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The firm’s guidance to  startups is to assess their runway (as future financing might become challenging), reassess sales forecasts, raise return on investment for marketing spend, and assess headcount and capital spending. All business fundamentals need to be looked at once again.

The most striking statement in the post is: “In downturns, revenue and cash levels always fall faster than expenses.”

For startups dependent on venture cash to grow, belt tightening to extend the runway–provided you are not too late and raising this quarter–might make sense. In Crunchbase data, we have not yet seen funding slow down. However, funding rounds announced recently were closed in the past couple of months, with conversations and diligence stretching back to a very different funding climate.

In October 2008 Sequoia’s “RIP Good Times” described by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington as a ” the message was dire with “cuts are a must” and “Get Real or Go Home”.

In the 2008 RIP report, Sequoia claimed the following:

New Realities

• $15 million raised at $100 million post is gone
• Series B/C will be smaller
• Customer uptake will be slower
• Cuts are a must

Need to become cash flow positive

• Increased challenges
• M&A will decrease
• Prices will decrease
• Acquiring entities will favor profitable companies
• IPOs will continue to decrease and take longer

Saying “cuts are a must” might be interpreted as sounding cruel.

In the middle of a health crisis, where people in nonessential industries are mandated to stay home, and with heavy job losses predicted for the travel, hotel and retail industries, getting a new job will be more difficult.

Some jobs are opening up, however. just announced it is hiring to up to 100,000 new full- and part-time workers in delivery and fulfillment centers to address the crisis.

Investors are aware that in the last downturn, new companies–formed in 2008 and its aftermath in 2009–have become significant technology companies. Those companies include , , , , , and . Investors will continue seeking those opportunities, having raised unprecedented funds themselves with no shortage of money to invest. And with valuations likely to be capped, this might just be a good time to invest.

Sequoia signs off with: “Stay healthy, keep your company healthy, and put a dent in the world.”

Illustration: .

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To answer that question, Crunchbase took a look at founders and CEOs across several groupings of startup unicorns. The research included the most heavily funded private companies, newly minted unicorns and companies that recently crossed the $5 billion valuation mark.

The short answer? Yes, immigrants are still heavily represented in the ranks of U.S. unicorn founders and CEOs. They hail from multiple continents, and are leading companies in sectors from e-commerce to crypto to pharmaceuticals.

The long answer? Yes, but maybe less so. Early data indicates the proportion of high-valuation U.S. startups founded or led by immigrants may be trending down some. One factor is the growth of startup hubs outside the U.S., making it easier for founders to launch companies in their home country. The other, most notorious factor: the hurdles of securing a visa as a would-be startup founder.

“There is no visa specifically for someone who wants to start a company,” according to , founding partner at , a Silicon Valley-based firm that invests in U.S. startups with immigrant founders.

While U.S. student enrollment of foreign nationals roughly doubled from 2007 to 2018, there hasn’t been a corresponding strategy to speed or simplify graduates’ pursuit of a green card, Mehta said. And although that issue predates Trump’s election, the current administration hasn’t helped, deciding not to implement an Obama-era .

Still, a striking percentage of funded private companies that crossed the $1 billion valuation threshold this past year are immigrant founded. Below, we take a look at 19 such companies, along with a look founders’ countries of origin.

We also look at the most heavily funded, highest-valuation private companies overall with immigrant founders and CEOs.

The big picture

If investors are backing fewer immigrant-led U.S. startups, it may be because there are fewer available to back. For the 2018-19 period, U.S. immigration declined to 595,000 people—the lowest level since the 1980s, according to one oft-cited . It’s a level that leaves even some members of the Trump administration’s inner circle concerned that immigration levels are to support economic growth.

Of course, one needn’t be a new immigrant to launch a high-flying startup. Many of the successful founders on our lists above immigrated years or decades before their companies took flight. The lists, overall, include immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children as well as those who came later, commonly to attend universities.

Lastly, we should keep in mind that immigration, like unicorns, venture funding and startup valuations, has historically been rather cyclical. The issues confronting immigrant founders today may very well fade away or morph into something completely different in coming years.

