4G Clinical’s clinical trial management software attracts over $200M in new funding

The pandemic significantly changed how we do medical research, and now companies are trying to figure out what trends will stay and which ones will go. One that 4G Clinical is hoping will survive the pandemic is a need for speed and flexibility in therapeutics trials. 

4G Clinical creates software to run the back-end of a clinical trial. That means randomizing patients into treatment and placebo groups, locating medicines and placebos, keeping the supply of those medicines stocked, and, at least during the pandemic, delivering those medicines to patients. All of these tasks fall under the umbrella of Randomized Trial Supply Management, or RTSM for short. 

Specifically, 4G Clinical’s software, called Prancer, uses natural language processing to take specific requirements needed to manage a clinical trial, which are often written in long, complex documents, and configures them into a platform.

The fastest the company has been able to move from a phone call to the first dose in a clinical trial was 6 days – a sprint that created the software needed for a COVID-19 study during the pandemic. That was an exceptionally fast case, but in general, 4G Clinical says it can beat standard timelines by considerable margins.

“Most vendors in the world would say that they are probably, you know, between 10 and 16 weeks from, you know, from the kicking off a study until they can dose a patient,” says Dave Kelleher, a company co-founder. “Our typical timeline is generally four to six weeks post spec signature.” 

Generally, large pharmaceutical companies are capable of creating these trial management systems internally. Small companies, however, may not have the capability to do so. 4G Clinical goal is to provide a service that can be of use to both. 4G Clinical has currently designed systems for over 230 companies – though the company would not disclose the specific trials in which its systems are being used. 

4 strategies for building a digital health unicorn

4G clinical is also announcing over $200 million in a growth equity round led by Goldman Sachs. Before Goldman, the primary investment came from Boston-based Schooner Capital and First Analysis, a VC firm out of Chicago. 

Kelleher declined to say what the plans for the round were, other than company has plans to pursue more go-to-market strategies and R&D, and ultimately aims to “take up as much air” in the eClinical and RTSM space as possible. 

The eClinical market is expected to reach about $14.7 billion by 2027. RTSM made up about 17 percent of market share in 2020. With the complexity of clinical trials increasing, and the number of trials growing – even after COVID-19 related issues shut many trials down in 2020 – there may be room for more growth. 

Before COVID-19, there was evidence that the amount of clinical trials had steadily been increasing. In 2000, there were 2,119 clinical trials registered at Clinicaltrials.gov. By 2010, 100,208, and by 2020, 362,532 registered by the end of the year (that includes massive slowdowns created by the pandemic for non-COVID research). 

Within that landscape, there is some evidence that sponsors of clinical trials are using more external applications to manage those clinical trials. Of 500 clinical operations professionals respondents surveyed by Veeva (another eClinical company, keep in mind) found that 63 percent were using an RTSM system, up from about 43 percent in 2017. 

4G Clinical, generally, is looking to benefit from the increased public attention to the clinical trials process, and the flexibility that the pandemic has created for sponsors to get creative with clinical trial designs. 

The pandemic did encourage some innovation in this regard. Take, for example, the World Health Organization’s SOLIDARITY trial, which used an adaptive trial design in which multiple drugs could be tested at once. Drugs that showed no promise mid-way through the trial could be dropped (as hydroxychloroquine was in June 2020). The adaptive part, in short, allows for mid-trial tweaks. 

It’s not the traditional design of the gold-standard randomized controlled clinical trial, but it did glean a significant amount of knowledge in a short period of time. After seven months, three of four drugs tested showed no effect on mortality, whereas the fifth remdesivir, showed some limited promise. 

The health data transparency movement is birthing a new generation of startups

Adaptive trial designs weren’t unheard of before the pandemic – the FDA had actually released guidance on adaptive clinical trials in 2019. But the post-pandemic landscape might encourage more flexibility in this regard, and with it, increase a need for software that can be tweaked to accommodate such changes. 

“I think that we saw some regulatory hurdles reduced as part of this process that allows for more creativity in study design,” says Kelleher. “Probably the most important thing for us is our flexibility, we can make changes to studies very rapidly – to live studies.” 

4G Clinical and other RTSM software like it, are looking to hone tools that already exist within clinical trials – specifically software used to actually run them. It’s an area of research that the team itself has both a personal stake in, and strong industry knowledge. 

