Daily Archives: April 7, 2021

News: Spotify stays quiet about launch of its voice command ‘Hey Spotify’ on mobile

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In 2019, Spotify began testing a hardware device for automobile owners it lovingly dubbed “Car Thing,” which allowed Spotify Premium users to play music and podcasts using voice commands that began with “Hey, Spotify.” Last year, Spotify began developing a similar voice integration into its mobile app. Now, access to the “Hey Spotify” voice feature

In 2019, Spotify began testing a hardware device for automobile owners it lovingly dubbed “Car Thing,” which allowed Spotify Premium users to play music and podcasts using voice commands that began with “Hey, Spotify.” Last year, Spotify began developing a similar voice integration into its mobile app. Now, access to the “Hey Spotify” voice feature is rolling out more broadly.

Spotify chose not to officially announce the new addition, despite numerous reports indicating the voice option was showing up for many people in their Spotify app, leading to some user confusion about availability.

One early report by GSM Arena, for example, indicated Android users had been sent a push notification that alerted them to the feature. The notification advised users to “Just enable your mic and say ‘Hey Spotify, Play my Favorite Songs.” When tapped, the notification launched Spotify’s new voice interface where users are pushed to first give the app permission to use the microphone in order to be able to verbally request the music they want to hear.

Image Credits: GSM Arena (opens in a new window)

Several outlets soon reported the feature had launched to Android users, which is only partially true.

As it turns out, the feature is making its way to iOS devices, as well. When we launched the Spotify app here on an iPhone running iOS 14.5, for instance, we found the same feature had indeed gone live. You just tap on the microphone button by the search box to get to the voice experience. We asked around and found that other iPhone users on various versions of the iOS operating system also had the feature, including free users, Premium subscribers and Premium Family Plan subscribers.

The screen that appears suggests in big, bold text that you could be saying “Hey Spotify, play…” followed by a random artist’s name. It also presents a big green button at the bottom to turn on “Hey Spotify.”

Once enabled, you can ask for artists, albums, songs and playlists by name, as well as control playback with commands like stop, pause, skip this song, go back and others. Spotify confirms the command with a robotic-sounding male voice by default. (You can swap to a female voice in Settings, if you prefer.)

Image Credits: Spotify screenshot iOS

This screen also alerts users that when the app hears the “Hey Spotify” voice command, it sends the user’s voice data and other information to Spotify. There’s a link to Spotify policy regarding its use of voice data, which further explains that Spotify will collect recordings and transcripts of what you say along with information about the content it returned to you. The company says it may continue to use this data to improve the feature, develop new voice features and target users with relevant advertising. It may also share your information with service providers, like cloud storage providers.

The policy looks to be the same as the one that was used along with Spotify’s voice-enabled ads, launched last year, so it doesn’t seem to have been updated to fully reflect the changes enabled with the launch of “Hey Spotify.” However, it does indicate that, like other voice assistants, Spotify doesn’t just continuously record — it waits until users say the wake words.

Given the “Hey Spotify” voice command’s origins with “Car Thing,” there’s been speculation that the mobile rollout is a signal that the company is poised to launch its own hardware to the wider public in the near future. There’s already some indication that may be true — MacRumors recently reported finding references and photos to Car Thing and its various mounts inside the Spotify app’s code. This follows Car Thing’s reveal in FCC filings back in January of this year, which had also stoked rumors that the device was soon to launch.

Spotify was reached for comment this morning, but has yet been unable to provide any answers about the feature’s launch despite a day’s wait. Instead, we were told that they “unfortunately do not have any additional news to share at this time.” That further suggests some larger projects could be tied to this otherwise more minor feature’s launch.

Though today’s consumers are wary of tech companies’ data collection methods — and particularly their use of voice data after all three tech giants confessed to poor practices on this front — there’s still a use case for voice commands, particularly from an accessibility standpoint and, for drivers, from a safety standpoint.

And although you can direct your voice assistant on your phone (or via CarPlay or Android Auto, if available) to play content from Spotify, some may find it useful to be able to speak to Spotify directly — especially since Apple doesn’t allow Spotify to be set as a default music service. You can only train Siri to launch Spotify as your preferred service.

If, however, you have second thoughts about using the “Hey Spotify” feature after enabling it, you can turn it off under “Voice Interactions” in the app’s settings.

