November 2020 – Page 50

News: Onfido’s Husayn Kassai steps back, brings in new CEO ahead of a planned IPO

November 13, 2020
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There are big changes today at Onfido, the global identity verification and authentication platform which has rocketed in adoption as so many services become digitized during the pandemic. The company, which has raised more than $200 million to date, is appointing a new CEO with the intention of moving towards an IPO “at some point”

Kassai has of this week handed over the reins to Mike Tuchen, the former CEO of Talend who successfully took the compay to the NASDAQ in 2016.

Kassai says he will remain with Onfido, working “2-3 days a week” to assist Tuchen as he leads the company through the next period of growth across sectors and geographies, and towards that IPO.

Prior to Talend, a leader in cloud data integration, Tuchen led Rapid7, a security software startup, and founded a marketing analytics startup in between senior management roles at Microsoft and Polycom.

Kassai co-founded Onfido with Eamon Jubbawy and Ruhul Amin in 2012 to make digital identity verification simpler and more accurate, and it now employs over 400 people globally.

Speaking exclusively to TechCrunch Kassai said: “Its kind’ve been non-stop for 10 years. I’ve taken us from zero to one. And in order to go from ‘one to 100’, specifically an IPO and listing in large part, that’s the stage where you have to meet with consulting firms, banks etc, which has a lot of fun in it, but it’s not what I’m interested in. So I’d rather step down, still work with the company and help an experienced CEO take this forward for the next stage.”

Asked if he was stepping down for any other reason Kassai told TechCrunch: “No this is predominantly about the IPO focus, plus I have I’ve been speaking internally for a year about taking a break after this ten year period. My personal life has been on hold for this whole time. Exercise, eating well, family birthdays, everything else that goes with it. On hold. This move, in part, helps me get back some of my personal life, while the company will be in good hands.”

Asked if he would be taking the title of Chairman or Co-CEO or some other title, Kassai said that was undecided that this point.

On the joint call between Tuchen and Kassai, Tuchen said: “My first company was a security company in Boston. It’s now public on the NASDAQ. We took Talends public in 2016. So, I’ve had a lot of experience working across Europe and the US.”

Tuchen said he would be based in California, now that the whole company has moved to remote working because of the pandemic: “I don’t expect to move a lot during COVID. We are a remote-first company right now and will be for the medium term at least, and still trying to work out what our longer-term plans are, as we get – post-vaccine – back in the office. I spent a lot of time on the road before, but we’ll be figuring out how to develop that same kind of relationship with people over Zoom, with all the stuff that, you know, we’re used to doing in the regular world. So we’re kind of experimenting and figuring that out. The entire process of me joining was done over Zoom. And now the whole onboarding and getting to know the company is all being done on top, so we’re all kind of breaking new ground here in this dynamic environment.”

Tuchen said no decision had been made about where the IPO would be placed, but “most likely on one of the US exchanges.”

News: DoorDash files to go public

November 13, 2020
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After filing earlier this year, DoorDash dropped its public S-1 filing this morning, bringing clarity to its numbers and moving it closer to a public debut that should happen before the end of the year. The company is one of several startups that we expect to see IPOs from before the year ends, despite some

The company is one of several startups that we expect to see IPOs from before the year ends, despite some recent market chop and election chaos in the United States.

DoorDash is a heavily-backed company, with Crunchbase reporting that the food-delivery giant has accessed around $2.5 billion in capital during its life, most recently in a $400 million round this June. At the time, DoorDash was valued at a towering $16 billion, post-money, giving the company big valuation shoes to fill when it prices its IPO, and begins to trade.

What follows is a brief rundown of its numbers. The TechCrunch crew will be digging through the IPO filing all morning, so expect more coverage on ownership, legal risks, and other details soon. Let’s go!

The numbers

DoorDash has grown incredibly rapidly, scaling its revenues from $291 million in 2018 to $885 million in 2019. And more recently, from $587 million in the first nine months of 2019 to $1.92 billion in the same period of 2020.

That is 226% growth in 2020 thus far, the sort of expansion that explains why DoorDash was able to attract so much capital at such high prices.

DoorDash confirms $400M raise, IPO timing unclear

How high-quality is DoorDash’s revenue? In the first three quarters of 2019, the company had gross margins of 39.9%, and in the same period of 2020 the figure rose to 53.1%, a huge improvement for the consumer consumable delivery confab.