Illustration: .

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Today, though, it’s making waves for different reasons. Stock markets around the world roil and churn as investors grapple with the implications of a particularly virulent and aggressive respiratory virus formally known as SARS-CoV-2, which originated in China but is now rippling across the planet.

This is the sort of moment some risk-loving swing traders live for, the sort of moment others dread, the sort of moment where some people want to watch their stocks and make some money moves. On Monday, , 10.8 billion shares traded hands, 50 percent higher than the 50-day moving average.

None of those shares were traded on Robinhood, because Robinhood has been in the midst of a prolonged service outage that stretched into a second day.

On Tuesday morning, stated that it was experiencing a system-wide outage affecting all facets of its service except for market data and dividends. During this time, I attempted to sign up for a Robinhood account for testing purposes. I succeeded in entering my information and creating the account, but was faced with a series of error messages when I tried to hook up my bank account and perform other functions on the company’s mobile application.

As of about 11 AM Central Time on Tuesday, Robinhood’s status page indicates that all systems are operational with the exception of its email support system, which had been experiencing reliability issues since Monday morning.

The company said it will work with customers “on a case-by-case basis” and possibly offer compensation or other forms of restitution to people whose trading accounts were affected by the company’s system outage.

Robinhood was one of several companies rumored to seek IPOs in 2020. With the reputational damage and the as-yet unknown costs stemming from its early March outage, its path to public markets now looks decidedly more uphill.

According to Crunchbase data, Robinhood has raised from investors including , , and .

Robinhood was valued at $7.6 billion in its Series E round, which netted the company $373 million over two tranches. Crunchbase News covered the first $323 million close in late July 2019, and the company to extend its Series E round at the end of October 2019.

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But not every industry had a great year. A Crunchbase News analysis shows a number of major categories – including hardware, blockchain, delivery and electric vehicles — that are poised to show big year-over-year declines.

Below, we look at what the numbers reveal about these out-of-vogue sectors.

Hardware

Hardware investment showed a decline in 2019, as U.S. investors increasingly backed away from big rounds for startups developing consumer electronics, networking hardware, and other devices.

Per 1, U.S. hardware raised $1.97 billion in seed through late stage venture funding rounds in 2019. Direct year-over-year comparisons aren’t entirely fair at this point in the year, given that many rounds get reported late. Still, it’s hard to see much chance we’ll catch up to the 2018 total of $3.46 billion.

One of the big reasons hardware funding is down is that there were fewer supergiant funding rounds in the category this year. Just two companies raised known rounds of $100 million or more: , a maker of hardware and software platforms for data centers, and , a developer of adaptive, kinetic glass.

It should also be noted that the hardware category does not include a lot of robotics and autonomous driving deals. If we factored in funding rounds for startups such as , a developer of autonomous robotic vehicles that raised $940 million in February, the 2019 totals would be much higher.

Crypto And Blockchain

While the price of bitcoin has recovered from lows hit a year ago, dealmaking activity for crypto and blockchain has not followed suit.

Crunchbase data shows investor enthusiasm for crypto and blockchain deals remains far below peaks hit several quarters ago. Dealmaking activity appears to have hit its highest point around late 2017 and early 2018, when cryptocurrency prices kept soaring, and blockchain was the buzzword of the day.

For the first two-thirds of the year, private investors put an estimated $2 billion to work across at least 472 known rounds globally, per Crunchbase analysis (not including initial coin offerings (ICOs)). Initial data for the remainder of the year shows the space still garnering some deals, but well below prior highs. (In 2018, the peak year, investors put at least $4.65 billion into the space, not including ICOs.)

It also should be noted that the numbers include companies for which crypto or blockchain is a component but not a core focus of the business. For example, one of the  largest crypto-related rounds of 2019 was a $323 million Series E for , which offers cryptocurrencies but is best-known as a commission free stock trading app.

So when one looks at funding for more pure-play crypto and blockchain startups, the funding levels look more bearish.

