Venture

Extra Crunch roundup: Zūm CEO interview, Cisco’s M&A ethos, neoinsurance bad romance

Comment

Each busy day looks exactly the same, but people around are always different. Just take a moment to slow down.
Image Credits: Zeyu Wang (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

It was once common practice for doctors to visit sick patients in their homes: In 1930, 40% of all consultations were house calls. By 1980, that figure was less than 1%.

Today, urgent care centers occupy Main Street storefronts and 33% of all medical expenditures occur in hospitals. It’s clear that the additional overhead is generating higher prices, but not necessarily better results, according to Sumi Das and Nina Gerson, who lead healthcare investments at Capital G.

“We can improve both outcomes and costs by moving care from the hospital back to the place it started — at home,” they write in a post that explores five innovations enabling at-home care and identifies investment opportunities like acute care and infrastructure development.

Today, in-home care comprises just 3% of overall healthcare spending, but Gerson and Das estimate that will expand to 10% in the next 10 years.

“To make these improvements, in-home healthcare strategies will need to leverage next-generation technology and value-based care strategies. Fortunately, the window of opportunity for change is open right now.”

Back to the suture: The future of healthcare is in the home


Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members.
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription.


Image Credits: Cowboy Ventures / Guild Education

Tomorrow’s episode of Extra Crunch Live will feature guests VC Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures and Rachel Carlson, CEO and co-founder of Guild Education.

Among other topics, Lee will talk about how Guild Education met her criteria for investment before the duo offer feedback on startup pitches submitted by audience members.

Register now to join the free chat on Hopin on Wednesday, August 25, at 11:30 a.m. PDT/2:30 p.m. EDT.

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; have a great week!

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

Zūm CEO Ritu Narayan explains why equity and accessibility works for mobility services

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Ritu Narayan founded Zūm with her two brothers in 2016 to disrupt student transportation, a space that hasn’t seen much innovation since pupils began finding their way to and from little red schoolhouses.

Since then, Zūm has inked partnerships with school districts around the country to create more efficient routes and reduce vehicle emissions.

By 2025, Narayan says her company will have 10,000 electric school buses and plans to put the fleet into service to generate power and feed it back to the grid.

To learn more about the company’s development, its immediate plans for the future and how the pandemic impacted operations, read on.

Zūm CEO Ritu Narayan explains why equity and accessibility works for mobility services

Bird shows improving scooter economics, long march to profitability

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

For The Exchange, Alex Wilhelm looked at recent financial data from scooter sharing service Bird, which — like Lyft, Uber, Airbnb and others — took a beating during the pandemic as potential riders stayed home.

Bird flipped its business model and its results improved, but it still has a ways to go. “In the bull case, Bird can get rid of its adjusted losses in a few years,” Alex writes.

“If any issues arise at the top of the company’s table — say, for example, that rides per scooter do not scale as the company rolls out more hardware, or merely slower than expected — the anticipated profitability results could evaporate or be pushed into the future.”

Bird shows improving scooter economics, long march to profitability

India’s path to SaaS leadership is clear, but challenges remain

Image Credits: Thitima Thongkham / Getty Images

By 2030, India’s SaaS industry is estimated to comprise 4%-6% of the global market and generate between $50 billion and $70 billion in yearly revenue, according to a SaaSBOOMi/McKinsey report.

“With the right approach, it won’t be long before the Indian SaaS community becomes a large-scale employer of talent, a significant contributor to India’s GDP and a creator of unmatched products,” says Manav Garg, CEO and founder of Eka Software Solutions.

In a guest post, he lays out several key growth drivers, which include “the largest concentration of developers in the world” and the fact that “SaaS is not a winner-take-all market.”

Even so, the region still faces challenges, since “growth requires a growth mindset.”

India’s path to SaaS leadership is clear, but challenges remain

Why have the markets spurned public neoinsurance startups?

