The next gen of child stars

EXTRA, EXTRA: A funding roundup for the whole family

Child stars, cameras, caregivers: Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.

Today we have a little funding news for kids, adults, and 65-and-betters alike.

For the kids: Viacom leads funding round for Pocket.watch

Kids entertainment platform Pocket.watch has raised $15m in a funding round led by Viacom.

The startup makes videos that target small children with small, digital friendly screens, and they’re coming for your babies.

In addition to Viacom’s ‘strategic investment,’ the two companies will develop and produce long-form and short-form content, and help identify future kiddo creators and talent for digital and TV.

For adults: Light lands $121m, led by Softbank

It’s official. Camera tech company, Light, is the latest to call SoftBank’s massive Vision Fund daddy after it led a $121m Series D for the budding camera startup.

The funding will go toward growing Light’s ultra-high-def mobile phone camera equipment, including its illustrious 16 lens camera (which captures 52 megapixels of ultra-hi-def imagery).

For grandma: Kindly Care scores $5.4m to help with in-home care

With a reported 45m unpaid elder care providers in the US, it’s fair to say the industry of taking care of the nanas and the papas of the world is widely undervalued.

Now, SF-based Kindly Care wants to lend a hand to the marketplace, after raising $5.4m to help pair vetted caregivers with families who need them.

The company will help both sides manage their financial and tax arrangements by acting as a bookkeeper of sorts, because taking care of grams can be expensive, but ya gotta do it.

As the race to deliver groceries heats up, new distribution hubs keep produce cool

To compete with big e-commerce players like Amazon and big grocers like Kroger, delivery companies are now building massive high-tech distribution warehouses.

The poster child: FreshDirect, a direct-to-consumer grocery service, which just opened a 400k-square-foot distribution facility in the Bronx to deliver even more avocados.

Keepin’ things Fresh, to the last mile

The biggest challenge for same-day food delivery is preventing perishable fruits and veggies from half-rotting by the time they’re delivered. So to solve the problem, companies have begun to build distribution hubs to accelerate the packing and shipping processes.

With dedicated facilities and fewer middlemen, companies like FreshDirect can deliver swordfish caught in Nova Scotia to dinner parties in Connecticut in 24 hours.

It may seem expensive to add distribution centers into the supply chain, but it seems to be working: In the last 6 years, FreshDirect doubled sales. Today, FreshDirect makes $800m in annual revenue, enough to fuel multi-city expansion plans.

Online delivery is the future… and everyone knows it

In the food industry, e-commerce accounts for 2% of sales, compared to 10% economy-wide. But increasing interest in grocery delivery is expected to drive online grocery sales from last year’s $14.1B to $40B by 2021.

FreshDirect leads the New York metropolitan market with 54% market share (#2 Peapod has 21%, and Amazon has 8.8%) thanks to high-tech facilities like the new one in the Bronx that keeps quality groceries fresh.

But, with revenues more than 100x FreshDirect’s, competitors Walmart and Amazon are investing heavily in delivery. Earlier this month, Walmart announced its plans to build a distribution warehouse in the Bronx -- and, knowing Bezos, Amazon probably isn’t far behind.

Goooooooooaaaaallllllllll: Ronaldo’s new team sold $60m in jerseys in the first 24 hours

One of the biggest-name soccer players on the planet, Cristiano Ronaldo, just jumped on a one-way train from former team Real Madrid to Juventus -- and he’s already making sh*t happen for the Italian football powerhouse.

The club reportedly sold 520k Ronaldo jerseys in the first day of his arrival, netting the premier soccer club $62.4m in revenue.

That’s almost half of what he signed for

But the Italian club won’t get all of it. As the Independent notes, usually clubs receive only 10-15% of the revenue generated by the kit manufacturer (in Juventus’ case, Adidas).

The club stands to profit only $6m to $9m, which is still nothing to wave a yellow card at, especially when you consider all the other benefits they’ve received since -- and even before -- his arrival.

The gift that’s gonna keep on giving

The mega-star and his abs signed a deal with Juventus last week for $129.3m, and raised Juventus’ stock almost a full 40% immediately after the news broke that he was considering going to Juventus.

The club also saw a huge social media spike, gaining more than 1.5m new followers in the first day.

The people have a fever, and the only cure is more Ronaldo.

After failing to spread his wings, CEO Marwan Fawaz was pushed out of Nest

Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz stepped down yesterday after employees demanded new leadership. Since Google acquired the smart home startup for $3.2B in 2014, Nest has been in a nearly constant state of upheaval.

Despite Nest’s past product successes, the constant executive drama over the past 4 years is a textbook example of how not to transition after acquisition. But after cycling through several CEOs, Google is finally forcing the unwound Nest into submission.

A match that was never meant to be

When Google first acquired Nest, the market for smart home devices wasn’t as strong as Google had hoped.

By 2016, only 6% of homes had smart home systems and 72% of homeowners had no plans to buy smart appliances in the next 5 years, and co-founder and then-CEO Tony Fadell left the company after butting heads with the brass at Google.

The situation got so ugly that Google tried (unsuccessfully) to offload Nest and all its occupants that year.

Now, Nest is just another Google device

Five months ago, Google took steps to tame Nest by rolling the company’s independent operations into Google’s hardware department.

Nest is now part of a happy hardware family that includes Google Home, Chromecast, and Google WiFi.

Ultimately, Google plans to integrate Nest’s products into a comprehensive voice-powered MegaHome -- which should be easier with all those pesky Nest execs out of the way.

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