Betterment, a startup that uses technology to automate financial planning, just raised $100 million in a Series E round of funding.

Leading the investors is Sweden's Kinnevik. Previous investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Anthemis Group, and Francisco Partners participated.

The round values Betterment, the largest of the independent so-called robo-advisers, at $700 million. That's up from a $400 million to $500 million valuation after its Series D funding round a year ago.

"To us it feels like a validation of the growth that we've had over the last year and some of the product enhancement that we've rolled out" CEO Jon Stein told Business Insider.

The funding round is notable given the unusually tough market environment. Many venture capitalists are backing away from investing in the private markets after exploding private valuations for startups in recent years.

"The markets have been frothy," Stein said, adding that the company could have pushed for a higher valuation during its Series D round but chose to go with a more conservative price.

"I think that that decision really put us in a good spot going into this round of funding, because people understood the story, they understood how we continued to grow," he said.

Betterment manages clients' money by investing in exchange-traded funds. Based on client goals, it uses technology — rather than human financial advisers — to automate investing decisions.

But it is also expanding into other advisory roles, and Stein said he planned to use the new funds to build out some of those initiatives. One of those is the RetireGuide feature, which syncs customers' accounts, including non-Betterment accounts, to help plan for retirement.

The firm, which has 149 employees, also plans to hire. Stein said he was looking to fill roles in engineering, design, product management, and investment management.

Betterment said it had grown from managing $1.1 billion in assets 15 months ago to now managing nearly $4 billion in assets for more than 150,000 customers.

SEE ALSO: There's one thing stopping finance startups from working with big Wall Street firms

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Wearable tech startup Ringly is best known for its line of cocktail rings, which wearers can customize to discreetly notify them whenever they get a call, text message, or notification from a supported app.

Each 18-carat gold-plated ring has a precious gem and can light up or vibrate according to your personal preferences. The ring connects via Bluetooth to an app made for both iOS and Android. 

But the company announced Tuesday it's launching a new product category: bracelets.

The Aries bracelet collection incorporates the same notification technology into a gold-plated bracelet with one of four gemstones: lapis, tourmalated quartz, rainbow moonstone, and labradorite. 

"The number-one thing we were hearing from people is that they liked the idea of Ringly, but that they didn't wear a ring every day," Ringly founder and CEO Christina Mercando d'Avignon told Business Insider. "Our vision is to have different products to match different lifestyles." 

The bracelet is offered in the four gemstones that were most popular in the original Ringly. The company sources all of its gems directly from Jaipur, India, and each one looks a little bit different.

Behind each gem is a complex set of technology — accelerometer, Bluetooth LE, motor, and LEDs — made as discreet as possible. 

"We're targeting women in both style and functionality," d'Avignon said. "We envision this being a way to make life easier for women, for them to stay connected without having to keep their phones out or have to fumble around for their phone in their purse." 

Ringly products can currently connect to more than 100 different apps, including Uber, Slack, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. The bracelet's battery will last two to three days on a full charge, depending on how many apps you sync with it. It comes with a custom stand for charging. 

The new bracelets will also have a step-tracking feature, which Ringly's first line of rings did not include. Fitbit, d'Avignon said, has been the most-commonly integrated fitness app on Ringly products so far. Now wearers will be able to count their steps and monitor their caloric intake directly on the Ringly app. 

The startup of 15 people is also working on a new partnership with Mastercard that will make it possible for wearers to make payments with their ring or bracelet. 

Preorders begin Tuesday, and bracelets are expected to ship this summer. It will retail for $275 (slightly more expensive than the $195 rings), but preorders will be discounted at $195. The first 1,000 people to order will also get a diamond on the side of the bracelet, where the notification light shines through.   

Ringly has raised $7 million in venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, and High Line Ventures. The company declined to share exactly how many rings they've sold, saying only that it has been "tens of thousands". Ringly did $100,000 in sales on its first day of business in June 2014. 

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Buying a new car may never the same.

You can mostly thank Tesla Motors for successfully putting the direct-to-consumer sales model into practice — a sales strategy where the dealership is removed, and the car company itself sells and delivers cars to its customers.

A California-based startup called Roadster is trying to expand on that concept by giving car shoppers a way to purchase almost any vehicle from 35 different automakers.

The company's new service, Roadster Express, is a car-shopping experience that's done entirely online.

That model is already in use, in varying degrees, among a handful of startups — and even some major manufacturers like General Motors— but, for now, they only sell preowned vehicles.

Roadster Express is selling brand-new vehicles from makes like Honda, Subaru, Toyota, and many others.

"It's a simple, self-service interface that gets you through the entire transaction," Roadster COO Rudi Thun told Business Insider, "then you'll schedule delivery, and we’ll bring that car to your house."

Thun is a 15-year veteran of the auto industry, having run eBay Motors and AOL Autos before jumping on board with Roadster.

