Monthly Archives: April 2021

News: Extra Crunch roundup: StockX EC-1, Early Stage recaps, unpacking Alkami’s IPO, more

• April 9, 2021
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Over the last few days, we’ve published several articles recapping panels from last week’s TechCrunch Early Stage virtual conference. Each story is based on an interview with a founder or investor who addressed some of the most common startup dilemmas. Predictably, they’re mostly focused on the how and why: How do I get into an

Over the last few days, we’ve published several articles recapping panels from last week’s TechCrunch Early Stage virtual conference.

Each story is based on an interview with a founder or investor who addressed some of the most common startup dilemmas. Predictably, they’re mostly focused on the how and why:

How do I get into an accelerator? When should I hire a sales team? What’s the best way to earn attention from investors?

TechCrunch reporter Natasha Mascarenhas interviewed Kleiner Perkins partner Bucky Moore to get sector-agnostic advice for founders who are ready to raise a Series A.

Their conversation isn’t a rehash of basic best practices — Moore says the pandemic has fundamentally changed the way he does business: “I actually believe that first meetings over Zoom are here to stay; I think it’s far more efficient.”

I’m looking forward to the eventual return of live TechCrunch events, but each Early Stage recap includes video and a complete transcript. As ever, full articles are available for Extra Crunch members.

Thanks very much for reading — I hope you have a fantastic weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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The StockX EC-1

Have you ever bought a pig in a poke?

It’s a saying from medieval times: A farmer traveling on an unfamiliar road agrees to buy a baby pig in a bag from a passing stranger. Unfortunately, when the farmer gets back to their hut and opens the sack, there’s a kitten inside.

The risk of getting stuck with a counterfeit item when buying online is real, especially when it comes to sneakers, jewelry and other designer products. That’s why online marketplace StockX created a rigorous product verification and authentication process.

To date, its users have conducted more than 10 million transactions for sneakers, handbags, streetwear, watches and other high-end items that are often produced in limited quantities.

StockX’s prices are regulated and all transactional data is transparent, factors that have combined to help the platform reach a $2.8 billion valuation.

In a four-part series that dropped this week, Extra Crunch analyzes this “foundational new category of market” that began as a hobbyist’s sneaker price chart.

• Part 1: How StockX became the stock market of hype
• Part 2: Authentication and StockX’s global arms race against fraudsters
• Part 3: Where StockX fits in the business of sneakers
• Part 4: The consequences of scaling up sneaker culture

Will Topps’ SPAC-led debut expand the bustling NFT market?

Yes, the baseball card company is going public in a debut that could easily be read as a way to put money into the NFT craze without actually having to buy cryptocurrencies.

Digging into the Alkami Technology IPO

It appears that the slowdown in tech debuts is not a complete freeze; despite concerning news regarding the IPO pipeline, some deals are chugging ahead.

Alkami Technology joins a list that includes Coinbase’s impending direct listing and Robinhood’s expected IPO.

Texas-based Alkami Technology is a software company that delivers its product to banks via the cloud, so it’s not a legacy player scraping together an IPO during boom times.

Let’s dig into the latest SEC filing from the software unicorn.

Chinese startups rush to bring alternative protein to people’s plates

Last year could well have been the dawn of alternative protein in China. More than 10 startups raised capital to make plant-based protein for a country with increasing meat demand. Of these, Starfield, Hey Maet, Vesta and Haofood have been around for about a year; ZhenMeat was founded three years ago; and Green Monday is a nine-year-old Hong Kong firm pushing into mainland China.

The competition intensified further last year when American incumbents Beyond Meat and Eat Just entered China.

Although some investors worry the sudden boom of meat-substitute startups could turn into a bubble, others believe the market is far from saturated.

LG’s exit from the smartphone market comes as no surprise

For those who follow the space, LG will be remembered fondly as a smartphone trailblazer. For well over a decade, the company was a major player in the Android category and a driving force behind a number of innovations that have since become standard.

LG continued pushing envelopes — albeit to mixed effect. But in the end, the company just couldn’t keep up.

This week, the South Korean electronics giant announced it will be getting out of the “incredibly competitive” category, choosing instead to focus on its myriad other departments.