Kelleher was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the age of 23 (a disease to which there is still no definitive cure), and previously founded the Portland-based ACME business consulting. His co-founder Ed Tourtellotte, lost his wife to breast cancer around the same time. Neither have a background in pharmacology, but rather, the team is tackling drug development through streamlining clinical trial software. 

By contrast, other companies aim to streamline clinical trial processes through A.I-based drug target identification, an especially hype-induced area of the space in which investment quadrupled to $13.9 billion between 2019 and 2020. Clinical trial management software may seem more mundane, but it’s still an essential part of running Phase III and most Phase II studies. 

Tourtellotte has designed bespoke software systems for major drug developers, including Pfizer’s Impala system (used in 80 percent of Pfizer’s clinical trials for the past 20 years, says Kelleher) and another system Trident, which was sold to Bioclinica in 2009 (along with Tourtoulette’s company, Tourtellotte Solutions). Trident was utilized by GlaxoSmithKlein for clinical trials in 2010. 

At this point, the company has declined to confirm a total amount of funding, but in 2020, revenue grew 110 percent with just ten percent of its portfolio focused on COVID-19 related projects. 

Does early-stage health tech need more ‘patient’ capital?

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On TikTok, Black creators’ dance strike calls out creative exploitation

There’s a new Megan Thee Stallion music video out in time for triple digit temperatures. But instead of launching a fresh viral TikTok dance for summer, the single inspired an informal protest among Black creators tired of thanklessly launching trends into the social media stratosphere.

With the release of the video for “Thot Shit,” some Black TikTok creators began calling attention to that exploitation this week, inspiring others to refuse to choreograph a dance to the hit song. The idea behind the movement is that Black artists on the platform create a disproportionate amount of content and culture — much of which is re-packaged and monetized by popular white creators and culture at large.

The song choice probably isn’t a coincidence. The Megan Thee Stallion video is both a playful but important paean to essential workers — twerking grocery, food service and sanitation workers, in this case — and a biting commentary on the wealthy white establishment that exploits their labor without thinking twice.

https://t.co/hfBdd4xbzo THOT SHIT OUT NOW EVERYWHERE pic.twitter.com/y096FWJJNL

— TINA SNOW (@theestallion) June 11, 2021

The TikTok strike truly is amazing b/c it shows not only how US pop culture is built on stealing from Black people, but how the music industry depends on this cycle of theft & white washing in order to monetize the music.

— DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE, REFUND OUR COMMUNITIES (@BreeNewsome) June 24, 2021

The “strike” doesn’t have creators leaving the platform or even staying off of the app. Instead, Black creators who might normally contribute dances for the hot new song are sitting back and pointing to what happens when they’re not around. (Predictably: not a lot.)

On the sound’s page, some videos tease choreography but pivot into a statement about how Black creators don’t get their due on the app. In other videos, Black creators watch on in horror at awkward dance attempts failing to fill the void or laugh about how the song’s lyrics are instructional but non-Black TikTok still can’t figure it out. The eminently danceable “Thot shit” could build into Megan Thee Stallion’s biggest hit yet, but just looking on TikTok you wouldn’t know it.

TikTok launches Jump, a third-party integration tool

When reached for comment on the phenomenon, TikTok praised Black creators as a “critical and vibrant” part of the community. “We care deeply about the experience of Black creators on our platform and we continue to work every day to create a supportive environment for our community while also instilling a culture where honoring and crediting creators for their creative contributions is the norm,” a TikTok spokesperson said.

Many TikTok accounts participating in the strike cite a recent explosion of white TikTokkers lip-syncing obliviously to a clip of Nicki Minaj’s 2016 song “Black Barbies” that specifically praises Black bodies (“I’m a fucking Black Barbie/Pretty face, perfect body…”). White TikTok inexplicably flocked to the sound, boosting its popularity and crowding out Black creators. It’s just one incident in a long history of Black creators feeling exploited and appropriated on social networks. Black TikTok dancers have long been left in the cold: Their original dance moves explode in popularity and get picked up by non-Black creators, who also pick up the credit along the way.

The recent strike is the latest beat in the ongoing conversation over who gets to cash in on the wellspring of creativity that pours out of a platform like TikTok. More broadly, some creators believe that TikTok’s economics are stacked against them, even compared to other major platforms like YouTube. Across social media sites, creators, particularly creators of color, are turning to collective action and even unionizing to assert their power.

