Specializing in Computer Repair, Networking, Internet Solutions, Web Designing, Hybrid App Designing and Windows Operating systems.
Inside YouTube Music's plans to compete with Spotify and others by putting the entire music business, including livestreams and tickets, onto a single platform — For the last eight months, musicians and bands haven't been able to tour, play festivals or go much of anywhere.
A look at Covid Tracking Project, a website run mostly by volunteers, which has become one of the most trusted sources on the spread of COVID-19 in the US — At the start of 2020, Amanda French was in between academic jobs. Her mother had died about a year earlier, and she'd taken time off to help settle her affairs.
LA-based Credit Key, which offers a B2B buy-now, pay-later service for e-commerce merchants, raises $33.85M Series A from Greycroft, Bonfire Ventures, others — Bringing the buy-now pay-later model that transformed companies like Klarna and Affirm into billion dollar businesses …
Twitter is the latest social media site to allow users to experiment with posting disappearing content. Fleets, as Twitter calls them, allows its mobile users post short stories, like photos or videos with overlaying text, that are set to vanish after 24 hours.
But a bug meant that fleets weren’t deleting properly and could still be accessed long after 24 hours had expired. Details of the bug were posted in a series of tweets on Saturday, less than a week after the feature launched.
The bug effectively allowed anyone to access and download a user’s fleets without triggering a notification that the user’s fleet had been read and by whom. The implication is that this bug could be abused to archive a user’s fleets after they expire.
Using an app that’s designed to interact with Twitter’s back-end systems via its developer API. What returned was a list of fleets from the server. Each fleet had its own direct URL, which when opened in a browser would load the fleet as an image or a video. But even after the 24 hours elapsed, the server would still return links to fleets that had already disappeared from view in the Twitter app.
When reached, a Twitter spokesperson said a fix was on the way. “We’re aware of a bug accessible through a technical workaround where some Fleets media URLs may be accessible after 24 hours. We are working on a fix that should be rolled out shortly.”
Twitter acknowledged that the fix means that fleets should now expire properly, it said it won’t delete the fleet from its servers for up to 30 days — and that it may hold onto fleets for longer if they violate its rules. We checked that we could still load fleets from their direct URLs even after they expire.
Fleet with caution.
This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays, based on the column of the same name. You can sign up for the email here.
I had a neat look into the world of mental health startup fundraising planned for this week, but after being slow-motion carpet-bombed by S-1s, that is now shoved off to Monday and we have to pause and talk about COVID-19.
The pandemic has been the most animating force for startups and venture capital in 2020, discounting the slow movement of global business into the digital realm. But COVID did more than that, as we all know. It crashed some companies as assuredly as it gave others a boost. For every Peloton there is probably a Toast, in other words.
Such is the case with this week’s crop of unicorn IPO candidates, though they are unsurprisingly weighted far more toward the COVID-accelerated cohort of startups instead of the group of startups that the pandemic cut off at the knees.
More simply, COVID-19 gave most of our recent IPOs a polite shove in the back, helping them jog a bit faster toward the public-offering finish line. Let’s talk about it.
Roblox, the gaming company that targets kids, has been a beneficiary during the COVID-19 pandemic, as folks stayed home and, it appears, gave their kids money to buy in-game currency so that their parents could have some peace. Great business, even if Roblox warned that growth could slow sharply next year, when compared to its epic 2020 gains.
But Roblox is hardly the only company taking advantage of COVID-19’s impacts on the market to get public while their numbers are stellar. We saw DoorDash file last week, crowing from atop a mountain of revenue growth that came in part from you and I trying to stay home since March. As it turns out you order more delivery when you can’t leave your house.
Affirm got a COVID-19 boost as well, with not only e-commerce spend growing — Affirm provides point-of-sale loans to consumers during online shopping — but also because Peloton took off, and lots of folks chose to finance their new exercise bike with the payment service. Call it a double-boost.
The IPO is well-timed. Wish falls into the same bucket, though it did hit some supply-chain and delivery issues due to the pandemic, so you could argue it either way.