News: Daily Crunch: Google I/O will return virtually next month

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Google announces its I/O plans, Facebook tests an audio Q&A feature and Patreon triples its valuation. This is your Daily Crunch for April 7, 2021. The big story: Google I/O will return virtually next month Google canceled its giant developer conference last year during the pandemic. This year, the show will return in virtual form,

Google announces its I/O plans, Facebook tests an audio Q&A feature and Patreon triples its valuation. This is your Daily Crunch for April 7, 2021.

The big story: Google I/O will return virtually next month

Google canceled its giant developer conference last year during the pandemic. This year, the show will return in virtual form, from May 18 to May 20. It will be free and open to all.

Google is following the lead of companies like Apple (which is holding a virtual WWDC in June) and Microsoft (which will hold a virtual Build from May 25 to 27).

The tech giants

Facebook tests Hotline, a Q&A product that’s a mashup of Clubhouse and Instagram Live — Unlike Clubhouse, creators can opt to turn their cameras on for the event, instead of being audio-only.

Twitch expands its rules against hate and abuse to include behavior off the platform — The news comes as Twitch continues to grapple with reports of abusive behavior and sexual harassment, both on the platform and within the company itself.

E-bikes and earbuds among the first third-party hardware to support Apple’s Find My tracking — VanMoof’s S3 and X3 e-bikes will sport tracking functionality, along with a “Locate with Apple Find My” logo located on the bottom side of the crossbar.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Patreon triples valuation to $4 billion in new raise — This was in a $155 million funding round led by Tiger Global.

Plaid raises $425M Series D from Altimeter as it charts a post-Visa future — After its $5.3 billion sale to Visa fell through this January, it became clear that Plaid would chart its own future.

Authentic Artists is building virtual, AI-powered musicians — These musicians will perform their own concerts, initially in Twitch, and can respond to audience requests.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How to kick the 10 worst startup habits with Fuel Capital’s Leah Solivan — Solivan has ample experience on both sides of the fence, as she founded TaskRabbit and led it to exit through an acquisition by Ikea in 2017.

The do’s and don’ts of bug bounty programs with Katie Moussouris — In the rush to launch, cybersecurity doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, and yet it’s one of the first things that can go wrong for startups.

Building and leading an early-stage sales team with Zoom CRO Ryan Azus — Before his role at Zoom, Azus built RingCentral’s North American sales organization from the ground up.

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

Everything else

Saying hello to TechCrunch’s newest podcast: Found — The Equity team sits down with the hosts of TechCrunch’s new podcast Found.

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 said to have held acquisition talks with Clubhouse on potential $4B deal

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Twitter held talks with Clubhouse around a potential acquisition of the live drop-in audio networking platform, with a deal value somewhere around $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg. TechCrunch has also confirmed the discussions took place from a source familiar with the conversations. While the talks occurred over the past several months, they’re

Twitter held talks with Clubhouse around a potential acquisition of the live drop-in audio networking platform, with a deal value somewhere around $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg. TechCrunch has also confirmed the discussions took place from a source familiar with the conversations.

While the talks occurred over the past several months, they’re no longer taking place, though the reason they ended isn’t known according to the report. It’s also worth noting that just a few days ago, Bloomberg reported that Clubhouse was seeking to raise a new round of funding at a valuation of around $4 billion, but the report detailing the potential acquisition talks indicate that the discussions with Twitter collapsed first, leading to a change in strategy to pursue securing additional capital in exchange for equity investment.

Twitter has its own product very similar to Clubhouse — Spaces, a drop-in audio chatroom feature that it has been rolling out gradually to its user base over the past few months. Clubhouse, meanwhile, just launched the first of its monetization efforts, Clubhouse Payments, which lets users send direct payments to other creators on the platform, provided that person has enabled receipt of said payments.

Interestingly, the monetization effort from Clubhouse actually doesn’t provide them with any money; instead, it’s monetization for recipient users who get 100% of the funds directed their way, minus a small cut for processing that goes directly to Stripe, the payment provider Clubhouse is using to enable the virtual tips.

While we aren’t privy to the specifics of these talks between Twitter and Clubhouse, it does seem like an awfully high price tag for the social network to pay for the audio app, especially given its own progress with Spaces. Clubhouse’s early traction has been undeniable, but there are a lot of questions still remaining about its longevity, and it’s also being cloned left and right by other platforms, begging the age-old startup question of whether it’s a feature or a product on its own.

