Monthly Archives: May 2021

News: Daily Crunch: In $8.45B deal, Amazon to buy MGM Studios

• May 26, 2021
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Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Wednesday, May 26. Yes, we’re going to get to the huge Amazon-MGM deal, but we have to chat about a startup first. Have you heard of Poparazzi? If you have kids you might have — it’s the latest social phenom. And it just ran its way up to the top of the App Store. (Too bad it’s not Puparazzi!)

Yes, I feel old as well. Take a look if you want to know what the kids are up to. Now, the rest of the news. — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Amazon snaps up MGM: The biggest news out today is the giant Amazon-MGM deal worth more than $8 billion. Its studio purchase helps cement Amazon in the mix of tech companies with huge investments in the online video space. Observers believe the e-commerce giant plans to use MGM to bolster its Prime service, making consumers less likely to churn thanks to the inclusion of more services. Which rings hollow to us: Who is going to give up Prime, but be swayed by movies? The connection to shipping speed feels tenuous.
• The global fintech boom: This morning, Clara announced a new round, mere months after it raised its preceding round of capital. The Mexican startup works in the corporate spend market, a startup niche that recently saw a $2.5 billion exit in the United States, and more capital for both Ramp and Brex. Our read here is that many nascent fintech formulas that work in the U.S. are going to have wide remit globally.
• IPOs are back: The recent Flywire IPO pricing (strong) and first-day trading (even stronger) are indicative that the temporarily slowed public-offering market is back. So, Robinhood, let’s go?

Startups and VC

Here are five of the tastiest venture capital rounds that TechCrunch covered, showing off an array of niches and round sizes:

• UK’s Paysend raises $125M for mobile B2B payments: You are excused for wondering if every fintech round these days involves both companies and payments. I feel the same way. But what matters in the case of Paysend is that its model to provide SMB online payment services is happening from a post-Brexit U.K. Not even a tectonic decoupling can stop U.K. fintech, it seems.
• Yalo raises $50M for conversational commerce: Here’s a tech startup round that typifies the year. Did it raise less than a year ago? Yes. Did the company have funding find it, as opposed to the other way around? Yes. And did COVID accelerate its business? Yes. Yalo is a wager that the way we buy online is changing, a technology story if we’ve ever heard of one. And it’s one that venture capitalists are lining up to bet on.
• Skiff raises $3.7M for encrypted Google Docs: That’s the pitch, per our own Zack Whittaker. Essentially, Skiff mimics the familiar features of Google Docs, but with end-to-end encryption. As a fan of privacy, I dig the project.
• Treet raises $2.8M to help brands resell their own stuff: The online resale market is huge. ThreadUp is public now, as is Poshmark. But Treet is betting that there is still room in the market for more tech, namely its plan to get brands involved in their own resale market. It isn’t the richest startup around, but given the sheer number of brands out there, it has a pretty huge TAM to grow into.

Finally, African fintech OPay is in the process of raising a huge new round. The investment could help push the continent’s 2021 venture capital totals to new heights, based on data TechCrunch reported earlier in the week.

7 questions to ask before relocating your startup to Florida

Cities like Miami, Pittsburgh and Austin have been drawing talent and wealth from Silicon Valley for years, but the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the trend.

In recent months, many investors and entrepreneurs have noisily departed for Miami, citing the region’s favorable business climate and quality of life. It’s always good to consider one’s options, but before booking a moving van for the Sunshine State — or any emerging tech hub, for that matter — here are some basic questions entrepreneurs should ask themselves.

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

Big Tech Inc.

We’re not going to touch on the Amazon-MGM deal more here in the Big Tech section, leaving us room for all sorts of other news:

• Facebook is looking into allowing users of both the Big Blue App and Instagram to hide social like counts. Which is great for your mental health, we suspect, if awful for those of us with overdeveloped competitive urges.
• Visa is rebounding from its pre-nuptial breakup with fintech unicorn Plaid by building a vetted list of fintech startups that its friends and other customers may want to leverage. In a sense, it’s a way for startups to get a stamp of approval from Visa, and possibly more clients in the process. What’s in it for Visa? More digital payments. That’s good for a company that does lots of payments work, we reckon.
• GM and Lockheed are working on the next American lunar vehicle. It is very, very American to have the progenitors of the consumer Hummer and various weapons of death build our next extraplanetary go-kart. And it’s good that we may go back to the moon? It’s more than time.

