Technology

Aston Martin is finally sharing some specs and a couple of teaser photos of the upcoming Rapide E, the British automakerfirst all-electric sports car. The upshot: It&ll be fast and rare.

The company will only make 155 of the Rapide E,which will be powered by an 800-volt battery system with 65 kilowatt-hour capacity.(Pretty sure that makes Aston Martin the first luxury car company to launch an 800-volt system.)

The battery, which will use more than 5,600 lithium-ion 18650 format cylindrical cells, is expected to have a range of more than 200 miles. The battery system will have a charging rate ofa 185 miles per hour using a 400V outlet with 50kW charger. The carbattery system does enable faster charging of 310 miles of range per hour for those using a 800V outlet delivering 100kW. CEO Andy Palmer told TechCrunch recently that translates to about 15 minutes to charge the battery 80 percent.

The big objective of this project — one that has been years in the making — is to build an electric vehicle that can deliver those V12-engined Rapide S feels. The company said engineers paid particular attention to the development and tuning of the electric powertrain, which Williams Advanced Engineering worked on, the chassis and software integration.

Aston Martin Rapide E.

The Rapide E is expected to have a top speed of 155 miles per hour and be able to travel from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds, and from 50 to 70 mph in 1.5 seconds.The battery system powers two rear-mounted electric motors that produce a combined target output of just over 600 horsepower and 700 pound-feet of torque.

Aston Martin emphasized that drivers will be able to hit these performance targets regardless of how full the battery is. The aim, the company said, is for the Rapide E to drive a full lap of the famousNürburgring &with absolutely no derating of the battery and the ability to cope with the daily demands of repeated hard acceleration and braking.&

Customer deliveries are set for the fourth quarter of 2019.

The Rapide E is a bridge of sorts to Aston Martinelectric future. The Rapide E and the resurrected Lagonda brand will be built in the upcomingSt. Athan production facility in the U.K. Lagonda will be Aston Martinelectric brand, with production beginning in 2021.

&The Rapide E will help us understand the technology and the customer,& Palmer told TechCrunch during Monterey Car Week in August. Customers have agreed to work with the company to provide data and their experience of driving and owning an electric vehicle, Palmer said, adding that information will impact the upcoming Lagonda brand.

Aston Martin doesn&t advertise the price of the Rapide E, saying pricing is available once customers have applied. The company previously said it would be priced around $255,000.

These days my Instagram feed feels more like QVC than a social network.

And many of these companies are enjoying tremendous success pitching natural deodorants, unique underwear, creative candles, glam glasses, stunning shoes — all manner of well-craftedmicrobrands. We&re witnessing a Cambrian explosion of new consumer startups.

For the last couple of years, building a successful startup has seemed as simple as picking an out of favor category like ketchup and turning the most mundane of condiments into a$100M+ exit! Why try to build a robot or AI company when you can just modify and repackage a topping

But how should founders evaluate the markets for mattresses and menhealth What heuristics should an investor use to weigh Hims and Hubble, or to compare AllBirds and Away And what is the right kind of founder for this sort of startup Do you look for the designer with an unimpeachable aesthetic sense Or an MBA whorun the numbers on every facet of the fashion industry

Itfar from clear at this point, but I think there are a few emerging ground rules:

Itmore Science than Art

What strikes me as most unusual and unpredictable is that most of these companies were founded by entrepreneurs with analytical, business training. They&re strong on finance, marketing, and customer acquisition. Itnot what you would have expected in categories noted more for an ineffable &cool& factor than feature lists.Creative designhelps a brand stand out, but accounting acumen is what keeps it alive and on its way to becoming a unicorn.

It turns out that much of the same playbook for building and scaling a software company applies to a modern CPG startup. In many ways, Casper isn&t so different from Slack, and they are certainly closer in spirit than a direct competitor like MattressFirm.

This is why you see a migration of founders and VCs like me playing in categories previously out of bounds for tech investors. Whether its finding the latest targeting tools or closely monitoring customer NPS, this is the DNA needed to be successful. For this reason, VCs are able to pattern match, somewhat, based on what they&ve seen working in other aspects of their investing.

Market structure is more important than marketing

Bootstrapped mattress maker Tuft - Needle merged with market leader Serta-Sealy for somewhere between$200 million and $800million.Purple, whoonly raised $2 millionvia crowdfunding, wasacquired for $1.1 billionby a private equity company. Casper is reported to have broken through the$600 million in revenuemilestone earlier this year and is on the trajectory towards becoming a public company. These mattress companies, along with other emerging D2C players have captured20% of the market in the space of five years.

Perhaps ita coincidence that three amazing founding teams bet on beds, but I&d wager the state of the mattress market is partially responsible for their success. The mattress business is essentially aduopolyrun byprivate equity firmswho have made major investments in real-estate and an in-store sales model. As a result, we see less experimentation and artificially high prices.

Compare the mattress industry to the meal kit delivery business which had to contend with a wide variety of substitute food products, from Dominoto DoorDash and supermarkets to Soylent — not to mention spoilage, high levels of customer churn, etc. As a result, companies in this space have had a harder time dominating their respective categories. Sadly, there is no amount of clever branding or subway advertising that will eliminate those realities.

