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The NYC-based brick-and-mortar kids’ clothes and toys retailer filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, reporting that it had raised $10.5 million in funding.The company offered its equity-only stocks, aiming to gather $11 million but it came $500,000 short of it. Camp secured funds from 5 different investors, the SEC filing reveals, with the first investment made at the beginning of April.Camp is a New York City retail concept store that offers goods and experiences for children. It opens its doors seven days a week to the general public and its members alike. Both can purchase toys and clothing but also partake in the many family activities organized by the store. The family experience store provides fun and educational activities that range from dance and improv classes to arts and crafts and even kids yoga. A Camp membership card offers many perks, including access to two free activities a day, guest passes so that you can bring your friends along for the adventure, and complimentary refreshments. The free date night drop-off is among the highly popular members-only benefits, as it allows parents to enjoy three hours of alone time, knowing that their little ones are well taken care of and amused at Camp.With just one store on 5th Avenue at the moment, the brick-and-mortar retailer has announced it will open another one in Brooklyn soon without specifying the date or the exact location.Who is behind this project?Ben Kaufman is the founder and CEO of this camp-themed retail store that opened in December 2018. According to his Linkedin profile, he began working on the project in June last year.Apart from his role at Camp, he also works at Buzzfeed as the Chief Marketing Officer. He ventured into retail twice before founding the NYC-based shop. Back in 2005, Kaufman started his iPod accessories and batteries retail business called Mophie. He expanded his offer to smartphones before selling the company in 2016. Kaufman’s second, less successful venture was called Quirky. The company wanted to “make invention accessible” by bringing together a community of inventors, filtering out ideas, and helping to manufacture and launch the final product. He founded Quirky in 2009 and managed to raise more than $185 million in debt and equity funding before filing for bankruptcy in 2016.Even though Kaufman didn’t keep Quirky afloat, it’s precisely thanks to this project that he was able to secure RRE as an investor in Camp. RRE’s Jim Robinson who represented the VC company in Series A funding of Quirky was listed as an investor in Camp in September 2018, as reported in an earlier SEC filing submitted by Ben Kaufman.

Gusto, a SaaS company that provides cloud-based payroll, benefits, and human resource management solutions to small businesses, has announced earlier today that it raised $200 million in series D funding, at a valuation of $3.8 billion.The San Francisco-based startup attracted new investors like Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Generation Investment Management while keeping its previous backers T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., Dragoneer Investment Group, and General Catalyst.One year ago, the company was valued at $2 billion when it raised $140 million in round C. The HR platform geared at small business owners has amassed more than $516 million since it was founded by Edward Kim, Josh Reeves, and Tomer London in 2012.Since its inception, Gusto’s self-described “people platform” has been addressing a number of HR-related functions like providing payroll services, employee onboarding, time tracking, retirement, and in recent years, health insurance. It also offers team management tools.The human resources platform currently employs more than 1,000 workers, with its Denver office being the largest. Established in 2015, the Denver branch currently boasts 600 employees. According to Gusto’s CEO and co-founder Josh Reeves, the company will use a portion of the newly raised funds to double the staff in Denver, grow its Bay Area team, and open up a new Research and Development office in New York City.“We’re excited about being in NY, and that’s all about accessing more technical talent, particularly in the financial services area, but also in general in the city’s growing tech ecosystem,” Reeves told Crunchbase News.He added the company plans on investing “quite a bit” in developing fintech by adding more functionality to the getting-paid-early feature of its software. Another substantial part of the money raised will be invested in services that help small businesses offer health insurance to their workers. “Healthcare in America is pretty complex. Over time we want to make healthcare more accessible,” said Reeves. “I feel like the scale is just beginning for us. Only 50% of small businesses make it to year five. We would love to increase the longevity for small businesses.” Apart from announcing the capital raise, Gusto also shared the news of welcoming Anne Raimondi, a SaaS industry veteran with more than 20 years of experience in scaling technology businesses, to its Board of Directors.In fact, the company has been rounding out its executive team since last year’s round C. Danielle Brown, who was Google's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, has recently joined Gusto in the role of Chief People Officer whereas Fredrick Lee, the former Chief Information Security Officer at Square, has become the new CISO.

Kaiyun Motors, a producer of mini electric vehicles from China, has been selling its tiny electric pickups in the U.S. and Europe since May 2019, cracking two of the world’s toughest markets as car sales decline in China.Even though Kaiyun Motors’ sales in these two competitive markets have been modest so far with less than a hundred vehicles sold since May, the company founder Wang Chao is optimistic about attracting new customers in the following months.The Chinese manufacturer has been around since 2014 and produces a small pickup truck called model called Pickman. The miniature electric vehicles, which can develop a maximum speed of 30 miles per hour, have found its buyers mostly in California, France, Spain, and Sweden. In the U.S., Kaiyun Pickman sold 40 units, and another 30 were shipped to Europe.Despite slow sales in the first few months of breaking into the U.S. market, Kaiyun Motors aims to sell between 3,000 and 4,000 vehicles in the country by the end of next year. When it comes to European sales forecasts, the carmaker refrained from making any predictions.The Pickman model can be purchased in the U.S. for the affordable price of $7,999, which includes a 25% import tax. The company decided to offer the same price to its European customers even though it pays zero tax to export to Europe. However, Kaiyun Motors needs to make some adjustments to the tiny pickup before it is approved for driving on public roads in the EU.“Mini-electric vehicles are more than enough to meet consumers’ daily needs,” Wang Chao told Bloomberg in an interview back in January, when he announced the firm got approved for selling in the states.American consumers, accustomed to large gasoline-powered pickups like the Ford F-250 which can haul more than 2,200 lbs at a 100-miles-per-hour speed, might disagree with this statement. On the other hand, Pickman comes with a much more affordable price tag than the Ford F-250 (with a price tag of $33,000). Moreover, it can manage trips around large construction sites, farms, and plants.Low-speed electric vehicles, powered by cheaper lead-acid batteries than its normal-sized counterparts, are prevalent in China. In 2017, the Chinese bought nearly 1.8 million such cars, which is equal to double the sales of regular electric vehicles like Tesla during the same period. Kaiyun Motors has sold around 4,900 models of Pickman in China this year.

Job satisfaction statistics highlight the fact that happy employees really make a difference in any organization.

It might not come as a surprise that the US is the single biggest outsourcing country in the world.