Dr. Joe DeSimone took his own path to entrepreneurship. His latest venture, Carbon, is changing the way things are made.
He’s assembled one of the most impressive Board of Directors and line up of investors to transform the $300 billion manufacturing industry.
Joe recently appeared as a guest on the DealMakers Podcast. During his exclusive interview, he shared how his team is transforming how the world makes things, the fundraising process, what it’s like building a nearly 500 person company in less than 6 years, and many more topics.
From Academia to Entrepreneurship
Joe DeSimone was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Ever since high school, Joe found he had a knack for chemistry. For both understanding it and for teaching it.
He attended Ursinus College, and then Virginia Tech for his Ph.D. On a tip from a faculty advisor, he went to check out the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill—-one of the top 10 chemistry departments in the country.
If he would teach organic and polymer chemistry, then they would give him $500,000 to start a research program. He was convinced. At UNC, he enjoyed a highly successful career as a professor for 25 years.
Joe taught a lot of students chemistry and mentored many researchers. He learned that people have very different learning styles. From his perspective, if you want to be a great teacher, you have to take responsibility for explaining complicated topics in accessible ways.
It turns out that is a really important trait for entrepreneurs too. It’s a valuable skill whether you’re doing it in a classroom setting, talking to VCs or investors, or your own employees. The importance of bringing people along with you.
His position in academia enabled Joe DeSimone to pursue a handful of interesting startups based on his research before he launching his newest venture, Carbon, in 2013.
His first company was BioStent. A partnership with an interventional cardiologist at Duke University. They developed a coronary stent that is polymeric instead of metal-based. It dissolves in the body after 18 months, once blood vessels can operate on their own again. The company was acquired by Guidant, and then Abbott.
Next, it was Liquidia Technologies, a partnership with one of Joe’s Ph.D. students including Jason Rolland, now SVP of Materials at Carbon. Liquidia went IPO last year.
They developed technology that leveraged tools from the computer industry to make precision nanoparticles. It spawned new and more effective ways to deliver medicines to the airway.
It has proven valuable in improving treatment approaches for diseases like pulmonary arterial hypertension, and in creating next-generation vaccine platforms for infectious diseases and certain cancers.
After spending 25 as a faculty member at UNC, the opportunity to go to Silicon Valley and take on a new entrepreneurial challenge was something Joe couldn’t pass up.
UNC agreed he could take a sabbatical to pursue his idea. That was five years ago.
Departing Academia for Silicon Valley
When Joe left North Carolina for Silicon Valley to found Carbon, he didn’t know what the future would hold. Carbon is now one of the world’s leading digital manufacturing companies.
Based in Redwood City, Carbon’s mission is to enable companies to make breakthrough products that can improve human health and well being, transform industries, and change the world.
Joe launched the company and its groundbreaking Digital Light Synthesis™ (DLS) technology on the TED stage in 2015. DLS fuses light and oxygen to rapidly produce products from a pool of resin. Using DLS technology, Carbon is enabling companies like Adidas, Riddell, Ford and Johnson & Johnson to create breakthrough products at speeds and volumes never before possible, finally fulfilling the promise of 3D printing.
Joe believes that empowering product teams to make breakthrough products and bring them to market faster will change the way we live.
Carbon has cracked the code on 3D printing at scale. The manufacturing industry is a $12 trillion market and manufacturing polymers is a $330 billion market. There is enormous potential here for Carbon to lead the digital revolution in manufacturing.
Creating a Company Differentiated by its Technology, Business Model and Team
With a team of nearly 500 employees around the world, Carbon has also assembled an impressive team of board members and investors while raising $680 million in the process at a $2.5 billion valuation.
Carbon’s board includes former Chairman and CEO of DuPont, Ellen Kullman, former CEO of Ford Motor Company, and former CEO of Boeing’s Aircraft Division, Alan Mulally, and Sequoia’s Jim Goetz.
Some of their investors include Sequoia, Google Ventures, GE, Adidas, BMW, Johnson & Johnson, and JSR. They’ve also got Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, and Madrone Capital Partners as well as investment from additional international sovereign funds.
Storytelling is everything in fundraising and Carbon was able to master this. Being able to capture the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides is the key. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.
Critical Ingredients for a Successful Company
During the interview, Joe shared three of the most important components of building a successful company as being:
1. The importance of IP and patent-protection
2. Building highly differentiated technology
3. Assembling a world class team of people that are committed, passionate, and talented
DeSimone also shared his thoughts on the similarities between academia and entrepreneurship such as the importance of bringing people along with you and painting a vision for the future and how the world can be different.
Listen in to the full podcast episode to find out more, including:
I am a serial entrepreneur and the author of the The Art of Startup Fundraising. With a foreword by ‘Shark Tank‘ star Barbara Corcoran, and published by John Wiley & Sons, the book was named one of the best books for entrepreneurs. The book offers a step-by-step guide to today‘s way of raising money for entrepreneurs. Most recently, I built and exited CoFoundersLab which is one of the largest communities of founders online. Prior to CoFoundersLab, I worked as a lawyer at King & Spalding where I was involved in one of the biggest investment arbitration cases in history ($113 billion at stake). I am an active speaker and have given guest lectures at the Wharton School of Business, Columbia Business School, and at NYU Stern School of Business. I have been involved with the JOBS Act since inception and was invited to the White House and the US House of Representatives to provide my stands on the new regulatory changes concerning fundraising online
The Apollo 11 astronauts are transcendent leadership role models.
Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
To paraphrase Walter Cronkite, it was, and remains to this day, the greatest adventure in the history of mankind.
The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing says much about the capability of our country, the miracles of science and engineering and the commitment of the NASA team. But it also offers important lessons on leadership, which are as relevant today as they were in July, 1969.
These are leadership lessons that transcend time and circumstance, which corporate executives and board members may well want to consider as they commemorate this great event.
Lesson #1: Visions Can Come True. JFK’s memorable 1962 “Moon Speech” set forth the vision of Apollo. It included the famous “…because it is hard” acknowledgment, and the equally inspiring charge that “…to do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out—then we must be bold.” Some 57 years later, vision, boldness and the motivation they generate in others remain essential tools by which leaders take organizations to great heights. Their absence can create insurmountable barriers to growth.
Lesson #2: Teamwork Matters. The three Apollo 11 astronauts were not close friends. They had different personalities. Armstrong was emotionally remote. Aldrin acerbic and abrasive. Collins more “happy go lucky.” But they made it work; they interacted successfully under the most extreme circumstances. For leaders don’t need to be BFFs with their colleagues in order to be effective. They do, however, need to be accepting and respectful of who their colleagues are, and the contributions they offer.
Lesson #3: Confidence. They believed in their systems in spite of the risks: the Saturn V liftoff, the LM ascent engine firing, trans-earth injection, the re-entry and splashdown. Even at NASA’s famous 99.9% reliability standard, much could still go wrong. Yet they moved forward in reliance on confidence in the technical competency of the workforce and the efforts to remove risk from the conceptual design. Where leaders can establish an organizational commitment to quality, safety and risk management, managers can more comfortably implement even the most aggressive of products.
Lesson #4: We Need The Michael Collinses. It was not for Collins to land on the moon. It was for him to orbit the moon in solitude, waiting/hoping for the return of Armstrong and Aldrin from the lunar surface. His glory would be less; history would not treat him nearly as prominently. And he was good with it. Indeed, every organization needs leaders content to do their job, who are willing to be part of a larger effort and not likely to complain or worry about more glamorous tasks being assigned to others.
Lesson #5: Command Decisions Count. The legend is indeed the fact. Armstrong really did land the Lunar Module, manually, with just 16 seconds of fuel remaining. Aborting the descent was not an option. Like all good leaders, Armstrong was in charge. He knew the terrain. He knew his machine. He knew the stakes and he was going to get the job done. The absolute ultimate command decision. Leaders who “sit in the left seat” must be prepared to “make the call,” to make the most difficult of decisions, often in the most trying of circumstances.
Lesson #6: Encourage Ideas. It wasn’t store-bought. There wasn’t a model or prototype. The enormous “crawler” that transported the Saturn V from the Vehicle Assembly Plant to the launchpad was the brainchild of a member of the launch operations team, whose name is now lost to history. He reportedly got the idea from watching the strip-mining process. Ingenuity and creativity often have wildly diverse parentage, and smart leaders will encourage ideas from all elements of the workforce, starting with the mailroom and continuing up the ladder.
Lesson #7: “Code 1202” Events. It was the Apollo version of a “black swan.” On final lunar descent, an unusual program alarm (code 1202) flashed, indicating a problem with the guidance computer. With the landing in balance, a young control officer in Houston, familiar with the code from earlier simulations, provided the critical “go on that alarm” assurance. No company is immune to a Code 1202 event. The unforeseeable will occur. But leadership can set expectations concerning risk evaluation that will help the company respond in crisis situations.
Lesson #8: It Takes A Village. A very big village, in fact. The Apollo project team was estimated at over 300,000 people. It was an amazing partnership between the government, private industry and the astronauts—and, ultimately the American public. And on their final flight transmission, the Apollo astronauts paid a humble video tribute to that partnership. Effective leadership recognizes that success often requires a combination of management vision and workforce commitment. Rarely is it one or the other, and almost never “just about me.”
Lesson #9: Learn from Mistakes. The great success of Apollo 11 was made possible in large part by the tragic failure of Apollo 1. That catastrophe forced NASA to confront its culture of complacency for risk and safety, and to restructure its entire operations. Indeed, great lessons can be learned from failure as well as success; from accepting responsibility for non-performance and moving forward from there. Even on the largest possible scale, leaders never stop learning-even from their own (or their organization’s) mistakes.
Lesson #10: Otherworldly Commitment. Armstrong attributed Apollo’s success to its nature as “a project in which everybody involved was…interested…involved…and fascinated by the job they were doing.” (“Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon” by Craig Nelson (Penguin, 2009) In today’s business environment, when leaders are increasingly focused on workforce culture and satisfaction, major initiatives are more likely to succeed when employees, like the Apollo team, are motivated “to [do] their job a little better than they have to.”
