Monthly Archives: April 2021

News: An Oracle EVP took a brass-knuckled approach with a reporter today; now he’s suspended from Twitter

• April 29, 2021
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Companies and the reporters who cover them routinely find themselves at odds, particularly when the stories being chased are unflattering or bring unwanted attention to a business’s dealings, or, in the company’s estimation, simply inaccurate. Many companies fight back, which is why crisis communications is a very big and lucrative business. Still, how a company

Companies and the reporters who cover them routinely find themselves at odds, particularly when the stories being chased are unflattering or bring unwanted attention to a business’s dealings, or, in the company’s estimation, simply inaccurate.

Many companies fight back, which is why crisis communications is a very big and lucrative business. Still, how a company fights back matters. And according to crisis communications pros who TechCrunch spoke with this afternoon, a new post on Oracle’s corporate blog misses the mark, as did the company’s related follow-up on social media.

In fact, the author of the post, an Oracle executive named Ken Glueck, a 25-year-long veteran of the company, has been temporarily suspended by Twitter, the company told Gizmodo this afternoon. Yet that might be the least of his concerns right now.

The trouble ties to a series of pieces by the news site The Intercept about how a “network of local resellers helps funnel Oracle technology to the police and military in China,” and Oracle’s response to the pieces. While it isn’t uncommon for companies to post responses to media stories on their own platforms (as well as to take out ads in mainstream media outlets), the crisis execs with whom we spoke — and who asked not to be named, given that they work with companies like Oracle — had a few observations that might be helpful to Oracle in the future.

Rule number one: don’t draw attention unnecessarily to work that you might prefer didn’t exist. Oracle’s newest post doesn’t link back to the new Intercept story that Glueck works to dismantle, but in an earlier post about the first Intercept story that ran in February, Glueck hyperlinks to the story on Oracle’s blog. It’s hard to know what Oracle wants its audience to read more — Glueck’s blog post or that Intercept story, particularly given its intriguing title (“How Oracle Sells Repression in China.”). “How many of Oracle’s customers or employees saw [The Intercept piece] and didn’t give a damn and now he’s drawing attention to it?” noted one exec we’d interviewed today.

Rule number two: Don’t attack reporters; attack (if you must) the outlet. In Glueck’s first diatribe against The Intercept over its February piece, he mentions the outlet 26 times and the author of the piece once. In Glueck’s newest salvo against The Intercept, he refers to its author, reporter Mara Hvistendahl, 22 times — mostly by her first name — and even invites readers of Oracle’s blog to reach out to him, writing in boldface: “If you have any information about Mara or her reporting, write me securely at kglueck AT protonmail.com.”

Though Glueck has since said the call-out was a tongue-in-cheek gesture, it was subsequently removed from the post, presumably owing to its “sinister tone” as observed by one of our experts. “No one likes a bully,” notes this comms pro, adding that  “bullying conveys weakness.”

Before

After

Rule number four: Know your purpose. By lashing out in what is a plainly derisive tone to The Intercept’s piece, as well as continuing to doubling down on its attack against  Hvistendahl on social media afterward, Oracle’s strategy became less and less clear, says one of the crisis specialists we spoke with.

“You can do what Ken did and mock” the reporter, says this person, “but is that going to stop The Intercept from continuing to do stories about Oracle? And what is the reaction of other media? Are they scared off by [what happened today] or are they going to circle the wagons?” (Below: a note from an L.A. Times reporter to Glueck today in response to his call for information about Hvistendahl.)

Rule five: Keep it short. Two of the pros we spoke with today applauded Glueck’s writing style, remarking that it’s both fluid and funny. Both also observed that his response is far too long. “I couldn’t get through it,” said one.

Rule six: Find another way if possible. The crisis experts we spoke with said it’s ideal to first work with a reporter, then the reporter’s editor if necessary, and if it comes to it, involve lawyers, of which Oracle surely has plenty. “That’s the chain of appeal if a reporter has gotten a story blatantly wrong,” said one source.

Very possibly, Glueck decided to throw out this rulebook by design. Oracle tends to do things its own way, and Glueck is very much a product of that culture. (The WSJ wrote a 1,300-word profile about Glueck last year, calling him a “potent weapon” for Oracle.)

As for Hvistendahl, she suggests there is another reason Oracle took the route that it did.

