Today we’re wrapping our multi-week exploration of the global venture capital market’s second-quarter performance. We’ve gone around the world, working to better understand the geyser of cash flowing into today’s startups. But we’ve saved the best for last: Latin America.
Category: Uncategorized
Keeper Tax Raises $13M Series A to Build Complete Tax Platform for Gig Workers and the Creator Economy
Startup aims to make sensible tax advice and filing accessible for anybody making 1099 income, helping them identify write-offs and deductions from everyday purchases. Keeper Tax, the #1 tax filing software for gig workers, creators and freelancers, today announced it has raised its $13M Series A.
Karat launches a credit card for online creators
MEET THE TEEN WHO INVENTED A BRA THAT DETECTS CANCER
Julián Ríos Cantú knows all too well about the importance of early and accurate breast cancer detection. The 19-year-old’s mother survived two bouts with breast cancer, despite an inaccurate diagnosis. But from that experience came EVA — a bra that detects cancer.
Insurtech startup Obie raises $10.7M Series A led by Battery Ventures
Obie, which has developed an insurtech platform for landlords, has raised $10.7 million in a Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures.
Thomvest Ventures, Funders Club, MetaProp and Second Century Ventures also participated in the financing.
If this sounds like a niche offering, that’s because it is. Obie’s software specifically targets small-to-medium size apartment landlords who own single-family rentals and/or larger apartment buildings.
Chicago-based Obie — which also went through the Y Combinator program — says its platform stands out because it offers instant quotes (by instant, they mean in about three to five minutes). The company also claims to save policyholders up to 25-30% compared to other insurance premiums. Over the past year, Obie has secured insurance for over $3 billion worth of property.
B.C. technology company Switchboard connects the logistics dots
Sagar Malhi pulls out his phone and calls up a map of North America, covered in 7,200 pink dots. They speckle the continent, streak down the West Coast and cluster around cities like Chicago.
Each circle represents a truck fitted with one of Vancouver-based Switchboard’s electronic logging devices (ELDs).
“We bet huge on ELDs,” said Michael Ip, who co-founded the now nine-person startup with Malhi.
“This ELD was a big boon because this U.S. government mandate forced pretty much 20 million trucks to adopt this new technology. That’s crazy.”
Reverie Labs raises 25M
Reverie Labs, a pharmaceutical startup founded by Jonah Kallenbach, A.B./S.M. ’17 (computer science) and Ankit Gupta, A.B./S.M. ’17 (computer science) raised $25 million from investors.
The company uses machine learning, physics-based modeling, and massive-scale computational infrastructure to engineer new medicines. Reverie will use this funding to advance its internal and partnered drug discovery programs towards the clinic, further develop its innovative computational discovery platform, and expand its team of scientists and engineers.
How Robotics Breakthroughs are Transforming Manufacturing
Lean manufacturing, the philosophy driving gains in productivity and quality for more than a century, is based on five core ideas:
● Figure out a product’s value to customers
● Map its value-stream and remove unnecessary steps
● Set up a flow that allows it to move continuously through the remaining steps
● Establish a pull system for production
● Strive to perfect the process
These principles led companies to become world leaders. While the manufacturing facility has evolved in recent decades, the principles of lean manufacturing still apply. Indeed, advances in artificial intelligence and factory robotics are automating the manufacturing process even further, opening up new paths to apply lean.
Stoke Space aims to take reusable rockets to new heights with $9M seed
Many launch providers think reusability is the best way to lower the cost and delay involved in getting to space. SpaceX and Rocket Lab have shown reusable first stages, which take a payload to the edge of space — and now Stoke Space Technologies says it is making a reusable second stage, which will take that payload to orbit and beyond, and has raised a $9.1 million seed round to realize it.
Designing a first stage that can return to Earth safely is no small task, but the fact that it only reaches a certain height and speed, and doesn’t actually climb into orbit at an even higher velocity, means that it is simpler to try. The second stage takes over when the first is spent, accelerating and guiding the payload to its destination orbit, which generally means it will have traveled a lot farther and will be going a lot faster when it tries to come back down.