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

As Alex Wilhelm has repeatedly noted in The Exchange, neoinsurance companies, from healthcare to auto to home and rental, have taken a whacking by the market.

But he hadn’t quite figured out why until he chatted with Pie Insurance co-founder and CEO John Swigart, who had an interesting hypothesis.

Summing up their conversation in a single sentence: “From the public markets’ perspective, it’s the results, stupid.”

Why have the markets spurned public neoinsurance startups?

How Cisco keeps its startup acquisition engine humming

The Cisco Systems logo is displayed at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona on February 25, 2019. - Phone makers will focus on foldable screens and the introduction of blazing fast 5G wireless networks at the world's biggest mobile fair starting February 25 in Spain as they try to reverse a decline in sales of smartphones. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP) (Photo credit should read JOSEP LAGO/AFP via Getty Images)
Image Credits: Josep LAGO /AFP/ Getty Images

Ron Miller interviewed three Cisco executives to learn more about the company’s “rich history of buying its way to global success”:

  • CFO Scott Herren
  • Derek Idemoto, SVP for corporate development and Cisco investments
  • Jeetu Patel, EVP and GM, Security and Collaboration

Since its founding, Cisco has acquired 229 companies, buying more than 30 startups in the last four years that focus on everything from edtech to event management.

“Indeed, one of the big reasons for all these acquisitions could be about maintaining growth,” writes Ron.

How Cisco keeps its startup acquisition engine humming

Future tech exits have a lot to live up to

Image Credits: Sam Salek/EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images (Image has been modified)

“Inflation may or may not prove transitory when it comes to consumer prices, but startup valuations are definitely rising — and noticeably so — in recent quarters.”

That’s Alex Wilhelm’s summation of a recent PitchBook report rounding up valuation data from U.S. startup funding events.

He dug into the report and analyzed what the numbers mean for startup valuations and potential exits.

Future tech exits have a lot to live up to

More TechCrunch

French AI startup Mistral is introducing new AI model customization options, including paid plans, to let developers — and enterprises — fine-tune its generative models for particular use cases. The…

Mistral launches new services, SDK to let customers fine-tune its models

The warning for the Ai Pin was issued “out of an abundance of caution,” according to Humane.

Humane urges customers to stop using charging case, citing battery fire concerns

The keynote will be focused on Apple’s software offerings and the developers that power them, including the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS and watchOS.

Watch Apple kick off WWDC 2024 right here

As WWDC 2024 nears, all sorts of rumors and leaks have emerged about what iOS 18 and its AI-powered apps and features have in store.

What to expect from Apple’s AI-powered iOS 18 at WWDC 2024

Welcome to Elon Musk’s X. The social network formerly known as Twitter where the rules are made up and the check marks don’t matter. Or do they? The Tesla and…

Elon Musk’s X: A complete timeline of what Twitter has become

TechCrunch has kept readers informed regarding Fearless Fund’s courtroom battle to provide business grants to Black women. Today, we are happy to announce that Fearless Fund CEO and co-founder Arian…

Fearless Fund’s Arian Simone coming to Disrupt 2024

Bridgy Fed is one of the efforts aimed at connecting the fediverse with the web, Bluesky and, perhaps later, other networks like Nostr.

Bluesky and Mastodon users can now talk to each other with Bridgy Fed

Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving unit, is bringing its autonomous vehicles to more cities.  The self-driving technology company announced Wednesday plans to begin testing in Austin and Miami this summer. The two…

Zoox to test self-driving cars in Austin and Miami 

Called Stable Audio Open, the generative model takes a text description and outputs a recording up to 47 seconds in length.

