November 2020 – Page 33

News: With a 2021 IPO in the cards, what do we know about Robinhood’s Q3 performance?

November 18, 2020
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After rising sharply in the second quarter of 2020, Robinhood’s income from routing its users’ orders to different parties for execution appears largely flat in the third quarter. To be clear, Robinhood’s year-over-year growth is likely very impressive given the gains we’ve seen in the key revenue category for the heavily-funded unicorn this year. But,

After rising sharply in the second quarter of 2020, Robinhood’s income from routing its users’ orders to different parties for execution appears largely flat in the third quarter.

To be clear, Robinhood’s year-over-year growth is likely very impressive given the gains we’ve seen in the key revenue category for the heavily-funded unicorn this year. But, after torrid sequential growth from Q1 2020 to Q2 2020, Robinhood’s payment for order flow rose only modestly during Q3, according to a TechCrunch analysis of the company’s disclosures.

The data matters in the wake of news that Robinhood could go public as soon as the first quarter of 2021.

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

Payment for order flow is a way that many brokerages make money, and by rule the data from the transactions is public. This provides a window into various fintech companies, both startup and incumbent that shows how quickly they are growing in this particular area. Robinhood has made the concept of payment for order flow better known thanks to its zero-fee model — order flow incomes are therefore key to its revenues — but it did not invent the practice.

Notably in the context of Robinhood’s slim Q3 order flow revenue growth, total equity trading volume was up in Q3, according to DriveWealth data. DriveWealth sells technology that powers equity trading for other companies.

So, the trading boom continues, which we read as bullish for Robinhood and similar players like Public (here’s the data from its securities provider, Apex. And, for fun, here’s E*Trade’s Q3 data.)

Still, a slowdown in growth of its payment for order flow revenue could decelerate Robinhood’s 2020 growth rate from simply bonkers to merely very good. And that could lower its potential IPO valuation from titanic to merely rich.

Let’s get into the numbers.

Robinhood’s Q3

Starting with some historical context, Robinhood’s payment for order flow revenues in preceding quarters are as follows:

Q1 2020: $90.9 million
Q2 2020: $177.9 million (This is around $6 million lower than we initially counted a few months back. In the spirit of fairness, I wanted to share the spreadsheet we used to tabulate both Q2 and Q3 Robinhood order flow revenues, but I am blocked from doing so by Verizon Media Group’s cybersecurity folks. Anyway, email in if you want to see the doc. Notably, The Block counts $180.1 million for Robinhood Q2 payment for order flow revenue. That number underscores our read that Robinhood order flow revenues were effectively flat in Q3 from Q2.)

News: Nestlings wants to help international students navigate a messy higher-ed environment

November 18, 2020
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The admissions process for international students applying to colleges is outdated. For starters, there is no Common App, the one-stop application that U.S. students are able to use to apply to a variety of schools in one go. Instead, international students must navigate thousands of schools, each having their own requirements and application process, on

The admissions process for international students applying to colleges is outdated. For starters, there is no Common App, the one-stop application that U.S. students are able to use to apply to a variety of schools in one go. Instead, international students must navigate thousands of schools, each having their own requirements and application process, on a one by one basis.

It’s a time-consuming and convoluted process, which is exactly where Nestlings, a Cupertino, California-based startup, comes in. Founded by Sowmya Satish, a former Apple product manager, and her husband, Raj Basavaraju, the startup is hoping to streamline the college admissions journey for international students.

Nearly 15 years ago, Basavaraju left Bangalore to pursue his master’s degree at Glasgow Caledonian University.

“When I was looking to study, I was not able to find a proper course, proper program, and I didn’t find much support,” he said. “It was not easy for me to get all the information I needed, like how safe it was, the lifestyle, and all of those things that are actually very important information.” So, he had the idea to put the information online and make it more accessible for other students who were interested in studying abroad.

At its core, Nestlings is a platform to help international students browse colleges in the United States, U.K., and Canada and apply to multiple colleges with one application. Beyond this service, Nestlings wants to help connect students to mentors in their potential fields to help with advice along the way, as well as place Nestlings students into post-graduate employment opportunities.

8 edtech investors talk re-skilling, digital universities, ISAs and other post-pandemic trends

“Our goal is to help students build their career, not just be an admissions portal,” said Satish.

