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Founded in 2011, Dynamic Yield has so far raised a total of $77 million. Among the six disclosed funding rounds, participated in three of them. co-led the company鈥檚 in 2017. Additionally, several notable corporations have also invested in Dynamic Yield, including and the Chinese search engine .

Dynamic yield pairs ecommerce experiences in an interactive digital shopping setting with a personalized sales assistant. Using the Dynamic Yield technology, companies can automatically engage with customers on their platforms. For example, when a customer browses a clothing website, the individual is prompted with a dialogue box that suggests items or promotions based on the person鈥檚 previous activity on the site. Similarly, customers are reminded by email if they have left items in their online shopping carts, or are offered suggestions similar to the items in the cart.

鈥淲hen we built Dynamic Yield, we built it from the very get-go to be a technology that will be used by product teams and engineering teams to create a better framework for their marketers to be able to launch campaign at scale,鈥� said Dynamic Yield鈥檚 CEO Liad Agmon. 鈥淥ur technology can support very sophisticated use cases in a much more elegant way.鈥�

Dynamic Yield on its ability to be highly integrated with its clients鈥� proprietary data, so the clients鈥� marketing campaigns can be tailored to individual customers.

Agmon also notes that clients in different countries may also adopt different personalization strategies. For example, Agmon told 附近上门 News that, mobile use, specifically for retail, is much more prominent in Asia and South America than in North America and Europe. Cultural nuances also play a role in varied personalization strategies, like messaging and other creative work.

Dynamic Yield aims to become 鈥渢he industry鈥檚 first personalization anywhere platform,鈥� per its press release. According to Agmon, this means that instead of having several siloed interactions with different digital interfaces, customers will have one integrated experience through multiple digital channels.

Currently, Dynamic Yield serves over 200 enterprise and mid-market clients around the globe, and its personalization services mainly operate through online, mobile, and email channels. With the new infusion of capital, the company is planning to expand its personalization solutions to kiosks, call centers, point-of-sale systems, and IoT devices.

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into the German high tech sector. According to 附近上门 data, German startups in 2017 attracted $3.5 billion in disclosed venture rounds, a 51 percent increase from 2016.

German venture firms are behind the investment jump. 附近上门 data shows that German VC firms made 331 venture deals in German startups in 2017. These deals account for roughly $1.77 billion鈥攁 little over half of the total funding amount that German startups raised.

From 2012 to 2015, the number and volume of investments made by German venture firms in German startups had climbed up steadily. Both metrics hit their peaks in 2015 when 420 known deals were made with a total value of around $2.3 billion.

In 2016, investors made smaller investments in angel, seed, and early-stage rounds to support up-and-coming startups, hence the dip in dollar volume. In the following year, big rounds such as the raised by car trading platform contributed to the dollar volume rebound.

So far this year, German venture firms have participated in 149 funding rounds in German startups, with a total value of $1.67 billion. Major players range from privately owned firms to government-backed investment vehicles.

Here is a list of the top 10 most active German venture capital firms that have made the most investments from 2012 to 2017:

German-based startups are also making headway into the U.S. market with the help of German Accelerator Tech. And although Germany-based startups have a lot of catching up to do, the country鈥檚 manufacturing prowess makes it an area worth watching.

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The San Francisco-based company received its in 2015, a year after its founding. Investors in the company at that stage included , , and , the managing partner of Teamworthy Ventures. In 2017, most of these investors continued their support to RaiseMe with a $4.5 million Series A. The latest funding round, backed by Teamworthy Ventures, boosted the company鈥檚 total funding to $31.5 million and placed Lehrman on the RaiseMe board.

RaiseMe a 鈥渕icro-scholarship鈥� program, which means that the platform awards students with incremental scholarships of small amounts, rather than giving out a lump sum of money at once. High school students starting from 9th grade are eligible to sign up on RaiseMe for free.