Citadel ID raises $3.5M for API-delivered income and employment verification
This morning Citadel ID announced a combined $3.5 million raise for its income and employment verification service. The startup provides an API to customer companies, allowing them to rapidly verify details of consumer employment.
The capital came from a blend of venture firms and angels. On the firm side, Abstract and Soma VC were in there, along with ChapterOne. Brianne Kimmel put capital in as well, according to the startup. And denizens with work histories at companies like Zynga (Mark Pincus), Stripe (Lachy Groom), Carta (Henry Ward) and others also put cash into the fundraise. (The company reached out to add that Fathom Capital also put a good amount in the round.)
Alloy raises $4M to build out its e-commerce automation service
Alloy Automation, a startup that was part of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 cohort, announced today that it has closed $5 million across two rounds, the most recent of which brought $4 million to the company in October of 2020.
The new funds were raised at a $16 million pre-money, $20 million post-money valuation, Alloy told TechCrunch.
The company’s latest fundraising was led by Bain Capital Ventures and Abstract, with participation from Color Capital, BoxGroup and a collection of individual investors, including Shippo’s Laura Behrens Wu.
BukuWarung, a startup digitizing Indonesia’s SMEs, raises new funding from Rocketship.vc
BukuWarung, an Indonesian startup focused on digitizing the country’s 60 million small businesses, announced today it has raised new funding from Rocketship.vc and an Indonesian retail conglomerate.
The amount was undisclosed, but sources say it brings BukuWarung’s total funding so far to $20 million. The company’s last round, announced in September 2020, was between $10 million to $15 million. Launched in 2019, BukuWarung was founded by Chinmay Chauhan and Abhinay Peddisetty and took part in Y Combinator last year.
Nayya Raises $11M Series A Led By Felicis Ventures to Optimize Personalized Healthcare Decisions
Nayya, the leading insurance benefits experience and management platform, today announced that it has closed $11M in Series A funding led by Felicis Ventures, with continued support from all early investors including Social Leverage, Guardian Life, one of the largest mutual life insurance companies in the US, and Cameron Ventures. Unum Business Ventures also joined the round with a venture investment from the Fortune 500 insurance company covering 39 million Americans.
Gainful raises $7.5M for personalized sports nutrition
Gainful, a startup offering personalized subscriptions to protein powders and hydration products, is announcing that it has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding.
COO Eric Wu, who founded the company with CTO Jahaan Ansari, told me that Gainful began with his own experience experimenting with different protein powders and eventually finding the combination that worked best for his goals and dietary needs.
Datafold raises seed from NEA to keep improving the lives of data engineers
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With Datafold, changes made by data engineers in their extractions and transformations can be compared for unintentional changes
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Explo snags $2.3M seed to help build customer-facing BI dashboards
Explo, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 class, which is helping customers build customer-facing business intelligence dashboards, announced a $2.3 million seed round today. Investors included Amplo VC, Soma Capital and Y Combinator along with several individual investors.
The company originally was looking at a way to simplify getting data ready for models or other applications, but as the founders spoke to customers, they saw a big need for a simple way to build dashboards backed by that data and quickly pivoted.
Secureframe raises $4.5M to help businesses speed up their compliance audits
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Secureframe, helps businesses get and maintain their SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications.
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Index nabs $2.6M seed to create BI dashboards without coding
[vc_row type=”full_width_content” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none” shape_type=””][vc_column column_padding=”padding-6-percent” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]Index is a startup to help non-technical users build business intelligence dashboards without coding[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Transforming Latin American Corner Stores: Chiper Carries In $12M Series A
Chiper has been amassing a network of digitized corner stores in Latin America for the past two years. Now armed with $12 million in Series A funding, the Colombia-based e-commerce platform for independent merchants is poised to capture even more corner-store retailers.
Nabis raises $5m Series A to grow its cannabis distribution platform
The cannabis industry is quickly growing up, and companies like Nabis play a critical role. Today, the company is announcing it raised $5 million in Series A funding, which will help it grow and expand its offering.