Nestlings is essentially itching to be part of a student’s entire professional life, from the moment they decide to pursue higher education to the jobs they apply to during and after graduation.

Nestlings, like any college recruitment platform, is only as successful as how many students use the platform. For that reason, Nestlings has made its service free for students, and instead charges fees to its partners, both universities and employers, whenever it places a student in one of those groups. The business works as a two-sided marketplace; it scales its students through word of mouth, and its institutions by promising recruitment results.

So far, Nestlings has more than 30,000 students on its platform. It has partnered with over 180 universities, and, more recently, signed a non-exclusive partnership with one of the largest testing centers in Southeast Asia. The testing center is part of Nestlings’ strategy to bring in more students without paying an agent fee or having to advertise.

As an early-stage startup, Nestlings has a huge competitor: ApplyBoard, which recently raised $75 million at a $1.4 billion valuation. ApplyBoard similarly helps international students navigate the abroad college application process, but is a massively bigger company in the late stage. The business did not immediately respond to request for comment on its thoughts about Nestlings.

Edtech’s newest unicorn, ApplyBoard, lands $1.4B valuation with fresh funding

Still, Nestlings is hoping to win by focusing its business more broadly on student success than simply college admissions. The focus is partly why Nestlings acquired AdmitAlly, a Cincinnati-based video chat platform that matches students with mentors and college applicants with current students.

“Especially in the pandemic, we didn’t want to waste time reinventing the wheel and saw an opportunity to fold the technology into Nestlings’ existing offerings quickly,” Satish said of the acquisition. “International recruiting is going to be tough this admissions cycle, as students can’t visit campuses and recruiters cannot travel abroad.”

AdmitAlly, which was founded by Anu Vora, was sold for an undisclosed price. However, as part of the deal, Vora became both a board director at Nestlings and, separately, an investor in the startup. In tandem with running AdmitAlly, Vora runs an investment firm and incubator, Candid Ventures. She put $1.5 million into the company in seed funding.

As higher education faces its own renovation from low enrollment and remote schooling, Nestlings is still betting on a long-term vision where international students will crave a United States education. The strategy will only pay off if that remains true.

Will edtech empower or erase the need for higher education?

News: Jinx launches a text-to-buy dog food platform, with help from Initialized Capital

November 18, 2020
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Jinx is launching a simple way to buy dog food and manage orders via text message. The startup says it has developed “the first text-to-buy platform in the legacy pet food space,” in partnership with its investor Initialized Capital and the firm’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian (who departed earlier this year and is raising a new fund).

Jinx is launching a simple way to buy dog food and manage orders via text message.

The startup says it has developed “the first text-to-buy platform in the legacy pet food space,” in partnership with its investor Initialized Capital and the firm’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian (who departed earlier this year and is raising a new fund).

Jinx CEO Terri Rockovich told me that while Jinx’s most important differentiator is creating kibble and treats that are healthier and better-suited to modern dog lifestyles, the increasing competitiveness of the dog food market means that it’s also important to rethink the broader consumer experience.

“As a brand that’s committed to redefine dog nutrition … we’re required to go above and beyond in delivering a really unparalleled customer experience,” Rockovich said.

And that includes offering an easy shopping experience on our phones. Jinx provided a demo in which a user could starts a dog food purchase on the startup’s mobile website, enters their phone number for text updates, then confirms their purchase via text.

Former Casper execs are building a direct-to-consumer dog food startup called Jinx

Rockovich added that since the startup’s general launch earlier this year, she’s seen subscriptions as increasingly central to Jinx’s business. (For example, a two-pound a bag of Jinx’s salmon, brown rice and sweet potato kibble normally costs $15, but you save 10% if you sign up for shipments every three weeks.)

And while the initial rollout of text-to-buy functionality is focused on the basic purchase experience, Jinx will be adding subscription management features next week, so that subscribers can make adjustments in a “seamless” way.

“We could send a push notification that says, ‘Hey, your order is going to ship in a week and arrives in a week and a half, do you want to add this product?’” Rockovich said. “Or if you want to pause your subscription indefinitely because you’re going on vacation, it’s so easy to do that via text.”

And because the underlying platform was built with Initialized, it can be used across the firm’s startup portfolio. Rockovich said the technology puts “a lot of automation at your disposal,” with chatbots that can tap into a business’ existing content library and FAQ, while also handing the conversation over to human agents when necessary.

