Yearly Archives: 2021

News: NoRedInk raises $50 million Series B to help students become better writers

• August 24, 2021
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“In order to become a better writer, read your written words out loud.” That’s one of the first, and best, writing tips I ever received. I always found the advice ironic because it required me to change the medium of my writing to become a better writer. Still, all these years later, it’s true: vocalizing

“In order to become a better writer, read your written words out loud.”

That’s one of the first, and best, writing tips I ever received. I always found the advice ironic because it required me to change the medium of my writing to become a better writer. Still, all these years later, it’s true: vocalizing your words helps identify typos and incomplete thoughts, but also notice more subtle things like awkward turns of phrases or a weird rhythm in your sentence structure. Best of all, if you find yourself bored of your own text while reading out loud, you know readers will be, too.

This is all to say that writing, even for those who love writing, is a deeply human art built on top of nonobvious rules. While those complications don’t exactly scream for a tech solution, NoRedInk, a San Francisco-based startup, has spent nearly a decade trying to help students get better at their writing through software.

NoRedInk announced today that its digital writing curriculum, which pairs adaptive learning with Mad Libs-style prompts, has helped it raise a $50 million Series B led by Susquehanna Growth Equity, with participation from True Ventures. Other investors in the company include GSV, Rethink Education and Kapor Capital.

The financing event comes nearly six years after its Series A, a signal that the company has ambition to scale meaningfully in the coming months and years. With millions more, though, NoRedInk has to address its biggest challenge: the intricacies of the subject matter that it wants to make simple.

Founder and CEO Jeff Scheur built NoRedInk in 2012 when he was an English teacher in Chicago. The site served as a way to help kids get more than “red ink” on their papers, a nod at how teachers often use red ink to mark corrections and suggestions on assignments.

“Kids get feedback on their paper and they have no idea what to do with it,” Scheur said. “They see the grade, but they tend to just throw it out… so I figured out how to help them apply very difficult-to-learn skills that we expect kids to know, but don’t explicitly teach them.”

Since launch, NoRedInk’s goal is to help students with writing skills ranging from how to structure an essay to how to cut fluff from their arguments to how to cite correctly.

Image Credits: NoRedInk

“One of the great challenges about teaching writing is that we want to demystify the process of becoming a great writer without reducing the art form of expression,” he said. “So that means providing kids with lots of targeted personalized practice, and helping them realize that there’s no one way to write.”

It thus makes sense that NoRedInk uses adaptive learning, an educational method that uses an algorithm to get inputs of learners, such as strength areas or preferences, to create an output that better meets them where they are. After asking students for their favorite characters and role models, NoRedInk creates personalized writing exercises targeting each student’s interests, then guides them through the writing process with light support.

Image Credits: NoRedInk

Scheur described part of the goal of NoRedInk as “breaking down difficult to learn skills with various degrees of scaffolding.”

To date, more than 10 billion exercises have been completed on NoRedInk’s practice engine — which is data the company uses to underscore problem areas, shared struggles and potential blind spots of traditional curriculum for its districts.

NoRedInk has a free-but-limited version of its platform for teachers to try, but offers a full-fledged premium version that integrates with learning management systems and other classrooms to offer a school and district a view of progress.

As the business expands, NoRedInk might need to get deeper into drafts in order to win over market share. Will it ever play the role of suggesting tone the way that AI-based grammar and writing unicorn Grammarly does? For now, it appears not.

“Grammarly is a modern-day spellcheck,” Scheur said. “NoRedInk is very different; it’s what schools and districts use to teach skills.”

News: A California judge just struck down Prop 22: Now what?

• August 24, 2021
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California is not going to resolve this issue. Congress is not going to resolve this issue because it almost never resolves anything. So the game comes down to individual states.

Every time you turn around, someone new is winning the war in California around organizing workers in the sharing economy.

Labor struck first when California legislators passed Assembly Bill 5, requiring all independent contractors working for gig economy companies to be reclassified as employees. That was expected to set off a chain reaction in state legislatures nationwide, until two things happened.

First, COVID-19 hit and quickly became all-encompassing, making it virtually impossible for lawmakers and regulators to focus on anything but surviving the pandemic. Second, Uber, Lyft, Instacart and others funded and voters approved Prop 22 in California, striking down AB-5 and returning sharing economy workers to independent contractor status.