Whatever went down, the timing of this revelation seems likely to prime the pump for Clubhouse’s conversation with potential investors at its target valuation for the round it’s looking to raise. Regardless, it’s exciting to have this kind of activity, buzz and attention paid to a consumer software play after many years of what one could argue has been a relatively lacklustre period for the category.

News: Uber entices drivers back post-pandemic with $250 million stimulus

• April 7, 2021
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Despite the classification of ride-hail drivers as “essential workers” during the early days of the pandemic, last April Uber’s business dropped by 80%. Drivers decided they’d rather not risk contracting or spreading COVID-19 for the measly revenue provided by the few rides per day they were getting, so when the federal CARES Act extended the Pandemic

Despite the classification of ride-hail drivers as “essential workers” during the early days of the pandemic, last April Uber’s business dropped by 80%. Drivers decided they’d rather not risk contracting or spreading COVID-19 for the measly revenue provided by the few rides per day they were getting, so when the federal CARES Act extended the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance to gig workers, many Uber drivers decided to hang up their keys. 

With more than a quarter of the U.S. population already vaccinated, Uber is now in a sticky situation wherein there are more riders requesting trips than there are drivers available. The ride-hailing giant not only wants drivers to know that there’s business to be had once again, but they also want to sweeten the deal with incentives. 

On Wednesday, the company announced the launch of a $250 million driver stimulus to welcome drivers back into the fold and recruit new ones as the pandemic begins to ease in the U.S. Both returning drivers and new drivers will be receiving bonuses over the coming months, according to an Uber spokesperson.  

“In 2020, many drivers stopped driving because they couldn’t count on getting enough trips to make it worth their time,” reads the blog post announcing the stimulus. “In 2021, there are more riders requesting trips than there are drivers available to give them — making it a great time to be a driver.”

Due to high rider demand and low supply of drivers, the current median hourly rate for cities like Philadelphia, Austin, Chicago, Miami and Phoenix is $26.66, which is 25% to 75% higher than they were in March of last year. Uber wants drivers to take advantage of the higher earnings now because “this is likely a temporary situation.” Meaning as the country recovers and more gig workers get back behind the wheel, earnings will likely decrease from their current levels. 

The stimulus money will go on top of those hourly rates, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. The incentive structure will be based on individual activity, as well as location. For example, in Austin, drivers are guaranteed $1,100 if they complete 115 trips. In Phoenix, drivers can earn an extra $1,775 for 200 trips. 

The money will also go toward guaranteed minimum pay and on-boarding for new Uber drivers, and the full $250 million pool is coming directly from Uber’s pockets. The company’s shares declined as much as 3.6% during trading on Wednesday. 

Uber is also aiming to help streamline the process of getting drivers vaccinated with an in-app booking portal as part of its partnership with Walgreens.

News: Pinterest announces $500K Creator Fund, ‘Creator Code’ content policy, moderation tools and more

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Pinterest today hosted an event focused on its creator community, where the company announced a series of updates including the launch of a $500,000 Creator Fund, a new content policy called the Creator Code, as well as new moderation tools, among other things. With the changes, the company says its goal is to ensure the

Pinterest today hosted an event focused on its creator community, where the company announced a series of updates including the launch of a $500,000 Creator Fund, a new content policy called the Creator Code, as well as new moderation tools, among other things. With the changes, the company says its goal is to ensure the platform continues to be a “inclusive, positive and inspiring place.” The new content guidelines put that into more specific terms as it requires Pinterest creators to fact-check content, practice inclusion, be kind, and ensure any call to action they make via the site doesn’t cause harm.

Creators will be required to agree and sign the code during the publishing process for Story Pins, where they tap a button that say “I agree” to statements that include “Be Kind,” “Check my facts,” “Be aware of triggers,” “Practice inclusion,” and “Do Not Harm.”

Image Credits: Pinterest

The code will be enforced the same way Pinterest today applies its rules for its other content policies: a combination of machine learning and human review, Pinterest tells us. However, the site’s algorithm will be designed to reward positive content and block harmful content, like anti-vaccination sentiments, for example. This could have a larger impact on what sort of content is shared on Pinterest, rather than a pop-up agreement with simple statements.

The Creator Code itself is not yet live, but will roll out to creators to sign and adopt in the weeks ahead, Pinterest says.