Nabis is a business to business distributor, handling logistics, payment, and warehousing. Instead of being a distributor for beer, snacks, or pet supplies, Nabis is a cannabis distributor. The company acts as a middleman between cultivators and retail establishments, providing both parties’ unique services. Since it’s illegal to ship cannabis through traditional means, most cannabis operators turn to private operations to transport goods.
Arist Announces $1.9 Million in Seed Funding to Transform the Way Organizations Train and Learn
Arist, a text message learning platform used by organizations including DuPont, the Poynter Institute, and the State of California, today announced it has raised $1.9m from Acadian Ventures, Global Founders Capital and Craft Ventures, with additional participation from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Emles Venture Partners, Hack VC, Rebel Fund, Liquid 2 Ventures, and angel investors Derek Schoettle (CEO of Cloudant) and Adam Goldstein (founder of Hipmunk), among others. Founded by Michael Ioffe, Ryan Laverty, and Maxine Anderson, Arist makes learning accessible and frictionless by delivering courses entirely via text message and WhatsApp.
Learning from Ioffe’s prior work improving access to learning in war-torn countries, the Arist team saw a different but critical need in the American workplace. The Arist platform makes it easier to create and simpler to access training. Organizations can create and launch text message courses in just minutes on any topic — from diversity and inclusion, compliance and sales enablement to safety training. Arist is particularly well-suited for reaching frontline employees who may not have laptop or LMS access, and is currently trusted by more than 50 leading companies, universities and nonprofits.
Doppler Raises $2.3 Million From Sequoia And Kleiner Perkins To Create The First Universal Secrets Management Solution For Developers
A developer’s primary priority is to write code. The secondary tasks, like keeping track and managing access of secrets, or digital authentication credentials, go on the back burner. However, secrets management must be done well, or a developer team risks compromising their code at critical times. Yet, most secrets management software are built by DevOps and security-focused teams or are quickly hacked-together developer solutions that won’t be able to scale with greater use.
Brian Vallelunga has struggled first-hand with secrets management. He and his team have built Doppler to address the problem. Doppler is the first ‘Universal Secrets Manager’ built specifically for developer teams of all sizes. The San Francisco-based startup has raised $2.3M in a seed round from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Abstract Ventures and Soma Capital, with participation from prominent tech investors and executives such as Aaron Levie, Peter Thiel, Nat Friedman, Dylan Field, Kevin Hartz, Greg Brockman, Jeremy Stoppelman and Ben Porterfield, and more.
Datasaur snags $3.9M investment to build intelligent machine learning labeling platform
As machine learning has grown, one of the major bottlenecks remains labeling things so the machine learning application understands the data it’s working with. Datasaur, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 batch, announced a $3.9 million investment today to help solve that problem with a platform designed for machine learning labeling teams.
The funding announcement, which includes a pre-seed amount of $1.1 million from last year and $2.8 million seed right after it graduated from Y Combinator in March, included investments from Initialized Capital, Y Combinator and OpenAI CTO Greg Brockman.
Indonesian fintech startup BukuWarung gets new funding to add financial services for small merchants
A month after completing Y Combinator’s accelerator program, BukuWarung, a financial tech startup that serves small businesses in Indonesia, announced it has raised new funding from a roster of high-profile investors, including partners of DST Global, Soma Capital and 20VC.
The amount of the funding was undisclosed, but a source told TechCrunch that it was between $10 million to $15 million. The new capital will be used to hire for BukuWarung’s technology team. TechCrunch first profiled BukuWarung in July.
Flat, a Mexican property tech startup, raises $4.6M pre-seed led by ALLVP
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Flat has raised one of Mexico’s largest pre-seed rounds to take the Opendoor real estate marketplace model across the Rio Grande
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YC-Backed FamPay Launches First Numberless Payments Cards For Teens
Y Combinator-backed fintech startup FamPay, on Thursday (July 16), launched FamCard, a numberless card to allow teenagers to independently transact online with minimal intervention from parents.