For Black creators tired of seeing their work appropriated, collectively refusing to gift the world a hot new TikTok dance is certainly one way to show just how vital they are to the online ecosystem — something even a quick glance at the desolate “Thot Shit” sound makes abundantly clear.

How Fortnite’s dance moves sparked new lawsuits against Epic Games

Black Innovation Alliance aims to increase Black ownership and shrink the racial wealth gap

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Daily Crunch: Google and Jio Platforms unveil ‘extremely optimized Android’ phone for Indian consumers

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for June 24, 2021. There’s an ocean of tech news to get through today, but up top if you care about the advertising market, head here first. Google is pushing back cookiegeddon, and the decision could impact companies from the smallest startup to, well, Google. — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Instagram’s slow embrace of computers continues: After a long history of being a mobile-first, or mobile-only product, Instagram is now testing the “ability to create a Feed post on Instagram with [a] desktop browser,” the company told TechCrunch. As a PC user, huzzah.
• BuzzFeed is going public: Digital media company BuzzFeed is going public via a SPAC at a valuation of $1.5 billion. Want to know why it’s worth that much? We’ve got you covered. (Don’t forget that BuzzFeed raised hundreds of millions of dollars while private.)
• How some companies are working on vaccine passports despite the controversy: TechCrunch’s Ron Miller dove into the world of vaccine passports, the tech companies that are backing them and how they’re handling a dicey political environment. It’s a great read.

Startups/VC

• Doubling down on crypto: The a16z investing house is redoubling its bet in the crypto economy with a new $2.2 billion fund. And the venture capital firm is going to do more than just write checks: It intends to take part in crypto projects and even help clear regulatory brush for the sector. It’s a big commitment.
• Visa tries again: After Visa’s deal to acquire fintech API provider Plaid died, you might have thought that the American payments giant would have thrown in the towel on big deals. Nope. Visa is dropping $2.15 billion to buy Tink, a company that TechCrunch described as “a leading fintech startup in Europe focused on open banking application programming interfaces,” or APIs.
• Don’t trip about Tripp’s (virtual) trips: Tripp, a startup that wants to provide mental-health services via VR that mimic psychedelic experiences sans drugs, has just raised $11 million. If that sounds far out, understand that some startups are flat-out working with psychedelic drugs for different therapeutic approaches to mental health. So, this is the less aggressive version of the idea. Because VR is pretty neat, we dig it.
• The intersection of no-code, automation and humans: That’s where Tonkean plays. The company’s software helps ops teams at startups build automated business logic across applications, allowing data to flow between them. And it allows for humans to be in the loop, separating its offerings from what UiPath and other RPA companies offer. Oh, and Tonkean just closed a $50 million round.
• The online video boom powers JW Player to $100M in new capital: While not quite yet a unicorn, JW Player’s nine-figure round caught TechCrunch’s attention. The company sells a video platform for publishers and others, and it had a good 2020. COVID led to a boom in video watching, so the company’s recent growth is not a huge surprise. And now it has a tower of new capital to fuel even more expansion.

Reform your startup’s meeting culture

Meetings should have a clear purpose, but at many startups, they’ve become a way to perform in front of a crowd instead of share information.

Workplace politics can make the matter even more complicated: How secure do you feel declining a meeting invitation from a co-worker, or worse yet, from a manager?

“Every time a recurring meeting is added to a calendar, a kitten dies,” says Chuck Phillips, co-founder of MeetWell. “Very few employees decline meetings, even when it’s obvious that the meeting is going to be a doozy.”

Changing your meeting culture is difficult, but given that 26% of workers plan to look for a new job when the pandemic ends, startups need to do all they can to retain talent. Here are four actionable steps that will help you boost productivity and say goodbye to poorly run, lazily planned meetings.