Giving EV batteries a second life for sustainability and profit

Electric cars and trucks seem to have everything going for them: They don’t produce tailpipe emissions, they’re quieter than their fossil-fuel-powered counterparts and the underlying architecture allows for roomier and often sleeker designs.

But the humble lithium-ion battery powering these cars and trucks leads a difficult life. Irregular charging and discharge rates, intense temperatures and many partial charge cycles cause these batteries to degrade in the first five to eight years of use, and, eventually, they end up in a recycling facility.

Instead of sending batteries straight to recycling for raw material recovery — and leaving unrealized value on the table — startups and automakers are finding ways to reuse batteries as part of a small and growing market.

How to kick the 10 worst startup habits with Fuel Capital’s Leah Solivan

Fuel Capital General Partner Leah Solivan joined us at TechCrunch Early Stage 2021 to explain how to avoid early mistakes in building your startup.

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. She shared a list of 10 things to avoid in total, but here are some highlights of what to watch out for.

How founders can avoid blind spots and make better decisions with EchoVC’s Eghosa Omoigui

Eghosa Omoigui, the founder and managing general partner of EchoVC Partners, has helped entrepreneurs navigate the first steps of starting a company and laying the right foundation early on.

Omoigui advocates for founders to develop their own All-22 tape — a tool used by professional football coaches that allows the viewer to see all 22 players on the field at the same time. It improves a coach’s line of sight, and, most importantly, helps avoid missing a critical motion or player.

The concept of this tool can — and should — be applied in the startup world as well, Omoigui said during the virtual TC Early Stage event. He explained what it means to have an All-22 tape and the steps founders should take to develop a skill set that will allow them to see and understand the playbook from all sides.

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

This year at Early Stage, TechCrunch spoke with Zoom Chief Revenue Officer 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.

The dos and don’ts of bug bounty programs with Katie Moussouris

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.

Start your engines, TechCrunch is (virtually) headed to Detroit

Join us on our next (virtual) field trip to Southeast Michigan. All lights will be shining on the Motor City.

Why Detroit? This is where StockX and Rivian call home, along with a growing stable of medical technology companies, fintech startups and security companies. The area is quickly transforming thanks to active investors, low cost of living and access to amazing universities that have a long history of supporting entrepreneurs.

If you’re interested in what’s happening in Detroit in general, are seeking out a new up-and-coming city to live in, or looking for cool companies and talented founders to invest in, then you’ll want to register and drop Thursday, April 15, on your calendar.

How to get into a startup accelerator

Should you try to get your company into an accelerator? How far along should your idea and your team be before applying? When it is time to apply, how do you make your application stand out from hundreds or thousands of others? How fancy do you need to get with the application video?

For answers, we spoke with Neal Sáles-Griffin, managing director of Techstars Chicago and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University. He’s got an incredible wealth of knowledge about all things startups.

Understanding how fundraising terms can affect early-stage startups

Fenwick & West partner (and business lawyer) Dawn Belt joined us at TechCrunch Early Stage to break down some of the terms that trip up first-time entrepreneurs.

Belt has been involved in a number of key Silicon Valley moves, including EV company Proterra’s recent decision to go public via SPAC, as well as IPOs for Bill.com and Facebook. Here, she discusses key concepts like equity and the right of first refusal, and the role they play in the early stages of startup funding.

Bootstrapping, managing product-led growth and knowing when to fundraise

Product-led growth is all the rage in the Valley these days, and we had two leading thinkers discuss how to incorporate it into a startup at TechCrunch Early Stage 2021.

Tope Awotona is the CEO and founder of Calendly, which bootstrapped for much of its existence before raising $350 million at a $3 billion valuation from OpenView and Iconiq. And on the other side of that table (and this interview) sat Blake Bartlett, a partner at OpenView who has been leading enterprise deals based around the principles of efficient growth.

The two talked about bootstrapping and product-led growth, expanding internationally, when to bootstrap and when to fundraise, and how VCs approach a profitable company (carefully, and with a big stick). Oh, and how to spend $350 million.

Four strategies for getting attention from investors

Being a successful early-stage investor is about a lot more than simply identifying trends; a successful VC needs to think several steps ahead. For MaC Venture Capital founder Marlon Nichols, it’s an ability that’s helped him spot big names like Gimlet Media, MongoDB, Thrive Market, PlayVS, Fair, LISNR, Mayvenn, Blavity and Wonderschool early on.