On the same day that Prop 22 passed, Democrats captured both chambers of Congress in Washington, but their margins were so slim (50-50 in the Senate and a nine-vote majority in the House), that federal legislative action on the issue was near impossible. Across the country, politicians read the tea leaves of Prop 22 and decided to mainly stay away. That kept the issue at bay during the 2021 state legislative sessions.

But the tide started to turn again this summer. First, U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Virginia) introduced the PRO Act in February 2021, stating that workers would be reclassified using an ABC test, in addition to rolling back right-to-work laws in states and establishing monetary penalties for companies and executives who violate workers’ rights.

The bill handily passed the House in March, but has since stalled in the Senate, despite receiving a hearing and energetic support by high-profile senators including Bernie Sanders and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The Biden administration’s appointees to the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board are decidedly in favor of full-time-worker status. And now, a California Superior Court judge has ruled Prop 22 unconstitutional, saying it violates the right of the state legislature to pass future laws around worker safety and status.

The sharing economy companies are expected to appeal, and the case could ultimately wind up before the California Supreme Court.

So now what? The courts will ultimately determine the status of sharing economy workers in California, but since the decision will be about the specific legal parameters of California’s referendum process, it won’t determine the issue elsewhere. And despite noise from Washington, Congress isn’t passing the PRO Act any time soon (Democrats may try to include it in the reconciliation for the $3.5 trillion American Families Plan, but the odds of its survival are low). That means the action returns to the states.

New York is the biggest battleground outside of California. Democrats have amassed a supermajority in both chambers of the legislature, and New York lacks a referendum vehicle to overturn state law.

Sharing economy workers are the biggest organizing opportunity for private sector unions in decades, and labor will use all of its influence to pass worker classification reform in 2022.

However, Kathy Hochul, New York’s new governor, is a moderate, and state legislators recently abandoned a half-baked plan brokered by gig companies to safeguard independent contractor status, indicating a resolution on the issue will likely take time.

Illinois is fertile ground for worker reclassification, too, but the state remains a question mark.

There’s also a chance of movement in Massachusetts, where gig companies are making a play to establish a ballot initiative very similar to Prop 22. Legislators in Seattle and Pennsylvania have also signaled an interest in exploring the issue.

And just a few months after most state legislative sessions conclude next summer, we’ll hit the midterm elections, which could produce a Republican wave (especially in the House) that would yet again quash the chances of worker classification legislation passing anywhere.

In other words, this is going to ping back and forth for at least the next few years in the courts, in state legislatures, and in the halls of Congress and federal agencies. If you’re a sharing economy investor and you want this issue resolved once and for all, that peace of mind isn’t coming. And the market, rather than accepting that this will be an unresolved issue for the next few years, will probably overreact to each individual action, whether it’s a lower court ruling or a piece of legislation making its way through a state.

In reality, the answer is the same as it’s always been: Trying to shoehorn sharing economy workers into one of two existing categories — 1099 or W-2 — doesn’t work. We still need to recognize that the inherent nature of work has changed over the last decade, and we need to recognize that both parties — the sharing economy companies and the unions — are only looking out for their own interests and coffers at the expense of what’s best for actual workers.

California is not going to resolve this issue. It’s just swung back and forth from one extreme to another. Congress is not going to resolve this issue because it almost never resolves anything.

So the game comes down to states like Illinois, New York and Massachusetts. It comes down to legislators and leaders trying to craft good public policy at the expense of their donors and supporters and Twitter followers — and then it comes down to their colleagues doing the same.

It means sacrificing politics for policy. That almost never happens. And it probably won’t happen here, either. So if you’re trying to game out where this issue is going, accept the uncertainty and expect that a thoughtful, smart resolution — locally or nationally — is unlikely. It’s a dissatisfying conclusion but, sadly, it epitomizes exactly where our politics stand today.

