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Like some of the best consumer tech from the last decade, I didn’t know I needed an e-bike until I was on one, breezing down the bike lane contemplating my newfound freedom.

Before buying a Nintendo Switch, I would have never guessed how much a candy-colored gaming console that I could pop out of a dock and into my backpack for long flight would fill me with joy. An e-bike, particularly this e-bike, the VanMoof X3, feels like that.

I live in Portland, Oregon, land of ample bike lanes and naked bike rides. When I first moved here, I biked everywhere, but that habit slowly dissolved over the years. First, I bought a car for weekend camping trips, which slowly became weekday errand running.

A few years later, I got diagnosed with a chronic illness and suddenly found myself much less confident in what my body could do and where it could comfortably take me. Over time, my bike would only see a handful of rides a season on beautiful days, when I’d always sigh and think I wish I biked more — it makes me feel good!

Before testing the X3, I’d find excuses to drive short distances instead of riding my bike. What if I got tired and didn’t feel like biking home? What if it starts pouring rain? What’s if it’s too hot? What if I’m too sweaty when I get to the office? Riding an e-bike erases most of those concerns outright.

The X3 is an effortless enough ride that I can still zoom to work if it’s 95+ degrees out. It’s fast enough that I can get out of a surprise rainstorm quickly if need be. If I don’t want to be sweaty at the start of the day, I can lean on sweet, sweet electricity to whisk me away, rolling up to my office without breaking a sweat.

And it can’t go unstated that going fast on a bike — the whole time, with as much or little effort as you feel like putting in — is really, really fun. If you haven’t had a chance to try an e-bike, know that the sensation of effortlessly zipping around, electricity near-imperceptibly humming beneath you, is difficult to describe and best experienced first-hand.

VanMoof’s handsome pair of high tech bikes, the X3 and its larger cousin the S3, are far from the only options on the market, so some of their pluses would hold true for any electric bike. But that doesn’t make the VanMoof interchangeable either. The VanMoof X3 has a very specific look, feel and feature set that will perfectly suit a certain kind of rider (myself included) but other e-bike shoppers will still want to play the field. We’ll get into that — here goes!

Matrix display shows battery life, speed and other key info.

APPEARANCE

I tested the VanMoof X3 over the S3 not by choice — its geometry is a little wacky looking in pictures — but because I’m 5’4″. The X3, which fits anybody from 5′-6’5″, is a little smaller and less traditional looking than the S3, which suits anyone taller than 5’8″. The X3 has 24″ wheels rather than the S3’s 28″ wheels and it has a little bungee-corded platform in the front where presumably you could carry something, but I still have no idea what (You can also buy an add-on front basket that slots in there and looks very cute.)

Like most e-bikes, the X3 is much, much heavier than a normal road or commuter bike. The listed weight is 45.8 lbs and you’ll feel every pound of it if you ever need to carry it very far. I live in a standalone house in Portland, Oregon and had to carry the X3 down a very short front step to ride it — totally fine!

I used to live in a fifth floor walkup in Brooklyn and carrying it up or down that would have been impossible. If you can’t store the X3 (or most any e-bike) around ground level with access to a charger, it might not be a good fit for you. (Note that in our pictures, the small platform above the chain area is where an optional external battery pack, discussed later, sits. The platform is removable.)

Though on paper I’d prefer the look of the S3, the X3 doesn’t look strange at all IRL, whether parked or with somebody riding it. It’s cute, futuristic but not conspicuous and gets plenty of compliments. My wife described its aesthetic as “Death Star chic” and while I don’t totally know what that means, she’s not wrong. On the way to my office a sanitation truck driver rolled down his window to bellow “HEY—THAT’S A REALLY COOL BIKE.” Thanks, my dude!

The current generation of VanMoof e-bikes are coated in matte paint and you can choose between a classic, sexy matte black or a pleasantly cheery matte light blue. A previous version of the bikes used glossy coating, but apparently the matte is supposed to be more scratch resistant. The paint does seem pretty tough though it’s not totally bombproof. Somehow the handlebars picked up a little nick in the paint, though I still have no idea where it came from or what did it (owls?).

Something important to note is that neither the VanMoof X3 or S3 look like e-bikes. They don’t have an ugly bulge jutting out from the frame and the top tube and down tube are both thick but uniform — and not so thick you’d think twice about it.