Delivery

Food delivery is a tough category for making a profit, but in recent years it’s been a pretty lucrative one for raising venture funding. But if 2019 is any indication, the fast-growing sector is in the midst of a slowdown.

So far this year, food delivery companies brought in in venture and seed funding across at least 125 funding rounds, per Crunchbase data. That’s down from $11.1 billion that went to , across at least 223 rounds.

��DZ��dz�������’s had the largest single venture capital funding round of food delivery companies in 2019, bringing in $1 billion in its Series E round. also pulled in some serious cash, raising a total of $1 billion across two separate rounds.

The food delivery space has encountered its share of problems in 2019. DoorDash came under fire for its tipping practices and we’re still waiting on Postmates to go public. Lackluster post-IPO performance by Uber, which had been banking on growing its delivery business, also hasn’t helped.

That said, companies are still raising big sums, so this isn’t a sector that hasn’t petered out yet.

Electric Vehicles

If you are a venture capitalist and want a place to park lots of capital, the electric vehicle industry has much to offer. Companies in the space are notoriously capital-intensive, and while their risk profile is high, the returns on betting on the category leader can be high too, as evidenced by Tesla’s $70 billion-plus market capitalization.

However, history also shows that the bulk of electric vehicle investments don’t turn out so profitably. Perhaps that, combined with a slowdown in China-based supergiant rounds, is contributing to a global slowdown in venture-backed bets on the sector.

So far in 2019, venture investment in electric vehicle-focused companies , with just over $5 billion going to Chinese deals. In 2018, by contrast, investors put over $18 billion to work globally, of which more than $14 billion went to China-based companies.

The Big Picture

It’s noteworthy that three of the four shrinking categories highlighted above involve companies that operate in the physical world, either making things or delivering things other people made. The fourth, crypto and blockchain, saw declines in large part because of the bubbly levels of the prior year.

Looking at where the money continues to flow, it’s clear venture investors love affair with software revenue models has not abated. They’re more on the fence, it appears, when it comes to businesses that still incur high fulfillment costs for each customer they add.

Photo courtesy of via Unsplash.

When quickly grew on the back of its zero-fee trading system, it was a direct threat to incumbents. Companies like and made money by charging clients for equity trades, forming a regular revenue stream at the publicly-traded companies. Could those fees go to zero?

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Yes, as it turned out. Robinhood’s radical pricing forced its larger, public rivals to follow suit. The impact for the online brokers was falling share prices. In effect, Robinhood’s model forced its rivals to slash fees, cutting revenue in the process, leading investors to push their market value down.

We love tracking how new, young companies change the face of larger, public companies (more here, and here). It’s the good end of capitalism in action.

But, since that first shakeup in pricing, things have changed yet again. As noted, big brokers that Robinhood forced into changing their fee structure were initially repriced. Since then, however, :

Shares of Charles Schwab Corp. closed at $40.98 on Friday, just 2% below their closing price on Sept. 30. That was the day before the San Francisco-based online brokerage said it was  on online stock trades to zero, an announcement that rattled the e-broker industry and triggered a nearly 10% one-day drop in Schwab stock.

The same Wall Street Journal notes that other firms like TD Ameritrade and have also regained ground, if not as much as Schwab.

The recovery feels a bit like a reversion to the mean, as trading fees were a minority revenue stream at the companies we’re discussing. But there’s a final wrinkle in the mix worth our consideration. Namely, ad spend.

CAC

Speaking loosely, not being able to tack on a $5 or $10 fee to equity trades amongst clients probably costs trading platforms (all of them) some near-term revenue. Fair enough?

Consider my surprise then when I began to note Schwab and others ( at a minimum) running expensive television advertisements touting their zero-cost trading and other low-cost services (Fidelity is proud of its zero-fee funds, for example). More simply, the incumbent players in the market are spending their ad budgets showing off new pricing schemes that Robinhood forced them into.

This makes some sense. But I’ve also seen more Robinhood ads as well. In short, we’re seeing folks try to beat one another on low pricing as a way to drive customer acquisition and, I presume, retention.

This is great for me, Alex, the consumer. For Robinhood which has than its incumbent rivals, seeing them use the startup’s prior selling point in their own advertising is fascinating.