In a statement sent to us earlier, she writes that “Ken Glueck has published two lengthy blog posts attacking me and my editor, Ryan Tate. But Oracle has not refuted my central finding, which is that the company marketed its analytics software for use by police in China. Oracle also hasn’t refuted our reporting on Oracle’s sale and marketing of its analytics software to police elsewhere in the world. We found evidence of Oracle selling or marketing analytics software to police in Mexico, Pakistan, Turkey, and the UAE. In Brazil, my colleague Tatiana Dias uncovered police contracts between Oracle and Rio de Janeiro’s notoriously corrupt Civil Police.”

News: Super, an Indonesian hyperlocal social commerce startup, raises $28M led by SoftBank Ventures Asia

• April 29, 2021
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In Indonesia, daily necessities often cost more in smaller cities and rural areas. Super co-founder and chief executive officer Steven Wongsoredjo said the price difference can vary from about 10% to 20% in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, to nearly 200% in eastern provinces. Super uses social commerce and a streamlined logistics chain to

Super’s founding team on Mount Bromo in East Java

In Indonesia, daily necessities often cost more in smaller cities and rural areas. Super co-founder and chief executive officer Steven Wongsoredjo said the price difference can vary from about 10% to 20% in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, to nearly 200% in eastern provinces. Super uses social commerce and a streamlined logistics chain to lower the cost of goods. The startup announced today it has raised an oversubscribed $28 million Series B led by SoftBank Ventures Asia.

Other participants included returning backers Amasia, Insignia Ventures Partners, Y-Combinator Continuity Fund and Bain Capital co-chairman Stephen Pagliuca, while partners from DST Global and TNB Aura invested for the first time in this round.

The funding brings Super’s total raised so far to more than $36 million, which the company says is the most funding an Indonesian social commerce startup has raised so far.

Super, which took part in Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch, focuses mainly on cities or towns with a gross domestic product per capita of $5,000 USD or lower. It currently operates in 17 cities in East Java, and has a network of thousands of agents, or resellers, and hundreds of thousands of end buyers. The company will use its new funding to double its presence in the region and launch in other Indonesian provinces this year. It will also expand its product categories beyond fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and develop its recently-launched white label brand, SuperEats.

Wongsoredjo told TechCrunch that Super’s ultimate goal is to “build the Walmart Group of Indonesia without having a retail store and utilizing the social commerce aspect to build a sustainable model,” similar to the way Pinduoduo became one of China’s biggest e-commerce companies by focusing on smaller cities.

Prices for consumer goods are higher in small cities and rural areas because of two reasons, Wongsoredjo said. The first is that orders from smaller cities cost more to fulfill, with supply chain costs adding up, than larger orders, and the second is infrastructure that makes it harder for manufacturers and FMCG brands to truck goods into rural areas, so supply does not meet demand.

Super operates a central warehouse, along with smaller hubs closer to buyers. Most of Super’s products are supplied by regional FMCG brands, and group orders are delivered to agents, who in turn perform last-mile deliveries to their buyers. This keeps prices down by making its supply chain more efficient and enabling it to fulfill orders within 24 hours without relying on third-party logistics providers.

Other social commerce companies in Indonesia include KitaBeli, ChiliBeli and Woobiz. Wongsoredjo said Super had a headstart to serve smaller cities and rural areas because it does not focus on Jabodetabek, or the greater Jakarta region. Its headquarters and core operations teams are also all outside of major cities.

“We believe that by not having Jabodetabek’s presence in our DNA, we can build unique social commerce products with the hyperlocal touch to serve rural communities much better,” Wongsoredjo added. “We want to go after the rest of 90% of the market that is still under-penetrated.”

In statement, SoftBank Ventures Asia partner Cindy Jin said, “We have been impressed by the Super team’s deep knowledge and commitment to Indonesia’s underserved regions, and believe that a truly local team like theirs will be well equipped to navigate and build out a platform in this hyperlocal market.”

News: India’s ElasticRun raises $75 million to grow its commerce platform for neighborhood stores

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A startup that is helping over 125,000 neighborhood stores in India secure working capital, inventory from top brands, and work with e-commerce firms to boost revenues said on Thursday it has raised a new financing round as it looks to further its reach in the world’s second largest internet market. Pune-based ElasticRun said it has

A startup that is helping over 125,000 neighborhood stores in India secure working capital, inventory from top brands, and work with e-commerce firms to boost revenues said on Thursday it has raised a new financing round as it looks to further its reach in the world’s second largest internet market.