The electronic components are nestled away in the frame and even the drivetrain is tucked away and enclosed. And while there’s a deeply cool LED matrix display embedded in the top tube, only the rider really sees it. For anyone looking for an e-bike that doesn’t scream e-bike!!!! the VanMoof is one of the best choices if not the best choice you could make. It’s an awesome looking bike — not just an awesome looking e-bike.

VanMoof X3 in the city of roses.

RIDING

The VanMoof X3 is a nice-looking bike — you get it. But what about, you know, the biking? I can confidently report that from the first time you hop on it to your twentieth commute to work, the X3 is an absolute joy to ride.

As an e-bike newcomer I had reservations. Would the electric assistance cheapen the magic of riding a bike? Do I really want a bike doing the shifting for me? As it turns out, quite the opposite and yes, absolutely.

The VanMoof X3 (and its sibling the S3) give you an electric boost while pedaling — you’ll still be pedaling but it feels enticingly easy and you’ll go faster with less effort. The bike also features a Turbo Boost button on the right-side handlebar that gives you a big boost on top of the smoother normal electronic assistance, up to 20 miles per hour in the U.S.

You can choose the amount of help that you want. Using the VanMoof app, which we’ll get to, or a physical button, you can select what level of power assist you’d like from zero to four. Zero is you pedaling a heavy-ass bike alone with no help (it sucks) and four makes everything feel so easy there’s almost no way to break a sweat.

In my time testing the bike, I’d use “two” when I felt like getting a bit of a workout with extra pep in my pedal, four when I was in a hurry to get to my co-working space in the mornings and three the rest of the time, like riding to brunch on a weekend. Being able to choose the level of pedal assistance is a huge perk and it makes the bike feel flexible for different uses.

The kick lock button, back wheel and enclosed chain.

Whatever mode you’re on, the turbo boost button is a killer feature. It flattens steep hills and makes it feel way safer to zip across busy intersections where you’re not sure drivers are paying attention. It’s fun and awesome for safe, defensive city riding.

It takes a little bit to get used to the automatic electronic shifting but that’s silky smooth too. I initially assumed that, like many things that worked perfectly well before having some extraneous “smart” high-tech nonsense draped over them (fridges! lamps! vibrators!) the technology would fail just often enough to be a nuisance.

After a long period of testing, I can report that the X3 rides as smooth and seamless as ever. Every once in a while I’d crunch down on the pedal or a gear won’t catch right away but it’s super rare. You can even use the app to customize when the bike shifts up and down and it’s worth playing around with that to find something that feels just right.

What else? The X3’s maximum assisted speed is in the U.S. is 20 mph (32km/hr), but anyone in Europe will be limited to 15.5 mph (25km/hr). The U.S. speed feels great and it’s painless to get up to 20mph and maintain that speed with the X3 in a way I’d have to destroy my quads to manage otherwise, even on my zippy non-electric road bike.

Beyond that, the seat is very comfy and the ride is pleasantly upright and natural. After riding the X3 for a while I had a hard time going back to hunching over on my (adorable) little Bianchi and pined for the comfy ride I’d gotten so used to.

Tail light from the future.

VALUE

The VanMoof X3 is an excellent value, all things considered. The company has a weird habit of tinkering with its pricing, but after a redesign and a colossal price drop in 2020 ($3,398 to $1,998 at the time) the bikes feel very well priced. Now they’re retailing for $2,298 — $300 more than the previous price but still a fine deal for anyone looking for a very full-featured e-bike without spending more than around $2,000.

That’s not that much more than you’d spend on a regular new bike, sans electricity and VanMoof’s many, many cool bells and whistles. If you’re into higher end bikes, it could even be a lot less. And realistically, it’s just as likely that you’re shopping for an e-bike to rely less on a car, public transportation or whatever else you’re paying for to get around — not to replace a traditional bike. (For something in the U.S. in the sub-$2,000 range, check out Rad Power Bikes and Charge for some good options.)

VanMoof’s pricing is also substantially less than you’d pay for the high end tier of feature-rich e-bikes with high quality components, but the company still manages to compete with those on looks and features. Still, it’s kind of stressful that VanMoof is quietly messing around with the pricing with the bikes already out in the wild. It would suck to plan to buy one only to see the price shoot up before you’d pulled the trigger.

The company should be more transparent about this, giving set future dates for planned price changes. There also seem to be updates within generations of the bikes, so an X3 you buy now might differ from an X3 you could buy in 2020. That’s confusing and all of it should be made clearer somewhere obvious on the website.

The VanMoof app’s in-app ride tracking and summary stats.

