Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the weeks noteworthy news pertaining to startups and venture capital.
Before I jump into todays topic, lets catch up a bit.
Last week, I profiled an e-commerce startup Part - Parcel.
Before that, I wrote about Stripes grand plans.Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter@KateClarkTweets.
If you dont subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do thathere.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 Matchstick Ventures.
The company is actually based out of LA, too, but has completed its initial launch in Minnesota, where theres greater demand for short-term bus travel.Landline isnt 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 Airlines.
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.Its all meant to be at the level of reliability that you would expect from an air carrier, Sunde tells TechCrunch.
We dont 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 businesss focus on long-haul trips.
Landline will specifically focus on connecting those in rural communities to airports, particularly regions where there arent already bus routes that conveniently access the airport.
Cant say Im 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.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 dont know much about the companys plans, but we wouldnt 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 companys exit plans say the business intends to publicly unveil its IPO prospectus this month.To discuss the companys 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.
Dont miss it.A whole lot of VCs will be joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt.Well have a16z general partners Chris Dixon, Angela Strange and Andrew Chen for insight into the firms latest activity.
Seed investor Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures and Redpoint Ventures general partner Annie Kadavy will show up to give founders tips on how to raise VC.
Y Combinators Michael Seibel and Ali Rowghani will join us with advice on how to get accepted to their respected accelerator.Plus, GVs David Krane, Sequoia general partner Jess Lee, Floodgates Ann Miura-Ko, Aspect Ventures Theresia Gouw, Bessemer Venture Partners Tess Hatch, Forerunner Ventures Eurie Kim, Mithril Capitals Ajay Royan and SOSVs 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.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.