In a statement, Ohanian said:

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the DTC e-commerce space and as a product-builder my whole career, realized I could build a better system for all the companies in our portfolio and that there’d be no better partner to launch it than Jinx, who have consistently been at the cutting edge of the industry. [Although] there are many plug and play text-to-buy options available in the marketplace, our goal was to create a proprietary technology that offered convenience and personalization to Jinx’s customers and allowed us to hone in on consumer findings that would be valuable to all our portfolio brands.

Dog food startup Sundays launches its air-dried kibble alternative

News: Go Jauntly applies AI to seek scale via ‘greener’ walking routes

November 18, 2020
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Unless you’ve been on very extended digital detox, you’ll have noticed algorithms don’t exactly have the greatest reputation these days, saddled as they are with pervasive questions of bias and inequity. Not to mention the dubious content amplification choices of social media platforms. Nor has 2020 helped their automated cause — with, in just one

Unless you’ve been on very extended digital detox, you’ll have noticed algorithms don’t exactly have the greatest reputation these days, saddled as they are with pervasive questions of bias and inequity. Not to mention the dubious content amplification choices of social media platforms.

Nor has 2020 helped their automated cause — with, in just one example, outraged UK students leading chants of ‘fuck the algorithm‘ this summer as they were assigned exam grades using a flawed model after the government scrapped the sitting of exams during the coronavirus pandemic. (It was later forced into a U-turn on the issue — meaning students got their (human) teachers’ predicted grades instead.)

Given so much AI-fuelled ugliness and algorithmic mistrust, you’d be forgiven for thinking there are no more quick wins left. But walking routes app Go Jauntly may have found a redeeming use-case for AI to lift app users’ spirits in 2020.

It’s beta launched an algorithmically powered routing feature that recommends “green routes” within the user’s vicinity — meaning the leafiest and most pleasant/scenic (i.e. less polluted) urban walks possible — drawing on its understanding of users’ walking behaviour. The thinking being that COVID-19 lockdown-hit Brits could do with some nice new spots to stretch their legs locally and enjoy a change of air.

Go Jauntly’s app has been around since 2017, with more than 175,000 downloads of the (free) app to date, but it’s hoping the algorithmically powered green routes will be a game-changer for scale — given all walks in the app have been manually created by actual (human) boots on the ground up to now (including some user-submitted walks).

That said, the feature is only available to users of the app in the UK and Ireland (and only on iOS; Android is due to get it next Spring) — but the plan is to roll it out globally later in 2021. (The rest of Go Jauntly’s app is currently also available in Sweden, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.)

As well as recommending the most scenic/least polluted route to walk between two destinations in the UK and in Ireland, the algorithm can suggest routes that start and end at a single location — for walks lasting from 10 minutes up to 2+ hours in length.

The machine learning tech powering the green routes feature is drawing on external sources of environmental data including the Tranquil City Index (which maps London based on measures associated with tranquility, e.g. lower pollution and noise), as well as OpenStreetMap and GraphHopper data for routing.

Go Jauntly is keen for beta testers to pull on their hiking boots and road test the algorithmically programmed walks to feed in data to help its models improve over time. So it’s quite possible that an AI’s (data-bounded) notion of ‘scenic’ may not live up to your human standards.

Trusting an AI’s urban walking route recommendation could also mean you end up passing through a less nice and/or welcoming neighbourhood than you’d expected.

Or you might find your route barred because the app is erroneously suggesting you walk through private property — much like a satnav trying to send a car the wrong way down a one-way street.

Ergo, green route guinea pigs should keep their eyes peeled — and definitely avoid straying into pastures new that contain cattle.

Go Jauntly says it hopes to continue to develop the algorithmic feature to incorporate more data sets in the future — such as accessibility information, toilets, and historical points of interest — to expand the types of route requirements it can support, working towards what it dubs a “full cross-platform digital ‘nature prescription’ in 2021”.

It monetizes its hike-loving community of users via an optional premium subscription which gives access to extra content such as curated walking routes and guided tours, as well as the ability to download certain types of content such as walking trails for offline use.

