How to write your monthly investor update

by with No Comment Tech

Paper craft illustration of brain filled with multi colored geometric shapes. Creative mind

Image Credits: Eugene Mymrin / Getty Images

Joshua Brueckner

Contributor

The founder of Trulytell, Joshua Brueckner guides founders through their fundraising process to close deals and get back to building. He currently runs programming for Techstars accelerators, and makes effective pitch decks at Trulytell.

Pitching investors is a big part of running your startup, but no matter the outcome of the meeting, the opportunity does not end there. You should not only be logging your hard-earned contacts into a CRM, but also keeping these relationships warm through investor updates.

But what exactly is an investor update?

It’s a regular email a startup sends to its investors to inform them about the company’s recent progress, key metrics, challenges and future plans.

These updates demonstrate to investors your commitment to progress and learning through trial and error. Over time, this builds trust while allowing you to leverage investor expertise and their networks. With enough trust, these investors may participate in your next round and refer you to new potential investors too.

Although it may sound like a simple email, there really is an art to writing an effective investor update. The following is everything you need to know about how to craft and send an update that keeps investors engaged, communicates momentum, and garners support on your journey.

The role of tone and transparency

Investor updates make a critical tool for nurturing relationships, so you’ll want it to come across as genuine and relatable. Strive for transparency rather than salesy or unrealistically optimistic. Your update should feel like an insider report that’s almost impartial, letting the facts and figures speak for themselves.

It’s also perfectly okay to acknowledge areas where you didn’t quite meet your goals. I’ve seen founders turn these types of situations into pure gold by simply spinning them into lessons learned.

Format considerations

For startups at the seed or Series A stage, updates should be about 250 to 750 words, while quarterly and annual updates should be up to 1,500 words to account for more areas of the business. Your investor update should be concise and straight to the point, because investors are often bombarded with emails. Plus, information overload can cloud your main takeaways.

Aside from charts and graphs, your updates should be primarily text. Use bullets and subheadings to break up the text for ease of readability.

Tools for writing, sending and tracking

You can use a number of tools to draft and send along your updates, but don’t let the setup process hold you up if you need to get it out the door. A lot of founders start by just drafting their update with a simple email and BCC-ing everyone.

When you’re ready to explore more advanced options, tools like Paperstreet, Cabal and HubSpot simplify the process of sending the updates. Personally, I like Loops — it’s like Notion but for building emails, so I find the interface intuitive and easy to use.

The two main advantages of using a dedicated sending tool over standard email are better deliverability and the ability to review post-sending analytics. Tracking open and click rates is especially valuable for understanding which prospective investors are most engaged with your content.

Timing and consistency

It’s a good idea to start getting content ready about one to two weeks ahead of time. If you have a team, work with them early to gather the latest information. For seed or Series A startups, monthly and annual updates are the way to go. As your business grows and matures, however, the norm shifts toward quarterly and annual updates.

One thing is true across the board when it comes to frequency: Stay consistent. Sticking to your update schedule builds trust with investors, which is key to getting them involved in your startup.

Components of the investor update

Introduction: The CEO should open with a brief, personal note. No more than three to four sentences.TL;DR: Summarize key points in order of importance, including major news and top-line review numbers.Asks: Clearly state what you need support with, be it intros, advice or resources. Include a quick reminder of what your company does and its current focus so they can forward that information easily to their network.Performance review: Share recent achievements, growth metrics, and lessons learned. Use real numbers and compare them to your goals and industry standards.Future outlook: Outline your goals for the coming period and any strategic shifts.Good things: Highlight positive news and key hires and show appreciation for investor support.Closing: End with a call to action, such as scheduling a catch-up call.

Example investor update

Subject Line: FakeCo Update | July ’24

Hi all — I’m pleased to report on a pretty monumental last month here at FakeCo. Team morale feels high, and our customers can’t seem to get enough. Let’s dig in!

TL;DR:

Achieved 15% month-over-month revenue growth, reaching ARR of $217K.Successfully launched our new product feature, enhancing user experience.Secured a strategic partnership with TechLeaders Inc., expanding our market reach.

