✍️ WHAT CAUGHT OUR EYES
Booking.com's growth strategy
Booking.com – a tiny startup in the Netherlands back in the 2000s, became one of the greatest Consumer acquisitions of all-time.
Insights into their early growth strategy from their former CMO:
Their performance marketing team drove their supply strategy: "Our supply organization was fully aligned behind what the demand was looking for. If we had enough customers coming in on queries that were high intent, we would want to be #1. Our goal was to find out why we were losing in the auction — was a competitor doing something better, or are we missing supply? Our process was: do we have demand? → do we have inventory? → is it the right inventory? → do we have availability? → do we have conversion? The team never wanted to believe they were losing a keyword because our competitors are being irrational. You cannot be irrational for too long because it'll put you out of business. If someone else was winning, they were doing something else better. Nothing was sacred."
The performance marketing team was only two people, even past $100M/year spend: "I always believed that the secret to our success was that we were not heavily automated for most of our early spend. Probably from 2004 to 2010, Peter was leading all of this, doing almost half the spend personally. Our Google rep was shocked that we had just one person running this."
They obsessed over Product-Channel Fit: "People talk about Product-Market Fit. We realized we needed Product-Channel Fit. And it became clear Google AdWords was that for us. Critical to getting this Product-Channel Fit right was our obsession with conversion improvements and A/B testing. Each A/B test that increased bookings, or monetization, increased the performance of marketing campaigns. Conversion improvements made unviable campaigns viable, improved competitiveness of existing campaigns, and further improved ROI on campaigns where we already were #1 — allowing us to invest those margins in new frontiers for the business."
They turned disadvantages into advantages: "Unlike our competitors (e.g. Expedia), we didn't have access to chain hotels in big markets, so we focused on long-tail markets early-on. We build inventory in secondary and tertiary destinations. This also led to our successful landing-page strategy, where we created bounding boxes pulling all of the nearby hotels, along with a map of the area, the POIs, and a search box. We also translated the pages into many languages, with hundreds of translators on the payroll at one point. At this time, Expedia was 100x bigger than us, but with this approach, we could pretend we were a big company in each of these specific cities because no one knew we didn't have any supply anywhere else. When people land on one of our landing pages, they were like wow, so many hotels in this city!"
Edtech’s Answer to Remote Learning Burnout
Prior to COVID, Edtech companies largely sold to schools, with mixed results.
There are many reasons the B2B model didn’t penetrate —a misalignment of stakeholders, dispersed financial decision-makers, long sales cycles, and low school budgets.
For many teachers and parents, the current status quo —Zoomed-out kids passively watching teacher lectures— is sorely lacking.
While educators around the country adapt to the challenges of virtual classrooms, many parents have become increasingly involved in their kids’ education — whether out of enthusiasm or necessity.
Now, verticalized startups are carving off niche subjects to provide a variety of learning styles for various interests and budgets.
Sora’s personalized curriculums meld live and independent learning and are driven by individual student curiosities.
Juni Learning creates high-quality curriculums on subjects like coding and computer science.
Platforms like Primer and Prisma focus on project-based learning for at-home schooling.
Where these types of activities were possible in the past, there is more depth and optionality to online marketplaces than ever before.
Parents can seek out the best instructors for specific topics—tailored to the needs of each individual child. Kids get access to a wider variety of learning resources and teaching styles. And educators are less constrained in their curriculums (previously defined rigidly only by districts) and can monetize their talents with a wider audience.
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👏 WHERE THE MONEY WENT
🇪🇺 Notable EU early stage Consumer rounds :
Beam, a France-based app that is both a web browser and a note app, raises €3M with Spark/Alven - link
Hedvig, a Sweden-based home neo-insurer, raises $9M with Commerz/Obvious/Cherry - link
Joko, a French cashback app, raises $12M with Partech/Axeleo - link
🇺🇸 Notable US early-stage Consumer rounds :
Zora, a US-based crypto-driven marketplace rewarding creators, raises $2M with Coinbase/Kindred - link
Oula Health, a US-based modern maternity center company, raises $3.2M with Collaborative Fund - link
Dispo, a US-based camera app which requires users to wait for photos to "fully develop", raises $4M with Seven Seven Six - link
Clair, a US-based fintech that accelerates payments for hourly and gig economy workers, raises $4.5M with Upfront - link
Welcome Homes, a US-based online-ordered and customizable homes maker, raises $5.4M with GFC - link
Pillar, a US-based company offering a digital dashboard for family medical, legal, and financial documents, raises $7M with Kleiner/Great Oaks - link
Playbook, a US-based monetization platform for fitness instructors, raises $9.3M with Abstract/e.ventures/FJ Labs/Aglaé - link
River, a US-based non-social content discovery platform, raises $10.4M with Founders Fund/.406/BoxGroup - link
Possible, a US-based small personal loans fintech, raises $11M with USV - link
Future, a US-based coach-led digital fitness training company, raises $24M with Trustbridge/Caffeinated/Kleiner Perkins - link
Kasa Living, a US-based short term furnished apartment rental company, raises $30M with Ribbit Capital - link
Whisper, a US-based maker of smart hearing aids, raises $35M with Quiet/Sequoia/First Round - link
🔭 Notable later stage Consumer rounds :
M1 Finance, a US-based robo-advising, neo-banking, and lending startup, raises $45M with Left Lane - link
Handshake, a US-based recruitment platform for college students to meet recruiters, raises $80M with GGV/EQT/Kleiner/Lightspeed/Spark - link
Perch, a US-based platform company that acquires D2C businesses selling on Amazon, raises $123.5M with Spark - link
LIVEKINDLY, a US-based maker of plant-based foods, raises $135M with Blue Horizon/Trustbridge/EQT - link
Getaround, a US-based car-sharing company, raises $140M with PeopleFund/Reid Hoffman/Mark Pincus - link
Plenty, a US-based vertical farming company delivering fresh pesticide-free produce, raises $140M with Driscoll's/SoftBank/DCM - link
Instacart, a US-based grocery delivery company, raises $200M with D1/Valiant Peregrine - link
goPuff, a US-based daily essentials fast-delivery company, raises $380M with Accel/D1/Luxor/SoftBank - link
🖤 - HEARTCORE
Travelperk launches an API for covid-19 restrictions
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