Thun said Roadster Express is an extension of its premium service, Roadster Concierge, an option geared toward vehicles that are harder to find.

Roadster Express specializes in cars that are widely available, and generally inexpensive — think Chevy Volts, Toyota Camrys and Acura MDXs — cars in the $20,000 to $40,000 range.

It's another example of the auto industry's continual metamorphosis of the last couple of decades. When online car shopping sites like Edmunds and AutoTrader first came online in the late 1990s, the best you could do was research your next car and get a price quote.

Your inbox would fill up with messages from a bunch of sales people — all of whom were trying to get you into their showrooms.

Those days may be ending. Edmunds and AutoTrader are still around and have evolved in their own ways, but new competitors like Beepi and Carvana have come around to take things a step further. They leverage powerful mobile devices and consumer appetites for personalized, on-demand service.

It would seem that this innovation could be detrimental to traditional dealerships, but the threat is minuscule at best, for now. Dealers sold a record 17.5 million vehicles in 2015, raking in about $570 billion on new-car sales.

Dealers that partner with Roadster Express pay the startup 1.25 percent of the price of the new-car sale. In return, dealers don't just get a sales lead, they get a complete new-car order, generated and executed by Roadster.

And customers, who are demanding more control and transparency in the buying process, are spared the agony of spending hours inside a dealership.

For now, Roadster Express is only available in California, but the startup is planning a nationwide expansion later this year.

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The latest celebrity-approved accessory is a silicon bracelet called the Lokai.

Like the iconic yellow Livestrong bands of years past, this one promises to distribute a portion of its profits to charity — 10%, in this case. Like the Livestrong, you can wear it 24/7 without worrying about it tarnishing or falling off.

But unlike the cheap Livestrong bracelets — which cost $10 for a 10-pack — the Lokai is $18 a pop. And instead of sending money only to cancer research, Lokai donates its proceeds to a selection of different charities.

"It's a very millennial take on how to change the world and how to give back," Lokai's 25-year-old founder, Steven Izen, told Business Insider.

Though Lokai has declined to share how many bracelets it has sold, the company has raised over $4 million for charities since the brand's launch in 2013, thanks in part to some serious celebrity support and a strong social-media following.

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The idea for Lokai came from a bittersweet moment in Izen's life: While enjoying a vacation with his family, he received news that his grandfather had Alzheimer's.

His desire to find balance in the midst of the "highest highs" and "lowest lows" turned into the distinctive Lokai design.

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Each bracelet has one white bead encasing water from Mount Everest and one black bead filled with mud from the Dead Sea — the highest and lowest points on earth. Izen even found a team of Sherpas who could get him the Everest water.

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Unless the SEC sets clear rules and regulations, it should stop targeting Silicon Valley with scare tactics, argues Dallas Mavericks owner and investor Mark Cuban.

In a visit to Stanford on Thursday, Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White warned investors to be cautious of the $1 billion "unicorn" companies that have multiplied as fast as their valuations, according to a report from Bloomberg.

"They do not appear to be an endangered species,” White said. “The concern is whether the prestige associated with reaching a sky-high valuation fast drives companies to try to appear more valuable that they actually are.”

In an appearance on CNBC, Cuban ripped into the SEC for encouraging fear rather than taking any action. The fear of having to deal with the SEC is crippling entrepreneurs from going public, according to Cuban, a noted SEC critic.

"It's not so much they are overstepping their bounds, it’s just that they are doing what the SEC always does. 100 degrees of gray," Cuban told host Kelly Evans. "There's no clarity and where there's no clarity and no certainty on what to do in response to the SEC, you get people doing nothing or people avoiding going public or doing anything to avoid dealing with the SEC. And that's a real problem for up and coming companies and it’s a problem for the economy as well."

Cuban chastised the commission for targeting companies who are private without creating any rules or guidance that they should adhere to. Instead, if the SEC is worried about secondary market transactions or companies falsifying their sky-high valuations, then it should pass clear rules and regulations around it, Cuban argues. By leaving it open-ended and unclear what the rules are, it's scaring off companies who may want to go public.

"I mean, 20 years ago, Kelly, it was a goal of every entrepreneur to take their company public. That was, you know, part of the end game," Cuban said. "That led to growth, that led to more jobs, that led to employees at all levels being able to participate with equity and gain from their companies going public. That's gone. The number of public companies has been cut in half."

SEE ALSO: Mark Cuban blasts the SEC for going after Silicon Valley's unicorns

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While companies like Uber are arguing to stay private for as long as they can, investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is taking the opposite approach. 

He's arguing to his companies that it's worth the hassle to go public, he said in a "Closing Bell" interview on CNBC.

In 2015, many tech companies that went public didn't see many positive results. There's been a "down mood" around tech stocks Cuban argues because they are all companies that waited too long to go public.

