0 Shares EmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInSoftBank-backed Brandless has reportedly shut down operations, according to an article by Protocol’s Biz Carson.

SoftBank Vision Fund led its last funding round, a $240 million Series C, which valued the company at $500 million, according to Crunchbase.

The news that Brandless has shuttered is not entirely shocking, considering that last June, it got a new CEO amidst “turmoil” within the company, according to TechCrunch.

Looks like Brandless’ vision of $3 home goods just couldn’t keep up with the steep competition from rivals like Amazon.

In fact, SoftBank’s heavy-handed check-writing is leading investors and startups alike to rethink sky-high valuations in favor of a path to profitability. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581364806.5591826/SoftBank’s-Latest-Setback:-Brandless-Shuts-Down-After-Raising-$292.5M?ref=audio_experience

It has been just shy of two months since Gympass—the Brazilian fitness marketplace scaleup—announced it had bought Flaner—a Portuguese AI and machine learning tech company.

The first quarter of 2020 will be spent incorporating the Flaner team into the company, as well as carrying out tests with their newly purchased Portuguese tech across their much larger global marketplace.

Those were also the days of the relationship during which Flaner was working as its own company alongside the exercise unicorn.

Indeed, the incorporation of Flaner may well come to grate against Gympass’ much flaunted autonomous and flexible corporate culture.

These are not just questions for Gympass, but for any startup or founder looking to scale their business model. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581363007.6181943/How-to-integrate-an-acqui-hire.-Gympass’-plan-for-Flaner-is-full-of-hicup-portunities?ref=audio_experience

Facebook quietly acquired another UK AI startup and almost no one noticedOver the last few years, Facebook has been busy building out AI capabilities in areas like computer vision, natural language processing (NLP) and ‘deep learning,’ in part by acquiring promising startups in the space.

A regulatory filing for Deeptide reveals that Facebook became a majority owner on 13th December 2019.

The same day, Atlas ML co-founder Robert Stojnic published a Medium post titled “Papers with Code is joining Facebook AI,” which went largely unnoticed outside of the machine learning research community.

Terms of the deal — or even that the acquisition took place — weren’t announced by Facebook at the time, beyond Stojnic’s sanctioned post.

I’ve contacted Facebook for comment and will update this post if and when I hear back. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581361207.327827/Facebook-quietly-acquired-another-UK-AI-startup-and-almost-no-one-noticed-–-TechCrunch?ref=audio_experience

Just a couple days after mobile analytics and marketing company Localytics was acquired by Upland Software, two of its founders are announcing their new startup, Demand Sage.

CEO Raj Aggarwal and CTO Henry Cipolla previously co-founded and served in the same roles at Localytics, and they founded Demand Sage with Chief Product Officer Randy Dailey — whom Aggarwal described as the “perpetual all star” of the Localytics product team.

“That’s what makes it cost tens of thousands of dollars, often.

That’s the first piece that we think we can eliminate immediately.”Second, there’s the fact that marketers are increasingly creating their reports in Google Sheets, because of its flexibility.

“We might ask them what factors influenced customer converting down the funnel, and they would say we don’t do that analysis,” Dailey said. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581359407.1214042/Localytics-founders-announce-Demand-Sage,-a-startup-bringing-marketing-intelligence-to-small-and-mid-sized-businesses-–-TechCrunch?ref=audio_experience

Sdui, a Koblenz, Germany-based provider of a school app, extended its seed financing to around €2m.

Backers included High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and business angels Martin Ostermayer and Dirk Freise (blau.de, handy.de, among others) joined the seed round as new lead investors.

The Investitions- und Strukturbank Rheinland-Pfalz (ISB) as well as Udo Schloemer, founder and CEO of Factory Berlin, have also joined the seed round extension as existing investors.

Founded by Daniel Zacharias (22) and Jan Micha Kroll (21), Sdui provides a central communication platform, on which teachers, students and parents can exchange information in a GDPR-compliant manner.

The app is already being used by around 1,000 schools throughout Germany. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581357609.0979373/Sdui-Extends-Seed-Financing-to-€2M?ref=audio_experience

Gento (formerly Nursing Without Walls), a Los Angeles, CA-based on-demand staffing and care delivery management startup, raised $5M in Series A funding.

The round was led by Jeff Anderson at Palisades Growth Capital.

The company, which has raised over $7M to date, will use the funds to expand nationwide and to improve care-delivery through their technology.

Led by CEO Victor Gajendran, Gento provides on-demand staffing and care delivery management to home health agencies and skilled nursing facilities through a platform and mobile app.

The company’s technology platform has been used for over 75,000 visits. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581355815.3113034/Gento-Raises-$5M-in-Series-A-Funding?ref=audio_experience

0 Shares EmailFacebookTwitterLinkedInData warehouse startup Snowflake raised $479 million in a new round of funding, bringing the company’s valuation to a whopping $12.4 billion.

It also makes Snowflake even more special and rare than a regular old unicorn, as it’s now reached decacorn status.

Its Series B came a little over two years later in October 2014, with $26 million in a round led by Redpoint.

Snowflake raised a $105 million Series D led by ICONIQ Capital in September 2017, with a post-money valuation of about $500 million, according to Crunchbase.

It reached unicorn status around the time of its $263 million Series E in January 2018. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581354005.930056/Snowflake-Gets-$479M,-Reaches-Decacorn-Status-With-$12.4B-Valuation?ref=audio_experience

Acuva Technologies, a Burnaby, BC-based cleantech startup developing water purification technology, has closed a $5.4 million CAD Series B.

UV disinfection uses short-wavelength radiation to kill microorganisms by destroying the nucleic acids and disrupting their DNA, leaving them unable to perform vital cellular functions.

Acuva’s IntenseBeam technology combines UV disinfection with the energy efficiency of LEDs, increasing available UV power through optical lensing.

The technology purifies drinking water with microbial disinfection to protect health and safety without adding chemicals into the water.

Through Acuva’s Strike platform of UVC-LED disinfection applications, the startup aims to help to make safe drinking water more accessible. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581352205.058626/Water-purification-startup-Acuva-Technologies-closes-$5.4-million-Series-B?ref=audio_experience

The food chain has raised a mix of equity and debt from new and existing investorsFood chain Chaayos has raised $21.5 Mn in a mix of equity and debt in its Series B funding round.

Existing investors including Tiger Global Management, SAIF Partners, Integrated Capital, and former WhatsApp business head Neeraj Arora also invested in the Series B round.

Chaayos founder and CEO Nitin Saluja said that the company will invest the funds to expand the store network.

“We’ll hire a few more senior people, and invest more in technology,” Saluja was quoted as saying by Livemint.

Founded in 2012 by IIT alumni Nitin Saluja and Raghav Verma, Chaayos offers numerous tea varieties. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581350407.0236228/Chaayos-Raises-$21.5-Mn-Series-B-To-Expand-Store-Network?ref=audio_experience

The 2022 Cisco Visual Networking Forecast report displays that video marketers firmly believe that their brand’s authority has escalated because of high-quality video content.

Professional design agencies are now actively marketing their services through video content and noticed a remarkable increase in conversions.

It is Optimize for SEO and rank in Google SERPsCrafting great video content is useless if no one views it.

When creating descriptions and tags for video content, you have to include primary alongside LSI keywords for better video optimization.

If you want to create high-quality video content for YouTube, planning is the foremost step to get started. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1581348608.9567132/4-Must-Known-Essentials-of-A-High-Quality-Video-Content-in-2020?ref=audio_experience