Asks

[Intro Request] Bob Jones, VP of Product at GlobalFirm re: product partnership.[Advice] Looking to talk to folks who specialize in B2B marketing with experience in healthcare.[Boost] We’re hiring two full-stack engineers to optimize our platform. Please share this job post: <link>

FakeCo specializes in AI-driven analytics for healthcare providers, focusing on improving patient outcomes through data insights. For more information, please visit <link>.

July Performance Review

chart showing revenue with growth percentage
Image Credits: Loops

Revenue grew by 15% month-over-month, resulting in $217K ARR.We experienced a 20% increase in MAUs, mainly due to our activation partnership.Despite our growth, we fell short of our customer acquisition target by 10%. However, we’ve identified key areas for improvement in our marketing strategy and are implementing changes to enhance outreach efforts.Our NDR stood at an impressive 120%, showcasing strong customer satisfaction and upsell rates.Lessons learned: Focusing on targeted marketing campaigns has yielded better conversion rates compared to some of the broader strategies we tried.

Future Outlook: August

Aiming to launch our new AI feature, which predicts patient health trends.Targeting a 10% increase in revenue and a 25% increase in new leads.Planning to expand our sales team to begin tapping into new regions and medical practices.

Good Things

Excited to announce the launch of our latest HealthBotAI feature, which has already received positive feedback from many of our early adopters.We welcomed Sally Rhodes, our new VP of Sales. She brings extensive experience and fresh perspectives mainly from medical device sales.Shoutout to Sheldon Field from Healthy Capital for the intro to the Head of BD at HealthyCo back in April — this led to a $1 million contract!!

It’s been another great month here at FakeCo. Thank you for all of your ongoing support as we continue this wild ride! Looking forward to discussing these updates and our future plans in more detail.

Please feel free to schedule a catch-up call with me here: <link>

Until next time!

Tim Johnson

Founder & CEO, FakeCo

When sharing this update or any information from this email, I ask that you please do so with careful consideration.

Think of your investor update as a chance to show investors what you’re made of. It’s not just about the numbers and milestones — it’s about giving them a peek into how you think, how carefully you’re paying attention to the details, and just how far you can take your startup. Embrace this tool, and I guarantee that you’ll quickly see its impact.

Mozilla Monitor thumbnail

Mozilla Monitor's new service removes your personal info from data broker sites automatically

by with No Comment Tech

Mozilla Monitor thumbnail

Image Credits: Mozilla

Mozilla today is introducing a new subscription service that will help people locate and remove their personal and sensitive information from data broker websites around the web. This includes the ability to remove your phone number, email, home address and other information that is exposed on data broker websites and sold for profit, the company says.

The new subscription-based service is being offered as part of Mozilla Monitor (previously Firefox Monitor), originally a free service that notifies you when your email has been a part of a data breach. The newly added and optional subscription, Monitor Plus, will allow the over 10 million existing Mozilla Monitor users to run scans to see if their personal information has been leaked, and then provide users with tools to help make that information private again.

Currently, the process of getting information removed from data broker websites can be convoluted and confusing. Most sites have an opt-out page where you can fill out a form to request your information’s removal, or you can contact the broker directly to request this. But people often don’t know who has their information or how to go about the process of getting it removed once they find it online.

Image Credits: Mozilla

Mozilla Monitor aims to make this process easier by proactively searching across 190 data broker sites that are known to sell people’s personal and private information. If it discovers data you’ve provided to Mozilla — like your name, location and birthdate — on any of these sites, it will initiate the request for removal on your behalf. The process can take a day or up to a month, Mozilla notes. This feature is a part of the new Monitor Plus $13.99 per month subscription, which lowers to $8.99 per month if buying an annual subscription ($107.88/year).

Free users will instead have the option of a one-time scan of data broker sites but will have to go through the steps to remove their information manually. This could potentially help upsell them to the new subscription service, as it offers automatic removals for this otherwise painstaking process. Both free and paid users will also continue to get alerts about data breaches, as before, and be offered tools to fix those breaches that are high-risk.

