OpenBorder, e-commerce, international expansion

OpenBorder’s e-commerce software helps merchants access consumers around the world

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OpenBorder, e-commerce, international expansion

Image Credits: OpenBorder

Richard Hong found that while expanding his e-commerce brand of men’s personal care brands, gaining international customers was easy to do. The challenges came when trying to get the merchandise to them.

“We found that logistics pack compliance, product compliance and marketing had no localization technology,” Hong told TechCrunch. “We had to build a lot of those capabilities in-house to be able to scale.”

Hong, working through his e-commerce company Pangaea Holdings, was able to scale to the point where a majority of revenue — well into nine figures — was coming from outside of the United States.

Hong and his Pangaea co-founder Darwish Gani started thinking about how they could help other e-commerce businesses expand internationally. Only not have to conquer the same obstacles.

Pangaea Holdings, developing men’s personal care brands, raises $68M, including minority stake from Eurazeo

In March 2023, Hong and Gani spun off the technology business into OpenBorder, which raised $10 million in seed funding. At the time, the company had five merchants, and that has grown to nearly 70 merchants in a year’s time. It has also increased processing volume 10 times.

OpenBorder’s cross-border trade concept is simple: Provide e-commerce merchants instant access to international customers through automation of certain logistical needs.

Those include shipping, trade, tax and duty compliance, product localization and international marketplace listings — all from one software platform. Merchants can also sell on Amazon and regional marketplaces with a two-day, Prime-like experience, Hong said.

With the cross-border market being a $2 trillion opportunity, OpenBorder is not alone in working to address this need. For example, Nocnoc is doing something similar for merchants in Latin America, while Keeta is providing a way for easier cross-border payments.

Meanwhile, Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia) led the investment and was joined by Capital 49 and Harlem Capital. OpenBorder is using the capital on software development, including partnerships and artificial intelligence to find areas of cost reduction to improve performance. The board also added Pangaea investor Eurazeo, which has vast experience in the consumer merchant segment.

Many OpenBorder merchants start at 4% of revenue coming from international, but grow to 15% or even 20%. Pangaea was able to reach over 50% of its revenue coming from non-U.S. customers, and OpenBorder wants to help other merchants get there in just a few years, Hong said.

“With us doing it, that tells us there is truly a potential for other merchants to get there, but the question is, “What does it take to get there?” Hong said. “We have the obvious answer to that question and want to help every merchant access every consumer around the world.”

We should all be paying more attention to the PDD-Alibaba rivalry

In this photo illustration the Everbridge logo seen displayed on a smartphone.

Thoma Bravo takes critical event management software company Everbridge private in $1.8B deal

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In this photo illustration the Everbridge logo seen displayed on a smartphone.

Image Credits: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images

Everbridge, a critical event management (CEM) software company, is going private in a $1.8 billion all-cash deal that will see it taken over by private equity giant Thoma Bravo — 20% more than what was originally announced last month.*

Founded in 2002 initially as 3N Global, Everbridge helps governments and enterprises from across the industrial spectrum respond to emergency situations — this includes risk intelligence to help asses the threat landscape around where employees live or travel, as well as mass-notification tools to effectively communicate critical messaging during severe weather or terrorist attacks.

Everbridge went public on the Nasdaq in 2016, with its shares hitting an all-time high in September 2021 — the company reached a market cap of $6.4 billion, but this dropped by more than two-thirds within four months. Things never recovered, with its valuation hovering at below the $1 billion mark for the past six months.

Eventbridge
Image Credits: Eventbridge

Premium plan

Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm renowned for snapping up underperforming enterprise software firms, is effectively paying a premium in excess of 83%* on Everbridge’s market cap on February 2, the last day of trading before Thoma Bravo tabled a bid. Looking at the volume-weighted average share price (VWAP) over the previous three months, the deal represents a 62% premium, with shareholders netting $35.00 per share — $6.40 more than what was initially announced.*

At a time when geopolitical instability is expected to increase due to the number of elections taking place, alongside existing threats related to climate change and economic headwinds, Thoma Bravo clearly sees Everbridge’s suite of SaaS tools as being integral to companies looking to manage these risks.

“We look forward to working with Everbridge to expand their ability to capitalize on opportunities in an expanding marketplace for risk, compliance, and safety solutions,” Thoma Bravo partner Hudson Smith said in a press release. “The Everbridge product portfolio is already used by some of the world’s most-respected corporations and organizations to comprehensively monitor risk and manage critical events, and we see an extensive runway ahead for product innovation and profitable growth.”

