Heartcore Capital, one of the few VCs to focus on consumer technology, has raised a $200 million early-stage fund for those kinds of startups across Europe. Heartcore IV, the firm’s flagship investment vehicle, will be supported by Heartcore Progression Beta, a $50 million ‘opportunity fund’ for follow on rounds in consumer tech.

The firm said both vehicles were oversubscribed. Investors in the funds include Hermann Haraldsson (Boozt), Andrew Stalbow (Seriously), Phillip Chambers and Kasper Hulthin (Peakon), Paul Crusius and Marco Vietor (Audibene), Morten Strunge (Podimo, Mofibo), and Max-Josef Meier (Finn).

Most European VCs tech to be B2B/ SaaS focused, but Heartcore has specialized in consumer technology VC.

In Heartcore’s favour is the fact that there are 500 million consumers in the EU spending an annual $11 trillion, making it on-par with the US consumer market. It also has a larger middle class. And while B2B platforms must usually win the US or at least originate from there, the B2C market tends to be more local.

The pandemic has also acted as an accelerant for consumer technology, forcing po[ulations to take up digital services such as online groceries

Heartcore has had a 14-year history in consumer tech with its portfolio raising close to $1 billion in follow-on financing over the past 12 months, the company said.

Swedish consumer personal finance manager Tink’s recently sold to Visa for $2.2BN, and Heartcore was the largest venture investor at the time of acquisition.

It has also invested in virtual restaurants (Taster), open banking (Tink), quick-commerce (Weezy), fashion e-commerce (Boozt), cellular agriculture (Gourmey), digital health (Kaia Health, Natural Cycles) or subscription commerce (La Fourche, Italic).

Max Niederhofer, Heartcore Capital partner, told me: “Europe historically has been great at consumer tech. You’ve had Skype, Last fm, Spotify and Supercell. All of those are consumer companies. I think the thing that’s happening is that a lot of the consumer champions are domestic champions. Lando is huge in Germany. The biggest insurance tech company in France is actually a French company. So, as technology disrupts every consumer spend category, there’s a lot of big companies being built in Europe that are primarily domestic or regional, and that’s where we feel there’s a lot of room to play.”

Welcome to a two public-offering week. U.S software company Amplitude is expected to post a direct-listing reference price this evening and begin trading tomorrow morning, per publicly available IPO calendars. Warby Parker is also set to direct list later this week — more on its numbers here.

Expect a raft of coverage from TechCrunch on both debuts.

Even if you are tired of IPOs, these two warrant your attention. The Amplitude debut is notable for its status as a direct listing that follows a large private-market fundraising. The company is pursuing a liquidity model that both leverages ample private fundraising and dodges pricing issues present in traditional IPOs that have irked many in the Silicon Valley chattering classes.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

And the Warby offering will help set — or correct — market sentiment regarding D2C companies; the unicorn isn’t even a technology company in the eyes of many. However, its DNA in e-commerce and venture-backed history keep it firmly in the TechCrunch wheelhouse, regardless. And it’s also pursuing a direct listing after raising private capital in recent quarters.

The two direct listings will help us figure out which side of the public-private divide is truly undervaluing startups. It’s either pesky bankers extracting unearned value from hardworking Silicon Valley types at graduation day, or it’s private-market investors irked that anyone else accretes upside from startups.

Let’s talk about how we’ll sort the matter.

Raise, then direct list

We’ve seen a number of direct listings in recent years. Spotify is perhaps the best remembered. But Asana also went out via a direct listing. As did Wise, Squarespace, Coinbase and Roblox.

Amplitude will also float without raising primary capital in its public debut. It raised a huge stack of funds earlier this year — $150 million at a valuation of just under $4.2 billion, per Crunchbase data. This method of raising private capital and then direct listing decouples the traditional IPO, which combines a primary raise and a public flotation.

Another variation on the method is to direct list, later raising primary funds through a follow-on offering once the market has set what is perhaps a fairer price for the equity of the company in question. There is also work afoot to allow companies to direct list and raise primary capital, shifting pricing power from banks to public investors more directly. That final option is still more theory than applicable exercise.

So, unicorns that don’t want to pursue a traditional IPO can raise private funds before or after a direct listing in an attempt to get around the exorbitant first-day pops that some firms have recorded in recent quarters.

Roblox is an example of the raise-then-direct list method. It filed to go public but shelved its IPO after seeing a few other companies storm out of the gate. The gaming company went on to raise private funds in early 2021, and then direct list. Squarespace was similar: It raised $300 million at a flat $10.0 billion valuation (post-money) this March before direct listing in May.

This is the model that Amplitude and Warby Parker will test this week. The question it begs is simple: Does raising private capital and then direct listing solve the pricing issue that traditional IPOs engender when bankers and institutional investors price the floating company at a lower value than what retail investors and others will pay for the same stock once it begins to trade?