News: HyPoint and Piasecki reach $6.5M deal to develop hydrogen fuel cells systems for eVTOLs

• August 24, 2021
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A quick survey of many of the most highly valued electric vertical take-off and landing companies shows one thing in common: All of them are developing aircraft powered by batteries. But a growing suite of aviation companies, turned off by what they see as the energy density limitations of lithium-ion batteries, are turning instead to

A quick survey of many of the most highly valued electric vertical take-off and landing companies shows one thing in common: All of them are developing aircraft powered by batteries. But a growing suite of aviation companies, turned off by what they see as the energy density limitations of lithium-ion batteries, are turning instead to hydrogen fuel cells.

This is where HyPoint comes in. The two-year-old company has been working with a number of eVTOL companies, like ZeroAvia, on air-cooled hydrogen fuel cell systems that it says have triple the power-to-weight ratio of traditional liquid-cooled hydrogen fuel cells. Now, the fuel cell developer is adding Piasecki Aircraft Corporation to its list of partners.

The relationship between the two companies is being minted with a $6.5 million multiphase development agreement for the design and certification of hydrogen fuel cell systems. Through the partnership, HyPoint aims to deliver five full-scale, 650 kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell systems for ground testing, demo flights and the certification process.

The goal is to create a system that has four times the energy density of existing lithium-ion batteries, double the specific power of existing hydrogen fuel cell systems, and that costs up to 50% less relative to the operative costs of turbine-powered rotorcraft. HyPoint unveiled a prototype of the new technology in March.

Image Credits: HyPoint (opens in a new window)

Through the deal, Piasecki will have exclusive license to the tech created as a result of the partnership. It aims to use the technology for use in its PA-890 manned helicopter, which it says would be the first hydrogen-powered helicopter on the market. HyPoint will maintain exclusive ownership of the fuel cell system.

The two companies said in a statement that they intend to make the system available to other eVTOL makers as well. “Piasecki is ready to support other eVTOL makers with Hypoint,” HyPoint CEO Alex Ivanenko told TechCrunch

The agreement started with a feasibility study, in which HyPoint created a very small-scale prototype to show proof-of-concept. Now, the company is in the design stage, at work building a single power module (each 650 kW system contains several), and an integration concept of the system in Piasecki’s aircraft. The single power module will be ready by the end of this year, with the first 650 kW system being delivered to Piasecki in 2023, and a commercially available product by around 2025.

The two companies have also developed a certification roadmap that outlines when HyPoint needs to deliver systems, to ensure that they’re ready for testing and demo flights with the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Our objective is to develop full-scale systems within two years to support on-aircraft certification testing in 2024 and fulfill existing customer orders for up to 325 units starting in 2025,” John Piasecki, CEO of Piasecki, said.

News: Airbnb to provide free temporary housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees

• August 24, 2021
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Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on Tuesday the company plans to offer free temporary housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world amid the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan. Chesky said the company will cover the costs for the housing, using funds from contributions to its nonprofit Airbnb.org and a specific Refugee Fund established

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on Tuesday the company plans to offer free temporary housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world amid the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan.

Chesky said the company will cover the costs for the housing, using funds from contributions to its nonprofit Airbnb.org and a specific Refugee Fund established by that division, as well as personal contributions from Chesky himself. Airbnb will also work alongside NGOs through Airbnb.org, which provides people with emergency housing in times of crisis.

“The displacement and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S. and elsewhere is one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time. We feel a responsibility to step up,” Chesky said in a tweet.

In a follow-up tweet, Chesky said Airbnb hosts who are willing to offer up their residences will soon be able to sign up to accommodate a refugee family fleeing Afghanistan. Airbnb plans on sharing more details on how hosts and the broader community can support the initiative. Chesky said he hopes Airbnb’s initiative will inspire other business leaders to do the same.

The company said it has already worked with partners to place 165 refugees in safe housing after reaching the U.S. this past weekend. Airbnb plans to work with resettlement agencies to evolve the initiative and provide support as necessary.

Airbnb’s initiative comes at a time when tens of thousands of people are attempting to flee Afghanistan. Amid the crisis, companies and governments are facing increasing pressure to aid refugees fleeing the country. There are currently nearly 2.5 million registered refugees from Afghanistan, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Since August 15, countries have evacuated around 58,700 people from the country’s capital, Kabul.

