Monthly Archives: September 2021

News: Grab your free Disrupt Expo Pass to access these breakout sessions at Disrupt next week

• September 17, 2021
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As we get closer to TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, the list of our special breakout sessions just gets bigger and better. The wide range of tech startups is on full display in these sessions hosted by our partners. What’s more, these smaller, interactive gatherings pack a lot of advice, insight and value — with plenty of

As we get closer to TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, the list of our special breakout sessions just gets bigger and better. The wide range of tech startups is on full display in these sessions hosted by our partners. What’s more, these smaller, interactive gatherings pack a lot of advice, insight and value — with plenty of time to get answers to your pressing questions.

A note from the home office: Get a free Expo Pass to access all of these session and more for a limited time here.

Here’s the latest round of breakout sessions you can join on September 21-23. Check out the Disrupt 2021 agenda for the exact dates and times and save room in your schedule to expand your mind and your opportunities.

Using Visual Communication to Build Your Startup’s Brand

In today’s increasingly visual world, visual communication is the new currency between brands and their customers. So what are the opportunities startups and their clients can use to enhance brand connection? Join Canva’s Strategic Account Executive, Spencer Llewellyn, to learn how the visual economy has transformed the tech industry and powered the evolution of branding and customer experiences. Presented by Canva.

The $49B Developer Landscape

Over the past 20 years, IT has witnessed a power shift from CIOs to developers. Any developer with an idea has been given empowerment and authority to innovate. This has led to the creation of a 1,000 companies that create products used, influenced or bought by software development teams. In this session, we’ll discuss the 17 landscape segments, the CIO transition from decision maker to governor, and the developer “pay for value” mentality causing the emergence of product-led growth (PLG) businesses. Presented by Dell for Entrepreneurs

The Dark Matter of Workflows: Business Technology’s Big Opportunity

According to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, we’re only familiar with 5 percent of matter and energy in the universe. The rest is dark. The same can be said about the nature of work. Organizations only have visibility into a small percentage of the actual work taking place because the complexities surrounding it have been growing exponentially. With enormous amounts of data, systems, applications, workflows and more floating around, leaders and employees feel the gravitational mass of work in their stress levels, yet there’s no clear unified system of record for it. The most successful startups will be the ones that seek to understand, uncover and harness the dark matter of work now — before they launch into hypergrowth mode. Andrew Filev, founder of a leading collaborative work management platform that went from bootstrapping to billion-dollar acquisition, will discuss how he’s helping startups bring to light the dark matter of work and harness workflows for operational efficiencies. Presented by Wrike.

Thrive with an Untethered Workforce

Shark Tank investor and cybersecurity leader, Robert Herjavec chats with Ben Wright, founder and CEO of Velocity Global, about how to thrive with an untethered workforce. The mindsets of employers and talent has converged to work with anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyhow. Choice is paramount: employers engage all types of talent from full-time to project freelancers; people live anywhere, work for anyone, in a work-life balance. When priorities align, the possibilities are endless. Presented by Velocity Global

TTA Taiwan Pavilion Pitch-off Session: Healthcare and Enterprise

Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) champions entrepreneurship and innovation to build a vibrant global startup ecosystem in Taiwan. Twenty out of 40 promising TTA startups will unveil their latest innovation related to Healthcare and Enterprise solutions. Presented by Taiwan Tech Arena.

How to Approach Fundraising from Corporate VCs

Global CVC funding hit an all-time high of $73B in 2020. Corporations are increasingly investing in the startup community and can be a valuable resource beyond capital. But not all corporate VCs are the same. Understanding a corporate investor’s strategy, mandate and processes can improve how startups successfully fundraise from corporate VCs. Intuit Ventures recently invested in Clearco, a $2B+ startup that is disrupting traditional VC with founder-friendly, equity-free capital. Join Shveta Mujumdar (VP of corporate development at Intuit), Andrew D’Souza (co-founder and CEO at Clearco), and Michele Romanow (co-founder and president at Clearco) to learn what corporate VCs look for in an investment and how to best position your company and showcase how you are solving your customers’ biggest problems. Presented by Intuit.

TTA Taiwan Pavilion Pitch-off Session: Smart Tech

Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA) champions entrepreneurship and innovation to build a vibrant global startup ecosystem in Taiwan. Twenty out of 40 promising TTA startups will unveil their latest innovation related to Smart Tech. Presented by Taiwan Tech Arena.