“When we launched Monitor, our goal was to help people discover where their personal info may have been exposed. Now, with Monitor Plus, we’ll help people take back their exposed data from data broker sites that are trying to sell it,” explained Tony Amaral-Cinotto, Product Manager of Mozilla Monitor at Mozilla, in a launch announcement. “Our long-standing commitment to put people’s needs first and our easy step-by-step process makes Monitor Plus unique. Additionally, we combine breach alerts and data broker removal to offer an all-in-one protection tool and make it easier for people to feel and be safe online,” he added.

To initiate a scan, users provide Mozilla with their first and last name, current city and state, date of birth and email. This information is encrypted and follows Mozilla’s privacy policy. Using this information, Mozilla runs a scan that shows you where your personal information is exposed, including through data breaches and brokers’ sites. The company notes that 233 million people were impacted by data breaches in 2023 alone, making such a tool a necessity these days.

Mozilla Monitor Plus subscribers will benefit from monthly scans and automatic removals. The free scan and paid service will initially be offered to users in the U.S. only, the company says.

Google saves your conversations with Gemini for years by default

by with No Comment Tech

Google logo sign with white backlighting on dark background

Image Credits: Artur Widak/NurPhoto / Getty Images

Don’t type anything into Gemini, Google’s family of GenAI apps, that’s incriminating — or that you wouldn’t want someone else to see.

That’s the PSA (of sorts) today from Google, which in a new support document outlines the ways in which it collects data from users of its Gemini chatbot apps for the web, Android and iOS.

Google notes that human annotators routinely read, label and process conversations with Gemini — albeit conversations “disconnected” from Google Accounts — to improve the service. (It’s not clear whether these annotators are in-house or outsourced, which might matter when it comes to data security; Google doesn’t say.) These conversations are retained for up to three years, along with “related data” like the languages and devices the user used and their location.

Now, Google affords users some control over which Gemini-relevant data is retained — and how.

Switching off Gemini Apps Activity in Google’s My Activity dashboard (it’s enabled by default) prevents future conversations with Gemini from being saved to a Google Account for review (meaning the three-year window won’t apply). Individual prompts and conversations with Gemini, meanwhile, can be deleted from the Gemini Apps Activity screen.

But Google says that even when Gemini Apps Activity is off, Gemini conversations will be saved to a Google Account for up to 72 hours to “maintain the safety and security of Gemini apps and improve Gemini apps.”

“Please don’t enter confidential information in your conversations or any data you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services, and machine learning technologies,” Google writes.

To be fair, Google’s GenAI data collection and retention policies don’t differ all that much from those of its rivals. OpenAI, for example, saves all chats with ChatGPT for 30 days regardless of whether ChatGPT’s conversation history feature is switched off, excepting in cases where a user’s subscribed to an enterprise-level plan with a custom data retention policy.

But Google’s policy illustrates the challenges inherent in balancing privacy with developing GenAI models that feed on user data to self-improve.

Liberal GenAI data retention policies have landed vendors in hot water with regulators in the recent past.

Last summer, the FTC requested detailed information from OpenAI on how the company vets data used for training its models, including consumer data — and how that data’s protected when accessed by third parties. Overseas, Italy’s data privacy regulator, the Italian Data Protection Authority, said that OpenAI lacked a “legal basis” for the mass collection and storage of personal data to train its GenAI models.

As GenAI tools proliferate, organizations are growing increasingly wary of the privacy risks.

A recent survey from Cisco found that 63% of companies have established limitations on what data can be entered into GenAI tools, while 27% have banned GenAI altogether. The same survey revealed that 45% of employees have entered “problematic” data into GenAI tools, including employee information and non-public files about their employer.

OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others offer GenAI products geared toward enterprises that explicitly don’t retain data for any length of time, whether for model training or any other purpose. Consumers though — as is often the case — get the short end of the stick.

Otter brings GenAI to your meetings with AI summaries, AI chat and more

by with No Comment Tech

Otter AI Chat screen

Image Credits: Otter

Otter, the AI-powered meeting assistant that transcribes audio in real time, is adding another layer of AI to its product with today’s introduction of Meeting GenAI, a new set of AI tools for meetings. Included with GenAI is an AI chatbot you can query to get information about past meetings you’ve recorded with Otter, an AI chat feature that can be used by teams and an AI conversation summary that provides an overview of the meeting that took place, so you don’t have to read the full transcript to catch up.