Reform your startup’s meeting culture

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Today was a big day for Microsoft, so we’ll start there, yeah? Here are TechCrunch’s notes from the day’s Windows 11 event:

• Android apps are coming to Windows: Via the Amazon store, but still. Microsoft’s effort over time to make its operating system more open reached a new zenith today with the news that Windows 11 will support a host of Android apps. We want to play with it before we grade it, but the idea is super neat.
• We hope you like Teams: Microsoft is all-in on Teams, so much so that it’s getting the Windows treatment. TechCrunch reports that “Windows 11 will have Microsoft Teams built in, in a bid to compete more directly with communication platforms like Apple’s FaceTime.” Honestly, Teams is way better than Skype was, so that sounds fine. It does prickle our antitrust early warning system, however.
• It’ll be a Windows Christmas: Per Microsoft, Windows 11 should land later this year. In time for Christmas, it turns out. So if you are a gamer or a corporate drone or merely someone who prefers the Microsoft approach to computing, get hyped. The new build is coming your way, and quickly. If you can’t wait, there are leaks out there. But don’t install those on a computer with data you actually need.

Next up, a little from Google:

• Google and Jio team up for a budget smartphone: The JioPhone Next, a low-cost Android smartphone, could help the next few hundred million folks in India get online with faster service if the telco and American tech giant have their way. Jio wants more mobile subscribers, and Google wants more internet users, period. Call it a match made in heaven, provided that the hardware is good.

And to close out, one for the Zoomers:

• Ephemeral tunes? In today’s TikTok world, having access to popular music is a must for social networks. So it’s not a surprise to see Snap close a multiyear deal with Universal Music Group. Snapper, rejoice!

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

TechCrunch is building a shortlist of the top growth marketers in tech. If you’re a founder, we’d love to hear who you’ve worked with. Fill out the survey here.

Here’s one of the many excellent recommendations we’ve received:

Name of marketer: Dylan Max

Name of recommender: Kris Rudeegraap, Sendoso

Recommendation: “Dylan Max’s creativity is what sets him apart from 99% of those that practice growth marketing. One of his first campaigns went viral on LinkedIn. We ran a special campaign where we sent real cans of Spam to the best marketers and salespeople (our target demographic), with the idea that traditional spamming has become impersonal and we’re out to change that. Those that were nominated could “spam” other marketers or salespeople in their network, leading to a viral sensation that took over LinkedIn. We got a ton of business from it and our sales team still lists it as one of the most creative ways to leverage direct mail and gifting. Today it is still LinkedIn’s most viral grassroots campaign in the B2B space. Dylan is part of a rare breed of growth marketers, excelling in many different marketing channels including SEO, paid search, conversion rate optimization (CRO) and A/B testing. Dylan also spun up our first ever ABM campaign where we leveraged hypertargeted social media ads to earn seven-figure revenue on less than $20,000 of ad spend. I love his hackiness and he needs to be on this list.”

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Happs raises $4.7 million for a multicast livestream platform creator community

Happs, an app that lets creators stream live video simultaneously across social platforms, has raised $4.7 million in a post-seed round. The product originally began as a platform for independent journalists, but expanded its mission last year to offer tools to all online creators while connecting them through a new social network.

The funding was led by Bullpen Capital and Crosslink, Goodwater, Corazon, Rob Hayes of First Round Capital and Bangaly Kaba, previously at Instagram and Sequoia, also participated.

What sets Happs apart from some established competitors in the space is the team’s desire to not only build tools that help video creators produce professional-looking online streams, but to cultivate a kind of meta-community that brings people together from across other social media sites.

“We kind of view this as the essence of what the creator economy is all about,” Happs CEO Mark Goldman told TechCrunch. “The idea of locking creators into an individual platform is a very traditional way of thinking about content creation.”

Like Goldman, the other co-founders, David Neuman and Drew Shepard, come from the media world. Goldman was the founding COO of Current TV, an experimental TV channel that dabbled in user-generated content and eventually sold to Al Jazeera in 2013.

“The whole idea was to democratize media and open it up,” Goldman said of his time working on Current TV, which he connects directly to his interest in building Happs. “[We] loved the creativity unleashed by that.”

Online creators tend to be siloed within the app where they’ve built the biggest community, but Happs wants to empower them to reach as many followers as possible in a platform-agnostic way. For creators, the appeal with multistreaming is maximizing reach while making content efficiently. There’s a risk of alienating YouTube followers at the expense of your Twitch community if you don’t play your cards right, but some savvy content creators have turned toward the model to grow their audiences.

Happs connects people across platforms in a few ways. For one, Happs users can broadcast live to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Twitch simultaneously. The app also collects live comments from all supported social media sites and beams them into its own interface where they appear in a continuous cross-platform stream.