If this advertising moment winds up boosting customer acquisition costs amongst Robinhood and its rivals, while likely depressing short-term top line from those customers (see the opening line of this section), the economics of trading could become less attractive. This might hurt Robinhood more than its rivals, as it has a less-developed suite of services (though, as we’ve reported, the company is working on the matter.)

Summing, what we’ve seen is a startup (Robinhood) push its rivals (incumbent trading platforms) into matching its competitive advantage (zero-cost trades). Then, its rivals (publicly-traded, profitable companies) started using Robinhood’s old selling point (low-cost financial services) as a way to attract more customers to their own wares, but with likely larger budgets.

Robinhood’s next few moves will, therefore, prove fascinating. Does the richly-valued unicorn have another trick up its sleeve? I wouldn’t bet against it.

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as a trading platform was predicated on of low-cost services and mobile accessibility. Offering free trades on the go, Robinhood became a popular hub for to get into buying and selling equities for less.

Rounds and rounds of capital later (Robinhood has ), the company’s model, proven out by swelling usage numbers, is attracting copycats. As we reported a few weeks back, traditional online brokerages have begun swinging towards Robinhood’s most-famous price by offering zero-cost trades.

Robinhood showed the market that customers were ready to stop overpaying for equity trades. But now that Robinhood has shamed incumbents into following suit, what’s next for the company?

Now What?

Robinhood has changed its market, yes, but in the process has seen one of its key advantages diluted by larger trading companies following suit. The scale of the copying is now pandemic. Here’s (condensed and reformatted by Crunchbase News):

Fidelity announced Thursday that it will no longer charge customers to trade US stocks, [ETFs] or options. The company […] joins a growing list of brokers that have slashed online trading fees in quick succession. Charles Schwab last week eliminated commissions for trading stocks [while] TD Ameritrade and E-Trade have also ditched commissions.

So much for low-cost trades setting Robinhood apart.

Robinhood’s mobile app could remain an advantage, but certainly its pricing scheme is no longer going to direct as many users through the door as it once did. Could the changed reality of the market that the unicorn is competing inside of slow Robinhood’s growth, and thus curtail its future fundraising ability?

Perhaps, though the company is well-capitalized. DST Global led Robinhood’s $110 million 2017 Series C. And its $363 million 2018 Series D. And its $323 million 2019 Series E. Surely Robinhood has a chunk of that money left over. But past having cash-on-hand, the trendy unicorn has something else up its sleeve.

Banking

It would be too easy to say that the increasingly competitive, zero-fee trading landscape is very worrisome for Robinhood if the company didn’t have other products that could pick up slack in its growth figures.

You recall that Robinhood has crypto trading (notably crypto competitor Coinbase recently  to ). However, Robinhood has also moved, yet again, into banking services.

Here’s , announced earlier in the week:

This time it actually has insurance. Zero-fee stock-trading app Robinhood is launching Cash Management, a new feature that earns users 2.05% APY interest on uninvested money in their account with the ability to spend it through a special Mastercard debit card.

Crunchbase News has learned that Robinhood has more than 300,000 people on the waitlist for the feature.

Moving into banking is something of a regular step in 2019 for companies that work with money in some capacity. SoFi moved into the cash-and-debit market earlier this year with an offering which it called “a new, hybrid account offering high-yield interest” after starting out with student loan services. Acorns added a debit card after starting in savings accounts and easy investing. Chime started off as a bank, but also features the usual debit card service. ( that Chime is raising new money at a new, higher $5 billion valuation.)

Competition

Why is every service getting a debit card into the hands of its users? In 2014, back when Chime raised its $18 million Series B, TechCrunch reported that the company “earns about 1.5 percent in fees per transaction” that went through its debit card.

So Robinhood has a second and third act underway while its former rivals match its low-cost equity trades. But will crypto trading and banking move the needle when each category has a host of well-funded competition?

The funding point isn’t an exaggeration. , a crypto trading competitor, has in known capital to date from investors like , , and . Chime has in known capital to date, including money from , , , and, notably, DST Global. Acorns, completing our point, has raised $207 million, including raising from and .