NTWRK, a video shopping app that has helped to popularize the idea of live-streamed commerce in the U.S., announced today it’s closed on $50 million in new funding led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and global luxury group Kering, owners of luxury brands Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and others. The company has been working to capitalize on the growing interest in live commerce and creator content, and shifted into live virtual events and festivals as Covid-19 ravaged the U.S. last year. Now it says it will invest in furthering its growth and working to establish a more global footprint.

Other participants in the new round include LionTree Partners and Tenere Capital. They join the company’s prior backers:  Main Street Advisors (whose investors include Jimmy Iovine, Drake, LeBron James), Live Nation, Foot Locker, and others. Allison Berardo, a Vice President within the Growth Equity business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management, will join NTWRK’s board of directors.

Aimed at a younger crowd of Gen Z and millennial consumers, NTWRK offered tools that allow creators to interact with viewers and sell products in real-time, in what’s been called a mix of QVC, Twitter, and Twitch. The experience blends commerce with entertainment, as viewers watch and chat with other viewers and hots in real-time, as they shop for streetwear, shoes, collectibles, and other items. The company has also created its own exclusive content where it’s featured hosts like Billie Eilish, Juice WRLD, DJ Khaled, Odell Beckham Jr, Eddie Huang, Blake Griffin, Alexander Wang, FaZe Clan, Nadeshot, Jonah Hill, Gary Vee, A$AP Ferg, Wu-Tang Clan, Doja Cat and others. (It even invested into FaZe Clan last year, we should note.)

Its business model extends beyond just offering live video shopping that you can tune into at any time, as it also regularly features product drops that work to build up anticipation and excitement. This sort of feature is only now making its way to larger social media platforms, like Instagram, which introduced drops just this spring.

NTWRK has also embraced live events and virtual festivals as another way to engage audiences. Last year, for instance, it ran TRANSFER, which featured 30 brands and artists, panels, interviews, DJ sets, and musical performances. It also ran BEYOND THE STREETS, a virtual art fair that attracted over 250,000 attendees. Earlier this year it ran a two-day designer toy and collectibles festival, Unboxed, as the first of a slate of digital events which have subsequently run throughout the year, including Surface Festival, a virtual food festival, and virtual home goods festival. It’s now gearing up for the return of its flagship event, TRANSFER.

Image Credits: Ntwrk (opens in a new window)

This summer, NTWRK also embraced the world of digital goods with the launch of NTWRK NFT, its own curated shop for unique crypto art from creators like BADBOI, Imaginary Foundation, MILKMAN, Young & Sick, Fafi, KidEight, MGOGLKTKO, and Eddie Gangland.

Livestream shopping is already a popular activity overseas, but is still gaining ground here in the U.S. The company, in announcing its news today, noted that livestream shopping in China reached $150 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $300 billion this year. But in the U.S. it’s expected to reach $11 billion by the end of 2021 and $25 billion by 2025, leaving much room for growth.

“Our vision is to become the biggest, most culturally relevant, livestream shopping marketplace for Gen-Z and Millennial audiences who are obsessed with pop culture,” said NTWRK CEO Aaron Levant, in a statement. “It’s exciting for NTWRK to have Goldman Sachs and Kering sign on for the future of livestream shopping.”

NTWRK had previously raised a $10 million Series A, according to Crunchbase data.

Open banking — a new approach to payments and other financial services that disrupts traditional card-based infrastructure by linking directly into banks — is having a moment. On the heels of open banking startup TrueLayer hitting a $1 billion valuation in its latest round after seeing strong traction for its services, today another open banking startup, Vyne, is officially opening for business, and announcing seed funding of $15.5 million to help it grow.

The funding is coming from Hearst, Entrée Capital, Triplepoint, Seedcamp, Venrex, Founder Collective and Partech, with Alex Chesterman (founder of Rightmove and CEO of Cazoo), Charlie Dellingpole (CEO and founder of ComplyAdvantage) and Will Neale (founder of Grabyo) also participating. CEO Karl MacGregor said in an interview that the round was “massively oversubscribed.”

London-based Vyne has been quietly building its platform — which targets merchants to help them build open-banking-based payment services — for the past 18 months, honing the tools based on feedback from early customers that it’s picked up ahead of today’s wider launch. The sizable seed round from strong investors is due to a few factors. Firstly, because of its early traction — the company says that it’s already processing millions of pounds in transactions in the UK each month, and is growing currently at a rate of 95% each month — in what (secondly) many believe is poised to be a big market in coming years. And thirdly, because of the pedigree of its four founders:

MacGregor’s long financial services resume included years as an executive at Barclays (at Barclaycard), online betting company Ladbrokes (where he oversaw not just payments but also fraud), and Worldpay. COO Damien Cahill spent years at Worldpay, as well as Amazon. CTO Adam Rowland was also a Worldpay alum, among other financial services roles elsewhere. And business development head Nick Daniel spent years in financial services at Logica (now part of CGI) and VocaLink (which was acquired for nearly $1 billion by Mastercard a few years ago).