To round out the Big Tech section today, OpenAI is out in the market with a $100 million fund to invest in startups. And Microsoft is partnering with the company and putting funds into the capital pool. It feels like ages ago that Microsoft told me that it wasn’t getting into the VC game because the returns would not prove material to its asset base. That wasn’t the point and the company seems to have figured that out.

TechCrunch reports that OpenAI’s Sam Altman of Y Combinator fame said that the fund “plan[s] to make big early bets on a relatively small number of companies, probably not more than 10.” Something to watch out for.

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News: Twitter teases its upcoming ‘premium’ service which it plans to release globally

• May 26, 2021
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Would you pay for an upgraded Twitter? That’s a question Twitter will soon answer when it rolls out a new subscription service that will present users with an expanded feature set available only to paid subscribers. This is a different offering than Twitter’s previously announced Super Follow subscription plans, which will allow users to subscribe

Would you pay for an upgraded Twitter? That’s a question Twitter will soon answer when it rolls out a new subscription service that will present users with an expanded feature set available only to paid subscribers. This is a different offering than Twitter’s previously announced Super Follow subscription plans, which will allow users to subscribe to individual creators’ for access to exclusive content. Instead, the new subscription service will target Twitter’s power users who tweet frequently enough or otherwise engage with the product to the point that they’d be willing to pay to do even more.

Twitter has already broadly hinted at its forthcoming subscription plans, having told Bloomberg in February that it would “research and experiment” with ways to diversify its revenue beyond advertising in 2021 and beyond. Twitter ads are 85% of revenue, but Twitter often faces slowing or flat user growth. That has led the company to consider new ways to extract more money from existing users. It told Bloomberg this plan “may include subscriptions” and other approaches that gave businesses and users access to “unique features.”

It also reiterated its interest in subscription products during its Twitter Analyst Day later that same month, when it said it would “experiment with subscriptions.” And its Twitter Investor Relations account tweeted in March that it would “test subscription products in public.”

But so far, the only subscription product Twitter has fully detailed is Super Follow, also announced during its Analyst Day event. It had not specifically spelled out what its other subscription tests would look like, nor provided any sense as to when they would arrive beyond tests that would begin rolling out “over the course of this year.”

What we know of Twitter’s efforts on this particular front doesn’t come from official sources.

Instead, it comes from app researcher Jane Manchun Wong, who earlier this month scooped not only Twitter’s premium subscription offering itself but also its name and pricing. She found the forthcoming subscription plan, currently dubbed “Twitter Blue,” would cost $2.99 per month and would include access to new features like bookmark collections and the Undo Tweets feature that Twitter had previously confirmed to CNET were being tested.

However, when tech news site The Verge asked Twitter to comment on Twitter Blue, the company declined.

This week at J.P. Morgan’s Global Technology, Media, and Communications conference, Twitter spelled things out a bit more clearly.

Instead of vaguely hinting at forthcoming “experiments” or tests that gave users “people and businesses of all sizes access to unique features,” as it said before (gotta love that corporate speak!), Twitter CFO Ned Segal told investors its new “premium service” would be aimed at people who use Twitter’s service — “and they pay us for it.”

Segal noted this premium offering was one of the two types of subscriptions that Twitter had in the works, the other being Super Follows.

The premium service also sounded less of an “experiment,” than when Twitter had discussed its plans before. In earlier statements, it had seemed as if Twitter was embarking on some kind of research project to see if there was even any demand for a Twitter premium subscription at all. The wording the company used in the past didn’t make it clear how seriously this effort was.

Segal said the company would offer more info about Twitter’s premium service in the coming months. It would test the service to learn more but then, it would “ultimately roll it out to people around the world,” he said.

That’s no “experiment” — that’s a roadmap.

Twitter won’t replace the core, free product it offers, in case you were concerned. He cleared that up, too. It will provide premium features “on top of [Twitter’s] continuous improvement mindset around the free version of the service that everybody will continue to have access to.”