Nichols joined us on TechCrunch Early Stage to discuss his strategies for early-stage investing and how those lessons can translate into a successful launch for budding entrepreneurs.

Setting up a management board for success with Dave Easton

Viewed from the outside, board selection and corporate governance can seem like a bit of a black box — particularly at a startup.

Generation Investment Management partner Dave Easton spoke at TechCrunch Early Stage about how to build a board as a founder, and, specifically, how to build a board you can live with. Easton’s experience serving on boards as both a full member and as an observer helped peel back the curtain on the murky topic of good governance.

Founder and investor Melissa Bradley outlines how to nail your virtual pitch meeting

Zoom-based pitch meetings became standard during the pandemic, but many investors say they intend to maintain the practice as more people are vaccinated.

In conversation with Jordan Crook, founder, investor, and business school professor Melissa Bradley offered pointers for how founders can prepare for Zoom calls, common pitfalls to avoid, and how to allocate time during the meeting.

News: Ocean Solutions Accelerator doubles down on blue economy with new track for later-stage companies

• April 9, 2021
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The planet-loving folks at the Sustainable Ocean Alliance started an accelerator a couple years back focusing on very early stage companies, but this year they’re expanding the program to accept those who have already closed their first round. The mix of experimental and (comparatively) proven approaches may help diversify the accelerator’s growing network. “Last year,

The planet-loving folks at the Sustainable Ocean Alliance started an accelerator a couple years back focusing on very early stage companies, but this year they’re expanding the program to accept those who have already closed their first round. The mix of experimental and (comparatively) proven approaches may help diversify the accelerator’s growing network.

“Last year, amidst the onset of a global pandemic and mounting urgency related to solving the ocean’s greatest challenges, we received unprecedented demand for the Ocean Solutions Accelerator,” said the accelerator’s co-founder, Craig Dudenhoeffer. “It became clear to us that now more than ever, ocean tech startups need powerful community support, mentorship, and access to those unique opportunities that truly propel their businesses. We decided to double our efforts and run two accelerator cohorts in 2021 in order to support 21 incredible innovators.”

Last year’s cohort included companies creating robotic fish, kelp-based foods, artificial reefs, aquaculture animal feed, and other interesting and potentially breakthrough products. But one thing they all have in common with each other and those from previous years is they are nearly all very early stage.

Having a prototype and taking on a big problem or market is a great start but it’s also where a lot of startups wash out. Companies like Coral Vita have powered through repeated disasters (in their case hurricanes and of course the pandemic) to raise money and move towards scaling up.

But others in the sadly undervalued conservation space still have a long road ahead before VCs think it’s worth taking a risk on them. Few check writers will see the problems and potential solutions up close and personal and make a personal connection with the driven and occasionally idealistic young founders, but those that I saw do that in Alaska were convinced.

This year the accelerator will have two sequential cohorts, an early stage one in June for pre-seed companies and another in September for those that have raised a seed or A round and have “a strong MVP.” Applications for both are open until April 12th, with 21 spots available. That’s Monday, so better get to it.

“In expanding to two accelerator programs this year, we’re now able to provide highly curated content and tailored support to serve our entrepreneurs and meet them exactly where they’re at in their unique journeys to addressing our most critical ocean challenges,” said Dudenhoeffer.

While the organization is still small and the accelerator a relatively straightforward affair, the space that they are in is expanding and gaining credit among investors. Renewed attention and funding on climate change, ecological stewardship, and alternative energy sources from the new Biden administration change the equations for startups and services in related industries; all of a sudden an idea that seemed wild a couple years ago makes perfect sense. With luck that means a bit of wind in the sails of entrepreneurs trying to save the world.

News: Daily Crunch: Amazon beats back union push

• April 9, 2021
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Efforts to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama appear to have failed, Facebook takes down fake review groups and a monkey plays Pong with its brain. This is your Daily Crunch for April 9, 2021. The big story: Amazon beats back union push Union organizers lost a much-publicized election at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse, with

Efforts to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama appear to have failed, Facebook takes down fake review groups and a monkey plays Pong with its brain. This is your Daily Crunch for April 9, 2021.

