Monthly Archives: October 2020

News: New Chinese browser offers a glimpse beyond the Great Firewall – with caveats

• October 9, 2020
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China now has a tool that lets users access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and other internet services that have otherwise long been banned in the country. Called Tuber, the mobile browser recently debuted on China’s third-party Android stores, with an iOS launch in the pipeline. The landing page of the app features a scrolling

China now has a tool that lets users access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and other internet services that have otherwise long been banned in the country.

Called Tuber, the mobile browser recently debuted on China’s third-party Android stores, with an iOS launch in the pipeline. The landing page of the app features a scrolling feed of YouTube videos, with tabs at the bottom that allow users to visit other mainstream Western internet services.

While some celebrate the app as an unprecedented “opening up” of the Chinese internet, others quickly noticed the browser comes with a veil of censorship. YouTube queries for politically sensitive keywords such as “Tiananmen” and “Xi Jinping” returned no results on the app, according to tests done by TechCrunch.

Using the app also comes with liabilities. Registration requires a Chinese phone number, which is tied to a person’s real identity. The platform could suspend users’ accounts and share their data “with the relevant authorities” if they “actively watch or share” content that breaches the constitution, endangers national security and sovereignty, spreads rumors, disrupts social orders, or violates other local laws, according to the app’s terms of service.

Rather than blocking sites that are beyond the purview of Beijing and tracking individuals using VPNs to circumvent the Great Firewall, China now has an app that gives its people a glimpse into the Western internet — with the caveat that their digital footprint may be under close watch by the authorities.

Much about the app remains unclear, such as its origin and the motive behind it. The operator of the app’s official website (上海丰炫信息技术有限公司) is 70% owned by a subsidiary of Qihoo 360, a Chinese cybersecurity software giant. It remains to be seen whether the app will take off.

This is an updating story.

News: Top mobility VCs on the risks and rewards in partnering with giants like Amazon

• October 9, 2020
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At our recent TechCrunch Mobility event, we spoke with Amy Gu, the founder and managing partner of Hemi Ventures, Olaf Sakkers, a founding partner at Maniv Mobility and Reilly Brennan, the founding general partner at Trucks VC. We discussed a wide range of things, from frayed U.S.-China relations, to the mobility industry’s eager embrace of

At our recent TechCrunch Mobility event, we spoke with Amy Gu, the founder and managing partner of Hemi Ventures, Olaf Sakkers, a founding partner at Maniv Mobility and Reilly Brennan, the founding general partner at Trucks VC. We discussed a wide range of things, from frayed U.S.-China relations, to the mobility industry’s eager embrace of SPACs as a way to get capital-intensive companies into the public market.

We also talked partnerships. Specifically, we wanted to know how one determines whether a corporate leviathan that asks for information from a young startup — and maybe even invests in it — is really a friend or foe.

Our sense from the VCs is that mobility startups no longer have a choice but to partner with bigger and deeper-pocketed companies.

For example, Brennan wrote one of the first checks to autonomous shuttle company May Mobility and became its first board member. He suggested that the company, which has faced numerous engineering and operational challenges, had ambitions of going it alone when it was founded in 2017. At the time, other companies were operating in the world with apparent plans to remain independent, including self-driving software startups Cruise Automation and NuTonomy.

Today, Cruise is now a subsidiary of GM, and NuTonomy sold to automotive supplier Delphi four years after it launched. “If you were to [launch] a structured robo-taxi service today, it’s really hard to do without a big manufacturing partner,” said Brennan. Indeed, he went on to note that last December, Toyota Motor Corp. led a $50 million Series B round in May Mobility, advising attendees to “stay tuned” for the fruits of that partnership.

Gu agrees the “partner structure” is the path forward for startups and during the event cited numerous reasons why, including the fact that many of the larger companies in the automotive space have continued work nearly apace during the pandemic. She pointed to one of Hemi’s portfolio companies, Ample, a startup working on a battery-swapping technology that recently announced a partnership with Uber (which has committed to becoming a zero-emission platform by 2040).