Instead of submitting essays or teacher recommendations, students earn scholarship credits by completing tasks such as taking a different language course, getting an A in a class, or taking leadership in a club. These credits will be counted towards the scholarship packages that the students will receive when they are accepted by colleges.

According to RaiseMe鈥檚 communications manager Cecilia Xia, the company wants students to regard micro-scholarships as a 鈥渞oadmap鈥� to track their progress in high school.

鈥淚t鈥檚 no surprise that holding oneself accountable for long term is a challenge, so we bring a more tangible, approachable road towards achieving these goals in front of students who are at pivotal stage in their life,鈥� Xia wrote in an email to 附近上门 News.

On the other side of the micro-scholarship equation is universities and colleges that partner with RaiseMe to offer students scholarships. RaiseMe charges participating institutions to be listed on its platform. Students can then track how much scholarship money they will receive at different colleges to help them decide which colleges to apply to and attend.

Xia told 附近上门 News that universities can design customized micro-scholarship programs on RaiseMe to 鈥減repare students to succeed at their institutions.鈥� , the University of Chicago awards students $287 for taking a challenging class, $143 for playing a sport, and $263 for doing community service. Schools looking for different values in their students may set different scholarship awarding metrics.

RaiseMe claims that it has so far served 鈥渙ver 1.2 million users across two-thirds of U.S. high schools, and has awarded a cumulative $2.5 billion college scholarships.鈥� Aiming to increase student body diversity at higher education institutions, the company also focuses on connecting with high schools with high concentration of underrepresented students.

For example, RaiseMe is active in the Chicago Public School district, which has . It also counts the University of Chicago, which is based in that school district, as its institutional partner. The latter, through RaiseMe, offers a scholarship program named to help high school students from the Chicago area attend UChicago or other selective liberal arts colleges.

With the new infusion of capital, RaiseMe is also expanding its business to help transfer students from community colleges.

鈥淲e’re keen to bring new financial aid transparency and clarity to the forefront of the community college transfer process, while also providing these students with a roadmap that will help them effectively complete their Associate’s Degrees as well,鈥� wrote Xia.

Editorial Disclosure: Salesforce Ventures is also an investor in 附近上门, 附近上门 News鈥檚 parent organization.

Editorial Note: An earlier version of this article stated that RaiseMe charges participating institutions annual fees from $4,000 to $20,000. The information has since be updated.听

That鈥檚 a shared experience among German entrepreneurs looking to expand in the U.S. Either they鈥檙e crossing the Atlantic Ocean, or they鈥檙e staying put and combating the notorious time difference between Germany and the U.S. (not to mention that there are four main time zones here).

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鈥淪ilicon Valley is 9 hours to Germany, and this really means that they (entrepreneurs) feel like they work all the time,鈥� said Katharina Legge, marketing chief at German-government backed startup incubator (GAT). 鈥淏ecause they work on U.S. time on their U.S. business, but they also want to be responsible for the German business.鈥�

Despite all the difficulties, German startups are tracing an upward trail on the U.S. venture landscape.

Venture deals in German startups led by U.S. investors have been consistently increasing since 2012. This year, German companies already scored 22 funding rounds that are led by U.S. investors, according to 附近上门 data.

Going Global, Staying Awake

Germany鈥檚 venture scene may be much smaller than America鈥檚, but German startups have increasing appetite for international expansion. Per (link in German), 82.7% of German startups have plans to expand overseas.

However, on a global scale, venture funding and new technology are still very concentrated in the U.S. This means that for many German startups, a large part of going global involves breaking into the U.S. market.

According to GAT鈥檚 Company Scout , a U.S. company aiming to be a global player can just grow in its home turf because the U.S. market is already so big. Meanwhile, a German startup can grow to a sustainable size in Germany, but once it enters the global market, it鈥檚 still small compared to its U.S. and international counterparts.

A German headquarters also means that it takes extra effort to win the trust of U.S. investors.