Twitter shouldn’t have to tweak the new offering too much, as it’s already done a lot of pre-launch research on what features users are most interested in, including via user base surveys back in 2020. Not surprisingly, the Undo Tweet option — as close as we’ll ever get to an “edit” button, was among those features users wanted most.

While Twitter didn’t really say anything we didn’t know already, thanks to assumptions, leaks and vague confirmations in the past, it’s nice to see it spelled out in a more straightforward manner as a forthcoming product meant for users worldwide.

“We want to make sure that we have a durable business for our benefit, but also for the benefit of people who use the service,” Segal said.

The question now remains whether Twitter’s users will actually subscribe.

News: Engine Biosciences expands its digital drug discovery pipeline with $43M round

• May 26, 2021
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Drug discovery is a large and growing field, encompassing both ambitious startups and billion-dollar Big Pharma incumbents. Engine Biosciences is one of the former, a Singaporean outfit with an expert founding crew and a different approach to the business of finding new therapeutics, and it just raised $43 million to keep growing. Digital drug discovery

Drug discovery is a large and growing field, encompassing both ambitious startups and billion-dollar Big Pharma incumbents. Engine Biosciences is one of the former, a Singaporean outfit with an expert founding crew and a different approach to the business of finding new therapeutics, and it just raised $43 million to keep growing.

Digital drug discovery in general means large-scale analysis of biological data like genes, gene expression, protein structures, binding sites, things like that. Where it has hit a wall in the past is not on the digital side, where any number of likely molecules or processes can be generated, but on the next step, when those notions need to be tested in vitro. So a new crop of biotech companies have worked to integrate these aspects.

Engine does so with a pair of tools it has dubbed NetMAPPR and CombiGEM. NetMAPPR is a huge sort of search engine for genes and gene interactions, taking special note of “errors” that could provide a foothold for a molecule or treatment. CombiGEM is like a mass genetic testing process that can look into thousands of gene combinations and edits on diseased cells simultaneously, providing quick experimental confirmation of the targets and effects proposed by the digital side. The company is focused on anti-cancer drugs but is looking into other fields as they become viable.

Image Credits: Engine Biosciences

The focus on gene interactions sets their approach apart, said co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Lu.

“Gene interactions are relevant to all diseases, and in cancers, where we focus, a proven approach for effective precision medicines,” he explained. “For example, there are four approved drugs targeting the PARP enzyme in the context of mutation in the BRCA gene that is changing cancer treatment for millions of people. The fundamental principle of this precision medicine is based on understanding the gene interaction between BRCA and PARP.”

The company raised a $10 million seed in 2018 and has been doing its thing ever since — but it needs more money if it’s going to bring some of these things to market.

“We already have chemical compounds directed toward the novel biology we have uncovered,” said Lu. “These are effectively prototype drugs, which are showing anti-cancer effects in diseased cells. We need to refine and optimize these prototypes to a suitable candidate to enter the clinic for testing in humans.”

Right now they’re working with other companies to do the next step up from automated testing, which is to say animal testing, to clear the way for human trials.

The CombiGEM experiments — hundreds of thousands of them — produce a large amount of data as well, and they’re sharing and collaborating on that front with several medical centers throughout Asia. “We have built what we believe to be the largest data compendium related to gene interactions in the context of cancer disease relevance,” said Lu, adding that this is crucial to the success of the machine learning algorithms they employ to predict biological processes.

The $43 million round was led by Polaris Partners, with participation by newcomers Invus and a long list of existing investors. The money will go toward the requisite testing and paperwork involved in bringing a new drug to market based on promising leads.

“We have small molecule compounds for our lead cancer programs with data from in vitro (in cancer cells) experiments. We are refining the chemistry and expanding studies this year,” said Lu. “Next year, we anticipate having our first drug candidate enter the late preclinical phase of development and regulatory work for an IND (investigational new drug) filing with the FDA, and starting the clinical trials in 2023.”

It’s a long road to human trials, let alone widespread use, but that’s the risk any drug discovery startup takes. The carrot dangling in front of them is not just the possibility of a product that could generate billions in income, but perhaps save the lives of countless cancer patients awaiting novel therapies.

