Meats, which created the world's first lab-grown chicken meat last year, has been able to tick off all of these boxes so far — a feat that recently landed them on the cover of Inc. magazine.

"We're giving scientists a chance to be entrepreneurs when literally no one else would have given them a chance," Gupta said. "Seeing Uma on the cover of Inc. — that's my personal gratification."

SEE ALSO: A controversial technology could save us from starvation — if we let it

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The surprising reason we boil lobsters alive

Silicon Valley can't handle hard conversations — and it's hurting entrepreneurs

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Silicon Valley

  • There's a growing lack of transparency in Silicon Valley boardrooms, and startup founders report that they're deprived of mentorship.
  • Founders report that investors are often unable to engage in difficult conversations.

Last year, the amount of available venture capital within the US swelled to a staggering $71.9 billion— the second largest amount of available venture capital since the previous record of $76.8 billion in 2015. While this influx of new funding is making it easier for entrepreneurs to kick start their companies, it's presenting a new set of problems of its own.

With more money flooding into early stage deals, some critics are saying that investors aren't able to spend enough time guiding fledgling entrepreneurs. Not only does this lead to potential opportunities for professional missteps and entrepreneurial blunders along the way, but it's altering how founders and investors interact.

Startup founders, too, are finding that they're unable to engage transparently with their investors who often have little time to spare.

One startup founder who asked not to be named told Business Insider that he felt that he couldn't approach his investors with the delicate business dilemmas his company had faced in the past.

"There's this feeling that I couldn't be transparent about my own company," he said.

After a falling out with his co-founder, the unnamed founder said that he felt that he was unable to confide in his investors as he re-built his company alone.

"I was in such a bad place," he said. "Because of the sensitivity of the situation, I couldn't go to any of my investors and talk through this."

The thing everyone is talking about privately is never openly discussed

This glaring lack of transparency between entrepreneurs and their investors is becoming a growing trend, according to Josh Rahn, an early Facebook employee who hired close to 200 people at the company.

Rahn, along with former Foursquare president Steven Rosenblatt and former Google executive Glenn Handler, has founded Oceans Ventures, a mentorship program for startup founders.

Rahn said that opacity in boardrooms is increasingly becoming the status quo within the tech industry.

"One of the fundamental issues that we're seeing in boardrooms is a lack of transparency and hard conversations taking place," Rahn told Business Insider. "What most founders and investors usually find out too late is that the thing that everyone is talking about privately is never openly discussed."

Rahn's co-founder, Steven Rosenblatt, said that undisclosed problems can lead to more insidious issues within companies later on. Rosenblatt cited the recent Theranos debacle, in which the notoriously guarded blood-testing company blindsided its investor to liabilities with the company's chief product early on.

"You have to start thinking about these problems early," said Rosenblatt. "Every founder should be able to address the things that could potentially derail their company with their investors."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The top 10 games coming in 2018

WeWork has raised $6.1 billion and pioneered the co-working movement — but it increasingly looks like it doesn't understand commercial real estate

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Adam Neumann

  • The public got a first glimpse of WeWork's financials this week as the company prepared for a bond offering.
  • The documents raise serious doubts about the company's business model — and particularly its ability to survive a recession.
  • Successful real estate companies rake in cash during boom times to see themselves through the inevitable downturns, but WeWork is seeing a massive outflow of cash and its bottom line is worsening.


One of the truisms of the real estate business is that to be successful for the long haul, you have to be able to survive a downturn.

Lots of people can make money in real estate in the boom times. But recessions tend to weed out the weak and improvident en masse.

So you've got to wonder just what WeWork investors see in the company. Because even though the economy is as strong as it's been in a decade, the company isn't making any money. Instead, as was made clear in documents that leaked to the press this week, its losses are piling up faster than ever.

WeWork describes itself as "a platform for creators," and it's frequently described in the press as being in the co-working business. But it's basically in the commercial real estate business. It leases space from building owners or other real-estate firms and turns around and subleases that space to other companies.