“As tens of thousands of Afghan refugees resettle around the world, where they stay will be the first chapter in their new lives. For these 20,000 refugees, my hope is that the Airbnb community will provide them with not only a safe place to rest and start over, but also a warm welcome home,” Chesky said in a statement.

It’s worth noting Airbnb has historically provided free housing to those in need over the past few years. In 2017, the company offered free housing to stranded refugees, students and green card holders affected by former President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting refugees. More recently, Airbnb provided free or subsidized housing for 100,000 healthcare workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Airbnb notes it has connected approximately 25,000 refugees to temporary housing over the past four years.

News: Israel’s DiA gets $14M to expand AI-driven ultrasound analysis

• August 24, 2021
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Israel-based AI healthtech company, DiA Imaging Analysis, which is using deep learning and machine learning to automate analysis of ultrasound scans, has closed a $14 million Series B round of funding. Backers in the growth round, which comes three years after DiA last raised, include new investors Alchimia Ventures, Downing Ventures, ICON Fund, Philips and

Israel-based AI healthtech company, DiA Imaging Analysis, which is using deep learning and machine learning to automate analysis of ultrasound scans, has closed a $14 million Series B round of funding.

Backers in the growth round, which comes three years after DiA last raised, include new investors Alchimia Ventures, Downing Ventures, ICON Fund, Philips and XTX Ventures — with existing investors also participating including CE Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Defta Partners, Mindset Ventures, and Dr Shmuel Cabilly. In total, it’s taken in $25M to date.

The latest financing will go on expanding its product range and going after new and expanded partnerships with ultrasound vendors, PACS/Healthcare IT companies, resellers, and distributors while continuing to build out its presence across three regional markets.

The healthtech company sells AI-powered support software to clinicians and healthcare professionals to help them capture and analyze ultrasound imagery — a process which, when done manually, requires human expertise to visually interpret scan data. So DiA touts its AI technology as “taking the subjectivity out of the manual and visual estimation processes being performed today”.

It has trained AIs to assess ultrasound imagery so as to automatically hone in on key details or identify abnormalities — offering a range of products targeted at different clinical requirements associated with ultrasound analysis, including several focused on the heart (where its software can, for example, be used to measure and analyze aspects like ejection fraction; right ventricle size and function; plus perform detection assistance for coronary disease, among other offerings).

It also has a product that leverages ultrasound data to automate measurement of bladder volume.

DiA claims its AI software imitates the way the human eye detects borders and identifies motion — touting it as an advance over “subjective” human analysis that also brings speed and efficiency gains.

“Our software tools are supporting tool for clinicians needing to both acquiring the right image and interpreting ultrasound data,” says CEO and co-founder Hila Goldman-Aslan.

DiA’s AI-based analysis is being used in some 20 markets currently — including in North America and Europe (in China it also says a partner gained approval for use of its software as part of their own device) — with the company deploying a go-to-market strategy that involves working with channel partners (such as GE, Philips and Konica Minolta) which offer the software as an add on on their ultrasound or PACS systems.

Per Goldman-Aslan, some 3,000+ end-users have access to its software at this stage.

“Our technology is vendor neutral and cross platform therefore runs on any ultrasound device or healthcare IT systems. That is why you can see we have more than 10 partnerships with both device companies as well as healthcare IT/PACS companies. There is no other startup in this space I know that has these capabilities, commercial traction or many FDA/CE AI-based solutions,” she says, adding: “Up to date we have 7 FDA/CE approved solutions for cardiac and abdominal areas and more are on the way.”

An AI’s performance is of course only as good as the data-set it’s been trained on. And in the healthcare space efficacy is an especially crucial factor — given that any bias in training data could lead to a flawed model which misdiagnoses or under/over-estimates disease risks in patient groups who were not well represented in the training data.

Asked about how its AIs were trained to be able to spot key details in ultrasound imagery, Goldman-Aslan told TechCrunch: “We have access to hundreds of thousands ultrasound images through many medical facilities therefore have the ability to move fast from one automatic area to another.”

“We collect diverse population data with different pathology, as well as data from various devices,” she added.

“There is a Phrase ‘Garbage in Garbage out’. The key is not to bring garbage in,” she also told us. “Our data sets are tagged and classified by several physicians and technicians, each are experts with many years on experience.