News: Tesla has installed 200,000 Powerwalls around the world so far

• May 26, 2021
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Tesla has installed its 200,000th Powerwall, the company’s home battery storage product, the company said in a tweet on Wednesday. Tesla’s CFO Zachary Kirkhorn told investors during a first-quarter earnings call in April that Tesla is continuing to work through a “multi-quarter backlog on Powerwall,” suggesting that the volume of installations will continue to soar

Tesla has installed its 200,000th Powerwall, the company’s home battery storage product, the company said in a tweet on Wednesday. Tesla’s CFO Zachary Kirkhorn told investors during a first-quarter earnings call in April that Tesla is continuing to work through a “multi-quarter backlog on Powerwall,” suggesting that the volume of installations will continue to soar in coming months.

During that earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will no longer sell its Solar Roof panel product without a Powerwall. He said widespread installation of solar panels plus home battery packs (Tesla built, of course) would turn every home into a distributed power plant.

“…Every solar Powerwall installation that the house or apartment or whatever the case may be, will be its own utility,” he said. “And so even if all the lights go out in the neighborhood, you will still have power. So that gives people energy security. And we can also, in working with the utilities, use the Powerwalls to stabilize the overall grid.”

He noted the unprecedented winter storm in Texas in February, which, combined with record-breaking demand for electricity, left millions without power in freezing temperatures. He suggested that under that scenario, utilities could work with customers who have Powerwalls to release stored electricity back on the grid to meet that demand.

“So if the grid needs more power, we can actually then with the consent, obviously, of the homeowner and the partnership with the utility, we can then actually release power on to the grid to take care of peak power demand,” he said.

Tesla hit the 100,000 milestone for Powerwall installations in April 2020, five years after it debuted the first-generation Powerwall. That means that sales numbers that took the company five years to achieve were doubled in a single year.

News: Vise CEO Samir Vasavada and Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire break down the art of the pitch

• May 26, 2021
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“The deck has to show that you’re solving an important problem, that you’ve got the path to an important solution, that there is a big market opportunity, and that your team is positioned to execute.”

In just a few short years, Vise has gone from launching on the Disrupt Battlefield stage to unicorn. Co-founders Samir Vasavada and Runik Mehrotra met Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire at an afterparty at the event, and Maguire ended up leading a seed and Series A round while Sequoia led the Series B. Last week, Vise raised its Series C of $65 million and was officially valued at $1 billion post-money.

We sat down with Vasavada and Maguire to talk about the early fundraising process for Vise, specifically the seed round, and get a look at the startup’s first pitch deck. We discussed what Vasavada has learned about delivering a good fundraising pitch, and what stood out about the pitch and the product for Maguire.

Simplicity is key

Vasavada says he’s made dozens of pitch decks since starting Vise and that this early deck was not his best because it was trying to do too much.

“A good pitch deck is short and simple, and covers the key points in less than 12 words a slide,” said Vasavada, adding that many founders think they need to show investors every part of their business.

“The deck has to show that you’re solving an important problem, that you’ve got the path to an important solution, that there is a big market opportunity, and that your team is positioned to execute,” he said. “Those are the only four things that matter. Everything else can be discussed in the Q&A.”

The goal of a pitch meeting is not to get the “yes” instantly, and satisfy every curiosity, but rather to give the investor something to think about and a reason to want another conversation.

Vasavada explained to the audience that this early seed deck certainly went into too much detail and was too text-heavy. (You can check out the full deck below.)

Why will this product be successful right now?

Beyond the problem, solution, market and team, there is an additional X factor that makes a difference in pitching for fundraising.

Timing can make or break a startup. Incredible ideas, ones that have gone on to be some of the biggest businesses in the world, have fizzled out and died for being too early.