There are two stories here, then. First, that Robinhood attacked a market with radically low pricing (thanks to the power of software), drawing blood early and forcing change from competitors after it had racked up a substantial user base. However, Robinhood’s second act could prove tricky given the number of players in the cash-and-debit-card game.

In a nearly ironic sense, then, Robinhood’s runaway success growing its market footprint with free trades worked so well that its competitors broke out the copy machines. Now Robinhood has to craft a more diversified growth path, but where there’s more competition and it’s not the first mover.

We’ll see!

Illustration: .

News broke this morning that will reduce its commissions . As while reporting the news this morning, the move is part of a trend that has also seen and reduce trading fees.

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Shares of Schwab competitors and Schwab itself are down today. This, of course, brings up Robinhood and its platform that charges end-users nothing to trade stocks.

The genius of early product work was that it took something that could be priced nigh-zero in a digital world (trading) and set its actual price near the marginal cost of the transaction. By excising the margin, the then-startup attracted legions of fans, and, afterward, .

According to its most recent funding round, a $323 million Series E in 2019, Robinhood is worth $7.6 billion today. That’s not to say that its road has been smooth. The company ran afoul of effectively everyone when it ; Robinhood has also , something not uncommon for high-growth startups.

All the same, Robinhood’s pitch to consumers that there was no reason to pay $4.99 or $7.99 or $9.99 just to execute an equity trade worked. Throw in the company’s tools like options and margin products, and Robinhood was offering quite a lot for not too much money. Incumbents had to compete, therefore, on price and features.

Robinhood’s launch was an asteroid impact into the fees-for-trades equity world. Schwab’s move today is the first die-off of a dinosaur revenue stream.

Yet Again

Before I torture that analogy further, let’s remind ourselves of when we last touched on the theme of startups impacting incumbents. In early August we wrote that , a publicly-traded banking service, had been repriced by the market by nearly half after it disclosed a diminished future outlook in an earnings report.

Green Dot placed the blame for its smaller revenue and profit expectations on the back of what its CEO described as “so-called neobanks,” the sort of firm like Chime and Acorns that we’ve covered extensively over the years.

In the case of Green Dot, well-funded upstarts were taking parts of the market away. and et al often have a focus on slim fees, and features. In that way they are similar to Robinhood as we’ve seen above; a market that was too comfortable in its pricing found itself under attack from younger competitors unfocused on short-term profitability.

������Ƶ tend to win in these situations, even if they don’t switch providers. Schwab customers just got a fee cut, for example, without having to move to a startup platform. I’ve written skeptically (here, here) about Robinhood’s valuation, yes, but I also want to note that its impact on regular folks has so far been positive at least in one way.

There is excess amidst tech startups and other venture-backed companies. There are silly valuations. There are bad actors. But let’s not forget that sometimes startups do have the ability to disrupt pricing regimes that made no sense. As marginal costs fall, so should prices. And quickly.

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So far in 2019, the pace of private funding for blockchain and crypto deals lags sharply behind last year. The downward trajectory applies to both initial coin offerings and venture rounds for companies in the space.

Altogether, investors have put an estimated $3.38 billion to work in initial coin offerings and private funding rounds for companies in 2019, according to Crunchbase data.* At this pace, annual investment portends to be a fraction of the 2018 investment total of $12.86 billion.

The declines come as major cryptocurrencies continue to trade well below prior peaks, although they have rebounded from last year’s lows. And new cryptocurrencies have failed to deliver breakout hits. Out of the roughly $250 billion in total valuation for the crypto space, roughly 70 percent comes from bitcoin alone.

Below, we break out numbers for both investor-backed rounds and ICOs, looking at trendlines for investment totals and round counts.

Not A Popped Balloon, But Certainly A Deflated One

The current crypto and blockchain funding environment looks less like a popped bubble than a deflated one. Currencies are still trading and startups are getting funded. There’s just less money chasing the space.