The market used to be able to capitalize on the the hypergrowth of a company going public early and that's not happening anymore, he says.

"Companies are waiting seven, nine, 10 years or longer to go public, and their hypergrowth is typically gone," Cuban said. "And so that's why you're seeing a lot of IPOs underperform."

He's working to push his companies to go public early, instead of following the Uber path of wanting to stay private forever. 

"It’s something we have to work at. That when we hit 50 or $100 million in sales, and we think we can be a 500 or $750 million revenue and 10% net profit company, let's go public early," Cuban says.

The lack of exciting hypergrowth companies going public also gives bigger companies the advantage to swoop in and acquire smaller upstarts looking for capital. Cuban argued that's what happened with Facebook buying Instagram and Oculus. There's diminished incentives for companies to invest in their own R&D and fight it out with the upstarts. 

"Because the problem is there's aren’t exciting growth companies coming and there’s a reduction in competition for big companies because all those big companies have to do is sit back and wait and buy all these upstarts that are doing well," Cuban said. "Look at Facebook with Instagram and Oculus. In the past, those companies would have gone public..."

SEE ALSO: Mark Cuban blasts the SEC for going after Silicon Valley's billion-dollar 'unicorn' startups

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Josh Bruno was lucky to be able to spend more time than most with his grandfather, who lived to be 98. But the last five years were a chaotic, tumultuous time, Bruno says.

The problem was how to care for his grandfather. Trying to take on caring for a senior can quickly sap the energy of a family, and hiring a caregiver can be a terrifying experience. You just don't know what you're going to get, Bruno says.

"Only 20% of the time a caregiver sticks," Bruno says. Bruno attributes that statistic to a lack of professionalization in the caregiving industry, which often uses independent contractors who lack training, adequate compensation, and a viable career path.

Bruno's startup, Hometeam, is one of a few long-term senior-care companies trying to upend that model using technology and more rigorous training and accountability for caregivers.

On Monday, Hometeam announced a partnership with CareOne, a New Jersey healthcare provider that discharges 20,000 patients every year.

While some technology companies, like Uber, have shaken up traditional industries by moving toward the flexibility that comes with independent contractors, Hometeam took the opposite approach.

"At first, we were a manual company," Bruno says. Hometeam developed a training system and brought all its caregivers, which now number about 1,000, onto its payroll as W2 employees. Bruno wanted to move away from the unreliability of the independent-contractor model.

Why hadn't the industry moved this way before?

"Most [legacy] companies couldn't use [venture capital] money to invest in training," Bruno says. Hometeam has raised $38.5 million to date. The company is betting that with scale it can provide a return on that investment.

After creating an employee model, the tech platform came next.

Hometeam provides a matching model for patients and caregivers around not just medical needs, but also things like shared interests. The platform gives families an increased check-in ability as well, via an iPad in every home.

For this combination of training and tech, Hometeam clients pay about $24 to $25 an hour. And clients on average receive 44 hours a week of care, Bruno says.

Using these numbers, and the 1,000 active and full-time caregivers Hometeam employs, Hometeam could be pulling in more than $54 million in yearly revenue (assuming close to a full placement of caregivers on payroll).

Hometeam isn't the only startup going after this space with tech.

Honor, a West Coast competitor, has raised $20 million and was recently named as one of Business Insider’s hottest San Francisco startups to watch in 2016.

Hometeam operates in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, but it hopes to expand to 10 new markets by the end of 2016.

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Jinn, the on-demand food and goods delivery startup that lets people in London and Manchester order from almost any restaurant, has raised a $7.5 million (£5.2 million) Series A funding round, TechCrunch reports.

Jinn works with a selection of restaurants and companies to let people order goods through its app. You select what you want, and then one of the company's drivers brings the goods to you. It's similar to another London startup: Deliveroo.

But what makes Jinn different is that you can order from custom locations. Just tell the company what you want and a driver will go and pick it up for you. Crucially, Jinn supports McDonald's deliveries, too, something that McDonald's doesn't do itself, and Deliveroo doesn't offer either.

The funding comes from Samaipata Ventures, Elderstreet, Bull Partners, and angel investors who had already invested in the company. Madrid-based Samaipata Ventures is a relatively new VC fund that looks to invest in e-commerce companies in Europe.

Jinn CEO Mario Navarro told TechCrunch that his company plans to use the funding to expand to more UK cities as well as continental Europe. Navarro says Jinn has around 50,000 orders every month through its app, which he says is 30% month-on-month growth.

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Cargomatic, a Los-Angeles based logistics startup described as the "Uber for truckers" that has raised more than $10 million in funding, "blindsided" staff by laying off half of its workforce — around 50 to 60 employees — over the past couple of months, according to people familiar with the matter.