Pune-based ElasticRun said it has raised $75 million in its Series D financing round co-led by existing investors Avataar Ventures and Prosus Ventures. Existing investor Kalaari Capital also participated in the round, which takes the four-year-old startup’s to-date raise to $130.5 million.

Millions of neighborhood stores that dot large and small cities, towns and villages in India and have proven tough to beat for e-commerce giants and super-chain retailers are at the center of a new play in the country.

A score of e-commerce companies, offline retail chains and fintech startups are now racing to work with these mom and pop stores as they look to tap a massive untapped opportunity.

Sandeep Deshmukh, co-founder and CEO of ElasticRun, talking about the startup’s business at a conference in 2019.

ElasticRun helps merchants operating these stores, who typically have to spend a few days a month visiting bigger cities to secure inventory, get reliable and more affordable goods directly from big brands. (Big brands love this because this enables them to significantly expand their reach.)

These store owners also spend a number of hours a day not doing much when the business is slow. ElasticRun is also addressing this by partnering with some of the biggest e-commerce firms including Amazon and Flipkart to utilize this workforce to make deliveries to customers. (E-commerce firms find value in this because neighborhood stores have a larger presence in the country, can reach a customer much faster, and also often have their own inventory.)

Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments for India at Prosus Ventures, told TechCrunch that ElasticRun has built a variable capacity, crowdsourced delivery model, which distinguishes the startup from other players in the market that have a fixed number of people on payrolls making these deliveries. He said as the startup has developed the railroads, a number of new opportunities has unlocked.

One such opportunity is providing working capital to these neighborhood stores. Their operators typically don’t have savings, and need to sell the existing inventory to secure funds to refill the stock. In recent years, ElasticRun has struck partnerships with banks and NBFCs to provide credit to these merchants.

ElasticRun today operates in over 300 cities in nearly all Indian states. The startup works with over 125,000 neighborhood stores, and plans to expand to reach 1 million in 18 to 24 months, said Shitiz Bansal, co-founder and chief technology officer of ElasticRun, in an interview with TechCrunch.

The startup’s current run rate is about $350 million, a figure it plans to grow to over $1 billion in the next 12 months, he said.

Saurabh Nigam, co-founder and chief operating officer, said the new financing round has also enabled the startup to offer early employees access to “tangible benefits” of the firm’s growth over the last five years.

News: The SPAC boom isn’t just here to stay, it’s changing consumer tech

• April 29, 2021
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The SPAC route is a match made in heaven for consumer tech companies: SPACs put more of a focus on the management team and the vision than traditional IPOs, which is a boon for such firms.

Consumer technology is an inherently risky investment sector: even the best idea can fall flat if the story of the product is not sold properly to the end user. The stats can only take you so far, and, eventually, customers want to believe in the product.

Traditionally, companies that have successfully told their story and become market leaders have taken the initial public offering route — pitching their story to institutional investors on banker-led roadshows rather than to the people that buy their products.

But the last 18 months have seen a new door open for companies seeking to skip the bankers, partner with good managers, and gain a more direct route to public capital: merging with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company, or SPAC.

For the right consumer technology companies — for which the story is often just as, if not more, important than the financial figures — a SPAC deal offers a more direct access to public capital. Instead of walking institutional investors through the P&L, these companies can spend more time telling investors, including the retail investors using the products, what the company can be long-term.

There is no denying the growing popularity of this avenue to public exchanges: more than 200 companies went public via a SPAC deal in 2020. But as with any asset that grows hot, there will be parties out there expecting it to blow up.

Lessons have been learned and we probably have more coming, but those who treat SPACs as a sign of the end-days of economic recovery are wrong. These vehicles offer a legitimate route to the public markets while stripping out traditional gatekeepers and allowing individual investors to decide if they want to buy — or sell — a company’s story.

The SPAC bubble claim

First, it is important to address the naysayers’ concerns. Given the meteoric rise in SPAC activity, analysts speculate that the trend is overblown; they argue that companies are listing too early and that money losers are getting access to public capital before they deserve it.

