Restaurant revolution: robots, reviews, and modern content!
Another day, another dime, another rhyme, another dollar.
Pulse has the news that makes you wanna holler!
Here’s the agenda:
A “kernel” of truth
The love child of Yelp and TikTok
The search for new content!
AI for home services
Bringing the outdoors closer to home
How tech is solving unemployment
Hip hop hooray, let’s do this!
Startup Deals
Robotic Restaurants | While the idea of burger-flipping robots has been with us since the Jetsons, automated restaurants haven’t taken off just yet. Chipotle founder Steve Ells is the latest entrepreneur to throw his hat in the ring with a new concept: Kernel. The upstart restaurant, currently bootstrapped by Ells, will use a hub-and-spoke system, with the majority of the food prepared by robots in a centralized kitchen before being sent to small-footprint stores for finishing touches and sales. Kernel locations are expected to be 800 square feet, about one-third the size of a Chipotle, and can be run by just three employees. The menu will be plant-based, offering a variety of items like açai bowls, wraps, salads, pizza, pasta, and burgers. The first storefronts are slated to open in New York City later this year.
Local Exploration | What do you get when you combine Yelp with TikTok? The answer: Atmosfy. This new app helps users explore dining, nightlife, hotels, and more by browsing quick videos from locals and visitors, offering an authentic real-time glimpse into the atmosphere of each location. Users can search by filtering for hashtag, location, cuisine, price, and more to discover local spots that top each category. Already featuring video content from over 10,000 cities in 150 countries, Atmosfy recently raised $12 million in seed funding led by Redpoint Ventures and a mix of VCs, corporate investors, and world-renowned DJ Kygo.
Content Exploration | Content Exploration | For marketers looking to capture the attention of their audiences with content that feels authentic, it doesn’t get any more real than user-created. However, finding and licensing that content can be a hassle. Enter Catch+Release. The startup’s platform uses an AI-powered search engine to help brands find the right user-created content and license it with ease. Part of Catch+Release’s secret sauce lies in its ability to assess and classify various characteristics of the content, like whether other brand logos appear in the footage or if the content is sensitive in some way. It then assigns a “licensability” score to that content—something akin to Zillow’s Zestimate. Catch+Release recently raised an $8 million extension on its $14 million 2021 Series A led by blue-chip fund Accel, with participation from a list of others that includes NBA superstar Kevin Durant’s fund, 35V.
Home Service Support | In the world of businesses like general contracting and landscaping, your service doesn’t speak for itself; you need a strong online presence. Topline Pro helps small home-service businesses scale up with a comprehensive digital platform that features a suite of tools for online presence-building, trust-building through reviews and photos, online scheduling, payments, and long-term customer engagement. In a particularly crowded space, Topline Pro seeks to differentiate itself via features like AI-generated Google Ads in under 60 seconds and an AI-enabled “Super Assistant” to help navigate the app and digitize interactions with customers. Despite stiff competition, Topline Pro has generated over $180 million in business across thousands of customers in nearly all 50 states. Unsurprisingly, it was able to raise a $12 million Series A led by elite consumer-centric firm Forerunner Ventures, along with Bonfire Ventures, TMV, and BBG Ventures.
Essential Reads
Consider that one in three Americans don’t have accessible outdoor spaces close to where they live! No beach, no river, not even a park. REI is hoping to change this with its Outside in 5 initiative. By supporting projects and policy at the national, state, and local levels, REI aims to provide 100 million Americans with access to a green space in five minutes or less—and in doing so, it’s building the type of community that retail brands should care about.
Learn more about Outside in 5 here.
As China faces record-high youth unemployment, Taobao, the country’s leading e-commerce platform, wants to simplify the job hunt for new grads. Known for its one-click ordering, Taobao has now applied that concept to job listings, helping graduates find employment via its newly launched Taobao Offer platform. With youth unemployment north of 20%, this essential read looks at how tech platforms are stepping up to support new grads in one of the world’s most challenging job markets.
Learn more about Taobao’s job platform here.