That鈥檚 been the finding for , co-founder of ultrasound sensor startup , who has been searching for sales and funding opportunities in the U.S. He told 附近上门 News that many U.S. investors are less interested in startups based overseas because many haven鈥檛 built a strong U.S. presence, and there are also potential legal complications such as different tax laws in Germany than in the U.S.

鈥淭he Valley investors are pretty spoiled because there are so many good activities going on [here in San Francisco],鈥� he said, joking: 鈥淢any of them have the mindset: if I cannot reach my startup with my bicycles then I will not invest.鈥�

Culture Shock

As if all the challenges of time difference and legal issues are not enough, German entrepreneurs in the U.S. are not exempted from culture shock. After all, Germany and the U.S. have very different startup ecosystems.

To Bahnemann, one of the most shocking things he found in Silicon Valley was the speed at which Americans do business. He recalled an instance in which he was introduced to two investors late Friday evening, and by Sunday midday he already finished two appointments with them.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 something that would never happen in Germany,鈥� said Bahnemann. 鈥淚n Germany, the weekend is kind of like a holy thing that you don鈥檛 touch.鈥�

Americans are also more open and willing to share, GAT鈥檚 Krauss and Legge pointed out.

In Germany, Krauss said, companies are more private about their business progress and partnerships, while U.S. founders often speak openly about their problems and achievements.

鈥淭his is something that is completely new for Germans when they come to U.S., that it鈥檚 so open that people share so much,鈥� said Krauss.

Both Bahnemann and Krauss mentioned that the U.S. and German styles of pitching and storytelling also differ quite a bit. Germans tend to fill their powerpoint slides with detailed technical information about their companies. In the U.S., however, the slides are there to get clients and investors hooked. For Bahnemann, getting used to the American style of selling was his biggest takeaway from his time at the GAT program.

The networking culture in the U.S. also catches some German entrepreneurs off guard.

鈥淚t’s a new country. It鈥檚 new people. It’s a different style of doing business. It鈥檚 quicker. It鈥檚 louder. It鈥檚 more intensive,鈥� said Bahnemann, noting that some German entrepreneurs, especially technical founders, are less willing to go out and talk to people about their work.

For German entrepreneurs willing to overcome those hurdles, however, recent investment trends indicate there鈥檚 a ready and growing supply of U.S. backers open to a cross-Atlantic relationship.

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So far Megvii has raised $607 million from Alibaba鈥檚 , , and government-backed funds like the , among others.

Megvii and SenseTime have raised $2.2 billion in total so far. But although Megvii and SenseTime are two of the biggest players in the face recognition space, its smaller competitors are also picking up cash from investors.

So far this year, have been made in Chinese face recognition startups, ranging from early to late-stage rounds. Lead investors include , , and . Alibaba has participated in three of the seven deals. It led a in SenseTime, leaving little doubt over the e-commerce giant鈥檚 ambition to leverage face recognition technology in its retail and finance businesses. that Megvii also plans to use its face recognition technology in retail settings.

Both SenseTime and Megvii also sell their products to law enforcement agencies. SenseTime has up with public security bureaus in Guangzhou and Yunnan to detect crimes, and Megvii uses facial scans provided by a Ministry of Public Security database drawn from legal identification files on about 1.3 billion Chinese, .

The fast expansion of this technology into retail and government surveillance poses hard to answer questions about privacy and government oversight of citizens. However, Megvii and Sensetime鈥檚 ability to raise giant rounds of funding shows that VCs and state-backed investors are willing to punt those problems down the road in favor of growth and market share.

From Bikes To Scooters

In December 2017, Lime reached one million rides sourced only from its bikes. Lime鈥檚 electric scooters didn鈥檛 debut until February 2018. By May 2018, however, Lime reported that its users had recorded three million rides on its bikes and scooters.

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While Lime has given the market a number of data points, Bird, another electric scooter sharing company, has been less generous. Bird announced in April 2018 that it had reached one million rides. That鈥檚 it.

Because of the meager statistics here, we will have to do some guesswork to make the comparison between the two work. But, with the information that is available, here is how the two companies currently compare:

Lime has raised 86 percent of its capital since it debuted electric scooters. (More notes on Lime鈥檚 fundraising can be found here.) That is because scooters proved to be a hit. As such, we can infer that a large percentage of Lime rides since the debut of scooters were, in fact, taken on scooters themselves.

You can select any number you鈥檇 like, but given the company鈥檚 growth rate after scooters, we鈥檝e decided鈥攆or argument鈥檚 sake鈥攖o presume that 80 percent of Lime rides reported may have been scooter-enabled. From that educated guess (based on the firm鈥檚 reported results), we can loosely infer 1.6 million Lime scooter rides between December 2017 and May 2018. That鈥檚 more than the scooter-only Bird reported around the same ending period.¹

Using the same 80 percent estimate, we can quickly calculate that Lime may have reached 4 million scooter rides by July鈥攁bout half a year after it launched its scooting service.

In two months from May to July, Lime鈥檚 rides may have doubled from 3 million to 6 million. If the firm stopped growing and continued at an estimated pace of 1.5 million rides per month, it鈥檚 possible Lime reached 13.5 million rides in total. However, the company has likely continued to grow.

A bit more math can be done here to see how these rides are turned into revenue. In a 附近上门 News article in May, estimated that a reasonable guess for the average revenue per scooter ride to be about $2.50. With that number, we can estimate that Lime so far had generated $15 million in revenue with its 6 million rides. By the end of the year, revenue could reach $33.75 million. This number pales compared to its roughly .

The firm will end 2018 on a far higher run rate, however, than it started on. As such, investors may wrap up the year on two small wheels with one big smile.

Article contributions made by Alex Wilhelm.

1. We鈥檙e stuck with some pre- and post-scooter launch data points, and thus are working with little data and much intuition. This is how covering startups sometimes goes.

In a bid to expand its online e-commerce outreach offline, today a $2.23 billion investment in , a Shanghai-based outdoor advertising business. The investment gives Alibaba 10 percent stake of Focus Media, and the giant is also considering an option to buy an additional five percent of the smaller company in the next twelve months.

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Focus Media distributes advertisements on screens in elevators, shopping floors, or movie theaters. The company claims to have reached 200 million city residents through 1.5 million screens in over 150 cities.

On Focus Media鈥檚 website, the company (link in Chinese) a set of data by Nielsen that people in China spend 24 minutes looking at ads every day, 19 percent of which is spent on elevator ads. This 19 percent is the attention graph the e-commerce giant Alibaba is trying to tap into.

Why would Alibaba invest in offline ads? Imagine you enter an elevator where all three walls are covered by prominent ads hanging at eye level. Chances are you will eventually, if not immediately, read them. Not to mention that all ads come in with convenient QR codes so that you can scan and purchase, all in one elevator ride.

More than half of the population in China lives in cities, . If half of those people use elevators once a day, it would represent daily traffic of 384 million. Alibaba is betting that this seamless online-to-offline shopping experience and the huge traffic can boost its already extensive business.

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From The听:

Big Five tech firms valued over $4T

The collective market value of the five biggest U.S. technology companies just surpassed $4 trillion. Whether they will maintain or surpass that mark will depend heavily on their latest earnings, which start to trickle out this week.

Another day, another really, really big tech fund closing. This time it鈥檚 software growth investor听, which just raised $6.3 billion for its tenth fund. This latest fund dwarfs its Fund IX, which closed in 2015 with $3.3 billion.

Chinese ed-tech platform raises $350M

Baidu-owned education startup听听just raised a $350 million Series D led by Coatue Management. Participating investors include Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital China, and New Enterprise Associates, among others.

, a developer of advanced imaging technology for digital photography, raised $121 million in a Series D round led by SoftBank.