News: Device that combines air circulation with UV-C light deployed in first U.S. homes to help decrease COVID-19 transmission risk

November 18, 2020
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Now that we know the virus that causes COVID-19 can be transmitted via aerosol (tiny particles in the air that can hang around for a long time), researchers and engineers globally have turned their attention to helping promote air circulation where risk exposure is high, and also to kill any active viral particles that might

Now that we know the virus that causes COVID-19 can be transmitted via aerosol (tiny particles in the air that can hang around for a long time), researchers and engineers globally have turned their attention to helping promote air circulation where risk exposure is high, and also to kill any active viral particles that might be in the air. One such effort is the Nanowave Air, a device created by Pittsburgh-based Dynamics, Inc. (via NEXT Pittsburgh) which uses UV-C light in a safe and contained way to inactivate the virus in enclosed spaces.

The Nanowave Air operates on basically the same principal as any air purifier you might have in your home, using a fan to take in air and then passing it through a filter before putting it back out into the room. The difference is that the filter in this case is actually exposure to ultraviolet light – and specifically UV-C light, the type that has been proven to be effective in killing the SARS-CoV-2 virus that leads to COVID-19.

UV-C light differs from the more common UV-A light that we’re all generally exposed to in significant quantities from sunlight, and direct exposure to UV-C is harmful to humans. It has been used in indoor viral surface sterilization in the past, but typically the rooms where it’s used can’t be occupied at the time, and obviously it’s not effective once it’s no longer in use and people are allowed back in.

The Nanowave Air was created by the Carnegie Mellon spinout Dynamics when its CEO realized that the technology they were working on around UV-C light sources already for large-scale industrial applications could be adapted to address the COVID-19 crisis. That led to the portable design of the Air, which is roughly the size of a hobbyist telescope, and which works by containing the UV-C light within, and funneling air through it at high speeds using fans in order to be able to neutralize any active virus present while also allowing people to still continue to occupy the spaces where it’s in operation.

Nanowave Air is now shipping, with a $3,450 retail price. It’s intended for use in spaces like primary care facilities, dental offices, and other shared locations where people have to occupy the same space despite current guidance around social distancing and especially indoor exposure. The company, which has tested its technology at a number of labs across the U.S. including the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Vaccine Research, also announced that it’s now being used in some homes with a COVID-19-positive individual, in order to reduce the exposure potential for other members of the household who haven’t yet contracted the illness.

This week saw the announcement of positive news for two of the larger efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, but even if those end up providing long-term protection and ramp distribution quickly, the effort to contain COVID-19 globally will still include a lot of necessary preventative steps to avoid contraction among the unvaccinated populace. Managing airborne presence of the virus is sure to be a key ingredient, and solutions like the Nanowave Air could help to spur those efforts.

News: Amazon brings Alexa Routines to Fire TV

November 18, 2020
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Amazon announced today it’s bringing Alexa Routines — the feature that allows users to create their own Alexa shortcuts that combine multiple actions — to its Fire TV platform. Starting today, Amazon customers will be able to include Fire TV commands in their Alexa routines, including those that power on or off the TV, open

Amazon announced today it’s bringing Alexa Routines — the feature that allows users to create their own Alexa shortcuts that combine multiple actions — to its Fire TV platform. Starting today, Amazon customers will be able to include Fire TV commands in their Alexa routines, including those that power on or off the TV, open a Fire TV app, or play, pause, or resume content on the Fire TV.

For example, you could create an Alexa Routine for movie night that would pause the program and turn on the lights for your snack break, and another to again dim the lights and resume the movie when you return. Or you could incorporate Fire TV into your bedtime routine, by powering off the TV while also dimming the lights and turning on your morning alarm. This could be useful for those who like to wind down at night by falling asleep to their TV.

You can configure your own voice commands for these custom routines, too, like, “Alexa, I’m getting a snack,” or “Alexa, I’m back,” for example.

Amazon says these two use cases would address activities that, according to a Morning Consult survey it commissioned, are already common in the U.S. The survey found that 75% of U.S. consumers pause their TV show or movie at least once per night to grab a snack or a drink, and 32% said they fall asleep watching movies and TV shows more in 2020 compared with last year.

Plus, if you create a Routine you think others may find useful, you can share it with friends and family via the sharable URLs Amazon introduced in September.