With a lot of that experience covering payment systems based on cards and card networks, it was the perfect knowledge bank for understanding why open banking was such an important innovation, and why it had an opportunity to disrupt a lot of what’s in place today.

“Our key takeaway over those years [of experience] was that payment cards are not a great fit for e-commerce,” MacGregor said. “They were designed 40 years ago, and are costly and inefficient.”

He noted that the annual cost of dealing with fraud is now at €25 billion (there is a comparable number in this report), and that’s before considering other issues related the friction of using cards for payments, such as shopping cart abandonment (users give up instead of pulling out cards and punching numbers in), mistyped details, and more.

Because of that, MacGregor said many in the industry, including Vyne’s co-founders, “saw open banking as a huge opportunity” to transform the rails around how people get paid. “That is a global scale opportunity, and this is what motivates us,” he added.

MacGregor claims that implementing an open-banking-based system can save a merchant up to 65% in costs because of the added speed and efficiency (and no longer needing to pay fees to card networks).

TrueLayer’s value in the market, as one of the early movers in this space, has been in how it worked with a wide range of major and smaller banks to help build the infrastructure and services to integrate their banking services into a wider network where they could be used for direct payments and providing other kinds of financial data about their customers. It then used that critical mass to build out the connectors to those who wanted to use those integrations to do stuff: build payment flows, authenticate users and more.

As a later entrant, Vyne’s value has been in using some of that groundwork to then focus more on the merchant end of that ecosystem, and to make their open-banking-based services work more seamlessly for their customers. For example, if a customer selects an open banking option for payment in an app, the customer is then redirected to the banking app used for banking to authenticate the transaction and the connection without needing to enter any details. “The UX has been significantly improved,” MacGregor said.

Targeting primarily digitally native consumers as the most likely early adopters, Vyne also lets merchants build QR codes and pay-by-link to complete transactions.

The fact that we’re still talking about early adopters, however, speaks to the bigger challenges that exist, not just for Vyne but all startups focused on open banking. Open banking is at its most mature state in the UK, but even here it’s relatively young: regulations only came into effect at the start of January 2018. Europe has followed on, and although there are companies like Plaid in the U.S. that have made some interesting headway in building services that bypass payment rails, regulation has been slow to follow. Some have even speculated it may never arrive.

The UK’s catchily-named Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE for short), a trade body for those building in this area, is predictably upbeat about growth. However, if the numbers speak for themselves, there is clear opportunity. The OBIE said in a recent report that some 300 fintechs are now in the open banking ecosystem, and more than 2.5 million consumers in the UK are using services enabled by open banking (these include payments, getting lines of credit, authenticating services, and more). And, API call volumes reached 6 billion in 2020, up from just 66.8 million in 2018. Adoption is coming, if perhaps slowly and not as internationally as what open banking is trying to replace.

“Our view is that this is the hockey stick of growth that all VCs like,” Megumi Ikeda, the MD for Hearst Investments, said in an interview. “The second factor is the habits of consumers. They have shifted to a cashless economy [but] merchants are still operating on old banking rails… Open banking helps the merchants catch up.”

Perhaps just as importantly, by giving customers a more direct grip on how and where their financial data is used, by dis-intermediating the card companies (and credit ratings, and many others involved) in the process, open banking is part of a bigger evolution in how personal data and information are being used. As systems catch up with what we use them for, that can only be a good thing.

Evermos’ founding team (l to r): Arip Tirta, Ghufron Mustaqim, Iqbal Muslimin and Ilham Taufiq

Evermos is an Indonesian social commerce startup with two goals: to let people earn extra income by opening online stores without spending capital and to help small brands grow into household names. The company, which focuses on halal products and other items for Muslim customers, announced today it has raised a $30 million Series B, led by UOB Venture Management’s Asia Impact Investment Fund II. Other participants included IFC, MDI Ventures, Telkomsel Mitra Innovation (TMI) and Future Shape, along with returning investors Jungle Ventures and Shunwei Capital.

The funding will be use on hiring, enhancing Evermos’ recommendation engine and other AI-based tech, and entering new regions in Indonesia. The company says it currently has 100,000 active resellers in more than 500 Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, mostly in Java. Its goal is to reach more than one million resellers throughout Indonesia over the next five years.