Regardless, as we have seen from global numbers, COVID-19 is very much not done wreaking havoc on our health, happiness, and ability to go about normal life. So the trends that this week’s S-1s have shown us still have some room to run.
Which is irksome for Airbnb, a unicorn that was supposed to have debuted already via a direct listing, but instead had to hit pause, borrow money, lay off staff, and now jog to the startup finish line with less revenue in this Q3 than the last. In time, Airbnb will get back to full-speed, but among our new IPO candidates it’s the only company net-harmed by COVID-19. That makes it special.
There are other trends to keep tabs on, regarding the pandemic. Not every software company that you might expect to be thriving at the moment actually is; Workday shares are off 8% today as I write to you, because the company said that COVID-19 is harming its ability to land new customers. Here’s its CFO Robynne Sisco from its earnings call
Keep in mind, however, that while we have seen some recent stability in the underlying environment, headwinds due to COVID remains particularly to net new bookings. And given our subscription model, these headwinds that have impacted us all year will be more fully evident in next year’s subscription revenue weighing on our growth in the near-term.
Yeesh. So don’t look at recent IPOs and think that all things are good for all companies, or even all software companies. (To be clear, the pandemic is a human crisis, but my job is to talk about its business impacts so here we are. Hugs, and please stay as safe as you can.)
There was so much news this week that we have to be annoyingly summary.
I caught up with Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras the other day, giving The Exchange a chance to parse what happened to the company during the early COVID days when the company decided to cut staff. The short answer from the CEO is that the company went from growing 10% to 15% each month, to seeing negative growth — not a sin, Airbnb saw negative gross bookings for a few months earlier this year — and as the company had hired for a big year, it had to make cuts. Dubugras talked about how hard of a choice that was to make.
Brex’s business rebounded faster than the company expected, however, driven in part by strong new business formation — some data here — and companies rapidly moving into the digital realm and moving to finance systems like Brex’s.
Looking forward, Dubugras wants to expand the pool of companies that Brex can underwrite, which makes sense as that would open up its market size quite a lot. And the company is as remote as companies are now, with its CEO opening up during our chat about the pros and cons of the move. Happily for the business fintech unicorn, Dubugras said that some of the negatives of companies working more remotely haven’t been as tough as expected.
Next up: Growth metric. Verbit, a startup that uses AI to transcribe and caption videos, raised a $60 million Series C this week led by Sapphire Ventures. I couldn’t get to the round, but the company did note in its release that it has seen 400% year-over-year revenue growth, and that its “revenue run-rate [has] grown five-fold since 2019.” Nice.
Jai Das led the round for Verbit, and, in a quirk of good timing, I’m hosting an Extra Crunch Live with him in a few weeks. (Extra Crunch sub required for that, head here if you need one. The discount code ‘EQUITY’ should still be working if it helps.)
Telos, a Virginia-based cybersecurity and identity company went public this week. It fell under our radar because there is more news than we have hands to type it up. Such is the rapid-fire news cycle of late 2020. But, to catch us both up, Telos priced midrange but with an upsized offering, valuing it around $1 billion, according to MarketWatch.
After going public, Telos shares have performed well. Cybersecurity is having one hell of a year.
Turning back to our favorite topic in the world, SaaS, ProfitWell’s Patrick Campbell dropped a grip of data on the impact of COVID-19 on the B2B SaaS market. Mostly it’s positive. There was a hit early on, but then growth seems to have accelerated. Just keep in mind the Workday example from earlier; not everyone is in software growth paradise as 2020 comes to a close.
And, finally, after Affirm released its S-1 filing, competing service Klarna decided it was a good time to drop some performance data of its own. First of all, Klarna — thanks. We like data. Second of all, just go public. Klarna said that it grew from 10 million customers in the United States to 11 million in three weeks, and that the second statistic was up 106% compared to its year-ago tally.