News: Changing how retweets work, Twitter seeks to slow down election misinformation

• October 9, 2020
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Twitter announced a major set of changes to the way its platform would work Friday as the social network braces for the most contentious, uncertain and potentially high stakes election in modern U.S. history. In what will likely be the most noticeable change, Twitter will try a new tactic to discourage users from retweeting posts

Twitter announced a major set of changes to the way its platform would work Friday as the social network braces for the most contentious, uncertain and potentially high stakes election in modern U.S. history.

In what will likely be the most noticeable change, Twitter will try a new tactic to discourage users from retweeting posts without adding their own commentary. Starting on October 20 in a “global” change, the platform will prompt anyone who goes to retweet something to share a quote tweet instead. The change will stay in place through the “end of election week,” when Twitter will decide if the change needs to stick around for longer.

Gif via Twitter

“Though this adds some extra friction for those who simply want to Retweet, we hope it will encourage everyone to not only consider why they are amplifying a Tweet, but also increase the likelihood that people add their own thoughts, reactions and perspectives to the conversation,” Twitter said of the change, which some users may see on the Twitter for the web starting on Friday.

Twitter has been experimenting with changes that add friction to the platform in recent months. Last month, the company announced that it would roll out a test feature prompting users to click through a link before retweeting it to the platform at large. The change marks a major shift in thinking for social platforms, which grew aggressively by prioritizing engagement above all other measures.

The company also clarified its policy on election results, and now a candidate for office “may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called.” Twitter will look to state election officials or projected results from at least two national news sources to make that determination.

Twitter stopped short of saying it will remove those posts, but said that It will add a misleading information label pointing users toward its hub for vetted election information to any content claiming premature victory. The company does plan to remove any tweets “meant to incite interference with the election process or with the implementation of election results” including ones that incite violence.

Next week, Twitter will also implement new restrictions on misleading tweets it labels, showing users a pop-up prompt linking to credible information when they go to view the tweet. Twitter applies these labels to tweets that spread misinformation about COVID-19, elections and voting, and anything that contains manipulated media, like deepfakes or otherwise misleading edited videos.

The company will also take additional measures against misleading tweets that get a label when they’re from a U.S. political figure, candidate or campaign. To see a tweet with one of its labels, a user will have to tap through a warning. Labeled tweets will have likes, normal retweets and replies disabled.

These new measures will also apply to labeled tweets from anyone with more than 100,000 followers or tweets that are getting viral traction. “We expect this will further reduce the visibility of misleading information, and will encourage people to reconsider if they want to amplify these Tweets,” Twitter said in its announcement.

Image via Twitter

Twitter will also turn off recommendations in the timeline in an effort to “slow down” how fast tweets can reach people from accounts they don’t follow. The company calls the decision a “worthwhile sacrifice to encourage more thoughtful and explicit amplification.” The company will also only allow trending content that comes with additional context to show up in the “for you” recommendation tab in an effort to slow the spread of misinformation.

The company acknowledges that it plays a “critical role” in protecting the U.S. election, adding that it had staffed up dedicated teams to monitoring the platform and “respond rapidly” on election night and in the potentially uncertain period of time until authoritative election results are clear.

News: Odell Beckham Jr. turned to Mojichat’s advertising features during his inaugural live-stream

• October 9, 2020
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Mojiit, the Los Angeles-based company behind the popular avatar generation service Mojichat, has landed one of its highest profile users with the launch of Odell Beckham Jr.’s livestream over the weekend. As Odell Beckham Jr. did his first livestream with the gaming superstar Dr. Disrespect he turned to Mojichat to create the pop up onscreen

Mojiit, the Los Angeles-based company behind the popular avatar generation service Mojichat, has landed one of its highest profile users with the launch of Odell Beckham Jr.’s livestream over the weekend.

As Odell Beckham Jr. did his first livestream with the gaming superstar Dr. Disrespect he turned to Mojichat to create the pop up onscreen emote that danced above a logo from Scuf Gaming, a retailer of customized controllers.