There is an understandable tendency to marginalize important events that happened long ago. Men in a spaceship—how interesting, but of course it was long ago, and we’ve progressed so much since then. It’s hardly relevant to our world today. But as to Apollo 11, that would be a huge mistake; it still matters, very much so.
In his Farewell Address to the nation, President Reagan spoke to the lasting value of the American heritage. He warned of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. “If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are.” And, one might add, of what we are capable of achieving, as a nation, as individuals—and as organizations. That’s the transcendent lesson of Apollo 11. And it’s a lesson that is meaningful in the boardroom, and the executive suite.
I wish to acknowledge “Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon” by Craig Nelson (Penguin, 2009) as a resource in the preparation of this post.
I am a partner in the Chicago office of international law firm McDermott Will & Emery and earned my law degree at Northwestern University. I represent corporations (and their officers and directors) in connection with governance, corporate structure, fiduciary duties, officer-director liability issues, charitable trust law and corporate alliances. Over the course of my 39-year career, I have served as outside governance counsel to many prominent national corporations. I speak and write on a range of emerging trends and issues in corporate governance to help leaders understand the implications and how they might be relevant to their own circumstances. Writing is a passion of mine and I do my best writing on the porch of my home in Michigan.
Each year for the past five, Forbes has searched the country for the 25 fast-growing, venture-backed startups most likely to reach $1 billion in value. Graduates include: food delivery service DoorDash, home seller Opendoor, luggage brand Away and synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks.
This year, with the help of TrueBridge Capital Partners, we scoured the country again for budding unicorns. TrueBridge analyzed the finances of more than 150 startups, then our reporters dug deeper. That research caught problems at San Francisco-based Cleo, a parenting app with a troubled workplace and a CEO who lied about her age and background. The company was removed from consideration after our investigation, and its CEO resigned in mid-June. (The full story is here.)
Michael Gronager
CHAINALYSIS
FOUNDERS: Michael Gronager (CEO), Jonathan Levin, Jan Moller
EQUITY RAISED: $53 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $8 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Accel, Benchmark
New York-based Chainalysis makes cryptocurrency investigation software that can shine light on how people use bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and more. Financial institutions use the technology to screen customers and comply with regulations designed to prevent money laundering, while government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can identify illicit transactions and investigate alleged criminals. Before teaming up to found Chainalysis, CEO Michael Gronager, 49, cofounded cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, while CTO Jan Moller, 47, built the Mycelium cryptocurrency wallet.
Alan Naumann
CONTRAST SECURITY
FOUNDERS: Arshan Dabirsiaghi, Jeff Williams; CEO: Alan Naumann
EQUITY RAISED: $122 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $25 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Acero Capital, Battery Ventures, General Catalyst, Warburg Pincus
In 2010, software security analyst Jeff Williams, 52, started dedicating resources at his consultancy, Aspect, to developing a program that would automate software security analysis. In 2014, he and former Aspect analyst Arshan Dabirsiaghi, 36, founded Los Altos, California-based Contrast Security to monitor the code within running apps and directly notify developers of potential vulnerabilities. “The work that previously had to go through security experts now goes directly to developers,” says Dabirsiaghi, now the company’s chief scientist. In 2016, the company brought in an outside chief executive, Alan Naumann, formerly CEO of online fraud detection startup 41st Parameter, to expand the business.
Lior Div
CYBEREASON
FOUNDERS: Lior Div (CEO), Yossi Naar, Yonatan Striem-Amit
EQUITY RAISED: $189 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $50 million
LEAD INVESTORS: CRV, Lockheed Martin, Softbank, Spark Capital
Cofounders Lior Div, Yossi Naar, and Yonatan Striem-Amit met during their service in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite intelligence unit, Unit 8200, fertile ground for many high-tech startups. While working on cybersecurity in the military, they came up with the idea for Cybereason, a cloud-based cybersecurity platform specializing in continuous monitoring and response to advanced cybersecurity threats. The company launched in 2012, and relocated from Israel to Boston the next year. “You provide value by helping a big organization not to be in the news as someone that gets hacked,” says Div, 41.
Jason Wilk
DAVE
FOUNDERS: Paras Chitrakar, Jason Wilk (CEO), John Wolanin
EQUITY RAISED: $13 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $19 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Mark Cuban, Section 32
As a college student at Loyola Marymount University, Jason Wilk, now 34, blew through his budget, collecting overdraft fees. Wilk, an avid “Redditor,” saw that overdraft fees are a common complaint among users. So in 2016, he founded Dave, short for David, who beat Goliath, which Wilk sees as the big banks. The app tracks expenses and warns when a user’s account is in danger of being overdrawn. It hit a nerve: Dave was Apple’s “app of the day” in April 2017, and has been downloaded nearly 10 million times in two years. “Entrepreneurs can keep their ear to the ground for the next idea,” Wilk says. “Any idea that can be Reddit tested is a good place to start.”