“We also have a strong rejection system that rejects images that was taken incorrectly. This is how we overcome the subjectivity of how data was acquired.”

It’s worth noting that the FDA clearances obtained by DiA are 510(k) Class II approvals — and Goldman-Aslan confirmed to us that it has not (and does not intend) to apply for Premarket Approval (PMA) for its products from the FDA.

The 510(k) route is widely used for gaining approval for putting many types of medical devices into the US market. However it has been criticized as a light-touch regime — and certainly does not entail the same level of scrutiny as the more rigorous PMA process.

The wider point is that regulation of fast-developing AI technologies tends to lag behind developments in how they’re being applied — including as they push increasingly into the healthcare space where there’s certainly huge promise but also serious risks if they fail to live up to the glossy marketing — meaning there is still something of a gap between the promises made by device makers and how much regulatory oversight their tools actually get.

In the European Union, for example, the CE scheme — which sets out some health, safety and environmental standards for devices — can simply require a manufacturer to self declare conformity, without any independent verification they’re actually meeting the standards they claim, although some medical devices can require a degree of independent assessment of conformity under the CE scheme. But it’s not considered a rigorous regime for regulating the safety of novel technologies like AI.

Hence the EU is now working on introducing an additional layer of conformity assessments specifically for applications of AI deemed ‘high risk’ — under the incoming Artificial Intelligence Act.

Healthcare use-cases, like DiA’s AI-based ultrasound analysis, would almost certainly fall under that classification so would face some additional regulatory requirements under the AIA. For now, though, the on-the-table proposal is being debated by EU co-legislators and a dedicated regulatory regime for risky applications of AI remains years out of coming into force in the region.

News: Waymo launches robotaxi service in San Francisco

• August 24, 2021
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Waymo, the self-driving vehicle company under Alphabet, has launched a robotaxi service that will be open to certain vetted riders in San Francisco. On Tuesday, the company officially kicked off its Waymo One Trusted Tester program in the city with a fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACEs equipped with the company’s fifth generation of its autonomous

Waymo, the self-driving vehicle company under Alphabet, has launched a robotaxi service that will be open to certain vetted riders in San Francisco.

On Tuesday, the company officially kicked off its Waymo One Trusted Tester program in the city with a fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACEs equipped with the company’s fifth generation of its autonomous vehicle system. This AV system, which has been branded the Waymo Driver, is informed by 20 million self-driven miles on public roads and over 10 billion miles driven in simulation, according to Waymo.

The so-called Waymo One Trusted Tester program mirrors the company’s strategy in Phoenix, where it rolled out its first commercial ride-hailing service several years ago. The Trusted Tester program is a rebranding of Waymo’s previous Early Rider Program that it launched in Metro Phoenix in April 2017. Seeing as it’s been over four years, those riders are no longer exactly “early,” so a name change was in order, according to a Waymo spokesperson.

In Phoenix, Waymo eventually invited some of the early riders to move over to the Waymo One service, which let users publicly share their impressions on the service and invite friends or family member who weren’t part of the early rider program. Waymo then opened up the service to everyone.

San Franciscans can download the Waymo One app and express their interest in joining the program, which will begin with an initial select group from diverse backgrounds with varied transportation needs, including wheelchair accessibility, according to Waymo. The company would not share how many riders would be included in the initial group, nor how many Jaguars it will have roaming the city, but it did say riders would have to be willing to offer a lot of detailed feedback on their riding experience and sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Waymo will encourage riders to use its autonomous service to help them with their everyday mobility needs. The rides are free for now, and will start out in an initial territory in parts of San Francisco, including the Sunset, Richmond, Pac Heights, Noe, the Castro, Haight Ashbury and more, with expectations to expand over time. The service will be offered 24 hours per day, seven days per week, the spokesperson told TechCrunch. 

The company will have so-called “autonomous specialists” — another term for human safety operators — sitting in the front seat to monitor the ride and ensure a safe experience. These safety drivers are contract workers, and employed by Transdev. Waymo has long partnered with Transdev to provide staffing for some of its operations.

Waymo’s rider support team will also be available at the tap of the button on the in-car screen or through the app if riders have any questions during their rides, the spokesperson said.

