Technology

When Richelieu Dennis came to the U.S. from his home in Liberia to attend Babson College, he wasn&t expecting to stay. But unable to return home owing to the first Liberian civil war, stay he did, building the personal care products company SheaMoisture with his college roommate Nyema Tubman in Harlem and later establishing a larger holding company, Sundial Brands, that would oversee a suite of product lines focused on women of color.

Among them, SheaMoisture,Nyakio,Nubian Heritage, andMadame C.J. Walker, named after a philanthropist and social activist and one of the earliest female founders of color. (Walker, the daughter of slaves, died a wealthy woman at the age of 51 in 1919, after herself developing a line of beauty and hair products for black women.)

All that hard work was seemingly rewarded when last year, consumer goods giant Unilever acquired Sundial for undisclosed terms. In a unique twist, the deal should fuel the companies of future founders of color, too.

To wit, when the acquisition was announced, Unilever and Sundial announced that they would create a new investment vehicle to empower minority women entrepreneurs — the New Voices Fund — to which they would commit an initial $50 million.

Thursday, at 2018 Essence Festival in New Orleans, Dennis said he was officially launching the fund with twice that amount — $100 million — adding that roughly a third of the fund has already been committed to black women entrepreneurs. (According to fundsite, it writes seed through Series C checks.)

The outlet Black Enterprise was first to report the news.

The development will undoubtedly be welcome news to women, and particular women of color, who are among a fast-growing percentage of entrepreneurs in the country, according to the Institute for WomenPolicy Research, a 31-year-old, Washington-based nonprofit.According to one of its reports, women of color—who constitute approximately 35 percent of the female population aged 18 and older—owned 929,445 businesses in the United States, representing 17 percent of all women-owned firms, in 1997. By 2014, that number had hit 2,934,500 businesses, or 32 percent of women-owned firms.

Naturally, these aren&t all venture-backed (or backable) businesses, but those numbers are on the rise, too, and their founders are going to need capital on the scale that New Voices is promising.

Per digitalundivided, an organization that supports black and Latina women tech founders, ofthe$84 billion that VCs plugged into startups last 2017, just 2.7 percent flowed to women-led companies, and black women founders saw just .2 percent of that capital.

Good thing Carrie Bradshaw, the shoe-loving heroine of Sex and the City, wasn&t a footwear venture capitalist. The high-heeled, high-priced and hard-to-walk-in pairs beloved by the TV icon are pretty much the least fundable concept in the shoe startup space lately.

Instead, when they do dip their toe in the footwear space, venture investors have been putting a premium on comfort.

At least thatwhat recent funding records indicate. Over the past year-and-a-half, investors have tied up roughly $170 million in an assortment ofshoe-related startups, according to an analysis of Crunchbase data. The vast majority is going to sellers and designers of footwear that people might actually want to walk in.

Top funding recipients are a varied bunch, including everything from used sneaker marketplaces to high-end designers to toddler play shoes. Startups are also experimenting with little-used materials, turning used plastic bottles, merino wool and other substances into chic wearables.

Below, we look at how startups are leveraging market trends to get a foot in the door.

Growth market

It should be noted that recent footwear funding activity comes on the heels of some positive developments for the shoe industry.

First, this is a huge and growing industry. One recentreportpegged the global footwear market at $246 billion in 2017, with annual growth rates of around 4.5 percent.

Second, public markets are strong. Shares of the worldmost valuable footwear company — Nike — have climbed more than 50 percent over the past nine months to reach a market cap of nearly $130 billion. Stocks of several smaller rivals, including Adidas, have also performed well.

Third, men are spending more on footwear. Though they&ve long been stereotyped as the gender with more restrained shoe-buying habits, men are putting more money into footwear and could be on track to close thespending gap.

Sneakeringin

Both men and women are spending more on sneakers, and venture capitalists have taken notice. Sneakers and sneaker-related businesses account for the majority of footwear startup funding, as consumers increasingly opt for more casual, sportier styles.