Blake Murray
DIVVY
FOUNDERS: Blake Murray (CEO), Alex Bean
EQUITY RAISED: $257 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $8 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Insight Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Pelion Venture Partners
Expense tracking service Divvy is taking on Concur and Expensify by offering its budgeting, fraud detection, and spend management tools for free. Instead of charging per user, Lehi, Utah-based Divvy gives businesses custom Mastercards and takes a cut of merchants’ fees to the bank when people make purchases. Founders (and high school buddies) Alex Bean and Blake Murray, both 35, have won over more than 3,000 corporate customers so far, including WordPress, Evernote and Qualtrics.
Luis von Ahn
DUOLINGO
FOUNDERS: Luis von Ahn (CEO), Severin Hacker
EQUITY RAISED: $108 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $36 million
LEAD INVESTORS: CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures
The world’s most popular digital language-learning tool, seven-year-old Duolingo has 28 million monthly active users. Most use the free version of its gamified courses. Revenue, largely from subscription fees from ad-free Duolingo Plus, is expected to double this year. CEO Luis von Ahn, 39, is a 2006 winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant and a former Carnegie Mellon computer science professor. Before founding Pittsburgh-based Duolingo, he sold two inventions to Google, including reCAPTCHA, the software that spits out the squiggly lines you type to alert a website that you are not a bot. An immigrant from Guatemala City who says learning English transformed his life, he’s driven to offer free language education to the masses. For our feature on Duolingo, click here.
Max Rhodes
FAIRE
FOUNDERS: Marcelo Cortes, Daniele Perito, Max Rhodes (CEO)
EQUITY RAISED: $116 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $100 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Forerunner Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Y Combinator
In a bid to help mom-and-pop stores survive in the age of Amazon, Faire wants to take the risk and hassle out of wholesale purchasing. The San Francisco-based company helps retailers discover and buy new products online, and will accept free returns from them within 60 days for items that don’t sell. Today, it offers 5,000 brands to 35,000 stores. CEO Max Rhodes, a 32-year-old former Square employee, came up with the idea after he started working with a New Zealand-based umbrella brand and spent thousands of dollars to sit at a tradeshow booth to convince U.S. store owners to stock the high-end umbrellas.
Dylan Field
FIGMA
FOUNDERS: Dylan Field (CEO), Evan Wallace
EQUITY RAISED: $83 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $3 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Greylock, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia
Figma wants to move design online, casting aside the old model of software downloads and siloed creation in favor of a browser-based tool where designers can work and collaborate together. Founders Evan Wallace, 29, and Dylan Field, 27, met at Brown University—Wallace graduated, Field dropped out with a Thiel Fellowship—and launched the San Francisco-based company in 2012. Five years later, Figma started charging professionals to use its product. (Individuals are still free.) Today, professionals pay $12 per editor per month and businesses $45 per editor month to use Figma. More than 5,000 teams, at companies like Microsoft, Volvo, Uber and Square, are users. “Design is like this viral infectant because once your competitor is well-designed, you have to be well-designed, otherwise you’ll be disrupted,” says Field.
Matt Elenjickal
FOURKITES
FOUNDERS: Arun Chandrasekaran, Matt Elenjickal (CEO)
EQUITY RAISED: $101 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $16 million
LEAD INVESTORS: August Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners
Matt Elenjickal, 37, a logistics geek with an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, founded FourKites in 2014 to help companies know where their deliveries are, when they’ll arrive and what’s going on along the way. Its predictive supply-chain management software is now used by more than 260 of the world’s top shippers — and upwards of 500,000 loads per day — including Best Buy, Kraft Heinz, Nestlé and Smithfield Foods. “If you are a shipper, once the truck leaves your facility you have no idea what is happening,” Elenjickal says. “That is how supply chains are run even now without a solution like FourKites. You cannot compete against Amazon.”
Mathilde Collin
FRONT
FOUNDERS: Mathilde Collin (CEO), Laurent Perrin
EQUITY RAISED: $79 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $16 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Sequoia, Uncork Capital
Mathilde Collin, an alumna of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, got the idea for Front while at her first job after graduate school. “I saw how much time was wasted with people sorting through their emails,” she says. So in 2013, she launched the San Francisco-based startup to help companies become more productive with a shared email inbox that incorporates Facebook, Twitter and SMS, and encourages team collaboration. Today, Front has 5,000 customers including Shopify, MailChimp and Stripe.
David Gandler
FUBOTV
FOUNDERS: Sung Ho Choi, David Gandler (CEO), Alberto Horihuela
EQUITY RAISED: $145 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $74 million
LEAD INVESTORS: 21st Century Fox, Northzone, Sky
David Gandler, 44, a longtime network sales exec, launched FuboTV in 2015 to tap into pent-up demand in the United States for overseas soccer leagues. FuboTV offered live streams of soccer channels such as GolTV and Benfica TV to start, then expanded programming through deals with beIN Sports and Univision. Today, New York-based FuboTV is generally a cheaper alternative to cable (starting at $54.99 a month) that offers more than 90 channels.