RANGE

One of the biggest considerations with an e-bike (or an e-anything!) is range. VanMoof says the X3’s range is 37 miles using “full power” and up to 93 miles in economy mode. If you’re getting 93 miles out of the battery, you probably aren’t even using the pedal assistance at all, so you can just toss that number out. The low end estimate of 37 miles might be a little generous for someone who’s using the bike on the fourth power assistance level and smashing the turbo boost regularly, but 35-45 miles feels about right from my testing (usually mode 3 or 4, occasionally 2, light use of turbo button).

The range feels good. Even using the X3 most days out of the week, charging is infrequent enough to never feel annoying. In my case, that meant daily short rides (2.5-5 miles, usually) and the occasional longer ride (10-20 miles). If you’re using the X3 or S3 to commute to work somewhere that’s farther away, you’re going to find yourself plugging in more. Even so, I never got into a situation where I was concerned that I’d run out of battery far from home. And even if you do, you can still pedal the bike — it’s just really heavy. Most people will probably charge up overnight, but you can fill up the battery in four hours if you need to.

Something to note is that you’ll plug in a wall charger directly to the bike to charge it. For anyone who can’t charge and store the X3 on ground level, know you’ll have to carry the whole dang bike to an outlet. The lack of a removable battery might be a strike against the VanMoof bikes for folks who live in walk-ups or small apartments, but for people with somewhere easy to store it, this wasn’t something I thought twice about.

While the built-in range is totally adequate for a lot of use cases, VanMoof just introduced an external add-on battery pack for both the X3 and S3. The battery slots into a little platform, pictured below and mounted on our test bike, and it extends the X3’s range considerably. VanMoof sells the PowerBank accessory for $348. The thing isn’t small — it weighs six pounds — but VanMoof says it’ll give you anywhere from 28 to 62 miles of extra range. Again, almost nobody is going to hit the high end of this, but even at the low end it almost doubles the bike’s existing range.

External PowerBank via VanMoof

The PowerBank is big and pretty clunky. It doesn’t look awful, but it definitely makes the X3 look like an e-bike. It’s not elegant like the removable battery on the Cowboy, another extremely handsome e-bike, but it’s ok. If everything else about a VanMoof suits you perfectly but you need more range, it’s great to have the option, even if you’ll be shelling out for it.

TECH FEATURES

The tech bells and whistles are something that really makes the VanMoof X3 and S3 stand out from the crowd. The X3’s price feels reasonable for a reliable, great-looking e-bike, but on top of that you’ll be getting an electric steed with some pretty sweet tricks:

• Matrix display: On the bike’s top tube an array of LED lights built into the metal displays your speed, battery life and other useful info. This is a killer feature, it’s extremely cool!
• Alarm. You can activate an alarm that will *literally growl* at anyone who jostles your bike. It’s intense and really loud.
• Kick lock. You can kick a small physical button to alarm the bike and lock the back wheel. If you live in a city with bike theft, someone could still toss the bike in a truck easily so this isn’t a single security solution (I used a normal mini Kryptonite lock and that worked great.)
• Find My on iOS. If you’re an iOS user you can track your bike’s whereabouts easily. It’s a nice feature, though ideally if your bike is well-locked you aren’t going to be messing with this much.

VanMoof support for “Find My” app in iOS

• Lights. The VanMoof X3 has great built-in lights, front and back.
• App: Surprisingly, the app is actually pretty good. You can customize lots of small things (bell noise, alarm on or off, shifting preferences), use it to track your rides and more. You also don’t have to be connected to the bike with the app to do the most essential stuff, liking riding it, unlocking it and changing your level of electric assistance. I had an occasional connectivity problem with the app (usually on Android) but this was easily resolved and never kept me from biking anywhere, though it did mean some rides weren’t automatically tracked. Importantly, you can also track your bike’s whereabouts through the app and VanMoof touts this feature combined with its alarm system and recovery team for helping people get their bikes back.

Overall, something great about the X3 is that the tech features aren’t just fancy tricks — they really enhance the experience. And even so, they’re optional. You can ride the bike and benefit from the power assistance without using the app. You can use a regular lock and skip the alarm system if you choose to, or use a physical button code to disable it manually. You can change the power assistance mode with the same button. This is all huge and lets you use the e-bike how you want to. Personally, I’d never buy an e-bike that required connectivity, a phone or an app to operate it; that’s just asking for trouble.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Shipping and Assembly: The VanMoof X3 and S3 come in the mail in a big box. The assembly process was almost painless — except for this one really fiddly bit you have to slide into another fiddly bit which took me the better part of an hour and some searching on the VanMoof subreddit (not the only one with this problem!)

