Co-founders Elle Smyth and Sarah Hamer came up with the idea while working together at supply chain unicorn startup, Stord.
“We met each other and bonded over our love for the supply chain industry,” Smyth told TechCrunch.
Warehouse workers have to reference “phone book-sized” manuals of how to ship items to retailers, like Target and Walmart.
If shipping/warehouse workers don’t pack these items correctly, retailers will charge the brands fees, known as a chargeback.
RetailReady replaces those manuals with a digital version that gives workers a directed workflow on how to pack an order correctly.
“So many folks in D.C. don’t actually know what it is,” he remarked.
When Graham put out a call for startup applications, a dozen startups got into YC’s debut class.
Lowe didn’t confirm where that was a strategy on Tan’s part, but he praised Tan for his warmness and his dedication.
After educating the D.C. market, YC aims to leverage its influence, particularly in areas like competition policy.
And if we don’t do that, then it’s pretty easy to see how this plays out,” Lowe said.
What a week, everyone.
Two full days of Y Combinator demo day activity kept us busy, but the latest accelerator cohort’s launch was far from the only big story in startup-land.
Then to close out, we chatted through the impending Ibotta and Rubrik IPOs.
The latter deal could provide a fascinating heat-check for unprofitable unicorns that need to find some sort of exit, and quickly.
All told we chatted through startups from their very earliest form all the way through their most mature.
Draijer said the company started off as an installer of solar panels in Spain, but after the pandemic, it decided it should offer a solar energy management system.
“Solar is not a product,” Draijer said, explaining why most Spaniards can’t or just don’t want to pay upfront for solar panels.
That’s why SolarMente offers subscription-based energy management services, which include installing solar panels without upfront costs.
“We’re using this round to really power our super app for home energy,” Gardrinier said.
But first, SolarMente wants to further expand across Spain, where its subscription solar offer just became available nationwide, Draijer told TechCrunch.
Six months on from its launch, Subsets has already claimed some decent customers including the New York Times’-owned Athletic and Danish newspaper Børsen.
The media businessWhile Subsets could be applied to any subscription business, it’s currently focused on the digital media vertical.
Subsets allows non-technical teams to run retention “experiments” on subsets (hence the company name) of their subscriber base, to see what actions might lead a customer to staying on-board.
These experiments might be a series of push notifications or email offering a subscription discount, or perhaps a free upgrade to unlock new features.
Aside from lead backers Upfin and YC, Subsets’ pre-seed round included investments from a slew of institutional and angel investors including Cuesta Labs; Sandhill Markets; and Peakon founder Phillip Chambers.
This YC alum just raised $31M to build the ‘TurboTax for construction permitting’ Kleiner Perkins led the Series A, which came just over a year after seed roundAnyone who has ever tried to build or renovate a house knows the pain of obtaining construction permits.
It’s no surprise then that the startup world has seen a flurry of startups focused on streamlining the permitting process.
Today the company is announcing it has raised $31 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins, TechCrunch has learned exclusively.
More affordable housingPermitFlow primarily works with general contractors to help make the permitting process less painful.
“A municipality today will have a digital permitting process.
Leveraging resources such as virtual data rooms and shared labs makes it easier for biotech startups to grow.
“For this to work, the world would need to scale up the number of MRI scans it does by at least 100x.
Co-working for biotechShared lab spaces have been a game changer for biotech startups, Nature reported.
This reminded me of Startup Battlefield alum Parallel Health — its chief scientist officer Nathan Brown had mentioned shared labs in passing when we chatted at Disrupt.
“If you’re thinking about starting a company, try to visit a few just to see which one is the best.”Virtual data roomsVirtual data rooms are another important resource for biotech startups.