Affirm, you are now required by honor to update your S-1 with even more data as an arch-nerd clapback. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
Alright, that’s enough of all that. Chat to you soon, and I hope that you are safe and well and good.
Welcome back to Human Capital, where I break down the latest in diversity, equity and inclusion, and labor in tech.
TL;DR: This week, Apple announced its third head of diversity and inclusion in four years, Uber’s Black employee base shrunk despite the company committing to anti-racism and Reddit brought on its second Black board member this year.
Meanwhile, Facebook’s content moderators spoke out against the company for forcing some of them to work in the office during a pandemic and a new report from Silicon Valley Rising showed 63% of blue-collar tech workers are Black or Latinx.
Sign up here to get this as a newsletter in your inbox every Fridays at 1 p.m. PT. However, I’m taking next week off so you won’t be hearing from me until December 4.
Facebook content moderators demand better protections and benefits
A group of more than 200 Facebook content moderators, as well as some full-time employees, demanded the tech company “stop needlessly risking moderators’ lives,” they wrote in an open letter to Facebook and the company’s contractors that manage content moderators, Accenture and Covalen. The demands came after The Intercept reported how some Facebook content moderators — who deal with things like sexual abuse and graphic violence — were required to come back into the office during the pandemic. Shortly after they returned to the office, a Facebook content moderator reportedly tested positive for COVID-19.
Facebook later defended its decision to bring some content moderators into the office, saying it’s “not able to route some of the most sensitive and graphic content to outsourced reviewers at home,” its VP of Integrity Guy Rosen said on a press call. “This is really sensitive content. This is not something you want people reviewing from home with their family around.”
Turo commits $1 million to addressing wealth inequality
Car-sharing marketplace Turo teamed up with Kiva to offer interest-free loans to Black people and folks from traditionally underserved communities to buy cars and then share them on Turo. The $1 million commitment aims to address the issue of wealth inequality in the United States.
Called the Turo Seed Initiative, those who are eligible can raise up to $15,000 via crowdfunding and Turo’s matching program. In order to raise money on Kiva, folks must use the funding for business purposes, which includes car sharing on Turo. Through Kiva, they can raise up to $7,500 and Turo will then match up to $7,500. From there, they can buy a car and list it on Turo.
Tech’s cafeteria workers, security officers, etc. are predominantly Black or Latinx
A Silicon Valley Rising report recently showed about 63% of blue-collar tech workers are Black or Latinx. These are the workers who cook and serve food in tech company cafeterias, drive tech shuttles or work as security officers or custodians.
Also this week, a group of cafeteria workers who formerly worked inside Verizon Media’s offices protested outside its CEO’s home in San Francisco. These workers were laid off by Verizon Media contractor Compass in September. Meanwhile, LinkedIn stopped paying more than 260 food service workers at the end of June and Tesla laid off 280 janitors and bus drivers in April.
Transitioning from Trump to Biden: Now is not the time for complacency
On this week’s episode of TC Mixtape, we spoke with Y-Vonne Hutchinson of Ready Set about DEI and what a new administration means for the work she and so many others are doing. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:
While I’m optimistic and so thrilled at the prospect that we’re not going to see harm like we did under the Trump administration, I also remember the Obama administration. This isn’t like these structures that got spun up — this didn’t happen out of the blue.
I hope that we have learned some really valuable lessons when it comes to the impact that not just like lack of diversity inclusion, because that feels so milk toast to say, but like these exclusionary and harmful organizations, platforms, powerful people in our industry, like I hope we’ve learned from our mistakes there. But I think that there’s always going to be a temptation to say, ‘well, we got Trump out and the work is done’ [or] feel a little bit complacent. I worry about that complacency. Because, you know, the dirty, nasty undercurrents, all of that stuff that got us to where we are today — all of that’s still there, all that festering toxicity.
We still have work to do, and I’m not saying that everybody’s a bad actor and you know, get rid of it. But I think that we really need to be critical and think about what accountability looks like for our industry and make sure that we’re not falling into the same bad habits that we did that got us here in the first place. So I’m kind of waiting to see how that plays out.
