INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week startups and venture capital news
Before I jump into today topic, let catch up a bit
Last week, I wrote about All Raise expansion, Uber the TV show and the unicorn from down under.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions
and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter@KateClarkTweets
If you don&t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do thathere.
The SoftBank saga
According to a new report from The Wall Street
Journal, SoftBank plans to take a more conservative approach as it begins deploying capital from Vision Fund II
Why? The Japanese mega-fund track record is less than stellar
Not only has it lost billions on WeWork, but several of its other portfolio companies are suffering through layoffs, mismanagement and
more.
Fair.com, a startup building a flexible car ownership business that is valued at $1.2 billion — backed by some $500 million in
equity from SoftBank and others, plus billions more dollars in debt funding — said this week that it will be laying off 40% of its staff
On top of this, it removing its CFO, Tyler Painter, the brother of the CEO and co-founder (and car business veteran) Scott Painter
He being replaced in the interim by Kirk Shryoc
Read more from TechCrunch Ingrid Lunden.
WeWork,the co-working giant we&re all too familiar with at this point, has benefited from $18.5
billion from SoftBank, according to Marcelo Claure, a SoftBank executive who speech to WeWork employees was leaked to Recode this week
&We have guaranteed the future of WeWork, but more importantly is we&re putting the future back into our hands
There no more days needed to go fundraising …The size of the commitment that SoftBank has made to this company in the past and now is
To put the things in context, that is bigger than the GDP of my country where I came from
That a country where there 11 million people.& Now nearly every single WeWork investor, particularly SoftBank, is entirely under
water.
There more where that came from
Brandless, another … star of SoftBank portfolio, has struggled greatly with layoffs and a CEO shake-up, according to The Information
The dog-walking startup Wag raised $300 million from SoftBank, has also endured layoffs and management changes, and has failed to protect
the safety of its pets, per this great report from CNN
And Compass, a real estate unicorn, has lost its CFO, CMO and CTO in what been labeled &Another SoftBank-Fueled Real Estate
Exodus.&
BERLIN, GERMANY & DECEMBER 05: Clue Co-founder - CEO Ida Tin talks at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2017 at Arena Berlin on December
4, 2017 in (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images for TechCrunch,)
Meet me in Berlin
The TechCrunch team is heading to Berlin again this year for
our annual event, TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, which brings together entrepreneurs and investors from across the globe
We announced the agenda this week, with leading founders including Away Jen Rubio and UiPath Daniel Dines on tap for great talks
Take a look at the full agenda.
I will be there to interview a bunch of venture capitalists, who will give tips on how to raise your first
Buy tickets to the event here.
VC deals
Logistics management business Shipwell raises $35M
Very Good Security gets $35M
Grafana Labs raises
$24M from Lightspeed
Mobile banking startup Current secures $20M
Modern Animal raises $13.5M to make going to the vet suck less
Pet health
tech company Gallant nabs $11M
Bespoke Financial lands $7M to fund cannabis entrepreneurs
YC grad Taskade nabs $5M to take on
Notion
Workplace learning platform HowNow gets $3M
Vendr, already profitable, nabs $2M to replace your enterprise sales team
Equity
This
week, Alex was remote and I was in studio to chat about a new angel fund, the WeWork saga and Lime losses
Listen to the latest episode here.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us oniTunes,Overcastand all the casts.
Startup
Spotlight
Bespoke Financialwants to provide cannabis businesses with the same kind of financial services that other businesses get, but that
dispensaries and growers can&t yet access.
The regulations around cannabis operations are so stringent at the local level — and so
nebulous at the federal level — that national banks won&t give businesses in the cannabis industry the same basic services (like
short-term loans).
That why one former Goldman Sachs banker has partnered with two entrepreneurs from the traditional agriculture industry
to create Bespoke Financial
And it why the company has raised $7 million in financing led by Casa Verde Capital — the investment firm launched by legendary cannabis
aficionado, Calvin Broadus (AKA Snoop Dogg)
Read more by TechCrunch Jon Shieber here.