However, the card requires top-ups from an adult but lets children spend it the way they want, under supervision. This relieves parents from giving children physical cash or their debit/credit card, and gives a sense of financial freedom to teens. FamPay believes that such an offering can efficiently teach children about financial management.
Athlane looks to connect brands and esports streamers with a fresh $3.3 million in funding
Athlane, the YC-backed company from the Summer ’19 cohort, is today ready to launch with a fresh $3.3 million in capital. Investors include Y Combinator, Jonathan Kraft (New England Patriots), Michael Gordon (President of Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club), Global Founders Capital, Romulus Capital, Seabed VC and more.
The startup originally positioned itself as the “NCAA of esports” but, after some time in stealth, has taken a new approach. Athlane is looking to be the connective fiber between streamers and brands, facilitating sponsorship and endorsement deals with more transparent data and analytics and a streamlined communications flow.
Nayya, bringing transparency to choosing and managing healthcare plans, raises $2.7 million
Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator -backed Nayya is on a mission to simplify choosing and managing employee benefits through machine learning and data transparency.
The company has raised $2.7 million in seed funding led by Social Leverage, with participation from Guardian Strategic Ventures, Cameron Ventures, Soma Capital, as well as other strategic angels.
The process of choosing an employer-provided healthcare plan and understanding that plan can be tedious at best and incredibly confusing at worst. And that doesn’t even include all of the supplemental plans and benefits associated with these programs.
Exclusive: Swap Taps $3.3M Seed Round To Create Better Infrastructure For Fintechs
Brazil-based Swap raised a $3.3 million seed round to help financial institutions create their own internal financial technology businesses faster and more effectively.
“We are like AWS [Amazon Web Services] for payments, helping companies improve connection, experience and embed finance into their business so they can stop outsourcing those functions,” Swap`s co-founder and Chief Product Officer Ury Rappaport, told Crunchbase News.
ONEVC led the seed round, with participation from GFC, SOMA Capital, Brad Flora, ABSeed, Flourish Ventures, Rhombuz, Canary, Hustle Fund and Patrick Sigrist.
Karat launches a credit card for online creators
Karat is a new startup promising to build better banking products for the creators who make a living on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch and other online platforms. Today it’s unveiling its first product — the Karat Black Card.
The startup, which was part of accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 batch, is also announcing that it has raised $4.6 million in seed funding from Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, SignalFire, YC, CRV and Coatue.2
Benepass raises $2.4 million to help employees get the most out of their tax-advantaged benefits
Tax-advantaged benefits, like flexible spending accounts, can save employees in the United States thousands of dollars annually, and reduce the amount of payroll taxes companies pay. But those benefits are often underutilized, simply because they can be confusing to navigate. Benepass wants to make the process easier with a mobile app that centralizes all of an employee’s tax-advantaged accounts, and is linked to physical and virtual payment cards. The startup announced today that it has raised a $2.4 million seed round.
Remote work start-up Deel scores $14 million investment led by Andreessen Horowitz
Amid a sharp pullback in venture capital activity during the coronavirus pandemic, one Silicon Valley start-up is showing what could be a path forward for other new companies seeking funding.
The business, a payroll platform for remote workers called Deel, has secured a $14 million series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, sources told CNBC exclusively. As part of the investment, Andreessen general partner Anish Acharya is joining the San Francisco-based company’s board.
ElectroNeek, A Y Combinator Robotic Process Automation Startup, Raises $2.5M To Increase Remote Work Productivity
The novel coronavirus pandemic has forced many non-essential businesses across the US to close their offices in a bid to stop the spread of the virus. The disruption caused by the virus has diminished consumer demand and severely impacted the day-to-day operations of firms of any size. Sergey Yudovskiy, Dmitry Karpov, and Mikhail Rozhin started ElectroNeek to help businesses increase their productivity, given the necessity for remote work during the pandemic. ElectroNeek picked up $2.5 million in their seed round led by 645 Ventures, with participation from Soma Capital, I2BF Global, and other funds and angel investors. The San Francisco-based startup was recently in Y Combinator’s (YC) Winter 2020 batch.