On the supply side, Evermos works with more than 500 brands, primarily small Indonesian businesses, and sells fashion, halal health and beauty products, and food and beverages. The company says its total transaction volume has increased by more than 60 times over the last two years.

Evermos was founded in November 2018 by Ghufron Mustaqim, Iqbal Muslimin, Ilham Taufiq and Arip Tirta. Mustaqim told TechCrunch that the team was motivated by its dissatisfaction with many retail practices in Indonesia. For example, this includes multiple layers of distribution that hike up prices and the proliferation of fake products online, which makes many people wary of buying from e-commerce marketplaces.

“We’re trying to solve these problems by innovating with the social commerce model, so resellers can help customers pick the right products in a more efficient way,” Mustaqim said.

Almost 90% of Indonesians are Muslim, so “when you say we target the Muslim market, we are targeting almost all of Indonesia,” he added. “We carefully curate the products onboarded to our platform, and one of the most important aspects is whether it’s relevant to the Muslim market. For example, it has to be halal, if it’s fashion it has be modest fashion.”

Evermos does not require resellers to buy inventory. Instead, resellers market items picked from Evermos’ catalog to their social circles, including family, friends and neighbors, through WhatsApp, Facebook and other apps. Resellers have an online landing page created on Evermos’ app and can send links about products to customers, but Mustaqim says most sales happen through chat.

Evermos handles inventory, logistics and customer support. Like many other social commerce startups in Indonesia, including Super, KitaBeli and ChiliBeli, Evermos focuses on smaller cities, where e-commerce penetration is lower because of factors like higher shipping costs. To keep shipping costs down, Evermos resellers often group their customers’ orders into batches. Products are usually sent to them from the brands’ own warehouses via third-party logistics providers, but Evermos is currently building inventory analytics and a network of warehouses to stock products closer to resellers.

Mustaqim says brands usually pay 30% commission on products sold through Evermos, and the company shares most of that with resellers. Evermos’ top resellers earn about $200 USD a month, or about the monthly minimum wage in most Indonesian provinces.

Since most of Evermos’ resellers are selling online for the first time, it provides in-app training modules (and occasional offline training events, too). This includes advice on curating inventory, how to use Evermos’ platform to make orders and use its promotional programs and product copywriting.

So far, Evermos has focused primarily on Java, but plans to expand into other regions of Indonesia. Its strategies for reaching one million resellers in five years include running ads and a program where resellers get one-time commissions for referring new sellers to the platform. Mustaqim says over-penetration won’t be a problem because resellers usually focus on a handful of product categories, so even people located in the same community won’t necessarily be competing with one another.

French startup Mirakl has closed a new Series E funding round of $555 million. Following this round, the company is now valued at $3.5 billion. Mirakl helps you launch a marketplace on your online store for your end customers or for your B2B clients. It’s a software-as-a-service marketplace, meaning that Mirakl manages the marketplace for you.

Silver Lake is leading the investment with existing investors 83North, Elaia Partners, Felix Capital and Permira also participating. With today’s funding round, Mirakl is experiencing a sharp valuation bump as the company closed a $300 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation last year.

Some of Mirakl’s clients include ABB, Accor, Airbus Helicopters, Carrefour, Express, Leroy Merlin, The Kroger Co and Toyota Material Handling.

Chances are you’re already familiar with marketplaces on online stores. If the e-commerce brand doesn’t have the item you’re looking for, they might be recommending some third-party sellers. You can buy the item from this third-party seller directly on the store you’re using. Mirakl helps you add a marketplace to your site.

On some online stores, marketplace transactions have overtaken in-house transactions. It’s a lucrative shift as e-commerce companies don’t own the inventory of third-party sellers. It frees up some capital to increase reach and online sales.

And that trend isn’t limited to consumer-facing online stores. B2B marketplaces are emerging. For instance, car manufacturers rely on many different suppliers. They could all list parts directly on a marketplace so that repair shops can easily find the right part to fix a car.

When you add a marketplace component, you switch from a one-to-many model to a many-to-many model. It means that you have to make sure that you’re taking advantage of your marketplace by partnering with the right third-party sellers. As a third-party seller, it also means that you need to list your products on as many marketplaces as possible.

That’s why the company has also built something called Mirakl Connect. The startup positions itself as a center piece of the marketplace ecosystem by connecting online stores with sellers. Mirakl customers can use Mirakl Connect to find third-party sellers. And third-party sellers can more easily list their products on Mirakl-compatible marketplaces.

With today’s funding round, Mirakl plans to increase the size of its engineering team. It’ll add 350 engineers on top of its team of 500. Similarly, the customer success team will double in size. In other words, things are going well for Mirakl, so let’s invest.