Extra Support: VanMoof offers three paid plans to keep your bike in working order and in your possession. You can buy a three-year maintenance plan for $348, a three-year theft recovery plan for $398 or a combined plan for $690 (broken down via VanMoof below).

Maintenance: Where you live should be a major consideration when thinking about buying a VanMoof. In my time testing it for reliability over an extended period, I was surprised by how few problems came up. I had to mess around with re-centering the front wheel at some point because a brake pad was rubbing, but aside from occasional app connectivity issues, that was pretty much it. Of course, significant wear and tear means any bike could benefit from a pro tune up from someone who knows the model.

VanMoof has full-fledged stores in Amsterdam, London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Tokyo. Beyond its flagship stores, the company relies on an expanding network of service centers and “certified workshops” to maintain its bikes, so be sure to check what’s near you. Personally, I’d want to be near enough to a VanMoof store or at least a service center to guarantee my $2,000+ investment and its many, many technological bits could be maintained in perfect health. Nobody wants to ship a bike back for repairs, especially a heavy, technologically complex one.

Prior to testing out the X3, e-bikes aren’t something I’d thought a lot about and I wasn’t really sure who they were for. I first heard of VanMoof a couple of years ago when a close friend and much more serious biker than me bought one for towing her dog (the goodest girl) on a long work commute. We rode to the farmer’s market together and I admired her VanMoof, but I was skeptical that something with so much technology under the hood could prove reliable over time.

Bikes are mechanical and simple — that’s something wonderful about them! Could an e-bike really translate the joyful simplicity of biking into something much more high tech? As it turns out, yes. After test riding the VanMoof X3 to get a sense of its reliability and how its features hold up in normal day-to-day use, I regret my early skepticism.

I don’t know if I can overstate how much riding an e-bike, specifically this e-bike, enhanced my life in small ways for the better while I tried it out. Biking more — and e-bikes do get people biking more — makes me happier and healthier. Biking more has helped me ease out of an intensely sedentary pandemic period into new habits that make me feel more connected to the world around me. I’m seeing my city with fresh eyes, biking to new neighborhoods I’ve never explored and appreciating all of the little things I took for granted. My only e-bike regret is not hopping on one sooner.

Source: Tech Crunch

At our recent Early Stage event, we had the opportunity to talk at length with Arvind Purushotham, the managing director and global head of Citi Ventures, about how startups should think about corporate venture arms, including what a check from an enterprise like Citi can mean, and how to leverage that kind of Goliath once it’s already a financial partner.

For founders trying to understand the benefits and potential pitfalls of working with a corporate venture arm versus a more traditional venture team, it’s very much worth zipping through this discussion.

Among the many topics addressed, Purushotham gave us insight into how corporates have altered the way they work in some cases, driven by necessity. The bottom line at Citi Ventures, he said, is that they’ve had to move faster in order to remain competitive. Still, owing to its internal systems already in place, involving risk and compliance teams and senior management, moving faster mostly hasn’t been a problem.

Said Purushotham: “We have not had to wait for a second close or we’ve not had to request the company to do a second close. We’ve been able to close along with the rest of the the syndicate.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Google favors large sites more than ever, basically because it is trying to avoid providing misinformation in our polarized age. But sometimes the small sites have key new information — like the content that your startup is trying to share with the world. How can you stand out in the right search results, as algorithms continue to change?

Growth marketing expert Mark Spera writes that AI-driven content generators, careful trend tracking, great UX/UI and graphics and inspiration from your competitors’ ads can all give you an edge. His article for Extra Crunch this week was one of our more popular ones with subscribers, but it’s not alone.

Check out our latest coverage of growth-related topics below, plus a few of the many reviews we’ve received this week in our ongoing growth marketer survey. (Please fill it out if you haven’t already, we’re using founder recommendations to find the best growth experts around the world, and sharing the results back with all of our readers.)

Marketer: Maya Moufarek, Marketing Cube
Recommended by: Nikki O’Farrell, www.KatKin.club
Testimonial: “Expert ear and eye from the world of start ups/scale ups and growth. Her functional and direct approach allows you to execute at speed and see results quickly.”