Apple announces a new head of D&I
Apple recently announced Barbara Whye, former head of D&I at Intel, will be joining them as its VP of inclusion and diversity in early 2021. The announcement came after its former head of D&I, Christie Smith, left the company in June “to spend time with her family,” an Apple spokesperson said at the time. Smith had been in the role since late 2017, after Denise Young Smith, the company’s first-ever VP of diversity and inclusion, left after only being in the role for six months.
Uber’s D&I efforts fall short this year
Uber recently released its latest diversity report, showing a decline in the overall representation of Black employees in the U.S. despite an increased focus on racial justice this year in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. In 2019, Uber was 9.3% Black while this year, only 7.5% of its employees are Black.
Uber attributes the decline in Black employees to its layoffs earlier this year, where about 40% of its employees in community operations were laid off, Uber Chief Diversity Officer Bo Young Lee told TechCrunch.
“As a company that has so publicly stated its stance on anti-racism, that’s not acceptable,” she said.
That unintentional decline in the Black population at Uber “led to a lot of soul searching,” she said. “Dara was certainly upset by it. Every leader was. It reinforced how easy it is to lose some ground after all the work you’ve done.”
Reddit adds another Black director to the board
Reddit has appointed Paula Price, who has served on the board of six public companies, including Accenture and Deutsche Bank, to its board of directors. Price’s appointment makes her one of two Black directors on the company’s board.
“Paula’s vast experience as a world-class financial leader and strategic advisor will be a tremendous asset to us in the years ahead,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a statement. “Best of all, she embodies the two qualities most important to us for this Board seat: expertise leading companies through periods of transformative growth and real passion for Reddit’s mission.”
Before Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian stepped down from the board and urged the company to appoint a Black director to take his place, Reddit had zero Black board members. Reddit took Ohanian’s advice and appointed Y Combinator Michael Seibel to the board.
LAPD bans commercial facial recognition
Following an inquiry from Buzzfeed regarding officers’ use of Clearview, the LAPD has banned the use of commercial facial recognition programs. That’s not to say LAPD won’t continue using facial recognition that compares images to suspect booking records but it will no longer use facial recognition tools that rely on social media and other websites.
ClosedLoop.ai, which is developing AI-based tools to help hospitals predict factors like patient readmission and appointment cancellations, raises $11M Series A — Even before a patient walks into the doctor's office, ClosedLoop.ai aims to predict whether that patient may be admitted …
A look at the growing world of virtual HQs on services like Branch, Gather, and Huddle, which are using spatial tech to create a metaverse dedicated to work — ‘The future of transportation is no transportation’ — In retrospect, 2019 feels like the working world's last dance with spontaneity.
SpaceX is set to launch a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Saturday morning, with a target liftoff time of 9:17 AM PST (12:17 PM EST). This is the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich Mission, which carries a satellite of the same name developed by the European Space Agency, NASA, and both U.S. and European meteorological monitoring bodies.
The Sentinel-6 is named for former NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich, who occupied the position between 2006 and 2019 and passed away in August. It’s one of two Sentinel-6-series satellites that will be launched for the program, with the Sentinel-6B set to join the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich sometime in 2025.
SpaceX will be looking to recover the Falcon 9 first stage booster with a powered landing back on Earth at Landing Zone 4 at Vandenberg. This is the first SpaceX launch from Vandenberg since June of last year, though it has flown plenty of missions from both Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The webcast above will go live approximately 15 minutes prior to the liftoff time, so at around 9:02 AM PST (12:02 PM EST). Should this mission have to be canceled today, there’s a backup opportunity set for Sunday at 9:04 AM PST (12:04 PM PST).
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is an all-time first for the show, it’s an Equity Leftovers. Which means that we’re not focusing on a single topic like we would in an Equity Shot. This is just, well, more Equity.
Danny and I and Chris got together to chat about a few things that we could not leave out:
And with this, our fourth episode in six days, we shall pause until Monday. Hugs from the Equity crew.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
