Casper raises $100 million for Unicorn Status

Online mattress retailer Casper Sleep has reached unicorn status after receiving $100 million in funding at a 1.1 billion dollar valuation.

According to Bloomberg, investors in the funding round include Target, New Enterprise Associates and Norwest Venture Partners, as well as Dani Reiss, the CEO of Canada Goose Holdings and Gordon Segal, co-founder and former chairman of Crate & Barrel.

The funding will be used to boost its international expansion, as well as the growth of its physical retail stores.

“We are in the very early chapters of our growth story as demand for Casper products continues to expand across the globe,” Casper Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Philip Krim said in a statement. “Today’s financing accelerates Casper’s vision to become the world’s largest end-to-end sleep company. Our growth will continue to be catalyzed by state-of-the-art sleep products, best-in-class customer experiences, and world-class leadership.”

Casper has previously raised $240 million in equity funding from investors Leonardo DiCaprio and 50 Cent, as well as institutional investors, including Lerer Hippeau.

Founded in 2014, Casper’s revenue last year surpassed $400 million. The company isn’t profitable yet, with losses at $64 million last year, but the company is projecting that it will become profitable on an EBITDA basis this year with projected revenues of $556 million. An IPO is expected to be the company’s next step.

And last year the company revealed plans to open the doors of 200 brick-and-mortar stores after experimenting with pop-up shops. The company’s first brick-and-mortar location is in New York City and features six mini-bedrooms. In those spaces, customers are able to test out Casper’s products, such as pillows, sheets and duvets. The store will also host community events focused on sleep and wellness.

“Buying a mattress or sheets or pillows is one of the most intimate purchases you’ll make,” Krim said at the time. “You should be mentally relaxed and comfortable so you can find the right product.”

In addition to pop-up stores, the company has experimented with trucks containing four napping pods, called “Napmobiles,” which gave customers an opportunity to try out the company’s mattresses.

Source. Pymnts.com, March 28, 2019

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Aurora Nets $530M Series B For Self-Driving Tech

By Mary Ann Azevedo

Self-driving car startup Aurora has raised $530 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital.

The round, which also included participation from Amazon and T. Rowe Price, is said to have lifted the three-year-old company’s valuation to over $2.5 billion, according to TechCrunch.

The Palo Alto-based company has been a standout in the autonomous vehicle space largely due to the caliber of its founding team, which includes pioneers in the field from Uber, Google, and Tesla. This round brings its total raised to date to $620 million. It raised a $90 million Series A in February 2018 from Greylock Partners and Index Ventures.

Although it was founded in 2016, Aurora didn’t emerge out of stealth mode until January 2018. The company is working on technology to develop Level 4 and Level 5 (fully autonomous in all circumstances) vehicles and has struck partnerships with large automakers such as Volkswagen and Hyundai.

As mentioned above, all three of Aurora’s founders—Sterling Anderson, Drew Bagnell, and Chris Urmson—are self-driving veterans. Crunchbase News’s Savannah Dowling reported last August, “Interestingly, in a tech world where brains and ego often go hand-in-hand, Aurora emphasizes character and lack of ego in its hiring process.” According to this CNN piece, “its values include ‘no jerks’ and ‘operate with integrity.’ “

Source. Crunchbase News, February 8, 2019

Healthcare Analytics firm Aetion gets 27M from biopharma, healthcare companies

By Alaric DeArment

A healthcare analytics company that provides data for life sciences companies, payers, providers and regulatory agencies has attracted an infusion of investment from several healthcare companies.

New York-based Aetion said Tuesday that it received a $27 million investment from drugmakers Sanofi and UCB, as well as McKesson Ventures and Horizon Health Services. Amgen Ventures had invested money earlier, while existing investors participating included NEA, Flare Capital and Lakestar. The investment caps a $63 million Series B funding round and brings the total amount of funding the company has received to $77 million since it was launched in 2015.

Aetion plans to use the funding to build up its product, the Aetion Evidence Platform, and move into therapeutic area-related intelligence, outcomes-based contracting for payers and promote RWE globally. It noted that RWE is particularly important for value-based care.

The company’s focus is on real-world evidence, delivered through the platform, which analyzes data to produce what it calls transparent, rapid and scientifically validated answers on treatments, costs and outcomes. “We’re entering a new era in which nearly the entire healthcare ecosystem – from biopharma and regulators to payers and technology companies – recognizes the importance of using real-world evidence to reduce the time and cost to bring new therapies to market,” CEO Carolyn Magill said in a statement. “This funding demonstrates that the industry’s leaders, who are using our technology to drive healthcare’s most critical decisions, view Aetion as a trusted partner vital to their long-term success.”

The company said its product is used by eight of the 15 largest biopharma companies, payers, academic institutions and international regulatory bodies, including the Food and Drug Administration. The company started its partnership with the FDA in 2018 to recreate 30 randomized clinical trials through real-world evidence in order to demonstrate RWE’s value as an “accelerant” to drug approval and access decisions, in a study titled DUPLICATE. The study is referenced in the FDA’s RWE program framework.

The FDA announced the framework in December, with the goal of using RWE to support drug development. The idea is to use information gathered from patients and healthcare professionals in order to inform and shape the agency’s decisions across its development efforts around pharmaceuticals and biologics. It’s part of the 21st Century Cures Act, which requires the FDA to release a plan for how it will continue to advance those efforts.

Source. MedCity News, Alaric DeArment, February 6, 2019