The transaction is still subject to certain regulatory and shareholder approvals, but the company said it expects to close the deal in Q2 2024.

*This article was updated on March 1, 2024, with amended acquisition price and premiums after Everbridge’s “go shop” process yielded greater interest.

AI brain over purple money background

AI fraud detection software maker Inscribe.ai lays off 40% of staff

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AI brain over purple money background

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Yet another AI-powered fraud detection software provider is laying off staff. Inscribe, whose platform works to detect fraud in areas like business underwriting, tenant screening and onboarding, has cut just under 40% of its staff, which equates to dozens of employees. The news follows that of another small round of layoffs at AI-powered plagiarism detector Turnitin, whose CEO had last year touted how AI would enable the company to reduce its headcount.

According to sources, Inscribe’s board recommended the cuts as the current market caused the startup to miss its revenue goals for over a year.

San Francisco-based Inscribe.ai confirmed the headcount reduction to TechCrunch, noting that the AI advances in the financial services industry necessitated a pivot to a new product and direction for the company.

“2023 was a year of change for our customers and Inscribe,” explained Inscribe CEO and co-founder, Ronan Burke. “Many of our customers in the fintech industry had to contend with higher interest rates and an unpredictable future for consumers and businesses. Additionally, the advances in AI in 2023 present one of the largest opportunities for the financial services ecosystem — enabling improved customer experiences, more efficient processes and fairer decisions,” he continued.

“In Q4 of last year, we set out on a new product strategy to align with these two industry shifts, and we have a large product launch planned for later this year related to this, which we are very excited about. As part of the change in strategy, in January of this year, we made the difficult decision to reduce the size of the team by just under 40%, mostly in go-to-market and operational roles,” Burke said.

The company was already a relatively small operation, with 60 (or more) employees, according to LinkedIn and PitchBook, a mix of engineering, product design, AI expertise, marketing, sales and more.

In January 2023, Inscribe raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Threshold Ventures with participation from Crosslink Capital, Foundry, Uncork Capital, Box co-founder Dillon Smith and Intercom co-founder Des Traynor. The round brought Inscribe’s total raise to date to $38 million. At the time, the company forecast it would double its then 50-person workforce over the coming 12 to 18 months.

Sarah Perez is reachable at [email protected] or @sarahperez.01 / 415.234.3994 on Signal.

Inscribe bags $25M to fight financial fraud with AI

Pelikan Mobility is building a software-enabled commercial EV leasing solution

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Image Credits: Koiguo / Getty Images

Chances are you may have noticed that many commercial vehicles are now electric vehicles — think delivery vans, telecom minivans, utility maintenance trucks, and so on. But there are still many diesel-powered commercial vehicles because it’s simply too expensive and too complicated to switch to an all electric vehicle fleet overnight.

That’s why Pelikan Mobility has been building a platform and a leasing solution that address this challenge caused by the switch to EVs for commercial fleets. The French startup raised a €4 million (about $4.4 million at today’s exchange rate) seed round from Pale Blue Dot, Frst, Seedcamp and others.

Both commercial fleet operations and financing have been designed for traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. If you want to go beyond a handful of EVs, you have think about charging, range and your everyday operations.

“We have developed a software solution to optimize fleet operations with electric vehicles. It’s not necessarily fleets that are completely electric — they’re generally not there yet. It’s diesel fleet operators who are starting to put electric vehicles into their fleets. And we help them optimize the usage of vehicles according to their capacities,” co-founder and CEO Vincent Schachter told me.

After having registered your entire fleet on Pelikan Mobility and uploaded historical data, the company can automatically create various optimization scenarios that take into account charging times, pricing for diesel and EV charging, range, parking space and more.

Pelikan Mobility goes beyond everyday optimization, as it also takes into account the overall costs associated with each vehicle — capital expenditures are as important as operational expenditures for commercial fleets. EVs tend to cost more when you buy one, for instance. But they’re generally cheaper to operate.

“These are long-term but very accurate scenarios. As we have ingested the fleet’s operational data, we can build a digital twin. In these long-term scenarios, we even simulate daily routes with different vehicle designs, different charging station scenarios, and so on,” Schachter said.

And this software platform unlocks new possibilities on the leasing front. Many companies lease their commercial vehicles and Pelikan Mobility believes that pricing is broken for commercial EVs.

“Leasing has been designed for private cars with internal combustion engines. Leasing contracts — even for commercial vehicles, even for electric vehicles — end far too quickly. These are 3- to 5-year contracts, and the whole business is structured around the resale value of the vehicles,” Schachter said.