Customized, branded emotes are one of the ways that companies are trying to make it easier for live-streamers to make money off of their shows. Companies like Mochjichat argue that it’s a more elegant solution for gamers to use, because it doesn’t take viewers away from the livestream, where they could potentially miss some of the action.

Typically, streamers rely on advertising revenue from pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll advertising, according to Mojichat co-founder Jeremy Greene. Alongside his wife, Janelle, Greene had built Mojichat into one of the premier names in avatar development. As competitors crowded in, the company has been diversifying its products to allow for influencers to begin using their digital avatars as a monetization source… and the kind of in-stream advertising

“No streamer… wants to run a pre-roll,” said Greene. “The first thing about Mojichat that made us very successful from the very beginning you have to hunt down someone to make your custom emotes for you.”

Earlier this year, the company partnered with DoorDash on a similar activation for a concert to raise money fro the Boys and Girls Club, as part of a broad celebrity effort to raise money to alleviate food insecurity for families affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.

“Any time someone sends a communication that will trigger an alert that floats as a Mojichat animation on top of the screen,” Greene said of the earlier activation. 

The way that Greene describes the service — and Janelle and his larger vision for the company — is to be the next generation of adserver for the live-streaming market.

“My plan is to become the avatar solution for all of unity,” Greene told me earlier. “We will offer up our platform to every single gaming platform or mobile developer to plug and play.. I would consider us… we’re like the Google Admob for livestream.”

Companies like Streamlabs are integrating Mojichat’s features into their streaming offerings and the work with Dr. Disrespect and Odell Beckham Jr. show just how much demand there is for these types of offerings.

“The avatar space is going to be won in the gaming community,” Greene said.

Mojichat already has 12,000 streamers using the technology right now and through a partnership inked earlier this year the company expects to push more ads through the service.

“Nobody wants to sit on a stream for 15 hours a day,” said Greene.

“It’s really wrong that streamers can’t make as much money as YouTubers… a streamer can spend all day on Twitch and they are forced to run these pre-rolls… [meanwhile] Jake Paul can upload a video to YouTube and make $300,000… That’s really why i built Mojichat.. I wanted to make gamers’ lives easier… We are going to build custom software for gamers that makes their lives easier.”

News: Polestar CEO defends the Polestar 2’s recall and 233-mile EPA rating

• October 9, 2020
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Polestar is a young automaker spun out of Volvo and Geely. Now, just four years old, it has two cars on the market with more launching soon. Like many startups, the company is weathering early storms coming from government regulators and early recalls. Earlier this week, the EPA released its findings on the Polestar 2’s

Polestar is a young automaker spun out of Volvo and Geely. Now, just four years old, it has two cars on the market with more launching soon. Like many startups, the company is weathering early storms coming from government regulators and early recalls.

Earlier this week, the EPA released its findings on the Polestar 2’s electric range, certifying it as capable of traveling 233 miles on a charge. That’s about 90 miles less on a charge than the competing Tesla Model 3. Read our early impressions here.

Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath spoke at TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility shortly after the EPA released its range guidance. In short, he said Polestar knows drivers see real-world results that exceed the EPA’s range.

“We know what the car does in reality,” Ingenlath said. “We know in reality, what might look like a very big difference, is not that much of a difference in real life. We think it’s definitely sufficient for day-to-day life as an EV. It’s one of our versions, and we ill be adding different variants to the Polestar 2 that will have a higher EPA [rating]. I think [the range] is absolutely in the ballpark of competing EVs that is really good for you 365 days a year.”

Ingenlath concedes his company is not beating Tesla in range but encourages side-by-side comparisons in the real world. What looks like a large difference on paper is much less in practice. And he says a longer-range version is on the way.

“Next year in 2021, we have in our plans to come out with a single motor version,” Ingenlath said. “This will, of course, provide a better range with the same battery. And, of course, along the way, we’ll have software improvements that will give more efficiency with the same kilowatt-hours battery.

