TechCrunch
EBay's PayPal Acquires Payments Gateway Braintree For $800M In Cash
Ebay’s PayPal has acquired Chicago-based payments gateway Braintree, in an all-cash deal worth $800 million. We had originally reported that Braintree was on the block, with Square and PayPal both in acquisition talks for the company.
Although owner eBay is leading on the news, the intention is to combine Braintree with its PayPal payments business. “Braintree is a perfect fit with PayPal,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe in a statement. “Bill Ready [CEO of Braintree] and his team add complementary talent and technology that we believe will help accelerate PayPal’s global leadership in mobile payments. Together, we expect that PayPal and Braintree also will accelerate our leadership in supporting developers who are creating innovative solutions for next generation commerce startups.” Ready will report to David Marcus, who is the president of PayPal.
Braintree — which had raised $69 million in outside funding from Accel, NEA, RRE, Greycroft and others — was founded in 2007. Braintree essentially powers and automates online payments for merchants and companies online. The company provides a merchant account, payment gateway, recurring billing, credit card storage, support for mobile and international payments, and PCI Compliance solutions. Braintree has become a one-stop-shop for all the services a business needs to receive payments from anywhere in the world.
The processor is now seeing $10 billion in payments annually, the company reported in July. The service is used by a number of startups and tech companies, including Airbnb, Fab, LivingSocial, Uber, Twilio, GitHub and others.
But as Ready noted today, the deal will mean that Braintree can expand its prospects even further. “The alignment with PayPal means Braintree can continue to push the boundaries of innovation while expanding into new markets with increased speed and confidence,” he said. “Our current customers and developer community can expect the same level of support and partnership they’ve always enjoyed, coupled with more resources.”
In addition, Braintree operates Venmo, a mobile payments solution the company acquired last year for $26.2 million. We’re hearing that Venmo, which allows people to pay and send money to each other for free, was a key part of what attracted PayPal to the company.
It’s unclear yet how Venmo’s technology will be integrated into PayPal’s core platform but eBay noted in its statement today that it “will help to contribute to PayPal’s mobile payments capabilities.” PayPal is forecasting mobile payments volumes on its platform of over $20 billion this year.
Though Braintree was an early mover in the online payments space, these days competition with other services like Stripe and Balanced has been making things tougher on the company.
We heard from sources that while acquisition talks with Square stalled, negotiations with PayPal were taking place over the past month or so. We also heard Braintree was asking for a hefty $1 billion.
With Braintree on board, PayPal, which last acquired IronPearl in the Spring of this year, could take on Stripe in acquiring more business in the area of of the online checkouts. It’s also a good way to bring in fresh talent to the organization, which is attempting to reinvigorate innovation and product development these days.
Neurotrack Raises $2M From Founders Fund, Social+Capital To Predict And Diagnose The Onset Of Alzheimer's Disease
I have two grandparents who are afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. Unfortunately, in both situations we didn’t find out that they had the disease until they were both showing strong symptoms. In the case of my grandfather, we found out when he was traveling back to India from the U.S. and forgot to get on the plane from Mumbai to Bangalore. He was found wandering the streets of Mumbai with no shoes or wallet and no idea where he was. Neurotrack is a health startup that is going to change the way we diagnose Alzheimer’s and could help prevent what happened to my grandfather from happening to anyone else.
The startup, which graduated from Rock Health’s Boston class, has developed a computer-based cognitive test that can detect the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease up to six years prior to the onset of symptoms. The science behind Neurotrack’s technology stems from 30 years of research that eventually discovered that the hippocampus is the first structure in the brain to be affected by Alzheimer’s. And in most cases, the disease is not detected when this happens.
For CEO Elli Kaplan, this research hits close to home. Like me, she had two grandparents who suffered from Alzheimer’s. After hearing some of the results from early studies at Emory University a few years back, she became intrigued and teamed up with the group of scientists to figure out how they could actually bring this to market.
Here’s how it works: participants take a 15- to 17-minute test on a monitor, in which they watch a series of images. The test relies on humans’ innate preference for novelty as a mechanism for tracking recognition memory, which is controlled by the hippocampus. The monitor tacks how the eyes reach to familiar images and unfamiliar images to detect whether a participant’s recognition memory is impaired. Other data points include how much time a person spends looking at novel images versus familiar images.