Although journalists and students may use AI to record things like interviews or lectures, Otter’s new AI features are aimed more at those who leverage the meeting helper in a corporate environment. The company envisions the new tools as a complement or replacement for the AI features offered by different services like Microsoft Copilot, Zoom AI Companion and Google Duet, for example.

Explains Otter CEO Sam Liang, the idea to introduce the new AI tools was inspired by his own busy schedule.

“I actually have 30 — sometimes more than 30 — meetings every week. Sometimes I’m even double-booked. I couldn’t go to two or three meetings at the same time, but my OtterPilot would tune into those meetings on my behalf,” he said, referring to the Otter feature that lets an AI bot record a meeting for you to review later.

Now, users will be able to read an AI-generated summary of what was covered in that meeting, including a paragraph followed by a list of action items. Otter’s customers can also now interact with an AI chatbot where they can ask questions about what took place in the past meeting or others.

Image Credits: Otter

For example, you could ask the AI chatbot things like “What did the CMO say?” or “Did they change the launch date?”

While Liang admits Otter is not the first to offer an AI companion for meetings — Microsoft Copilot and Zoom also have AI features — he believes that Otter’s version is more powerful and more comprehensive.

“You can use AI chat to query your entire meeting history,” he explains. That means you can go back to ask questions about prior meetings, not just the one you’re reviewing.

Another feature offers an AI chatbot that joins Otter’s channels where group chats take place. Here, the bot interacts like any other chat with another participant and can be invoked by anyone who asks Otter a question. For example, as users are chatting with each other, they could pause to ask the AI a question, like, “Hey Otter, what’s our revenue?” The AI chatbot will then answer your question.

The eventual goal is to have Otter more proactively participate by chiming in when it thinks it has something helpful to offer, by analyzing what’s being discussed. Perhaps if a colleague didn’t know an answer to a question, Otter could one day respond after looking back through the company’s meetings history and finding the answer shared elsewhere.

Image Credits: Otter

Otter’s data is stored in the cloud and secured, similar to other cloud-based services like Dropbox or Google’s Gmail, but no one who isn’t authorized by the company will have access to the meeting data. This allows people to access Otter, including its AI features, via any device, including their laptop or smartphone. Otter also isn’t using a customer’s data to train its AI, it says, although it allows individual users to contribute their recordings via an opt-in basis.

Notably, the company doesn’t plan to charge for its new AI features. While Microsoft charges $360 per year for its Copilot in Office 365 and Teams, Otter’s GenAI will be included both in the free plan and the $20 per month Business plan.

In this photo illustration the Clubhouse logo seen displayed

Clubhouse's new feature turns your texts into custom voice messages

by with No Comment Tech

In this photo illustration the Clubhouse logo seen displayed

Image Credits: SOPA Images (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Clubhouse, the once-popular live audio app, announced today that users can now text their friends and they’ll hear those texts in the sender’s custom voice.

In a bid to stay relevant amid user drop-off, Clubhouse debuted group voice chats where members can send asynchronous voice messages to each other, and they would appear in a format like Instagram Stories.

With today’s announcement, the company is acknowledging that you might not be in a situation to send voice messages to each other. So you can train your custom voice, send texts, and your friends would hear the message in the recreated voice. The app shows an indicator to your friends when the AI voice is reading out a message.

You can now send texts on Clubhouse and it will read out messages
Image Credits: Clubhouse

In a blog post, the company said that this feature still retains the feeling of being in a real-time chat with a friend.

“Imagine you text a friend, but on the other end they hear your words as if you actually said them. Your custom voice makes talking and typing or reading and listening all feel seamless so you never lose that feeling of being in a live conversation,” the company said.

Clubhouse claims that its AI is able to recreate your voice close to the original even when you train it by reading just a few phrases. The company said the AI can’t recreate your laughter well (so maybe don’t type hahaha?).

Clubhouse custom voice
Image Credits: Clubhouse

The company can also generate a voice on its own if you are not comfortable recording your voice. The startup didn’t specify any details, but it would be likely a text-to-speech model.

Currently, this feature is only available in the US at the moment.

