Monthly Archives: June 2021

News: Daily Crunch: Spotify’s new ‘Only You’ feature expands on personalization investment

• June 2, 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 June 2, 2021. It’s a good day in the tech world because former unicorn Spotify is out with new features about you. Yes, the company is taking its yearly listening review to a midyear format and packing its app with even more personalized mixes. My playlists are why I won’t leave Spotify until the heat death of the universe, so I suppose it makes sense that the service is doubling down on its personalization feature set.

And yes, I do listen to a lot of Taylor Swift in the morning. — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Stack Overflow sells for $1.8B: Well-known developer community and hub of copy-pastable coding snippets for software engineers of all skill levels Stack Overflow is selling itself to Prosus for nearly $2 billion. What’s Prosus? It’s part of Naspers, a South African investing group that you may have heard of. Naspers is perhaps best known for owning a large stake in Tencent.
• Guild Education raises $150M: The company, focused on providing what TechCrunch described as “employer-sponsored learning opportunities” for employees, is now worth $3.75 billion after its latest funding round. For the burgeoning edtech startup market, the round is big news. There’s still lots of capital for tech companies tackling the various sides of the education market.
• The great technology company liquidity run continues: As well-known tech startups like Marqeta look to list, other companies are jumping on the bandwagon. TechCrunch reported this morning that fintech firm Yieldstreet may go public via a SPAC, and data-centered unicorn Confluent is also going public.

Startups and VC

The week’s busy startup fundraising cycle continued today with a host of companies from the very earliest stages to the most mature unicorns raising capital. What follows is a selection of the day’s hottest deals. We’re starting in the world of wheels:

• Faction raises $4.3M for three-wheeled delivery vehicles: That are driverless, we should add. Daily Crunch is certain that, simply given the sheer amount of capital that has gone into the various projects of this sort, it will eventually work. Perhaps Faction will be the company to get it right.
• FlixMobility raises $650M for its low-cost bus service: If you are American, you may have not heard of FlixMobility, which operates FlixBus and FlixTrain, low-cost transport services in Europe. The company is also working to expand in the U.S. For reference, the new Flix round is a Series G.
• Tier options $60M for e-scooter network: Electric scooter shares are not dead, it turns out. Sure, Bird’s SPAC demonstrates how difficult the economics proved for the model in some markets, but Tier now has access to a “highly scalable asset-backed debt facility,” in the words of its CFO, to keep growing. The company also has some neat battery tech aboard its portfolio.

Now, today’s other rounds of note tackling a more diverse set of industries:

• Stemma raises $4.8M for managed Amundsen: What’s Amundsen? Per Ron, it’s a “data catalogue project that [Lyft built] to manage its massive data requirements.” And now there’s a startup offering it as a service. This reminds me of BuildBuddy to a degree, in which a startup takes on a BigCo tool, helping others access and leverage it.
• $131M in total capital for Jeeves: It’s $31 million in equity funding and $100 million in debt access, which we presume is a revolving facility of sorts because Jeeves is building a multinational expense management platform. You know, for companies that have employees everywhere. Like every single early-stage startup we talk to these days.
• Divido raises money because apparently we still need more buy now, pay later (BNPL) services: Divido has put together a fresh $30 million round to bring its BNPL service to more markets, TechCrunch reports. The startup BNPL market has been hot because the companies in it have been doing well. But at some point we hit saturation, right? Right?

With $1.6B Depop purchase, Etsy asks, ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’

News broke today that Etsy will buy used fashion marketplace Depop in a transaction that values the U.K.-based startup at $1.625 billion.

Depop showed 100% year-over-year growth to reach $70 million in revenue last year, but it’s still worth asking whether Etsy paid a premium to expand its reach into the hearts, minds and wallets of Gen Z and young millennial consumers.

To frame the deal’s overall value in a larger context, let’s look at revenue multiples for rivals Poshmark and ThredUp. If large e-commerce players are willing to splash out for youth-approved marketplaces, there’s a good reason why.

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

Big Tech Inc.