The result of DoorDash’s epic growth, and gross margin improvement has been radically improving profitability. The company’s operating loss fell from $479 million in the first nine months of 2019 to just $131 million in the same period of 2020. DoorDash’s net losses are slightly worse — $533 million and $149 million over the same timeframes, respectively — but, again, compared to the company’s topline growth and revenue quality improvements, are inconsequential.

DoorDash has around $1.6 billion in cash and equivalents heading into the fourth quarter, meaning that it has ample cash to fund itself, sans an IPO. The company is therefore going out because it thinks the time is ripe.

Driving DoorDash’s epic growth has been a huge boom in the company’s order volumes and gross order volumes, while its gross margins appear driven by an epic gain in the profitability of the company’s core activity. Observe the following dataset:

The 2019 to 2020 change in contribution margin at DoorDash, and its jump into positive-adjusted EBITDA, makes one wonder why Uber is struggling to accomplish the same task with its Uber Eats business. Regardless, the flip into adjusted profitability should be enough to allay Wall Street concerns about DoorDash’s path to eventual GAAP profits.

At that trajectory it can get the job done in a year or so.

And DoorDash’s operations have flipped into the cash-generating territory, with the company reporting operating cash flow of $315 million during the first three quarters of 2020, up from -$308 million in the same period of 2019.

Overall I am impressed at first blush. The company is bigger, growing more quickly, and losing less money than I expected. Throw in cash generation and adjusted EBTIDA positivity and improving gross margins, and DoorDash could be worth a pretty penny. Without recurring revenues akin to a software company, and the possibility of a vaccine slowing is future growth, DoorDash won’t get a SaaS multiple when it prices. But perhaps defending that $16 billion valuation won’t be as hard as we might have guessed before getting our hands on the numbers.

More to come. Stick with TechCrunch.

News: Microsoft says hackers backed by Russia and North Korea targeted COVID-19 vaccine makers

November 13, 2020
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Microsoft has revealed that hackers backed by Russia and North Korea have targeted pharmaceutical companies involved in the COVID-19 vaccine development efforts. The technology giant said Friday that the attacks targeted seven companies in the U.S., Canada, France, India, and South Korea. But while it blocked the “majority” of the attacks, Microsoft acknowledged that some

Microsoft has revealed that hackers backed by Russia and North Korea have targeted pharmaceutical companies involved in the COVID-19 vaccine development efforts.

The technology giant said Friday that the attacks targeted seven companies in the U.S., Canada, France, India, and South Korea. But while it blocked the “majority” of the attacks, Microsoft acknowledged that some were successful.

Microsoft said it had notified the affected companies, but declined to name them.

“We think these attacks are unconscionable and should be condemned by all civilized society,” said Tom Burt, Microsoft’s customer security and trust chief, in a blog post.

The technology giant blamed the attacks on three distinct hacker groups. The Russian group, which Microsoft calls Strontium but is better known as APT28 or Fancy Bear, used password spraying attacks to target their victims, which often involves recycled or reused passwords. Fancy Bear may be best known for its disinformation and hacking operations in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, but the group has also been blamed for a string of other high-profile attacks against media outlets and businesses.

The other two groups are backed by the North Korean regime, one of which Microsoft calls Zinc but is better known as the Lazarus Group, which used targeted spearphishing emails disguised as recruiters in an effort to steal passwords from their victims. Lazarus was blamed for the Sony hack in 2016 and the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, as well as other malware-driven attacks.

But little is known about the other North Korea-backed hacker group, which Microsoft calls Cerium. Microsoft said the group also used targeted spearphishing emails masquerading as representatives from the World Health Organization, charged with coordinating the effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged it was the first time the company had referenced Cerium, but the company did not offer more.

This is the latest effort by hackers trying to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic for their own goals. Earlier this year, the FBI and Homeland Security warned that hackers would try to steal coronavirus vaccine research.

Today’s news coincides with the Paris Peace Forum, where Microsoft president Brad Smith will urge governments to do more to combat cyberattacks against the healthcare sector, particularly during the pandemic.

“Microsoft is calling on the world’s leaders to affirm that international law protects health care facilities and to take action to enforce the law,” Burt said. “We believe the law should be enforced not just when attacks originate from government agencies but also when they originate from criminal groups that governments enable to operate — or even facilitate — within their borders.”