Incubator aims to mint more German unicorns

While Germany鈥檚 economic prowess is indisputable, the country assumes a much more modest reputation in the tech startup scene. A government-backed incubator is working to turn that around, helping startups network their way to global expansion.

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Founded in 2014, Zuoyebang is an online education platform where K-12 students can upload their homework questions and search for solutions. The company started to run independently from Baidu in 2015 when it also raised its first round of $25 million. In 2016 and 2017, the company scored a $60 million Series B and a $150 million Series C, respectively.

Zuoyebang has been successful in retaining its investors. Its 2015 Series A was led by Sequoia and Legend Capital. The two firms continued their support in Zuoyebang in the next two rounds of funding, with more investors like GGV Capital and Coatue Management hopping on along the way.

Based on the community feature of Baidu Knows, a platform that allows users to ask and answer questions, Zuoyebang targets K-12 students. The startup allows students to upload a photo, which the platform will analyze and match to questions in its database. For questions without solutions, students can opt to pay for virtual one-on-one sessions with teachers that partner with Zuoyebang.

The snapchat-your-homework idea may seem to be the way to go to in China, although there is a catch. The online education space is very competitive in China. Zuoyebang is in direct competition with and . Both companies provide similar services and have collectively raised over $350 million. Yuanfudao is also backed by Tencent.

So far this year, Sequoia and Sequoia Capital China have invested in four Chinese education startups, including Zuoyebang. This investment pattern may indicate that China鈥檚 online education market, although crowded, still has untapped potential.

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That experience continued to pay off for years down the road. Most recently, it came in the form of a $50 million Series B round at a $1 billion valuation, with backing from famed Valley VC Accel. That deal vaulted Celonis to unicorn status. But it was the trip a few years back that helped set the trajectory, said co-CEO .

鈥淚t introduced us to the Silicon Valley ecosystem, which is very important,鈥� Rinke told 附近上门 News. 鈥淭he customers we were introduced to, and a lot of entrepreneurs, all these things are important to me as a tech company to grow, and position yourself (in the U.S. market).鈥�

Buoyed by the success of Celonis and other program grads, GAT has continued to strengthen the presence of German tech companies in the U.S. Yet while startups have made some inroads in their international expansion efforts, funding and exit data shows that Germany still has a lot of catch-up to do to in establishing itself as a leading hub for the next generation of tech industry giants.

Germany Leads In Lots Of Spaces, But Not Startups

As Europe’s largest economy, Germany in high tech machinery, vehicles, chemicals and household equipment. However, while the country鈥檚 economic prowess is indisputable, Germany assumes a much more modest reputation in the tech startup scene. Germany, with about one-fourth the population of the U.S., secured around in venture funding in 2017, less than one-twentieth the U.S. total, according to 附近上门 data.

鈥淭he idea was that we didn鈥檛 see any big tech companies out of Germany in the last 30 years,鈥� 听, a company scout for GAT, told 附近上门 News. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 have any new companies like Amazon and Google or Facebook, and the German government thought that this has to change.鈥�

German Accelerator Tech is one of three sub-branches of German Accelerator, an incubator program that selects promising German startups and supports them in expanding their businesses outside the country. The other two branches focus on startups in life sciences and tech startups looking to expand in Southeast Asia.

With its offices in Silicon Valley and New York, GAT concentrates on bringing German tech startups to the U.S. market. Every quarter the incubator admits 8 to 10 companies, targeting that are incorporated in Germany and have products relevant to the U.S. market.

There鈥檚 plenty of demand. In the past 6 years, the incubator said it has received over 1,000 applications and mentored 161 startups. GAT estimates that 92 percent of these startups are still in business today. To date, at least 9 incubator participants have been acquired and 10 have raised over $20 million total funding.

GAT鈥檚 not the only government-backed program to boost entrepreneurship and global tech leadership. 听The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy built a program to Germany鈥檚 presence in the digital economy. In addition to GAT, those efforts included 听, a VC firm, , a program to improve domestic entrepreneurial environment in higher education institutions, and , a funding program for angel investors.