The Moore’s law of software – onboarding time

For software companies, onboarding is the single barrier to scaling. For software buyers, the time it takes to adopt products stifles innovation regardless of industry. David Boskovic, CEO and Co-Founder of hyper-growth startup Flatfile, dives into the fundamental economics of data exchange and how it’s the Moore’s law of software. One prediction: Boskovic expects that onboarding time will halve every year, driving exponential growth in software innovation over the next decade. Presented by Flatfile

Electric Generation: The Next Frontier For American Business

This session will explore the ways in which smart electric mobility impacts businesses, and what a transition to electric will look like for commercial fleets. Host Chuck Nice will be joined by TechCrunch panelist Tim Cannis, CEO of Ford Pro, and Sam Abuelsamid, longtime engineer in the automotive industry-turned auto industry journalist. Nitty-gritty car talk will blend with discussion of sustainability and imagery to elaborate on the future of the topic. Presented by Ford

Accelerating your direct-to-consumer business

The direct-to-consumer landscape has radically accelerated over the past few years, becoming an even more critical lever for brands to build relationships with customers than ever before. This is a new era in which brands must understand the shifts in the customer journey to drive transformational business growth to be ready for what’s next. Join Google and Lenovo to understand key strategies to enable business success and delight customers in 2022 and beyond. Presented by Google

Top Japanese Startups pitch their exciting new tech live

Top Japanese Startups pitch their exciting new tech! Come watch the live JETRO pitch session 9/23 at 1PM PST. Learn about the latest advancements from Japan in fields like Environment, Entertainment, Wellness, and Fitness. Companies include AC Biode, AMATELUS, everblue, hemVR, NeuralX, PJP Eye, R’s KOSO, Samaria, SpoLive Interactive, and XPAND. Presented by JETRO

Accelerate your growth using agile market research throughout the product lifecycle

Conducting market research at each stage of your product lifecycle is a critical component to a successful product launch and sustained growth in an increasingly competitive market. While traditional market research can be costly and require a specialized team, agile market research software makes it possible for anyone on your team to get the insights you need fast. Join Momentive.ai to learn how to conduct your own market research to identify what kinds of products and features users value most, get insight into the competitive landscape, and track your brand’s awareness and shifting perceptions over time. Presented by Momentive.ai

How to build a remote-first engineering culture

How do you build culture with globally dispersed engineers? Marcelo Lebre, COO and co-founder of Remote and former VP of Engineering at Unbabel, understands better than anyone the challenges of scaling an international workforce of engineers. In this talk, Marcelo will teach you how to adopt a remote-first mindset and how to scale a distributed team of engineers while retaining your culture. Presented by Remote

Scaling Businesses and Creating Value with the Everywhere Workforce

As startup founders scale their companies, increase velocity and eye potential exits, flexibility in talent that can execute a lean, mean go-to-market strategy is quickly becoming not only a necessity but a differentiator. Join Insight Partners’ Hilary Gosher and Ivanti’s Melissa Puls in conversation with Upwork’s Tim Sanders about how hybrid workforces are the new cloud when it comes to accelerating revenue, value creation and businesses overall. Presented by Upwork

How Netflix Saved Cybersecurity – Roundtable

We’ve all heard that membership has its privileges, right? In fact, the membership Economy has forever changed why and what we buy…until we go to work. For many of us, the tools we buy at work are still tied to old-school ownership models: The millions of dollars we spend on technology solutions and services tied to multiyear licensing agreements effectively hold us hostage regardless of product efficacy. In cybersecurity specifically,, the transactional nature of such purchases has not and cannot keep pace with the growing costs of breaches or the ease with which hacks can be executed. We’ll show how membership–the Netflix model–can successfully replace ownership and usher in a whole new taxonomy of cybersecurity defense. Presented by Cyvatar

CISO2CISO: On the Wrong Side of Disruption – Roundtable

Disruption isn’t always a good thing. Often, we fear it. We resist prioritizing even necessary change out of fear that the disruption it may bring will be more detrimental than beneficial. Are we wrong? Are we right? Cyvatar Co-Founder and ex-global CISO Craig Goodwin and Alteryx CISO Billy Spears debate both possibilities as they look at the ways we prioritize risk and disruption at work. Presented by Cyvatar