Image Credits: Pinterest

Pinterest today also introduced several new creator tools focused on the similar goal of making Pinterest a more positive, safe experience for all.

It’s launching comment moderation tools that will allow creators to remove and filter comments on their content, as well as tools that will allow them to feature up to three comments in the comment feed to highlight positive feedback. New spam prevention tools will help to clear out some of the unwanted comments, too, by leveraging machine learning technology to detect and remove bad comments.

Also new are “positivity reminders,” which will pop up asking Pinterest users to reconsider before posting potentially offensive comments. The notification will push users to go back and edit their comment, but doesn’t prevent them from posting.

Image Credits: Pinterest

Related to these efforts, Pinterest announced the launch of its first-ever Creator Fund at today’s event. The fund is specifically focused on elevating creators from underrepresented communities in the United States, and will offer a combination of creative strategy consulting, and compensating them with budget for content creation and ad credits. At least 50% of the fund’s recipients will be from underrepresented groups, Pinterest says.

The company tells us it’s initially committed to giving creators $500,000 in cash and media throughout 2021.

“For the first participants of the program, we worked with eight emerging creators across fashion, photography, food and travel, and will be identifying ten more creators in the next few months for the next cohort,” noted Creator Inclusion Lead Alexandra Nikolajev.

“We’re on a journey to build a globally inclusive platform where Pinners and Creators around the world can discover ideas that feel personalized, relevant and reflective of who they are,” Nikolajev said.

Pinterest has been working to rebuild its image in the wake of last year’s allegations of a host of internal issues, including unfair pay, racism, retaliation, and sexism, which conflicted with its outside image of being one of the “nicer” places to work in tech. Despite this fallout — which included a lawsuit, employee walkout, petitions, and more —  the issues that had been raised weren’t always reflected in Pinterest’s product.

The company had previously launched inclusive features like “skin tone ranges” to help those shopping for beauty products find matches for their skin tone. It also allowed retailers and brands to identify themselves as members of an underrepresented group, which gave their content the ability to appear in more places across Pinterest’s platform, like the Today tab, Shopping Spotlights and The Pinterest Shop, for instance.

Evan Sharp, Pinterest’s co-founder and Chief Design and Creative Officer, referenced the company’s image as “a positive place” at today’s event.

“We’ve been building Pinterest for 11 years, and ever since our users routinely tell us that Pinterest is the ‘last positive corner of the internet.’ In that time, we’ve also learned that you need to design positivity into online platforms as deliberately as much as you design negativity out,” Sharp said. “The Creator Code is a human-centric way for Creators to understand how to be successful on Pinterest while using their voice to keep Pinterest positive and inclusive,” he added.

Today, Pinterest serves over 450 million users worldwide, but is challenged by large platforms serving creators like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and others, including newcomers like TikTok and those that are inching into the creator community with funds of their own, like Snapchat, which is paying creators for Spotlight content, and Clubhouse, which is now funding creators’ shows. The increased competition for creator interest has left Pinterest needing an incentive program of its own.

To kick of its announcement, Pinterest’s Head of Content and Creator Partnerships, Aya Kanai, interviewed television personality Jonathan Van Ness (Queer Eye) at today’s virtual event, where they talked about the need for positivity and inclusivity on social media. Other event participants included creators Peter Som, Alison Cayne, Onyi Moss, Oyin Edogi and Jomely Breton — the latter two who spoke about putting the Creator Fund to use for themselves.

News: The do’s and don’ts of bug bounty programs with Katie Moussouris

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Cybersecurity veteran Katie Moussouris explains what startups should (and shouldn’t) do, what to prioritize, and the difference between vulnerability disclosure, penetration testing and bug bounties.

In the rush to launch, cybersecurity doesn’t always get the attention it deserves, and yet it’s one of the first things that startups learn can — and will — go wrong.

Hacker and security researchers can be some of your biggest assets in helping your startup stay secure. Vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty programs are part of working with the hacker community to build a stronger, more resilient company. But these are not a replacement for security investments, which as a growing company you should not overlook.

Katie Moussouris has been in cybersecurity circles since some of the world’s biggest tech companies were startups, and helped to set up the first vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty programs. Moussouris, who runs consultancy firm Luta Security, now advises companies and governments on how to talk to hackers and what they need to do to build and improve their vulnerability disclosure programs.