These new “Entertainment Routines” are launching today across all Fire TV devices including Fire TV Edition smart TVs and Fire TV Cube. However, if you’re using a Fire TV Stick, you need a TV that supports Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) to use powering on and off your TV as Routine actions.

The feature will be globally available, Amazon says.

News: What China’s fintech market can teach the world

November 18, 2020
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If you want to know what the future of finance looks like, head east, where it’s already been laid down in China. Digital payments through mobile phones are ubiquitous, and there is incredible innovation around lending, investments and digital currencies that are at the vanguard of global financial innovation. Take the cover photo of this

If you want to know what the future of finance looks like, head east, where it’s already been laid down in China. Digital payments through mobile phones are ubiquitous, and there is incredible innovation around lending, investments and digital currencies that are at the vanguard of global financial innovation.

Take the cover photo of this article: At Alibaba, facial recognition software identifies customers at the employee cafeteria, while visual AI identifies foods on their tray and calculates a total bill — all pretty much instantly.

Given some of the big news stories emanating out of the sector the past two weeks, I wanted to get a deeper view on what’s happening in China’s fintech market and what that portends for the rest of the world moving forward. So I called up Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who is writing a book on the development of China’s fintech sector to get his take on what’s happening and what it all means.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

TechCrunch: Why don’t we start with the big news from earlier this month about Ant Group and how its world-record shattering IPO was pulled at the last minute by Chinese financial regulators. What was your take and why were so many people trying to pile into the IPO?

Martin Chorzempa: I think there’s been surprise at how much interest there is in the company, and I think that’s just really an indication of the market for fintech in China. It’s certainly the world’s largest market for financial technology, and even though in the payments space things look pretty saturated between Ant and Tencent’s WeChat, there are so many areas that they’re expanding into, like credit and insurance, where there’s still a lot of room to run for these kinds of financial technologies to take over a much larger share of the financial system than they do now.

So even just considering the domestic market, it’s huge and it’s just going to get larger. Then, the big question mark is expanding abroad and whether these companies can become truly global financial technology giants. Today, nobody except Chinese people outside of China uses Alipay or WeChat Pay to pay for anything. So that’s a big unexplored side that I think is going to come into a lot of geopolitical risks.

So on globalization, who do these companies need to globalize? China has 1.3 billion people — isn’t that enough of a market to stay focused on?

Well, I don’t think anything’s ever enough for firms this ambitious. And if you think about it, if you have this really unique experience and data, that has a lot of applicability to other countries. So at the very least, it would be kind of a deadweight loss not to have that technology and experience applied to building out digital financial solutions in other countries.

Prior to the pandemic, Chinese people were going abroad in large numbers. So if you want to keep serving even the domestic market you have to have your payment methods accepted abroad.

Plus, if you want to facilitate and grow with China’s e-commerce businesses and other kinds of international trade, then having networks of merchants abroad and being able to use Alipay, for example, is something that could be really important to future growth. The domestic market is huge, but eventually you do run into diminishing returns if everybody already has your app and they’re already borrowing and investing.

Pulled Ant Group IPO costs Alibaba nearly $60B in market cap

News: Bella is a new challenger bank with a text-based interface

November 18, 2020
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Meet Bella, a new challenger bank launching on November 30th. The company is trying to differentiate itself with two distinctive features. First, you can interact with the app using keywords and text commands. Second, Bella is trying to build a community that helps each other to differentiate its product from soulless monolithic banking services. Let’s

Meet Bella, a new challenger bank launching on November 30th. The company is trying to differentiate itself with two distinctive features. First, you can interact with the app using keywords and text commands. Second, Bella is trying to build a community that helps each other to differentiate its product from soulless monolithic banking services.

Let’s start with the basics. When you open a Bella account, you receive a rainbow debit card that works on the Visa network. You get a checking account as well as the ability to create savings accounts. Behind the sene, Bella works with nbkc bank for the banking infrastructure. Accounts are FDIC insured up to $5 million.

Your card works with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. There are no foreign transaction fees and Bella reimburses all ATM fees. There are no account minimums and service fees either.

Image Credits: Bella

But the app doesn’t look like your average banking app. There’s a text field at the bottom of the screen at all times. If you tap that field and enter a keyword, you can do all the interactions you’d expect to do. That feature is called Socratex.