News: NBA All-Star Chris Paul joins digital media startup Greenfly’s growth round

• August 24, 2021
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Greenfly is building a workflow to provide sourcing, creation and automated distribution of short-form photos and videos created for social media.

Greenfly’s latest funding round has a new face: Phoenix Suns point guard Chris Paul joined as a strategic investor and partner in the company, which developed digital media flow management software.

Paul’s investment is part of an $8.4 million strategic growth round that also includes Verance Capital, Higher Ground Labs, DD Venture Capital, SW19 Ventures, LinkinFirm and Allievo Capital, as well as existing investors Go4it Capital, Elysian Park Ventures, Alpha Edison and Iconica Partners.

The new round gives Los Angeles-based Greenfly over $23 million raised since the company was founded in 2014 by former Major League Baseball All-Star Shawn Green and his cousin Daniel Kirschner, who previously held senior roles at the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission and Activision Blizzard.

Green and Kirschner saw how social media was driving new sources of revenue for organizations like sports teams, politics and consumer brands, but needed a way for real-time distribution of media to be easily shared. Kirschner explained that when Green first started in his career, there were times when he needed to provide feedback for a public moment, like when his home run record was tied, and it occurred to Green that they could build a mini media studio.

Paul, an 11-time National Basketball Association All-Star, was one of Greenfly’s early adopters, using the platform to share content to his social media channels following his games. However, Paul realized he was also sitting on valuable content within his phone, like game or event photos, but without a good system for easily accessing them or matching them to events going on at that moment. He considers Greenfly “instant access to a media gallery” that he can share on his social media accounts.

One of the best features, he explained, was seeing a post on social media with only two photos of an event, but while searching Greenfly, he came across 12 to 15 other photos that he had never seen. He believes the company will continue to grow, and as a partner, will work with Greenfly to build awareness for the platform and get other players involved.

“I’m a big believer of creating memories and seeing photos,” Paul told TechCrunch. “You can go in and search for my name and Devin Booker’s and see photos of us playing together. The NBA uses Greenfly to automate the media and share with others. I love it because it makes it easy — you don’t want something hard and complicated.”

Instead of just repurposing materials, Greenfly will continue to build a workflow around events that provides sourcing, creation and automated distribution of photos and short-form videos created for social media.

Greenfly is also working on increased improvements to curate media most relevant to users, and is collecting data to provide more insights around that so that users can manage relationships with their community to amplify their messages. The new funding will go toward growth and expansion to build additional collaboration tools and content as more players sign on.

“With Chris, it is an opportunity to come at it from the athlete’s perspective,” Kirschner said. “Our deals are mainly with leagues and teams, so to be working with athletes, who are their own brands, enables us to be the system of record for all sides.”

The past year was a big growth period for the company, and it had been reaching a tipping point just prior to 2020, he added. Greenfly is now working with more than 30 sports leagues, including the NBA, Major League Baseball and World Surf League.

It also boasts over 500 organizations in sports, media and entertainment, political campaigns, social causes and consumer brands, and is experiencing over 100% growth so far in 2021, Kirschner said.

With social media evolving, the company is looking for more polished content because it learned that stories and intimate content performs better.

“We set out to build a content collaboration platform to provide content that athletes and others can share on social media and also manage that workflow around large, complex organizations,” he added. “Organizations have lots of content and we make that available through routing tools and curation, making it easy to find what you are looking for.”

News: Stewart Butterfield and Bret Taylor are coming to Disrupt

• August 24, 2021
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When Salesforce acquired Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, the deal seemed on its face to make sense, given that the coronavirus pandemic accelerated already growing demand for tools that enable people to work remotely and that roughly 90% of Slack’s enterprise customers already used Salesforce. Today, the question is: How well are things going?

When Salesforce acquired Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, the deal seemed on its face to make sense, given that the coronavirus pandemic accelerated already growing demand for tools that enable people to work remotely and that roughly 90% of Slack’s enterprise customers already used Salesforce.

Today, the question is: How well are things going?

Salesforce just last week announced some initial integrations with Slack, including introducing so-called account and deal Slack rooms to its “Sales Cloud,” which Salesforce says will allow sales teams to interact around a customer deal cycle. Rob Seaman, SVP for Slack at Salesforce, told TechCrunch last week that, more broadly, “We really want Slack to be the primary engagement surface for our users, their communications, their work, their workflows and the processes and the apps they support.”