Why Can’t We Stop Ransomware? – Roundtable

This will be an open discussion with participation from audience members about the challenges and consequences of our current approaches to defending against ransomware attacks. The reemergence of REvil over the Labor Day weekend and the uptick in ransomware attacks on schools and universities remind us that hacks for ransom are still among the most attractive and lucrative threats around. Our open forum will uncover ways to combat malicious actors better and thwart the successful execution of ransomware. Presented by Cyvatar

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place September 21-23. Don’t miss the big value in our smaller breakout sessions. Grab your free Expo Pass and, tune in and take away insight to help you build a better business.

News: Web host Epik was warned of a critical website bug weeks before it was hacked

• September 17, 2021
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Hackers associated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous say they have leaked gigabytes of data from Epik, a web host and domain registrar that provides services to far-right sites like Gab, Parler and 8chan, which found refuge in Epik after they were booted from mainstream platforms. In a statement attached to a torrent file of the

Hackers associated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous say they have leaked gigabytes of data from Epik, a web host and domain registrar that provides services to far-right sites like Gab, Parler and 8chan, which found refuge in Epik after they were booted from mainstream platforms.

In a statement attached to a torrent file of the dumped data this week, the group said the 180 gigabytes amounts to a “decade’s worth” of company data, including “all that’s needed to trace actual ownership and management” of the company. The group claimed to have customer payment histories, domain purchases and transfers, and passwords, credentials, and employee mailboxes. The cache of stolen data also contains files from the company’s internal web servers, and databases that contain customer records for domains that are registered with Epik.

The hackers did not say how they obtained the breached data or when the hack took place, but timestamps on the most recent files suggest the hack likely happened in late February.

Epik initially told reporters it was unaware of a breach, but an email sent out by founder and chief executive Robert Monster on Wednesday alerted users to an “alleged security incident.”

TechCrunch has since learned that Epik was warned of a critical security flaw weeks before its breach.

Security researcher Corben Leo contacted Epik’s chief executive Monster over LinkedIn in January about a security vulnerability on the web host’s website. Leo asked if the company had a bug bounty or a way to report the vulnerability. LinkedIn showed Monster had read the message but did not respond.

Leo told TechCrunch that a library used on Epik’s WHOIS page for generating PDF reports of public domain records had a decade-old vulnerability that allowed anyone to remotely run code directly on the internal server without any authentication, such as a company password.

“You could just paste this [line of code] in there and execute any command on their servers,” Leo told TechCrunch.

Leo ran a proof-of-concept command from the public-facing WHOIS page to ask the server to display its username, which confirmed that code could run on Epik’s internal server, but he did not test to see what access the server had as doing so would be illegal.

It’s not known if the Anonymous hacktivists used the same vulnerability that Leo discovered. (Part of the stolen cache also includes folders relating to Epik’s WHOIS system, but the hacktivists left no contact information and could not be reached for comment.) But Leo contends that if a hacker exploited the same vulnerability and the server had access to other servers, databases or systems on the network, that access could have allowed access to the kind of data stolen from Epik’s internal network in February.

“I am really guessing that’s how they got owned,” Leo told TechCrunch, who confirmed that the flaw has since been fixed.

Monster confirmed he received Leo’s message on LinkedIn, but did not answer our questions about the breach or say when the vulnerability was patched. “We get bounty hunters pitching their services. I probably just thought it was one of those,” said Monster. “I am not sure if I actioned it. Do you answer all your LinkedIn spams?”

News: Rolls-Royce’s all-electric aircraft completes 15-minute maiden voyage

• September 17, 2021
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Rolls-Royce, best known in aviation for its jet engines, has taken an all-electric airplane on its maiden voyage. The “Spirit of Innovation” completed a 15 minute flight.

Rolls-Royce, best known in aviation for its jet engines, has taken an all-electric airplane on its maiden voyage. The “Spirit of Innovation” completed a 15 minute flight, marking “the beginning of an intensive flight-testing phase in which we will be collecting valuable performance data on the aircraft’s electrical power and propulsion system,” the company announced.

Rolls Royce said the one-seat airplane has “the most power-dense battery pack every assembled for an aircraft.” The aircraft uses a 6,000 cell battery pack with a three-motor powertrain that currently delivers 400kW (500-plus horsepower), and Rolls-Royce said the aircraft will eventually achieve speeds of over 300 MPH.