Marketer: MuteSix
Recommended by: Rhoda Ullmann, Sense
Testimonial: “We’ve tried a number of different agencies, they demonstrate best in class expertise with Facebook and Google paid ad platforms. They also have a very smart and efficient approach to creative development that was critical to helping us scale.”

Marketer: Mitch Causey, Demandwell
Recommended by: Drew Beechler, High Alpha
Testimonial: “Mitch and the Demandwell team are some of the smartest content, SEO, and digital marketers I’ve ever met, and their results speak for themselves. Their process, proprietary software, and expertise around organic search and content is some of the best out there in helping companies think about organic search as a repeatable, proven method for growth and demand gen. Mitch and the Demandwell playbook worked so well that after being a client for two years and recommending to many in our portfolio, High Alpha ended up bringing Demandwell into the portfolio to turn their playbook into a scalable software platform.”

How pitch training can help startups get their story right: Anna Heim talks with Alex Barrera, Spanish marketing expert, about his consulting work and how he sets up his clients for success.

Kenya’s AIfluence closes $1M for its AI-powered influencer marketing platform: Tage Kene-Okafor dives into the seed funding of AIfluence, which has been developing software to run brand and performance campaigns for a range of global advertisers across Africa and Asia.

Announcing the agenda for the Disrupt Stage this September: Come hear from top founders and investors about how to build a company.

(Extra Crunch) 5 advanced-ish SEO tactics in 2021: Growth expert Mark Spera discusses using content generators, how to do keyword research and other ways to increase your SEO.

(Extra Crunch) How we got 75% more e-commerce orders in a single A/B test for this major brand: Managing partner of The Conversion Wizards, Jasper Kuria, pushed the limits of optimizing a page for conversions, which led to a 75% increase in sales. Read the guest post to find out how.

Do you have a top-tier growth marketer who works with startups that you want us to know about? Let us know by filling out this quick survey.

Source: Tech Crunch

When you hire a marketing consultant, you don’t necessarily expect to wind up discussing your life’s purpose. Yet, that is what Spanish marketing expert and entrepreneur Alex Barrera often ends up doing with startup founders who hire him to help improve their pitch. They think they are going to get help convincing investors, and they do, but the byproduct of the process is that they reframe their startup’s vision.

In this context, ethical and philosophical considerations aren’t that far away, because more often than not, this includes a deep look at how their company impacts society. “The days where you could do whatever you wanted and dive into grey legal or moral areas are dwindling,” Barrera says. “Growth companies need to be careful about the potential fallouts of pursuing such strategies. While there are still plenty of investors that push for “growth at any cost,” the social pressure is changing and it’s suddenly becoming costlier to take such stances.”

You may have spotted Barrera’s cowboy hat at one of the many startup conferences he is involved with as a mentor, judge, host or speaker — and he does wear many hats.

Having previously co-founded two startup accelerators and Europe-focused tech publication Tech.eu, he now authors The Aleph Report, a periodical publication on cutting-edge technology and its implications. But it is through his Press42 venture that he collaborates with startups and corporations on organizational storytelling and strategic communications, and it is also what we discussed in the interview below (which has been edited for length and clarity).

TechCrunch is asking founders who have worked with growth marketers to share a recommendation in this survey. We’ll use your answers to find more experts to interview.

What do people often misunderstand about pitch training?

Well, it depends on their experience level. When first-time entrepreneurs hear about pitching, they immediately think of the infamous “elevator pitch,” roll their eyes and moan. For those with a bit more experience, pitching is about a set of slides to achieve a certain goal, mostly funding. However, seasoned managers end up discovering that telling the story of their product or service is not a one-way street. Having to sell a future vision of where the company is heading invariably affects your conception of the product in the now and what you need to build to achieve it. The vision impacts the product, because you need consistency between the product and storytelling.

What type of companies do you help?

I have been helping startups with pitching for years. This used to be mostly early-stage startups, and in groups, with accelerators and startup competitions calling me to help their entire batch or portfolio. I still provide that sort of training, but these days I will more often work one-on-one with a single client that is at a later stage. And I also sometimes work with tech companies getting ready for M&As, as well as large corporations.

What is your sweet spot for startups you work with?

For one-on-one work, I have a preference for David versus Goliath, and less sexy spaces. I love these companies that were built without the noise: There’s a lack of hubris, they are really humble, but the numbers are there — the founders could be obnoxious, but it’s the opposite. I don’t work with companies that sell smoke and mirrors or hurt society because they shamelessly disregard any responsibility for their impact on others.