Image Credits: Mirakl

It would be fair to say the pandemic has had enormous effects on the world of work, but it has come at a time when other factors were already ongoing. The decline of main-street shopping due to e-commerce has only been hastened. The shift to remote working has sky-rocketed. And people no longer want to commute 8am-6pm anymore. But we’ve also found that working from home isn’t all its cracked up to be. Plus, they don’t see the point of commuting into a big city, only to have to co-work in something like a WeWork, when they could just as easily have gone to something local. The problem is, there is rarely a local co-working space, especially in the suburbs or smaller towns.

If, instead, you could bring work nearer to home (rather than working from home) then, the theory goes, you’d get a more balanced lifestyle, but also get that separation between work and home so many people, especially families, still desire.

Now, a new UK startup has come top with a ‘decentralized workspace’ idea which it plans to roll out across the UK.

Patch will take empty local high street shops and turn them into “collaborative cultural spaces” with its ‘Work Near Home’ proposition aimed at traditional commuters. There are an estimated 6 million knowledge work commuters in the UK, and Patch will run on monthly subscriptions from these kinds of members.

It’s now raised a $1.1M Seed funding round from a number of leading UK angel investors including Robin Klein (cofounder of LocalGlobe), Matt Clifford (Cofounder of Entrepreneur First), alongside Charlie Songhurst, Simon Murdoch (Episode 1), Wendy Becker (former CEO Jack Wills and NED at Great Portland Estates), Camilla Dolan (founding partner of sustainable investor Eka Ventures), Zoe Jervier (talent Director for US investment firm Sequoia), and Will Neale (founder of Grabyo and early-stage investor).

Patch says its ‘Work Near Home’ idea is geared to the Post-Covid ‘hybrid working’ movement and it plans to create public venues, “with a focus of entrepreneurship, technology, and cultural programming.”

Each Patch location will offer a range of private offices, co-working studios, “accessible low-cost options” and free scholarship places.

Patch’s first site will open in Chelmsford, Essex in early November, and the startup says several more sites are planned for 2022. It says it has received requests from people in Chester, St Albans, Wycombe, Shrewsbury, Yeovil, Bury, and Kingston upon Thames.

Patch’s founder Freddie Fforde said: “Where we work and where we live have traditionally be seen as distinct environments. This has led to the hollowing out of many high streets during the working week, and equally redundant office districts. We think that technology fundamentally changes this, allowing people to work near home and creating a new mixed environment of professional, civic, and cultural exchange.”

Fforde is a former Entrepreneur First founder and employee who has held various roles in early-stage tech companies in London and San Francisco. The head of product will be Paloma Strelitz, formerly cofounder of Assemble, a design studio that won the 2015 Turner Prize.

Commenting, Matt Clifford, Entrepreneur First and Code First Girls, said: “Technology has always changed the way we organize and work together. Patch will unlock opportunities for talented people based on who they are, unconstrained by where they live. We want to be a country where high-skilled jobs are available everywhere and Patch is a key part of that puzzle.”

Targeting towns and smaller cities, in residential areas, not the major city centres, Patch says it will look for under-utilised landmark buildings in the center of towns. In Chelmsford, their first space will be a Victorian brewery, for instance.

Grays Yard

Chelmsford Councillor Simon Goldman, Deputy Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Small Business and representative for the BID board, said: “The introduction of a new co-working space in Gray’s Yard is a really positive scheme for the city. Providing local options for residents to work from will help them to have less of a commute which will hopefully allow a better work/life balance. Working closer to home brings many benefits for both individuals and their families, but also for the environment and the local economy.”

Patch says it will also operate a model of ‘giving back’, with 20% of peak event space hours donated to local and national providers of community services “that support the common good”. Early national partners include tech skills providers Code First Girls, and with Coder Dojo, a Raspberry Pi Foundation initiative.

Twitter’s creator platform Super Follows is off to an inauspicious start, having contributed to somewhere around $6,000 in U.S. iOS revenue in the first two weeks the feature has been live, according to app intelligence data provided by Sensor Tower. And it’s made only around $600 or so in Canada. A small portion of that revenue may be attributed to Ticketed Spaces, Twitter’s other in-app purchase offered in the U.S. — but there’s no way for this portion to be calculated by an outside firm.

Twitter first announced its plans to launch Super Follows during its Analyst Day event in February, where the company detailed many of its upcoming initiatives to generate new revenue streams.

Today, Twitter’s business is highly dependant on advertising, and Super Follows is one of the few ways it’s aiming to diversify. The company is also now offering a way for creators to charge for access to their live events with Ticketed Spaces and, outside the U.S., Twitter has begun testing a premium product for power users called Twitter Blue.

Image Credits: Twitter

But Super Follows, which targets creators, is the effort with the most potential appeal to mainstream users.