Stability AI releases a sound generator

It’s not just instant-delivery startups that are struggling. Oda, the Norway-based online supermarket delivery startup, has confirmed layoffs of 150 jobs as it drastically scales back its expansion ambitions to…

SoftBank-backed grocery startup Oda lays off 150, resets focus on Norway and Sweden

Newsletter platform Substack is introducing the ability for writers to send videos to their subscribers via Chat, its private community feature, the company announced on Wednesday. The rollout of video…

Substack brings video to its Chat feature

Hiya, folks, and welcome to TechCrunch’s inaugural AI newsletter. It’s truly a thrill to type those words — this one’s been long in the making, and we’re excited to finally…

This Week in AI: Ex-OpenAI staff call for safety and transparency

Ms. Rachel isn’t a household name, but if you spend a lot of time with toddlers, she might as well be a rockstar. She’s like Steve from Blues Clues for…

Cameo fumbles on Ms. Rachel fundraiser as fans receive credits instead of videos  

Cartwheel helps animators go from zero to basic movement, so creating a scene or character with elementary motions like taking a step, swatting a fly or sitting down is easier.

Cartwheel generates 3D animations from scratch to power up creators

The new tool, which is set to arrive in Wix’s app builder tool this week, guides users through a chatbot-like interface to understand the goals, intent and aesthetic of their…

Wix’s new tool taps AI to generate smartphone apps

ClickUp Knowledge Management combines a new wiki-like editor and with a new AI system that can also bring in data from Google Drive, Dropbox, Confluence, Figma and other sources.

ClickUp wants to take on Notion and Confluence with its new AI-based Knowledge Base

New York City, home to over 60,000 gig delivery workers, has been cracking down on cheap, uncertified e-bikes that have resulted in battery fires across the city.  Some e-bike providers…

Whizz wants to own the delivery e-bike subscription space, starting with NYC

This is the last major step before Starliner can be certified as an operational crew system, and the first Starliner mission is expected to launch in 2025. 

Boeing’s Starliner astronaut capsule is en route to the ISS 

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco is the must-attend event for startup founders aiming to make their mark in the tech world. This year, founders have three exciting ways to…

Three ways founders can shine at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Google’s newest startup program, announced on Wednesday, aims to bring AI technology to the public sector. The newly launched “Google for Startups AI Academy: American Infrastructure” will offer participants hands-on…

Google’s new startup program focuses on bringing AI to public infrastructure

eBay’s newest AI feature allows sellers to replace image backgrounds with AI-generated backdrops. The tool is now available for iOS users in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. It’ll gradually roll…

eBay debuts AI-powered background tool to enhance product images

If you’re anything like me, you’ve tried every to-do list app and productivity system, only to find yourself giving up sooner than later because sooner than later, managing your productivity…

Hoop uses AI to automatically manage your to-do list

Asana is using its work graph to train LLMs with the goal of creating AI assistants that work alongside human employees in company workflows.

Asana introduces ‘AI teammates’ designed to work alongside human employees

Taloflow, an early stage startup changing the way companies evaluate and select software, has raised $1.3M in a seed round.

Taloflow puts AI to work on software vendor selection to reduce costs and save time

The startup is hoping its durable filters can make metals refining and battery recycling more efficient, too.

SiTration uses silicon wafers to reclaim critical minerals from mining waste

Spun out of Bosch, Dive wants to change how manufacturers use computer simulations by both using modern mathematical approaches and cloud computing.

Dive goes cloud-native for its computational fluid dynamics simulation service

The tension between incumbents and fintechs has existed for decades. But every once in a while, the two groups decide to put their competition aside and work together. In an…

When foes become friends: Capital One partners with fintech giants Stripe, Adyen to prevent fraud

After growing 500% year-over-year in the past year, Understory is now launching a product focused on the renewable energy sector.

Insurance provider Understory gets into renewable energy following $15M Series A

Ashkenazi will start her new role at Google’s parent company on July 31, after 23 years at Eli Lilly.

Alphabet brings on Eli Lilly’s Anat Ashkenazi as CFO

Tobiko aims to reimagine how teams work with data by offering a dbt-compatible data transformation platform.

With $21.8M in funding, Tobiko aims to build a modern data platform