Real estate fortunes follow the business cycle

Commercial real estate can be immensely profitable. Companies need space to operate and are often willing and able to pay up for it. During boom times, spaces fill up, sending rents skyward — and allowing real estate firms to make a killing.

But the flip side happens during downturns. Real estate tends to be among the industries that get hardest in recessions. Companies die or scale back their operations, vacating their offices and retail locations, leaving the owners or primary leaseholders holding the bag.

Real estate firms have various ways of surviving and succeeding through the ups and down of the business cycle, but a tried-and-true one is to keep your costs low and stockpile cash during the boom times. During the inevitable busts, you buy or lease properties on the cheap with the cash you've saved up.

Another good strategy is to sign anchor tenants to long-term contracts, figuring those companies will stand a better chance of weathering the storm.

WeWork isn't saving for a rainy day

But that's not exactly how WeWork is running its business. Instead of piling up cash, it's burning through it. Rather than waiting until the downturn to acquire inventory, it's been massively expanding at what may end up being the peak of the boom.

Wework headquartersEven though its occupancy levels are relatively high, its rents are actually falling. And while it's been luring a growing number of big companies, some of which are signing multi-year contracts, its business is still largely built around small startups and entrepreneurs who are leasing month-to-month.

In other words, this is a company that looks like it's a prime candidate to be killed off in the next recession.
That's not WeWork's position, of course. The company "feels confident" about its business model and future, a source close to WeWork said.

But a close look at the company's financials offers plenty of fodder for doubt about that assessment.

WeWork announced Thursday that it's expecting to raise $702 million in a debt offering that's slated to close on Monday. That amount is actually about $200 million more than the company was seeking, a result of strong demand for the offering, the source close to WeWork said. Following the offering, the company expects to have about $3 billion in cash on hand, the source said.

That sounds like a lot until you put it in context.

To date, including the debt offering, WeWork has raised about $6.1 billion, according to data collected by Crunchbase. That amount includes a giant $3 billion investment from SoftBank last year. Taking all that into account, WeWork has already blown through more than half of the total amount it's raised, including about $700 million of the money it got from SoftBank.

So, even though it raised billions last year, the company already felt it necessary to get more cash.

WeWork will pay a steep price for its latest cash injection

It may also be revealing that WeWork raised that money via debt rather than equity. Selling debt can make sense when you pay low interest rates. But that's not the case here. WeWork's bonds were reportedly rated at junk levels and carry an interest rate of 7.875%.

By comparison, Netflix just raised money in a debt offering also. Like WeWork, Netflix has seen a massive outflow of cash in recent years. Netflix also has a huge amount outstanding in future obligations, but it's for content licenses rather than leases. Netflix also already carries a sizable debt load. But the interest it will pay on that offering is 5.875%.

But the way things stand right now, the latest cash fill-up for WeWork doesn't look like it will be close to enough for the company. That's because instead of improving, its financials are getting worse.

At first glance, that wouldn't seem to be the case. Its occupancy rate came in at 81% last year, up 5% from the prior year, according to Bloomberg's data. Given that it reportedly only needs a 60% occupancy level to break even, it should be rolling in dough. And, in fact, WeWork's revenue more than doubled last year.

But the company reported a disturbing trend amid a boom — the amount of money it saw per customer actually fell last year by 6%. That decline was due to discounted rates it used to attract new customers, according to Bloomberg. That implies that the company's occupancy rate was inflated — and that it may already be having trouble filling its spaces.

The company's got a lot of bills coming due

More disturbingly, WeWork's expenses grew even faster than its revenue, leading to a bottom-line loss of $934 million, according to Bloomberg.

WeWork Crystal City Large Conference RoomA significant chunk of WeWork's expenses come in the form of stock options, which are a non-cash expense. But the cash outflow since the close of its SoftBank deal attests to the fact that those expenses include a lot of cold, hard cash.