It’s also one that is working to capitalize on the growing creator economy, where content creators build a following, then generate revenue directly through subscriptions — decreasing their own dependence on ads or brand deals, as a result. The platforms they use for this business skim a little off the top to help them fund the development of the creator tools. (In Twitter’s case, it’s taking only a 3% cut.)

The feature would seem to make sense for Twitter, a platform that already allows high-profile figures and regular folks to hobnob in the same timeline and have conversations. Super Follows ups that access by letting fans get even closer to their favorite creators — whether those are musicians, artists, comedians, influencers, writers, gamers, or other experts, for example. These creators can set a monthly subscription price of $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 to provide fans with access to bonus, “behind-the-scenes” content of their choosing. These generally come in the form of extra tweets, Q&As, other interactions with subscribers.

Image Credits: Twitter

At launch, Twitter opened up Super Follows to a handful of creators, including the beauty and skincare-focused account @MakeupforWOC; astrology account @TarotByBronx; sports-focused @KingJosiah54; writer @myeshachou; internet personality and podcaster @MichaelaOkla; spiritual healer @kemimarie; music charts tweeter @chartdata; Twitch streamers @FaZeMew, @VelvetIsCake, @MackWood1, @GabeJRuiz, and @Saulsrevenge; YouTubers @DoubleH_YT, @LxckTV, and @PowerGotNow; and crypto traders @itsALLrisky and @moon_shine15; among others. Twitter says there are fewer than 100 creators in total who have access to Super Follows.

While access on the creation side is limited, the ability to subscribe to creators is not. Any Twitter iOS user in the U.S. or Canada can “Super Follow” any number of the supported creator accounts. In the U.S., Twitter has 169 million average monetizable daily active users as of Q2 2021. Of course, only some subset of those will be iOS users.

Still, Twitter could easily count millions upon millions of “potential” customers for its Super Follow platform at launch. Its current revenue indicates that, possibly, only thousands of consumers have done so, given many of the top in-app purchases are for creators offering content at lower price points.

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

Sensor Tower notes the $6,000 in U.S. consumer spending on iOS was calculated during the first two weeks of September (Sept. 1-14). Before this period, U.S. iOS users spent only $100 from August 25 through 31 — a figure that would indicate user spending on Ticketed Spaces during that time. In other words, the contribution of Tickets Spaces revenue to this total of $6,000 in iOS consumer spending is likely quite small.

In Canada, the other market where Super Follow is now available to subscribers, Twitter’s iOS in-app purchase revenue from September 1 through September 14 was a negligible $600. (This would also include Twitter Blue subscription revenue, which is being tested in Canada and Australia.)

Worldwide, Twitter users on iOS spent $9,000 during that same time, which would include other Ticketed Spaces revenues and tests of its premium service, Twitter Blue. (Twitter’s Tip Jar, a way to pay creators directly, does not work through in-app purchases).

Unlike other Twitter products that developed by watching what users were already doing anyway — like using hashtags or retweeting content — many of Twitter’s newer features are attempts at redefining the use cases for its platform. In a massive rush of product pushes, Twitter has recently launched tools for not just for creators, but also for e-commerce, organizing reading materials, subscribing to newsletters, socializing in communities, chatting through audio, fact-checking content, keeping up with trends, conversing more privately, and more.

Twitter’s position on the slower start to Super Follows is that it’s still too early to make any determinations. While that’s fair, it’s also worth tracking adoption to see if the new product had seen any rapid, of-the-gate traction.

“This is just the start for Super Follows,” a  Twitter spokesperson said. “Our main goal is focused on ensuring creators are set up for success and so we’re working closely with a small group of creators in this first iteration to ensure they have the best experience using Super Follows before we roll out more widely.”

The spokesperson also noted Twitter Super Follows had been set up to help creators make more money as it scales.

“With Super Follows, people are eligible to earn up to 97% of revenue after in-app purchase fees until they make $50,000 in lifetime earnings. After $50,000 in lifetime earnings, they can earn up to 80% of revenue after in-app purchase fees,” they said.

Food delivery service DoorDash will now deliver alcohol — a move that will allow it to better compete with rivals who already offer alcohol delivery in markets where permitted, like Uber Eats, Grubhub, Shipt, Instacart, and others. Initially, DoorDash will support delivery of beer, wine, and spirits across 20 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Canada, and Australia, reaching a potential 100 million-plus customers.

To find the feature, customers in supported markets will use the new “Alcohol” tab in the DoorDash app where they’ll be able to browse the selections of drinks offered by restaurants, or other alcohol offerings from grocery stores, local retailers, and convenience stores. In total, DoorDash’s alcohol catalog contains 30,000 SKUs — though the ones an individual user will see are only those available to their local market.