What most surprised staff was that up until recently the 3-year-old company, which provides an app to connect businesses that need to ship goods locally with nearby truckers who have capacity in their vehicles, had been on a hiring spree.

The US trucking industry is big business. Trucks are the way the majority of freight is transported in the States, with the industry generating $700.4 billion in revenue in 2014, according to the American Trucking Association. Cargomatic says that the local US trucking industry is valued at $82 billion.

The sheer size of the market and the fragmentation of the many old-school companies in the space is part of the reason VCs have been so interested in the sector, investing $63.25 million into "Uber for truckers"-type technology-logistics businesses in 2015, according to VentureBeat. Meanwhile, Uber is also plotting a move into the logistics space.

In January 2015, Cargomatic announced an $8 million Series A funding round led by Canaan Partners, with participation from Volvo Group Venture Capital, Sherpa Ventures, SV Angel, Scott Banister, and others. It brought its total funding to $10.6 million.

At the time of the funding announcement, Cargomatic said that it wanted to use the investment to broaden its operations from the Southern California and New York metro areas to other locations in the US.

'Everyone that was laid off was given no warning whatsoever'

Cargomatic's recent recruitment spree came to a "dead stop" once January and February 2016 rolled around, one former employee told us.

The person added:

I think everyone had a sense that something was amiss when management implemented a sudden hiring freeze with no explanation. But no one could have expected something of this magnitude. Everyone that was laid off was given no warning whatsoever. They were completely blindsided.

Cargomatic confirmed the layoffs with Business Insider, although the company wouldn't confirm the number of jobs cut. The former employee, a source close to the company, and reviews on the anonymous employer-rating service Glassdoor, said that 50% of jobs were axed — around 50 to 60 staff.

'Key to growing a successful company is knowing where to staff appropriately'

CEO Jonathan Kessler said in an emailed statement: "The Cargomatic marketplace continues to expand and has enjoyed year-over-year growth since our founding in 2013. Key to growing a successful company is knowing where to staff appropriately at different growth phases. Sometimes that means making difficult decisions, and to that end, we recently reduced the size of our marketplace operations and inside sales teams."

Kessler added that the reduction has allowed the company to make new investments in building out its enterprise-sales department, including the recent hires of two senior logistics sales executives: former VP for Carlile Transportation, Chuck Oeleis, as VP of sales and Meaghan Diem, a former VP at Coyote Logistics, as VP of enterprise sales.

The company has also made additions to its engineering team "to automate tasks that previously had been handled manually," Kessler said.

The four current job openings on the company's website are for two engineers, an enterprise-sales executive, and an inside-sales representative.

Kessler added: "Cargomatic remains laser-focused on developing world-class technology that provides increased efficiency, transparency, and affordability to the trucking industry."

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A well-known Israeli investor has warned startups that if they raise too much capital in their early days then they will explode their "financial bladder."

Speaking at the Forbes Under 30 EMEA Summit this week, Yossi Vardi said raising vast sums at the beginning of a company's life is a "death kiss" because it makes startups cash flow negative from the outset.

"There will be a high burning rate and it won’t generate a positive cash flow," said Vardi at the conference in Tel Aviv, Israel. "Too much money will explode the financial bladder."

According to the National Venture Capital Association, US startups raised $47.2 billion (£33 billion) in the first three quarters of 2015, which is by far the most since 2000. 

Vardi, who has founded and helped to build over 60 tech companies in a variety of fields over the last 40 years, gave the young entrepreneurs in the audience several other bits of advice.

Among them, he said three people is the optimal number of cofounders to start a company with. One to deal with product, one with technology, and one with business.

He added that a third of startups fail because people don't get along with each other. 

"Relationships are key," he said. "In Israel, the army is very relevant. The most important contribution to the ecosystem in Israel is that the people are able to see who they are compatible with and with whom they can work well with."

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Dozens of cool, innovative businesses pop up across the US every day, bringing new technologies, entertainment options, and services to their local communities.

Throughout the year, we've highlighted several of these small, independent businesses that have opened over the past five years or so in New York City, San Francisco, Houston, Portland, Boston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and now we've scoured the rest of the country for inventive new ventures.

From a pizza oven on wheels to a boutique where everything's free — with a catch, of course — there are plenty of smart places to check out. Read on to see our top 50.

Editing by Alex Morrell. Additional reporting by Lauren Browning.

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5 Rabbit Cervecería

6398 W. 74th St., Bedford Park, Illinois

What it is: A Latin-influenced craft brewery that bases its beers on Aztec culture.

Why it's cool: Located just outside Chicago, the first Latin microbrewery, or cervecería, in the US infuses its brews with ancho chili, piloncillo cane sugar, and other Latin flavors. Inspired by an Aztec myth, 5 Rabbit names all of its beers to coincide with the Aztec calendar.

Angela & Roi

Online, based in Boston, Massachusetts

What it is: A handbag company that has a unique charity-donation policy.