The integrated comment feature is nice built-in option for anyone who’s straddled comments across multiple devices simultaneously while livestreaming, which is no easy feat. When you’re streaming live you can feature a comment so that followers can see it on the screen no matter what platform they’re watching on.

Other companies in the space like OBS, Streamlabs and Restream are focused on the tools part of the equation, offering power users a useful backend for pushing out multi-streamed live video. Streamyard also offers multistreaming to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms through a simple browser interface.

Restream raises $50M to help creators program and stream to multiple platforms

Unlike those services, Happs feels more like a social network, with familiar features like user profile photos, follower counts and a feed next to a “go live” button. Anyone can use the multi-streaming platform through its iOS or Android apps or a web interface, whether they’re a creator signing up for the tools or a fan looking to support the content they love.

Happs lacks some of its competitors’ bells and whistles, stuff like fancy customized graphics and lower-thirds, but has a few interesting tricks of its own. While streaming live on Happs, you can invite someone else on the app to join your feed for a real-time collaboration. The social networking elements are meant to encourage cross-platform creativity, so a YouTuber and a Twitch personality could hang out together and boost both of their reaches, all while streaming to a bunch of other apps.

Happs also offers users monetization tools from the get-go, with no requirements before they can start making money. That speaks to the app’s appeal for creators who might be less established or just starting out. Happs could be a much harder sell for a popular creator deeply invested in a platform like Twitch, which has rules against multi-streaming for most accounts that are allowed to monetize.

There are a few different ways to monetize. One lets anyone on Happs sponsor a broadcaster through regular monthly payments. The other is a one-off option that lets you chip in an award for any livestream, or to the VOD (video on demand) after the fact. The in-app currency is a virtual coin that users can buy or earn through doing stuff on the app. There are no plans for ads (yet, anyway).

The company will take 30% cut of subscription earnings, though according to Goldman they’ll be waiving those fees for an unspecified period of time to attract people to the platform.

“We raised this round to really build up product and tech team [and] to make the platform much more stable and reliable,” Goldman said. The company is looking forward to leveraging the new resources to “really go out now and get in front of creators so they know Happs exists.”

Logitech acquires popular game streaming tool Streamlabs for around $89M

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Apple is opening a store in downtown LA’s nearly 100-year-old Tower Theatre

This Thursday, Apple will mark the opening of a new store in downtown Los Angeles. The space occupies the newly renovated Tower Theatre, which opened in DTLA’s Broadway Theater District in 1927. Among other milestones, the 900-seat theater was the first in LA to be wired for the talkies, hosting a premier of “The Jazz Singer” that same year. Not for nothing, it was also the first theater in the city with air conditioning.

Apple Tower Theatre is actually the company’s 26^th store in greater LA. Obviously, though, moving into a 94-year-old theater takes a fair bit more work than, say, a shopping mall. The store has been in the works for a number of years, owing in part to having to work with the city to restore a space that had been declared a landmark.

Image Credits: Apple

Interestingly, an LA Times article back in 2018 noted that the space, “may also serve as a declaration that Apple intends to compete as a major Hollywood content creator.” In hindsight, fair enough. Apple TV+ launched late the following year.

[gallery ids="2168778,2168774,2168777,2168779,2168782,2168766"]

The theater has actually been largely unoccupied since 1988, which clearly meant even more work had to go into shining up the walls and making the grand old theater presentable for that modern retail vibe — not to mention a seismic upgrade to help make it more earthquake proof.

The company also notes that it took care to maintain some of the space’s more iconic elements.

Image Credits: Apple

“Apple Tower Theatre anchors the corner of Eighth Street and Broadway, where visitors will immediately recognize the fully restored clock tower, recreated Broadway marquee, clean terra cotta exterior, and renovated historic blade sign,” Apple writes. “After walking through the Broadway doors, guests enter the monumental lobby inspired by Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera House, featuring a grand arched stairway with bronze handrails flanked by marble Corinthian columns.”

The store’s opening also marks the launch of Apple’s new Creative Studios initiative. The LA store and a location in Beijing will be the first to get the program. In its initial form, it will run between eight and 12 weeks, providing a group of mentors from the creative arts.

Image Credits: Apple

“Creativity and access to education are core values for Apple, so we are absolutely thrilled to kick off today at Apple Creative Studios in Los Angeles and Beijing and to bring this meaningful program to several more cities this year,” SVP Deirdre O’Brien said in a press release. “Building on our long history of using stores as a venue to host local artists to educate and inspire, Creative Studios is one more way we’re providing free arts education to those who need it most.”