FBI and DHS accuse Chinese hackers of targeting US COVID-19 research

News: Using the GoPro Hero 9 Black and Zeus Mini to improve my manual driving skills

November 13, 2020
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There are plenty of reviews out there for the Hero 9 already, so I wanted to do something a little different. I decided to put GoPro’s latest to the test while hugging turns in my 1970 Chevelle. I recently swapped the automatic transmission in it for a Tremec Magnum 6-speed manual in order to do

There are plenty of reviews out there for the Hero 9 already, so I wanted to do something a little different. I decided to put GoPro’s latest to the test while hugging turns in my 1970 Chevelle.

I recently swapped the automatic transmission in it for a Tremec Magnum 6-speed manual in order to do something I’ve never done before: rev-match my downshifts. In other words, I wanted a smooth ride. And what better way to monitor my progress than record it with the Hero 9?

The camera features a front-facing screen, removable lens cap, webcam and streaming capabilities, Hypersmooth 3.0, and Hindsight with up to 30 seconds of pre-recording. GoPro threw in the Zeus Mini, and I’m glad they did.

The rechargeable LED light has a 6-hour total runtime at level one brightness. There are four levels in all, at a max of 2000 lumens. It’s waterproof up to 33 feet and has a 360 rotating clip that’s also magnetic. There’s also a strobe mode for emergency signaling or partying. As a video producer I can always use different types of light sources.

Mounting the Zeus Mini was quick and simple thanks to the clip. It lit my pedals well. I set the brightness on level four to try and match the light coming in from the windows. I have to say I’m very impressed with the utility of the light. Not only can it mount onto the cold shoe of a media mod, you can clip it on your hat for camping, or light up a section under the hood that’s tucked away from light. It’s handy.

I tried mounting the Hero 9 a couple of places to capture the road, as well as my shifting in the same frame – one with a head mount and the other on my chest. Neither one could capture both really well, but the chest mount was definitely better than on my head. I also mounted DJI’s competitor, the Osmo Action, as a b-cam to cut between for comparison.

I shot both cameras with stock settings. Of the two, the Hero 9 generally had less noise in the shadows, more vibrant colors and a high-contrast image quality compared to the Osmo. I like to shoot most of my work flat so I have the option to create the look that I want instead of having it baked in, but in this case I really didn’t mind having that stock GoPro look.

Is the new Osmo Action camera a GoPro killer?

Seeing your ride blast down the road in 5k is awesome and hearing your exhaust note roaring by can be just as good. The sound quality is also much better on the Hero 9 than the the Osmo, especially at lower frequencies. DJI’s camera seemed to have a high pass filter or additional wind filtering baked in even when the optional wind noise reduction was already turned off. The Hero 9 also has some wind noise filtering that was noticeable but it didn’t seem as intrusive.

One tjomg I didn’t like about the Hero 9 is how both screens are simultaneously on. I know a lot of folks love this feature, and I see why it can be useful, but I just think you should be able to turn them off and on independently. Maybe a double tap on the mode button or something, because, you know, battery life.

The battery is improved from the Hero 8, but when recording side-by-side with the Osmo for continuous recording, the Hero 9 depleted when the Osmo was still around 50%.

Another critique: the hypersmooth actually worked too well. A side-by-side from the rear shows the Hero 9 drift from left or right in the turns to keep things smooth, whereas the Osmo drifted some but managed to keep most of the dash in frame.

A common nice-to-have feature on either action cam would be a front touch screen. But adding that functionality would likely mean increasing the overall size even more.

Watching myself rev matching in 5k is definitely helpful and it’s only a matter of time before I get better. The Hero 9 is a significant improvement on previous generations. If you own a Hero 8 and don’t have a need for a front facing screen, 5k, or a removable lens then you probably don’t need to upgrade. For me, the Hero 9 isn’t the silver bullet of action cams but is a welcome addition to my collection.

You can pick up the Hero 9 Black for $399.

GoPro’s Hero 9 Black arrives with a bigger battery and front-facing screen

News: This fintech-focused VC firm just closed a $75 million debut fund; backers “came out of the woodwork”

November 13, 2020
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It’s no secret that a massive digital transformation is happening within financial services companies and amid the growing number of non-financial outfits that are also adding financial products to their offerings. Still, Sheel Mohnot, who was formerly a general partner at the fintech fund of 500 Startups, and Jake Gibson, co-founder of personal finance startup

Still, Sheel Mohnot, who was formerly a general partner at the fintech fund of 500 Startups, and Jake Gibson, co-founder of personal finance startup NerdWallet, were a little taken aback by investor interest in their fintech-focused early-stage venture firm, Better Tomorrow Ventures, or BTV.