Image: Soifer/iStock

Whatthe million-dollar insight

The first Casper mattress was the50,001st mattress sold by Philip Krim. Prior to manufacturing his own beds, Krim built a drop ship business serving other manufacturers and learned which levers to pull in order to attract customers and generate demand. It was this seemingly mundane insight & that you could box and ship a mattress via a carrier instead of onboard a large truck that allowed him to scale much faster than Sleepys andgenerate $100M+ in sales just a couple of years after founding.

Similarly,ButcherBoxandDaily Harvesteach ignited a boom in direct-to-consumer food delivery. These companies recognized that fresh and immediately frozen products limit spoilage and allows for much easier transport. While competitors had to worry about organic kale rotting in a fulfillment center, these companies could focus more attention on customer acquisition. This insight coupled with smart marketing, virality, and high NPS has helped them bothgarner millions of dollars of weekly sales.

Itnot nearly enough to say, &The competitors don&t get it.& or this is for &Gen Z.& Instead, like with all start-ups, the founders need to identify that non-obvious, often contrarian, insight. This is usually less of a product &A-Ha!& and is more likely an arbitrage opportunity in a dysfunctional market.

Spend Carefully, Your Potential Buyer Will

Digital vertical native brands can be compelling investments, but they are unlikely to have deal dimensions, in terms of multiples or absolute exits, that we see with traditional tech investments.

Just look at a few recent sales of DNVBs. The absolute dollar amounts are reasonable, but the multiples are small relative to tech, ranging from 1.6X to a potential 8X (no doubt subject to earn outs), with the average being in the 2-3X range. On the bright side, these acquisitions do tend to consummate quickly, often within a few years of their founding.

If you finance a DNVB like a deep tech company with heavy reliance on tens of millions of venture capital, founders and investors are likely to see little in return. AsJason Del Rayrecently wrote at ReCode, many of these brands are skipping VC all together.

• Sir Kensington wasacquired for $143M

• Native Deodorant wasacquired for $100M

• MVMT wasacquired for $100M

• Tuft and Needle had$170M in revenueand was acquired for 1-5X

• Krave Jerky sold for $200-$300M with $35M in revenue

• RX Bar was acquired for $600M, but had $130M in sales

• DaveKiller Bread wasacquired for $275M on $160M in sales

• Anova was acquired for$115M (with $135M in earn out potential) on $40M in sales.

• Blue Apron has built the biggest brand in meal kit delivery, got public, and currently has amarket cap that is just 50% higher the aggregate amount of capital it has raised.

• StitchFix is one of the clearest success stories and stilltrades at 1-3X revenues.

• Dollar Shave Club sold for$1B on $200M in revenue, though it wasn&t yet profitable.

Itimportant to remember that these sales are predicated on impressive revenues. Cruise Automation can get acquired for $1B because its technology could be the basis for a new kind of car, but don&t expect Kelloggto acquire a pre-launch cereal company for a similar sum.

DNVB investing is here to stay as there is a fundamental shift going on in retail and how consumers shop. Unless you&re Kylie Jenner with a hit reality show, investors would be wise not to dismiss that nerdy MBA or former consultant pitching the next great brand.

The most remarkable thing about the iPhone XS Max is that it doesn&t feel huge. Itall relative, of course. And surely Appleold guard would have scoffed at the notion of a 6.5-inch display. But time marches on. Seasons change and so do minds. Temperatures increase, superhero movies pile up and screen sizes increase, unabated.

Much of the perception no doubt comes from the rest of the industry pushing the limits of human hands and pants pockets. I&ve been carrying around the Note 9 of late — and before that, the iPhone 8 Plus. The XS Max feels roughly the size of the latter, which is pretty remarkable given that the Plus sported a 5.5 inch display.

The dimensions break down thusly:

iPhone 8 Plus: 158.4 x 78.1 x 7.5 mm

iPhone Xs Max: 157.5 x 77.4 x 7.7 mm

The Max is ever-so-slightly smaller in two of three dimensions.

This was accomplished in no small part to bezels. Getting rid of all of that extra real estate makes a world of difference, along with dropping the home button and continuing to embrace the way of the notch.

Aside from size, you won&t notice a lot new here. Thatjust sort of the plight of the S model —well, that and coming immediately after the largest single design update in the iPhone10 year history. The new finishes are very, very shiny as well, silver especially, which will probably blind you if the sun catches it just right, but you&re going to put that $1,099+ phone in a case anyway, right

Speaking of pricing, as Tim Cook said on stage, the larger model starts at &just& $100 more than its predecessor. Thatthe sort of statement you can get away with when you help set the precedent for a $1,000 phone a year prior. That Band-Aid has already been ripped off, right, so whatanother $100 between friends

That said, if I were in the market for a new iPhone, I&d strongly consider the size upgrade.The leap from5.8 to 6.5 inches is pretty sizable. Sticking with the former was an interesting move on Applepart, given that the XR splits the difference at 6.1 inches. Maybe ita supply chain thing I don&t know. I&m just sort of spitballing at this point.

As ever, I&m going to have to hold off judgement on things like performance and camera quality until we can take the thing for a spin. Given that the phones are due out in the not-so-distant future, however, I suspect that will be sooner rather than later.

Itworth noting, of course, that those bits and bobs are relatively iterative, as is custom with the &s& suffix. The specs also look remarkably similar between the XS and XS Max: dual rear-facing 12-megapixel cameras, A12 Bionic chip, HDR display (though the Max naturally, has more pixels, while both work out to 458 PPI). I suspect this decision was made, in part, to help keep the newer, bigger phone at &just& $100 over its predecessor.