Why it's cool: Angela & Roi handbags come in all sorts of colors, but when choosing, most customers don't just think about the color they like; they also think about the "color" they're donating to. A portion of each bag sale goes to the charity whose color coordinates with the bag — red is for HIV/AIDS, pink is for breast cancer, and so forth. Angela & Roi bags are also eco-conscious, made without animal products or sweatshop labor.

Arrowroot

Online, based in Denver, Colorado

What it is: A brand that believes in ethically produced clothing and dressing up every day.

Why it's cool: This online retailer based in Denver claims to make it easier to get dressed in the morning, whether you’re running errands, heading to work, or grabbing coffee with a friend. This fair-trade fashion label was created by E.A. Lepine, a designer intent on trading lazy-day yoga pants for casual, comfortable, and trendy dresses.

All items sold at Arrowroot are sewn by a group of seven women in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. The women earn fair wages — about $10 to $12 an hour, enough to support a family — and healthcare benefits.

It's already a pain to find parking in crowded cities. It's even worse if it's a city you've never been to. 

That's why rental-car company Hertz just made a $50 million strategic investment in Luxe, a San Francisco-based startup that makes it its job to handle the parking for you. 

Luxe works as a valet on-demand. In a way similar to Uber, you tap on an app when you need your car parked, and it tracks you as you arrive at your destination, whether it's at a restaurant for dinner or at your office for the day.

The startup does more than just park the car — it can also refill the gas or have it washed while you're in meetings. Then you can either schedule your return or tap the button to have your car returned to you by a Luxe valet.

Now its new strategic investment from Hertz will hopefully help both resident city-dwellers and out-of-town visitors take the hassle out of finding a parking spot. 

"Renting a car isn't the easiest thing in the world, and especially when you rent a car and go into a city or metro area, not being able to find parking and having to find gas especially when you don't know the city well is a challenging experience," Luxe CEO Curtis Lee told Business Insider. "And those are the perfect use cases that customers use Luxe for right now."

Business Insider learned that the Series B round lead by Hertz officially closed on Tuesday, although the partnership had been rumored since a report by The Information in February. The final valuation ended up higher than the rumored $110 million, according to a person involved in the deal, making it a major milestone for a company in a beleaguered category of on-demand startups. 

Several other companies have already failed and shuttered or pivoted their business away from serving drivers at the push of the button. Luxe is the only company that hasn't had the same fate, Lee said.

Instead, it's grown 30% month-over-month in a market where all of the competition has fallen by the wayside and now has a $50 million cash infusion from one of the top rental-car companies to power it to grow even larger. 

"By the time our competitors have folded, we’ve been meaningfully bigger," Lee said. "We’ve been telling press for so long that we’re the leaders in the space. Now it’s extremely clear."

The allure of corporate cash

Transportation startups are starting to see an increased interest and an increased opportunity to partner with incumbents in the field.

Since the beginning of 2016, General Motors has been on an investing and buying spree, striking a massive $500 million investment in Lyft and buying a self-driving-car startup Cruise for $1 billion. It also mopped up the remaining assets of Sidecar, one of the first ride-hailing car companies, in an attempt to brace for the future when no one owns cars. 

BMW also made a similar strategic investment last fall in Zirx, Luxe's once rival in the on-demand-parking business that has already pivoted to focusing only on enterprise customers. 

Luxe's $50 million from Hertz, though, is a much larger check than its rival received, and Lee attributes that to turning on-demand parking into a good business.

No one wants to invest in a business that's not going to be a sustainable business

"We're profitable in certain cities and we're close to being profitable in the others too," Lee said. "Honestly I think the reason why a lot of our competitors folded and the reason why the on-demand space is under so much heat is that companies haven't been able to demonstrate that they can turn profitable, and I don't think we would have gotten the attention, the term sheets, and certainly the investment from Hertz had we not been profitable. No one wants to invest in a business that's not going to be a sustainable business."

Luxe had been reportedly trying to raise since last fall, but Curtis said the Hertz investment only took two to three months to finish before it officially closed on Tuesday. 

The latest deal with Hertz kicked off after the top car-rental company approached the San Francisco startup, Lee told Business Insider. There were several other term sheets on the table for the company, a source told Business Insider, but Luxe went with the largest amount and the only strategic partner rather than a traditional venture-capital firm. 

The deal doesn't yet come with any formal partnership announcements, like reduced costs for Hertz customers, but Lee acknowledged that he was looking forward to working with the company down the line.

As part of the financing, Hertz CEO John Tague, who also used to run United Airlines, is joining the board. 

“Our investment will support Luxe's ability to scale its successful service to other major urban centers, while offering our customers enhanced convenience and value with regard to their urban parking needs,” Tague wrote in a statement. “Building on an expanded Luxe footprint and capability, we will partner together to develop new innovative and integrated services that will enhance the relevancy of our core products in urban markets.” 