Big Tech was super busy today, Spotify aside. Today we’re talking Amazon, Apple, Facebook, GitLab and Huawei:

• Welcome to 2021, Amazon: The American e-commerce giant is doing away with cannabis testing of its employees. Our first reaction to this news was that Amazon was drug testing its employees?
• Apple thinks highly of itself: Apple has a study out saying that it facilitated more than a half-trillion dollars in commerce last year. We are sure that Apple really put itself to the test in coming up with the number.
• Facebook does two things that don’t suck: Today Facebook opened up its Messenger API to all companies, which is good. And Big Blue put together a research API. Both are good things from Zuck’s empire. Which is nice to say for once.
• GitLab buys UnReview: GitLab is north of $100 million in revenue and is slated for an eventual IPO, so it’s big enough to warrant inclusion in this section. Regardless, the GitHub competitor has bought a startup that “helps software teams recommend the best reviewers for when developers want to check in their latest code” using machine learning. Honestly, that sounds cool.
• Huawei’s new OS loves Android: TechCrunch has lots of details on HarmonyOS, the new operating system from Huawei. It turns out that it uses some Android code. All hail Google, we suppose.

Community

Tomorrow (Thursday) at 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. EDT, we’ll be chatting on Twitter Spaces about the future of e-commerce with Accel’s Ethan Choi, who wrote this piece for Extra Crunch recently. Joining him will be our very own Danny Crichton, Shogun CEO Finbarr Taylor and Shopify’s VP of Product and GM of Platform, Brandon Chu. Keep an eye on our tweets for details and come have a listen (and bring your thoughts and questions!).

TC Eventful

Are you a founder trying to get your startup off the ground? If so, TC Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising is here to help! During this two-day bootcamp, leading experts will guide you through marketplace positioning to growth marketing and content development. Get an additional 10% off early-bird pricing if you register before this Friday with promo code DAILYCRUNCH — Register Now!

News: How to win consulting, board and deal roles with PE and VC funds

• June 2, 2021
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There are relatively few jobs directly inside private equity and venture capital funds, and those jobs are highly competitive. However, there are many other ways you can work within the industry.

Would you like to work with private equity and venture capital funds?

There are relatively few jobs directly inside private equity and venture capital funds, and those jobs are highly competitive. However, there are many other ways you can work and earn money within the industry — as a consultant, an interim executive, a board member, a deal executive partnering to buy a company, an executive in residence or as an entrepreneur in residence.

Venture capitalists often have an operations background. However, historically most private equity professionals were former investment bankers and other finance professionals. Then private equity players gradually realized that value cannot be created through financial engineering alone. A BCG study of 121 investments found that operational improvement drives 48% of value creation in PE-backed companies. PE funds now almost always require an upgrade in management and change management teams if necessary.

Not surprisingly, the tighter your relationship with the firm, the more money you will earn:

At Versatile VC, we’ve used all these models. We are soon launching Founders’ Next Move, a selective, free community for founders researching their next move, which will be a key tool for working with outside talent.

The simplest path forward is to identify funds in your industry of expertise and reach out. You can explore all of the models below with them. First, start by identifying the firms that invest in companies that you’ve worked with. Then, more broadly, look for investors in the industries in which you have expertise. You can identify institutional investors through one of multiple online databases:

All investors	Private equity	Venture capital
Preqin (free demo) Grey House (free demo) S&P Global Market Intelligence Pratt’s Guide Thomson One	PitchBook (free trial) PrivateEquityFirms.com (free trial) Eurekahedge	AngelList (free) CrunchBase (free) PWC MoneyTree (free) VentureDeal (free trial) Asian Venture Capital Journal (free trial)

Let’s take a look at the different ways you can work with the investment community.

Expert networks

Expert network firms source subject matter experts from various domains and pair them with clients seeking topical or industry insights. They typically charge clients up to $1,200 per hour, and pay the expert $100 to $500 an hour. I founded Circle of Experts, an expert network that I sold to Evalueserve.

The expert network industry has grown an average 4.5% annually between 2015 and 2020, its market size topping $1.3 billion in 2020. While the major clients were initially hedge funds and private equity firms, consulting firms now comprise 32% of total demand for expert network services.

Inex One, an expert network marketplace, has compiled a list of 80 expert networks, summarized in the graphic below:

The largest expert networks include: GLG, which accounts for approximately 50% of the industry’s revenue; AlphaSights is the second biggest generalist expert network; Guidepoint services six major categories of clients globally across several industries; and Third Bridge hires and retains talent to “democratize the world’s human insights and upend the traditional research model.”