The company says it will verify customer IDs prior to checkout, and again by the delivery drivers before the order is complete. The system will respect user privacy by blurring out other information on the user ID besides the photo and DOB. For those who don’t imbibe, DoorDash will also offer an opt-out that will not only exclude customers from being able to order alcohol, but from direct marketing and communications related to alcohol delivery, as well.

The addition comes at a time when alcohol delivery has become one of the fastest-growing e-commerce verticals across all consumer packages goods, DoorDash notes, citing recent Nielsen data. In particular, the Covid-19 pandemic has played a role in the increased demand for online orders, as more customers stayed home under lockdowns and quarantine orders. For example, the number of off-premise buyers purchasing alcohol was up 27% year-over-year from the same time before Covid, according to data analyzed during a week in April 2020, compared with the prior year.

DoorDash noted, too, how data from the National Restaurant Association found that 56% of customers over the age of 21 said they would likely order alcoholic beverages along with their food delivery orders from restaurants if permitted. DoorDash expects the expansion to include alcohol could boost restaurants’ average order values by up to 30%. Another new feature called DoubleDash will allow customers to combine two shops into one order, which can now be used for bundling alcohol with other orders.

With the feature, the company is benefitting from the loosening of state laws over alcohol delivery, which were enacted due to the pandemic impacts to local businesses. Many of those temporary measures were extended as the pandemic wore on or even made into permanent laws in a number of U.S. states 

“Over the past year, many cities where we operate evolved their legislation in order to permit the delivery of alcohol to residents’ homes,” said Caitlin Macnamara, Director, Alcohol Strategy & Operations at DoorDash, in a statement about the launch. “Over that time, we worked tirelessly to build a trusted alcohol ordering and delivery experience for merchants, customers, and Dashers. We’re committed to providing new earning opportunities for merchants and Dashers, a safe, high-quality experience for customers, and being a responsible leader in compliant alcohol delivery,” she added.

The expansion follows DoorDash’s forecast of a potentially weaker Q3, citing the continued uncertainty around how consumer behavior related to the pandemic may continue impact its business.

The ability to offer stock options is utterly essential to startups. They convince talented people to join when the startup is unlikely to be capable of matching the high salaries that larger, established tech firms can offer.

However, it’s a complex business developing a competitive stock option plan. Luckily, London-based VC Index Ventures today launches both a handy web app to calculate all this, plus new research into how startups are compensating their key hires across Europe and the US.

OptionPlan Seed, is a web-app for seed-stage founders designing ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans). 
The web app is based on Index’s analysis of seed-stage option grants, drawing on data from over 1,000 startups.

The web app covers a variety of roles; 6 different levels of allocation benchmarks; calculates potential financial upside for each team member (including tax); and adjusts according to policy frameworks in the US, Canada, Israel, Australia, and 20 European countries.

It also builds on the OptionPlan for Series A companies that Index launched a few years ago.

As part of its research for the new tool, Index said it found that almost all seed-stage employees receive stock options. However, while this reaches 97% of technical hires at seed-stage startups and 80% of junior non-technical hires for startups in the US, in Europe only 75% of technical hires receive options, dropping to 60% for junior non-technical hires.

That said, Index found stock option grant sizes are increasing, particularly among startups “with a lot of technical DNA, and weighted towards the Bay Area”. In less tech-heavy sectors such as e-commerce or content, grant sizes have not shifted much. Meanwhile, grants are still larger overall as seed valuations have grown in the last few years.

Index found the ESOP size is increasing at seed stage, following a faster rate of hiring, and larger grants per employee. Index recommends an ESOP size at seed stage is set at 12.5% or 15%, rather than the more traditional 10% in order to retain and attract staff.

The research also found seed fundraise sizes and valuations have doubled, while valuations have risen by 2.5x, in Europe and the US. 


Additionally, salaries at seed have “risen dramatically” with average salaries rising in excess of 60%. Senior tech roles at seed-stage startups in the US now earn an average $185,000 salary, a 68% increase over 3 years, and can rise to over $220,000. But in Europe, the biggest salary increases have been for junior roles, both technical and non-technical.



That said, Index found that “Europe’s technical talent continues to have a compensation gap” with seed-stage technical employees in Europe still being paid 40-50% less on average than their US counterparts. Indeed, Index found this gap had actually widened since 2018, “despite a narrowing of the gap for non-technical roles”.


Index also found variations in salaries across Europe are “much wider than the US”, reflecting high-cost hubs like London, versus lower-cost cities like Bucharest or Warsaw.

The war for talent is now global, with the compensation gap for technical hires narrowing to 20-25% compared to the US.


Index’s conclusion is that “ambitious seed founders in Europe should raise the bar in terms of who they hire, particularly in technical roles” as well as aiming for more experienced and higher-caliber candidates, larger fundraises to be competitive on salaries.