“We are on a journey,” he said. “That is where we start, and it will get better from month to month.”

Ingenlath also addressed the Polestar 2’s recent full recall over vehicles that abruptly stopped while driving. “This happened in very, very rare cases,” he said, adding there are only 2,200 Polestar 2’s on the market, and none of the reported cases happened in the United States. None of the affected vehicles were involved in an accident.

The issue is being fixed with a software update.

“We have many things to learn, and as a company, improve,” Ingenlath said. “We are a startup that’s fresh out. And of course, you cannot expect everything to go smoothly. We have to improve, and our customers have to be with us on the way. And I think it’s a really great standard that the car industry, actually, does very early recalls to make sure no one gets into a problem.

He says he doesn’t see a big issue with the early recall. Instead, he says, he’s now focusing on ensuring the company excels at customer service when interacting with a Polestar 2 owner around the recall.

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News: YCharts sells to PE firm in all-cash transaction as it looks to pass $15M ARR this year

• October 9, 2020
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This morning, YCharts, a financial data and charting service, announced that it has been purchased by LLR Partners, a private equity firm. The companies are dubbing the transaction a “growth recapitalization,” indicating that the smaller firm won’t be stripped of its talent in hopes of driving near-term positive EBITDA. The deal was an all-cash transaction,

This morning, YCharts, a financial data and charting service, announced that it has been purchased by LLR Partners, a private equity firm.

The companies are dubbing the transaction a “growth recapitalization,” indicating that the smaller firm won’t be stripped of its talent in hopes of driving near-term positive EBITDA. The deal was an all-cash transaction, TechCrunch confirmed.

Digging into YCharts itself, the company told TechCrunch via email that it expects to “surpass” $15 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) this year, and that it has been growing top line at a compound annual growth rate of 30 to 40% for “the past several years.”

Those figures imply that YCharts did not sell for cheap. At the market’s current multiples, YCharts was likely worth between 10 and 20x times its ARR, making the deal (presuming, say, $13.5 million ARR at the time of the sale) worth between $135 million and $270 million, unless LLR managed to secure a discount, or the firm’s economics were worse than we’d imagine from our current remove.

The companies declined to share details of the transaction, including price.

As a somewhat long-term YCharts user — the startup set up custom colors in my account so that I could share charts in TechCrunch green, which was fun — the deal is notable in that I’ve come to appreciate what the service is capable of; it’s a great tool to create charts that encompass a wealth of financial data to make a clear point, like the historical trends in Tesla’s price/sales ratio compared to other automotive players, for example.

Financial tooling that is accessible, and shareable, is rare in our Bloomberg world. So here’s to hoping that  the transactions promised investment into YCharts bears out.

Turning to the why, I asked YCharts why it didn’t merely raise external capital instead of selling itself. YCharts’ CEO Sean Brown wrote that he’s “found that capital is easy to get,” but that “LLR Partners provides [YCharts] with much more than just capital.” The investing group, Brown continued, shares his company’s vision, has “strong domain experience,” along with “a dedicated team focused on fintech, and a ton of relevant strategic and operational expertise.”

The CEO also stressed LLR’s prior investments into other fintech companies, and said that “as part of the buyout of our existing shareholders, LLR will be funding capital to YCharts’ balance sheet to support continued investment in product and sales [and] marketing.”

YCharts raised capital as an independent company across a number of rounds, including a 2010 Series A led by Hyde Park Angels and I2A Fund, and a Series B and C led by Morningstar. The company had around $15 million in known capital raised, according to Crunchbase data.

News: Porsche is researching synthetic fuels to make gas-powered cars sustainable

• October 9, 2020
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The road to sustainable vehicles likely ends at electric cars, yet the route to this goal isn’t clear. There are multiple ways to get there, and Porsche is looking at synthetic fuels as a potential path. These so-called eFuels are produced from CO2 and hydrogen. If produced using renewable energy, they can help vehicles powered

The road to sustainable vehicles likely ends at electric cars, yet the route to this goal isn’t clear. There are multiple ways to get there, and Porsche is looking at synthetic fuels as a potential path. These so-called eFuels are produced from CO2 and hydrogen. If produced using renewable energy, they can help vehicles powered by internal combustion engines (ICE) become more sustainable before the end of their life.