Much of the innovation is in the sale and design of pricey, high-performance shoes. The largest footwear-focused round in recent months, for instance, went toGOAT, operator of an online sneaker marketplace that specializes in rare and high-end shoes. The three-year-old, Los Angeles-based company secured a $60 million Series C in February.

Other sneaker companies to raise funding recently includeStockX, an auction-style GOAT competitor;Stadium Goods, a streetwear retailer; andSuper Heroic, which makes high-performance athletic shoes for children.

The spike in sneaker funding comes amid a growth streak for the sector. As mentioned previously, much of that is driven by men. However, one other bullish sneaker trend footwear analysts point to is thechanging buying habitsof women. Driven perhaps by a desire to walk more than a few blocks without being in pain, we&re buying fewer high heels and more sneakers.

Stylish and eco-friendly

Demand for more comfortable footwear doesn&t only translate into more sneaker sales. Venture investors also see potential in other comfy shoe startups, particularly those with eco-friendly options.

In this camp isAllbirds, a maker of merino wool shoes in casual styles that has raised more than $27 million to date. Meanwhile,Rothy&s, which makes shoes out of recycled plastic bottles and sells them for around $125 a pair, has brought in $7 million.

Slippers are also a fundable space, as evidenced by the $2 million seed round last fall forBirdies, a maker of footwear for people who want to pad around the house in slippers while also looking stylish.

And as previously noted, it doesn&t look like high heel-focused startups have been kicking up a lot of capital lately. However, designers that offer varied heel heights are still scoring some big rounds. This category includesTamara Mellon, a two-year-old brand that has raised more than $40 million to scale up a shoe design portfolio that runs the gamut from flats to spike heels.

But does it make money

Recent history shows you can make a good exit with a shoe startup. And you can also flop or stagnate.

One of the more noticeable recent flops was Vancouver-based Shoes.com, an online shoe retailer thatshutteredlast year and filed for bankruptcy following disappointing sales.

Others found they weren&t as good a fit for todayconsumers as hoped. Most recently,Shoes of Prey, a made-to-order womenshoe startup that raised more than $25 million, secured a smallbridge roundto keep operations afloat. A few years earlier, ShoeDazzle, a celebrity-backed shoe subscription service with more than $60 million in funding,soldat a steep markdown.

Meanwhile, developers of 3D printing and scanning technology are stepping up the pace of M-A. In April, Nike snapped upInvertex, a seed-funded startup that specialized in 3D foot-scanning. Last year, Aetrex Worldwide, a leading maker of therapeutic footwear, bought Sols, a venture-backed maker of 3D-printed custom orthotics and insoles.

Granted, ithard to imagine an episode about Carrie Bradshaw shelling out for custom orthotics. But in the exit-driven world of startup financing, it seems clear that Manolo Blahniks are out, while sneakers and insoles are in.

RIP &crypto&. You had a good run.

This week veteran cryptographer Matt Blaze, finally gave in — to what must have been a near-constant, low-level drone of ‘CAn Buy Crypto.com$$$$!& spam — and sold the pithy domain name he registered in 1993, in the midst of the PC era crypto wars, to use as an encryption policy resource, to Monaco, a Zug, Switzerland-based payments and cryptocurrency platform startup whose self-styled mission is &accelerating the worldtransition to cryptocurrency&, positioning itself at the nexus of the current crypto craze.

So crypto.com now points to cryptocurrencies.

Which seems a fitting moment to say RIP &crypto& as shorthand terminology for an entire domain of cryptographic work that underpins so many more things than just Bitcoin or Ether or Ripple or Litecoin or Zcash — or any of the myriad digital coins that have winked (and more recently minted) into virtual existence over the last decade or so, hoping to hit the crypto jackpot.

Frankly this is not at all fair. But, linguistically, so it goes. Languages live or they die. And to live in linguistic terms means to shift your meaning as word usage ebbs and flows.

The sale of crypto.com tells us not so much that money talks, though clearly therethat too — domain sellers were speculating that the price for crypto.com could have been a cool $5M-$10M, per this Vergereport from March; though the actual price-tag paid by Monaco has not been disclosed.