The outfit just closed its debut fund with $75 million in capital commitments, exceeding their original $60 million target, and even one of their earliest investors, Michael Kim of Cendana Capital, expresses surprise. “Remarkably, they raised a lot of it during Covid,” says Kim.

We talked yesterday with the pair, who have already invested in 13 startups with the fund’s capital and, they say, led nine of those deals.

TC: The good news is you’re focused on fintech. The bad news is that fintech valuations are going through the roof. How do you compete?

SM: It’s true. Everybody decided that what we’ve been talking about all along is in line with their beliefs too, after exits like Plaid and Credit Karma. Everybody became a fintech investor. And you’re right that that has led to an increase in valuations. To some extent that’s good, though. It’s meant that one of our companies has already had a pretty massive markup in part because of this phenomenon.

I also think we’re finding we’re able to win deals at better prices because we’re both founders. [Mohnot sold a company, FeeFinders, to Groupon 2012]. And all we do is fintech. So we tend to understand better what founders are building than generalist investors.

JG: I do think [these things] resonate in that we’ve been able to pay prices that we think make sense and to get the ownership we want. This isn’t the 4 on 16 game that others are playing (where VCs invest $4 million at a pre-money valuation and so own 20% of the company). I think all but one or two of our investments involve repeat founders who see the value of working with partners like us.

TC: How much ownership are you targeting for that first check — 10%?

JG: Right, 10%, though we’re really shooting for 12%.

TC: And will you turn to [special purpose vehicles] to maintain your stake if certain companies begin to gain traction?

JG: Yes, I’ve done quite a bit of SPVs in the past. I’ve invested in 90 companies as an angel investor and I think we’ve probably deployed more than $40 million between the two of us over the last five years leading up to BTV, including SPVs on top of angel investments. [Editor’s note: some of those earlier deals include Chipper Cash, Albert, Clear Cover, and Hippo.]

TC: What companies are in BTV’s portfolio?

SM: None have been announced.

TC: Not one?!

SM: Nobody announces their seed rounds anymore. When I started my company, I wanted as much coverage as possible. I thought that was great for the company. Now founders don’t feel that way, with very few wanting to announce.

TC: But there are benefits to recruiting and getting on the radar or later-stage investors. Why eschew it altogether?

JG: Competition to some extent. They don’t want people to know what they’re working on because once you see a competitive seed round, you see a lot of other startups pop up to do the same thing. I also just think there’s not as much upside anymore to announcing, so most founders, when you’re seeing their seed round, it’s because they’re about to raise their Series A. The data you’re seeing in Pitchbook is typically six months [behind].

TC: Who are your investors?

SM: We have founders of fintech unicorns. We have a couple of fintech venture funds, fintech-focused GPs from later-stage funds, a few insurance companies, and Wall Street people who help us keep track on that side of the market, as well.

JG: We’re also backed by kind of a who’s who of fund of funds that back emerging managers: Cendana, Industry Ventures, Vintage [Investment Partners], Invesco.

TC: Did you know a lot of these investors before the pandemic shut down everything?

JG: Some, but we had to sell a lot of them cold over Zoom. We held a first close last December — that capital was from Cendana and individuals. We’d started conversations with other institutions at that point but everyone said it would take a while and that institutions won’t come until you raise your second fund, so we didn’t have high hopes that we’d get a lot of them on board.

In fact, when March and April hit, we figured we’d have to raise a smaller fund. But then things re-opened, people got back to work, and we were able to close institutions we’d started conversations with. Then people came out of the woodwork, because tech got hot fast but especially fintech, with all the IPO and M&A activity. People said, ‘We want fintech exposure now, and we want to invest in a fintech-focused fund, and you’re the only game in town.’

TC: What do you need to see to write a check?

JG: Our thesis is that everything is fintech, so we invest across the board: payments, lending, banking, real estate, insurance, b2b, consumer — anything that’s ostensibly fintech. We think a lot of companies that aren’t typically fintech today will look like fintech later, with more and more tech platforms that get into financial services. We’re investing at the pre-seed and seed stage but also meeting with founders at the idea stage, sometimes to talk them out of starting another neobank. [Laughs.]

TC: Do you? Every time I wonder how many neobanks make sense in this world, an investor tells me that if only their startup can get .00001% of the market, they’ll have a multibillion company on their hands.

JG: No. Most will never figure out how to get profitable. A lot of investors like to argue that with neobanks, you lose money on every trade but you make it up in volume. Yet very few have a path to getting to positive economics. You need huge scale to get to profitability, and that means you have to spend a ton of venture capital on marketing. More, a lot are going after audiences that are already over-served by traditional financial products.

SM: The same is true for “Plaid for X” type companies. After the announcement of Plaid’s exit — or what we all thought was Plaid’s exit — we looked at five companies, many of them hitting on the same ideas and duking it out for the same customers.

TC: Will the fact that the DOJ is suing to block Plaid’s sale to Visa, citing Visa’s monopoly power, have a chilling effect?

JG: We haven’t seen that. A lot of people are discounting that complaint and thinking it will get out of this in the end via SPAC. The company was doing north of $100 million in revenue, and given where these businesses trade, Plaid could go public and see an amazingly successful outcome.

It’s not just Plaid, by the way. There are now 40 SPACs that are focused on fintech alone. Just think about the outcomes that have to happen in the next two years.

News: The U.S. government sends mixed messages about TikTok’s future

November 13, 2020
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The fate of TikTok in the United States got even more confusing this week. The U.S. Justice and Commerce Departments sent conflicting messages today about TikTok’s future, which is now up in the air with the upcoming administration transition. The Department of Commerce said Thursday it would abide by an injunction issued October 30 by

The Department of Commerce said Thursday it would abide by an injunction issued October 30 by the District Court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania that would have blocked TikTok from operating in the U.S. starting from today. In a statement, the department said it is complying with the court’s order and its prohibition against TikTok “HAS BEEN ENJOINED, and WILL NOT GO INTO EFFECT, pending further legal developments.”

But on the same day, the Justice Department appealed the Pennsylvania court’s ruling just as it was set to go into effect.

But wait! It gets even more convoluted: another court–the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington–just set new deadlines in December for ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, and the Trump administration, to file documents in a case involving a divestment order that would force ByteDance to sell TikTok to continue operating in the U.S.

ByteDance reached an agreement with Oracle and Walmart in September, but the future of the deal is also uncertain.

The Justice Department’s appeal is part of a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government on September 18 by three TikTok creators, Douglas Marland, Cosette Rinab and Alec Chambers. Each has more than a million followers on TikTok, which has about 100 million users in the U.S., and argues that a ban would impact their ability to earn a living from brand collaborations on the app.

On Oct. 30, Judge Wendy Beetlestone issued an injunction against the U.S. government’s restrictions. In her ruling, Beetlestone wrote that the “government’s own descriptions of the national security threat posted by the TikTok app are phrased in the hypothetical.”

TikTok stars got a judge to block Trump’s TikTok ban

This case is separate from the one ByteDance filed against the U.S. government in a federal appeals court in Washington D.C. Earlier this week, ByteDance asked that court to vacate the U.S. order forcing it to sell the app’s American operations. ByteDance told TechCrunch in a statement that without an extension on the November 12 deadline, it “[had] no choice but to file a petition in court to defend our rights and those of our more than 1,500 employees in the U.S.”

ByteDance asks federal appeals court to vacate US order forcing it to sell TikTok

The Commerce Department’s statement today, along with the Justice Department’s appeal and the new deadlines in the divestment case, underscore the confusion about the future of the Trump administration’s actions against TikTok after President-Elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20.

While some analysts believe the Biden administration may give Chinese tech companies that were targeted under the current administration, including Huawei and ByteDance, a chance to re-negotiate with the government, that may take second priority as Biden deals with domestic issues, including the resurgence of COVID-19 in the U.S.

News: More voting software FUD falls flat after Trump highlights dubious data

November 13, 2020
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Reports that Dominion Software, which provides voting tabulation tools to about half the states in the U.S., “deleted” millions of votes have been soundly rebuffed after outgoing President Trump parroted numbers from a random internet forum. Tweeting Thursday morning about baseless claims of election fraud, Trump cited OANN, a right-wing news outlet, which itself seemed

Tweeting Thursday morning about baseless claims of election fraud, Trump cited OANN, a right-wing news outlet, which itself seemed to have found its numbers in a thread on pro-Trump Reddit knock-off thedonald.win. (The tweet was quickly wrapped in a warning that the contents are disputed.)