Stuart Landesberg
GROVE COLLABORATIVE
FOUNDERS: Chris Clark, Stuart Landesberg (CEO), Jordan Savage
EQUITY RAISED: $213 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $104 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Bullpen Capital, General Atlantic, Lone Pine Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Norwest Venture Partners, Serious Change
Ask Grove Collaborative CEO Stuart Landesberg, 34, who his typical customer is, and he’ll give you a specific answer: “A 29-year-old mother of two working as a substitute teacher in Lawrence, Kansas.” Even in the age of Amazon, Grove has carved out a $104 million niche in e-commerce by selling natural products, from laundry detergent to sponges, in easy-to-order shipments. Around 60% of its revenue comes from products not sold on Amazon, says Landesberg. But he wants to do more than sell Seventh Generation or Method soaps online. In 2016, Grove started to manufacture its own all-natural products that now make up nearly 50% of its sales. The key? Designing products that are easier to ship. Its glass cleaner, for example, is highly-concentrated and smaller than a tube of toothpaste.
Augusto Marietti
KONG
FOUNDERS: Augusto Marietti (CEO), Marco Palladino
EQUITY RAISED: $71 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $5 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, Index Ventures, New Enterprise Associates
Kong acts as a gatekeeper to companies’ APIs (code developers use to build apps) and monitors how often they’re used. Augusto Marietti, 31, and Marco Palladino, 30, launched the company out of a garage in Milan, where they both attended university, and were constantly flying back and forth to Silicon Valley to fundraise. “At this stage, we barely had enough money to eat,” Marietti says. “We definitely lost a few pounds when we were first starting up.” Now based in San Francisco, Kong has successfully penetrated the enterprise market with 130 customers that include SoulCycle, Yahoo Japan and WeWork.
Jack Altman
LATTICE
FOUNDERS: Jack Altman (CEO), Eric Koslow
EQUITY RAISED: $27 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $7 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Shasta Ventures, Thrive Capital
Lattice founders Jack Altman, 30, and Eric Koslow, 28, learned first-hand the impact of work culture while working at startup Teespring, which sells custom t-shirts. In 2015, they decided to do something about it, starting Lattice. The San Francisco-based company’s human resources software uses surveys to shift the focus of performance management from employee evaluation to career development. Today, Lattice works with 1,300 customers, including Coinbase, Instacart, Slack and WeWork. “Employees are looking for more meaning from work than ever before, and have more visibility into and access to other jobs than ever before,” Altman says. Lattice helps their employers step up.
Lidia Yan
NEXT TRUCKING
FOUNDERS: Elton Chung, Lidia Yan (CEO)
EQUITY RAISED: $125 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $46 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Brookfield Ventures, China Energy Group, Sequoia
Cofounded by husband and wife team Elton Chung and Lidia Yan in 2015, Los Angeles-based Next Trucking is moving freight brokerage online. While other startups like Convoy and Uber Freight move cargo from point A to point B, Next Trucking focuses on drayage, or the “first-mile” of transferring goods from port to warehouse. “Drayage is a lot more complicated because it involves terminals and ports,” says Yan, 38. As a result, Next Trucking has doubled revenue every year since 2016, reaching $46 million in 2018. Yan forecasts revenue will hit $120 million this year, helped by large contracts with retailers Dollar General, Rite Aid and Steve Madden. For our feature on Next Trucking, click here.
Jack Conte
PATREON
FOUNDERS: Jack Conte (CEO), Sam Yam
EQUITY RAISED: $166 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $35 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Freestyle Capital, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Thrive Capital
Musician turned entrepreneur, Jack Conte, 35, wants to break the “starving artist” archetype by helping creators earn a regular income. “Deciding to be an artist shouldn’t have to be a difficult conversation,” says Conte. “It should feel like a viable career choice.” Using Patreon, artists offer exclusive experiences in return for contributions from their subscribers or “patrons.” HBO’s Issa Rae, Humans of New York founder Brandon Stanton and comedian Heather McDonald are some of the creators currently using Patreon and by 2019, the company expects to pay out more than $1 billion to its users.
Denis Mars
PROXY
FOUNDERS: Denis Mars (CEO), Simon Ratner
EQUITY RAISED: $14 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $1 million
LEAD INVESTOR: Kleiner Perkins
The Proxy app is like having a set of keys on your smartphone: Your profile’s signal gives you access to any building where you’re registered, eliminating the need for traditional ID cards and keys. It’s a straightforward idea, but Australian-expat founders Denis Mars, 42, and Simon Ratner, 39, are confident that they’ve just scratched the surface of its potential. So far, San Francisco-based Proxy has proven popular with commercial real estate clients like WeWork. Mars and Ratner now hope to expand their technology (which includes the app, management platform and signal-reading hardware) to identity verification for ride-sharing and event check-in.