The big story: Amazon beats back union push

Union organizers lost a much-publicized election at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse, with more than half of the 3,215 ballots cast ultimately voting against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

“It’s easy to predict the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that’s not true,” the company said in a blog post. “Our employees heard far more anti-Amazon messages from the union, policymakers, and media outlets than they heard from us. And Amazon didn’t win—our employees made the choice to vote against joining a union.”

However, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum suggested that there will “very likely” be a rerun election, and his organization is demanding “a comprehensive investigation over Amazon’s behavior in corrupting this election.”

The tech giants

Facebook takes down 16,000 groups trading fake reviews after another poke by UK’s CMA — The CMA has been leaning on tech giants to prevent their platforms from being used as marketplaces for selling fake reviews.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Watch a monkey equipped with Elon Musk’s Neuralink device play Pong with its brain — A macaque named Pager was eventually able to control the in-game action entirely with its mind via the Link hardware and embedded neural threads.

Mortgage is suddenly sexy as SoftBank pumps $500M in Better.com at a $6B valuation — The COVID-19 pandemic and historically low mortgage rates fueled an acceleration in online lending.

SnackMagic picks up $15M to expand from build-your-own snack boxes into a wider gifting marketplace — The company hit a $20 million revenue run rate in eight months and turned profitable in December.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

So you want to raise a Series A — Kleiner Perkins’ Bucky Moore shares sector-agnostic advice.

How we dodged risks and raised millions for our open-source machine language startup — Jorge Torres and Adam Carrigan of MindDB tell their funding story.

Building the right team for a billion-dollar startup — From building out Facebook’s first office in Austin to putting together most of Quora’s team, Bain Capital Ventures managing director Sarah Smith has done a bit of everything when it comes to hiring.

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

Everything else

The 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV lowers the cost of entry for some of GM’s most advanced tech — The optional Super Cruise puts it on course to compete with the Tesla Model Y.

APKPure app contained malicious adware, say researchers — APKPure is a widely popular app for installing older or discontinued Android apps from outside of Google’s app store.

Last call for Detroit startups to apply for TechCrunch’s Detroit City Spotlight pitch-off — The deadline is today, April 9.

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: Founder and investor Melissa Bradley outlines how to nail your virtual pitch meeting

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Ureeka founder Melissa Bradley explains how to prepare for a virtual pitch, allocate time, how to close meetings with a clear list of action items, and what to avoid.

Melissa Bradley wears many hats. She’s the co-founder of a startup called Ureeka, an investor at 1863 Ventures, and a professor at Georgetown’s business school. So it’s not an understatement to say that she understands the fundraising process from every angle. And moreover, she has both invested and fundraised for her own startup during this last year, where the landscape has shifted drastically. At TechCrunch Early Stage, she led a session on how to nail your virtual pitch meeting.

Bradley covered how to allocate your time during the meeting, how to prepare, how to close out the meetings with a clear list of action items, and what to avoid.

You can watch the session or check out the full transcript below, but I’ve also pulled out a few highlights from the talk just for you.

Enjoy!

Conversation > Pitching

One of the greatest shifts in the pitch landscape during the pandemic was the nature of meetings themselves. Because investors and founders can take 30 meetings a day from the comfort of their home, it means that conversation has been prioritized over presentation. Adding to the need for conversation is the fact that investors aren’t ‘getting to know you’ IRL as they would in the past, and so how you interact (not just the content of your pitch) is critically important.

Bradley explained that planning for extra time to answer questions and go deep on strategy is more important now than ever.

Now is the time to really have a conversation and deeply engage the investor in your story and your vision. You want to be conversational in nature, but still formal in tone. So you want to be respectful; you want to avoid jargon; you want to make sure it’s clear what you’re talking about. But it’s really much more of a two-way conversation than we’ve probably seen before. I think again, pace yourself, be really clear in advance how much time you have. One-third of the time should be spent on your pitch, and the other two-thirds, you should be prepared to field questions and really have that conversation. Pace yourself. Don’t rush through. If you only have 30 minutes, it’s probably not the best time to do a demo. You might want to follow up with a recorded demo or make an offer to do a demo afterwards. (Timestamp – 6:03)

Strategy > Projections

News: Job postings hint at winners of NYC and London e-scooter pilots

• April 9, 2021
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A batch of job listings along with some Twitter whisperings suggests that scooter companies such as Lime and Superpedestrian are gearing up to operate in London and New York City — two of the last remaining frontiers of shared scooter services. A review of job listings, company websites and LinkedIn shows that Lime and Dott

A batch of job listings along with some Twitter whisperings suggests that scooter companies such as Lime and Superpedestrian are gearing up to operate in London and New York City — two of the last remaining frontiers of shared scooter services.