Earlier this year, a startup called Olive launched its new shopping site and app with the goal of making e-commerce more efficient, convenient, and sustainable by offering a way for consumers to aggregate their orders from across retailers into single shipments that arrive in reusable packaging, not cardboard. If items need to be returned, those same packages are reused. Otherwise, Olive will return to pick them up. Since its February 2021 debut, the company has grown to include over 100 retailers, predominately in the fashion space. Today, it’s expanding again by adding support for another 25 beauty retailers.

Launch partners on the new effort include brands like Supergoop!, Kora Organics, Pai Skincare, Erno Laszlo, Jecca Blac, Sahajan, Clark’s Botanicals, NuFace, Purlisse, Cover FX, LYS Beauty, SiO Beauty, Peace Out Skincare, Koh Gen Do, Julep Beauty, In Common Beauty, Indie Lee, Glow Recipe, Ursa Major, RMS Beauty, Ceremonia, Sweet Chef, Follain, and BalmLabs.

They join Olive’s numerous apparel and accessory retailers like Adidas, Superga, Rag & Bone, Birdies, Vince, Goop, Khaite, and Veronica Beard, among others.

To support the expansion, Olive also developed a new set of reusable packaging that has protective elements for more damageable items. While before, the company had offered a variety of packages like soft-sided garment bags and various sizes of more rigid containers (see below), it’s now introducing its own alternative to the air bubble strips you’ll find in most Amazon boxes these days. Olive’s version is integrated into its reusable packaging and can be easily deflated by the customer when it’s time to return the package at pickup.

Image Credits: Olive, founder Nate Faust

The idea for Olive is a timely one. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, e-commerce adoption has soared. But so has consumers’ guilt. Multiple packages land on doorsteps every week, with cardboard and plastic to recycle — if that’s even available in your area. Delivery trucks — Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and others — are now a daily spectacle on every city street. Meanwhile, market leaders like Amazon and Walmart seem largely interested in increasing the speed of delivery, not necessarily the efficiency and sustainability. (Amazon allows shoppers to pick an Amazon Day delivery, for consolidated shipments, but it’s opt-in.)

Olive founder Nate Faust says he was inspired to build the company after realizing how little interest there was from larger e-commerce players in addressing some of the inconveniences and inefficiencies in the market. Faust had previously served as a vice president at Quidsi (which ran Diapers.com and Soap.com and sold to Amazon), then co-founder and COO at Jet, which was acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion. Before Olive, he was a senior vice president at Walmart.

After some soul searching, he realized he wanted to build something in the e-commerce space that was focused more on the social and environmental impact, not just on driving growth and consumption.

Image Credits: Olive

“I had an epiphany one evening when taking out the trash and recycling,” Faust explains. “It’s pretty crazy that we’re this far into e-commerce and this is the status quo delivery experience —  all this waste, which is both an environmental issue and a hassle for consumers,” he says. “And the bigger issue than the packaging is actually the fact that the majority of those packages are delivered one at a time, and those last-mile emissions are actually the biggest contributor of carbon emissions in the post-purchase e-commerce supply chain.”

Consumers may not think about all the issues, because many of them are hidden, but they do struggle in other ways beyond dealing with the waste. Returns are still a hassle — so much so, that Amazon now allows customers to go to Kohl’s where it’s partnered on in-store return kiosks that also help the brick-and-mortar retailer increase their own foot traffic.

Plus, consumers who shop from different sites have to set up online accounts over and over, entering in addresses and payment information many times, which is an annoyance. Olive offers the convenience of an Amazon-like one-stop-shop experience on that front.

Meanwhile, Olive addresses the return issue by allowing consumers to simply place their unwanted items back in Olive’s packaging then leave them on their doorstep or with the building’s doorman for return. It works with both the USPS and a network of local carriers to serve the customers in its current footprint, which is about 100 million U.S. consumers on both coasts.

While customers don’t have to deal with packaging, it hasn’t been entirely eliminated from the equation at this point. Olive today partners with retailers who ship packages to its own west coast and east coast warehouses, where they repackage them into the reusable containers to deliver to customers. Right now, that means Olive is responsible for the recycling issues. But it’s working with its brand partners to have them pack orders directly into the reusable packaging from the start — before shipping to Olive’s consolidation warehouses for delivery. Today, it has a few retailers on board with this effort, but it hopes that will eventually expand to include all partners.

The company generates revenue on an affiliate commission model, which works for now. But over time, it may need to evolve that business model over time, as its customer base and partnerships grow. At present, around 10,000 consumers have used Olive, ahead of any large-scale marketing and customer acquisition efforts on the startup’s part.

For now, New York-based Olive is growing its business by way of a fundraise of around $15 million from investors including Invus, Primary Venture Partners, and SignalFire.