Mostly it underlines that trying to push as an individual against a surging tide is hopeless. Principled, one-man-stands of linguistic resistance against the crypto(currency) craze are futile at this particular juncture of its technological development. Spam with no end in sight would worry the will of anyone.

So apologies also to the few folks who have written to complain about incorrect use of &crypto& in TC headlines. Using &cryptocurrency& is indeed more accurate if thatwhat the story is about. But as a term itheadline-unfriendly as well as being really quite a horrible mouthful.

And, well, &coin& is too generic unless you&re coin trade press.

Alternative linguistic confections — anyone for ‘cryptoc& — were never going to fly. So cryptocurrency colloquially colonizing &crypto& was really only a matter of time, given how many joules of attention-energy are being claimed and drained in its name.

Turns out language change can have plenty to do with the price of Bitcoin.

On the flip side, any craze can be a fleeting thing, and itentirely possible that, in time, &crypto& could revert to its proper meaning of cryptography should the cryptocurrency hype die back, as hype is wont to do when people get bored — because something that was new and novel becomes properly understood and adopted (and thus less of a conversation starter).

Sustained acceptance can make tongue-tripping nicknames less necessary, and reset the linguistic order.

Equally, though, a nickname can stubbornly stick around for ages — outlasting any nonprofessional understanding of the logic underlying its coinage.

Or at least until evolving usage causes another terminology shift.Think, for example, of the rhythmic swings of &telephone& -> &phone& -> &mobile phone& -> &mobile&.

Crypto(currency) could ultimately even lose the ‘crypto& prefix should the technology end up becoming so ubiquitous as to be considered synonymous with the generic term ¤cy&, and usurp/displace that word, sinking back into the accepted conceptual morass that envelopes the idea of money.

Of course the crypto(graphy) community have not been at all happy about the linguistic sands shifting treacherously under their foundational field.

And they do have a point, given that without their founding crypto there could be no, er, ‘crypto&…

&&Crypto& could mean encryption, cryptography, or cryptology, but never cryptocurrency,& one computing academic tells us, adding:&I&ve heard plenty of whinging about the changed meaning of &crypto& and I don&t expect a dignified fall-back.&

&Normal usage says &encryption& is only one application of &cryptography& (building schemes for encryption and similar apps) which together with &cryptanalysis& (trying to break such schemes) makes up &cryptology&,& he adds.

Certainly, don&t expect the original crypto community to migrate to alternative terminology — not willingly, and not anytime soon. Which will probably make for some confused messaging at times. But technology applying pressure points to human communications is just par for the course.

As recently as last month the content on Blaze(now former) website included the express declaration that: &This site does not trade in or provide services related to cryptocurrencies. It is concerned with cryptography, computer and network security, and technology policy research.&

It further capped that caveat with an explicit disclaimer — writing: &Warning: Many cryptocurrencies are scams, and I strongly advise against their use as investment vehicles.&

Visitors to crypto.com now will not encounter any such caveats. But most of these folks probably weren&t headed there looking for cautionary tales. Nor seeking Blazecontact details. So you really can&t blame him for moving with the times.

For the original crypto community, playing the long game and waiting for the upstart crypto usurper to get linguistically cut back down to size seems the best option.

Sure, they&ve lost this &crypto& war — but many more important crypto wars remain to be fought and (hopefully) won.

And of course, in the far-flung future, who knows how 2018crypto craze will be viewed Perhaps as the pinnacle of a hype-cycle that didn&t end in the wholesale reconfiguration of business and society that the crypto oracles promise, even if they managed to shift the conversation of a certain IT crowd for a while.

On another level, given rising levels of tech-fueled disruptive uncertainty crisscrossing so many facets of life, perhaps itfitting for &crypto& to become something of a cipher itself, devoid of fixed meaning.

&Encryption technology is the key to the future of the information revolution,& wrote Blaze in 1996. &It allows businesses and individuals to communicate securely over any inexpensive communication platform without fear of eavesdropping.&

That sentiment at least remains constant.