Accel-Backed Searchlight.ai, A B2B Hiring Software Startup, Fixes The Broken Interviewing Process
As global economic competition grows each year, firms work tirelessly to recruit the best talent available on the market. Companies invest in university and college recruiting sessions extensively. They also incentivize their employees with cash rewards to tap their networks to fill empty positions. Many think the problem with hiring top talent is related to not reaching enough potential candidates. However, Kerry and Anna Wang viewed the problem differently and created Searchlight.ai as their solution. Searchlight.ai is a hiring software startup integrating automated reference checks to companies’ hiring processes to build in-depth profiles of prospective candidates. The startup was in Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 batch.
Forager raises $10 million Series A for cross-border tech
Forager, the Chicago-based technology and logistics company focused on cross-border freight, announced Wednesday morning that it had closed a $10 million Series A round of venture capital funding.
The Series A was led by Silicon Valley firm U.S. Venture Partners (USVP); previous investor Chicago Ventures and new investor Soma Capital also participated in the round. Forager’s valuation was not disclosed.
CEO Matt Silver, VP of Finance & Analytics Jordan Salins, and COO Jessie Essman founded Forager in January 2019. Silver’s industry experience came from growing up at Coyote Logistics, the freight brokerage founded by his father in 2006, where he managed cross-border operations in Mexico and Canada. In November, Forager launched the first version of its cross-border freight matching and pricing platform, SCOUT.
FamPay Bags $4.7Mn Seed Funding To Build Fintech Platform For Teenagers
Bengaluru-based fintech startup FamPay, on Thursday (March 12), announced a $4.7Mn seed funding round from Y Combinator, Venture Highway, Sequoia India and Global Founders Capital (GFC).
Founded by recent graduates of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, Kush Taneja and Sambhav Jain, FamPay is currently building a payments network which will specifically cater to teenagers in India.
VCs bet millions on Microverse, a Lambda School for the developing world
The student loan crisis in the U.S. has left venture capitalists searching for novel approaches to financing higher education, but can the same systems designed for helping coders in Silicon Valley get jobs at Google help underserved students in developing countries become part of a global work force?
Similar to the buzzy San Francisco startup Lambda School, Microverse is a coding school that utilizes ISAs, or Income Share Agreements, as a means of allowing students to learn now and pay later with a fixed percentage of their future salary. Microverse isn’t aiming to compete heavily with Lambda School for U.S. students, however, they are looking more heavily at courting students in developing countries. The startup currently has students in 96 countries, with Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon and India among their most represented, CEO Ariel Camus tells TechCrunch.
Ramp is a corporate card focused on helping you spend less
Meet Ramp, a new startup that offers corporate credit cards with 1.5% cash back on everything. The company thinks that a cash-back program combined with an analysis of your payments to help you spend less is more valuable than alternative corporate card offerings.
Ramp is launching publicly today and has raised $25 million in funding from Keith Rabois, Coatue, BoxGroup, Conversion Capital, Soma Capital, Backend Capital and more than 50 business angels.
YC-backed Commercial Real Estate Startup Obie Raises $2.8M
Obie, a Chicago startup that’s building a commercial real estate platform, announced it has raised a seed round of funding and officially launched its product to the public.
Obie said Tuesday that it raised $2.8 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, MetaProp, FundersClub, Liquid 2 and Soma Capital. Opendoor founder JD Ross, Inkling founder Matt MacInnis and Rentlytics founder Justin Alanis also invested in the round.
The startup has built a cloud-based insurance and portfolio management platform for small- and medium-size commercial real estate funds and managers. Obie’s platform gives owners information about their assets in once place, and allows them to collaborate with property managers, leasing brokers, LPs and others who need access to the property data.
Obie also offers property and casualty insurance and says it can help customers cut premiums by 10-15%.
Brazilian Mobility Startup Kovi Raises $30M Series A From Global Investors
Kovi, a fast-growing 17-month-old Brazilian mobility startup, has raised a $30 million Series A led by Global Founders Capital.