Ofer Bengal
REDIS LABS
FOUNDERS: Ofer Bengal (CEO), Yiftach Shoolman
EQUITY RAISED: $147 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $50 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Bain Capital Ventures, Francisco Partners, Goldman Sachs, Viola Ventures
Israeli tech veterans Ofer Bengal and Yiftach Shoolman set up a fast-database service, in 2011, to help businesses looking to speed up responses on their apps. Redis Labs relies on what’s known as NoSQL, an alternative form of compiling data that is faster than traditional models. That lightening-fast processing speed has helped it sign on FedEx, Mastercard and other corporate behemoths. To scale up quickly, the Mountain View, California-based company offered a free, open-source version to hook developers. In 2013, it rolled out a paid version with costs starting at $5 per month per gigabyte. “You can’t do without open source if you want rapid adoption,” says Bengal.
Matt Oppenheimer
REMITLY
FOUNDERS: Shivaas Gulati, Josh Hug, Matt Oppenheimer (CEO)
EQUITY RAISED: $312 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $80 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Bezos Expeditions, DFJ Venture Capital (now Threshold Ventures), Generation Investment Management, Naspers’ PayU, QED Investors, Stripes Group
Remitly is taking on Western Union with lower fees — estimated 1.5% on average vs. the money-transfer giant’s 5%. Matt Oppenheimer, who had worked for Barclays in Kenya, and his cofounders launched the business in 2011 to help people in developed nations like the U.S. and Australia send money cheaply to relatives in developing countries like Mexico and the Philippines. Today, Remitly serves 60 countries and processes $6 billion a year in money transfers, about 1% of the nearly $700 billion remittance market. Already one of the largest fintech firms targeting immigrants, the Seattle startup’s long-term goal is to branch out into other financial services, potentially including credit cards, personal loans and auto loans.
Xuan Yong
RIGUP
FOUNDERS: Xuan Yong (CEO), Mike Witte
EQUITY RAISED: $94 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $21 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Bedrock Capital, Founders Fund, Quantum Energy Partners
There are nearly 1,000 rigs drilling for oil and gas in the U.S. Each well requires the input of dozens of service companies and workers — everything from high-horsepower compressors for fracking, to miles of steel pipe, and millions of gallons of water and truckloads of sand. Cofounder Xuan Yong, formerly of Citadel and D.E. Shaw, believes RigUp can improve on the good ol’ boy network by more efficiently connecting the “hyperfragmented” market of roughnecks, engineers and business owners with the big oil companies that call the shots. RigUp pre-vets workers and vendors, and creams an estimated 4% off every contract made via its online platform. Yong isn’t worried about machines invading the oilpatch. “Even with A.I. there will be demand growth for labor,” he says. “Field tickets are still signed on paper and stamped.” For now.
Roth Martin
ROTHY’S
FOUNDERS: Stephen Hawthornthwaite, Roth Martin (interim CEO)
EQUITY RAISED: $42 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $140 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Goldman Sachs, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Founders Roth Martin, a former art gallery owner, and Stephen Hawthornthwaite (aka “Hawthy”), a former investment banker, launched the footwear brand after listening to their wives complain about the lack of stylish, comfortable shoes. Rothy’s 3D-knitted round-toe and point-toe flats, made from recycled plastic water bottles, have gained cult status. In just three years, it expanded rapidly with direct-to-consumer sales online, reaching revenue of $140 million last year. For our feature on Rothy’s, click here.
Karthik Rau
SIGNALFX
FOUNDERS: Phillip Liu, Karthik Rau (CEO)
EQUITY RAISED: $179 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $25 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, General Catalyst, Tiger Global Management
SignalFx monitors cloud infrastructure in real time for companies like Yelp, Shutterfly and HubSpot. In 2013, Karthik Rau, 41, who previously worked at tech startups LoudCloud and VMware, founded the company with ex-Facebook software architect Phillip Liu, 51. While competitors collect and query data in batches every two to three minutes, SignalFx evaluates and alerts users to anomalies in two to five seconds. “The difference between getting reliable alerts within seconds and getting them in minutes is the difference of seamlessly dealing with an issue,” says Rau. “Or having all of your users on Twitter complaining.”
Paul Dabrowski
SYNTHEGO
FOUNDERS: Paul Dabrowski (CEO), Michael Dabrowski
EQUITY RAISED: $157 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $20 million
LEAD INVESTORS: Founders Fund, 8VC
Gene-editing tool Crispr has unleashed a gold rush for new products made possible by cheaply and easily editing DNA. Synthego is cashing in by selling the genomic equivalent of pickaxes, shovels, maps and other tools. Its ready-made and custom kits allow researchers in academia and the private sector to rapidly develop gene-edited products, including new medical treatments. Its founders, brothers Paul and Michael Dabrowski, 34 and 38, previously worked at SpaceX as engineers and drew on that experience to bring a new way of thinking to biotech.
Umar Afridi
TRUEPILL
FOUNDERS: Umar Afridi (CEO), Sid Viswanathan
EQUITY RAISED: $13 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $48 million
LEAD INVESTOR: Initialized Capital
If you buy birth control from Nurx or hair-loss products from Hims, behind-the-scenes pharmacy Truepill will actually fill and deliver your prescription. The three-year-old startup’s founders Umar Afridi, 37, a former retail pharmacist, and Sid Viswanathan, 35, who previously worked at Johnson & Johnson and LinkedIn, see a growing market in bringing technology and efficiency to pharmacy. Although Truepill started with direct-to-consumer brands, it’s now making a bigger play to bring on corporate customers with pricey, specialty medications.