Luckily, that’s rarely the case of people who call me. Usually, they are a bit out of the circuit, and they often have impostor syndrome. So my work is also about helping them understand what they can be proud of what they do, and then how to show that in their pitch. They value talking to someone who understands them and their challenges. I spend a lot of time doing research on all verticals and thinking about the future, so the conversation will typically go like this: “Dude, you get it!”

What is one of your favorite things about one-on-one pitch-related consulting work?

I find it very fulfilling to see how much value it brings to those involved. I am also a developer, and I do project management, but most of the consulting I do is not the kind of growth marketing stuff that takes more time to show results. When you do growth hacking at the product level, it takes time to see the impact, and even then, it’s not always easy to connect the dots.

When we work together on their pitch, CEOs can instantly see if the new pitch resonates or not; and they also know if the exercise itself worked for them. Working on a pitch requires a lot of reflection and it entails a lot of tension between you and the CEO.

This is especially true at the beginning, when you keep questioning why they did this or that, what the product provides and to whom, or why it grew here and not there. All these questions force many founders and managers to stop and think hard about the product, the market or the roadmap. Sometimes it pushes them to provide data to back up certain claims. The process pushes them to revisit old biases, beliefs or even myths around their company. Many people are surprised by how much clarity they gain into their company when they work on a pitch.

Do you only work with founders and executives?

Sometimes, the clarity and the strategic insight that working on a pitch provides to founders or CXOs becomes a trigger for them wanting to provide that level of understanding to other areas of the company, like sales, customer support or even the product team. In my case, being a developer myself enables me to switch and adapt my process to any layer of the organization, including the development team.

This is rare, but it eventually turns me into a kind of translator of the challenges of different parts of an organization, acting ultimately as the connector bridging different perceptions. In the end, that’s exactly what storytelling provides. It’s not just a tool for pitching, it’s a brutally effective way to communicate between humans, especially around challenging topics.

How would you describe the value that executives get from your collaboration?

One of the usual and even surprising values for most executives is the insight the process provides. When someone is running either a big company or a scaleup, their day to day is all about growing. They rarely have time to sit down and think about where they’re heading in terms of future product. They do have a roadmap, and their KPIs, but I rarely see a strong future vision broken down into steps.

The pitching process provides them with two valuable things: time and perception. Time because as they’re paying me, they’re stuck with me and need to allocate time for our sessions. That bubble, and the need to build a coherent story that tells why the company is at that particular point, create tremendous insight for most. And then, there’s perception. It’s funny because they’re the ones that provide all the pieces of the picture, I just help them put them together and then point at the obvious.

This process is very rewarding at a personal level for them. It helps them build a confidence that, while it was always there, it rarely shone through the pitch before. It also makes them reflect on where they want to go next, not just from a product perspective, but from a mission’s perspective. It reconnects them with that side that most of us care about, and the personal questions we ask ourselves about life and meaning.

How do you bridge the gap between what your clients already know and what’s next?

My clients already know how to grow a company. I always keep this in mind, not just with startups, but also with big corporations — too often, I see consultants talking to them and starting by telling: “You are doing it wrong!” Well, they got to where they are, didn’t they? It doesn’t mean that they don’t need help, but you can make them see that, you don’t have to dismiss what they have achieved. I see myself as the person that helps them get to the next level and build on top of what they have already done. Sometimes it takes some bruising to get there, but there is always massive respect for their achievements.

These people are very good professionals. It’s not that they don’t see or can’t see the vision. It’s that the need to connect the dots in detail allows for the emergence of a strategic vision of the organization. Now, here is where the real “coaching” kicks in. When such a picture emerges, many founders or executives tend to shy away from it. They have a hard time believing that they might be onto something groundbreaking or actually winning in their respective markets.

This is especially true for many scaleup companies. They’ve been fighting, first for market fit, and later on for market share, that they freeze at the possibility that they might be doing a fantastic job. Part of my role is precisely to break through their impostor syndrome and encourage them to be bolder, to believe in themselves, to trust the data.

How do you promote your services?

Well, it would be very hard for me to do cold calling. I wouldn’t be able to say: “It’s not just about pitching, you are going to see the future of your company!” — so I stopped even trying to market that. My best marketing tool is word of mouth from my clients, or even from people that see me perform on stage. But even then, people call for help with a specific milestone, like raising a round. It’s only through the process that they see that there’s way more to it. They begin to understand other parts about themselves that either enhance their capacity to raise more funds, or even take them to the next level like an acquisition or the development of a major breakthrough.