But when is it “too early” to enter the public market? DraftKings, one of the most successful SPAC stories of 2020, went public about eight years after it was founded, and Facebook was private for a similar length of time before its IPO. Meanwhile, Apple, the most profitable company in the world, listed less than four years after its founding. Tenure may be a factor in investors’ minds, but lack thereof has never stopped a company from listing on the public markets.

Profitability has also rarely been a requirement for an IPO. Uber, Tesla, and Amazon are all prime examples of unprofitable businesses that listed while reporting losses.

In all these examples, clear, coherent visions, strong leadership teams, and patience from investors to see leaders execute on their vision overcame the traditional financial barometers of success.

The market knows how to value a story

The public markets are obsessed with quarterly results. A company can miss analysts’ expectations for earnings per share by just a cent and its stock will be sent tumbling. However, not all companies are assessed this way: Many companies are valued on their vision for the future and their progress towards their goals. SPACs are an effective way to invest in a strong team or vision even when there’s not enough financial data to back a traditional investment.

Biotech firms are an excellent and timely example of the way investors are looking at the market, especially post-pandemic. Biotechs usually describe a treatment they are developing and the patients it could help; they provide estimates of the addressable market, the price they could charge, and the timeline they could expect to get through clinical trials. However, an early-phase biotech could be years away from selling any drugs, let alone turning a profit. The FDA estimates the time to complete Phase II and Phase III trials, the final phases before applying for approval, can total up to six years.

Yet, investors pour money into these companies. Analysts estimate the likelihood of a drug advancing in its trials after detailed scrutiny, but these companies can see their stocks rise for years while losing money. The markets will expect high returns for taking these risks, but they can arrive at a price nonetheless.

The storytellers of consumer tech

The SPAC route is a match made in heaven for consumer tech companies: SPACs put more of a focus on the management team and the vision than traditional IPOs, which is a boon for the sector, as this industry has always been dominated by visionaries.

Looking ahead, the savviest investors in SPACs will be paying close attention to direct-to-consumer technology, but not in the traditional, limited sense of D2C.

Consumers are looking for goods and services that they can access more quickly and reliably than ever before. Conveniently, the companies that tend to succeed in ramping up these options through technology are natural storytellers that know how to bring their product directly to the end-user. Inevitably, these firms are going to be on the radar of SPAC investors.

For example, fintech, in many ways, has become direct-to-consumer because it offers customers banking features directly on their phones. In just the last year, innovation in telemedicine has brought most health appointments from the waiting room to the living room, and forced outdated healthcare administration practices to embrace digital systems.

Products you could only buy at physical stores, like mattresses, can now be delivered straight to your door with companies like Casper and Purple. Certain auto companies will allow you to even design and buy a car as easily as ordering a pizza.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated this trend by exposing the need for faster, tech-driven access to services, and our “return to normal” means this trend is only going upwards. SPACs will be around to bring these ideas to market faster and provide the capital these companies need to meet the demand.

The road ahead

Despite the speculation, naysaying and “bubble” talk, SPACs have been around for decades and aren’t going to disappear in a flash. Indeed, the pace of SPAC deals might cool down and carry a higher risk premium as the trend continues, but just like the changes in consumer technology, SPACs themselves will evolve to best serve their consumers.

In many ways, the SPAC model is very similar to the way consumer technology has developed: It encourages disruption of established constructs. What’s more, investors in pre-acquisition SPACs get access to venture-like opportunities without the capital traditionally required for such investments.

In the end, a company’s success will depend on it meeting or exceeding targets, or if something pulls demand forward. The rules have not changed, and neither has the risk or the reward.

News: Daily Crunch: Uber adds vaccine booking

• April 28, 2021
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Uber unveils half a dozen new features, Samsung announces a new flagship laptop and Zomato files to go public. This is your Daily Crunch for April 28, 2021. The big story: Uber adds vaccine booking Uber announced a half dozen new features today, including the ability to make a vaccine appointment at Walgreens and then

Uber unveils half a dozen new features, Samsung announces a new flagship laptop and Zomato files to go public. This is your Daily Crunch for April 28, 2021.

The big story: Uber adds vaccine booking

Uber announced a half dozen new features today, including the ability to make a vaccine appointment at Walgreens and then reserve a ride to get there.

Other additions include a valet service to drop off rental cars, reserved rides at airports and the ability to pick up food during a ride. In an interview, CPO Sundeep Jain suggested that these features are part of the company’s key focus for the past year, namely “helping users ‘go’ and helping users ‘get.’”