And the company is on the hook to spend a lot more. It has at least $18 billion in lease commitments on its books.

Many of those lease commitments extend far into the future, said the source close to the company.

"There's not one big payment coming up," the source said. WeWork sees itself "in a strong position" to cover its commitments, the source added.

But $3.8 billion of the company's lease obligations come due over the next four years. In other words, WeWork is committed to spending more than its entire current cash stash just on leases between now and the end of 2021 — forget any money needed for ongoing operations or investments in new spaces or upgrading older ones.

WeWork's firewall looks flimsy

In one of its reports on WeWork's debt offering, Bloomberg noted that the company has protected itself from those commitments. Each of the spaces the company leases is under a separate subsidiary.

That kind of arrangement is common in the commercial real estate world and can serve as a kind of firewall for the parent company. In a downturn, if WeWork has trouble filling a particular space, the lease bills for that space would be on the subsidiary, which it could put in bankruptcy while preserving itself.

Despite that arrangement, the WeWork corporate parent typically guarantees six months to a year of rent for each of its subsidiaries. Typically what that kind of arrangement means is that if the subsidiary isn't able to pay its bills, WeWork itself would have to pay them for the agreed period while the building owner searched for a new tenant.

That limits the liability of WeWork the parent company — but only to a certain extent. If a recession hits nationwide, it could find itself with lots of vacancies — and many subsidiaries in trouble at the same time. It could be forced to cover the rent on lots of different properties at once — even after those properties can no longer support themselves.

The company's clientele is likely to be hit hardest by a recession

Just such a scenario looks like not only a possibility but a probability in an economic downturn, precisely because of WeWork's typical clientele. The company built its business around leasing space on a month-to-month basis to startups, small businesses, and entrepreneurs. By the very nature of WeWork's terms, many of its clients are likely to be those that don't have the financial resources to sign a long-term lease commitment — much less the resources to endure a recession.

wework culver city los angeles laThe company has been attracting a growing number of large enterprises — companies with 1,000 or more employees, the source close to WeWork noted. Those companies represent about 23% of the company's customer base and they "generally" sign agreements that are longer than the typically month-to-month deal, the source said.

But it's not clear how much of WeWork's total space is leased to those enterprise customers. Regardless, even with that as a growing part of its business, the company is still highly exposed to much smaller companies.

WeWork may yet survive. Before the next downturn hits, it could raise more cash to help see it through.

It's shown an ability to repeatedly attract investors in the private markets who are willing to cut it big checks. Meanwhile, the public markets are hot for new offerings from tech companies. WeWork isn't one, really, but it's tapped many of the same investors as tech startups, it caters to a good number of them, and it has a slick app, so it could get lumped in with them.

But from where things stand now, WeWork's position looks precarious. It doesn't at all look like the kind of real estate firm that's built on a solid foundation.

SEE ALSO: MoviePass is losing $20 million a month — and starting to look a lot like a famous dot-com bust

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NOW WATCH: These 3D printed homes can be constructed for $4,000 — and they might change the approach to underdeveloped housing

I slept on a memory foam mattress from popular online startup Leesa — and it was actually really impressive

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  • There are plenty of beds in boxes to choose from these days, all of which promise to have a unique feature to ensure a better night's sleep.
  • While I'm not always a fan of foam mattresses, I was certainly impressed by the Leesa mattress, which was not only comfortable, but cooling as well.
  • As a side sleeper, it’s sometimes tough to find mattresses that don’t leave me feeling achy, but the Leesa is certainly doing the trick.
  • At $995 for a queen, it’s a very good option for folks who may otherwise be skeptical of foam mattresses, or things that come out of boxes.
  • Right now, you can get $125 off a Leesa Mattress plus a free Leesa Pillow when you apply the code "SPRING18" at checkout. 

