INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week noteworthy news pertaining to startups and venture
Before I jump into today topic, let catch up a bit
Last week, I profiled an e-commerce startup Part - Parcel
Before that, I wrote about Stripe grand plans.
Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on
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Startup Spotlight: Landline
Some startups build space ships that will
one day send us all to Mars, others put their time and energy into improving 350 year old infrastructure.
Landline, the operator of a bus
network in the Midwest, is one of the latest companies to raise venture capital
The business has closed a $3.85 million round led by Los Angeles firm Upfront Ventures, with participation from Mucker Capital and
The company is actually based out of LA, too, but has completed its initial launch in Minnesota, where there greater demand for short-term
bus travel.
Landline isn''t just a few buses with startup branding
Founder and chief executive officer David Sunde tells TechCrunch a ride on Landline is booked through its partner airline Sun Country
A traveler pays Sun Country one fixed price to get them from the bus pick-up point to their final destination
The goal is to help those who live far distances from airports save money and to make the experience of busing more enjoyable.
It all meant
to be at the level of reliability that you would expect from an air carrier,& Sunde tells TechCrunch
&We don''t want people who get on the bus to be surprised or upset — we want it to be a seamless experience … The perception of bus
travel in the United States is negative
A big part of our mission is to get people comfortable on buses again as a viable alternative to air travel in certain markets.
For those of
you wondering, have these people ever heard of Greyhound? Landline says they wont compete with Greyhound because of the more than
100-year-old transportation business focus on long-haul trips
Landline will specifically focus on connecting those in rural communities to airports, particularly regions where there aren''t already bus
routes that conveniently access the airport
Can''t say I&m particularly bullish on this one but the startup is very early and transportation is a massive market ripe for
disruption.
Our vision is completely integrated multi-modal travel,& Sunde added.
IPO Update
WeWork has delayed its IPO following
questions surrounding its corporate governance and the ultimate value of the company
The co-working business says it expects to go public by the end of the year
Airbnb, for its part, filed a press release this week confirming its plans to go public in 2020
We don''t know much about the company plans, but we wouldn''t be too surprised to see the home-sharing decacorn pursue a direct
listing.
Postmates, the popular food delivery service, raised another $225 million at a valuation of $2.4 billion in a round led by the
private equity firm GPI Capital this week
The financing brings Postmates& total funding to nearly $1 billion
The company filed privately with the SEC for an IPO earlier this year
Sources familiar with the company exit plans say the business intends to publicly unveil its IPO prospectus this month.
To discuss the
company journey to the public markets and the challenges ahead in the increasingly crowded food delivery space, Postmates co-founder and
chief executive officerBastian Lehmann willjoin us onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Friday October 4th
Don''t miss it.
VC Deals
WordPress parent company Automattic secures $300M
Stripe nabs another $250M at a $35B valuation
Ginkgo Bioworks
raises capital at a $4B valuation
Vianai raises $50M seed to transform machine learning
Built Robotics raises $33M for its self-driving
construction equipment
HappyOrNot nabs $25M for its customer satisfaction terminals
Groww, an investment app for Indian millennials, raises
$21M
Online personal shopping service Lookiero gets $19M
Indian startup Digi-Prex raises $5.5M seed
@Thingtesting, a business that began as
an Instagram, gets seed capital
Learn from top VCs at TechCrunch Disrupt
A whole lot of VCs will be joining us at TechCrunch
Disrupt.
We&ll have a16z general partners Chris Dixon, Angela Strange and Andrew Chen for insight into the firm latest activity
Seed investor Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures and Redpoint Ventures general partner Annie Kadavy will show up to give founders tips on
Y Combinator Michael Seibel and Ali Rowghani will join us with advice on how to get accepted to their respected accelerator.
Plus, GV David
Krane, Sequoia general partner Jess Lee, Floodgate Ann Miura-Ko, Aspect Ventures& Theresia Gouw, Bessemer Venture Partners& Tess Hatch,
Forerunner Ventures& Eurie Kim, Mithril Capital Ajay Royan and SOSV Arvind Gupta will be on deck to comment on the respective
fields.
Disrupt SF runs October 2-4 at the Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco
Passes are available here.
#EquityPod
This week, the lovelyAlex Wilhelm and I welcomed Kleiner Perkins& Mamoon Hamid, known for his
investments in Slack, Figma, Cameo and more, to riff on upcoming IPOs and debate the scalability of D2C brands
Listen to the episode here or watch us on YouTube.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us onApple
Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify, and all the casts.