The tech giants

Here’s Samsung’s new flagship laptop series, the Galaxy Book Pro — These Windows machines continue the company’s push to blur some of the productivity lines between its Galaxy PC and mobile offerings.

Facebook hides posts calling for PM Modi’s resignation in India — Facebook temporarily hid all posts with the hashtag “ResignModi” in India, although a spokesperson said those posts have now been restored.

Netflix launches its shuffle feature, now called ‘Play Something,’ to users worldwide — This should make it easier to find something to watch when you can’t make a decision on your own.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Alchemy raises $80M at a $505M valuation to be the ‘AWS for blockchain’ — The company describes itself as the backend technology behind the blockchain industry.

MessageBird acquires SparkPost for $600M using $800M Series C extension — The acquisition enables MessageBird to get a stronger foothold in the U.S. market.

Splitwise raises $20M Series A to help everyone in the world divvy expenses — Splitwise aims to reduce the stress and awkwardness that money puts on relationships of all sorts.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Zomato juice: Indian unicorn’s proposed IPO could drive regional startup liquidity — Zomato’s debut could lead to a liquidity rush in India.

Dear Sophie: What’s the latest on DACA? — The latest edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

Fund managers can leverage ESG-related data to generate insights — Apex Group’s Georges Archibald argues that environmental, social and governance insights can yield treasure in the form of alternative data.

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

Everything else

CES will return to Las Vegas in 2022 — Per a press release, roughly 1,000 companies have committed to returning.

India’s entrepreneurs and investors are mobilizing to help the nation fight COVID-19, and you can too — For a week straight, India has reported more than 300,000 daily new infections, about half of all the cases across the globe.

Porsche makes its case for an all-electric Taycan wagon — The Porsche Taycan 4 Cross Turismo offers a blend of practicality with a whole lot of power and speed for under $100,000.

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: Boasting a pedigree in business intelligence, Sweep launches a new carbon accounting and offset tool

• April 28, 2021
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If businesses are going to meet their increasingly aggressive targets for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their operations, they’re going to have an accurate picture of just what those emissions look like. To get that picture, companies are increasingly turning to businesses like Sweep, which announced its commercial launch today. The Parisian company

If businesses are going to meet their increasingly aggressive targets for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their operations, they’re going to have an accurate picture of just what those emissions look like. To get that picture, companies are increasingly turning to businesses like Sweep, which announced its commercial launch today.

The Parisian company boasts a founding team with an impeccable pedigree in enterprise software. Co-founders Rachel Delacourt and Nicolas Raspal, were the co-founders of BIME Analytics, which was acquired by Zendesk. And together with Zendesk colleagues Raphael Gueller and Yannick Chaze, and the founder of the Net Zero Initiative, Renaud Bettin, they’ve created a software toolkit that gives companies a visually elegant view into not just a company’s own carbon emissions, but those of their suppliers as well.

It’s the background of the team that first attracted investors like Pia d’Iribarne, co-founder and managing partner, New Wave, which made their first climate-focused investment into the software developer. 

“We decided to invest before we even closed the fund,” d’Iribarne said of the investment in Sweep. “We officially invested in December or January.”

New Wave wasn’t the only investor wowed by the company’s prospects. The new European climate-focused investment firm 2050, and La Famiglia, a fund with strong ties to big European industrial companies also participated alongside several undisclosed angel investors from the Bay Area. In all Sweep raked in $5 million for its product before it had even launched a beta.

Sweep offers users the ability to visualize each location of a company’s business by brand, location, product, or division and see how those different granular operations contribute to a company’s overall carbon footprint. Users can also link those nodes to external suppliers and distributors t share carbon data. 

The effects of climate change are increasing, and companies across industries are motivated to do their part. But today’s carbon reduction efforts are being stalled by complex tools and resources that can’t match the urgency of the threat. By putting automation, connectivity and collaboration at the heart of the platform, Sweep is the first to offer companies an efficient mechanism to tackle their indirect Scope 3 emissions, and turn net zero from a buzzword into a reality. 

Like the other companies that have come on the market with carbon monitoring and management solutions, Sweep also offers the ability to finance offset projects directly from its platform. And, like those other companies, Sweep’s offsets are primarily in the forestry space.   