The flight comes about a year after the originally scheduled takeoff and about six months after taxi trials. Rolls-Royce is also developing an air taxi with manufacturer Tecnam, with the aim of delivering an “all-electric passenger aircraft for the commuter market,” according to the companies. It has previously teamed with Siemens and Airbus on another e-plane concept.

Aircraft companies have been exploring electric airplanes for a number of years, as air travel and cargo accounts for an increasing amount of greenhouse gases. The World Wildlife Foundation has called it “currently the most carbon intensive activity an individual can make.”

Weight is a much bigger problem for airplanes that it is for cars, however. Ford’s all-electric Lightning pickup weighs 1,800 pounds more than the gas-powered model, and offers a range that’s slightly under half. However, if you added 1,800 pounds to to a Cessna 206 Turbo Stationair, you’d exceed its useful load by 500 pounds before you even loaded passengers (or the pilot) — so it wouldn’t even get off the ground.

The project was half funded by the Aerospace Technology Institute and UK government, with the aim of eventually creating all-electric passenger planes. “This is not only about breaking a world record; the advanced battery and propulsion technology developed for this programme has exciting applications for the Urban Air Mobility market and can help make ‘jet zero’ a reality,” said Rolls-Royce CEO Warren East.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

News: Choices and constraints: How DTC companies decide which strategy to follow

• September 17, 2021
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In DTC, how companies decide omnichannel strategies depends on how well they know what their customers’ choices are and what their ideal strategy will be.

Companies typically have to settle on strategies that align with their customers, employees, investors, and regulators. The more they know about how the other side will decide, the clearer their own strategies become.

If regulators always prefer choice for consumers, then it is easy for a platform to allow multiple payment choices: Shopify allows multiple payment options from its partners, Apple doesn’t.

By regulatory intervention, it will have to now.

Nash equilibrium and Netflix time

Nash equilibrium is a fascinating, post-facto explanation for some of the interesting decisions you will often see in business.

In simple terms, Nash equilibrium states that if you have clarity on the other side’s decision, you can make yours without regret. In other words, there is no incentive to change strategy once each side knows what the optimal position of the other side is, in their combined transaction.

I see this playing out every weekend at home. I don’t mind reading a book alone or watching Netflix with my kid, but when I am available for Netflix and my kid decides to read a book, it is a bummer.

DTCs, DNVBs and game theory

In DTC, how companies decide their omnichannel strategy depends on how well they know what their customers’ choices are and what their ideal strategy will be. In many transactions, constraints are actually good forcing functions — they narrow down choices and help you arrive at an equilibrium faster and cheaper.

The marketing and public-market filing languages make for a fascinating read into the minds of companies.

When Warby Parker filed its IPO prospectus last month, the company referred to its digitally-native status in the past tense. The model was effectively flipped in 2020, as its share of online sales to total sales dropped from 65% to 40%. Meanwhile, its physical store count increased from 126 to 145.

News: WarnerMedia’s Andy Forssell will discuss HBO Max at Disrupt 2021

• September 17, 2021
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In May 2020, WarnerMedia launched HBO Max into a crowded streaming landscape. In spite of early struggles, the timing couldn’t have been better. When the world was stuck at home, struggling to find new sources of entertainment amid a global pandemic, HBO’s latest attempt at an app-based platform rose in the ranks alongside fellow newly

In May 2020, WarnerMedia launched HBO Max into a crowded streaming landscape. In spite of early struggles, the timing couldn’t have been better. When the world was stuck at home, struggling to find new sources of entertainment amid a global pandemic, HBO’s latest attempt at an app-based platform rose in the ranks alongside fellow newly launched service, Disney+.

The platform builds on HBO’s much-loved original prestige programming, while taking advantage of a day and date approach to streaming films, which many studios have opened up to amid worldwide theater shutdowns. In particular, its sister studio Warner Bros. has premiered a number of big-budget films on the service — including “Wonder Woman 1984” and “Space Jam: A New Legacy” — as the pandemic has shown no sign of slowing.