The app’s usage has dwindled in the last few years. It last raised a round at a reportedly $4 billion valuation. In the last few years, it has had several layoffs. But last year, the company claimed to have a few years of runway left. Now it’s experimenting with AI-powered features to make conversations between friends easier, hoping that the users would stick around.

App analytics firm Sensor Tower said that Clubhouse had a great 2021 with 35 million downloads. But with people going out more and the existence of alternative live-audio experiences like Twitter Spaces, the Clubhouse app was downloaded only 3 million times last year. Sensor Tower added that the audio-focused network’s monthly active users in January 2024 have dipped by 93% as compared to its peak in June 2021.

Notably, last year, Apple released a feature called Personal Voice, which creates a voice that sounds like you. This is particularly useful for people who may be at risk of losing their vocal speaking ability from conditions like ALS.

The story has been updated with download figures from Sensor Tower.

Google tests a feature that calls businesses on your behalf and holds until an agent is available

by with No Comment Tech

Google logo on building

Image Credits: Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images

Google is testing a new feature that will place a call to a business on your behalf, wait on hold and then give you a call once a live representative is available, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The new feature, called “Talk to a Live Rep,” would get rid of the need for users to wait countless minutes, and sometimes hours, listening to hold music trying to get connected to a customer service agent.

The company says the feature is now available in English for people in the U.S. who have joined Search Labs, its program for users to experiment with early-stage Google Search experiences, and opted into the Talk to a Live Rep experiment. It works on the Google app for Android and iOS, as well as Chrome on desktop.

The news was first reported by 9to5Google.

Although Talk to a Live Rep is similar to the Pixel’s “Hold for Me” feature, Google says there are some differences, noting that while some of the underlying technology is the same, Talk to a Live Rep goes one step further. With Talk to a Live Rep, Google’s systems will navigate the phone tree for you and then call you back when a customer service agent is available. Hold for Me can only be activated once you’re already on hold and waiting for customer service to take your call.

Plus, while Hold for Me is only supported on Pixel phones, Talk to a Live Rep is available on all devices. In addition, because Talk to a Live Rep asks you for the reason of the call, the customer service representative will already know why you’re calling the company, removing yet another step in the process.

Some businesses already offer a call-back option where you call them, secure your place in line and then get a call back when a representative is available. Talk to a Live Rep proactively calls the business on your behalf, getting rid of the need for you to enable the whole process yourself. With Talk to a Live Rep, you only need to pick up your phone when the company is available to talk to you.

When you search for a company’s customer support number, Google will display a “Request a call” button if the business is supported. From there, you can select the reason for your call. Google will then send you SMS updates about its progress and will then call you once a customer representative is available to speak with you.

The feature is currently available for a handful of airlines, telecom companies, retailers, insurance companies and other services. The supported businesses include Alaska Airlines, Delta Airlines, JetBlue, Best Buy, Costco, Walmart, Boost Mobile, Samsung, ADT, Instacart, UPS, Zelle, State Farm and more.

As with any other experimental feature, it’s unknown when Talk to a Live Rep will reach a wider audience.

A screenshot of Signal's new usernames feature

Signal now lets you keep your phone number private with the launch of usernames

by with No Comment Tech

A screenshot of Signal's new usernames feature

Image Credits: Signal

Signal is launching usernames, the company announced today. Up until now, you have had to give someone your phone number to chat with them on Signal. Now you can create a unique username that you can use instead. Usernames are currently launching in beta and will be rolling out to all users in the coming weeks. Signal still requires a phone number when registering for the app.

As end-to-end encrypted messaging apps go, Signal stands apart as one with the strongest security and privacy features. By allowing users to now keep their phone numbers private, Signal is closing one of the few loopholes that could allow hacker’s access to a victim’s messages — where hackers hijack the phone number at the phone carrier level used to register with Signal.

Usernames in Signal do not function like usernames on social media platforms, the company says. For example, Signal usernames are not logins or handles that you’ll be known by in the app. Instead, they’re just a quick way to connect with someone on the app without sharing your phone number.

If you create a username, your profile name will still display whatever you set it to, and won’t show your username. People you message on the app also can’t see or find your username unless you have shared it with them. If someone wants to talk to you on the app, they will need to know your exact username because Signal doesn’t provide a searchable directory of usernames like X and Instagram do. Or, you have the option to generate a QR code or link that directs people to your username.