A review of job listings, company websites and LinkedIn shows that Lime and Dott are preparing to launch in London, while Lime, Superpedestrian and maybe even Spin are getting ready for New York. While the job posts don’t provide definitive proof that these companies have been awarded these coveted permits, it does identify which companies believe they will win.

London’s Department for Transport and the NYC City Council approved their respective e-scooter pilots in the summer of 2020 as city dwellers sought socially-distanced modes of travel. London’s pilot should have begun at the start of 2021, and NYC’s was originally meant to launch by March 1, but neither city has even named which companies will be awarded concessions yet. Sources familiar with the dealings say London is holding up the announcement until after the mayoral race on May 6. The NYC Department of Transportation declined to comment.

Dott, Tier and Lime for London?

There has been speculation that Dott, Lime and maybe Tier will be sharing the streets of London once the pilot takes off. Information on Dott’s and Lime’s websites, LinkedIn profiles and hiring pages show that they’re hiring for positions in the city. Sources in the industry told TechCrunch that Tier had a London-focused job posting listed on its page that has since been taken down.

Dott, which doesn’t already appear to have a footprint in the United Kingdom, is hiring a UK-based operations manager to “set up operations from scratch within the U.K.” They’re also hiring a public policy manager to be the “voice for the Dott U.K. market.”

On Dott’s website, a map showing service areas shows a little yellow flag over London. Clicking on the flag leads to a 404 “page not found” error page. 

Lime, a mobility company that appears to be swiftly taking over the world, already has a presence in London in the form of its Jump e-bikes, which made an appearance last summer. New job postings on LinkedIn suggests they’re preparing to expand. 

The company’s LinkedIn page reveals a call for a London-based general manager whose responsibilities include building and implementing “the operational infrastructure to ensure market growth in the United Kingdom.” That gig was posted a week ago and they’re actively recruiting for it on LinkedIn. 

About a month ago, Lime also posted a London-based operations manager role, for which it appears to still be recruiting. 

Voi might also still be in the running based on its job postings on LinkedIn. On Thursday, the company added a call for an ambassador supervisor for a six-month position in London. It seems to be an on-the-ground sort of role, and the temporary nature of it could have something to do with London’s year-long pilot. It’s also possible the company is just looking for someone in a central city to manage the other U.K. cities where Voi operates.   

Bird has already been in London’s Olympic Park since the summer, and it actively lobbied for a change in London’s legislation around scooters riding on roads or pavements. This presence could explain why Bird’s operating map highlights London, but to make matters more confusing, the company is hiring an operations associate to ostensibly handle London city operations and general U.K. operations. 

New York might award Lime, Superpedestrian and others

Lime is no stranger to NYC. Its e-bikes have historically had a presence in the Rockaways, Queens. Now it has two job postings up — for a mechanic and an operations specialist — that specifically mention management, maintenance, deployment and retrieval of Lime’s e-scooters. 

Superpedestrian, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has four new job posts up between its website and LinkedIn. On the site, there’s a call for a chief of staff who is ideally based in NYC to support the CEO. Also listed is a general manager position; duties include “being responsible for the growth and success of our scooter share in New York and New Jersey.”

On LinkedIn, Superpedestrian has posted two positions based in NYC. The first, posted a week ago, is an operations associate that will handle things like scooter charging, safety inspections, deployment of scooters and scooter repair and assembly. The second is a scooter mechanic, posted a month ago, but to be fair the post does include the caveat: “If we are awarded the privilege of operating in NYC…”

Spin also posted an operations lead based in New York about a week ago. The employee hired for the position will be tasked with “Spin’s day-to-day operations, managing drivers and mechanics and building a highly efficient operations team.” It’s not precisely indicative of the Ford-owned company winning NYC, but the job does appear to be involved with on-the-ground tasks. The post also hints that the new hire would be leading the build-out and deployment of Spin’s vehicles. 