'A Darwinian process'

Luxe's latest deal also signals the return in faith from some investors in the on-demand space. After Zirx's pivot, a slew of other on-demand companies, like SpoonRocket for food delivery, shuttered their doors. Cargomatic, an "Uber for trucking" startup in LA, just laid off 50% of its staff in the last month.

Yet, despite some media reports evaluating whether the on-demand economy could ever succeed, investors from Venrock and Redpoint, which also participated in the round, both said they were still bullish on Luxe.

"Luxe has always been about making car ownership or people who use cars or anyone who has a car as painless and delightful as possible. That promise alone means they had a ton of business," said Ryan Sarver, a partner at Redpoint Ventures. 

He compared what's happening in the on-demand space now to Amazon's rise among ballooning ecommerce startups. There were a ton of companies, but only a few winners — yet few argue that having an ecommerce company like Amazon is a bad business overall. What's happening now is the weeding out of the good from the bad, he believes.

"I think what you’re starting to see is there’s been a kind of a Darwinian process happening," Sarver said. "[On-demand] got overhyped, and now it’s getting overhyped in the other direction."

Despite the calls for the death of the on-demand economy coupled with a downturn in startup funding, Lee said it wasn't a hard sell to convince Hertz about Luxe's strength in the market. It had already emerged from the competition as the only leader standing, and it had the growth and path to profitability he says to support it.

"If you kind of drown out some of the background noise, the core business speaks for itself," he said. "The climate is tough on the fundraising side, and I'm just proud of what we've accomplished. Getting this round, and a massive up-round at that, is kind of a testament to the company's strength."

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Amidst a funding slow down, a company that takes care of storing your stuff has raised money for the second time in five months.

And the entire deal only took nine days to close, says its cofounder and CMO Ari Mir. 

Los Angeles-based on-demand storage startup Clutter is announcing a $20 million Series B round led by Sequoia. The venture capital firm had led its $9 million Series A in October, just five months before.

However, Mir insists that the new round wasn't because the startup was low on cash. Instead, he could feel the market changing and he wants to push Clutter to profitability.

"The reason that we raised this round is that we saw that with this raise there's an incredibly high likelihood that we can get to an operating profit without having to raise another round of financing," Mir said. "Given with where things are going with the macro environment, we thought the best thing to do would be to reduce burn while pursuing growth as well to get this business to be profitable. Which is crazy, I know you never hear that, but I think we can do it."

The cash will also help Clutter go head-to-head with companies like MakeSpace in a fight over who gets to store your stuff.

Both startups have the same "Uber for storage" approach. Customers can request a pick up to put their items in storage instead of renting a unit of their own. The items are photographed and put in an online catalog as they're whisked away to a storage facility. When a customer needs their winter clothes or their couch back, it's as easy as a few taps in an app to select it to be returned to you. 

Where the startups differ, though, is in what they can accept. MakeSpace accepts items that can fit in bin that can hold hold up to 40 pounds. Any larger items, like your suitcase or golf clubs, add an additional monthly fee. In September, it also added a traditional storage space plan where any items can be accepted in a space as small as a hall closet or as big as 400 square feet.

Clutter started with the same box model, but quickly pivoted to take all sizes of objects using professionally trained movers.

"Your life doesn't fit in a box. The hard thing to do is to move an eight-piece sectional couch or a marble table," Mir told Business Insider back in October. "We pride ourselves on not necessarily doing what's easiest for us, but with the goal of what's the most convenient service for the customer."

The startup has been growing revenue 35% month-over-month and that hasn't been at the expense of margins, Mir says. While many on-demand companies are having their toes held to the fire over losing money on transactions, Mir is quick to point out that his storage is a better business because it's not relying on people's food cravings to turn a profit. 

"Our entire book of business is subscription," Mir said. "People keep paying for it."

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Original story here.

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Journalist/comedy writer Dan Lyons is on a publicity tour for "Disrupted," his new memoir about working for marketing tech startup HubSpot. He wrote a summary version of his experiences there for the New York Times.

He's right about a lot of criticisms, but ignores one very important point: Successful startups share some of their wealth with employees more broadly than almost any other company in any other field.

That means that rank-and-file employees can gain sudden life-changing wealth by working there. Where else can that happen?

First, the parts he's right about.

Startups do often have a cult-like atmosphere, complete with funny language and overblown rhetoric about changing the world. Managers do tend to be young — sometimes younger than their direct reports. Some startups do fire underperformers or conduct layoffs with little or no warning, although that's common in other companies as well. A lot of hyped-up tech startups have gone public without making profits, including Twitter (which lost over $521 million in 2015), Box (lost over $202 million in the year ended January 31, 2016), and Square (lost nearly $180 million in 2015). And, yes, HubSpot lost $46 million last year.

