Lyft says robots will drive most of its cars in five years
Lyft — trying to keep up with its longtime ride-hailing competitor Uber, which just rolled out a self-driving pilot in Pittsburgh — is being more explicit about what company president John Zimmer has dubbed the “third transportation revolution.” Zimmer laid out that plan in a Medium post published today, titled “The Third Transportation Revolution: Lyft’s Vision for the Next Ten Years and Beyond.” [ Recode ]
Being A Product Manager: How To Get Your Products Built
When I first started working as a Product Manager, I was amazed at how different PM’s built their products. Everyone had their own approach. I quickly realized that the role of a Product Manager is more of an art than a defined set of responsibilities, and I began to consider how the most successful products are greenlit to be built. [ Medium ]
CoinOut Wants To Digitize The Pennies In Your Pocket
Who isn't frustrated at coming home with a pocket full of loose change? Well, just like almost everything else in the universe, there's an app for that. CoinOut, a startup founded by Jeff Witten, aims to bring the benefits of electronic money to the multitudes of people who pay cash by allowing you to save the change you receive at participating merchants to your phone. From there you can send the balance to your bank account, transfer it to an Amazon.com gift card, or donate it to charity. [ Fast Company ]
Scott and Jenna discuss a decade of charity: water stories and the team’s life-changing impact reducing the water crisis from a billion people to 663 million.
LATEST FUNDING
KeyMe raises $15 million for digital key-copying kiosks
Here’s a new twist on getting your keys copied at the hardware store. KeyMe has raised $15 million in funding to expand its key-copying kiosks, which enable you to save “digital copies” of keys in the cloud. KeyMe promises to revolutionize costly locksmith services by enabling customers to copy their home, office, and car keys and then save copies of them in the cloud.The third round of funding was led by QuestMark Partners, coming after a $20 million second round in December 2015. To date, the company has raised $45 million. All previous investors participated in an oversubscribed round, including Comcast Ventures, Battery Ventures, White Star Capital, 7-Eleven, Ravin Gandhi, and the Michael Polsky Family Office, among others. [ Venture Beat ]
Renmatix Secures $14M Investment from Bill Gates and Total, the Global Energy Major, In Concert with Signing of 1 Million Ton Cellulosic Sugar License
Renmatix, the leader in affordable cellulosic sugars, today announced a $14Minvestment, led by Bill Gates. Industry demand for competitive alternatives to petro-derived molecules is gaining traction, despite recent market pressures. In the interest of expanding that supply, the Plantrose® process provides an enabling technology for profitable biorefineries. This investment in commercializing Plantrose will help drive towards the first wave of Renmatix licensees building Plantrose-enabled biorefineries in diverse global markets like Canada, India, Malaysia, the U.S. and elsewhere. In parallel, that activity will facilitate further market development in downstream bioproduct applications. [ PR Newswire ]
Resilinc Receives Funding Round
Resilinc, a Milpitas, Calif.-based provider of supply chain resiliency and risk management solutions built on the Salesforce platform, received a new investment round of undisclosed amount. Backers included Bright Success Capital, Procyon Ventures
and Salesforce Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of its predictive analytics solution.Led by Bindiya Vakil, CEO and founder, Resilinc provides a platform for companies to access to advanced multi-tier mapping and part origin intelligence, collected from over 35,000 suppliers across more than 65,000 factories globally.
[Finsmes ]
Pitango-backed Totango shows is can do the fandango after $8 million investment led by BGV
Tel Aviv-and-San Mateo-based customer success startup Totango has roped in a new $8 million Series C funding round, the company announced Wednesday. The round was led by Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) with participation from existing investors Pitango, Canvas and Interwest Partners. Their software picks up data about a company’s customers and can monitor customer health for companies in the tech space, making them a great tool for customer success folks. And what the hell is “customer success” you might ask? It’s more of a proactive approach to customer service and customer experience, checking in on clients and asking them how things are going with a given product or service. The way the industry refers to “customer service” is as something more reactive to individual problems, the type of thing that comes up from time to time and you would ring support to help solve. Customer success managers are tasked with keeping a constant watch on products, services and clients almost in the same way a waiter might come to check how everything is at your table in a restaurant. [ Geek time ]
Securus Medical raises $10 million in round led by Boston Scientific
Securus Medical Group has raised $10 million in an investment round led by Boston Scientific. The Cleveland company also announced that it has received regulatory clearance that would allow it to begin selling its first product: a temperature-monitoring device intended for use on the esophagus. The money will be used to continue product development and clinical testing, according to a news release from Securus. Boston Scientific now holds a seat on Securus' board. Securus also raised money locally: The Global Cardiovascular Innovation Center, a state-funded economic development organization led by the Cleveland Clinic, contributed capital, as did RiverVest Venture Partners, which has an office in Cleveland. RiverVest invested in Securusalongside JumpStart in 2011, and it invested more capital in 2013, when Securus raised $6.5 million and hired Steven Girouard as its CEO. The company that led the 2013 round, 3X5 Special Opportunity Fund L.P., contributed to the new round, as did another previous investor, the University of Michigan MINTS program. [ Crains Cleveland ]
LATEST EXITS
Exclusive: Infor working with Morgan Stanley after investment interest - sources
Infor Inc, a business software company which could be valued at more than $9 billion including debt, is working with Morgan Stanley to handle approaches from buyout firms interested in acquiring a stake, according to people familiar with the matter. The move follows a string of deals in the enterprise software sector, including Oracle Corp's $9.3 billion deal in July to acquire NetSuite Inc, which has driven private equity firms to review such holdings in their portfolios and scour the market for new assets. Golden Gate Capital and Summit Partners, the private equity firms that own Infor, may choose to pursue a debt investment or other ways to bring on additional investors besides a sale of a minority equity stake, the people said this week. [ Reuters ]
FUND RAISE
Venture Capital, iFly Venture Launches $100M Fund
A Palo Alto, CA-based newly formed venture capital firm – iFly Venture – has launched its first fund. According to a regulatory form filed with the SEC, iFly Venture Fund, L.P., is raising $100m. The doc lists VC professionals Han Shen and Haitao Zhang as people related to the offering. Han Shen was the former partner at Formation 8, associate at VantagePoint Capital Partners, and venture investment consultant at ARCH Venture Partners and Mohr Davidow Ventures, Haitao Zhang was the Asia Business Development Operating Partner at Formation 8, focusing on China, associate vice president of Golden Concord Holding Ltd.(GCL), a Chinese holding company in the
renewable energy industry, including GCL-POLY, a a Poly silicon and wafer manufacturer subsidiary listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKSE:3800) [ Finsmes ]