“Around the world, companies are under pressure from customers, investors and regulators to take action to reduce their emissions,” said Pia d’Iribarne, co-founder and managing partner, New Wave, in a statement. “As a result, we’re seeing unprecedented growth in the climate technology market and we expect it to continue to explode. What used to be an issue confined to a company’s sustainability team is now a front-and-center business objective that has the commitment of the CEO. We invested in Sweep because of their world-class expertise in sustainability and their success in developing state-of-the-art, end-to-end SaaS platforms. It’s the right team and the right product at the right time.”

News: Today’s big tech earnings in a mere 700 words

• April 28, 2021
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Today was yet another day of earnings from tech’s biggest names. To keep you up to speed without burying you in an endless crush of numbers we’ve pulled out the key data from each of the major reports. In each you will also find a link to their earnings reports. What does all of the

Today was yet another day of earnings from tech’s biggest names. To keep you up to speed without burying you in an endless crush of numbers we’ve pulled out the key data from each of the major reports.

In each you will also find a link to their earnings reports. What does all of the data from the week’s earnings downloads mean for startups? We’ll have a full roundup on that front tomorrow morning, so stay tuned.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Facebook crushed financial expectations, missed slightly on users. Shares of Facebook are up around 5% after it reported its recent financial results. Facebook had a somewhat two-part report. The first piece of its results was a huge financial beat; the second was that it missed ever-so-slightly on active usage. Investors are weighing the former more heavily than the latter. In numerical terms, Facebook had been expected to report $23.67 billion in revenue. Instead, it posted $26.17 billion. And its earnings per share beat expectations by $0.93 per share, or just under 40%. Facebook is a controversial company with known issues. But turning in better than expected financial results is not one of them.

• Shopify smashed expectations, again. Its shares spiked, again. The post-IPO Shopify story of the Canadian e-commerce infra player kicking the heck out of expectations continued today. Investors had expected Shopify to post $865.48 million in total Q1 2021 revenue. Shopify managed $988.6 million instead. And it beat profit expectations by a multiple. What drove the Shopify results? The company’s so-called “Merchant Solutions” business, which grew by 137%, faster than the company’s aggregate 110% growth rate in the quarter. Merchant Solutions at the company encompasses its payments, shipping, and capital services, among other elements of its business.

• Apple shares rose after the company reported strong growth across its product categories. Apple, like Facebook, demolished investor expectations for its most recent quarter. In the three-month period ending March 27, 2021, Apple produced revenues of $89.6 billion and earnings per diluted share of $1.40 were miles ahead of an expected $77.35 billion in revenue and $0.99 in diluted EPS. What drove the huge win? Growth in every single product category that the company reports, compared to the year-ago period. iPhone sales totaled $47.94 billion, compared to a year-ago result of $28.96 billion. And the company’s key services business line grew from $13.35 billion to $16.90 billion over the same temporal interval. For the nerds in the room, Apple’s net income as a percentage of gross profit in the quarter was just over 62%. Wow.

• Spotify shares fell sharply after it reported slower-than-anticipated user growth. In financial terms, Spotify had a pretty good quarter. It met revenue expectations (around €2.15 billion), and lost less money per share than was anticipated. However, the music streaming company’s user base only reached 356 million in the first quarter of the year, the low end of Spotify’s 354 million to 364 million guidance, and under the market’s expectation of just over 360 million. Its shares were off around 12% today. Why did Facebook shares rise after its usage miss, while Spotify’s fell? Facebook crushed financial expectations. Spotify merely met them. And Facebook’s user base miss appears smaller than what Spotify detailed.
• GrubHub grew its revenues and losses ahead of its acquisition. GrubHub, which is in the final stages of being digested by JustEat Takeaway, brought in more money in the first quarter than in the same period a year ago, but also lost more money too. Here’s the breakdown: Revenue grew 52% year-over-year to $550.6 million thanks to all that pandemic-driven demand for delivery. GrubHub also reported a negative Adjusted EBITDA of $9.3 million. GrubHub blamed its adjusted EBITDA results on several factors, including temporary fee caps (which it opposes), increased delivery driver costs caused by short-term driver supply imbalances from surging demand, extreme winter weather in numerous parts of the country and, to a lesser degree, the issuance of stimulus payments that caused some drivers to temporarily reduce hours in March. Active diners rose 38% year-over-year to 33.0 million, another positive sign for the company. But alas, its net loss grew to $75 million, or a loss of $0.81 per diluted share compared to a net loss of $33.4 million or a loss of $0.36 per diluted share in the same year-ago period.