At TC Early Stage, Moussouris explained what startups should (and shouldn’t) do, and what priorities should come first.

Knowing the basics

A bug bounty alone is not enough, and outsourcing the process to a platform isn’t going to save you time. Moussouris explained the basics and what differs between vulnerability disclosure, penetration testing and bug bounties.

Vulnerability disclosure is the process by which you hear about vulnerability from the outside. You digest that vulnerability somehow internally in your organization and figure out what to do with it — whether to create a patch, how to prioritize that patch, and then what to release to the public [ … ] What it comes down to is that organizations need guidelines on how to handle these issues appropriately.

Next we’ve got penetration testing: hiring professional hackers under contract [who have] a specific set of skills that match your problem set, and you pay them. They’re under a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) to keep your vulnerabilities secret for as long as you need them — perhaps forever — and you are at your leisure as to whether or not you fix those vulnerabilities.

Finally, bug bounties are simply adding a cash reward to the process of vulnerability disclosure programs. (Time stamp: 3:20)

• Talkspace threatened to sue a security researcher over a bug report
• Two hackers behind 2016 Uber data breach have been indicted for another hack

ISO standards are your friend

News: Walnut wants to crack open flexibility for healthcare bills

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Healthcare insurance, if you’re lucky to have it, only covers a subset of conditions in the United States. As a result, patients can often get burdened with horror story charges, like huge deductibles, out-of-network costs and expensive co-pays. So for the uninsured and insured alike, innovative ways of managing big bills are in high demand

Healthcare insurance, if you’re lucky to have it, only covers a subset of conditions in the United States. As a result, patients can often get burdened with horror story charges, like huge deductibles, out-of-network costs and expensive co-pays. So for the uninsured and insured alike, innovative ways of managing big bills are in high demand — especially as uncertainty remains around how COVID-19 and long-haul symptoms will be handled by patients and payers.

Walnut, founded by Roshan Patel, is a point-of-sale lending company with a healthcare twist. Walnut uses a “buy now, pay later” model, popularized by Affirm and Klarna, to help patients pay for healthcare over a period of time, instead of in one $3,000 chunk. Walnut works with healthcare providers so that a patient’s bill can be paid back through $100-a-month increments for 30 months, instead of one aggressive credit card swipe.

A patient using Walnut to pay healthcare bills. Image Credits: Walnut

It’s a sweet deal, but Patel added one more detail that he thinks makes Walnut stand out: The startup doesn’t charge any interest or fees to consumers.

“Almost every ‘buy now, pay later’ company in e-commerce charges interest or fees, and every personal loan provider charges interest or fees, but we do not,” he said. “And that’s really important to me, not making healthcare any more expensive than it already is. It’s a very patient-friendly product.”

Companies that use the buy now, pay later model with zero interest or fees need to make revenue somehow, and in Walnut’s case it is by charging healthcare providers a percentage of each sale or transaction.

If a provider’s collection rate for an out-of-pocket is 50%, Walnut would go to them and say “give us a 40% discount, and we’ll guarantee the cash for you upfront.” The startup will take the risk, and then the provider is able to make 60% of the collection rate.

Now, ideally, a provider would want to get 100% of payments they are owed, but that is wishful thinking. Patel explained that a large number of bills go unpaid due to bankruptcies or a default on payments (the average collections rate for hospitals out of pocket is less than 20%). Because of this, a company like Walnut has room to offer at least some stable upfront cash to hospitals, even if it ends up being 60% of overall bills versus 100%.

The company uses “extensive underwriting models” to figure out if a patient should qualify for a loan. Patel says that the startup goes beyond using credit score, which he describes as an “outdated metric”, and instead looks at thousands of data points from different providers, from side hustle income to spending habits on things like groceries and bills.

Image Credits: Lightspring (opens in a new window) / Shutterstock (opens in a new window)

Walnut’s biggest challenge, says Patel, is to underwrite the population and pay the healthcare provider upfront in cash. It then collects from the patient on the back end, which comes with its own amount of risk.

“To be able to take on that risk for patients that are less credit-worthy is a very challenging problem, and I don’t think it’s really solved yet in healthcare,” he said.

The startup is starting by working with small private practices of one to five physicians that focus on specialties like dentistry, dermatology and fertility.