Earlier this week, Porsche AG’s Detlev von Platen spoke to this alternative fuel at TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility.

Looking at Porsche’s current lineup, it’s easy to see where the automaker is heading: Electric sports cars. Right now, in 2020, the automaker has one electric sports sedan and an electric version of its small SUV coming soon. The automaker has a handful of plug-in hybrids available, too. The automaker says half of its vehicles will be electric by 2025.

“We are seeing a lot of new regulations coming up everywhere in the world,” Detlev von Platen, member of the Executive Board, Sales and Marketing, said at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020. “California is one example. Europe and China will become even more complicated in the future, and we see the transformation coming up very quickly. And to a certain point of time, developing and producing combustion engines and cars around this technology will become even more expensive than a battery vehicle. Things are moving very fast.”

Governments worldwide are using aggressive regulations to push automakers toward an electric future, though that goal doesn’t address the millions of gasoline-powered vehicles already on the road.

Von Platen explains that it’s Porsche’s goal to reach the commitments laid out by the Paris Climate Accord ahead of schedule. To do so means reducing the environmental impact of the entire car industry, and Porsche sees eFuels as a way to reduce the environmental impact of current and future internal combustion vehicles. If produced using renewable energy, it would result in ICE-powered vehicles being powered by a renewable source fuel.

Porsche is in a unique position: 70% of the vehicles it ever produced are still on the road. Their owners are generally enthusiastic and unlikely to trade-in their classic air-cooled Porsche coupes for an electric vehicle. The company sees eFuel as a way to reduce the environmental impact of those vehicles while keeping them on the road.

This new type of synthetic fuel is produced out of hydrogen and CO2. Porsche says that this fuel shares properties with kerosene, diesel and gasoline produced from crude oil in its most basic term.

“This technology is particularly important because the combustion engine will continue to dominate the automotive world for many years to come,” said Michael Steiner, member of the Executive Board, Research and Development, in a statement released in September. “If you want to operate the existing fleet in a sustainable manner, eFuels are a fundamental component.”

Synthetic fuels were tried in the past and gained little long-term traction. Porsche wants to influence this new breed of synthetic fuel specifications to ensure the eFuel works within Porsche’s performance engines. “When E10 came onto the market, the blend had some disadvantages. It must be different this time: it must have advantages,” Steiner said.

“We started a pilot program to talk about the industrialization of this fuel technology to make it cheaper, as it is still quite expensive compared to fossil fuels,” von Platen said. “If this works in the future, we can have something that will increase the speed of creating sustainability besides battery technology.”

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News: Funding for female founders falls to 2017 levels as pandemic shakes up the VC market

• October 9, 2020
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So much for progress. New data out this week from PitchBook indicates that the number of rounds raised by female-founded and co-founded companies fell year-over-year, with dollars invested in those rounds collapsing to 2017-era levels. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every

So much for progress.

New data out this week from PitchBook indicates that the number of rounds raised by female-founded and co-founded companies fell year-over-year, with dollars invested in those rounds collapsing to 2017-era levels.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

It’s a disappointing quarter that comes after a few years in which female founders saw an increase in the amount of capital they were able to raise. In 2016, PitchBook data shows quarterly results for female founders totaling around 100 to 125 rounds, and between $300 and $400 million in value. By 2019, those figures rose to 150 to 200 rounds per quarter, worth between $700 million and $950 million.

To see Q3 2020 manage just 136 rounds worth just $434 million is a sharp disappointment.

The depressing results come not during a time of sharply lower aggregate venture capital results, notably. Recent data concerning Q3 2020 compiled by PwC indicates that the quarter was relatively rich. Certainly, overall deal volume in the United States is down slightly compared to year-ago periods, but female founders fared worse.