New investor Quona Capital and existing investors Monashees, Maya Capital, Accel partner Kevin Efrusy, Y Combinator, Broadhaven Ventures, Tinder founder Justin Mateen and ONEVC also participated in the financing, which brings Kovi’s total raised since its inception to $40.6 million.
Founded in 2018 by two former 99 (Brazil’s first tech unicorn) executives, São Paulo-based Kovi rents vehicles to on-demand drivers who work for ride-hailing companies such as Uber, Didi and Lyft. It operates under the premise that more people in Latin America would work for these companies if they could afford to operate the necessary vehicle. Less than half the population in Brazil own a car. Also, cars are significantly more expensive in countries like Brazil than in the U.S. and the difference is even greater when it comes to the average income of the population. Kovi gives drivers who don’t necessarily want, or cannot afford, to own a vehicle “quick access to quality cars” at what it says is “a fair price”
ZeroDown, valued at $150M, plans to take on Zillow
Days out of Y Combinator, venture capitalists valued ZeroDown, a financial and real estate technology startup, at $150 million, the company has confirmed. The startup had the perfect match of experienced founders and eye-popping ambitions to carve a new path to home ownership.
“I think we will be known as a company that makes it easier to buy a home in every single aspect,” ZeroDown co-founder and chief executive officer Abhijeet Dwivedi tells TechCrunch.
An Indian startup that uses WhatsApp to serve thousands with chronic disease raises $5.5M seed round
Another startup in India is cashing in on the popularity of WhatsApp, the most popular app in the country with more than 400 million users, to build a business around it.
Digi-Prex is a seven-month old startup that runs an eponymous online subscription pharmacy in Hyderabad and serves patients with chronic diseases. Patients share their prescription with Digi-Prex through WhatsApp and the startup’s workers then deliver the medication to them on a recurring cycle.
This 4-month-old Y Combinator startup wants to be the Stripe for the Philippines
Francis Plaza, a serial entrepreneur, was long frustrated with the poor digital payments services in his home country the Philippines. One day, he decided to do something about it.
About four months ago, Plaza sat together with his Software Engineer friends to discuss the issues in the payments space in the country and developed a solution.
And it has now made it to Y Combinator’s summer batch 2019, the first Filipino fintech startup to achieve the feat.
Integrate Acquires ListenLoop, Combines Programmatic ABM & Demand Gen In New Solution
Integrate, a demand orchestration platform, has acquired ListenLoop, an account-based programmatic advertising platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The company also unveiled a new solution powered by ListenLoop that is designed to connect programmatic ABM and demand generation.
Dubai-based heavy equipment rental marketplace Tenderd raises $5.8 million seed from Y Combinator, BECO, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel & others
Dubai-based heavy equipment renal marketplace for the construction industry has raised $5.8 million in what it’s calling the largest ever seed funding round of MENA from some of the leading investors of Silicon Valley and the region. The round is led by Y Combinator and BECO Capital and joined by Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Paul Buchheit, Justin Mateen, Matt Mickiewicz, VentureSouq, SOMA, Dynamo, and Global Founders Capital.
ZeroDown is constructing a new path to home ownership
Even rich San Francisco residents can’t buy a home. Sure, if your startup just went public, you might be amongst a small class of people able to put in all-cash offers over the asking price. But most people living in the Bay Area, even those with six-figure salaries, only aspire to become homeowners.
Nectar’s sonar bottle caps could save $50B in stolen booze
Bars lose 20% of their alcohol to overpours and “free” drinks for friends. That amounts to $50 billion per year in booze that mysteriously disappears, making life tough for every pub and restaurant. Nectar wants to solve that mystery with its ultrasound depth-sensing bottle caps that measure how much liquid is left in a bottle by measuring how long it takes a sonar pulse to bounce back.
Clutter has picked up Omni’s storage business; Omni to focus on rentals
On the heels of Clutter announcing a large growth round of $200 million earlier this year, the storage startup is cleaning up the competitive field. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Clutter has purchased the storage business of erstwhile rival Omni.