In the chart below, we look at total funding across both initial coin offerings and private funding rounds for crypto and blockchain-focused companies globally:

Cryptocurrencies hit their bubbliest highs around late 2017 and early 2018. That’s when bitcoin passed the $20,000 mark, and total crypto market cap peaked at around $700 billion. Venture funding of blockchain-related startups was also on a roll around then, buoyed by bullish memes about the technology’s game-changing potential.

This past December, by contrast, looks like the lowest point for the crypto space in the past couple years, with total market cap down to about $75 billion. Crypto bears, some of whom predicted an eventual bitcoin , were starting to look rather prescient.

Now here we are in early September, and neither the bull nor the extreme bear case appear to be winning out.

VCs Still Like Blockchain, But They Like It Less

In short, blockchain is still a thing. It’s just not the thing that everyone’s talking about.

That includes venture capitalists, many of whom have been outspoken boosters of all things blockchain. As a group, they’ve been putting less money into the space of late.

So far this year, investors have put about $2 billion into rounds for companies tied to crypto and blockchain technology, not including ICOs. That’s on pace to come in well below the $4.65 billion tally for all of 2018. We have more numbers in the chart below:

Some of the most prominent VCs active in the  blockchain and crypto space have been cutting back in 2019. For instance, participated in 14 funding rounds with an aggregate value of nearly $850 million in 2018, per Crunchbase data. So far this year, the firm has backed five deals valued at a little over $75 million.

They’re not alone. and , two of the most active investors, have also cut back sharply in deal count and aggregate value of rounds they’ve backed.

It also should be noted that the numbers include companies for which crypto or blockchain is a component but not a core focus of the business. For example, the largest crypto-related round for 2019 is a $323 million Series E for , which offers cryptocurrencies but is best-known as a commission free stock trading app.

But there have been other big rounds this year for companies more exclusively focused on crypto.That includes a $200 million Series A for , a South Korean crypto exchange platform, and $100 million in Series C funding for , the San Francisco-based crypto trading provider.

Little Punditry For Blockchain And Crypto Slowdown

So, the data speaks pretty clearly: Blockchain and crypto-related funding is down but by no means dead after the cryptocurrency bubble popped. What’s lacking, however, is much in the way of punditry regarding why things are playing out this way.

The blockchain and crypto camps, as aforementioned, are mostly populated with extreme bulls and extreme bears. There are those who think bitcoin is the . And there are those who consider .

One possibility, , is that blockchain will present disappointments in its long march to widespread viability. The firm writes:

“Blockchain computers are new types of computers where the unique capability is trust between users, developers, and the platform itself… In exchange for these new capabilities, blockchain computers trade off other capabilities such as transaction scalability. This can lead people to dismiss them, in the same way people dismissed early smartphones because they traded off computing power and screen size for portability and new sensors.”

Personally, I’m not buying the firm’s comparison here. No one really dissed the future of smartphones, even back in the flip phone era. We just weren’t sure exactly when all the pieces – price, portability, durability, computing power, etc. – would come together in a package that warranted mass adoption.

Blockchain, by contrast, has some pretty hardcore doubters. And cryptocurrency, in particular, has some real pessimists among the world’s wealthiest, including Warren Buffet, who compares bitcoin to .

That said, we’re still in early innings. And for now, it looks like neither the blockchain boosters nor the detractors have sealed a winning case.

Methodology

Crunchbase’s ICO data is not exhaustive but does capture broad trendlines for growth and contraction in ICO funding.

Illustration: .

After a busy year, today’s technology and venture-backed technology IPO pipeline is light. But while the present-day pipeline of public IPOs is low there are a few big offerings that are expected to land shortly. So let’s examine both this morning.

Upcoming, Expected

The upcoming IPO pipeline (Crunchbase News tracks tech and venture-backed offerings on U.S. exchanges, including companies headquartered in other countries who choose to float here) contains a single, known offering. It’s , a China-based company that is to raise around $34 million in its debut.

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And that’s where the expected roll ends. It’s a short list. You can pick a reason why, but what matters is that the unicorn IPO run has come to a pause. So, let’s look at who is supposed to get out soon.