Once you create a username, your phone number will no longer be visible in Signal to anyone running the latest version of the app if they don’t already have it saved in their contacts. When you message people either directly or in group chats, your phone number won’t show up, as users will only see your profile name and image. However, if you still want people to see your phone number when you message them, you can change the default setting in your “Phone Number” settings.

Image Credits: Signal

To create a username, go into your “Profile” settings. From there, choose a unique username that has two or more numbers at the end of it. You can change your username as often as you want, and you also have the choice to delete your username altogether if you don’t want one anymore. The company says it created usernames to be easily changeable so that you can choose to make a specific username for things like a conference or a group trip, and then change it once it’s over.

To start chatting with someone via their username, you need to open the “New Chat” screen in the app and type in their username.

Signal is also introducing a new privacy setting that will let you control who can find you on the app with your phone number. Up until now, anyone who had your phone number, whether they got it on social media or a business card, has been able to find you on Signal. Now you can restrict this by going into your settings and navigating to the “Who can find me by my number” setting and selecting “Nobody.”

If you select the “Everybody” option, this means that anyone who has your phone number can type it into Signal and send you a message request, which you can of course reject or block.

Abstract glowing grid and particles

Qloo raises $25M to predict your favorite movies, TV shows and more

by with No Comment Tech

Abstract glowing grid and particles

Image Credits: piranka / Getty Images

The buzziest AI today — GenAI — is an undoubted labor saver, generating images, emails, songs and more in record time. But one of AI’s more useful applications in the long run might be identifying the counterintuitive correlations humans miss. Consider, for example, that people who like horror movies might be inclined to try certain exotic cuisines, while people who prefer sitcoms might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts.

Qloo, a New York-based startup, has made it its mission to apply AI to understand these types of nuanced taste and culture patterns. Founded in 2012 by Alex Elias and Jay Alger, Qloo seeks to uncover consumer behaviors and trends across entertainment, fashion, travel, sports, food and other segments.

Elias, an NYU Law School graduate, says that he was inspired to found Qloo after noticing a gap in the market for what he calls “taste knowledge.”

“As a passionate advocate for culture — I play the tenor saxophone and piano, and have a deep appreciation for midcentury cinema — I saw the fragmented world of taste knowledge,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. “I noticed that while companies like Spotify, Expedia and Netflix dominated their respective sectors creating data silos, there was a lack of a unified system capable of understanding and predicting diverse personal tastes across different domains without relying on identity-based data.”

So Elias teamed up with Alger, who previously led the digital marketing agency Deepend, to launch Qloo.

Qloo
Image Credits: Qloo

Today, Qloo offers companies AI-generated correlation data across many culture and entertainment domains, including film, travel, nightlife, literature and so on. The platform’s knowledge of a user’s taste in one category or genre can be leveraged to deliver suggestions in another category, for example applying TV favorites to game-buying behaviors.

“Qloo operates a sophisticated AI-powered insights engine comprised of … behavioral data from consumers around the globe,” Elias said. “Qloo’s proprietary AI models are capable of identifying trillions of connections between these entities. With a profound understanding of consumer behavior for over 575 million entities worldwide, our technology enables contextualized personalization and deep insights into the intricate connections behind people’s tastes.”

Now, that’s a lot of personal data Qloo’s working with — which certainly gave this writer pause. Where’s it all coming from and where’s it stored? Elias wouldn’t say — but he was quick to assert that Qloo doesn’t rely on personally identifiable information and adheres to the requirements of privacy laws including GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act.

“Qloo maintains a comprehensive Ethics Policy that prioritizes ethical, transparent and responsible AI development and deployment, as well as data privacy and security,” he said. “Specific to data and privacy, Qloo upholds the highest standards of data privacy and security and will not leverage any form of personally identifiable information or copyrighted information in any of the modeling pipelines.”

Whether that’s true, major customers are embracing Qloo to power their product experiences, Elias claims. For instance, Starbucks is using Qloo to create in-store music playlists tailored to specific neighborhoods. Hershey’s is tapping the platform to customize the content of assorted candy bags. Michelin is using Qloo to serve recommendations in its Michelin Guide App. And Netflix is leveraging Qloo’s tech to enhance merchandising by identifying actors who resonate with certain demographics.