Filip Kaliszan
VERKADA
FOUNDERS: Benjamin Bercovitz, Filip Kaliszan (CEO), James Ren, Hans Robertson
EQUITY RAISED: $59 million
ESTIMATED 2018 REVENUE: $20 million
LEAD INVESTORS: First Round, Meritech, Next47, Sequoia
While many startups have tackled the “smart home” with varying degrees of success, Verkada has exploded in shy of two years on the market by offering big businesses, municipalities and schools a cloud-based system that combines hardware and software to detect movement and easily store and share surveillance streams. In 2019, the company founded by three Stanford graduates and the former cofounder of Meraki (a cloud startup since acquired by Cisco) signed on the city of Memphis — a nearly 1,000-camera contract — Juul Labs and Newtown Public School District, the district of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting tragedy.
Additional reporting by Susan Adams, Elisabeth Brier, Dawn Chmielewski, Lauren Debter, Michael del Castillo, Jillian D’Onfro, Christopher Helman, Jeff Kauflin, Alex Knapp, Alex Konrad, Christian Kreznar and Monica Melton
Cover Photographs by Tim Pannell for Forbes | Illustrations by David Wilson
I head up Forbes’ manufacturing coverage, and write about manufacturing, industrial innovation and consumer products. I previously spent two years on the Forbes’ Entrepr…
I’m a San Francisco-based staff writer for Forbes with a focus on Uber, the sharing economy, and startups. I previously worked for Business Insider, Gigaom, and Wired.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has a terrible human rights record. But the average Filipino is doing better under Duterte.
When it comes to per-capita gross domestic product (GDP), that is. That’s a measure of the total output of a country divided by the number of people in that country.
The Philippines’ per-capita GDP was last recorded at an all-time high of 2,891.36 U.S. dollars in 2017, according to Tradingeconomics.com. That’s well above the average of 1,627.98 USD for the period 1960-2017.
Also, Filipinos are doing better under Duterte when per-capita GDP is adjusted by purchasing power parity (PPP). That measure, too, reached a record 7,599.19 U.S. dollars in 2017, well above the average of 4969.71 USD for the period 1990-2017.
Statistic
2015
2017
Per Capita GDP
$2615.7
$2891.36
Per Capita GDP PPP
6874.4
7599.19
GDP Annual Growth Rate
6.5%
7.2%
Source: Tradingeconomics.com 10/26/2018
To be fair, comparing per-capita GDP in USD for different time periods is a tricky exercise. Numbers can be distorted by population growth and currency fluctuations. For instance, the climb in the Philippines per capita GDP has been helped by a slow-down in population growth. It’s also an ongoing trend that can be traced back to the Aquino administration, which brought macroeconomic stability to the country.
“Aquino is delegating power to competent technocrats and seems to understand what needs to be done to get the lights back on,” wrote Ruchir Sharma in Break Out Nations.
Macroeconomic stability has helped the Philippines economy demonstrate a great deal of resilience in recent years. At the end of 2017, it grew at an annual 6.9% in the September quarter. That’s the strongest growth since the third quarter 2016. And the Philippines’ economy was still growing at 6% at the end of 2018.
Tracing per-capita GDP growth back to the Aquino period certainly raises the question: Who should take credit for the record per-capita GDP, Aquino or Duterte?
Philippines iShares MSCI ETF
Meanwhile, a recent McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) study places the Philippines among the few emerging market economies that are well-prepared to achieve sustained growth over the next decade.
That’s thanks to a rise in gross fixed-capital formation (investment). It reached 695,414.08 PHP million in the second quarter of 2018 from roughly 450,000 PHP million in July of 2015–well above the 303,138.16 PHP million for the period 1998 until 2018, and an all-time high.
Still, the Philippines’ per-capita GDP is equivalent to 23% of the world’s average, which makes Filipinos poor. And a resurgence in the cost of living in recent months makes things worse for them. The Philippines’ annual inflation rate rose to 6.7% in September of 2018 from 6.4% in the August, and compared to market expectations of 6.8%.
That’s the highest reading since February 2009, thanks to soaring food, transportation and utility prices.
Inflation, together with revolution and corruption, has suspended Philippines economic progress before, and it will do it again, if they aren’t addressed effectively.
Pilippines Corruption Rank
So rather than celebrating record per capita GDP, Duterte’s administration should keep an eye on the price of bread and rice. And he should look at his human rights record, which cannot be balanced by any economic record.
My recent book The Ten Golden Rules Of Leadership is published by AMACOM, and can be found here.
Consider two statistics about Indonesia: Economists forecast the country will become the world’s fourth-largest economy by 2050. We also have the world’s highest burden of tuberculosis after India, claiming the lives of 150,000 to 200,000 people every year.