You can catch up on Microsoft and Alphabet earnings, among others, here.

News: How to fundraise over Zoom more effectively

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Even though in-person drinks and coffee walks are on the horizon, virtual fundraising isn’t going away. It’s imperative to ensure your virtual pitch is as effective as your IRL one.

I was a first-time CEO who had just finished Techstars with my co-founders when the pandemic hit last March. I remember sitting alone in my basement room in Boulder, Colorado, in sweatpants, while connecting with my advisers. They confirmed my biggest fear: Warmly, our startup, had just three months of runway left in the bank.

It was every founder’s nightmare around that time: I’d be forced to fundraise amid a global pandemic.

Of course, venture capital investors weren’t taking in-person meetings then, which meant pitching over Zoom. As opposed to late-night drinks, coffee chats while strolling along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, and Sand Hill boardroom meetings (environments where I thought I could excel), I was stuck in a basement.

Whether I asked friends, mentors or Google, no one seemed to have any good tips for connecting with investors virtually. But I learned as I went, adopting new technology to assist in the VC fundraising process, and we were able to close a $2.1 million seed round in August. Phew.

While we might have thought virtual fundraising would impossible when the world shut down one year ago, I don’t think anyone believes that anymore. Not only is it more efficient — no expensive trips to San Francisco or trouble fitting investor meetings into one day — virtual fundraising helps democratize access to venture capital.

Founders can raise money from investors based anywhere in the world, and investors can consider startups from anywhere, too. My investors today are from California, Colorado, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and the U.K. And so far, I haven’t met a single one of them in person.

News: Microsoft’s new default font options, rated

• April 28, 2021
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Calibri, we hardly knew ye. Microsoft’s default font for all its Office products (and built-in apps like Wordpad) is on its way out and the company now needs your help picking a new one. Let’s judge the options! You probably don’t think much about Calibri, if you think about fonts at all, but that’s a

Calibri, we hardly knew ye. Microsoft’s default font for all its Office products (and built-in apps like Wordpad) is on its way out and the company now needs your help picking a new one. Let’s judge the options!

You probably don’t think much about Calibri, if you think about fonts at all, but that’s a good thing in this context. A default font should be something you don’t notice and don’t feel the need to change unless you want something specific. Of course the switch from Times New Roman back in 2007 was controversial — going from a serif default to a sans serif default ruffled a lot of feathers. Ultimately it proved to be a good decision, and anyway TNR is still usually the default for serif-specified text.

To be clear, this is about defaults for user-created stuff, like Word files. The font used by Microsoft in Windows and other official brand things is Segoe UI, and there are a few other defaults mixed in there as well. But from now on making a new document in an Office product would default to using one of these, and the others will be there as options.

Replacing Calibri with another friendly-looking universal sans serif font will be a considerably less dramatic change than 2007’s, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have opinions on it. Oh no. We’re going to get into it. Unfortunately Microsoft’s only options for seeing the text, apart from writing it out in your own 365 apps, are the tweet (doesn’t have all the letters) or some colorful but not informative graphic presentations. So we (and by we I mean Darrell) made our own little specimen to judge by:

You may notice Grandview is missing. We’ll get to that. Starting from the top:

Calibri, here for reference, is an inoffensive, rather narrow font. It gets its friendly appearance from the tips of the letters, which are buffed off like they were afraid kids might run into them. At low resolutions like we had in 2007 this didn’t really come across, but now it’s more obvious and actually a little weird, making it look a bit like magnetic fridge letters.

Bierstadt is my pick and what I think Microsoft will pick. First because it has a differentiated lowercase l, which I think is important. Second, it doesn’t try anything cute with its terminals. The t ends without curling up, and there’s no distracting tail on the a, among other things — sadly most common letter, lowercase e, is ugly, like a chipped theta. Someone fix it. It’s practical, clear, and doesn’t give you a reason to pick a different font. First place. Congratulations, designer Steve Matteson.

Tenorite is my backup pick, because it’s nice but less practical for a default font. Geometric sans serifs (look at the big fat “dog,” all circles) look great at medium size but small they tend to make for weird, wide spacing. Look at how Bierstadt makes the narrow and wide letters comparable in width, while in Tenorite they’re super uneven, yet both are near the same total length. Also, no, we didn’t mess with the kerning or add extra spaces to the end in “This is Tenorite.” That’s how it came out. Someone fix it! Second Place.