Those customers — and Qloo’s ~60 others, which span PepsiCo, Samsung, The New York Mets, BuzzFeed and Ticketmaster — are helping Qloo approach profitability. The company makes money by charging a monthly subscription fee for access to its platform through APIs; Elias says contracts start in the “five figures.”

Qloo
Image Credits: Qloo

Having today raised $25 million in a Series C round led by AI Ventures with participation from AXA Venture Partners, Eldridge and Moderne Ventures (bringing Qloo’s total raised to $60 million), Qloo is setting its sights on expansion. In addition to building a self-service research tool aimed at marketers and medium- and small-business customers, the startup is introducing what it calls a “multi-person recommendation AI,” which can match the profiles of any two people in Qloo’s database based on their preferences. Elias sees it being used in dating apps.

“The tailwinds from privacy and AI have greatly overpowered the headwinds from any tech slowdown,” Elias said. “Qloo has seen widespread contract expansion from the existing customer roll, looking to consume new data domains and areas of taste knowledge as well as address new use cases like generative itinerary planning and dynamic personalization using Qloo’s AI. Qloo is also seeing demand from new addressable markets, such as real estate, as well as accelerated sales cycles across the board despite increased compliance requirements.”

With the new capital, Qloo plans to expand its 50-person team to over 100 people by the end of the year and “pursue opportunistic M&A.” In 2019, Qloo acquired TasteDive, an entertainment recommendation engine, and Elias implied that future acquisitions would be along similar strategic lines.

Lapse app screen

Lapse, the app turning your phone into an old-school camera, snaps up $30M

by with No Comment Tech

Lapse app screen

Image Credits: Lapse (opens in a new window) under a license.

It can cost a fortune in 2024 to find an analogue camera, buy film (and maybe special batteries) for it and take pictures that then need to be paid for to be developed. Yet the experience had a charm and a simplicity to it. For those longing for those old days, a startup called Lapse has been giving smartphone users an alternative — you take pictures that you have to wait to see “developed,” with no chance of editing and retaking, before sharing them with a select group of friends if you choose.

Lapse has been been gaining some traction in the market — claiming millions of users, 100 million photos captured each month and a coveted, consistent top-10 ranking in the U.S. app store for photographic apps. Now it’s announcing a new round of funding of $30 million to take its ambitions to the next level.

Greylock — the storied consumer app investor that was an early backer of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok (when it was Musical.ly) and LinkedIn — co-led the round with the equally iconic DST Global Partners. Previous backers GV, Octopus Ventures and Speedinvest also participated. Following on from a previous $12.4 million raised in seed and pre-seed funding back in 2021, this brings the total to just over $42 million and a valuation of around $150 million, according to sources.

Lapse’s plans include more behind-the-scenes treatment of the “unedited” photos, adding more features around the photo experience and an eventual move into video.

Down the line, there may even be some monetization, CEO and co-founder Dan Silvertown said in an interview. Although that’s not something it’s touched yet, it’s looking to get away from the usual route that social apps take by leaning into advertising. “The feeling and early hypothesis is to not do that,” he said.

The company’s ethos may have an old-school feel to it, but some of the mechanics of how the app operates are anything but.

Some of these are interesting technological details that stem out of lived experience. As we’ve previously recounted, Silvertown co-founded the app with his brother Ben after Ben found himself, while traveling in Asia, longing for the freedom of a point-and-shoot camera that didn’t tie him to constantly looking at an app to see who “liked” his pictures, or what other people were doing, and most of all seemingly leading his life to capture and share the moment on an app, not the other way around. That led him and Dan to looking at how to recreate the analogue experience through a smartphone.

Although there is no scope in the app to edit pictures or constantly retake snaps if you’re unhappy with how they turn out at first, there is some interesting treatment happening behind the scenes.

“There are about 12 different steps that the photo goes through in terms of processing,” he said. Some of those have elements of computer vision in them, and some are built in-house and some use third-party technology. All of them essentially, he said, aim to understand what is in the picture you are taking and are designed to optimise how subjects and the overall composition look as a result. (Note: For those who export pictures to other apps, there are a set of edit features you can use to treat the image yourself, but these are not for sharing on Lapse natively.)