In the initial study, 92 people participated, with a median age of 70. If you score below a certain threshold, there is a 100 percent chance you will develop Alzheimer’s in three to six years. The tests have been conclusive.
While there is a genetic test that will show that you have a genetic mutation that could give you Alzheimer’s, the highest percentage chance that test gives you is 14 percent.
Even having a three- to six-year head start on Alzheimer’s can be game-changing from diagnostic, treatment and personal points of view. Kaplan explains that the primary reason many drugs are failing to treat Alzheimer’s is because there hasn’t been an early diagnostic test. In fact, 80 percent of people in Alzheimer’s drug trials fail because they either have a different type of dementia or they are too far along to participate. The startup is currently also working with pharmaceutical companies to help populate clinical trials.
Once an individual is diagnosed early, Kaplan says there are other ways in which a patient could treat the disease. For example, she says that studies show that diet and exercise can help stave off Alzheimer’s. While Neurotrack hasn’t been distributed commercially, there are a number of clinical studies being done with the technology at Emory, Johns Hopkins and Massachusetts General Hospital.
“It truly is matter of time before Alzheimer’s becomes a global epidemic,” Kaplan says. The startup is receiving requests daily from people who want to take the test. One individual wants to fly her father out from India to take it.
Investors have caught wind of what Neurotrack is doing, as well. The startup just closed a $2 million round of funding led by Founders Fund and Social+Capital. Kaplan says the investment is going to be used to build out the team, run additional trials and to refine the product.
It’s clear from talking to Kaplan that she and her team have ambitious goals and are tackling a huge problem, which doesn’t yet have a cure. But they are already helping many who didn’t know they had the disease cope with Alzheimer’s earlier. And from someone who has seen the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s first hand, I believe Neurotrack could change the lives of many families across the world. It’s going to be interesting to see how software, hardware and mobile technologies are merging to change the way we diagnose and treat disease–Neurotrack is certainly part of this new trend.
Academia.edu, The Social Networking Platform For Researchers, Raises $11.1 Million
For about five years, Richard Price and the team at Academia.edu have been quietly building a social networking platform for academics and researchers.
For years, it was slow going. It took three years for the company to get its first million users while mainstream consumer social networking platforms like Twitter were taking off.
But now, Academia.edu boasts 4.3 million users — perhaps around one-quarter of an estimated 17 million academics globally. They have been picking up about 1 million new users every three months.
And to mark that progress, the company is picking up $11.1 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from previous investors like Spark Capital and True Ventures. Khosla’s newest partner Ben Ling joins the company’s board.
The ultimate goal is to change the way scientific research is distributed and validated. Price envisions a platform where every research paper ever published will be freely available to the public.
“More outsiders will be able to come in and bring that beginner’s mind thinking to research,” Price said, pointing to 16-year-old Jack Andraka who studied papers from Science on applications for nanotubes and used that research to invent a new test for pancreatic cancer that is 26,000 times cheaper than previously existing tests and 400 times more sensitive.
The issue is right now, under the traditional peer review model where a handful of journals hold an overwhelming amount of power, research can be delayed by months or years before it can be consumed by academics in the field or even the public.
Price says peer review is too limiting. A recent Amgen study reported that 88 percent of peer-reviewed medical literature isn’t reproducible, making it hard for pharmaceutical companies and other medical device or health care companies to place bets on research.
Price says that open access to research will make it faster for academics to discover flaws.
On the platform, academics manage a social networking profile (just like they would on any other platform like Facebook or Twitter).
But they can also publish papers and send out updates about upcoming talks or conferences they’re attending. The platform sees about 150,000 articles uploaded every month, including a few that have gone viral like this one on medicinal mushrooms or this paper titled, “Evidence to Suggest that Copulatory Vocalizations in Women Are Not a Reflexive Consequence of Orgasm.”
Price wants to create a different kind of reputation system, taking cues from the follower model that Twitter popularized.
“A core problem for researchers is how to build their brand,” Price said. “To make yourself established in a field, the core way you do that is to share your work.”
While the company is still pretty much pre-revenue (except for job advertisements that appear on the site), Price envisions using a model that charges for-profit companies for access to data and insights on which research and researchers are gaining traction.
LeadPages Raises $5M From Foundry Group For Landing Page Service Powered By Data Analytics Engine
LeadPages, a Minneapolis company started less than a year ago, has received a $5 million Series A investment from the Foundry Group. The funding will help the company expand its service that provides customers with landing page templates powered by a data analytics engine that traditionally only a company like Google has been able to enjoy.