A big part of Walnut’s success will be determined by if it can attract people that truly need flexible financing options. For example, the company doesn’t have any hospitals as a partner yet, which would tap a larger group of patients that likely need flexible financing options the most. Right now, “the people who get elective-care surgery are the ones that can afford it.”

But Patel doesn’t see this as a disconnect; instead, he sees it as an opportunity to widen access to elective medical care to more people.

“I talked to a person last week who has no teeth and wants dentures but it costs $6,000,” he said. “That person should be able to afford it, and we enabled them to pay $100 a month for it.”

Walnut’s two biggest customer groups are the uninsured (people who have lost their jobs from COVID-19), and consumers who have high deductible plans.

Walnut isn’t the first. PrimaHealth Credit, Walnut’s closest competitor, offers point-of-sale lending procedures for elective medical procedures. Think surgeries like cataract work or dental work. The company said the service is currently available in Arizona, California, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas, and will be expanded to all 50 states this year. Walnut, comparatively, is mostly focused on the East Coast and plans to expand nationwide by the end of this year.

PrimaHealth’s average loan size is $1,800, and Walnut’s average loan size is $5,000.

The company is currently piloting with a handful of healthcare providers in dermatology, dentistry and fertility. It has had more than 500 patient loan applications, totaling over $4.6 million in application volume year-to-date. Patel says that Walnut only accepted a fraction of these applications, but declined to share what percent of money it has lent so far. As Walnut refines its model, it might be able to cover other categories.

Up until this point, Walnut has been lending off of its own balance sheet. In order to truly scale, it will need to get a new source of capital — either a credit line, debt financing round or venture capital — to offer more loans. Patel says that the startup is in talks with banks, and turned down a debt offer due to size and rate.

Venture capital seems to be the solution for now: The startup announced that it has raised a $3.6 million seed round from investors including Gradient Ventures, Afore Capital, 2048 Ventures, Supernode Ventures, TA Ventures, Polymath Capital, Tack Ventures, Awesome People Ventures, Newark Ventures and NKM Capital. Angels include the CEOs of Giphy and PillPack, and the CTO of Rampm Financial as well as an NFL coach. The company is also a part of Plaid’s inaugural accelerator.

“I don’t want to be yet another startup trying to offer you an undifferentiated insurance plan,” Patel said.

News: Twitch expands its rules against hate and abuse to include behavior off the platform

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Twitch will start holding its streamers to a higher standard. The company just expanded its hate and harassment policy, specifying more kinds of bad behavior that break its rules and could result in a ban from the streaming service. The news comes as Twitch continues to grapple with reports of abusive behavior and sexual harassment,

Twitch will start holding its streamers to a higher standard. The company just expanded its hate and harassment policy, specifying more kinds of bad behavior that break its rules and could result in a ban from the streaming service.

The news comes as Twitch continues to grapple with reports of abusive behavior and sexual harassment, both on the platform and within the company itself. In December, Twitch released an updated set of rules designed to take harassment and abuse more seriously, admitting that women, people of color the and LGBTQ community were impacted by a “disproportionate” amount of that toxic behavior on the platform.

Twitch’s policies now include serious offenses that could pose a safety threat, even when they happen entirely away from the streaming service. Those threats include violent extremism, terrorism, threats of mass violence, sexual assault and ties to known hate groups.

The company will also continue to evaluate off-platform behavior in cases that happen on Twitch, like an on-stream situation that leads to harassment on Twitter or Facebook.

“While this policy is new, we have taken action historically against serious, clear misconduct that took place off service, but until now, we didn’t have an approach that scaled,” the company wrote in a blog post, adding that investigating off-platform behavior requires additional resources to address the complexity inherent in those cases.

To handle reports for its broadened rules, Twitch created a dedicated email address (OSIT@twitch.tv) to handle reports about off-service behavior. The company says it has partnered with a third party investigative law firm to vet the reports it receives.

Twitch cites its actions against former President Donald Trump as the most high profile instance of off-platform behavior resulting in enforcement. The company disabled Trump’s account following the attack on the U.S. Capitol and later suspended him indefinitely, citing fears that he could use the service to incite violence.

It’s hard to have a higher profile than the president, but Trump isn’t the only big time banned Twitch user. Last June, Twitch kicked one of its biggest streamers off of the platform without providing an explanation for the decision.

Going on a year later, no one seems to know why Dr. Disrespect got the boot from Twitch, though the company’s insistence that it only acts in cases with a “preponderance of evidence” suggests his violations were serious and well-corroborated.