The past year has brought plenty of channels for the service, as well. Not everyone is thrilled about the pandemic trend of bypassing the theater. Sopranos creator David Chase was recently quoted as being “extremely angry” about the HBO Max release of the prequel — news that followed Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit against Disney over its own streaming release of “Black Widow.” The company has evolved strategies, removing its offering from Amazon Prime Channels and adding a lower-cost ad-based tier to Max.

WarnerMedia EVP and head of business operations for HBO Max Andy Forssell will be joining us at our virtual TechCrunch Disrupt next week on September 21-23 to discuss the service’s launch during a turbulent time, as well as what the future holds for the app, and video streaming in general. Prior to joining WarnerMedia in 2019, Forssell served as the COO of Otter Media and Fullscreen, Inc. and was the acting CEO and SVP of Hulu.

Disrupt starts next week. Get your ticket now for less than $100 before the price goes up in a few short days.

News: Boston Dynamics owner Hyundai deploys Spot for factory safety monitoring

• September 17, 2021
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Back in June, Hyundai completed a deal for controlling interest in Boston Dynamics. The Korean automotive giant no doubt has some grand plans for integrating the Massachusetts-based firm’s technology into a lot of their forward-looking concept mobility vehicles — for now, however, it’s more about putting existing robots to work. Hyundai today announced the arrival

Back in June, Hyundai completed a deal for controlling interest in Boston Dynamics. The Korean automotive giant no doubt has some grand plans for integrating the Massachusetts-based firm’s technology into a lot of their forward-looking concept mobility vehicles — for now, however, it’s more about putting existing robots to work.

Hyundai today announced the arrival of the drably-named “Factory Safety Service Robot.” It immediately began referring to the unit as “the Robot” for reasons of brevity in the announcement release, and I’m inclined to do the same, because who has the time to type out “Factory Safety Service Robot” a dozen times?

The Robot (see?) is essentially a modded up version of Spot designed for safety inspections at factories. Naturally, Hyundai is starting close to home, rolling out its first pilot at a Seoul plant for subsidiary, Kia.

The Spot, er, Robot, comes equipped for lidar and a thermal camera, which scan the space for high-temperatures, fire hazards and open doors. If it senses something off, it will send an alert through a secure site. It shares images and data in real time, and like Spot, can either operate autonomously or be controlled remotely.

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“The Factory Safety Service Robot is the first collaboration project with Boston Dynamics. The Robot will help detect risks and secure people’s safety in industrial sites,” Hyundai’s Dong Jin Hyun said in a release. “We will also continue to create smart services that detect dangers at industrial sites and help support a safe work environment through continuous collaborations with Boston Dynamics.”

On the whole, if you know what Spot can do, you pretty much get the gist with Robot here, albeit with additional mounted sensors. Earlier this week, Boston Dynamics announced additional data collecting features for the robot.

News: Former Instacart CFO Sagar Sanghvi joins Accel as its newest partner

• September 17, 2021
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Instacart‘s chief financial officer Sagar Sanghvi has departed from the on-demand grocery delivery company after nearly six years and is returning to his investing roots. Specifically, Sanghvi has joined Accel as a partner focused on global growth-stage consumer and enterprise investments. Prior to becoming CFO of Instacart, Sanghvi served as the company’s vice president of

Instacart‘s chief financial officer Sagar Sanghvi has departed from the on-demand grocery delivery company after nearly six years and is returning to his investing roots. Specifically, Sanghvi has joined Accel as a partner focused on global growth-stage consumer and enterprise investments.

Prior to becoming CFO of Instacart, Sanghvi served as the company’s vice president of finance and strategy. Interestingly, when he became CFO of Instacart in 2019, he was succeeding Ravi Gupta, who left the company to join Sequoia Capital as a partner on its growth team.

Sanghvi and Gupta worked together as investors at KKR (after Sanghvi had worked as an analyst for Goldman Sachs), so it is notable they are following similar career paths of first working in finance and then becoming operators before transitioning into VC roles. Both joined Instacart in 2015. And Gupta is the one who introduced Sanghvi to Accel’s Miles Clements years ago.

When Sanghvi joined Instacart, it had approximately 300 employees. By the time he’d left earlier this year, it had more than 1,500.

“I’ve been through quite the roller coaster of ups and downs along the way. It was the classic Silicon Valley journey. During my time there, a few crazy things happened,” he told TechCrunch. “ Amazon bought Whole Foods. We experienced the COVID pandemic and lockdowns, which led to an amazing wave of demand. It was an interesting time to be navigating the company.”