In short, a fear that well-known seed investor Charles Hudson discussed with TechCrunch during an Extra Crunch Live session back in April has come true. Let’s talk about it.

A diversity downturn?

Cards on the table, I think it’s better when venture capital is more diversely distributed. Why? Because when there’s more general access to funds, we’ll see a more varied set of products built to attack a more diverse set of issues and problems. Even more, venture capital can be a pathway to financial success for founders and employees, so investing it in all sorts of folks instead of one particular demographic set can spread the wealth around more equitably.

News: Pakistan bans TikTok over ‘immoral and indecent’ videos

• October 9, 2020
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Pakistan has banned popular short video app TikTok in the nation, citing circulation of videos that it deemed “immoral and indecent.” The move comes months after the South Asian country raised serious concerns about the nature of some videos on ByteDance’s app and the impact they posed on society. Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the country’s telecommunication

Pakistan has banned popular short video app TikTok in the nation, citing circulation of videos that it deemed “immoral and indecent.”

The move comes months after the South Asian country raised serious concerns about the nature of some videos on ByteDance’s app and the impact they posed on society.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the country’s telecommunication authority, said in a statement Friday evening that despite the warnings and months-long time, TikTok “failed to comply with the instructions, therefore, directions were issued for blocking of TikTok application in the country.” The authority had received a “number of complaints from different segments of the society” over the videos, it said.

Some individuals in Pakistan, a nation with about 75 million internet users, told TechCrunch that the TikTok app and its website were already inaccessible to them.

“TikTok has been informed that the authority is open for engagement and will review its decision subject to a satisfactory mechanism by TikTok to moderate unlawful content,” said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority in a statement.

The move from Pakistan comes months after its neighboring nation, India, banned TikTok, Bigo and 57 other apps developed by Chinese firms over cybersecurity concerns. Prior to the ban, TikTok identified India — where it had amassed over 200 million monthly active users — as its biggest market outside of China. Like in India, TikTok is also immensely popular in Pakistan, said Danish Khalid, an executive at Bykea, a Karachi-headquartered ride-hailing startup.

And then there is the U.S., the biggest market by revenue for TikTok, where also the app’s future remains uncertain.

News: Join Yext’s Howard Lerman for a Q&A October 13 at 2 pm ET/11 am PT

• October 9, 2020
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Heading into the third quarter and earnings season, TechCrunch is excited to announce that Yext CEO Howard Lerman will join us for a live Q&A next Tuesday as part of our continuing Extra Crunch Live series. The series recently hosted pairs of investors from Accel and Index Ventures and has hosted business leaders from Mark Cuban to

Heading into the third quarter and earnings season, TechCrunch is excited to announce that Yext CEO Howard Lerman will join us for a live Q&A next Tuesday as part of our continuing Extra Crunch Live series.

The series recently hosted pairs of investors from Accel and Index Ventures and has hosted business leaders from Mark Cuban to Roelof Botha. Lerman will be one of the few guests who is the CEO of a public company.

But Lerman is no regular public CEO — his company debuted at a TechCrunch event back in 2009, quickly raising capital after the pitch. Yext’s 2017 IPO was therefore an event of interest here at TechCrunch.

What will we talk about? There’s a number of things that come to mind, but we’ll certainly get into the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses and how Yext is handling an uneven market. We’ll dig into search, a rising product and revenue area for the company, and how Yext has managed to broaden its product mix without diluting its focus.

We’ll also discuss what changes for a tech CEO heading into the public markets and what advice he might have for companies either considering, or actively going public in 2020. It has been a busy year for startup liquidity, pushing a great number of startups into the public sphere with varying results.

And we’ll riff on where Lerman is seeing the most interesting startups being built, along with your questions. As with all Extra Crunch Live sessions, we’ll snag a few questions from the audience. So make sure your Extra Crunch Live subscription is live and prep your thoughts.

Details follow after the jump. See everyone Tuesday!

Details

Below are links to add the event to your calendar and to save the Zoom link. We’ll share the YouTube link on the day of the discussion: