Monthly Archives: January 2021

News: Daily Crunch: Robinhood raises $1B

• January 29, 2021
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Robinhood caps a wild week for new funding, Coinbase is going public and Johnson & Johnson reveals new vaccine trial data. This is your Daily Crunch for January 29, 2021. The big story: Robinhood raises $1B I know the newsletter has been dominated by Robinhood and stock market news for the past few days but,

Robinhood caps a wild week for new funding, Coinbase is going public and Johnson & Johnson reveals new vaccine trial data. This is your Daily Crunch for January 29, 2021.

The big story: Robinhood raises $1B

I know the newsletter has been dominated by Robinhood and stock market news for the past few days but, well, so have the headlines.

The latest news is that after reportedly tapping its credit lines, Robinhood raised $1 billion in new funding from existing investors. It seems the company needed the money in order to meet regulatory minimums and other requirements tied to users’ trading activity.

Meanwhile, the SEC has issued a statement that doesn’t specifically mention Robinhood or GameStop by name, but it says that “extreme stock price volatility has the potential to expose investors to rapid and severe losses” that could “undermine market confidence.”

The tech giants

You can now give Facebook’s Oversight Board feedback on the decision to suspend Trump — The board says the point of the public comment process is to incorporate “diverse perspectives” from third parties who wish to share research that might inform their decisions.

Uber’s Autocab acquisition gets eyed by UK competition watchdog — Autocab makes booking and dispatch software for the taxi and private-hire vehicle industry.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Coinbase is going public via direct listing — The company has raised over $540 million in funding as a private company.

Firehawk Aerospace extends seed funding to $2.5M with $1.2M from Harlow Capital — Firehawk has developed a new kind of hybrid rocket fuel that greatly enhances rocket launch safety, cost and transportation using additive manufacturing.

SoftBank earmarks $100M for Miami-based startups — The fund will back companies that are in Miami or plan to move there.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Customer advisory boards are a gold mine for startup brand champions — Some considerations to make certain your customer advisory board is a success.

Rising African venture investment powers fintech, clean tech bets in 2020 — The Exchange looks at a report from Briter Bridges, a research group that focuses on Africa’s private capital market.

Subscription-based pricing is dead: Smart SaaS companies are shifting to usage-based models — That’s according to Open VP of Growth Kyle Povar.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine is 85% effective against severe cases, and 66% effective overall per trial data — Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is a single shot rather than a two-course treatment.

‘Frozen’ CG snow and crash-test cadavers offer hints for 60-year-old Russian mystery deaths — New research uses simulation techniques from multiple eras to advance what is perhaps the least implausible explanation for a tragic mystery.

Reap big benefits when you attend both TC Early Stage 2021 events — TechCrunch Early Stage is a two-day virtual bootcamp that gives early founders access to leading experts.

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: Robinhood limits users to a single share of GameStop and other stocks

• January 29, 2021
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Robinhood has detailed its latest step in the complex quagmire of market manipulation that is this week’s GameStop hedge fund Reddit army debacle. Users will for the present be limited to holding a single share of GameStop and dozens of other stocks. Several stocks were limited to five shares, and options contracts are likewise limited

Robinhood has detailed its latest step in the complex quagmire of market manipulation that is this week’s GameStop hedge fund Reddit army debacle. Users will for the present be limited to holding a single share of GameStop and dozens of other stocks.

Several stocks were limited to five shares, and options contracts are likewise limited on many of the most-traded stocks this week, such as AMC and Blackberry. Positions exceeding these amounts will not be automatically sold, but they will apply if the user goes under them and tries to buy again. Fractional shares are also prohibited.

Any other specifics about positions, expiring options contracts and so on can be found in the announcement and related FAQs.

Robinhood has said that it has halted and now limited trading because of “financial requirements, including SEC net capital obligations and clearinghouse deposits” — essentially, the volume and value of the trading going on was beyond its ability to legally or realistically cover. Trading of certain stocks was halted or restricted earlier this week, but the new post details exactly which stocks are affected and how.

The company had to hastily raise funds totaling over a billion dollars from its existing investors after reportedly maxing out half a billion in credit lines.

With widespread outrage at the handling of the situation and the U.S. government taking notice, it’s unlikely Robinhood’s troubles (not to mention other trading apps and platforms) are anywhere near over. With new developments appearing seemingly every few hours, it’s hard to know how this particular story will develop.

News: Extra Crunch roundup: Edtech VC survey, 5 founder mistakes, fintech liquidity, more

• January 29, 2021
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Edtech is so widespread, we already need more consumer-friendly nomenclature to describe the products, services and tools it encompasses.

Edtech is so widespread, we already need more consumer-friendly nomenclature to describe the products, services and tools it encompasses.

I know someone who reads stories to their grandchildren on two continents via Zoom each weekend. Is that “edtech?”

Similarly, many Netflix subscribers sought out online chess instructors after watching “The Queen’s Gambit,” but I doubt if they all ran searches for “remote learning” first.

Edtech needs to reach beyond underfunded public school systems to become more sustainable, which is why more investors and founders are focusing on lifelong learning.

Besides serving traditional students with field trips and art classes, a maturing sector is now branching out to offer software tutors, cooking classes and singing lessons.

For our latest investor survey, Natasha Mascarenhas polled 13 edtech VCs to learn more about how “employer-led up-skilling and a renewed interest in self-improvement” is expanding the sector’s TAM.

Here’s who she spoke to:

• Deborah Quazzo, managing partner, GSV Ventures
• Ashley Bittner, founding partner, Firework Ventures (a future of work fund with portfolio companies LearnIn and TransfrVR)
• Jomayra Herrera, principal, Cowboy Ventures (a generalist fund with portfolio companies Hone and Guild Education)
• John Danner, managing partner, Dunce Capital (an edtech and future of work fund with portfolio companies Lambda School and Outschool)
• Mercedes Bent and Bradley Twohig, partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners (a multistage generalist fund with investments including Forage, Clever and Outschool)
• Ian Chiu, managing director, Owl Ventures (a large edtech-focused fund backing highly valued companies including Byju’s, Newsela and Masterclass)
• Jan Lynn-Matern, founder and partner, Emerge Education (a leading edtech seed fund in Europe with portfolio companies like Aula, Unibuddy and BibliU)
• Benoit Wirz, partner, Brighteye Ventures (an active edtech-focused venture capital fund in Europe that backs YouSchool, Lightneer and Aula)
• Charles Birnbaum, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners (a generalist fund with portfolio companies including Guild Education and Brightwheel)
• Daniel Pianko, co-founder and managing director, University Ventures (a higher ed and future of work fund that is backing Imbellus and Admithub)
• Rebecca Kaden, managing partner, Union Square Ventures (a generalist fund with portfolio companies including TopHat, Quizlet, Duolingo)
• Andreata Muforo, partner, TLCom Capital (a generalist fund backing uLesson)

Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to members
Use discount code ECFriday to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription

In other news: Extra Crunch Live, a series of interviews with leading investors and entrepreneurs, returns next month with a full slate of guests. This year, we’re adding a new feature: Our guests will analyze pitch decks submitted by members of the audience to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

If you’d like an expert eye on your deck, please sign up for Extra Crunch and join the conversation.

Thanks very much for reading! I hope you have a fantastic weekend — we’ve all earned it.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

13 investors say lifelong learning is taking edtech mainstream

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Rising African venture investment powers fintech, clean tech bets in 2020

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

After falling into yesterday’s wild news cycle, Alex Wilhelm returned to The Exchange this morning with a close look at venture capital activity across Africa in 2020.

“Comparing aggregate 2020 figures to 2019 results, it appears that last year was a somewhat robust year for African startups, albeit one with fewer large rounds,” he found.

For more context, he interviewed Dario Giuliani, the director of research firm Briter Bridges, which focuses on emerging markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Talent and capital are shifting cybersecurity investors’ focus away from Silicon Valley

Image Credits: MCCAIG (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

New cybersecurity ecosystems are popping up in different parts of the world.

Some of of that growth has been fueled by an exodus from the Bay Area, but many early-stage security startups already have deep roots in East Coast cities like Boston and New York.

In the United Kingdom and Europe, government innovation programs have helped entrepreneurs close higher numbers of Series A and B rounds.

Investor interest and expertise is migrating out of Silicon Valley: This post will help you understand where it’s going.

Will Apple’s spectacular iPhone 12 sales figures boost the smartphone industry in 2021?

Image Credits: NurPhoto (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Today’s smartphones are unfathomably feature-rich and durable, so it’s logical that sales have slowed.

A phone purchased 18 months ago is probably “good enough” for many consumers, especially in times of economic uncertainty.

Then again, of the record $111.4 billion in revenue Apple earned last quarter, $65.68 billion came from phone sales, largely driven by the release of the iPhone 12.

Even though “Apple’s success this quarter was kind of a perfect storm,” writes Hardware Editor Brian Heater, “it’s safe to project a rebound for the industry at large in 2021.”

The 5 biggest mistakes I made as a first-time startup founder

Image Credits: Randy Faris (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Finmark co-founder and CEO Rami Essaid wrote a post for Extra Crunch that candidly describes the traps he laid for himself that made him a less-effective entrepreneur.

As someone who’s worked closely with founders at several startups, each of the points he raised resonated deeply with me.

In my experience, many founders have a hard time delegating, which can quickly create cultural and operational problems. Rami’s experience bears this out:

“I became a human GPS: People could follow my directions, but they struggled to find the way themselves. Independent thinking suffered.”

Dear Sophie: How can I sponsor my mom and stepdad for green cards?

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Dear Sophie:

I just got my U.S. citizenship! My husband and I want to bring my mom and her husband to the U.S. to help us take care of our preschooler and toddler.

My biological dad passed away several years ago when I was an adult and my mom has since remarried.

Can they get green cards?

— Appreciative in Aptos

Check out the amazing speakers joining us on Extra Crunch Live in February

Next month, Extra Crunch Live returns with a lineup of guests who are extremely well-qualified to discuss early-stage startups.

Each Wednesday at noon PPST/3 p.m. EST, join a conversation with founders and the investors who backed their companies:

February 3:

Gaurav Gupta (Lightspeed Venture Partners) + Raj Dutt (Grafana Labs)

February 10:

Aydin Senkut (Felicis Ventures) + Kevin Busque (Guideline)

February 17:

Steve Loughlin (Accel) + Jason Boehmig (Ironclad)

February 24:

Matt Harris (Bain Capital) + Isaac Oates (Justworks)

Also, we’re adding a new feature to Extra Crunch Live — our guests will offer advice and feedback on pitch decks submitted by Extra Crunch members in the audience!

10 VCs say interactivity, regulation and independent creators will reshape digital media in 2021

Image Credits: Aleksandar Nakic (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Since the pandemic disrupted the social rhythms of work and school, many of us have compensated by changing our relationship to digital media.

For instance, I purchased a new sofa and thicker living room curtains several months ago when I realized we have no idea when movie theaters will reopen.

Last year, podcast sponsors spent almost $800 million to reach listeners, but ad revenue is estimated to surpass $1 billion this year. Clearly, I’m not the only person who used a discount code to buy a new product in 2020.

At this point, I can scarcely keep track of the multiple streaming platforms I’m subscribed to, but a new voice-activated remote control that comes with my basic cable plan makes it easier to browse my options.

Media reporter Anthony Ha spoke to10 VCs who invest in media startups to learn more about where they see digital media heading in the months ahead. For starters, how much longer can we expect traditional advertising models to persist?

And in a world with hundreds of channels, how are creators supposed to compete for our attention? What sort of discovery tools can we expect to help us navigate between a police procedural set in a Scandinavian village and a 90s sitcom reboot?

Here’s who Anthony interviewed:

• Daniel Gulati, founding partner, Forecast Fund
• Alex Gurevich, managing director, Javelin Venture Partners
• Matthew Hartman, partner, Betaworks Ventures
• Jerry Lu, senior associate, Maveron
• Jana Messerschmidt, partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners
• Michael Palank, general partner, MaC Venture Capital (with additional commentary from MaC’s Marlon Nichols)
• Pär-Jörgen Pärson, general partner, Northzone
• M.G. Siegler, general partner, GV
• Laurel Touby, managing director, Supernode Ventures
• Hans Tung, managing partner, GGV Capital

Normally, we list each investor’s responses separately, but for this survey, we grouped their responses by question. Some readers say they use our surveys to study up on an individual VC before pitching them, so let us know which format you prefer.

Does a $27 billion or $29 billion valuation make sense for Databricks?

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

Data analytics platform Databricks is reportedly raising new capital that could value the company between $27 billion and $29 billion.

By the end of Q3 2020, Databricks had surpassed a $350 million run rate — a $150 million YoY increase, reports Alex Wilhelm.

At the time, he described the company as “an obvious IPO candidate” with “broad private-market options.”

Which begs the question: “Can we come up with a set of numbers that help make sense of Databricks at $27 billion?”

End-to-end operators are the next generation of consumer business

Image Credits: Natalia Timchenko (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Rapid shifts in the way we buy goods and services disrupted old-school marketplaces like local newspapers and the Yellow Pages.

Today, I can use my phone to summon a plumber, a week’s worth of groceries or a ride to a doctor’s office.

End-to-end operators like Netflix, Peloton and Lemonade take a lot of time and energy to reach scale, but “the additional capital required is often outweighed by the value captured from owning the entire experience.”

Unpacking Chamath Palihapitiya’s SPAC deals for Latch and Sunlight Financial

Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)

On January 25, Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya tweeted that he was making two blank-check deals.

Enterprise SaaS company Latch makes keyless entry systems; Sunlight Financial helps consumers finance residential solar power installations.

“There are nearly 300 SPACs in the market today looking for deals,” noted Alex Wilhelm, who unpacked both transactions.

“There’s no escaping SPACs for a bit, so if you are tired of watching blind pools rip private companies into the public markets, you are not going to have a very good next few months.”

Fintechs could see $100 billion of liquidity in 2021

Image Credits: dan tarradellas (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

On Monday, we published the Matrix Fintech Index, a three-part study that weighs liquidity, public markets and e-commerce trends to create a snapshot of an industry in perpetual flux.

For four years running, the S&P 500 and incumbent financial services companies have been outperformed by companies like Afterpay, Square and Bill.com.

In light of steady VC investment, increasing consumer adoption and a crowded IPO pipeline, “fintech represents one of the most exciting major innovation cycles of this decade.”

Drupal’s journey from dorm-room project to billion-dollar exit

Image Credits: Acquia

On January 15, 2001, then-college student Dries Buytaert released Drupal 1.0.0, an open-source content-management platform. At the time, about 7% of the world’s population was online.

After raising more than $180 million, Buytaert exited to Vista Equity Partners for $1 billion in 2019.

Enterprise reporter Ron Miller interviewed Buytaert to learn more about his 18-year journey.

“His story is compelling, but it also offers lessons for startup founders who also want to build something big,” says Ron.

News: How Roblox’s creator accelerator helps the gaming giant build new platform opportunities

• January 29, 2021
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As Roblox eyes what could be a historic debut on public markets in the coming months, investors who have valued the company at $29.5 billion are certainly eyeing the gaming company’s dedicated and youthful user base, but it’s the 7 million active creators and developers on the Roblox platform that they are likely most impressed

As Roblox eyes what could be a historic debut on public markets in the coming months, investors who have valued the company at $29.5 billion are certainly eyeing the gaming company’s dedicated and youthful user base, but it’s the 7 million active creators and developers on the Roblox platform that they are likely most impressed by. 

Since 2015, Roblox has been running an accelerator program focused on enabling the next generation of game developers to be successful on its platform. Over the years, the program has expanded from one annual class to now three, each with now around 40 developers participating. That means over 100 developers per year are working directly with Roblox to gain mentorship, education, and funding opportunities to get their games off the ground.  

As the company’s efforts on this front have grown more formalized, Roblox in 2018 hired a former Accelerator alumni Christian Hunter, a Roblox gamer since age 10 and game developer since 13, to run the program full-time. Having been through the experience himself, Hunter brought to the program an understanding of how the Accelerator could improve, based on a developer’s own perspective. 

However, the COVID-19 pandemic threw the company’s plans to run the program into disarray. Instead of being able to invite developers to spend three months participating in classes hosted at Roblox’s San Mateo office, the company had to revamp the program for remote participation. 

As it turned out, developers who were used to playing and building games taking place in virtual worlds quickly adjusted to the new online experience. 

“Before COVID, everyone was together. It was easier to talk to people. [Developers] could just walk up to someone that was on our product or engineering team if they were running into issues,” explains Roblox Senior Product Manager Rebecca Crose. “But obviously, with COVID-19, we had to switch and think differently.”  

The remote program, though differently structured, offered several benefits. Developers could join the program’s Discord server to talk to both current participants and previous classes, and reach out and ask questions. They could also participate in the Roblox company Slack to ask the team questions, and there were more playtests being scheduled to gain reactions and feedback from Roblox employees.

Meanwhile, to get to know one another when they couldn’t meet in person, developers would have game nights where they’d play each other’s games or others that were popular on Roblox, and bond within the virtual environment instead of in face-to-face meetings and classes. 

The actual Accelerator content, however, remained fairly consistent during the remote experience. Participants had weekly leaders standup, talks on topics like game design and production, and weekly feedback sessions where they asked Roblox engineers questions. 

But by its nature, a remote Accelerator broadend who could attend. Instead of limiting the program to only those who could travel to San Mateo and stay for three months, the program was opened up to a more global and diverse audience. This drove increased demand, too. 

The 2020 program saw Roblox receiving the largest number of applications ever — 5 times the usual number.

As a result, the class included participants from five countries: The Philippines, South Korea, Sweden, Canada, and the U.S. 

The developers at IndieBox Studios saw the program as a chance to double down on their game development side hustles. The young friends spread across the UK and Kentucky spent their time during the accelerator scaling up their photorealistic title called Tank Warfare.

“We’ve actually never once met in real life, like we’ve been friends for going on what nine years now,” Michael Southern tells TechCrunch. “We met on Roblox.”

IndieBox is representative of many of Roblox’s early developer teams, younger gamers that have spent more than a decade learning the ins and outs of the evolving Roblox gaming platform.

“We all joined Roblox way back in 2008,” IndieBox’s Frank Garrison says. “But we only started developing on the platform in 2019. And for us, the decision to choose Roblox was more down to like, well it’s what we know, why not give it a bash?” 

The demographics of the accelerator have been shifting in other ways as the developer base grows more diverse.

“I would say, in the beginning, it was mostly young males. But as we’ve watched the program evolve, we’ve been getting so many new interesting teams,” notes Program Manager Christian Hunter. 

The 2020 program had more women participants than ever, for example, with 12 in a class of 50. And one team was all women. 

The age of participants, who are typically in the 18 to 22 year-old range, also evolved. 

“We’ve seen a lot more older folks,” Hunter says. “With [the COVID-19 pandemic], we actually saw our first 50-year old in the program. We’ve never had anyone older than, I’d say, 24. And in 2020, we had 12 individuals over the age of 30,” he notes. 

Two of the teams were also a combination of a kid and a parent. 

Shannon Clemens learned about the Roblox platform from her son Nathan, learning to code and bringing her husband Jeff in to form a studio called Simple Games. Nathan’s two sisters help the studio part time, as well as his friend Adrian Holgate.

“Seeing [my son’s] experience on Roblox getting involved with the platform, I thought it would be neat to learn how to make our own games,” Shannon Clemens told TechCrunch.

Their title Gods of Glory has received more than 13.5 million visits from Roblox players since launching in September.

“Our whole family is kind of creatively bent towards having fun with games and coming up with things like that,” Jeff Clemens tells us. “Why would we not try this? So, that’s when we applied to the program and said, ‘well, we’ll try and see if we get accepted,’ and we did and it’s been awesome.”

In addition to the changes facilitated by a remote environment, Roblox notes there were other perks enabled by remote learning. For one thing, the developers didn’t have to wake up so early to benefit from the experience.  

“With it being remote, the developers were working their hours,” says Crose. “As a developer, we tend to work later and stay up at night. Having them come in at 9 AM sharp was very difficult. It was hard for them because they’re just like…a zombie. So we definitely saw that by letting them work their own hours, [there is] less burnout and they increase their productivity,” she says. 

Though the COVID-19 crisis may eventually end as the world gets vaccinated, the learnings from the Accelerator and the remote advantages it offers will continue. Developers from the program hope that the growth seen on gaming platforms like Roblox continues as well.

“The pandemic has been great for most game studios,” developer Gustav Linde tells TechCrunch. “Obviously, it’s a very weird time, but the timing was good for us.”

The Gang Stockholm, a Swedish game development studio co-founded by Linde, has been building branded experiences for clients exclusively on the Roblox platform. The team of 12 has used the accelerator to slow down development deadlines and dig into some unique areas of the platform.  

“If you look at Steam and the App Store and Google Play, those markets are extremely crowded, and Roblox is a very exciting platform for developers right now.” said Linde. “Roblox is also getting a lot of attention and a lot of big brands are interested in entering the platform.”

Roblox says that going forward, future Accelerator programs will feature a remote element inspired by the COVID experience. The company plans to continue to make its program globally available, with the limitation for now, of English-speaking participants. But it’s looking to expand to reach non-English speakers with future programs.

The fall 2020 Accelerator class graduated in December 2020, and the next Spring class will start in February 2021. The applications are being reviewed now with a decision to be finalized soon. The next class will have some 40 participants, as is now usual, and Roblox will again aim to diversify the group of participants.

News: Subscription-based pricing is dead: Smart SaaS companies are shifting to usage-based models

• January 29, 2021
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Out of nine SaaS IPOs in recent years that had the best net dollar retention, seven employ usage-based models.

Software buying has evolved. The days of executives choosing software for their employees based on IT compatibility or KPIs are gone. Employees now tell their boss what to buy. This is why we’re seeing more and more SaaS companies — Datadog, Twilio, AWS, Snowflake and Stripe, to name a few — find success with a usage-based pricing model.

The usage-based model allows a customer to start at a low cost, minimizing friction to getting started while still preserving the ability to monetize a customer over time because the price is directly tied with the value a customer receives. Not limiting the number of users who can access the software, customers are able to find new use cases — which leads to more long-term success and higher lifetime value.

While we aren’t going 100% usage-based overnight, looking at some of the megatrends in software —  automation, AI and APIs — the value of a product normally doesn’t scale with more logins. Usage-based pricing will be the key to successful monetization in the future. Here are four top tips to help companies scale to $100+ million ARR with this model.

1. Land-and-expand is real

Usage-based pricing is in all layers of the tech stack. Though it was pioneered in the infrastructure layer (think: AWS and Azure), it’s becoming increasingly popular for API-based products and application software — across infrastructure, middleware and applications.

Image Credits: Kyle Povar / OpenView

Some fear that investors will hate usage-based pricing because customers aren’t locked into a subscription. But, investors actually see it as a sign that customers are seeing value from a product and there’s no shelf-ware.

In fact, investors are increasingly rewarding usage-based companies in the market. Usage-based companies are trading at a 50% revenue multiple premium over their peers.

Investors especially love how the usage-based pricing model pairs with the land-and-expand business model. And of the IPOs over the last three years, seven of the nine that had the best net dollar retention all have a usage-based model. Snowflake in particular is off the charts with a 158% net dollar retention.

News: ‘Frozen’ CG snow and crash-test cadavers offer hints for 60-year-old Russian mystery deaths

• January 29, 2021
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The Dyatlov Pass incident is the mother of all cold cases: 9 people found dead in 1959, deep in the Ural mountains, under circumstances no one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain. But new research uses simulation techniques from multiple eras to advance what is perhaps the least implausible story of this tragic mystery.

The Dyatlov Pass incident is the mother of all cold cases: 9 people found dead in 1959, deep in the Ural mountains, under circumstances no one has ever been able to satisfactorily explain. But new research uses simulation techniques from multiple eras to advance what is perhaps the least implausible story of this tragic mystery.

The paper, published yesterday in Nature Communications Earth and Environment, was accompanied by a highly readable summary in National Geographic, which is very much worth your time. (Even if the headline is the dreaded “Has science solved…?”)

Essentially the mystery is this: the 8 students and their ski instructor had pitched their tent on a slope that seemed safe — if not perfectly so then comparatively considering the surroundings at Kholat Saykhl, or “Dead Mountain — but were later found spread out around the area in various stages of disrobing and destruction. The carnage seemed beyond what an avalanche would produce, and anyway there seemed to be no evidence or likelihood of one in the first place.

For more than 60 years this has been a source of speculation and conspiracy, especially since there was the appearance of a cover-up by the Soviet government at the time. Even Russia revisiting the event in 2019 didn’t seem to produce a convincing explanation.

Enter Alxeander Puzrin and Johan Gaume, from Switzerland’s ETH Zürich and EPFL respectively, two highly prestigious and advanced technical institutes. Curious about the incident for their own reasons, they began looking into how to work out once and for all what happened. An interesting personal detail:

The scientific investigation came with an added benefit from Puzrin’s wife, who is Russian. “When I told her that I was working on the Dyatlov mystery, for the first time she looked at me with real respect,” he says.

One hardly knows what to say!

At all events the researchers put together a new hypothesis based on a few ideas.

First, the slope was not as shallow as it appeared — it was near the minimum for an avalanche to occur, and the snow was characterized as having a base layer conducive to slippage of snow on top. Freezing winds could have added mass and set off a slide under the cut-out in which the group put their tent.

Second, Gaume visited the creators of the movie “Frozen,” which featured highly realistic snow simulation. He met with Disney’s snow simulation specialist and got permission to use and modify the code — but in this case, to see what an avalanche striking sleeping students would do to them. Their simulations showed that it wouldn’t take much — a block of icy snow the size of a large car — to cause the devastation witnessed by the rescue party.

Image Credits: Gaume, Puzrin / Nature

Third, they used research performed by GM that broke the ribs of a hundred cadavers — for the purposes of tuning seatbelts. They proposed that because the Russian students would have been sleeping on their skis, it was fairly similar to how certain cadavers with rigid supports reacted to impacts. Thus the horrific injuries instead of the usual asphyxiation produced by being submerged in a drift that usually happens to victims of avalanches.

It’s all still speculation on top of speculation, but the important part is that by combining these various, reasonably objective measures, Puzrin and Gaume show that it’s possible that an avalanche was responsible for the Dyatlov Pass incident, however rare the combination of circumstances must have been.

They freely admit that many may not accept this explanation — “It’s too normal,” said Gaume — and will continue to pursue the conspiracies and fantasy scenarios the incident has spawned for half a century. But for others it may offer some solace: a reason to believe that these poor 9 souls were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

News: Reap big benefits when you attend both TC Early Stage 2021 events

• January 29, 2021
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Where can new founders and budding entrepreneurs turn for expert advice to navigate the formative phases of building a startup? Head to TechCrunch Early Stage — a two-day virtual bootcamp that gives early founders (pre-seed through Series A) access to the leading experts across a range of essential entrepreneurial skills. We’re talking dozens of workshops

Where can new founders and budding entrepreneurs turn for expert advice to navigate the formative phases of building a startup? Head to TechCrunch Early Stage — a two-day virtual bootcamp that gives early founders (pre-seed through Series A) access to the leading experts across a range of essential entrepreneurial skills.

We’re talking dozens of workshops addressing operations, fundraising, pitch deck pointers, term sheet tips, product-market fit, brand building, growth marketing, recruiting, taming your tech stack and a lot more.

That’s a lot of ground to cover, amirite? That’s exactly why we’re hosting two Early Stage events this year. Each one offers different content, a separate slate of speakers and unique perspectives. Both feature highly interactive Q&As with the experts. Get answers to all your burning questions!

Note: In a hurry? Scroll down to the bottom (or click here) to get the 411 on pass types, early-bird pricing and deadlines.

The first TC-ES, on April 1 & 2, covers topics ranging from fundraising and operations to product lifecycle and recruiting — for starters. The second, on July 8 & 9, spans marketplace positioning, growth marketing, content development and even more on fundraising.

Sure, you can go to a single Early Stage event, but savvy startuppers (that’s you, right?) will sign on for a double dose of knowledge and attend both. That’s not just marketing talk — the benefits are real.

Buy a dual-event pass (for a tidy discount, by the way), and you’ll not only learn more, but you’ll also have more time to absorb and implement critical advice that can lead to your success. Seriously, which topics and tips can you afford to miss? Don’t let the FOMO haunt you.

You’ll also have plenty of opportunity to connect and network with other early founders, later-stage founders and other smart members of the startup — oh, what’s the word? — community. Build your contacts, find indispensable support and mentorship. Remember, we all go further together.

We introduced TC Early Stage last year to rave reviews — like this one from Chloe Leaaetoa, founder of Socicraft.

“You learn from industry leaders and seasoned founders — people who’ve already been there and done that. They were genuine and honest about industry expectations. Plus, they shared first-hand accounts, which made them more relatable.”

And this one from Ashley Barrington, founder of MarketPearl.

“I recommend going to Early Stage. The virtual aspect helps in terms of scheduling, it offers community-building through networking, and it gives early stage founders a framework for navigating the startup ecosystem. This is the stage where founders need more support, especially if they haven’t done this before.”

Go all-in and attend TC Early Stage 2021 in April and again in July. Increase your knowledge, sharpen your skills, avoid pitfalls and expand your network. Those are mighty big benefits, and you deserve every one of them.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021 – Operations & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

News: Customer advisory boards are a gold mine for startup brand champions

• January 29, 2021
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Any startup that hopes to build a direct connection with its customers should consider recruiting a group of users who will share their experiences, insights and advice.

As a 20-year CIO and advisor to multiple startups, I sat on many customer advisory boards (CABs) and saw how they were formed. Some companies have highly functioning CABs, others merely serve as feedback loops. Any startup striving to connect directly with their customers would benefit from establishing one.

Here are some considerations to make certain your customer advisory board is a success.

Why CABs matter

For those unfamiliar, a customer advisory board is a group of customers who come together to share their experiences, insights and advice with an organization. First and foremost, the CAB functions to recognize and include the voice of the customer, an essential part of your company’s journey since customers interact closer than anyone with your product or service.

It’s best to designate early adopters to be on the board — those who took a chance on you and have been on the frontlines as your company evolved — as well as some newer customers.

While establishing this group signals appreciation and respect for your customers, it also provides an opportunity for you to formalize and structure the feedback you are requesting from them. You can seek validation for product ideas or guidance on roadmap development, test out marketing messaging and even tap into market intelligence.

The greatest benefit of a CAB, however, is the creation of champions for your brand. These loyal partners will ultimately offer testimonials, references and referrals. Key to this partnership is a shared sense of playing a small part in building the future of your company.

Assembling your CAB superteam

The best route to assembling your CAB is to start with a very small group and expand slowly. There’s quite a bit of nuance in the selection of who to include. Do you go after the executive who sponsored you, the one who saw a vision and thought your solution would fit?

Perhaps. But that individual may not be using your product every day, be involved deeply in its operational aspects and/or have their finger on the pulse of the end-user’s experience.

News: Three-dimensional search engine Physna wants to be the Google of the physical world

• January 29, 2021
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In June of 1999, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins invested $25 million into an early-stage company developing a new search engine called Google, paving the way for a revolution in how knowledge online was organized and shared. Now, Sequoia Capital is placing another bet on a different kind of search engine, one for physical objects

In June of 1999, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins invested $25 million into an early-stage company developing a new search engine called Google, paving the way for a revolution in how knowledge online was organized and shared.

Now, Sequoia Capital is placing another bet on a different kind of search engine, one for physical objects in three dimensions, just as the introduction of three-dimensional sensing technologies on consumer phones are poised to create a revolution in spatial computing.

At least, that’s the bet that Sequoia Capital’s Shaun Maguire is making on the Cincinnati, Ohio-based startup Physna.

Maguire and Sequoia are leading a $20 million bet into the company alongside Drive Capital, the Columbus, Ohio-based venture firm founded by two former Sequoia partners, Mark Kvamme and Chris Olsen.

“There’s been this open problem in mathematics, which is how you do three dimensional search. How do you define a metric that gives you other similar three dimensional objects. This has a long history in mathematics,” Maguire said. “When I first met [Physna founder] Paul Powers, he had already come up with a wildly novel distance metric to compare different three dimensional objects. If you have one distance metric, you can find other objects that are a distance away. His thinking underlying that is so unbelievably creative. If I were to put it in the language of modern mathematics… it just involves a lot of really advanced ideas that actually also works.”

Powers’ idea — and Physna’s technology — was a long time coming.

A lawyer by training and an entrepreneur at heart, Powers came to the problem of three dimensional search through his old day job as an intellectual property lawyer.

Powers chose IP law because he thought it was the most interesting way to operate at the intersection of technology and law — and would provide good grounding for whatever company the serial entrepreneur would eventually launch next. While practicing, Powers hit upon a big problem, while some intellectual property theft around software and services was easy to catch, it was harder to identify when actual products or parts were being stolen as trade secrets. “We were always able to find 2D intellectual property theft,” Powers said, but catching IP theft in three dimensions was elusive.

From its launch in 2015 through 2019, Powers worked with co-founder and chief technology officer Glenn Warner Jr. on developing the product, which was initially intended to protect product designs from theft. Tragically just as the company was getting ready to unveil its transformation into the three dimensional search engine it had become, Warner died.

Powers soldiered on, rebuilding the company and its executive team with the help of Dennis DeMeyere, who joined the company in 2020 after a stint in Google’s office of the chief technology officer and technical director for Google Cloud.

“When I moved, I jumped on a plane with two checked bags and moved into a hotel, until I could rent a fully furnished home,” DeMeyere told Protocol last year.

Other heavy hitters were also drawn to the Cincinnati-based company thanks in no small part to Olsen and Kvamme’s Silicon Valley connections. They include Github’s chief technology officer, Jason Warner, who has a seat on the company’s board of directors alongside Drive Capital’s co-founder Kvamme, who serves as the chairman.

In Physna, Kvamme, Maguire, and Warner see a combination of Github and Google — especially after the launch last year of the company’s consumer facing site, Thangs.

That site allows users to search for three dimensional objects by a description or by uploading a model or image. As Mike Murphy at Protocol noted, it’s a bit like Thingiverse, Yeggi or other sites used by 3D-printing hobbyists. What the site can also do is show users the collaborative history of each model and the model’s component parts — if it involves different objects.

Hence the GitHub and Google combination. And users can set up profiles to store their own models or collaborate and comment on public models.

What caught Maguire’s eye about the company was the way users were gravitating to the free site. “There were tens of thousands of people using it every day,” he said. It’s a replica of the way many successful companies try a freemium or professional consumer hybrid approach to selling products. “They have a free version and people are using it all the time and loving it. That is a foundation that they can build from,” said Maguire.

And Maguire thinks that the spatial computing wave is coming sooner than anyone may realize. “The new iPhone has LIDAR on it… This is the first consumer device that comes shipped with a 3D scanner with LIDAR and I think three dimensional is about to explode.”

Eventually, Physna could be a technology hub where users can scan three dimensional objects into their phones and have a representational model for reproduction either as a virtual object or as something that can be converted into a file for 3D printing.

Right now, hundreds of businesses have approached the company with different requests for how to apply its technology, according to Powers.

“One new feature will allow you to take a picture of something and not only show you what that is or where it goes. Even if that is into a part of the assembly. We shatter a vase and with the vase shards we can show you how the pieces fit back together,” Powers said.

Typical contracts for the company’s software range from $25,000 to $50,000 for enterprise customers, but the software that powers Physna’s product is more than just a single application, according to Powers.

“We’re not just a product. We’re a fundamental technology,” said Powers. “There is a gap between the physical and the digital.”

For Sequoia and Drive Capital, Physna’s software is the technology to bridge that gap.

News: You can now give Facebook’s Oversight Board feedback on the decision to suspend Trump

• January 29, 2021
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Facebook’s “Supreme Court” is now accepting comments on one of its earliest and likely most consequential cases. The Facebook Oversight Board announced Friday that it would begin accepting public feedback on Facebook’s suspension of former President Trump. Mark Zuckerberg announced Trump’s suspension on January 7, after the then-president of the United States incited his followers

Facebook’s “Supreme Court” is now accepting comments on one of its earliest and likely most consequential cases. The Facebook Oversight Board announced Friday that it would begin accepting public feedback on Facebook’s suspension of former President Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg announced Trump’s suspension on January 7, after the then-president of the United States incited his followers to riot at the nation’s Capitol, an event that resulted in a number of deaths and imperiled the peaceful transition of power.

In a post calling for feedback, the Oversight Board describes the two posts that led to Trump’s suspension. One is a version of the video the president shared the day of the Capitol riot in which he sympathizes with rioters and validates their claim that the “election was stolen from us.” In the second post, Trump reiterates those views, falsely bemoaning a “sacred landslide election victory” that was “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”

The board says the point of the public comment process is to incorporate “diverse perspectives” from third parties who wish to share research that might inform their decisions, though it seems a lot more likely the board will wind up with a tidal wave of subjective and probably not particularly useful political takes. Nonetheless, the comment process will be open for 10 days and comments will be collected in an appendix for each case. The board will issue a decision on Trump’s Facebook fate within 90 days of January 21, though the verdict could come sooner.

The Oversight Board specifically invites public comments that consider:

Whether Facebook’s decision to suspend President Trump’s accounts for an indefinite period complied with the company’s responsibilities to respect freedom of expression and human rights, if alternative measures should have been taken, and what measures should be taken for these accounts going forward.

How Facebook should assess off-Facebook context in enforcing its Community Standards, particularly where Facebook seeks to determine whether content may incite violence.

How Facebook should treat the expression of political candidates, office holders, and former office holders, considering their varying positions of power, the importance of political opposition, and the public’s right to information.

The accessibility of Facebook’s rules for account-level enforcement (e.g. disabling accounts or account functions) and appeals against that enforcement.

Considerations for the consistent global enforcement of Facebook’s content policies against political leaders, whether at the content-level (e.g. content removal) or account-level (e.g. disabling account functions), including the relevance of Facebook’s “newsworthiness” exemption and Facebook’s human rights responsibilities.

The Oversight Board’s post gets very granular on the Trump suspension, critiquing Facebook for lack of specificity when the company didn’t state exactly which part of its community standards were violated. Between this and the five recent cases, the board appears to view its role as a technical one, in which it examines each case against Facebook’s existing ruleset and then makes recommendations for future policy rather than working backward from its own broader recommendations.

The Facebook Oversight Board announced its first cluster of decisions this week, overturning the company’s own choice to remove potentially objectionable content in four of five cases. None of those cases pertained to content relevant to Trump’s account suspension, but they prove that the Oversight Board isn’t afraid to go against the company’s own thinking — at least when it comes to what gets taken down.