And while Sanghvi says he would definitely rather see a business be smaller “than have COVID happen to the world,” it was a time where he learned a lot in helping grow the company.

One of the things Sanghvi worked on during his time at Instacart was a $200 million venture round in October 2020 that valued the company at $17.7 billion. (Since then it raised another $265 million at a $39 billion valuation.) In fact, during his tenure, the company raised more than $2 billion.

But now, Sanghvi will be the one investing in other companies’ rounds — out of Accel’s Palo Alto office.

While his Instacart experience is clearly relevant to the consumer space, Sanghvi said he’ll be working with not just consumer-focused startups, but also a lot of enterprise solutions.

“One of the things that drew me to Miles and the team was the experience and success Accel as a firm has had investing in all different types of companies within the technology sector and so I’m hoping to diversify my experience,” he told TechCrunch.

Clements praised what he described as Sanghvi’s “humility and versatility.”

“He’s done everything from raising $2 billion of capital to being in the minutiae of evaluating back office automation software. He has led a company that is on its way to being an iconic consumer brand, but he’s also been a media investor at KKR,” Clements said. “He guided Instacart through some massive recent fundraises but only because he has also helped navigate through some previous existential challenges. So he brings a lot of natural empathy to founders and entrepreneurs.”

For his part, Sanghvi is eager to start investing as part of the Accel team.

When deciding to move to the venture world, he said, he was looking for a “very well-known brand” that invested across at all stages. He found that in Accel, he said.

“One of the things that was important to me was to find the type of people who really care about the success of companies, and in every person I met at Accel, I could see they took that responsibility very seriously,” Sanghvi told TechCrunch.

He officially started in his new role last week, so he’s actively scoping out investments as I type.

News: Aurora Propulsion Technologies closes €1.7M seed for spacecraft maneuvering and deorbiting tech

• September 17, 2021
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More spacecraft will be sent to orbit this year than ever before in human history, and the number of satellite launches is only anticipated to increase through the rest of the decade. Under these crowded conditions, being able to maneuver satellites in space and deorbit them when they reach the end of their useful life

More spacecraft will be sent to orbit this year than ever before in human history, and the number of satellite launches is only anticipated to increase through the rest of the decade. Under these crowded conditions, being able to maneuver satellites in space and deorbit them when they reach the end of their useful life will be key.

Enter Aurora Propulsion Technologies. It’s one of a handful of startups that has emerged in the past few years to help simplify the problem of spacecraft propulsion. Since its founding in 2018, the Finnish company has developed two products – a tiny thruster engine and a plasma braking system – and will be testing both in an in-orbit demonstration in the fourth quarter of this year. Aurora’s activities have caught the eye of investors: the company has just closed a €1.7 million ($2 million) seed round to bring its technology to market.

The round was led by Lithuanian VC firm Practica Capital, with additional participation from the state-owned private equity company TESI (Finnish Industry Investment Ltd.) and Kluz Ventures. Individual investors also participated.

Aurora’s first in-orbit demonstration, Aurora Sat-1, will be heading to space on a Rocket Lab rideshare mission, the company announced last month. On that satellite will be two modules. The first module will contain six Aurora “resistojet” engines, designed to help small spacecraft adjust their attitude (the satellite’s orientation, not its mood) and de-tumble. Aurora will also test its Plasma Brake technology, which could be used to de-orbit satellites or even to conduct deep space missions.

Each resistojet thruster comes in at just around one centimeter long, and it moves the spacecraft using microliters of water and propellant. The six thrusters are distributed around the satellite in such a way to facilitate movement in virtually any direction, and the thruster can also modulate the temperature of the water and the strength of the puff of steam that’s discharged to generate movement.

Aurora CEO Roope Takala, who previously worked for Nokia, likened the innovations in weight and size in the space industry – which we see in the resistojet – to what happened to cell phones and computers twenty years ago. “The industry moves very slow,” he said in a recent interview with TechCrunch. “In the old space era, it took a quarter to develop a rocket engine – that would be a quarter of a century. Now, it takes two quarters of a year. That’s what we did.”

The Plasma Brake uses an electrically charged microtether to generate a lump of protons to generate drag. That’s ideal for de-orbiting a spacecraft, but interestingly (and counterintuitively), the Plasma Brake could also be used for traveling away from the planet, Takala said. That’s because when you go outside the Earth’s magnetosphere, the Plasma Brake becomes unstable and moves with solar wind (which is also plasma). “The same product can jump onto that flow of plasma from the sun and extract energy from that,” Takala explained. “In that context we can use it as an interplanetary traveling tool.”

Theoretically, if a spacecraft was equipped with multiple tethers extending different directions, it could be used to rotate and guide the spacecraft, like a sailboat, he added. This technology is only scalable to a certain degree, however, so don’t expect it to be sending a crewed spacecraft into deep space anytime soon. That’s mostly due to limitations in the material strength of the Plasma Brake tethers, but the tech can be used for satellites up to around 1,000 kilograms.

“That’s our future. That’s where we’re aiming,” Takala said. “We’re focused now for the short term on low Earth orbit with the Plasma Brake and the attitude control [resistojet], and later on when the moon businesses kick off as they are slowly starting to do, then we’ll probably be looking at that way.”

The Plasma Brake and resistojet thruster would need to be put on spacecraft before they launch to orbit, but Aurora is in conversation with other companies of the potential of in-orbit installation of Plasma Brakes for existing space junk. Looking to the short-term, the company is going to use the funding to productize the technology for low Earth orbit and to serialize its production, as well as to add features to the products to equip them for satellites larger than CubeSats.

In the longer term, Aurora has a vision of conducting missions in deep space. “We started off from the idea that we want to make a technology that fits into a really small spacecraft, [and] travels really fast so that we can catch up with the Voyager probes,” Takala said.

“First to the moon and then to Mars, Venus, and then one day we may be able to catch up with the Voyagers and take a big trip.”

News: Extra Crunch roundup: Adtech investing, Intuit buys Mailchimp, ideal customer profiles

• September 17, 2021
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In school, it’s highly unethical to copy someone else’s work and pass it off as your own. In business, however, it is expected.

Major gains in online advertising have boosted valuations for adtech startups since the pandemic began, but one insider says investors are missing the party.

“Adtech is having a moment,” writes industry veteran Casey Saran.

“And while much of the oxygen has been soaked up by large legacy companies hitting the public market, there have been smaller deals that indicate a hunger for better creative adtech.”

Saran shares five reasons “why VCs should consider ratcheting up their investment into adtech startups building the next generation of creative tools.”

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On Wednesday, September 22 at 9:05 a.m PT, I’m moderating “The Path for Underrepresented Entrepreneurs,” a panel discussion at Disrupt 2021.

Our conversation will examine some of the unique challenges facing founders from historically marginalized groups, the strategies they used along the way, and the disruptive changes we need to consider if we want to see fundamental change.

I’ll be speaking with:

• Hana Mohan, founder & CEO, MagicBell
• Leslie Feinzaig, founder & CEO, Female Founders Alliance
• Stephen Bailey, co-founder & CEO, ExecOnline

I hope you’ll attend; we’ll take audience questions after our discussion concludes. Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week, and have a great weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

5 things you need to win your first customer

Congratulations on shipping your product, but how much do you know about your target customers?

Companies that haven’t created an ideal customer profile and performed a SWOT analysis are making big bets on guesswork and intuition. Sometimes that works out, but more frequently, it leads to tears.

In a guest post that walks readers through the fundamentals of creating customer personas that map to your company’s goals, Grammarly product marketing lead Bryan Dsouza shares five basic requirements for customer acquisition.

“Understanding and executing on these things can guarantee you that first customer win, provided you do them well and with sincerity,” he says.

“Your investors will also see the fruits of your labor and be comforted knowing their dollars are at good work.”

4 ways to leverage ROAS to triple lead generation

In school, it’s highly unethical to copy someone else’s work and pass it off as your own. In business, however, it is expected.

Xiaoyun TU, global director of demand generation at Brightpearl, wrote a comprehensive guide for how to use the key metric of return on advertising spend (ROAS) to triple your company’s lead generation.

“A ‘good’ ROAS score is different for each company and campaign,” she says. “If your figure isn’t where you’d like it to be, you can leverage ROAS data to create targeted campaigns and personalized experiences.”

3 strategies to make adopting new HR tech easier for hiring managers

Most of us prefer to trust our instincts instead of letting automated tools help us make decisions, particularly when it comes to hiring. But that’s not smart.

If your startup relies on an ad hoc hiring process, you’re probably not tracking candidates properly, there’s likely little consistency regarding how they’re treated, and bias can play a major role in who gets hired.

It’s fine to be skeptical of automated hiring tools — but not ignorant.

What could stop the startup boom?

In yesterday’s edition of The Exchange, Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm speculated about the conditions that could combine to cool off a hot startup market currently fueled by low interest rates and a sweeping digital transformation.

“From where we stand, the factors underpinning the startup fundraising boom appear solid and unlikely to unwind overnight. Still, no golden period shines forever, and even today’s luster will eventually tarnish.”

Intuit’s $12B Mailchimp acquisition is about expanding its small business focus

Before news broke this week that Intuit was acquiring Mailchimp for $12 billion, the ’80s-born fintech giant’s biggest buy was spending $7.1 billion last year for Credit Karma.

In the last few years, Mailchimp “has been expanding upon its core email marketing functionality” with offerings like web design and CRM, writes enterprise reporter Ron Miller.

The industry watchers he interviewed said the move signals Intuit’s interest in acquiring and serving more SMB customers with a variety of tools:

• Laurie McCabe, co-founder and partner, SMB Group
• Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst, CRM Essentials
• Holger Mueller, analyst, Constellation Research

Forge’s SPAC deal is a bet on unicorn illiquidity

“One of my favorite long-term issues with the late-stage startup market is that it is far better at creating value than it is at finding an exit point for that accreted value,” Alex Wilhelm writes for The Exchange. “More simply, the startup market is excellent at creating unicorns but somewhat poor at taking them public.”

That’s good news for Forge Global, a technology startup that operates a market for secondary transactions in private companies, with Alex dubbing its plans to go public via a SPAC combination “perfectly reasonable.”

Dear Sophie: Should I apply for citizenship if I have a conviction?

Dear Sophie,

At Burning Man a few years ago, I was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for smoking marijuana in public (in my car) and driving under the influence.

I currently have a green card and want to apply for U.S. citizenship next year.

Can I? If so, how should I handle my criminal record?

— Remorseful About the Reefer

Atlanta’s sundry startups join in global VC funding boom

Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim continued their tour of U.S. cities after hitting up Chicago and Boston in recent weeks.

This time, they dug into Atlanta’s booming startup scene, which is seeing record capital inflows.

“The picture that forms is one of a city enjoying a rising tide of venture activity, boosted by some local dynamics that may have helped some of its earlier-stage companies scale for cheaper than they might have in other markets,” they write.

News: A knock against bootstrapping

• September 17, 2021
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Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on a weekly basis now. She’s been a friend for years, and a colleague now twice-over for Natasha and Alex and we could not be more

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on a weekly basis now. She’s been a friend for years, and a colleague now twice-over for Natasha and Alex and we could not be more excited.

That personal news aside, here’s the rundown for today’s show!

• Funding rounds in the logistics and infra markets: We went physical-world with our funding round roundup this week. BridgeLinx put together the largest Seed round in Pakistan’s history, Releaf is doing incredibly interesting agtech work in Nigeria, and Stord’s huge round from earlier in the week brought us to Atlanta.
• And oh boy has Atlanta had a week. TechCrunch did a deep dive into the city’s superlative startup fundraising in recent quarters, and, of course, one of its home-grown startups sold to Intuit for $12 billion just a few days ago. We had a few thoughts on the Intuit-Mailchimp transaction, even if we tried to steer clear of territory that we’ve already tread. For more about the controversy, Business Insider wrote about how some Mailchimp employees are reacting to the deal.
• From there we turned to a layoff story. Casper, the DTC mattress company that is now public, had another round of layoffs that cut three C-suite executives. It brought us into a conversation about how Apple’s tracking updates are impacting startups in this category more broadly, and if more layoffs are on the horizon. 
• And then there were IPOs to discuss. Natasha talked us through the news that Quizlet may go public soon, which meant we had to chat edtech for a minute. Rounding out the Going Public conversation was notes on both Toast and Freshworks. Alex does not apologize for his lame joke, we hasten to add.

Disrupt is next week, so expect some possible changes to the regular Equity show lineup if the news cycle gets dicey. Hugs!