The anonymous person posting there claimed to have compared numbers from Edison Research, a company that does exit polls and other election-related measures, to those from Dominion, and come up with very different sums. The methods are not very well explained, nor are the results. It’s not really clear what is being compared to what and why, or for what reason this alleged fraud was published publicly by the company supposedly perpetrating it. No one has verified (if that’s the word) this analysis in any way.

In a comment to Politifact, Edison President Larry Rosin wrote that “we have no evidence of any voter fraud,” and that it pretty much has no idea what the purported analysis is referring to.

Twitter restricts Trump’s tweet claiming that foes would ‘steal’ the election

Dominion attracted attention earlier in the week when it seemed that a glitch had caused a number of votes to be registered for President-elect Joe Biden instead of Trump. But the miscount was immediately caught and found to be the result of human error. The company has dedicated a page to combating the misinformation around its software.

Politifact rated Trump’s claim “Pants on Fire,” calling it “ridiculous” for good measure. It’s worth noting that the tweet didn’t even state the numbers of the supposed fraud correctly.

There doesn’t seem to be any merit to the “analysis” at all, but it provides an excellent example of how people who are unfamiliar with how the voting apparatus works — which is to say almost everyone not directly involved — tend to find the software portion inherently untrustworthy.

Yet there is no way to count, tabulate and verify millions of ballots in hours or days after an election that does not rely heavily on private software tools, and it is in fact highly reliable and secure. The process of elections is bipartisan and extremely closely monitored.

Elections commissioners and state leadership have been unanimous in declaring the election a surprisingly smooth one considering the difficulties of holding one during a pandemic and with extremely high turnout both in person and by mail.

A major federal committee under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency today called last week’s election “the most secure in American history… There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised. We can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”

Despite accusations from a dwindling number of highly placed individuals in the government, there has been no evidence presented that there was any significant voter fraud or other irregularities in last week’s election, which resulted in the victory of former vice president, now President-elect Joe Biden.

Joe Biden wins the 2020 US presidential election

News: Daily Crunch: Apple releases macOS Big Sur

November 12, 2020
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The latest Mac operating system arrives, Amazon faces a lawsuit over PPE and Disney+ turns one. This is your Daily Crunch for November 12, 2020. The big story: Apple releases macOS Big Sur This update, which was first announced five months ago at WWDC, includes a number of design changes that continue to blur the

The latest Mac operating system arrives, Amazon faces a lawsuit over PPE and Disney+ turns one. This is your Daily Crunch for November 12, 2020.

The big story: Apple releases macOS Big Sur

This update, which was first announced five months ago at WWDC, includes a number of design changes that continue to blur the line between macOS and iOS.

One of the big additions is the Control Center, an iOS/iPadOS feature that presents a translucent pane down the right side of the screen. Meanwhile, Safari added features like built-in translation. And app icons and sounds have been updated throughout.

Brian Heater has been using the beta since June, and he concluded that Big Sur “boasts some key upgrades to apps and the system at large, but more importantly from Apple’s perspective, it lays the groundwork for the first round of Arm-powered Macs and continues its march toward a uniformity between the company’s two primary operating systems.”

The tech giants

Facebook’s Snapchat-like ‘Vanish Mode’ feature arrives on Messenger and Instagram — The feature, meant for more casual conversations, allows users to set chats to automatically delete after the message is seen and the chat is closed.

Amazon faces lawsuit alleging failure to provide PPE to workers during pandemic — The class action suit alleges Amazon failed to properly protect its warehouse workers and violated elements of New York City’s human rights law.

Apple HomePod Mini review: Remarkably big sound — A smart speaker for the masses.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Menlo Security announces $100M Series E on $800M valuation — CEO and co-founder Amir Ben-Efraim told us the startup remains focused on web and email as major attack vectors.

Livestorm raises $30M for its browser-based meeting and webinar platform — It’s purely browser based, without requiring presenters or attendees to install any software.

Nana nabs $6M for an online academy and marketplace dedicated to appliance repair — Nana runs a free academy to teach people how to fix appliances, then gives them the option to become a part of its repair marketplace.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Are subscription services the future of fintech? — As subscriptions become an increasingly alluring business model, fintechs will have to consider whether this strategy is worth the risk.

Conflicts in California’s trade secret laws on customer lists create uncertainty — Read this before you jump ship or hire a salesperson who already has.