On the other hand, some of the mechanics in the app are not as laudable.

Lapse has come under some scrutiny — see our story here — for how it has used growth-hacking and forced invites to expand the number of installs of its app. That technique definitely served to grow the number of users — it hit the top of the U.S. and U.K. iOS app stores (the only markets and the only platform where it is available) at one point, although it’s arguable how sustainable or user-friendly that can be for any company longer term if the app itself doesn’t offer anything useful and interesting to stick around.

Photo-sharing app Lapse hits top of the App Store by forcing you to invite your friends

For Lapse, the lesson was definitely learned, although in its defense, Silvertown still maintains that the startup had to start somewhere: Since the premise is to have a way to share your pictures with a small group of friends with no discovery feed, if you download the app and have no contacts using it, where do you go from there?

These days, he claims that the app — which has taken on more “journaling” characteristics, giving users a way to essentially build albums that you can keep private or share with a small group of people — no longer requires forced invites to use, not least because there is now a critical mass of people and it’s finding its own virality.

However, my own experience was that for totally new users — perhaps especially consumers that are sensitive to sharing data on social apps they don’t already know — it’s still tricky to sift through the app’s dark patterns to figure out how to use it without sharing at least a couple of names and numbers.

Force one piece of data out of a person, and you’ve lost trust very early on. (“Buh-bye, Lapse!” one of my more cranky and frustrated friends told me when I asked her to download the app to connect with me.)

That brings us to another important point: These days, we are at a notable crossroads in the world of consumer apps. Consumers have become all too aware of what they give up when they use most consumer apps (a lot of personal data, essentially). Yes, the most dominant names in the business are outsized in their scale with billions of users, but for the most part — Snapchat is possibly the biggest exception — they have moved far beyond a focus on sharing with small groups of friends, and none of them are without lots of bells and whistles that move users away from what looks real anymore. Some of the most popular apps, moreover, appear to be slowing down when it comes to growth and engagement.

Does all that leave an opening for at least a couple of players who are willing to give users a simpler alternative? BeReal, Dispo and a few others that have tackled that idea appear to have lost some steam for now, but Lapse still believes there is a lot more to come for its take on the concept.

And it looks like its investors do, too:

“What’s so interesting is that most high-scale platforms, whether it’s Instagram or Facebook, a lot of these originally started out life as places where we would keep up to date with our friends, and then slowly they kind of became the other stuff we know them for today,” such as sites for news, or entertainment or to keep up with influencers, Jacob Andreou, a general partner at Greylock, said in an interview.

“I think what’s interesting about that is it’s left a hole where there is no place where you can go to just check out your friends’ profiles, see what they’re up to. That’s also an amazing place to start because that’s where all these really big platforms started.” He believes that the mechanics of “capturing a photo, one at a time, and viewing later when the photo develops, can lower the barrier to sharing, using that to create this amazing place where you can stay up to date with your friends.”

Don't forget! Submit your Side Event at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024

by with No Comment Tech

Looking to leave your mark at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024? Our Side Events initiative offers a prime opportunity to connect with Boston’s vibrant tech scene in an unforgettable way. And the best part? We’ll help promote your event for free! Submit your event by March 20 to be part of the excitement.

Host your own Side Event at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024

Side Events are your chance to shine and engage with 1,500 conference attendees and the local Boston tech community during “Early Stage Week” from April 21 to April 27. Whether it’s a mixer, a career showcase, or a stimulating panel discussion, the choice is yours. There’s no application fee, so why not seize this opportunity?

Applications close next week, on March 20 at 11:59 p.m. PT. We’re reviewing and approving applications on a rolling basis, so don’t delay — submit your event today! The sooner you’re approved, the sooner we can start promoting your event.

Approved Side Events will receive complimentary promotion on TechCrunch.com and the Early Stage 2024 website, as well as exposure to Early Stage 2024 attendees through various channels like emails, posts, and the agenda.

There’s no cost to apply or participate, but hosts are responsible for all event aspects, including expenses and operations. For detailed guidance and tips, check out our Side Events Guide.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024? Reach out to our sponsorship sales team by completing this form.