You’re not just seeing things — in fact, there are an alarming number of mattress stores throughout the United States. In fact, so common a sight is one of these bedding purveyors that there have been severalarticles written about why there seem to be more Mattress Firms than Starbucks in some towns (honestly, looking at you, New York City). And now, there are also a plethora of online mattress stores too — sure, Casper may have been first out of the gate, but it seems as though you can’t go online anymore without receiving an ad for a new bed in a box from a new company.

But if you’re looking to cut through the noise a bit and find a mattress that is actually better than what you might find in a lot of the aforementioned brick-and-mortar stores, and indeed more comfortable than some online options, too, then look no further than Leesa.

Its flagship Leesa mattress promises to redesign your sleep experience, and I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by just how positive my experience really was on the mattress.

The Leesa mattress promises to provide you with "the comfort, support, and universal feel everybody needs to sleep better." The company leverages what it calls a "unique combination of performance foam layers" in order to "deliver cooling bounce, contouring pressure relief, and core support for amazing sleep." And frankly, Leesa lived up to its promises.

First things first — before I received my Leesa mattress, I looked up a few existing reviews on Amazon, where the mattress boasts a very respectable 4.1 out of 5 stars from over 900 reviewers. But of course, I wanted to see what folks said the problems were first. I read things about the mattress sleeping too hot, about visible sags, and about problems with the Leesa lying flat.

Luckily, I did not find any of these issues to plague me during my own testing of the Leesa mattress, but I'll address each existing concern to the best of my ability.

First off — the mattress too hot complaint. While I am not necessarily a hot sleeper, I certainly prefer the room to be cooler so that I can snuggle into several layers of blankets, and then move to various parts of the bed as I begin to overheat. When I slept on the Leesa, I found that I did not, in fact, have to move to other parts of the bed at all throughout the night. While the area in which I slept obviously became warmer than other parts of the mattress, I did not experience any sort of overheating, which was quite the surprise. This is likely due to Leesa’s 2-inch Avena foam top layer, which purports to provide airflow for a cooler night’s sleep.

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As for the visible sagging issue, this was certainly not the case in my experience. As soon as I unwrapped the mattress, it expanded prettily, and inflated to a very respectable thickness (which was consistent across the entirety of the mattress). And speaking of pretty, one of my favorite things about the Leesa mattress is that it is, indeed, a very attractive piece of furniture. Its grey and white cover almost looks like something you could just sleep on without a fitted sheet, but of course, that wouldn’t be the most sanitary option. That said, whenever you’re doing laundry, this isn’t a mattress that you’d be ashamed of your friends and family seeing naked. The built-in mattress cover is also extremely soft to the touch — in fact, it’s made of the same material as the Leesa Blanket, which I also own, and cannot say enough wonderful things about (but that's a story for another day).

Finally, in my experience, there was no problem with the Leesa lying flat. I unpacked it as the company suggested I do, placing the rolled up mattress on my bed frame, and then unrolling it as it expanded. It worked like a charm, and now sits atop my bed as I would expect it to.

When I first began sleeping on the Leesa, one of the key points I kept in mind was whether or not I would feel any stiffness or pain in my side upon waking. As a dedicated side sleeper, I sometimes feel that my mattresses are a bit too firm, and leave my favored side a bit uncomfortable throughout the night and the next day. Luckily, because the Leesa is a foam mattress and quite supple, I did not have this issue.

Indeed, I felt supported throughout my repose, and woke up without any cricks or aches, which was major. I also found that the Leesa was quite comfortable regardless of what other positions I tried out — the two-inch memory foam layer does seem to mold to the body quite well and relieve pressure whether you’re a back, stomach, or side sleeper. And for extra strength and durability, Leesa also boasts a six-inch base foam layer, for a total thickness of 10-inches. Not bad for a mattress that comes compressed out of a FedEx truck.

You can check out the full cutaway in the below image.

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When it comes to cost, the Leesa is quite competitive. Currently, Leesa is running a promotion that involves $125 off a mattress as well as a free standard pillow, for a total savings of $200. Shipping is free, and mattresses are built to order, which is another added plus.

