
Mattress company Casper filed its S-1 this Friday, and we published a breakdown of four things we learned from it (including our attempt to calculate Casperās LTV/CAC, a key D2C ratio that isnāt provided by the company!) The full blog post is available here, but hereās a summary of our key takeaways:
Casper sees itself as a āsleep economyā companyāthis goes beyond mattresses to meditation apps, sleep counseling, and eventually even medical devices.
Physical stores are boosting e-commerce purchases and generating impressive revenue/square foot, but itās unclear how long it takes to recoup the setup costs.
Casper makes a profit on a customerās first purchase, but we calculate they are only paying back 1.4x the acquisition cost in gross profit over a customerās lifetime - which isnāt great for either a tech company or a D2C brand.
Partnerships with other retailers (even major ones, like Amazon and Costco) still comprise only 17% of Casperās revenue. Casper sees higher margins and can more closely control the customer experience on its own channels.
news š£
š Layoffs hit SoftBankās portfolio. It was a tough week for the SoftBank portfolio, with major layoffs at five companies. As SoftBank no longer has unlimited capital to fund unprofitable growth, these companies may be forced to significantly cut their burn to survive. Robotic pizza company Zume (last valued at $2.3B) is laying off more than half of its employees and pivoting into compostable packaging. Micromobility startup Lime laid off 100 employees (14% of its workforce) and shut down 12 markets in a bid for profitability. Getaround, a P2P car rental company, is cutting a quarter of its staff, while on-demand delivery startup Rappi is laying off 300 people. Finally, hotel chain Oyo plans to cut 1,800 jobs across India and China.
š ClassPass becomes a unicorn. The first š¦ of 2020 has been born! ClassPass, a fitness/wellness membership program (and CRV portfolio company) announced a $285M Series E led by L Catterton and Apax Digital. Along with its consumer customers, the company now has 1,000 corporate partners who provide ClassPass as a benefit to employees. ClassPass operates in more than 28 countries (up from four in the last 18 months), and users can choose from 5M classes operated by 30k+ partner studios.
š° Social networks battle fake news. As the 2020 elections approach, social networks continue to refine their approaches to false content. TikTok released a new list of community guidelines, prohibiting ācontent distributed by disinformation campaignsā and banning hate groups and extremist organizations. While Facebook announced a ban on āmisleading manipulated mediaā (e.g. deepfakes), the company largely maintained its stance against policing content, and will continue to allow political campaigns to microtarget users with (potentially false) ads.
š 23andMe sells first drug. Personal genetics company 23andMe (former employer of our BFF Kai) has officially sold the rights to the first drug it developed using user data. The move marks 23andMeās evolution into a drug development company - prior pharma deals involved selling data to companies like GlaxoSmithKline. The drug, which was sold to Spanish company Almirall, is based on an antibody that targets skin conditions like psoriasis and inflammatory conditions like Crohnās disease. 80% of 23AndMeās 10M users have opted in to having their data used for drug discovery.
š SmileDirectClub gets into retail. Clear aligner company SmileDirectClub (which went public last year) is moving into mass retail with a new Walmart distribution deal. The company is expanding beyond aligners into other kinds of oral care that will be sold exclusively at Walmart, including a UV cleanser, toothbrush heads, and retainers. The move puts SmileDirectClub in closer competition with other D2C dental startups like Quip and Goby. The news sent SmileDirectClubās stock up almost 30%, but itās still trading more than 50% below its IPO price.

Mobile video company Quibi has joined Magic Leap on the list of startups that have raised $1B+ pre-launch. With another $400M announced this week, Quibi has now raised a total of $1.4B. Quibiās mobile-first streaming service will feature short (<10 minute) shows starring celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and Zac Efron. As Netflix has taught us, producing quality content is expensive, and weāre interested to see if Quibiās investments will pay off! Quibi will launch on April 6 at a price of $5/month (with ads) or $8/month (ad-free).
what we're following š
Lightspeedās Nicole Quinn shares her predictions for 2020.
Itās apparently possible to live off free trials from D2C mattress companies.
Is SoftBank walking away from startups after committing capital?
Thanks to lax security practices, over a billion medical images are freely available online.

2019 was a great year for Niantic (a CRV portfolio company) - according to Sensor Tower data, PokƩmon GO hit a record high of $894M in player spending. The game launched in 2016 and has had tremendous staying power, with 55M installs last year.
Why is it still so popular? PokĆ©mon GO has an extremely engaged community of users who make friends (and compete against each other) on the app, which makes it unusually sticky. Niantic holds monthly community days to bring players together IRL, as well as larger events like regional Safari Zones that attract hundreds of thousands of players. Theyāve also kept the game fresh by regularly adding features and new PokĆ©mon to catchāyou never āfinishā the game because thereās always more challenges to take on and events to participate in.
jobs š
Core Innovation Capital - Associate / VP (SF)
Viz.ai - Chief of Staff (SF)
Plaid - New Business Associate (SF)
Wells Fargo Strategic Capital - VC & PE Associate (Palo Alto)
RigUp - BD Associate (Austin)
Hilma - Product Development & Ops Manager (NYC)*
Compound - Investor (NYC)
Quona Capital - Platform Associate (DC)
OpenView - Investor (Boston)
Uala - Chief of Staff (Buenos Aires)*
Octopus - Investment Associate (London)
*Requires 3-5 years of experience.
internships š
Costanoa Ventures - Summer Fellows (SF)
Splunk - Mobile PM Intern (SF)
The AI Foundation - Research Intern (SF)
Zynga - PM Intern (SF)
ServiceNow - MBA Corporate Strategy Intern (Santa Clara)
Daily Harvest - Brand Intern (NYC)
Datadog - PM Intern (NYC)
Alumni Ventures Group - Deal Team Intern (NYC, Boston)
Cambridge Associates - MBA Summer Associate (Boston)
Cheer - Global Growth Intern (Various)
puppy of the week š¶

Meet Carter, a one-year-old bernedoodle who lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Carterās hobbies include hiking, playing in the snow, eating leaves, and hanging out by the fire. You can find him on Instagram @carter.the.bernedood!
Hi! š Weāre Justine and Olivia Moore, identical twins and venture investors at CRV. Thanks for reading Accelerated. Weād love your feedback - feel free to tweet us @venturetwins or email us at twins@crv.com.
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