These figures illustrate the extreme inequalities dogging the world’s fourth-most populous nation, despite impressive economic growth in the last decade and cutting poverty by half.
In Jakarta and other main cities, a burgeoning middle class is drawing local and international investors, from vehicle companies to financial services to digital technology to retail and fast food chains. Yet tuberculosis still affects far too many people, particularly poor people suffering from malnutrition, while malaria remains a major problem in the remote, heavily forested province of Papua in eastern Indonesia.
To achieve its full potential, Indonesia needs to tackle inequality by investing more in its people. According to the World Bank, growth has primarily benefited the richest 20% and left the remaining 80% of the population–about 205 million people–behind.
As the Bank’s Human Capital Project points out, education and health are two of the best ways to support prosperity and prepare countries for the economy of the future. With education you can change the fate of a country, but better health is central to human well-being. Healthy people live longer lives, are more productive and save more.
I was born into a working-class family at a time (the 1950s) when most families in Indonesia had no access to healthcare. Thousands of children died each year from preventable diseases such as measles, polio and malaria. My father had a business making pedicabs, while my mother ran a fabric shop in the city. When I became an entrepreneur, I felt compelled to give back to Indonesia. Philanthropy is not about making a donation. It is a commitment related to continuity and sustainability, and requires a well-planned system to have impact.
Since 2015, the Tahir Foundation has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which have played a key role in reversing the course of these epidemics around the word. In Indonesia, the partnership’s efforts are paying off: TB mortality rates have fallen by 44% and TB incidence was down by 14% from 2000 to 2017, thanks to improved case finding and better diagnostics. In 2017, more than half of Indonesia’s districts were officially declared malaria free–a major feat for a diverse archipelago of more than 17,000 islands and more than 300 ethnic groups.
Still, more robust investments are needed. Tuberculosis places a huge social and financial burden on the people who have the disease, as well as on their families and communities. Most of the infections occur in people at their most productive age, draining billions of dollars in loss of productivity due to premature death and medical costs.
I hold the conviction that the private sector and business leaders have an important role to play in public health and development in emerging economies in Southeast Asia, many of which share similar challenges and opportunities. The private sector can bring not only funding, but technical expertise, creativity, and innovation, and are often well positioned to drive policy change.
The government of my country has done a lot for public health, including rolling out a universal health insurance scheme that is designed to provide a wide range of services from maternal care to heart surgery for its entire population by the end of 2019. But the private sector can fill the gaps to complement public resources by expanding access so that all Indonesians benefit from better health.
In 2014, a coalition of Indonesian business leaders, in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, came together to create the Indonesia Health Fund, a significant step toward making Indonesia self-reliant in health funding and a model for philanthropic collaboration in the region. Over the past four years, the fund has contributed to family planning programs, TB research and advocacy programs, as well as TB screenings
It shows what can happen when public and private sectors come together with a common aim. It is more important than ever with the Global Fund now calling on the world to step up the fight against HIV, TB and malaria in the face of new threats from all three diseases. Raising their target of at least $14 billion will help save 16 million lives over the next three years, avert 234 million new cases and infections, and help us get back on track to end these diseases. The fund is calling on the private sector to contribute at least $1 billion of this total. So let us all do our share.
Doctor Yulismar checks the condition of a patient who has tuberculosis bacteria at the Indonesian Association Against Tuberculosis (PPTI) clinic in Jakarta, Indonesia, on March 24, 2016. (Photo: Jefri Tarigan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Disclosure: Dr. Tahir is the owner of the license to publish Forbes Indonesia magazine.
On a sun-filled San Francisco afternoon, Peter Szulczewski is climbing the stairs to the top of a Sansome Street skyscraper, past floors filled with Wish data scientists and engineers, pool tables and DJ equipment. Large windows give way to a stunning view of the city. But most of Szulczewski’s customers don’t work in offices like this or live in Northern California coastal enclaves. In fact, most of them don’t have much money at all. Wish’s customers are typically working-class Americans from places like the Florida Panhandle or East Texas, Dollar Store shoppers who find Amazon Prime’s $120 annual membership too rich for their blood……..
In July 2016, the biggest thing in security was ransomware. Several major ransomware attacks had made headlines in the preceding months, with healthcare hit particularly hard. This was in the early days, before ransomware like WannaCry and NotPetya would take down organizations on a global scale, but even so it was taking up a lot of real estate on security blogs and tech websites.
It’s a fully packed day with earnings from Apple, the start of a Fed meeting, several other major companies reporting, and more concerns about U.S. relations with China. U.S. stocks had a mixed tone in pre-market trading following a similar pattern in Europe and Asia. A development just after the closing bell yesterday could be a factor, as U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges against Chinese smartphone maker Huawei Technologies. One thing markets tend to dislike is uncertainty, and this might create even more. Asian markets took some heat Tuesday, and the Chinese government told Reuters the charges were unfair……….
Not everyone has a financial adviser, and not everyone has the time to read a personal finance book. Luckily, there’s the internet. We’ve made learning about money easier for you by compiling a list of some of our go-to websites for money advice……..
