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TwoTapraises $2.7M seed round
sandrav Posted On August 12, 2014


Universal shopping platform TwoTap recently closed a seed round at 2.7 million dollars in Silicon Valley. Backers include Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Joseph Saunders (CEO of Visa), Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Posterous co-founder Gary Tan along with Transmedia Capital and Digital Garage.

The team is planning to use the investment for marketing purposes, adding more people to the team and building the service around its API in order to allow customers to make purchases several times without having to enter their credit card information repeatedly. To make this work, they are using a high level security compliance called PCI DSS-level.

Founded at the beginning of 2013 in Palo Alto, California, the project quickly earned its way in the Valley. Prior to this seed round, TwoTap CEO Razvan Roman and his cofounder Radu Spineanu, became the first two Romanians to be accepted at Y Combinator, bringing them and their project greater attention.

To simplify the online buying process, especially on mobile devices, the founders created an app that works basically as a connector between retailers and customers – where users can buy products from different retailers and put them all in a universal shopping cart paying everything at once.

Among the current number of 215 retailers that use TwoTap are GameStop, Shopsy, Sephora and Kiip, all giving  away 15 per cent of their revenue for using the cart platform.

Over the past six months, the company demonstrated a phenomenal growth of nearly 5000 per cent in monthly transactions proving that their business model works and they are well positioned.


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Bellabeat closes a $4.5M round
evat Posted On June 3, 2014


Croatian Bellabeat closed a seed round of 4.5 million dollars. Their service targets parents-to-be and allows them to monitor every step in the development of their unborn child through an ultrasound mobile gadget.

Bellabeat or as it used to be known “BabyWatch” (read our startup pick here) saw the light of day in 2012 and decided to rebrand their product “when we had a clear vision of where we want to go and want to be in 10 years” co-founder and COO Urska Srsen (24) explained. While they made their first steps with some angel investments and the Y Combinator acceleration programme, the current investment adds up to 4.5 million dollars. Their combination of app and hardware on the pregnancy market convinced several investors such as SVAngel, CrunchFund, Nicolas Berggruen, Paul Buchheit, Justin Kan, Michael Seibel, Universal Music Group, Cherubic Ventures, Promus Ventures, Yi Pin NG, Boon Hwee Koh and Adrian Aoun.

Revolutionising prenatal care

Srsen and her team will put the money into further developing their quantified self tool: “We’re spending the money on producing a new generation of the Bellabeat product and […] introduce real time patient monitoring, as we always wanted,” said the Srsen to inventures.eu. The team of 15, nine of which are engineers, wants to revolutionise a whole medical branch in the near future: “We’d like Bellabeat to start changing the contemporary prenatal care by offering patients an easy access to reliable information and care providers.”

The heart of their startup is a small gadget that works in combination with the Bellabeat app. It is an ultrasound device for home use, costs 129 dollars, can be ordered online and is simply attached to a mobile phone. This makes it possible to listen to your baby’s heartbeat without consulting a doctor. With sound visualisation, a kick-counter and figures of the unborn’s development parents can track what is going on in the belly of the expecting mother from the very beginning. Moreover, the social component of the service makes it possible for users to already share their first parenthood experiences with others.

“Our system is starting to integrate the quantified self into the prenatal care and resulting in benefits for expectant mothers […] and for the care providers who […] are able to reach out to them faster,” said Srsen. This self monitoring concept was voted “most likely to succeed” during the winter 2014 accelerator Y Combinator programme and won the challenge at Pioneers Festival 2013.


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Povio presents at Y Combinator Demo Day
manonp Posted On March 27, 2014


A few hours before Matevž Petek presented in front of 500 people at the Y Combinator Demo Day in the US, concluding a three-month period spent at the American accelerator programme, inventures.eu caught the founder of Povio for a serving of hot news peppered with exciting insights.

Three months ago, Paul Graham, founder of the Californian accelerator, announced that several startups from CEE countries including Slovenia, Croatia and Bulgaria were accepted into the 2014 winter batch running from January to March, without disclosing their names. It turned out that among the mysterious companies were BellaBeat (ex –Babywatch) and photo sharing app Povio.

Povio enrolledinto Y Combinator this past January, less than a year after it launched in its home country. As a member of the programme, the startup received 20.000 dollars, three months’ worth of mentoring and acceleration, in return for seven percent equity.