But these kinds of public pronouncements don’t get to the heart of what’s happening inside the company. That’s where TechCrunch steps in. At TechCrunch Disrupt happening September 21-23, we are thrilled to be sitting down with both Bret Taylor — the entrepreneur and former Facebook executive who is now the No. 2 executive at Salesforce — and famed Slack founder Stewart Butterfield, to learn far more about their collective mission to take on Microsoft, and what, if anything, the market doesn’t understand about the tie-up between Salesforce and Slack. (Saleforces’s shares are only up slightly from a year ago and priced 16% higher than they were at the start of this year, compared to the S&P 500, which is up 35%.)

Who reports to whom? How independently is Slack being run? How will the two judge the success of the merger, and by when? These are just a few of the many questions we have for these two iconic executives, whose candid conversation with TC is one you won’t want to miss.

To participate in this year’s virtual show, check out the handful of pass options with discounts now available for founders, students and nonprofits. Get your ticket soon, though; prices more than double on September 20. We hope to see you online.

News: Walmart announces GoLocal, a last-mile delivery service for other retailers

• August 24, 2021
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Walmart today announced of a new delivery service business called Walmart GoLocal, which allows other merchants, both large and small, to tap into Walmart’s own delivery platform to get orders to their customers. Merchants can choose to the use the service for a variety of delivery types, including scheduled and unscheduled deliveries, including same-day delivery,

Walmart today announced of a new delivery service business called Walmart GoLocal, which allows other merchants, both large and small, to tap into Walmart’s own delivery platform to get orders to their customers. Merchants can choose to the use the service for a variety of delivery types, including scheduled and unscheduled deliveries, including same-day delivery, and they can expand their delivery capacity and coverage as their own customer demand requires.

GoLocal is powered by services Walmart first developed for its own delivery needs. Over the past three years, Walmart has been working to scale its in-house Express Delivery service, which promises delivery in two hours or less. This service now offers 160,000+ products at some 3,000 stores, reaching nearly 70% of the U.S. population, the company says. Now it believes it’s ready to make these same capabilities available to other merchants across the U.S. with GoLocal.

While the new B2B service allows merchants to leverage Walmart’s last-mile network and logistics, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Walmart employees will be delivering the packages — at least at first.

Instead, GoLocal’s last-mile capabilities will be handled by gig workers from Walmart’s Spark Driver program. These same drivers also support Walmart’s same-day grocery delivery. But while the same-day service additionally relies on third-party delivery services — like Roadie, DoorDash and Uber’s Postmates — Walmart tells us that third-party delivery services won’t be involved in GoLocal.

Instead, Walmart plans to expand GoLocal over time to include more associate-powered delivery. Already, Walmart is testing associate delivery in electric vans in Northwest Arkansas, for example. These vans would allow Walmart to power delivery for a wider variety of merchants — like those with larger products that wouldn’t fit into Spark drivers’ personal cars and trucks. Walmart also plans to evolve GoLocal delivery via newer innovations like drones and autonomous vehicles, which Walmart has been testing through its Express Delivery service.

“We’ve worked hard to develop a reliable last mile delivery program for our customers,” said Tom Ward, senior vice president, Last Mile, Walmart U.S., in a statement. “Now, we’re pleased to be able to use these capabilities to serve another set of customers – local merchants. Be it delivering goods from a local bakery to auto supplies from a national retailer, we’ve designed Walmart GoLocal to be customizable for merchants of all sizes and categories so they can focus on doing what they do best, leaving delivery speed and efficiency to us,” he added.

Participating GoLocal merchants don’t have to be of a certain size. Anyone from a mom-and-pop to a national retailer can opt to use the service. They also don’t have to sell on Walmart.com’s marketplace, as this isn’t a fulfillment service where Walmart both houses and delivers third-party inventory — it’s just the last-mile delivery portion. The merchant inventory remains at their own local stores.

