Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
Ashley Carman / The Verge:
A look at the challenges of podcast moderation: the difficulty of finding infringing content, the plethora of players, and philosophical objections to the idea — When former White House adviser-turned-podcaster Steve Bannon called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray, the tech platforms reacted.
Alan Boyle / GeekWire:
Pivotal Commware, which develops mmWave 5G infrastructure products that make use of metamaterials tech, raises $50M Series C led by Tracker Capital Management — Kirkland, Wash.-based Pivotal Commware says it has closed on a $50 million funding round that will help it expand research …
Sara Ashley O'Brien / CNN:
A DoorDash worker's vehicle was carjacked with two of his kids inside, showing the precarious position of parents in the gig economy during the pandemic — (CNN Business)For Ashley Vincent, a single mom in Binghamton, New York, delivering for DoorDash often requires some negotiation with her seven-year-old son.
Angel Au-Yeung / Forbes:
Following Bumble's IPO, CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who is 31, became the youngest female CEO ever to take a company public in the US — [Update 7 pm ET: Whitney Wolfe Herd ended the day Thursday with a net worth of $1.5 billion based on Bumble stock closing at $70.55.]
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
House committee says Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and YouTube streamer Keith Gill will testify at GameStop hearing on February 18 — On February 18th, the House Financial Services Committee will hold a virtual hearing to look into how GameStop's shares
Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
Sources: ByteDance is exploring a sale of India operations of TikTok to rival unicorn Glance, in talks initiated by SoftBank, a backer of Glance's parent InMobi — - TikTok banned in India amid poor relations with China — Talks are early and complex, according to people familiar
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google resumes updating its major iPhone and iPad apps, starting with YouTube; Google did not update the apps since before Apple's Dec. 8 privacy label change — The vast majority of Google's iOS apps have not been updated since early December. A trio of smaller Google applications saw …
Bloomberg:
Report: African startups raised $1.43B in 2020, down 29% YoY, declining for the first time in almost a decade — - Pandemic related slowdowns make investors wary of big deals — Funding rounds increased in Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa — Funding for African startups slowed …
Scott Chipolina / Decrypt:
A look at Valuables, a service from crypto company Cent that lets users sell their tweets as non-fungible tokens in exchange for Ethereum — A new platform that lets users buy and sell tweets has already seen $270,000 in offers. Here's how it works. — Individuals are now buying …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources shed light on the increasingly personal battle between Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg, who in private reportedly said “we need to inflict pain” on Apple — Animosity between CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook erupts over privacy and dueling visions of internet
Stanford Internet Observatory:
After researchers raised data privacy concerns, Clubhouse says it is taking steps “to prevent Clubhouse clients from ever transmitting pings to Chinese servers” — The audio chat app “Clubhouse” went viral among Chinese-speaking audiences. Stanford Internet Observatory examines …
Catalin Cimpanu / ZDNet:
Yandex says it caught an employee selling access to user email accounts for personal gains, and is in process of notifying 4,887 affected mailbox owners — The Russian company said the employee sold access to 4,887 user email accounts. — Russian search engine and email provider Yandex …
Michelai Graham / Technical.ly DC:
Data privacy management company WireWheel raises $20M Series B led by ForgePoint Capital, bringing its total raised to $45M — Led by ForgePoint Capital, this new financing will go toward expanding the data protection company's SaaS platform and adding to its product engineering, sales and marketing teams.
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Microsoft's Edge extensions store is hosting unofficial copies of games like Mario Kart 64, Pac-Man, more; Microsoft and Nintendo say they are investigating — Super Mario Bros., Sonic, Pac-Man, Tetris, Cut The Rope, even Minecraft — Microsoft's Edge extensions store appears …
Corinne Reichert / CNET:
BitPay adds Apple Pay support for its prepaid Mastercard which allows users to instantly convert their cryptocurrencies into fiat to pay for goods and services — Bitcoin wallet BitPay's Prepaid Mastercard users in the US can now add their card to Apple Wallet and Apple Pay will now allow Bitcoin …
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Minneapolis City Council unanimously approves an ordinance banning the use of facial recognition, including Clearview AI's software, by its police department — Minneapolis voted Friday to ban the use of facial recognition software for its police department, growing the list of major cities …
Dr. Tom Robinson / Elliptic Blog:
The founder of Joker's Stash, one of the most popular marketplaces for stolen credit card and identity data, has allegedly retired with a fortune of $1B+ — Elliptic's Co-founder and Chief Scientist discusses cryptocurrency forensics, investigations, compliance, and sanctions.