News: Okta expands into privileged access management and identity governance reporting

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Okta today announced it was expanding its platform into a couple of new areas. Up to this point, the company has been known for its identity access management product, giving companies the ability to sign onto multiple cloud products with a single sign on. Today, the company is moving into two new areas: privileged access

Okta today announced it was expanding its platform into a couple of new areas. Up to this point, the company has been known for its identity access management product, giving companies the ability to sign onto multiple cloud products with a single sign on. Today, the company is moving into two new areas: privileged access and identity governance

Privileged access gives companies the ability to provide access on an as-needed basis to a limited number of people to key administrative services inside a company. This could be your database or your servers or any part of your technology stack that is highly sensitive and where you want to tightly control who can access these systems.

Okta CEO Todd McKinnon says that Okta has always been good at locking down the general user population access to cloud services like Salesforce, Office 365 and Gmail. What these cloud services have in common is you access them via a web interface.

Administrators access the speciality accounts using different protocols. “It’s something like secure shell, or you’re using a terminal on your computer to connect to a server in the cloud, or it’s a database connection where you’re actually logging in with a SQL connection, or you’re connecting to a container which is the Kubernetes protocol to actually manage the container,” McKinnon explained.

Privileged access offers a couple of key features including the ability to limit access to a given time window and to record a video of the session so there is an audit trail of exactly what happened while someone was accessing the system. McKinnon says that these features provide additional layers of protection for these sensitive accounts.

He says that it will be fairly trivial to carve out these accounts because Okta already has divided users into groups and can give these special privileges to only those people in the administrative access group. The challenge was figuring out how to get access to these other kinds of protocols.

The governance piece provides a way for security operations teams to run detailed reports and look for issues related to identity. “Governance provides exception reporting so you can give that to your auditors, and more importantly you can give that to your security team to make sure that you figure out what’s going on and why there is this deviation from your stated policy,” he said.

All of this when combined with the $6.5 billion acquisition of Auth0 last month is part of a larger plan by the company to be what McKinnon calls the identity cloud. He sees a market with several strategic clouds and he believes identity is going to be one of them.

“Because identity is so strategic for everything, it’s unlocking your customer, access, it’s unlocking your employee access, it’s keeping everything secure. And so this expansion, whether it’s customer identity with zero trust or whether it’s doing more on the workforce identity with not just access, but privileged access and identity governance. It’s about identity evolving in this primary cloud,” he said.

While both of these new products were announced today at the company’s virtual Oktane customer conference, they won’t be generally available until the first quarter of next year.

News: Building and leading an early-stage sales team with Zoom CRO Ryan Azus

• April 7, 2021
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Zoom Chief Revenue Officer Ryan Azus gives tips on when founders should step aside from leading their startup’s sales org, how to build a working sales culture, hiring diversely, and more.

This year at Early Stage, TechCrunch spoke with Zoom Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) Ryan Azus about building an early-stage sales team. Azus is perhaps best known for leading the video-calling giant’s income arm during COVID-19, but his experience building RingCentral’s North American sales organization from the ground up made him the perfect guest to chat with about building an early-stage sales team.

We asked him about when founders should step aside from leading their startup’s sales org, how to build a working sales culture, hiring diversely, how to pick customer segments, and how to build a playbook.

Below, TechCrunch has compiled a number of key comments from Azus, and afterwards we’ve included the full video from the interview as well as a transcript. Let’s go!

When should founders let others run sales?

Nearly every startup leans on its CEO as its first salesperson. After all, who else knows the product and can talk it up like the startup’s leader? But having the CEO as point-person for sales scales poorly. So, when is the right time to have someone else step in?

Fairly early on. First off, CEOs need to solve customer needs. And so it’s important to be very hands-on for a while to really understand while you’re trying to figure out product-market fit. And then bringing in some of those sales people as you start seeing something [good].

Part of it is also knowing what type of salesperson you need. […] Who is your core audience? What persona are you going after? And trying to find people that know and understand selling something that’s primarily very transactional to small businesses, [or] e-commerce lead, or selling something that’s more enterprise — those are different animals, different segments that you’re going after. One mistake [startups make] is hiring the wrong type of salesperson. (Timestamp: 5:29)

• Top VCs, founders share how to build a successful SaaS company

How much product-market fit is enough?