Have you worked with a talented individual or agency who helped you grow your startup?

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What do you end up actually working on with founders?

Going higher up the chain, the pitch becomes a very powerful tool not just for fundraising, but also for thinking about your company strategically. It’s a place where founders can reach clarity about their strategy and what really matters — questions they don’t have time for on a day-to-day basis. They allocate time to it because they think it will help with fundraising, and then they find out that it helps them understand their company.

So typically, they will call me because they are raising a Series B round, or a very large A round. They realize that to unlock the next milestone, they need to fine-tune what they say. The game is different; it’s not about market fit anymore, or just about gaining market share, and what worked for them just no longer works — especially if they were semi-bootstrapped up to that point. They need to talk to someone who understands them and can help them prepare for the future, for instance by researching certain pitfalls or trends. I’m not just the guy that “pitches” but the guy that’s going to provide you with ammo to help you build a compelling case for your audience, whatever it is. The pitch is just an excuse!

What’s your take on comparing your startup to another one when pitching; for instance, calling yourself the “Uber for X”?

Analogies are very powerful. The major challenge when you are pitching any company, even a late-stage one, is that people have a tendency to put you in a box. So you have two options: either you let them do it, or you provide the tools to put you in a box. That’s where analogies work really well.

But then, who do you compare yourself to? It’s a challenge, because two elements are becoming increasingly important: capturing the right trends of the moment, and the ethics of how you do what you do. You want to control which box they place you, ideally one that’s trendy but at the same time one that doesn’t position you in apparently direct competition with someone you don’t want to be associated with.

Why do startups need to be careful when communicating?

Over the last few years, we have seen how startups are no longer seen as innocent by society; they no longer have “carte blanche,” and society is becoming a lot more sensitive. There’s a polarization issue around many topics, and we are increasingly going to see a clash between society and startups. It is even going to increase post-COVID, with tensions around automation versus jobs. And the thing is, scaleups and growth-stage startups have a choice in how they market themselves; so they need to be aware of ethical concerns that may arise sooner than later.

Society is going to ask you for responsibility. What’s happening with big brands is trickling down, and scaleups are hitting that threshold sooner. Typically, it catches them unprepared, because they reach that stage only knowing local feelings about what they do, and suddenly getting national or regional blowback. Or they expand internationally with local operations led by really young people with no experience in dealing with politics, who suddenly face strong local blowback.

All of this has a lot to do with pitching, because it’s not about product anymore. So for instance, it’s about convincing public authorities at different levels to let you operate, when their incentives are very different from investors. It’s B2G2C — business to government to consumer. And we are seeing more and more startups, with regulation as a factor in their operations.

How can you talk to public authorities, customers and investors in a unified pitch?

The major pitch needs to bring all elements together. It needs to be clear on what you do, and hit the right notes on ethical concerns. It’s important both for regulators and for fundraising; because from the investors’ perspective, it also reduces uncertainty around your business. As a scaleup, your ability to scale is a concern, so it helps to show that you are thinking and planning around societal impact.

I have to say that an increasing amount of investors do genuinely care about this. It may be because they have been burned, for instance from seeing regulatory blowback firsthand, or just because they are growing conscious. There are still some investors that have the “Uber mindset” and only care about muscle — grow first, and only then, deal with regulators — but more and more, VCs are aware that this might not fly, because society is changing. The pandemic is just highlighting this even more.

What about startups? Do they also care more about their societal impact?

I think it’s a pendulum, and the current generation is a child of the previous regulatory blowback. Crypto might still be on the other side, but increasingly, startups are aware that there are societal implications they will have to deal with. I also try to bring that message across when I prepare my clients to pitch — and warn that it sometimes happens very quickly: We’ve seen how one prohibition in one place can spread like wildfire. So you need to regulate your initial message and also be prepared to adapt quickly.

Source: Tech Crunch

After a record year for biotech investment in 2020 — during which the industry saw $28.5 billion invested across 1,073 deals — the market for new innovations remains strong. What’s more, these innovations are increasingly coming to market by way of early-stage startups and/or their scientific founders from academia.

In 2018, for instance, U.S. campuses conducted $79 billion worth of sponsored research, much of it thanks to the federal government. That number spiked amid the pandemic and could increase even more if President Biden’s infrastructure plan, which includes $180 billion to enhance R&D efforts, passes.