I’m very proud of the work we’re doing here at Extra Crunch, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that today is our second anniversary.
Thanks to hard work from the entire TechCrunch team, authoritative guest contributors and a very engaged reader base, we’ve tripled our membership in the last 12 months.
As Extra Crunch enters its third year, we’re putting our foot on the gas in 2021 so we can bring you more:
Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription
To be completely honest: Eric and I wavered about posting this announcement. Both of us would prefer to show the results of our work than make a list of future-looking statements, so I’ll sum up:
I’m proud of the work we’re doing because people around the world use the information they find on Extra Crunch to build and grow companies. That’s big!
Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; have a great weekend.
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Before the pandemic began, I took about seven or eight hailed rides each month. Since I began physically distancing from others to stem the spread of the coronavirus in March 2020, I’ve taken exactly 10 hailed rides.
Your mileage may vary, but last year, Uber and Lyft both reported steep revenue losses as travelers hunkered down at home. Today, Alex Wilhelm says both transportation platforms plan to reach adjusted profitability by Q4 2021.
He unpacked the numbers “to see if what the two companies are dangling in front of investors is worth desiring.” Since he usually doesn’t focus on publicly traded stocks, I asked Alex why he focused on Uber and Lyft today.
“Utter confusion,” he replied.
“Investors have bid up their stocks like the two companies are crushing the game, instead of playing a game with their numbers to reach some sort of profit in the future,” Alex explained. “The stock market makes no sense, but this is one of the weirder things.”
Image Credits: Techstars (opens in a new window)
In the theater, a “four-hander” is a play that was written for four actors.
Today, I’m appropriating the term to describe this roundup by Greg Kumparak, Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm and Jonathan Shieber that recaps their favorite startups from Techstars accelerators.
The quartet selected four startups each from Chicago, Boston and Techstars Workplace Development.
“As always, these are just our favorites, but don’t just take our word for it. Dig into the pitches yourself, as there’s never a bad time to check out some super-early-stage startups.”
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Neoinsurance company Metromile began trading publicly this week after it combined with a special purpose acquisition company.
Metromile will likely be one of 2021’s many SPAC-led debuts, so Alex interviewed CEO Dan Preston to learn more about the process and what he learned along the way.
A notable takeaway: “Preston said SPACs are designed for a specific class of company; namely those that want or need to share a bit more story when they go public.”
Image Credits: alashi (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Senior Writer Anthony Ha and Extra Crunch Managing Editor Eric Eldon surveyed three investors who back adtech and martech startups to learn more about what they’re looking for and whether deal flow has recovered at this point in the pandemic:
Image Credits: VCG (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
I have a hard time envisioning all of the hurdles deep tech founders must overcome before they can land their first paying customer.
How do you sustainably scale a company that probably doesn’t have revenue and isn’t likely to for the foreseeable future? How big is the TAM for an unproven product in a marketplace that’s still taking shape?
Vin Lingathoti, a partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, says entrepreneurs operating in this space face a unique set of challenges when it comes to managing growth and risk.
“Often these founders with Ph.D.s and postdocs find it hard to accept their weaknesses, especially in nontechnical areas such as marketing, sales, HR, etc.,” says Lingathoti.
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
This week, auto insurance startup Metromile completed its combination with SPAC INSU Acquisition Corp. II.
Last Friday, health insurance company Oscar Health announced its plans to launch an initial public offering.
As the saying goes: Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but using 2020 debuts by neoinsurance firms Lemonade and Root as a reference point, Alex says the IPO window is wide open for other players in the space.
“All the companies in our group are pretty good at adding customers to their businesses,” he found.