Other notable expert networks include Atheneum Partners, Coleman Research Group, Dialectica, ENG, Lynk Global, Mosaic, PreScouter, ProSapient and Tegus. There are also expert networks with sector or geography specialization. For example, SERMO is a global social media network for physicians to exchange knowledge and share challenging patient cases, and Clarity.fm connects startups to experts in building new businesses.

News: Rideshare drivers gather in NYC in hopes of unionizing

• June 2, 2021
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Protesters gathered in bright red t-shirts and matching masks bearing the Independent Drivers Guild logo. Placards bearing slogans like “Freeze Hiring, Reactive Workers Now!” and “Unlock Uber” were being handed out at a table toward the entrance. What the gathering lacked in sheer numbers, it made up with enthusiasm. A wide range of speakers approached

Protesters gathered in bright red t-shirts and matching masks bearing the Independent Drivers Guild logo. Placards bearing slogans like “Freeze Hiring, Reactive Workers Now!” and “Unlock Uber” were being handed out at a table toward the entrance. What the gathering lacked in sheer numbers, it made up with enthusiasm.

A wide range of speakers approached the podium — IDG members, drivers, local and prospective politicians. Nearly every speech was followed by a spirited call and response from the crowd, culminating in pro-union chants.

Previous protests have found drivers opting for other locations — perhaps most notably in 2019, when Brooklyn Bridge traffic toward the mayor’s residence at Gracie Mansion was slowed to a crawl. Today’s location was perfectly suited for such an event.

The gathering was framed by the Falchi Building, a large office space in Queens, New York, housing some 36,000 square feet of Uber offices. The neighborhood of Long Island City has long served as an epicenter for the city’s ridesharing operations. Lyft has offices nearby, as does the Taxi Limousine Commission (TLC). Walk down a block or two and you’ll almost certainly stumble across rows upon rows of yellow cabs.

The concerns of gig workers are nothing new, of course, but today’s crowd gathered in Long Island City, Queens to add support to a proposed bill currently making its way through the state legislature in Albany. The legislation is designed to make it easy for gig economy workers in the state to unionize.

“Currently, the gig workers have no voice in their workplace. No voice to negotiate pay or benefits of workplace policies,” bill sponsor state Sen. Diane Savino of Staten Island explained in a recent interview. “And I have been talking about this issue for several years now. The world of work is changing, and labor law has not caught up to technology and how it has changed the world of work.”

Such legislation would have a profound impact on not just ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft, but also a wide range of gig economy jobs, including food delivery services like Seamless. The gig economy has experienced explosive growth over the past decade, in many cases accelerated by the pandemic, as more people have relied on delivery and other services amid shutdowns. But the complaints remain the same: As corporations thrive on the backs of contractors, these workers too seldom receive the benefit of that growth.

The already complex math of being a driver in a city like New York is further compounded by a series of regulations that largely exist to support its once-thriving taxi business.

Tamina Ahmed, a member of the NYC Rideshare Club and registered nurse who has also worked as a driver for six years, cites the flexible hours as a net benefit for workers, but notes the rather intensive process required to start driving in NYC.

“That takes a lot time, funds and energy for the drivers,” Ahmed told TechCrunch after speaking at the event. “They have to sacrifice to get to this point, and it’s not right for them to be deactivated without cause. They don’t give valid reason. They just deactivate them. They’re never on the driver’s side. They’re always on the rider’s side.”

The group present at the protest seems optimistic about Savino’s proposed legislation. The ability to unionize brings certain protections to gig workers, include wages, discrimination protection and unemployment benefits. The latter is even more timely these days, as some one million gig employees in 20 Republican-controlled states will be losing Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) benefits soon. Prop 22, which passed in California last November, has been seen as another major precedent setting legislation for the industry.

With the legislative session ended this month, many are expecting action on Savino’s proposed bill. But not everyone is thrilled with what it offers. “[T]he biggest concern I have is that workers won’t have employee status,” State Senate Labor Committee Chair Jessica Ramos told NY1. “And more than that, Uber and Lyft drivers’ pay would be slashed in half. It’s very unfortunate that they crafted this bill without the workers at the table.”

We’ve reached out to Savino’s office for additional comment.