“Why do leasers want short contracts? Because carmakers want to sell more models and consumers want the latest model,” he added. But that’s not necessarily true for commercial vehicles. That’s why Pelikan Mobility thinks longer leasing plans make more sense.

“The good news is that electric vehicles last longer than diesel vehicles. They’re longer-lasting assets,” Schachter said. And longer contracts mean that the risks associated with the resale value are lower.

The company expects to start offering its first leasing plans this summer. It will also have to raise a debt fund for that new business as Pelikan Mobility plans to address large customers.

Right now, the startup has seven customers. And when you add up the commercial fleets of these customers, Pelikan Mobility currently tracks a bit less than 100,000 vehicles on its platform. It’s a software-meet-finance play that could potentially make it easier to switch to electric vehicles for fleet managers.

Atlassian combines Jira Software and Work Management tools

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At its Team ’24 event in Las Vegas, Atlassian today announced that it is combining Jira Software with Jira Work Management into a single product under the “Jira” brand.

The origins of Jira, Atlassian’s flagship project management tool, are in software development and issue tracking for developers, but throughout the past few years, the company started to launch Jira versions for other teams as well. These included Jira Work Management for business teams like marketing, sales and human resources, which launched in 2021 and replaced a previous product called Jira Core.

“We believe great teams are built on a foundation of shared goals, coordinated work, and free-flowing information across functions,” writes Dave Meyer, the head of product for Jira, in today’s announcement. “That’s why the latest evolution of Jira offers a shared place for every team to align on goals and priorities, track and collaborate on work, and get the insights they need to build something incredible, together. We’ve taken the best of Jira Work Management and Jira Software to make a single project management tool ready to help any team go from good to great.”

The idea here is to offer a cross-functional tool that allows different teams inside a company to more easily collaborate and track their work. While there were already connections between Jira Software and Jira Work Management (plus Work Management is already included in every Jira subscription for free), Atlassian says that this combined version will reduce friction and help different teams align on common goals, no matter whether they are engineers, marketers or designers, for example.

It’s worth noting that Jira Service Management for IT teams is not affected by this change.

Atlassian launches a Jira for every team

More AI in Jira

With this change, Atlassian is also bringing a number of new features to Jira to enable this kind of collaboration. Unsurprisingly, these include several new AI-based tools.

Maybe the most interesting of these is the new AI work breakdown (coming to Jira and Jira Premium users soon), which can help teams break down their epics into individual issues (or issues into sub-tasks) automatically — with the ability to edit them manually, too, of course. That takes away some of the grunt project management work and will free up project managers to focus on the bigger-picture items on their to-do lists.

Soon, Jira will also be able to sum up issue comments automatically. This capability will also come to Confluence, Atlassian’s wiki-like workspace tool.

Currently, to become a Jira power user, you’ll need to learn the Jira Query Language (JQL) to search for issues on the platform. Now, thanks to the power of large language models, users will be able to use natural language to create these JQL queries.

Image Credits: Atlassian
Image Credits: Atlassian

And for those occasions where you don’t know exactly what to write, Atlassian is also introducing a new generative AI writing tool to Jira that can create, summarize and improve descriptions and comments. These same capabilities are also coming to Atlassian’s Trello and Bitbucket, with Jira Product Discovery and Confluence following soon.

Setting Goals

Since the entire purpose of combining these two tools is to make collaboration easier, Jira is also getting a new feature that helps teams align on their overall goals. That feature, imaginatively dubbed “Goals,” will roll out in the coming month and aims to help users to “create goals in Jira’s list and issue views to visualize how each task maps to a higher objective.” There will also be a directory of goals and goal progress charts “where goals can be viewed in the context of your projects.”

Image Credits: Atlassian
Image Credits: Atlassian

New views

Jira is also introducing a few new ways to work with issues and visualize them. You can now see every project in a spreadsheet-like list view, for example, and make in-line edits. Atlassian notes that this will also make bulk edits easier.

To better track complex projects, Jira Premium and Enterprise users now get access to the new “Plans” feature, which allows users to track issues from different boards and projects in a single view.

Image Credits: Atlassian
Image Credits: Atlassian

“Now everyone – from leaders to program managers to team members – can estimate release dates for cross-team projects, answer staffing and resource questions, or map out yearly goals, all in a single view,” Meyer explains in today’s announcement.

Speaking of time, there is now also a new calendar view for tracking business projects with issues organized by due date. This, Meyer notes, will help business teams more easily align their work in sync with upcoming software releases. The full launch of this calendar feature is still a few months out, though.