Earlier this week, Povio was among the 68 startups that took the stage for a ten-minute presentation to a crowd including business angels and potential investors, during the 19th edition of Demo Day at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

Meeting the right people

Petek believes that if it weren’t for Y Combinator, the path to where the startup is now would surely have been longer, with more obstacles. “This is definitely the best experience I’ve had so far,” he said. “Here, we are working with founders of companies like Gmail, AirBnB, Dropbox – those guys really know what they are doing and they are happy to share their knowledge and ideas with us, it’s amazing.”

Besides knowledge, mentorship, and ideas that turn into action, Petek sees the experience as an opportunity to meet the right people. “Being part of Y Combinator also helps to get better publicity, more visibility, as well as an easier access to the press and it boosts your public image a bit,” he said.

So far, Povio has received two rounds of seed funding. The first one was from Y Combinator and the second came from four major investment companies: Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst and Maverick Capital. “They are helping us during our stay at Y Combinator – to cover pretty much everything that has to do with us and Povio,“ said Petek.

Yet another photo app or what?

Unlike the other photo apps abounding on the market that are push-based and often lead users to flooding the world with pics and selfies, Povio is a demand-driven sharing app. Through the sleek designed platform, users can “ping” their friends, asking for their current P.O.V. (point of view). The pinged friends in question will then have three seconds to capture their surroundings, without the possibility to pick a photo from a library or to edit it.

More spontaneous and less narcissistic than Instagram or its other counterparts, the app went viral in Slovenia, and claims to have achieved 35% of the user base that Twitter has in the country within six months. Since then, Povio has been working on its design, taking its user experience to a whole new level. Moving to California, the team started hustling at Santa Clara University four weeks ago and got 1200 sing ups, with 55% of them now pinging daily. “That is a great result – even better than the one we had back home – we are happy with the way things are going right now,” Petek said.

Thanks to Urska Renier for the lead into the story!


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Estimote talks Y Combinator experience
paulc Posted On September 26, 2013


In Roald Dahl’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there was a massive search for the golden tickets that would grant their holders a tour of Willy Wonka’s factory. For startups all over the world, a ticket to Y Combinator is just as precious. However, to get in, they have to go through an X-Factor type auditioning process where Paul Graham, the founder of Viaweb, is among the ones telling you whether you have “it”or not. Two local Krakow guys were able to convince Graham that they do have it. Yet, Jakub Krzych and Lukasz Kostka had to try three times to get a chance to take part in the startup summer camp. 

Takeaways from the US

Earlier this week, Krzych and Kostka – founders of Polish startup Estimote, hosted a Hive53 Swarm at the Stage in Krakow. The goal: to inspire fellow startups and to encourage them to apply to accelerators such as Y Combinator. “Networking” and “access” seemed to be the buzzwords of the night. Taking part in the programme is like getting into a prestigious university, it allows you access to some of the most influential people in tech and business, said the duo. 

Discover the best deals with Estimote

As it is hard for retailers to make their customers aware of recent deals and GPS data basically stops at the front door of any building, Estimote have thought of a solution extend that reach. That’s where their iBeacon takes over. The pebble-sized sensors they have developed are placed on strategic surfaces in retail spaces, while the customer can download an app on their smartphones. As they pass certain sensors, their smartphones deliver the deals of the day or special deals on certain products. At the same time, the retail operator can gather in-store traffic pattern data to help them more effectively plan their store layout.

iBeacon has previously won the Best Hardware Startup Award at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. 

A one-on-one with the co-founders

According to Krzych and Kostka, Estimote currently has paying customers in the thousands but specific figures are kept confidentialdue to the competitiveness of the market. Despite their recent accelerator experience, Krzych stressed that “the company is still young and there is much to do.” As for now, they are getting funding from a number of different investors both local ones and such they met at Y Combinator. The company is currently based in Krakow, but also has an office in Silicon Valley.

Comparing the scene between the US and Poland, the co-founders were impressed with the ambition and focus of American startups, stressing that they are very confident in their visions and provide a supportive atmosphere. “I wish that some of these would find their way to Poland,” said Krzych. 

The team’s plan is to build a long-term enterprise that will provide the best user experience to their customers. “The Y Combinator is amazing to take part in but it is not a necessary ingredient for success,” said Krzych. Paul Graham told them to “build something that people want to use” and that seems to be crucial for success.


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