As Lyons writes, "Wealth is generated, but most of the loot goes to a handful of people at the top, the founders and venture capital investors."

That is true. The investors and founders, who take the biggest risk, tend to own the biggest percentage of a company and reap the highest rewards when they go public or get swallowed by a bigger company.

But most tech startups dole out stock options and stock grants much more broadly to rank-and-file workers, including engineers and salespeople. That means they share in any happy outcome. 

I personally know plenty of former startup employees who used their exit money to buy a first home. Or to travel the world. I even know one who traveled, then bought a house on the beach in the country he fell in love with. He's not an entrepreneur. He's not an executive. He's a lucky programmer who happens to be very good at his job and has picked a couple winners.

In today's economy, how else can a rank-and-file worker suddenly get a life-changing sum of money? By winning the lottery?

I don't want to put too much of a shine on it. Most startups fail. Most startup workers' options and grants end up being worth zero. It's wrong to exchange too much salary for equity, and you should never make any big bets based on the value of unvested pre-exit options.

But still, in the hollowed-out economy of today, there are few jobs that offer a better prospect of upward economic mobility than working in a young tech company. It's not paradise, but it's not a horror show either. 

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Dave Asprey wants to hack death.

The Silicon Valley entrepreneur has spent over $300,000 on research trying to do so, using data to optimize his mind and body.

Asprey is the founder of the multimillion-dollar company selling Bulletproof Coffee, a blended drink with grass-fed unsalted butter and "Brain Octane," a trademarked oil extracted from coconuts.

As a guest on WNYC's podcast Note to Self on April 6, he explained that he aims to reach a high-performing state by any means necessary.

"The goal is to die when I want," he told host Manoush Zomorodi. "I’m planning to hit at least 180."

He believes the world isn't so far away. Just look at Lance Armstrong, he says.

"The only thing wrong that Lance Armstrong did is he didn’t tell everyone he was doing it," Asprey says. "Do you know how much precious knowledge we would have as a species if Lance had published what he was doing?"

If athletes want to experiment with enhancers, he continues, they should publish the data. "We are wired to evolve,” he says.

Asprey is part of the biohacking movement, which is made up of people (mostly men) who use data science to become "super-human." He practices intense workout regimens, tracks his sleep, and follows a strict diet without sugar, gluten, legumes, and dairy. More extreme biohackers have implanted microchips and magnets under their skin to link themselves with computers.

He says that Bulletproof Coffee, paired with his Bulletproof Diet, can boost energy, lead to weight loss, and even raise your IQ.

Asprey's claims have garnered skepticism. Earlier this year, Gizmodo's Brent Rose debunked most of the promises of Bulletproof Coffee, including that it will instantly burn fat and eliminate hunger. Asprey's research has likely operated on confirmation bias, Rose writes. The majority of studies Asprey sites were also done on rats and mice, which usually doesn't always apply to humans.

Still, he's optimistic.

"If we created a world where everyone is running at their optimum, it would be a really amazing world," Asprey says. "That’s what I’m working to create."

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Onfido has raised $25 million (£18 million) for its background checking platform from the investors behind companies like Spotify, Deezer, Happn, and Secret Escapes.

The startup, cofounded by three Oxford graduates in 2012, helps businesses like The Daily Mail and sharing economy startups like BlaBlaCar to verify that employees and contractors are who they say they are.

In order to help the company scale globally, Onfido chose to raise another round of funding. The series B funding round — led by Idinvest Partners, with participation from Wellington Partners, CrunchFund, and others — brings total funding in Onfido up to $30.3 million (£21.5 million).

Onfido CEO Husayn Kassai told Business Insider that the latest funding round will help Onfido expand deeper into the US, where it employs 10 people in San Francisco, in addition to the 86 staff it has across London and Lisbon.

"Our vision is to build the trust engine to power human interactions worldwide," said Kassai over email. "It could be the interaction between a passenger and a driver, a host and a guest, or even a cleaner and a homeowner. To achieve that we will be using the investment to scale our global operations and our machine-learning technology.

"We’ve seen that the US is our fastest growing market with 40% month-on-month growth. We’ve gained a lot of traction in the past few months with the likes of Turo and Workmarket and the demand is only growing — particularly in the sharing economy and fintech sector."

Unlike many other identity verification platforms, Onfido's operations are almost entirely online. Employers and sharing economy platforms send an email via Onfido to prospective employees or sharing economy users asking them to provide proof that they, for example, hold a valid driving license. Onfido's platform then automatically cross-checks these with the appropriate databases and reports back to the employer or sharing economy platform.

Kassai told Business Insider in January that Onfido had 625 customers. Today that number stands at over a thousand.

Working with Airbnb

One big sharing economy company that Onfido has failed to attract is Airbnb.