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie:
We’ve been having a tough time filling vacant engineering and other positions at our company and are planning to make a more concerted effort to recruit internationally.
Do you have suggestions for attracting workers from abroad?
— Proactive in Pacifica
Image Credits: ALLVISIONN (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
The people who produce viral TikTok duets, in-demand Substack newsletters and popular YouTube channels are doing what they love. And the money is following them.
Many of these emerging stars have become media personalities with full-fledged production and distribution teams, giving rise to what one investor described as “the enterprise layer of the creator economy.”
More VCs are backing startups that help these digital creators monetize, produce, analyze and distribute content.
Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm interviewed five of them to learn more about the opportunities they’re tracking in 2021:
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Simple agreements for future equity are an increasingly popular way for startups to raise funds quickly, but “they don’t generate the same paperwork exhaust,” Alex Wilhelm noted this week.
This creates cognitive dissonance: Investors see a hot market, while people who rely on public data (like journalists) get a different picture.
“SAFEs have effectively pushed a lot of public signal regarding seed deals, and even smaller rounds, underground,” says Alex.
Image Credits: Andriy Onufriyenko / Getty Images
Many enterprise companies were snapping up container security startups before the pandemic began, but the pace has picked up, reports Ron Miller.
The growing number of companies going cloud-native is creating security challenges; the containers that package microservices must be correctly configured and secured, which can get complicated quickly.
“The acquisitions we are seeing now are filling gaps in the portfolio of security capabilities offered by the larger companies,” says Yoav Leitersdorf, managing partner at YL Ventures.
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
In December 2019, Alex Wilhelm began reporting on startups that had reached the $100M ARR mark. A year later, he decided to reframe his focus.
“Mostly what we managed was to collect a bucket of companies that were about to go public,” he said.
Since then, he has recalibrated his sights. In the latest entry of a new series focusing on “$50M-ish” companies, he studies SimpleNexus, which offers digital mortgage software, and photo-editing service PicsArt.
Alex has more interviews and data dives coming on other companies in this cohort, so stay tuned.
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Dating platform Bumble initially set a price of $28 to $30 for its upcoming IPO, but at its new range of $37 to $39, Alex calculated that it could reach a max valuation of $7.4 billion to $7.8 billion.
Extrapolating revenue from its Q3 2020 numbers, he attempted to find the company’s run rate to see if it’s overpriced — and how well it stacks up against rival Match.
Mario Schlosser (Oscar Health) at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017
Jon Shieber and Alex Wilhelm co-bylined a story about Oscar Health, which filed to go public last week.
Although the health insurance company claims 529,000 members and a compound annual growth rate of 59%, “it’s a deeply unprofitable enterprise,” they found.
Jon and Alex parsed Oscar Health’s 2019 comps and its 2020 metrics to take a closer look at the company’s performance.
“Both Oscar and the high-profile SPAC for Clover Medical will prove to be a test for the venture capital industry’s faith in their ability to disrupt traditional healthcare companies,” they write.
Image Credits: Tomohiro Ohsumi (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Managing Editor Danny Crichton filed a column about Softbank’s Vision Fund that tried to answer a question he asked in 2017: “What does a return profile look like at such a late stage of investment?”
Softbank’s recent earnings report shows that its $680 million bet on DoorDash paid off handsomely, bringing back $9 billion. Compared to its competition, “the fund is actually doing quite decent right now,” he wrote. But Softbank has invested $66 billion in 74 unexited 74 companies that are worth $65.2 billion today.
“SoftBank quietly chopped half of the performance fees for its VC managers, from $5B to $2.5B, which led us to ask: are the best investments in the fund already in SoftBank’s rearview mirror? One upshot: WeWork seems to have turned something of a corner, with some improvements in its debt profile portending more positive news post-COVID-19.”
Conor Hale / FierceBiotech:
Hyperfine Research raises $90M Series D from GV, Nextrans, Axiom Associates, and others for its portable AI-powered MRI scanner — Hyperfine Research has raised $90 million to scale up the commercial rollout of its wheeled, bedside MRI scanner in the U.S. and abroad, following its debut last year.