As public investors reprice edtech bets, what’s ahead for the hot startup sector? — Selling edtech on the vaccine news (as investors did) was a bet that growth in the sector would be constrained by a return to normalcy.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Disney+ has more than 73M subscribers — The streaming service launched one year ago today.

L’Oréal rolls out a line of ‘virtual makeup’ — This builds on L’Oréal’s 2018 acquisition of an augmented reality filter company called Modiface.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

News: Twitter labeled 300,000 US election tweets — around 0.2%

November 12, 2020
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Just over a week after the U.S. elections, Twitter has offered a breakdown of some of its efforts to label misleading tweets. The site says that from October 27 to November 11, it labeled some 300,000 tweets as part of its Civic Integrity Policy. That amounts to around 0.2% of the total number of election-related

Of course, not all Twitter warnings are created equal. Only 456 of those included a warning that covered the text and limited user engagement, disabling retweets, replies and likes. That specific warning did go a ways toward limited engagement, with around three-fourths of those who encountered the tweets seeing the obscured texts (by clicking through the warning). Quote tweets for those so labeled decreased by around 29%, according to Twitter’s figures.

The president of the United States received a disproportionate number of those labels, as The New York Times notes that just over a third of Trump’s tweets between November 3 and 6 were hit with such a warning. The end of the election (insofar as the election has actually ended, I suppose) appears to have slowed the site’s response time somewhat, though Trump continues to get flagged, as he continues to devote a majority of his feed to disputing the election results confirmed by nearly every major news outlet.

His latest tweet as of this writing has been labeled disputed, but not hidden, as Trump repeats claims against voting machine maker, Dominion. “We also want to be very clear that we do not see our job as done,” Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead Vijaya Gadde and Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour wrote. “Our work here continues and our teams are learning and improving how we address these challenges.”

YouTube removes ads from, but won’t pull, ‘Trump Won’ video following backlash

Twitter and other social media sites were subject to intense scrutiny following the 2016 election for the roles the platforms played in the spread of misinformation. Twitter sought to address the issue by tweaking recommendations and retweets, as well as individually labeling tweets that violate its policies.

Earlier today, YouTube defended its decision to keep controversial election-related videos, noting, “Like other companies, we’re allowing these videos because discussion of election results & the process of counting votes is allowed on YT. These videos are not being surfaced or recommended in any prominent way.”

News: Personal finance startup Truebill raises $17M

November 12, 2020
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Truebill, a startup offering a variety of tools to help users take control of their finances, announced today that it has raised $17 million in Series C funding. When I first wrote about the startup in 2016, it was focused on helping users track and cancel unwanted subscriptions. Since then, it’s expanded into other financial

Truebill, a startup offering a variety of tools to help users take control of their finances, announced today that it has raised $17 million in Series C funding.

When I first wrote about the startup in 2016, it was focused on helping users track and cancel unwanted subscriptions. Since then, it’s expanded into other financial products, like reports on your personal expenses and the ability to negotiate lower bills.

This week, Chief Revenue Officer Yahya Mokhtarzada told me that with the pandemic leading to a dramatic reduction in ad costs, Truebill was able to make TV advertising a key channel for reaching new users.

And of course, the financial uncertainty has made the product more appealing too — particularly its smart savings tool, where users can automatically set aside money for their goals.

“People became aware of the need to have some cushion,” Mokhtarzada said. “You should start saving when things are going well, before you need it, but [saving during the pandemic] is better than not doing it at all. We’ve seen a big bump in smart savings adoption, which is at an all-time high.”

Truebill raises $15M to build a comprehensive platform for personal finance

The new round brings Truebill’s total funding to $40 million. It was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Eldridge Capital, Cota Capital, Firebolt Ventures and Day One Ventures.

The startup says the round will allow it to develop new products and features, including net worth tracking, automated debt payments and shared accounts.

Mokhtarzada added that the company will be making big investments in data science to help follow its “north star” of financial health, where he said, “”The data challenge is significant.”

Sure, it’s pretty straightforward to recognize whether someone’s doing well or poorly financially, but the real goal is to “recognize trends and shortfalls before they happen.”

For example, instead of simply alerting users when they’ve been charged an overdraft fee on their account, Mokhtarzada said, “What is helpful is to predictive models analyze data to anticipate a cashflow shortage and have the right tools in place that prevent it.”

Plum raises $10M for its ‘smart’ money management app

Monthly Archives: November 2020