Like other sharing economy companies, Airbnb is under pressure to improve the safety of its platform after reports emerged stating a number of guests have been raped by their hosts. There have also been reports of guests holding wild drug-fuelled sex parties in Airbnb properties.

In theory, a better background checking platform could help Airbnb to avoid these incidents.

Airbnb and Onfido have held talks but so far no deal has been signed. Now could be a good time for Onfido to move in, however, given Airbnb's current background checker, Jumio, filed for bankruptcy last month.

When we asked Kassai how long it will be before Onfido lands Airbnb as a customer, he said: "We hope to work with all big players in the fintech and sharing economy sectors who require an identity verification and background checking solution. By entering the US, we are building the single, global solution that many large companies need."

Matthieu Baret, a partner at Idinvest, said in a statement: "In what is set to be a testing year for many startups, Onfido has the product and business model that will allow them to continue their strong upwards trajectory. This is why we invested and we look forward to working together as they expand to new markets and territories."

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Shuddle, an "Uber for kids" startup, is shutting down on Friday after running out of money.

In an email sent to drivers today, the company said that it worked hard to find the financial resources, but couldn't raise the money in the end.

Since 2014, the startup had raised $13.2 million, including a $9.6 million round last year set aside for expansion, but had burned through the cash just in the Bay Area.

CEO Doug Aley told the San Francisco Chronicle's Carolyn Said that it needed to raise an additional $10 million to $15 million to "pull us through to profitability."

Faced with a market slowdown and investor demand for profitable businesses, the company failed to attract the cash and shuts down on Friday.

Shuddle also faced competition against other established startups — not to mention Uber — for transporting kids. In San Francisco, Shuddle went head-to-head with Kango, formerly known as KangaDo. In Southern California, HopSkipDrive is valued at $15 million and has already poached executives from Uber.

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Venture capital funding for startups dropped 25% in the first quarter of 2016, the steepest decline since the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, according to new data from Dow Jones VentureSource. 

A total of $13.9 billion flowed into U.S. startups in the first quarter, and only 884 deals were done, the lowest number in four years.

The report is really focused on the traditional VC market. It only includes startups with at least one venture-backed round, and ignores startups backed only by private individuals (such as angel investors) so very early stage startups are excluded. It also excludes companies that are majority owned by another company or by a private equity firm.

Even so, it's more evidence that the cold wind is definitely blowing through Silicon Valley. As companies find it hard to raise money, they'll have to get to positive cash flow sooner — that means real customers paying more money than the startup is spending.

Just today, "Uber for kids" startup Shuddle shut down, adding its name to the long and growing list of startups who have laidpeopleoff or shut down in recent months. 

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Investor T. Rowe Price just marked down its holdings in a bunch of hot tech startups, another indication that last year's sky-high billion-dollar valuations for startups are falling back to earth.

The mutual-fund manager took an ax to Dropbox in particular, valuing the company at $7.91 a share, reports Alfred Lee at The Information.

That's a 59% cut from what investors paid for a round in 2014, which valued the privately held company at $10 billion. But it's even lower than what they paid back in 2011 ($9.05 a share), Lee reports.

T. Rowe also marked down:

• Cloudera by 37%,
• MongoDB by 23%,
• Lookout by 16%,
• Flipkart by 15%,
• Apptio by 15%,
• Houzz by 12%,
• Warby Parker by 11%,
• and others.

Uber, the $62 billion ride-hailing startup, and home-sharing service Airbnb both got a 6% valuation haircut.

And T. Rowe took a heavy ax to its common stock Series 1 investment in Evernote, cutting that by 75%, although it did not mark down the value of its later rounds in Evernote, Lee notes.

The markdown to Evernote is interesting.

In many cases, the terms investors were offering startups in rounds that gave them such high billion-dollar valuations included extra protections for the investors and their preferred stock if it looked like they could lose money in future fund-raising or cash-out events, like an IPO. In other words, there may be less reason to write-down certain preferred stock, since the risk of losing money is much lower.

Mutual funds are very opaque about the methodology that they use to value private startups, and recently there have been some arguments that the significance of the markdowns has been overstated.

Indeed, other mutual-fund investors have rated their investments in these same startups differently.

For instance, look at the variations from 4Q 2013 to 1Q 2016, according to the Startup Stock Tracker by The Wall Street Journal:

• Dropbox: Collectively up 17.31% by all the mutual funds tracked, with the lowest price in that period again from T. Rowe Price at $9.40.
• Cloudera: up 54% (although Fidelity recently marked down Cloudera, too), with the lowest price at $19.50 from Hartford and Principal.
• MongoDB: down 32.83%, lowest price from Fidelity at $5.75.
• Lookout: down 9%, lowest price from Hartford $8.35.
• Flipkart: up 6.22%, lowest price $100.99 from Principal.
• Evernote: down 36%, from T. Row Price's last markdown in December to $7.66.

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