A Focus On Global Expansion

One of GAT鈥檚 missions is to help German entrepreneurs establish business connections here in the U.S.. The incubator has U.S. entrepreneurs and industry experts mentor participants and help them develop marketing strategies for the U.S. market. 听Mentors also connect GAT participants with their own networks and introduce them to other investors, clients, and U.S. startup founders.

The goal is to help more German startups to become the next Celonis. Below, we look at the ten most heavily funded startups that the group has mentored:

Participating startups have a track record of global expansion, including in the U.S. For instance N26, a GAT class of 2018 alumni, now has an office in New York and is planning on launching its mobile banking service in the U.S. by early 2019.

Meanwhile, the newly debuted tech unicorn Celonis now has four offices across the U.S. The startup had its eyes set on becoming a global company since the beginning.

鈥淔rom the very early days on, we had the ambition to build a global business. We never wanted to build anything else,鈥� Rinke said.

This is the same message that GAT tries to convey to its participants: think big from the get go, and don鈥檛 be confined to the German market.

鈥淕o to the European market as quick as you can and don鈥檛 stop there. Go to the U.S. market as quick as you can.鈥� said Krauss. 鈥淏ecause this is the only chance that you can grow into a decent size and compete with U.S. startups and maybe also get some money from U.S. investors.鈥�

1. It should be noted that the top fundraiser, N26, was a well established company in Germany before it joined GAT in spring 2018. It recently raised led by and .

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made waves this week after aiming for in the United States. The Chinese company is only three years old. Following the Pinduoduo news, two-year-old Sina-backed fintech startup also a United States-based IPO, hoping to raise $70 million.

The Beijing-based startup is a technology platform that provides financial services that connect businesses to their end users. Its software covers installment loans, personal loans, SME loans, wealth management, and insurance brokerage services. One of its most popular offerings is online lending, which facilitated $2.4 billion loans for over 2.7 million unique borrowers by the end of 2017, per its filing.

Founded in 2016, Pintec recently raised led by and Hong Kong-based . It has over 400 employees and is profitable, generating net income of over $3 million in Q1 2018, according to its filing.

The company鈥檚 quick growth is partly attributed to its former affiliation with . The latter built a peer-to-peer lending business in 2012 and developed a series of lending and wealth management platforms in 2015. Pintec formally spinned off from Jimu at the end of 2016 but retains its financial partnership with Jimu.

Pintec鈥檚 technology is employed by several digital platforms in China like , , , and . Pintec points out in the filing that by 2022 the finance market in China will grow to $3.7 trillion. How much of that market can be captured by the soon-to-be publicly listed Pintec remains to be seen.

Editorial Note: A previous version of the article stated that Pintec facilitated RMB 3.9 billion loans for over 1.1 million unique borrowers by the end of 2017. It has since been updated.听

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From The听:

Asia Pacific startup funding hits new highs

Startups in the Asia Pacific region attracted $72 billion in the first half of 2018, with $43 billion in venture capital funding in Q2 2018 alone, 附近上门 data shows. The funding totals show a staggering year-over-year increase, fueled by massive later stage rounds.

Speaking of giant funding rounds for Asia Pacific companies, China鈥檚听听just secured $500 million from the operator of the travel service Booking.com. The investment is part of a broader partnership for setting up rides on Didi through Booking鈥檚 apps.

High Alpha raises about $100M to boost Midwest startups

Indianapolis-based听, a venture studio and early-stage fund, announced that it has raised over $100 million to expand its operations, with backing from venture investors Foundry Group and Emergence Capital.

Catch up on Q2 with lots of charts

The just-ended quarter set fresh cyclical highs for venture investment, both globally and in North America. 附近上门 News summarizes the trends with a collection of charts for our听global听and听North American听Q2 investment reports.