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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:43) >  On this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we speak with Lluís Cañadell, the co-founder and CEO of Treinta, a Colombia-based fintech startup focused on helping Latin American microbusinesses transition into the digital era. Across Latin America, there are some 50 million micro-merchants or microbusinesses, typically sole proprietors or those with less than 10 employees, the vast majority of which are still relying on pen and paper for record-keeping and inventory management. Treinta’s super-app helps this class of merchants use their smartphones to take on those tasks, as well as receive digital payments, create online stores, and access a B2B marketplace; the company’s name comes from its original selling point of saving micro-merchants 30 minutes a day and increasing efficiency 30 percent. Launched by Cañadell and co-founder Man Hei Lou in 2020, Treinta now has around 5 million active users across 18 countries; earlier this year, it raised $46 million in a Series A round, one of the largest such raises in Latin America, bringing its total funding to $60 million. The company has a goal of expanding its micro-business ecosystem to one day include lending and additional fintech services, all enabled by and part of what Canadell calls “the democratization of financial services.”

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 30:44) >  On this episode of McKinsey on Start-ups, we talk to David Berry, the founder and CEO of Valo Health, a human data-driven startup hoping to fundamentally alter the drug discovery and development process. Berry, a serial entrepreneur who has founded more than 30 companies (five of which are publicly traded), believes the industry’s longtime approach to generating new drugs is too costly, slow, and ineffective to keep pace in the battle against disease. Valo is one of scores of AI and machine learning startups emerging lately that aim to use human datasets to reinvent the drug discovery and development process, but Berry feels his company’s distinctive approach gives it an advantage. Instead of targeting just a single therapeutic and disease category at a time, Valo relies on its Opal computational platform to simultaneously pursue potential treatments for multiple conditions in an integrated fashion. Valo’s wealth of longitudinal, high-density data is another asset, according to Berry. Assets are critical in such an expensive undertaking, and Valo has raised close to half a billion dollars in funding since its founding in 2019.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 26:15) >  Since the pandemic began, educational technology (or edtech) and remote schooling have gained traction. Growing numbers of students and adults were initially forced to rely on virtual classes and teaching, and since then many have chosen to stick with this relatively new method of learning. In this back-to-school guest episode from the McKinsey Israel on High Tech podcast, senior partner Andrew Goodman and Aviel Lazar of edtech company Chegg discuss the evolving edtech market and what lessons it holds for both current and prospective entrepreneurs and investors in the space.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 37:13) >  Chris Herd is the co-founder and CEO of Firstbase, a remote-work infrastructure provider that helps both new ventures and large established companies onboard and serve their growing ranks of employees no longer venturing into the office. Chris and cofounder and CTO Trey Bastian actually launched Firstbase a year before the pandemic fueled the rise of remote work; as they were attempting to get their fintech startup off the ground, they learned firsthand how challenging it can be to get new remote employees set up with the right equipment and provide them an all-around positive experience at the outset. Since they made the pivot to Firstbase, their business has taken off; earlier this year, they raised $50 million in a Series B, bringing the total funding to around $65 million.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 31:17) >  Itamar Zur is the cofounder and CEO of Veho, a next-generation logistics startup that is out to reinvent the delivery experience for e-commerce brands and their customers. In just two years, Veho’s delivery and return logistics platform has grown to 900 employees and is on track to be operating in 50 US markets by the end of year. Earlier this year, only a few months after its Series A raise of $125 million, Veho raised another $170 million, bringing its valuation to around $1.5 billion. By focusing on technology that gives customers more control and transparency over the shipping process and experience, Veho promises to build loyalty and increase customer lifetime value for ecommerce brands. The last mile delivery market that it plays in is already worth more than $100 billion globally, and estimated to reach close to $150 billion by 2025.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 27:51) >  Ilan Gur is the founder and CEO of Activate, an innovative non-profit organization that offers two-year entrepreneurial fellowships to scientists to try to bridge the gap in the US innovation ecosystem between the research lab and the startup world. Activate offers a wide range of resources, knowledge and networks to its fellows so they can begin to turn their cutting-edge ideas and technologies into real-world practical solutions, and businesses. The fellows are primarily focused on climate tech and the hard sciences, working to develop sophisticated, sustainable approaches to help a wide range of traditional industries – including agriculture, chemicals, energy, manufacturing and transportation – contribute to the fight against climate change. So far, Activate has supported almost 150 fellows, who have launched more than 100 startups and raised close to $900 million in additional public and private funding.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 23:52) >  In two recent McKinsey on Start-ups special guest episodes, we examined the emerging contours of the metaverse. Today we are pleased to feature the third and concluding episode in the special three-part series from At the Edge, the new podcast from McKinsey’s Technology Council. McKinsey senior expert Richard Ward talks to Mina Alaghband about a number of near-term metaverse use cases in the industrial, consumer goods and retail sectors, as well as even more innovative applications for further down the road and the potential size of the metaverse market.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 24:32) >  Once primarily focused on execution and on-time delivery, product manager roles have been heavily transformed. They are now expected to serve as a mini-CEO, acting as the glue that binds the many functions that touch a product, from engineering, design, and customer success, to sales, marketing, operations, and finance. And amid growing societal concerns about responsible stewardship, product managers are having to incorporate privacy, sustainability, and inclusion into their already complex jobs. A recent McKinsey article examined this increasingly important issue, and today on McKinsey on Start-ups, we’ll be speaking to two of the co-authors, partner Martin Harrysson and associate partner Rikki Singh.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 18:08) >  Back in April, McKinsey on Start-ups featured a special guest episode exploring the meaning and potential impact of the metaverse with tech futurist and advisor Cathy Hackl. The episode was the first in a three-part series from At the Edge, the new podcast from McKinsey’s Technology Council. Today, we are pleased to feature the second episode, with noted metaverse investor and author Matthew Ball. In his discussion with McKinsey’s Mina Alaghband, Ball offers his perspective on the dynamics of the shift to the metaverse economy, as well as regulatory questions, architecture issues, and how executives can begin to prepare their organizations for this new era.

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   Listen to the podcast (duration: 33:46) >  Adrien Nussenbaum, cofounder and co-CEO of Mirakl, joins McKinsey executive editor Daniel Eisenberg on this episode. Mirakl, the leading SaaS platform provider in the rapidly growing enterprise marketplace sector, was started in France about a decade ago by Nussenbaum and cofounder and CEO Philippe Corrot, who had sold their previous start-up, a digital gaming marketplace, to French retailer Fnac. The company helps both B2C and B2B companies set up their own online marketplaces, where they can leverage third-party vendors to offer their customers a much wider range of relevant products or services. It now counts more than 300 of the world’s biggest and most well-known enterprises as customers, including Macy’s, Target, Carrefour, Toyota, Siemens, Airbus, and L’Oreal. With more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue and more than $4 billion in transactions conducted over its platforms last year, Mirakl has raised close to a $1 billion in funding over the last few years, putting the company’s valuation squarely in the unicorn category. As Nussenbaum explains, Mirakl views marketplaces and the emerging “marketplace economy” as a way for many brands to start to “regain control of distribution” at a time when a handful of platforms have come to dominate the ecommerce business over the past two decades.

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