Of course, if you receive your Leesa and decide that this particular foam mattress is not for you, don’t fret. There is a 100-day return policy, so if you sleep on it and dislike it, you can always send it back from whence it came. But if you’re anything like me, that probably won't be the case.

Buy the Leesa Memory Foam Mattress from Leesa for $525 (Twin), $695 (Twin XL), $855 (Full), $995 (Queen), $1,195 (King/California King)

SEE ALSO: I spent a few weeks sleeping on sheets from Parachute, a popular online bedding company — and they're 100% worth their high price tag

DON'T MISS: This $115 pillow is the only one I've slept on that's literally cool to the touch — and that stays cool all night

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I found high-quality stainless steel cookware that doesn’t cost hundreds of dollars — and it’s not from a big name brand

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made in saucier main

  • When you're making sauces, gravies, and other thick foods, using a saucier is preferable to a saucepan because it lets you stir, whisk, and reduce ingredients more efficiently. 
  • Kitchen cookware startup Made In's saucier ($99) is even more rounded in shape than a typical saucier and is perfect for serious home cooks looking to improve their sauce-making. 
  • Though the saucier used to be more of a professional kitchen mainstay, Made In's well-designed, durable, and accessibly priced saucier deserves a space in your own kitchen. 

In every home cook's kitchen you're likely to find a saucepan, the small round cooking pot with tall sides that's used for making sauces and gravies or warming up liquids.

You're less likely to find a saucier, a similar type of pot that has a rounded bottom and slightly flared top. If you don't frequently make sauces, risottos, custards, and other types of foods that require frequent stirring or whisking, a saucier will just be another extraneous piece of cookware taking up space in your cabinet.

However, if you are a sauce enthusiast and are frustrated with the flaws of a traditional saucepan, you should consider investing in a saucier. 

I recently tested Made In's saucier, the shape and design of which made me question why I've put up with making sauces in a traditional saucepan for so long.

Made In is a made-in-America, direct-to-consumer kitchen company that first wowed me with its nonstick frying pan, and it makes a variety of other quality cookware essentials.

Its three-quart saucier, in particular, was designed based off customers' feedback, and because Made In can control all of its production processes, it was able to make a more "curated" saucier that specifically addresses these customer needs. 

saucier productMade In's saucier is more rounded in shape than a traditional saucier, making it even easier to stir ingredients around. It's also more flared in shape at the top to encourage better evaporation when you're reducing sauces and gravies. 

I made a variety of sauces, including a chunky tomato sauce filled with vegetables and a creamy alfredo sauce, in the saucier and the processes were so much smoother thanks to the design of the pot.

Because it doesn't have hard edges like a saucepan, ingredients didn't get stuck in tricky-to-reach places and I could stir everything in smooth, continuous motions. The handle is sturdy and made me feel supported as I turned the pot and also stayed cool throughout the cooking process. 

Reducing sauces and gravies makes more sense in a saucier instead of a saucepan with tall sides because there's more surface area to let the liquid reduce and condense faster. As a busy person who likes cooking but has many other tasks to get through during the night, I liked that the saucier made cooking more efficient. 

As with the nonstick frying pan, what especially impressed me was the value I was getting from this well-made cookware.

The saucier has a five-ply stainless steel and aluminum construction (the extra layers make it more durable), is induction compatible, and is dishwasher- and oven-safe. A three-quart All-Clad saucier has nearly all the same specifications — it's actually only three-ply — and is sold for double the price. With a lid, Made In's saucer is $99, while All-Clad's is $163 on Amazon and $195 at other major retailers like Bed Bath & Beyond

Savings like this combined with a product that was carefully designed for the actual cooking task in mind only further convinced me that Made In is a kitchen company you should be watching

Shop the Made In Saucier (with a lid) for $99 or without a lid ($85) here.

SEE ALSO: 7 high-protein pastas that are healthier for you and still taste great

DON'T MISS: These super-sharp chef's knives got their start on Kickstarter — and they're perfect for home cooks

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