With a huge presence in Europe but absolutely none in the United States as of yet, Voi has been hoping NYC would be its entry into the country. The company hasn’t posted any NYC-specific job ads, but its job board features a locations dropdown menu which includes NYC.

Finally, Bird is adding to the mess of guesses with two LinkedIn job posts based in New York. The general manager position, posted four weeks ago but still actively recruiting, appears to require someone to be pretty locally involved. The operations associate role, posted on Wednesday, is a bit more vague about whether the new hire would be on the ground in NYC or not. 

News: No-code publishing platform Shorthand raises $8M

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Shorthand, the Australian startup behind a no-code platform that allows publishers and brands to create multimedia stories, has raised $10 million Australian (just under $8 million U.S.) from Fortitude Investment Partners. CEO Ricky Robinson told me via email that this is Shorthand’s first institutional round of funding, and that the company has been profitable for

Shorthand, the Australian startup behind a no-code platform that allows publishers and brands to create multimedia stories, has raised $10 million Australian (just under $8 million U.S.) from Fortitude Investment Partners.

CEO Ricky Robinson told me via email that this is Shorthand’s first institutional round of funding, and that the company has been profitable for the past two years.

“We’ve been lucky enough to grow to where we are today through an entirely inbound, organic model that leverages the beautiful content that our customers create in Shorthand to generate leads,” Robinson wrote. “But we’ve been testing other channels with some success and the time is right to ramp up those other marketing initiatives. That’s where we’ll be spending this funding, while also investing heavily in our product to keep Shorthand at the cutting edge of storytelling innovation for the web.”

Those customers include the BBC, Dow Jones, the  University of Cambridge, Nature, Manchester City FC and Peloton. For example, BBC News used Shorthand to create this story about searching for dinosaur fossils.

The Shorthand website extols the virtues of “scrollytelling,” where a reader can trigger interesting transitions and effects simply by scrolling through the story. Robinson suggested that this is a way to make stories feel interactive and engaging “without asking your audience to learn how to interact with it.”

As you can see in the demo video above, Shorthand offers a fairly straightforward drag-and-drop interface for adding different text and media elements, as well as effects. Robinson said that unlike other tools like Webflow and Ceros, Shorthand was designed to be used by editors and writers. And although Shorthand does support the use of themes and templates, he said that’s not enough.

“You need to provide flexibility without making writers get into the weeds of web design or making them use complicated design tools,” he wrote. “The focus should be at the level of story design, not web design, and that’s really what sets Shorthand apart, and it’s why our customers are able to consistently produce highly engaging, award-winning content for their audiences.”

The company also says that demand has only increased during the pandemic, with usage quadrupling in the fourth quarter of 2020 and subscription revenue up 8.8% month-over-month in February of this year.

News: How we dodged risks and raised millions for our open-source machine language startup

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Open-source startups hoping to secure funding must be aware of these risks when crafting business models to attract investment.

Open-source software gave birth to a slew of useful software in recent years. Many of the great technologies that we use today were born out of open-source development: Android, Firefox, VLC media player, MongoDB, Linux, Docker and Python, just to name a few, with many of these also developing into very successful for-profit companies.

While there are some dedicated open-source investors such as the Apache Software Foundation incubator and OSS Capital, the majority of open-source companies will raise from traditional venture capital firms.

Our team has raised from traditional venture capital firms like Speedinvest, open-source-specific firms like OSS, and even from more hybrid firms like OpenOcean, which was created by the founders and senior leadership teams at MariaDB and MySQL. These companies understandably have a significant but not exclusive open-source focus.

Our area of innovation is an open-source AutoML server that reduces model training complexity and brings machine learning to the source of the data. Ultimately, we feel democratizing machine learning has the potential to truly transform the modern business world. As such, we successfully raised $5 million in seed funding to help bring our vision to the current marketplace.

Here, we aim to provide insights and advice for open-source startups that hope to follow a similar path for securing funding, and also detail some of the important risks your team needs to consider when crafting a business model to attract investment.

Strategies for acquiring open-source seed funding

Obviously, venture capitalists find many open-source software initiatives to be worthy investments. However, they need to understand any inherent risks involved when successfully commercializing an innovative idea. Finding low-risk investments that lead to lucrative business opportunities remains an important goal for these firms.