With LeadPages, landing pages from its entire customer base serve as a universal data source for real-time analysis. The service collects enough data so the smallest of business can enjoy the benefits of scale needed for meaningful analysis.
LeadPages provides HTML 5 templates for contact pages, webinar pages, sales lead and other types of landing pages that customers use to improve leads and get better conversions. The service runs on Google App Engine and uses technology like Big Table to analyze the landing page data. Unlike competitors that use WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), LeadPages does not have to translate into HTML. Instead the HTML pages are already made, which allows for the data to be decoupled and analyzed in the Google cloud stack. The pages are optimized for any mobiel device.
The company’s basic service is $37 per month and the Pro version has a $67 per month fee. Annual subscriptions are discounted. The pro version comes with A/B split testing and the ability to upload landing page templates. as well as other features.
It’s the data that matters most with a service like LeadPages. Being a data-driven company means taking actions based on what the analysis shows. It’s not just about measuring page views or time on a site. It’s knowing how to segment and test to constantly find better ways to harvest leads and convert into sales.
LeadPages competes most with services like Kickoff Labs and Instapage, providers of WYSIWYG services. The real threat, though, is a provider that can analyze data on a scale such as LeadPages. That could be Google, Salesforce or a provider that does data analytics to optimize marketing campaigns. But in the meantime. LeadPages has a service that can extend to new markets based upon the products it builds from its data. That might mean a media planning service, deeper mobile services or the analysis of data objects such as forms.
JustFab Raises Another $40M Led By Hong Kong's Shining Capital To Take Its Fashion Subscription Commerce Model To Asia And Beyond
Hot on the heels of its merger with rival ShoeDazzle (yes, pun intended), subscription-based fashion commerce site JustFab, now with 35 million users, is once again adding to its coffers to pick up the pace on international growth. Today the company is announcing that it has raised $40 million in a Series C round of funding.
This latest round was led by Shining Capital of Hong Kong, with participation from existing investors Matrix Partners, Rho Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and Intelligent Beauty. Co-CEO Adam Goldenberg tells me the funding will specifically be used to keep building out its international business, in Asia as well as Europe.
JustFab has been doing a fair amount of international growth already, both organically and inorganically. Other purchases have included Fab Shoes to expand into France and Spain, and FabKids, to enter the children’s clothes market.
The Series C comes a little over a year after JustFab closed a $76 million round, also with the aim of using the investment to expand its footprint and product line-up beyond its mainline offering of footwear for women. The company has now raised some $149 million in total.
Goldenberg says that while the interest from an Asian investor will certainly see the company moving into that part of the world, this will not be the only target.
“France and Spain so far are going extremely well,” he told me in an interview, “so we want to do more in Western Europe.” In fact, the company says that it is currently adding 400,000 members per month in the region, with over 3 million users in Western Europe to date.
“We are also looking at Australia, in addition to Asia, because over the next four years we want to build a global brand,” he added. This may include more acquisitions, or simply more offices opening on its own steam. “It’s important to have a strong balance sheet so that if there is good opportunity to buy something we can.”
Indeed, with much of e-commerce a game of scale, netting more users and more sales are essential to make the economics of companies like JustFab work. Goldenberg notes that this round is not related to the ShoeDazzle acquisition, which was financed from working capital. JustFab expects the newly-merged company to be profitable by next year.
It’s been building its business on the subscription commerce model, in which users sign up as members and buy an item a month, with everything priced at $39.95 (or equivalents in other currencies). If users don’t “skip” their purchase in a month by a certain period, they get charged a membership fee (of the same amount) anyway. You can also buy a la carte from the site but for very consistent shoppers the subscription works out to a good deal. This model has seen some controversy around how transparent charging is, but JustFab has stuck to its guns in this area.
The new round of investment also comes at the same time that JustFab is moving into a new product category beyond the shoes, accessories, kids’ clothes and apparel that it already sells. No word on what that will be, except that it will be launched before the year is out.
JustFab is not sharing any details on its company valuation, but it is increasingly becoming more competitive against a Fab of another name — that is, Fab.com. JustFab is currently suing the latter company for trademark infringement and unfair competition, a suit that Goldenberg says is still ongoing, with no further comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment