Hinge Health, the San Francisco-based company that offers a digital solution to treat chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions — such as back and joint pain — has closed a $310 million in Series D funding, according to sources.
The round is led by Coatue and Tiger Global, and values 2015-founded Hinge at $3 billion post-money, people familiar with the investment tell me. It comes off the back of a 300% increase in revenue in 2020, with investors told to expect revenue to nearly triple again in 2021 based on the company’s booked pipeline.
I also understand that Hinge’s founders — Daniel Perez and Gabriel Mecklenburg — retain voting …
Harry Destecroix co-founded Ziylo while studying for his PhD at the University of Bristol. Ziylo, a university spin-out company, developed a synthetic molecule allowing glucose to bind with the bloodstream more effectively. Four years later, and by then a Phd, Destecroix sold the company to Danish firm Novo Nordisk, one of the biggest manufacturers of diabetes medicines, which had realized it could use Ziylo’s molecule to develop a new type of insulin to help diabetics. He walked away with an estimated $800m.
Destecroix is now embarking on a project, “Science Creates”, to repeat the exercise of creating deep-tech, science-based …
Floww – a data-driven marketplace designed to allow founders to pitch investors, with the whole investment relationship managed online – says it has raised $6.7M / £5M to date in Seed funding from angels and family offices. Investors include Ramon Mendes De Leon, Duncan Simpson Craib, Angus Davidson, Stephane Delacote and Pip Baker (Google’s Head of Fintech UK) and multiple Family Offices. The cash will be used to build out the platform designed to give startups access to over 500+ VCs, accelerators and angel networks.
The team consists of Martijn De Wever, founder and CEO of London based VC Force Over Mass; Lee …
New research has found that San Francisco and London have become two of the world’s leading hubs for VC investment into tech solutions that address one or more of the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), more commonly referred to as “Impact Tech”. They are followed by Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Shanghai and Beijing.
Tech solutions for such pressing issues as the climate crisis and social inequality have seen a 280% increase in global VC investment from 2015 to 2020, while investment in this space more than doubled in both cities over the past five years. The report was put together by London & Partners and Dealroom as part of this week’s Silicon Valley Comes to the UK virtual event. More than 5,000 startups were surveyed to create the data.
According to the research, VC investment into London-based impact tech startups has grown by almost 800% (7.8 times) since 2015, compared to 3.1 times in Europe as a whole. 2020 is set to be a record year for London’s impact tech companies, which have received $1.2 billion in VC investment from January to October, already matching 2019 levels. London’s impact firms have also secured 429 deals between 2015 and 2020, more than any other city globally.
San Francisco’s impact-based tech companies have also shown strong growth over the past five years, with the data revealing that VC investment into its impact tech companies has almost tripled (2.8 times) from 2015 to 2020. So far this year, SF-based impact tech companies attracted $1.7 billion of VC investment in 2020 — more than any other city globally. At a national level, the United States received more VC funding for impact tech companies than any other country in the past five years, with investors pumping $35.8 billion into U.S. firms since 2015, double the amount invested into China ($16.8 billion) and the United Kingdom ($6.1 billion).
The research also found that the U.K. capital has produced 241 impact startups since 2006, with 95 companies founded in San Francisco. In London, “impact unicorns” include Octopus Energy (green energy), Arrival (zero-emission, public transportation vehicles), Gousto (food) and Babylon Health (AI health tech).
Climate change and clean energy solutions have attracted the most interest from investors in both cities, making up over 50% of overall VC investment over the last five years. Funding rounds including at least one North American investor made up $234 million of VC investment so far this year in London, up from $85 million in 2018, and equating to a fifth of all VC investment into London’s impact startups.
Funding rounds for London impact companies involving North American investors in 2020 include a $118 million growth equity round into Arrival by BlackRock, an $80 million Series B round for COMPASS Pathways and a $25 million Series C funding for Tractable.
Meanwhile, impact startups are crossing the pond in both directions. Arrival is now operating in Los Angeles, while Octopus Energy launched in the U.S. market in September after closing a $360 million funding round in April and acquiring Silicon Valley-based startup Evolve Energy. And San Francisco-based Allbirds, the sustainable shoe retailer, opened its first European flagship store in London in July 2018.
Commenting, Janet Coyle, managing director for business, London & Partners said: “San Francisco and London are two of the world’s top hubs for innovation and technology. But today’s figures also show that they are leading the way in creating purpose-driven companies striving to tackle some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges.”
A shared user account used by WeWork employees to access printer settings and print jobs had an incredibly simple password — so simple that a customer guessed it.
Jake Elsley, who works at a WeWork in London, said he found the user account after a WeWork employee at his location mistakenly left the account logged in.
WeWork customers like Elsley normally have an assigned seven-digit username and a four-digit passcode used for printing documents at WeWork locations. But the username for the account used by WeWork employees was just four-digits: “9999”. Elsley told TechCrunch that he guessed the password because it was the same as the username. (“9999” is ranked as one of the most common passwords in use today, making it highly insecure.)
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The “9999” account is used by and shared among WeWork community managers, who oversee day-to-day operations at each location, to print documents for visitors who don’t have accounts to print on their own. The account cannot be used to access print jobs sent to other customer accounts.
Elsley said that the “9999” account could not see the contents of documents beyond file names, but that logging in to the WeWork printing web portal could allow him to release other people’s pending print jobs sent to the “9999” account to any other WeWork printer on the network.
The printing web portal can only be accessed on WeWork’s Wi-Fi networks, said Elsley, but that includes the free guest Wi-Fi network which doesn’t have a password, and WeWork’s main Wi-Fi network, which still uses a password that has been widely circulated on the internet.
Elsley reached out to TechCrunch to ask us to alert the company to the insecure password.
“WeWork is committed to protecting the privacy and security of our members and employees,” said WeWork spokesperson Colin Hart. “We immediately initiated an investigation into this potential issue and took steps to address any concerns. We are also nearing the end of a multi-month process of upgrading all of our printing capabilities to a best in class security and experience solution. We expect this process to be completed in the coming weeks.”
WeWork confirmed that it had since changed the password on the “9999” user account.