While any retailer could use GoLocal, getting started requires technical integrations on the retailers’ part. Walmart provides an API that plugs into their existing commerce platform which will ping GoLocal when customers place orders. This alerts GoLocal to dispatch the driver while Walmart captures delivery experience feedback, it says. If widely adopted, this could also give Walmart access to local delivery data to analyze that could aid in improving its own delivery business or inform decisions about fulfillment center placement — a potential competitive advantage.

Walmart says it already has some merchant partners signed up for GoLocal, including contracts with some national enterprise retailers, but is not yet permitted to disclose those names. It won’t detail the pricing for the service, explaining that as a white-label option with a variety of features, the prices are customized to each retailer’s individual needs.

The service is one of several initiatives Walmart now has underway to generate revenue by serving the needs of other retailers. Recently, Walmart announced it would sell access to its own e-commerce technologies to retail businesses, for example. This is a part of Walmart’s broader strategy that will see it looking to turn a profit based on providing access to technologies and services it once used only for its own operations.

News: It’s time for the VC community to stop overlooking the childcare industry

• August 24, 2021
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The revitalization of the childcare sector would benefit from an ambitious and galvanizing “moonshot” goal, like providing universal, free childcare for all Americans.

Square. Uber. Zillow. Airbnb. Besides being some of the biggest technology companies, what else do these titans have in common? They all operate in entrenched, highly fragmented, geographically localized and regulated industries. That means they required a lot of upfront venture capital investment to disrupt their respective markets. And the investment has paid off — these are now some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Venture capital alone hasn’t funded some of the largest companies. One of today’s most successful tech entrepreneurs was funded by massive infusions of investment from the federal government — Elon Musk received $4.9 billion in public subsidies for his companies, including SpaceX and Tesla. Moreover, government investment, via tax credits for electric vehicle purchases, made it more affordable for consumers to buy the green transportation they needed.

But one massive industry has not yet benefited from the large amounts of money that both venture capital and government can provide: Childcare. Families in the United States spend $136 billion on infant and child care every year, and the market is only growing. If you include school-age care and education for all children under 18, that number grows to $212 billion. In investor terms, the TAM (total addressable market) is huge.

So where is the investment? Biden’s current compromise on an infrastructure plan does not include many provisions for childcare. Venture investment in this space is nascent and insufficient. In 2020, only $171 million was invested in care and early childhood education. The funding situation has improved in 2021, with $516 million invested in childcare, but it’s still just a tiny fraction of the $288 billion of venture capital invested so far this year.

To put that in perspective, a single new company has raised more funding in 2021 than the entire childcare industry.

Funding emerging childcare technology may require a lot of upfront capital. For starters, the industry is regulated and safety is and should remain a priority. Caring for and educating young children takes training, skill and love — it cannot be done by a computer.

But there are so many facets of the industry that are ripe for innovation. Parents sometimes take weeks to find a childcare provider that meets their needs. In some markets, there is not nearly enough supply (three children for every licensed slot) to meet the demand. Assessing quality, pricing and availability is challenging, and payments and business operations tools for the nation’s 300,000+ daycares are still often pen, paper and Excel spreadsheet affairs.

This industry just needs patient investors with long-term perspectives.

This is a great time to diversify investment portfolios and support relatively recession-proof companies meaningfully expanding access to childcare. COVID has finally started to bring this largely offline industry online. Parents are now willing to go digital for childcare decisions and providers are adopting new online technologies at a record pace. These tailwinds provide the perfect conditions for startups.

Solving this problem is a huge business opportunity that affects so much else. When the millions of parents with young children can’t find care, they can’t work. We saw this over and over again since the start of the pandemic. The average American family can spend up to 25% of their income on early childhood care, while the average care worker makes approximately $12 an hour.

Unlocking innovation here at scale will require public and private investment. Government shapes and enables markets, from the explosion of technology that followed from Kennedy’s investment in the space race to more recent fundamental investments in wind, solar and electric vehicles. NASA catalyzed dozens of new technologies in the 1960s because it had both a generous budget and the flexibility to work with the best private-sector contractors available to solve specific problems.

The revitalization of the childcare sector would benefit from an ambitious and galvanizing “moonshot” goal, like providing universal, free childcare for all Americans.

By collaborating with flexibility and creativity across the public and private sectors, we can achieve a basic shared goal that other democracies have already fulfilled — the accessible provision of high-quality childcare for all members of society.