Americans Are on the Move Again

September 2 2020

Before the pandemic, Americans are generally moving less. However, young people — especially those living in cities — are bucking this trend.

With the increasing acceptance of remote work and growing concerns of public safety, Americans are on the move again. Moving companies, a $25 billion business in the U.S., look like an upcoming target for disruption.

That's not a bad sign for the economy. The fact that more people are moving to new counties or states could be a good sign for economic mobility

There is a slew of inefficiencies within the moving industry. For example, there are more than 8,000 moving companies in the U.S. because most of them only serve small regions.

Increasingly, people are using a patchwork of apps and traditional moving companies to orchestrate piecemeal moves. That could include hiring a TaskRabbit to help disassemble a bed, finding a buyer for the mattress on an app like OfferUp or Facebook Marketplace, and renting a truck to transport the frame.

This piecemeal approach has inspired many startups to provide a more customizable moving experience. Many of them are platforms matching freelancers with customers, but with more industry focus and expertise.

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Innovative Moving Startups:

Bellhops, a Tennessee company, offers a clean app and site to instantly book only what you need, whether that's a helper or a truck or an entire moving team. Their slogan is "Imagine if moving were fun," and while traditional movers have trouble scaling, Bellhops' platform is available in almost every major U.S. city.

Moveline is a startup based in Las Vegas. The company, brokering between customers and some 200 moving companies, doesn’t charge additional fees beyond the base quote. Customers use Moveline’s app to Facetime (or video call) a “move captain” who is given a virtual tour of the customer’s home or apartment. The captain then provides three to five guaranteed quotes, from lower-end to high-end services.

BuddyTruk is a peer-to-peer, on-demand moving and hauling platform that lets people with trucks or minivans apply to become a mover. The iOS app lets users take a picture of the furniture item they wish to move, and the image is sent to all hired drivers in that area. It offers a similar service for big delivery jobs — like picking up a couch from the store — which usually comes with skyrocketing costs and takes the better part of a day.

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Since last week, PrivCo has added:
634 Companies | 74 M&A Deals | 289 Funding Activities

Funding & Deal Highlights:

Armstrong World Industries, Inc. today announced that it has acquired the business and assets of Moz Designs, Inc., a designer and fabricator of custom architectural metal ceilings, walls, dividers, and column covers for the interior and exterior applications. The talented team at Móz combines custom perforations, engraving, high-end metal finishes, and forming to produce rich, artistic visuals with depth and movement, collaborating with architects and designers to make their vision a reality. With this new exciting capability, AWI enriches its leading portfolio of the metal ceiling and wall solutions.

Apparis, an NYC-based vegan fashion brand, closed a $3m in a Seed funding round. This round was led by Third Kind Venture Capital, with a major investment from Exor Seeds, the venture fund affiliated with the Agnelli family. Several angel investors participated in the round, among them Karlie Kloss (supermodel and entrepreneur), Francesco Carozzini (Italian director and photographer), and Cam Newton (MVP New England Patriot Quarterback and fervent vegan).

ChartHop, an NYC-based organizational management platform for companies to plan for the future, raised $14m in Series A financing. The company will use the latest funding to expand its platform and its business reach.

Freenome, a privately held biotechnology company that has pioneered a comprehensive multi-omics platform for early cancer detection with a routine blood draw, announced an oversubscribed $270 million Series C financing, bringing the company's total financing to over $500 million since the company's launch. The proceeds will be used to accelerate the PREEMPT CRC™ clinical trial for Freenome's blood test for colorectal cancer screening and precancerous lesion detection, advance a pipeline of blood tests for both the early detection and early intervention of additional cancers, and continue building the company's proprietary multi-omics platform. PREEMPT CRC is an FDA registrational study launched in May 2020 to support approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the first front-line blood test to help the 45 million people who are currently not up-to-date on colorectal cancer screening guidelines in the U.S.

Finix, a startup that provides payments-related services to other companies, announced it has extended its Series B financing with a $30 million investment led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and American Express Ventures.

Fox Robotics is the latest startup to reap the benefits of the accelerated interest in the category. The Austin-based startup told TechCrunch this week that it has raised a $9 million Series A, led by Menlo Ventures. The latest round brings its total funding to date up to $13 million, with support from previous investors Eniac, Famiglia, SignalFire, Congruent, AME, and Joe.

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