Last week, Google launched its first retail store in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. The Apple Tower Theatre location opens at 10 a.m. local time on Thursday, June 24. The company says it’s employing nearly 100 to keep the store running.

A look inside Google’s first store, opening in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood tomorrow

 

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Electric utility bike startup Ubco raises $10 million to fund its global expansion

Ubco, the New Zealand-based electric utility bike startup, has raised $10 million to fund a global expansion focused on the U.S. market and scale up its commercial subscription service business. 

Ubco’s hero product, the Ubco 2X2, is an all-wheel drive electric motorbike that looks like a dirt bike but rides like a moped. What began as a solution for farmers to get around pastures and farms easily, safely and quickly has expanded to include an urban version of the bike that caters to fleet enterprise customers, gig economy workers and city riders. 

Since its founding in 2015, the company has produced two versions of its 145-pound utility bike: The Work Bike, the original off-road vehicle, and the Adventure Bike, the newer version that’s made for city riding but can handle itself off-road. 

Now that Ubco’s got a fresh cash infusion from the round led by Seven Peak Ventures, Nuance Capital and TPK Holdings, it hopes to continue expanding into existing verticals, like food delivery, postal service and last-mile logistics. The company already works with Domino’s in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, as well as a range of other national clients, like the New Zealand Post, the Defense Force, the Department of Conservation and Pāmu, or Landcorp Farming Limited and other local restaurants and stores.

“We have a strong enterprise market in New Zealand and have developed a strong pipeline of sales internationally,” Timothy Allan, CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch. 

While direct consumer sales make up for most of Ubco’s revenue at present, the company is pushing aggressively into enterprise, and more specifically, subscription services. The 2X2 is built on an intelligent platform that includes vehicle and power systems, cloud connectivity and data analysis, which enables the subscription model to work alongside fleet management systems. 

Ubco expects revenue to climb from $2.1 million in 2020 to $8.4 million by the end of 2021 as it pushes to increase its annual recurring revenue through subscriptions. Ubco’s subscription model, which costs about $50 to $60 per week ($75 to $85 NZD) for fleet enterprise customers, is being rolled out in New Zealand, Australia, the U.K., Europe and the U.S. this year and into 202. Consumers will get access to the subscriptions as well within the next couple of months, according to a spokesperson for the company. 

Allan sees subscriptions as the future of the EV industry, not just because it allows for a high chance of profitability, but also because it’s far more environmentally sustainable. As the company expands this part of its business model, it hopes to lead the circular economy space.

The company predicts that vehicles run through the subscription model will have four times the life expectancy as those sold outright and produce 80% less carbon overall compared to a combustion vehicle. 

“Subscription means we own the vehicle, so we manage the lifecycle,” said Allan. “So the first life starts at high intensity, and that might be 60,000 kilometers delivering pizza, or it might be 30,000 kilometers on a farm, which are equally hard for different reasons. Then after, that vehicle will go down to a lower intensity application. After that the battery can then be pulled out, and that might go into passive solar storage or something like that.”

Allan sees solving the end-of-life issue as a personal and professional challenge, one with room for creativity since no one has fully figured out the correct way of doing it. He says he takes a bottom up approach when it comes to the engineering of the vehicle in a way that allows for easier recycling.

“Like when you design a battery, fuck putting fire retardant foam into it because you can’t get it back at the end of life,” he said. “So it starts with correctly labeling, engineering with intent so that you’re designing for this type of assembly, and then your business or commercial system needs to support the concept. Now, we’ve got the advantage because the economics and incentives are aligned, and that all aligns with New Zealand’s product stewardship legislation.”

Trying to perfect the circular economy through utility vehicles isn’t just about doing what’s right for the environment. Allan thinks it’ll be a smart business decision in the end, one that will draw in customers and give the company a competitive edge with enterprise clients. 

“This is a part of your journey with us as a customer,” said Allan. “If we can design subscriptions and the life of the vehicle in such a way that you feel good about it, that’s where we’re driving from. Most people want to do the right thing, and we can provide something that logically fits the economics, can be done at scale and can be managed holistically.”

Mobility startups can be equitable, accessible and profitable

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