Since 1996, 14,000 startups have licensed technology out of those universities, and 67% of licenses were taken by startups or small companies. Meanwhile, the median step-up from seed to Series A is now 2x — higher than all other stages, suggesting that biotech startups are continuing to attract investment at earlier stages.

For biotech startups and their founders, these headwinds signal immense promise. But initial funding is only one part of a long journey that (ideally) ends with bringing a product to market. Along the way, founders will need to procure additional investments, develop strategic partnerships and stave off competition. All of which starts by protecting the fundamental asset of any biotech company: its intellectual property.

Here are three key considerations for startups and founders as they get started.

Start with an option agreement

Most early-stage biotechnology starts in a university lab. Then, a disclosure is made with the university’s tech transfer office and a patent is filed with the hopes that the product can be taken out into the market (by, for instance, a new startup). More often than not, the vehicle to do this is a licensing agreement.

A licensing agreement is important because it shows investors the company has exclusive access to the technology in question. This in turn allows them to attract the investments required to truly grow the company: hire a team, build strategic partnerships and conduct additional studies.

But that doesn’t mean jumping right to a full-blown licensing agreement is the best way to start. An option agreement is often the better move.

Source: Tech Crunch

Mortgages may not be considered sexy, but they are a big business.

If you’ve refinanced or purchased a home digitally lately, you may not have noticed the company powering the software behind it — but there’s a good chance that company is Blend.

Founded in 2012, the startup has steadily grown to be a leader in the mortgage tech industry. Blend’s white label technology powers mortgage applications on the site of banks including Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, for example, with the goal of making the process faster, simpler and more transparent. 

The San Francisco-based startup’s SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform currently processes over $5 billion in mortgages and consumer loans per day, up from nearly $3 billion last July.

Today, Blend made its debut as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange, trading under the symbol “BLND.” As of early afternoon, Eastern Time, the stock was trading up over 13% at $20.36.

On Thursday night, the company had said it would offer 20 million shares at a price of $18 per share, indicating the company was targeting a valuation of $3.6 billion.

That compares to a $3.3 billion valuation at the time of its last raise in January — a $300 million Series G funding round that included participation from Coatue and Tiger Global Management. Also, let’s not forget that Blend only became a unicorn last August when it raised a $75 million Series F. Over its lifetime, Blend had raised $665 million before Friday’s public market debut.

In filing its S-1 on June 21, Blend revealed that its revenue had climbed to $96 million in 2020 from $50.7 million in 2019. Meanwhile, its net loss narrowed from $81.5 million in 2019 to $74.6 million in 2020.

In 2020, the San Francisco-based startup significantly expanded its digital consumer lending platform. With that expansion, Blend began offering its lender customers new configuration capabilities so that they could launch any consumer banking product “in days rather than months.”

Looking ahead, the company had said it expects its revenue growth rate “to decline in future periods.” It also doesn’t envision achieving profitability anytime soon as it continues to focus on growth. Blend also revealed that in 2020, its top five customers accounted for 34% of its revenue.

Today, TechCrunch spoke with co-founder and CEO Nima Ghamsari about the company’s decision to go with a traditional IPO versus the ubiquitous SPAC or even a direct listing.

For one, Blend said he wanted to show its customers that it is an “around for a long time company” by making sure there’s enough on its balance sheet to continue to grow.

“We had to talk and convince some of the biggest investors in the world to invest in us, and that speaks to how long we’ll be around to serve these customers,” he said. “So it was a combination of our capital need and wanting to cement ourselves as a really credible software provider to one of the most regulated industries.”

Ghamsari emphasized that Blend is a software company that powers the mortgage process and is not the one offering the mortgages. As such, it works with the flock of fintechs that are working to provide mortgages.

“A lot of them are using Blend under the hood, as the infrastructure layer,” he said.

Overall, Ghamsari believes this is just the beginning for Blend.

“One of the things about financial services is that it’s still mostly powered by paper. So a lot of Blend’s growth is just going deeper into this process that we got started in years ago,” he said. As mentioned above, the company started out with its mortgage product but just keeps adding to it. Today, it also powers other loans such as auto, personal and home equity.

“A lot of our growth is actually powered by our other lines of business,” Ghamsari told TechCrunch. “There’s a lot to build because the larger digitization trends are just getting started in financial services. It’s a relatively large industry that has lots of change.”

In May, digital mortgage lender Better.com announced it would combine with a SPAC, taking itself public in the second half of 2021.

Source: Tech Crunch