Skeena, apart from sounding like a kind of monster you fight in an RPG, feels like a throwback. Specifically to Monaco, the font we all remember from early versions of MacOS (like System 7). The variable thickness and attenuated tails make for an interesting look in large type, but small it just looks awkward. Best e of the bunch, but something’s wrong with the g, maybe. Someone might need to fix it. Third place.

Seaford is an interesting one, but it’s trying too hard with these angular loops and terminals. The lowercase k and a are horrifying, like broken pretzels. The j looks like someone kicked an i. The d looks like it had too much to eat and is resting its belly on the ground. And don’t get me started on the bent bars of the italic w. Someone fix it. I like the extra strong bold and the g actually works, but this would really bug me to use every day. Fourth Place.

Grandview didn’t render properly for us. It looked like Dingbats in regular, but was fine in bold and italic. Someone fix it. Fortunately I feel confident it won’t be the next default. It’s not bad at all, but it’s inhuman, robotic. Looks like a terminal font no one uses. See how any opportunity there is for a straight line is taken? Nice for a logo — feels strong structurally — but a paragraph of it would look like a barcode. Use it for H2 stuff. Last place.

So what should you “vote” for by tweeting hard at Microsoft? Probably it doesn’t matter. I’m guessing they’ve already picked one. Bierstadt is the smart pick, because it’s good in general while the others are all situational. If they would only fix that damn e.

News: GM partners with 7 charging networks ahead of electric vehicle push

• April 28, 2021
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GM revealed Wednesday a four-part plan meant to handle all the steps of charging an electric vehicle, including finding a public charger and paying for the power, as the automaker seeks ways to attract customers to the 30 EVs it plans to launch by 2025. The so-called Ultium Charge 360 plan — named after the

GM revealed Wednesday a four-part plan meant to handle all the steps of charging an electric vehicle, including finding a public charger and paying for the power, as the automaker seeks ways to attract customers to the 30 EVs it plans to launch by 2025.

The so-called Ultium Charge 360 plan — named after the underlying electric vehicle platform and batteries of its upcoming EVs — aims to handle the access, payment and customer service components of charging an electric vehicle at home and on the road. As part of the plan, which the company’s chief EV officer Travis Hester said will be rolling out over the next 18 months, GM has signed agreements with seven third-party charging network providers, including Blink Charging, ChargePoint, EV Connect, EVgo, FLO, Greenlots and SemaConnect. Using their GM vehicle brand mobile app, EV drivers will be able to see real-time information, including location and whether a charger is being used, from nearly 60,000 charging plugs throughout the U.S. and Canada. These functions will be rolled into the existing brand apps GM has created for owners of its Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC vehicles.

The first GM and EVgo sites are now live in Washington, California and Florida. GM said each site is capable of delivering up to 350 kilowatts and averages four chargers per site. GM and EVgo are on track to have about 500 fast-charging stalls live by the end of 2021, according to the automaker.

Hester noted the plan isn’t just about how many third-party networks it partners with. (Although it should be noted that Electrify America is not on its list of partners announced Wednesday.)

“We know how critical the charging infrastructure is to our customers and how it plays a hugely significant role in EV adoption and experienced EV owners know that this is much more complicated than just a simple network quantity issue,” Hester said in a media briefing Wednesday.

For instance, the GM app will provide information on how to find stations along a route and initiate and pay for charging, Hester said. GM will continue to update the mobile app. GM is also planning to offer charging accessories and installation services for their home charger. The company said Wednesday it will cover standard installation of Level 2 charging capability for eligible customers who purchase or lease a 2022 Bolt EUV or Bolt EV in collaboration with Qmerit.

There were some gaps in the announcement, notably whether there would be Plug and Charge capabilities. Plug and Charge is a technology standard that allows the driver of an EV to pull up to a station, plug in and power up their EV without having to launch an app to begin the charging process or to pay for it. Instead, the vehicle is able to communicate with the charging infrastructure and the payment is integrated into that process. Alex Keros, the lead architect for EV infrastructure at GM, said the company wasn’t making any announcements around Plug and Charge, but noted that the company knows “that enabling that seamless experience is going to be an important part of that customer experience.”