News: Poparazzi hypes itself to the top of the App Store

• May 26, 2021
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If Instagram’s photo tagging feature was spun out into its own app, you’d have the viral sensation Poparazzi, now the No. 1 app on the App Store. The new social networking app, from the same folks behind TTYL and others, lets you create a social profile that only your friends can post photos to —

If Instagram’s photo tagging feature was spun out into its own app, you’d have the viral sensation Poparazzi, now the No. 1 app on the App Store. The new social networking app, from the same folks behind TTYL and others, lets you create a social profile that only your friends can post photos to — in other words, making your friends your own ‘paparazzi.’ To its credit, the new app has perfectly executed on a series of choices designed to fuel day one growth — from its pre-launch TikTok hype cycle to drive App Store pre-orders to its post-launch social buzz, including favorable tweets by its backers. But the app has also traded user privacy in some cases to amplify network effects in its bid for the Top Charts, which is a risky move in terms of its long-term staying power.

The company positions Poparazzi as a sort of anti-Instagram, rebelling against today’s social feeds filled with edited photos, too many selfies, and “seemingly effortless perfection.” People’s real lives are made up of many unperfect moments that are worthy of being captured and shared, too, a company blog post explains.

This manifesto hits the right notes at the right time. User demand for less performative social media has been steadily growing for years — particularly as younger, Gen Z users wake up to the manipulations by tech giants. We’ve already seen a number of startups try to siphon users away from Instagram using similar rallying cries, including Minutiae, Vero, Dayflash, Oggl, and more recently, the once-buzzy Dispo and the under-the-radar Herd.

Even Facebook has woken up to consumer demand on this front, with its plan to roll out new features that allow Facebook and Instagram users to remove the Like counts from their posts and their feeds.

Poparazzi hasn’t necessarily innovated in terms of its core idea — after all, tagging users in photos has existed for years. In fact, it was one of the first viral effects introduced by Facebook in its earlier days.

Instead, Poparazzi hit the top of the charts by carefully executing on growth strategies that ensured a rocket ship-style launch.

@poparazziappcomment it! ##greenscreen ##poparazziapp ##positivity ##foryoupage♬ Milkshake – BBY Kodie

The company began gathering pre-launch buzz by driving demand via TikTok — a platform that’s already helped mint App Store hits like the mobile game High Heels. TikTok’s powers are still often underestimated, even though its potential for to send apps up the Top Charts have successfully boosted downloads for a number of mobile businesses, including TikTok sister app CapCut and e-commerce app Shein, for example.

And Poparazzi didn’t just build demand on TikTok — it actually captured it by pointing users to its App Store pre-orders page via the link in its bio. By the time launch day rolled around, it had a gaggle of Gen Z users ready and willing to give Poparazzi a try.

The app launches with a clever onboarding screen that uses haptics to buzz and vibrate your phone while the intro video plays. This is unusual enough that users will talk and post about how cool it was — another potential means of generating organic growth through word-of-mouth.

After getting you riled up with excitement, Poparazzi eases you into its bigger data grab.

First, it signs up and authenticates users through a phone number. Despite Apple’s App Store policy, which requires it, there is no privacy-focused option to use “Sign In with Apple,” which allows users to protect their identity. That would have limited Poparazzi’s growth potential versus its phone number and address book access approach.

It then presents you with a screen where it asks for permission to access to your Camera (an obvious necessity), Contacts (wait, all of them?), and permission to send you Notifications. This is where things start to get more dicey. The app, like Clubhouse once did, demands a full address book upload. This is unnecessary in terms of an app’s usability, as there are plenty of other ways to add friends on social media — like by scanning each other’s QR code, typing in a username directly, or performing a search.

But gaining access someone’s full Contacts database lets Poparazzi skip having to build out features for the privacy-minded. It can simply match your stored phone numbers with those it has on file from user signups and create an instant friend graph.

As you complete each permission, Poparazzi rewards you with green checkmarks. In fact, even if you deny the permission being asked, the green check appears. This may confuse users as to whether whether they’ve accidently given the app access.

While you can “deny” the Address Book upload — a request met with a tsk tsk of a pop-up message — Poparazzi literally only works with friends, it warns you — you can’t avoid being found by other Poparazzi users who have your phone number stored in their phone.

When users sign up, the app matches their address book to the phone number it has on file and then — boom! — new users are instantly following the existing users. And if any other friends have signed up before you, they’ll be following you as soon as you log in the first time.

In other words, there’s no manual curation of a “friend graph” here. The expectation is that your address book is your friend graph, and Poparazzi is just duplicating it.

Of course, this isn’t always an accurate presentation of reality.

Many younger people, and particularly women, have the phone numbers of abusers, stalkers and exes stored in their phone’s Contacts. By doing so, they can leverage the phone’s built-in tools to block the unwanted calls and texts from that person. But because Poparazzi automatically matches people by phone number, abusers could gain immediate access to the user profiles of the people they’re trying to harass or hurt.

Sure, this is an edge case. But it’s a non-trivial one.

It’s a well-documented problem, too — and one that had plagued Clubhouse, which similarly required full address book uploads during its early growth phase. It’s a terrible strategy to become the norm, and one that does not appear to have created a lasting near-term lock-in for Clubhouse. It’s also not a new tactic. Mobile social network Path tried address book uploads nearly a decade ago and almost everyone at the time agreed this was not a good idea.

As carefully designed as Poparazzi is — (it’s even a blue icon — a color that denotes trustworthiness!) — it’s likely the company intentionally chose the trade off. It’s forgoing some aspects of user privacy and safety in favor of the network effects that come from having an instant friend graph.

The rest of the app then pushes you to grow that friend graph further and engage with other users. Your profile will remain bare unless you can convince someone to upload photos of you. A SnapKit integration lets you beg for photo tags over on Snapchat. And if you can’t get enough of your friends to tag you in photos, then you may find yourself drawn to the setting “Allow Pops from Everyone,” instead of just “People You Approve.”

There’s no world in which letting “everyone” upload photos to a social media profile doesn’t invite abuse at some point, but Poparazzi is clearly hedging its bets here. It likely knows it won’t have to deal with the fallout of these choices until further down the road — after it’s filled out its network with millions of disgruntled Instagram users, that is.

Dozens of other growth hacks are spread throughout the app, too, from multiple pushes to invite friends scattered throughout the app to a very Snapchatt-y “Top Poparazzi” section that will incentivize best friends to keep up their posting streaks.

It’s a clever bag of tricks. And though the app does not offer comments or followers counts, it isn’t being much of an “anti-Instagram” when it comes to chasing clout. The posts — which can turn into looping GIFs if you snap a few in a row — may be more “authentic” and unedited than those on Instagram; but Poparazzi uses react to posts with a range of emojis and how many reactions a post receives is shown publicly.

For beta testers featured on the explore page, reactions can be in the hundreds or thousands — effectively establishing a bar for Pop influence.

Finally, users you follow have permission to post photos, but if you unfollow them — a sure sign that you no longer want them to be in your poparazzi squad — they can still post to your profile. As it turns out, your squad is managed under a separate setting under “Allow Pops From.” That could lead to trouble. At the very least, it would be nice to see the app asking users if they also want to remove the unfollowed account’s permission to post to your profile at the time of the unfollow.

Overall, the app can be fun — especially if you’re in the young, carefree demographic it caters to. Its friend-centric and ironically anti-glam stance is promising as well. But additional privacy controls and the ability to join the service in a way that offers far more granular control of your friend graph in order to boost anti-abuse protections would be welcome additions. 

TechCrunch tried to reach Poparazzi’s team to gain their perspective on the app’s design and growth strategy, but did not hear back. (We understand they’re heads down for the time being.) We understand, per SignalFire’s Josh Constine and our own confirmation, that Floodgate has invested in the startup, as has former TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Bonatsos’ Dream Machine and Weekend Fund.

News: 7 questions to ask before relocating your startup to Florida

• May 26, 2021
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To help weigh the benefits of relocating to Florida, here are some FAQs I’ve encountered. And if the Sunshine State isn’t on your shortlist, don’t hesitate to apply this advice to another destination.

If it seems like everyone you know is moving to Florida these days, there is evidence to back that up. Recent data from LinkedIn published in Axios put Tampa Bay, Jacksonville and the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro areas among the top 10 U.S. cities seeing in-migration.

When I relocated from Chicago to Tampa in early 2018, I found myself in a city that countered the stereotypes I’d heard about the state. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate the advantages that came with building my organization in Florida, and I’m often asked how I made the call.

To help you weigh the benefits of relocating your startup to Florida, here are some FAQs I’ve encountered. And if the Sunshine State isn’t on your startup’s shortlist, don’t hesitate to apply these answers to a different destination.

1. What are your company’s needs?

While you may have personal reasons for wanting to relocate to a new state, it’s a good idea to map out your company’s needs as you think through this decision.

Does a move bring you closer to a great pool of talent? Are you looking for a headquarters near a specific material resource or type of infrastructure? Do you need to be local to a target customer base or community?

For example, Florida is a terrific location for companies that stand to benefit from the presence of retired military talent and the prevalence of military bases, which creates a strong market for certain types of tech innovation, including cybersecurity and aviation.

Whatever it is you need to fuel your company’s growth, listing out your company’s requirements will make it easier to compare your needs with what your potential destination has to offer.

2. Which community do you want to be a part of?

If you haven’t found the tech community you’re looking for in your current location, pause to articulate what qualities you’re looking for. With this in mind, you can begin to establish the kinds of local connections you’re hoping to grow before you make any big moves.

I moved to Florida to participate in the diverse tech communities in Tampa and Miami, and I knew I was headed to the right place because I tested the waters before jumping in. As a relative newcomer myself, I’ve found the landscape in Florida to be more open and accessible than in other more established startup hubs, but don’t take my word for it.

If you’re a startup leader who is looking to land in a place with a strong, welcoming network, take the time to reach out to local community leaders and other founders like you. Whether that means sending a tweet to the mayor of Miami or connecting to local startup hubs, these interactions will give you a good sense of the local culture.

Because so many people are migrating down to Florida, we’ve put together a database of recent transplants to make it even easier to connect new residents to the existing tech community.

3. What are the potential benefits of moving your company to Florida?

When I think about what brought me to Florida and why I see other entrepreneurs headed this way, three big things come to mind:

News: OpenAI’s $100M startup fund will make ‘big early bets’ with Microsoft as partner

• May 26, 2021
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OpenAI is launching a $100 million startup fund, which it calls the OpenAI Startup Fund, though which it and its partners will invest in early-stage AI companies tackling major problems (and productivity). Among those partners and investors in the fund is Microsoft, at whose Build conference OpenAI founder Sam Altman announced the news. In a

OpenAI is launching a $100 million startup fund, which it calls the OpenAI Startup Fund, though which it and its partners will invest in early-stage AI companies tackling major problems (and productivity). Among those partners and investors in the fund is Microsoft, at whose Build conference OpenAI founder Sam Altman announced the news.

In a prerecorded video, Altman explained that “this is not a typical corporate venture fund. We plan to make big early bets on a relatively small number of companies, probably not more than 10.”

It’s not clear exactly how the $100M will be divided or disbursed, or on what timeline, or whether this is part of a longer program. But it seems to be a limited fund, not just the 2021 round.

Altman did say that they will be looking for companies that are taking on serious issues, like healthcare, climate change, and education, where AI-powered applications or approaches could “benefit all of humanity,” in keeping with OpenAI’s mission statement. But it would also consider productivity improvements as well, presumably like the GPT-3 powered natural language coding Microsoft showed off yesterday.

“We know it’s you, the developers, who can use powerful tools like gpt3 to create ambitious applications that will leave a positive mark on the world,” said Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott in the company’s stream. “Microsoft is thrilled to be able to support this fund.”

Companies selected for funding will receive early access to new OpenAI systems and Azure resources from Microsoft, which hopefully would allow them to spring fully formed and ready to scale from the program. OpenAI would not elaborate on the equity agreement, expectations for startups, other partners, or any further details. It’s entirely possible that the $100M figure is the only thing they’ve actually settled on.

The minimal application process suggests they expect a large number of submissions, but if you want to throw your company into the mix, start prepping your elevator pitch. Part of the application is a one minute video (take note that “Demos, music and effects are not necessary”) that the selection team (the makeup of which OpenAI did not detail) will no doubt watch if a company makes it through the first round of winnowing. Hope you haven’t dismantled that Zoom background just yet.

News: Dear Sophie: Any unique immigration strategies for quick hiring?

• May 26, 2021
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I do recruitment for tech startups. With a surge of VC investing, many startups are urgently hiring. Which visas offer the quickest options for international talent?

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

Extra Crunch members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one- or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie,

I do recruitment for tech startups. With a surge of VC investing, many startups are urgently hiring.

Which visas offer the quickest options for international talent? Are there any unique strategies that you would recommend we explore?

— Maverick in Milpitas

Dear Maverick,

Thanks for reaching out with your questions! We’re seeing the same urgent hiring demand from startups. In my columns, you’ll find a lot of materials to support you regarding the most common options. However, in a recent podcast episode, I discussed a handful of very specialized — and rarely used — temporary work visas that in most situations offer an expedited way to bring international talent to the United States to live and work. The eligibility requirements for these work visas are very specific, but if any prospective candidates qualify, these visas are great, quick options for the startups you work with.

The quickest option for employers is to hire international talent already in the U.S. because many consulates still remain closed to routine visa processing due to the pandemic. What’s more, travel restrictions have been imposed on India and remain in place for Brazil, the U.K., Ireland, 26 other countries in Europe, China and Iran. However, there are some exceptions in the national interest. As always, I recommend consulting with an experienced immigration attorney.

Here are a few uncommon visas and strategies that can offer quick options for startups to recruit international talent:

News: Host live, interactive product demos at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

• May 26, 2021
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TechCrunch Disrupt has always been opportunity central, but that’s never been truer than this year at Disrupt 2021 (September 21-23) — especially for early-stage founders who exhibit in Startup Alley. Here’s why. Using Hopin — our virtual platform — Startup Alley exhibitors can schedule and host interactive product demos via livestream. Every exhibiting startup receives

TechCrunch Disrupt has always been opportunity central, but that’s never been truer than this year at Disrupt 2021 (September 21-23) — especially for early-stage founders who exhibit in Startup Alley.

Here’s why. Using Hopin — our virtual platform — Startup Alley exhibitors can schedule and host interactive product demos via livestream. Every exhibiting startup receives a company listing — a virtual booth as it were — where you can include a product walk-through video complete with links to your website and social media accounts. But wait, it gets better.

Take advantage of the interactive, live-stream capability and share your screen, host a live demo or a product tutorial — you can even moderate the chat area. Put on your entrepreneurial thinking cap and get creative. Why not use the live stream to host your own Q&A session?

Pro Tip: Before Disrupt even begins, you can combine the power of CrunchMatch, our AI-powered networking platform, and your access to the Disrupt attendee list. Schedule a demo to take place during Disrupt, reach out to your targeted audience using CrunchMatch, and line up those RSVPs in advance.

Maybe you want to establish yourself as a subject matter expert — this is a great way to tap into a hot tech topic, invite interested parties and get the conversation rolling. Whether you want to pitch, educate, sell or inspire, Startup Alley is the place and the platform to get the job done.

What else comes with exhibiting in Startup Alley? We’re so glad you asked,

The founders of every exhibiting startup get two minutes to pitch to TechCrunch staff live in a breakout session — in front of thousands of Disrupt attendees across the globe. It’s not just great practice. You’ll receive invaluable feedback to hone your pitch to prime fundraising perfection.

You might get tapped for a Startup Alley Crawl interview. We’re hosting a one-hour crawl for each business category. TC editors will choose several startups in each category and interview them live on the Disrupt stage.

Don’t forget about the Startup Battlefield Wild Card. Every year, TC editors select two outstanding startups from all the exhibitors. Those Wild Cards get to compete in the epic Startup Battlefield.

One last massive opportunity. All early-stages founders who buy a Startup Alley Pass before before Friday, June 4 at 11:59 pm (PT) are eligible for Startup Alley+. This is a curated, VIP experience designed to offer more growth opportunities. It kicks off in July and by the time Disrupt rolls around in September, you may well be an unstoppable force. Read the details here, and if you want a shot to be one of up to 50 chosen founders, you gotta beat the deadline.

Get creative, take advantage of opportunity central and exhibit in Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021. We can’t wait to see what you’ve got!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.