In our experience, we found these risks fall into three major categories: market risk, execution risk, and founders’ risk. Explaining all three to potential investors in a concise manner helps dispel their fears. In the end, low-risk, high-reward scenarios obviously attract tangible interest from sources of venture capital.

Ultimately, investment companies want startups to generate enough revenue to reach a valuation exceeding $1 billion. While that number is likely to increase over time, it remains a good starting point for initial funding discussions with investors. Annual revenue of $100 million serves as a good benchmark for achieving that valuation level.

Market risks in open-source initiatives

Market risks for open-source organizations tend to be different when compared to traditional businesses seeking funding. Notably, investors in these traditional startups are taking a larger leap of faith.

News: RWDSU head says rerun election ‘very likely’ following Amazon union vote loss

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However the outcome of today’s vote count turned out, there was one thing we knew for certain: it wasn’t going to mark the end of the battle between Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. With voting having broken overwhelmingly in Amazon’s favor, the union was quick to challenge the results. The RWDSU

However the outcome of today’s vote count turned out, there was one thing we knew for certain: it wasn’t going to mark the end of the battle between Amazon and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. With voting having broken overwhelmingly in Amazon’s favor, the union was quick to challenge the results.

The RWDSU was quick to offer TechCrunch a statement from President Stuart Appelbaum after no votes broke the 50% threshold, noting, “We demand a comprehensive investigation over Amazon’s behavior in corrupting this election.”

Amazon, unsurprisingly, was quick to take a victory lap. In a blog post credited to “Amazon Staff,” the company writes:

Thank you to employees at our BHM1 fulfillment center in Alabama for participating in the election. There’s been a lot of noise over the past few months, and we’re glad that your collective voices were finally heard. In the end, less than 16% of the employees at BHM1 voted to join the RWDSU union. It’s easy to predict the union will say that Amazon won this election because we intimidated employees, but that’s not true.

While the company was quick to state that the election is “over,” the RWDSU is hopeful, both in terms of future organizing at the Bessemer warehouse and for what the movement will mean for unionizing efforts at Amazon, going forward.

In a press conference held earlier today, Appelbaum suggested that Amazon told workers that they would have to vote against the union if they wanted to keep their jobs.

“We believe a rerun election is going to be very likely,” the union president told media. “I think that if Amazon considers this a victory, they may want to reconsider it. At best, it’s a Pyrrhic victory. Look at what happened during this period. We exposed atrocious working conditions at Amazon for everybody to see.”

Appelbaum’s comments seem to refer, in part, to numerous reports of workers urinating in bottles over concerns about stringent quotas. In the midst of an aggressive social media campaign at the apparent behest of CEO Jeff Bezos, the company initially denied reports, before conceding they may apply to some drivers. Amazon was quick to deflect blame to broader industry issues, however.

“Amazon didn’t win—our employees made the choice to vote against joining a union,” the company added in its post. “Our employees are the heart and soul of Amazon, and we’ve always worked hard to listen to them, take their feedback, make continuous improvements, and invest heavily to offer great pay and benefits in a safe and inclusive workplace. We’re not perfect, but we’re proud of our team and what we offer, and will keep working to get better every day.”

A key part to the RWDSU’s challenge is a ballot box the company reportedly pressured the USPS to install, in defiance of a National Labor Relations Board ruling. Appelbaum said the box “creates the impression of surveillance.”

He added that the union has already been in communication with workers at other Amazon facilities, explaining, “We have already started talking to workers at other facilities, as well, before this election.”

News: APKPure app contained malicious adware, say researchers

• April 9, 2021
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Security researchers say APKPure, a widely popular app for installing older or discontinued Android apps from outside of Google’s app store, contained malicious adware that flooded the victim’s device with unwanted ads. Kaspersky Lab said that it alerted APKPure on Thursday that its most recent app version, 3.17.18, contained malicious code that siphoned off data

Security researchers say APKPure, a widely popular app for installing older or discontinued Android apps from outside of Google’s app store, contained malicious adware that flooded the victim’s device with unwanted ads.