Big Names

There are two large, expected tech and venture-backed IPOs coming later this year that we have have our eye on, those belonging to and .

WeWork is expected to go public in September. The company is fitting a number of pieces together for its debut. First, it’s raising debt to avoid an oversized IPO. Why is it raising debt before it goes public? As WeWork consumes cash to operate, it needs to raise capital in its public offering. Raising debt before is a way to limit future equity dilution.

As we’ve mentioned on these pages quite often, WeWork’s rich valuation may prove difficult to defend when it goes public. The company will stress its growth (fast!), its growing stable of software tools (neat!), and the economics of its buildings once occupied (supposedly good!). Against it are public-market comps that are priced very differently, and staggering losses.

Not since have we looked forward to an S-1 more.1

Cloudflare is a simpler beast. Back in the news over its decision to end digital protection for the odious 8chan, Cloudflare is a critical part of how the Internet works. Therefore, its numbers will also be incredibly interesting. Cloudflare most recently , meaning that its public offering will be sizeable.

The latest regarding Cloudflare’s offering is that it filed privately this summer, and will float in September (credit for breaking the news). This IPO won’t make the same splash as WeWork’s own, but I am stoked at the prospect of checking out the company’s gross margins.

And that’s where the list of expected, major offerings ends this morning.

There are other, anticipated offerings, but it’s a somewhat soggy list. Here are some companies long expected to go public, and why we don’t anticipate incipient S-1s:

• : This company just raised a bunch of money at a new valuation. It’s busy putting that money to work. And, given media coverage of some of the that led to the embarrassing “bank account” situation, the company probably still has some growing up to do before it goes public.
• : Postmates has filed, but we haven’t heard anything regarding its public S-1 landing soon. Not that we wouldn’t welcome such an occurrence, we just don’t see it happening in the next month or two. You can read our latest coverage of the company’s IPO march here. (The Postmates S-1 will be fun not only because Postmates is itself a neat company, but because it will also shed light on the on-demand space in new detail.)
• : Towards the end of every year every publication says that Airbnb could go public in the coming annum. And here we are, with no public Airbnb shares yet again.
• : A dark horse in the IPO chronicles, the social-media popular in-home exercise, and bragging-rights company is going to post an IPO document in time, detailing a mix of hardware (stationary bikes! treadmills!) and software (recurring fees for digitally-delivered classes) that will generate a fascinating blended gross margin figure. We’re stoked. But here again, other than expectant scuttlebutt there isn’t too much to report.

What we do expect are more SaaS-style offerings from mid-range unicorns. Yes, SaaS stocks have had a tough run of it over the last few days, but the category is still valued historically-high multiples.

There’s a jinx factor in saying that some companies aren’t set to go public quickly. I’m fine with that. If I accidentally induce, say, Postmates to publicly file then I’ll have committed a public service. More when we get any sort of new S-1.

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Today your broker is probably an API which wears a user interface to work in a mobile app to do your bidding. Finance is still all handshakes and signatures, but now they’re between server and client and sealed cryptographically.

makes one of these apps. Based in San Francisco, the company is among the leading contenders looking to unseat established online brokerages by offering commission fee-free trading, asset classes including options and cryptocurrencies, and other features largely aimed at new investors.

In posted to the company’s blog, Robinhood announced it has raised , valuing the company at $7.6 billion, post-money. That valuation is upward of 36 percent higher than the company secured announced in May 2018.

Including this round, Robinhood has raised since it was founded in 2013, according to Crunchbase data.

led the Series E financing as a returning investor; the firm, founded by Russian tech billionaire , led both and Series D rounds. The company said that , , , and participated in the funding round.

Since its last round a little over a year ago, Robinhood says it’s made significant business progress. The upstart exchange platform rolled out its own clearing platform, launched a premium subscription offering with enriched market data provided by Nasdaq, and introduced multi-leg options strategies to its users. In March, (now “Robinhood Snacks”) to start its own in-house financial news publication.

“We’ll use the funding to keep pursuing our mission of democratizing finance for all,“ the company said.

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