Among those I spoke with at the event, employee status wasn’t high on the list of demands. In fact, a number of drivers told me that the flexibility the current model affords them. Ramos’ name appeared on a number of the protest placards at the event, largely in a negative light. It’s a complex issue, certainly — only exacerbated by the large number of residents any legislation would impact. The rise of the gig economy has brought a number of key questions relating to the connection between worker protections and employee status to the fore.

What seems clear across the board, however, is that these drivers — and other gig economy workers — are seeking what, in many other industries, have become fairly fundamental protections. Of late, unionization has become a major talking point for blue and white-collar workers, alike. Efforts have seen a number of wins over the past few years, though April’s failure to unionize employees at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama has been seen as a major setback for the cause.

Like those workers, the list of complaints among drivers is long. When a speaker at today’s event asked the crowd how many in attendance had had their accounts deactivated, the response was overwhelming. Many believed the decisions were made fairly arbitrarily.

“A lot of drivers are falsely being accused, deactivated, thrown out of all these rideshare companies that they invested so much money on,” Ahmed said.

The Independent Drivers Guild — which organized today’s event along with the NYC Rideshare Club and the Chinese Delivery Association — isn’t mincing words.

“By helping drivers through deactivated systems, we realized only a true union can solve that problem,” Aziz Bah, IDG organizing director, told TechCrunch. “We decided to unionize. We will let the companies know what our plans are. They had better be behind our proposal. Because this is no negotiation. If this is what drivers and delivery workers want, they had better be behind it.”

News: FireEye to sell products unit to Symphony-led group for $1.2B

• June 2, 2021
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Cybersecurity giant FireEye has agreed to sell its products business to a consortium led by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion. The all-cash deal will split FireEye, the maker of network and email cybersecurity products, from its digital forensics and incident response arm Mandiant. FireEye’s chief executive Kevin Mandia said the deal

Cybersecurity giant FireEye has agreed to sell its products business to a consortium led by private equity firm Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion.

The all-cash deal will split FireEye, the maker of network and email cybersecurity products, from its digital forensics and incident response arm Mandiant.

FireEye’s chief executive Kevin Mandia said the deal unlocks its “high-growth” Mandiant business, allowing it to stand alone as a separate business running incident response and security testing.

The move to split the two companies comes almost a decade after FireEye acquired Mandiant, and made Mandia chief executive.

Mandia said: “STG’s focus on fueling innovative market leaders in software and cybersecurity makes them an ideal partner for FireEye Products. We look forward to our relationship and collaboration on threat intelligence and expertise.”

STG managing partner William Chisholm said there is an “enormous untapped opportunity for the business that we are excited to crystallize by leveraging our significant security software sector experience and our market leading carve-out expertise.”

The company said the deal is expected to close by the end of the fourth quarter.

FireEye has become one of the more prominent names in cybersecurity, known for its research into hacking groups — some linked to governments — and its Mandiant unit for responding to major security incidents. Mandiant was called in to help Colonial Pipeline recover from a recent ransomware attack.

In December, FireEye admitted that its own networks had been hacked, a move praised across the cybersecurity industry for helping to speed up efforts that led to the discovery of the SolarWinds espionage attack, later attributed to Russian foreign intelligence.

FireEye becomes the latest cybersecurity giant to STG’s portfolio. In March, Symphony bought McAfee’s enterprise business for $4 billion and bought RSA for $2 billion.

News: Twitter starts rolling out Birdwatch fact checks inside tweets

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Twitter is looking to crowdsource its way out of misinformation woes with its new product Birdwatch which taps a network of engaged tweeters to add notes to misleading tweets. Today, Twitter announced that they are starting to roll out the Birdwatch notes to pilot participants across iOS, Android and desktop. The company launched a pilot

Twitter is looking to crowdsource its way out of misinformation woes with its new product Birdwatch which taps a network of engaged tweeters to add notes to misleading tweets. Today, Twitter announced that they are starting to roll out the Birdwatch notes to pilot participants across iOS, Android and desktop.

The company launched a pilot version of the program back in January, describing the effort as a way to add context to misinformation in real time.

“We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable” Product VP Keith Coleman wrote in a blog post at the time. “Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.”

That time is apparently now for an early set of Birdwatch pilot participants.

Twitter says that once Birdwatch notes are added to a tweet, users will have the opportunity to rate whether the feedback is helpful or not. If none of the replies are deemed helpful, the Birdwatch card itself will disappear, but if any notes are deemed helpful they’ll pop up directly inside the tweet.

There have been an awful lot of questions about how and whether Birdwatch will work inside the current social media framework. Using community feedback differs from more centralized efforts used by platforms like Facebook that have tapped independent fact-checking organizations. Twitter is clearly aiming to decentralize this effort as much as it can and put power in the hands of Birdwatch contributors, but with audiences of individual tweeters currently responsible for deeming the helpfulness and visibility of fact checks, it’s clear this is going to be a pretty messy solution at times.

News: With buyout, Cloudera hunts for relevance in a changing market

• June 2, 2021
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When Cloudera announced its sale to a pair of private equity firms yesterday for $5.3 billion, along with a couple of acquisitions of its own, the company detailed a new path that could help it drive back towards relevance in the big data market. When the company launched in 2008, Hadoop was in its early

When Cloudera announced its sale to a pair of private equity firms yesterday for $5.3 billion, along with a couple of acquisitions of its own, the company detailed a new path that could help it drive back towards relevance in the big data market.

When the company launched in 2008, Hadoop was in its early days. The open source project developed at Yahoo three years earlier was built to deal with the large amounts of data that the Internet pioneer generated. It became increasingly clear over time that every company would have to deal with growing data stores, and it seemed that Cloudera was in the right market at the right time.

And for a while things went well. Cloudera rode the Hadoop startup wave, garnering a cool billion in funding along the way, including a stunning $740 million check from Intel Capital in 2014. It then went public in 2018 to much fanfare.

But the markets had already started to shift by the time of its public debut. Hadoop, a highly labor-intensive way to manage data, was being supplanted by cheaper and less complex cloud-based solutions.

“The excitement around the original promise of the Hadoop market has contracted significantly. It’s incredibly expensive and complex to get it working effectively in an enterprise context,” Casey Aylward, an investor at Costanoa Ventures told TechCrunch.

The company likely saw that writing on the wall when it merged with another Hadoop-based company, Hortonworks in 2019. That transaction valued the combined entity at $5.2 billion, almost the same amount it sold for yesterday, two years down the road. The decision to sell and go private may also have been spurred by Carl Icahn buying an 18% stake in the company that same year.

Looking to the future, Cloudera’s sale could provide the enterprise unicorn room as it regroups.

Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insight & Strategies sees the deal as a positive step for the company. “I think this is good news for Cloudera because it now has the capital and flexibility to dive head first into SaaS. The company invented the entire concept of a data life cycle, implemented initially on premises, then extended to private and public clouds,” Moorhead said.

Adam Ronthal, Gartner Research VP agrees that it at least gives Cloudera more room to make necessary adjustments its market strategy as long as it doesn’t get stifled by its private equity overlords. “It should give Cloudera an opportunity to focus on their future direction with increased flexibility — provided they are able to invest in that future and that this does not just focus on cost cutting and maximizing profits. Maintaining a culture of innovation will be key,” Ronthal said.

Which brings us to the two purchases Cloudera also announced as part of its news package.

If you want to change direction in a hurry, there are worse ways than via acquisitions. And grabbing Datacoral and Cazena should help Cloudera alter its course more quickly than it could have managed on its own.

“[The] two acquisitions will help Cloudera capture some of the value on top of the lake storage layer — perhaps moving into different data management features and/or expanding into the compute layer for analytics and AI/ML use cases, where there has been a lot of growth and excitement in recent years,” Alyward said.

Chandana Gopal, Research Director for the future of intelligence at IDC agrees that the transactions give Cloudera some more modern options that could help speed up the data wrangling process. “Both the acquisitions are geared towards making the management of cloud infrastructure easier for end-users. Our research shows that data prep and integration takes 70%-80% of an analyst’s time versus the time spent in actual analysis. It seems like both these companies’ products will provide technology to improve the data integration/preparation experience,” she said.

The company couldn’t stay on the path it was on forever, certainly not with an activist investor breathing down its neck. Its recent efforts could give it the time away from public markets it needs to regroup. How successful Cloudera’s turnaround proves to be will depend on whether the private equity companies buying it can both agree on the direction and strategy for the company, while providing the necessary resources to push the company in a new direction. All of that and more will determine if these moves pay off in the end.

News: Gillmor Gang: Play It Again

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For the past several months or so, I’ve been writing an accompanying post to editions of the Gillmor Gang. Due to production issues, I’m usually at least a week behind the recording session for the target show. This originally seemed like an impediment to the process of enhancing the impact of the show, but over

For the past several months or so, I’ve been writing an accompanying post to editions of the Gillmor Gang. Due to production issues, I’m usually at least a week behind the recording session for the target show. This originally seemed like an impediment to the process of enhancing the impact of the show, but over time and various attempts to solve the out-of-sync timing problem, I began to see the delay actually produced some interesting context to the original recording. First and foremost, what seemed important weeks earlier became more nuanced as things developed — or often didn’t. Politics seemed loud and unprecedented in the moment; 10 days later, the ups and downs of the graph smoothed out the drama and accentuated the relative stability of intuitive analysis.

This in turn isolated some of the conflicts and pressure the media perceived as central to its ability to fund journalism, or more accurately nonfictional novelistic engagement and eyeball maintenance. And produced a wave of antagonism toward this repetitive ginned-up sawtooth of anger and despair. As the vaccines began to take root, we slowly but surely confirmed that we really didn’t have to live that way. Streaming and notifications are now in the process of moving into the mainstream, with media companies climbing into bed with tech giants and hybrid venture catalysts.

Cracks in this new infrastructure threaten to slow down the requisite belief that these changes will stick. Clubhouse seems to be going through a bloating effect on its gateway page; what once was a short list of 5 or 6 rooms now balloons to 20 or more entries. Topics, never my favorite mechanism for discovery, nail many of these conversations to the wall and move away from the underlying name intersections that suggest emergent themes rather than sandblasting them into the stage. Release notes of updates suggest the analytics are being mined for improvements to the differentiation with vanilla podcasts, but how they are surfaced is time sensitive to the momentum of the platform. The good news is that healthy injections from the founder and venture team will keep things afloat while we see the impact of the Android client. Competitive pressure, particularly from Kara Swisher on Twitter Spaces, will also help integrate mainstream and newsletter media with streaming audio innovation.

At a broader level, acquisitions and merger/alliances are recasting media companies as hybrid gorillas. Although AT&T is positioned by many as backing out of their foray into content, a more interesting dynamic is the combination of WarnerMedia scripted assets with Discovery’s sports and reality programming in an ad-supported streaming bundle. It’s reminiscent of the formation of MGM in the early days of Hollywood, blending a small beleaguered studio, Metro Pictures, with Sam Goldwyn’s independent near-bankrupt studio, firing Goldwyn but keeping the name, and installing a third studio’s Louis B. Mayer and his production head Irving Thalberg as executives of the bundled company. Not so coincidentally, it was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who was acquired by Amazon a few days later, bringing its library of the James Bond franchise, more than 4,000 classic films, and 17, 000 television properties to Prime’s 175 million active subscribers.

At various times, MGM and its United Artists acquisition have been bought and resold as power switched first from theaters to television and then to cable. Ted Turner famously bought the library and played it off on its Turner Classic Movies channel. Now the pandemic’s call to action has propelled digital transformation to the fore, and tossed yet another mix of the puzzle pieces into play. But MGM’s collapse in the 60’s and 70’s and the auctioning off of its backlot to real estate developers suggests something similar might be happening today with broadcast television networks losing out one by one when the music stops playing in this corporate game of musical chairs. Cable news may be blocked out if antitrust regulators refuse attempts to merge the new Warners Discovery with Comcast, the former now home for CNN and the latter MSNBC. Regulators will likely frown on two of the remaining 3 broadcast networks merging with a Viacom/CBS and Comcast /NBC/Universal deal.

Instead, the tech networks and their burgeoning social audio/newsletter platforms will virtualize the big studio model. Cable news will move from podcasts through Clubhouse and Spaces to newsletter brands, building tentpole events around technology news, innovations coverage, and startup deal flow. The scale of big incumbents like Netflix, Disney, and Amazon will produce 5,000+ executive interviews, with independent analysis from break-away blogs and newsletters looking a lot like a merger of MSNBC and CNBC. Apple and Spotify will emulate the ad-supported free tiers of their streaming networks to unbundle the music companies from their captive back catalogues and create a hybrid live performance promotional Top Forty for the play-from-anywhere crowd. The Marvel, DC, Star Wars cinematic universes will use the digital tier to promote theatrical experiences as the pandemic moves overseas and hopefully is suppressed globally over 2022. Politics, a trailing indicator, will be the arbiter of how quickly we can rearchitect in infrastructure, health care, and an equitable working majority rule of law. By then, maybe I can take a 3D VR trip through the MGM backlot and dream that this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, May 21, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

News: OroraTech’s space-based early wildfire warnings spark $7M investment

• June 2, 2021
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With wildfires becoming an ever more devastating annual phenomenon, it is in the whole planet’s interest to spot them and respond as early as possible — and the best vantage point for that is space. OroraTech is a German startup building a constellation of small satellites to power a global wildfire warning system, and will

With wildfires becoming an ever more devastating annual phenomenon, it is in the whole planet’s interest to spot them and respond as early as possible — and the best vantage point for that is space. OroraTech is a German startup building a constellation of small satellites to power a global wildfire warning system, and will be using a freshly raised €5.8M (~$7M) A round to kick things off.

Wildfires destroy tens of millions of acres of forest every year, causing immense harm to people and the planet in countless ways. Once they’ve grown to a certain size, they’re near impossible to stop, so the earlier they can be located and worked against, the better.

But these fires can start just about anywhere in a dried out forest hundreds of miles wide, and literally every minute and hour counts — watch towers, helicopter flights, and other frequently used methods may not be fast or exact enough to effectively counteract this increasingly serious threat. Not to mention they’re expensive and often dangerous jobs for those who perform them.

OroraTech’s plan is to use a constellation of about 100 satellites equipped with custom infrared cameras to watch the entire globe (or at least the parts most likely to burst into flame) at once, reporting any fire bigger than ten meters across within half an hour.

To start out with, the Bavarian company has used data from over a dozen satellites already in space, in order to prove out the service on the ground. But with this funding round they are set to put their own bird in the air, a shoebox-sized satellite with a custom infrared sensor that will be launched by Spire later this year. Onboard machine learning processing of this imagery simplifies the downstream process.

14 more satellites are planned for launch by 2023, presumably once they’ve kicked the proverbial tires on the first one and come up with the inevitable improvements.

“In order to cover even more regions in the future and to be able to give warning earlier, we aim to launch our own specialized satellite constellation into orbit,” said CEO and co-founder Thomas Grübler in a press release. “We are therefore delighted to have renowned investors on board to support us with capital and technological know-how in implementing our plans.”

Those renowned investors consist of Findus Venture and Ananda Impact Ventures, which led the round, followed by APEX Ventures, BayernKapital, Clemens Kaiser, SpaceTec Capital and Ingo Baumann. The company was spun out of research done by the founders at TUM, which maintains an interest.

“It is absolutely remarkable what they have built up and achieved so far despite limited financial resources and we feel very proud that we are allowed to be part of this inspiring and ambitious NewSpace project,” APEX’s Wolfgang Neubert said, and indeed it’s impressive to have a leading space-based data service with little cash (it raised an undisclosed seed about a year ago) and no satellites.

It’s not the only company doing infrared imagery of the Earth’s surface; SatelliteVu recently raised money to launch its own, much smaller constellation, though it’s focused on monitoring cities and other high-interest areas, not the vast expanse of forests. And ConstellR is aimed (literally) at the farming world, monitoring fields for precision crop management.

With money in its pocket Orora can expand and start providing its improved detection services, though sadly, it likely won’t be upgrading before wildfire season hits the northern hemisphere this year.

News: Startup Alley tickets are selling out in record numbers

• June 2, 2021
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Beware! There isn’t much time left to apply for Startup Alley. Take advantage of this opportunity before it’s too late. When you purchase a ticket for Startup Alley, you can opt into being considered for a spot in our inaugural Startup Alley+ cohort. This very cool and downright extraordinary business development opportunity kicks off in

Beware! There isn’t much time left to apply for Startup Alley. Take advantage of this opportunity before it’s too late.

When you purchase a ticket for Startup Alley, you can opt into being considered for a spot in our inaugural Startup Alley+ cohort. This very cool and downright extraordinary business development opportunity kicks off in July and takes you through TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 (September 21-23).

TechCrunch will select 50 startups to participate in Startup Alley+ and the only cost involved is the price you paid for your exhibitor’s pass. Here’s what Startup Alley+ delivers.

It all begins at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising in July, which you’ll attend for free. From there, you’ll receive three months of business development support. That support includes these three masterclasses on essential entrepreneurial topics:

• Key Principles of the Lean Startup Methodology with John Lynn, founder of CELA Innovation  
• How to Create Product/Market Fit with Dan Olsen, author of “The Lean Product Playbook”
• Outreach Strategies for Contacting VCs and Press with Annie Kadavy of Redpoint Ventures and TechCrunch editor Danny Crichton

You also get to perfect your pitch so you’re ready to impress potential customers at TC Disrupt. How? By pitching at one of our our weekly Extra Crunch Live events in the run-up to Disrupt.

And don’t forget — all Startup Alley exhibitors get two minutes to pitch live to the global Disrupt audience. This means you showcase your product to investors, media reps, corporate innovation teams and other attendees interested in your vertical.

What else? How about warm introductions to select VCs from the TechCrunch community? Check — we’ve got you covered on that front. Startup Alley+ cohort members will be introduced to relevant investors before Disrupt kicks off. Have your pitch deck ready and be prepared to give a product demonstration.

Times running out. Your chance to potentially join the Startup Alley+ cohort will not be around for too much longer.  Buy a Startup Alley Pass now. Take advantage of this opportunity and make the most of TechCrunch Disrupt 2021.

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

News: HBO Max launches ad-supported subscription for $9.99 per month

• June 2, 2021
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“Game of Thrones” might be over, but HBO Max is still breaking new ground, and even breaking the internet – this past weekend, HBO Max blacked out right before the finale of “Mare of Easttown,” likely due to traffic. But if you haven’t hopped aboard the HBO Max train yet, it might be time to

“Game of Thrones” might be over, but HBO Max is still breaking new ground, and even breaking the internet – this past weekend, HBO Max blacked out right before the finale of “Mare of Easttown,” likely due to traffic. But if you haven’t hopped aboard the HBO Max train yet, it might be time to try it out. Today, the streaming platform premieres an ad-supported subscription at $9.99 per month. Its existing service – which features no ads – costs $14.99 per month. Subscribers can save 15% on their subscription, no matter which version they choose, if they pre-pay for an entire year. 

The advertisements aren’t the only drawback of the more affordable subscription option. The ad-supported tier offers a maximum quality of 1080p, which is still pretty good for most consumers, unless you’re watching “Friends: The Reunion” in your 4k home theater. But, lower-tier subscribers won’t be able to download content to view offline, nor will they have access to same-day film premieres of Warner Bros.’s newest theatrical releases. However, these films will become available to stream months after release. On the bright side, ads will not appear on original HBO programming.

With just four minutes of ad time per hour, the ad-supported tier “launches with a commitment” to maintaining the lowest volume of commercials among popular streaming services. HBO Max follows in the footsteps of Hulu, which also offers a discounted subscription with ads for $5.99 per month, as opposed to $11.99 per month. But on Hulu, a half-hour show can contain almost five minutes of unskippable ad time. Meanwhile, Netflix offers its most basic plan – which allows streaming on one screen at a time without HD – for $8.99 per month. Its standard plan is $13.99 a month. Now that HBO Max has a more competitively priced option, it might give these other platforms a run for their money. 

What kinds of ads can you expect to see on HBO Max? The company says that subscribers can expect “a greater personalization in the ads they see” over time, with “more innovation in formats to come.” This could resemble the ad experience on Hulu, which has experimented with viewer-friendly binge-watch ads.

As of April 2021, HBO Max and HBO reached a combined 44.2 million subscribers, and in Q1 of the year, added 2.7 million domestic subscribers. By comparison, Netflix reported an increase of 4 million subscribers in the same period, bringing them to about 207 million global subscribers. However, only 450,000 of those new subscribers come from the US and Canada.

On June 29, HBO Max will launch in 39 Latin American markets. Later in the year, the streaming service is expected to roll out in Europe. This will only further the platform’s rapid growth – in 2019, AT&T, which owns HBO Max, set the modest goal to attain 50 million subscribers by 2025. Now, HBO Max expects it will reach between 120 million and 150 million subscribers by the same date.

The ad-supported subscription option for HBO Max is available now.