Kaspersky Lab said that it alerted APKPure on Thursday that its most recent app version, 3.17.18, contained malicious code that siphoned off data from a victim’s device without their knowledge, and pushed ads to the device’s lock screen and in the background to generate fraudulent revenue for the adware operators.

But the researchers said that the malicious code had the capacity to download other malware, potentially putting affected victims at further risk.

The researchers said the APKPure developers likely introduced the malicious code, known as a software development kit or SDK, from an unverified source. APKPure removed the malicious code and pushed out a new version, 3.17.19, and the developers no longer list the malicious version on its site.

APKPure was set up in 2014 to allow Android users access to a vast bank of Android apps and games, including old versions, as well as app versions from other regions that are no longer on Android’s official app store Google Play. It later launched an Android app, which also has to be installed outside Google Play, serving as its own app store to allow users to download older apps directly to their Android devices.

APKPure is ranked as one of the most popular sites on the internet.

But security experts have long warned against installing apps outside of the official app stores as quality and security vary wildly as much of the Android malware requires victims to install malicious apps from outside the app store. Google scans all Android apps that make it into Google Play, but some have slipped through the cracks before.

TechCrunch contacted APKPure for comment but did not hear back.

News: European tech event mainstays Shift and TOA find new homes, new models, post-COVID

• April 9, 2021
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Given the pandemic, huge changes are being wrought in tech events, something which used to be the lifeblood of the industry. Many a startup has pitched to win funding, and many a hackathon has formed teams that went on to greater things. It’s a sad fact that this era is over, at least until the

Given the pandemic, huge changes are being wrought in tech events, something which used to be the lifeblood of the industry. Many a startup has pitched to win funding, and many a hackathon has formed teams that went on to greater things. It’s a sad fact that this era is over, at least until the pandemic has fully passed, but this could take some time. Two significant European events have now had to change in order to carry their brands into new realms.

European breakout success story Infobip (which has raised over $200 million) was born out of Croatia. And so was the seminal developer conference Shift. With Infobipo needing that engineering community, and Shift needing a more stable home in uncertain times, it seems only natural that Infobip would put developers front and center of their company strategy with the acquisition of Shift, and appointing its founder and CEO Ivan Burazinto the board as Chief Developer Experience Officer. Shift will now form the basis of Infobip’s all-new Developer Experience department.
 
As Burazin said: “The vision was always to become one of the largest developer conferences in the world, and also to strengthen Croatia’s connection to the world of software developers. So now with the backing of a Unicorn and the freedom to keep working on independently – the vision seems to have finally become possible.”

He says Shift won’t disappear, but will now expand globally, first to the US and then to Latin America and southeast Asia, initially in remote events.
 
Infobip CEO Silvio Kutić said: “Infobip is on a growth trajectory to expand rapidly into the B2C vertical, or more specifically Business-to-Developer (B2D) space. Having Ivan on board with his experience as the founder of Codeanywhere, a B2D SaaS company, and creator of Shift, the largest developer conference in the region, will be an asset to us going forward.”
  
Meanwhile, a key startup and founder/investor-oriented conference “Tech Open Air Berlin” is also changing.

Tech Open Air (TOA), was known for its technology and startup festival, which attracted upwards of 20,000 people in Berlin every summer, but it has now pivoted into a new brand: TOA Klub. This will now be a “cohort-based learning and doing platform.” The 4-6 weeks of online programs will be aimed at help professionals progress in the tech industry.

TOA Klub will offer Founders Klub (for founders learning to startup); Investors Klub (for newbie investors); Crypto Klub (a “crash course in the crypto field”); and Co-Creators Klub (for founders looking to pivot and grow).

The first confirmed mentors and speakers include Rolf Schrömgens (Founder, Trivago), Dominik Richter (Founder, HelloFresh) or Jeanette zu Fürstenberg (Founding Partner, La Famiglia VC).

Nikolas Woischnik, founder of TOA said: “The world will come out of this pandemic having digitally aged by decades, not years.  The complexity of our business environment has greatly accelerated. At TOA this gives our long-time mission of “making people, organizations and the planet futureproof” ever more purpose. With the launch of Klub, it is time for us to leverage technology to deliver on our mission in a more impactful and accessible way.”

I for one am glad these greats brands have found new homes, because I know the brands and the founders both carry huge respect in the European startup scene.