This isn’t a chatbot, it’s more like a command line interface. For instance, if you type “Send”, it’ll suggest “Send money”. You can then enter an amount and hit next. After that, you can type the name of a contact, or add a contact, and then hit send.

You don’t have to find the right menu and hit the right button. The app tries to guide you so that you can construct a full sentence describing your intent. Bella uses LivePerson for that text-based interface. LivePerson is also Bella’s strategic backer.

Image Credits: Bella

And then, there is the Karma account. Over a hundred years ago in Naples, people started ordering two espressos and drinking just one. The second one would be a caffè sospeso. A poor person could ask for a caffè sospeso later that day and get a free coffee.

Bella is basically doing the same thing with its Karma account. Users can deposit up to $20 into a personal Karma account. Another user could use its Bella card and get a notification saying that their purchase is covered by someone else’s Karma account.

Similarly, Bella is introducing a randomized cashback program. The company randomly picks purchases and sends you back 5 to 200% in cashback.

When it comes to savings accounts, you can open as many savings accounts as you want and set some unconventional rules. For instance, you can set up a rule that puts some money aside when it’s sunny, when your sports team is winning, etc.

As you can see, Bella wants to introduce some randomized events so that you get surprised by your own bank account. The company wants to give back $1 million in cashback over the first four weeks on the market. Let’s see if that could turn the financial service into a viral experience.

News: Kerry Washington backs jewelry startup Aurate

November 18, 2020
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Actress Kerry Washington has made an investment of undisclosed size in direct-to-consumer jewelry startup Aurate. This isn’t Washington’s first startup investment — she’s also backed The Wing, Community and Byte. In fact, when we asked her about her dream investment at Disrupt in September, she hinted at a new deal that “feels pretty dreamy.” When I

Actress Kerry Washington has made an investment of undisclosed size in direct-to-consumer jewelry startup Aurate.

This isn’t Washington’s first startup investment — she’s also backed The Wing, Community and Byte. In fact, when we asked her about her dream investment at Disrupt in September, she hinted at a new deal that “feels pretty dreamy.”

When I brought up those comments earlier this week, Washington laughed and confirmed that Aurate is exactly what she’d been thinking about. In addition to providing funding, Washington also collaborated with the company to create The Lioness Collection, which features two of Aurate’s bestselling gold chains bonded together as both a necklace and a bracelet, along with hoop earrings and a pendant inspired by the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet.

Washington was excited about Aurate’s goals of sustainability (its gold comes from sustainable sources) and making fine jewelry more affordable. Plus, she said, “I love working with female founders,” to the extent she and Aurate founders Sophie Kahn and Bouchra Ezzahraoui have become “our own lioness tribe.”

“I was inspired by the themes of what the lioness means, how lionesses operate, how the lionesses hunt together and nurture their cubs together,” she added. “There’s no hierarchy among lionesses … They are fierce and ambitious but they also take care of each other.”

Image Credits: Aurate

And while the average price point of Aurate jewelry is $300, pricing for items in the Lioness Collection starts at around $150, with 20% of the proceeds going to women’s activist group Supermajority.

Kahn recalled “countless Zoom conversations” with Washington to develop the collection, while Ezzahraoui said that the team has been talking to Washington for the past three years — it took a while to make sure everyone was “aligned philosophically” and to figure out the right partnership.

“Aurate is style and substance and Kerry is style and substance,” Kahn said. “She’s also an activist, she cares and has a voice. That’s why it was such a perfect fit.”

Also worth noting: Aurate’s business continues to grow during the pandemic, and the startup is now profitable. Although it operates a couple of brick-and-mortar stores in New York City, 95% of its business is online.

You might think that jewelry might not be a big consumer priority while we’re social distancing, but Aurate is more affordable than most fine jewelry, while still being high-quality and long-lasting. Plus, it’s a fashion item that’s visible over Zoom.

“I’ve actually found that playing with jewelry, it’s been more more meaningful when all that you’re showing is from you waist up on a Zoom call,” Washington said. “It has survived a lot of the life editing process. High-heeled shoes, not so much.”

News: Dear Sophie: Can an H-1B co-founder own a Delaware C Corp?

November 18, 2020
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One founder is on a green card and already works there. The other founder is from India and is working on an H-1B at a large tech company. Can the H-1B co-founder lead this company?

Sophie Alcorn
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Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives.

Monthly Archives: November 2020