Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Daily Crunch - Zoom reports spectacular growth

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Wednesday, June 03, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Zoom’s latest earnings report was even better than expected, SoftBank announces a new fund to invest in founders of color and Google pulls a trending app that targets apps from China.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 3, 2020.

Remote work helps Zoom grow 169% in one year, posting $328.2M in Q1 revenue

Zoom's customer numbers were similarly sharp, with the firm reporting that it had 265,400 customers with more than 10 seats (employees) at the end of the quarter, which was up 354% from the year-ago period.

Not all of the news coming out of its latest earnings report was positive, however. CEO Eric Yuan confirmed that a plan to implement end-to-end encryption does not in fact extend to non-paying users.

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Remote work helps Zoom grow 169% in one year, posting $328.2M in Q1 revenue image

Image Credits: Kena Betancur / Getty Images

Brands see 18.5% of online e-commerce revenue from SMS marketing

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SoftBank launches $100M+ Opportunity Growth Fund to invest in founders of color

The Opportunity Growth Fund "will only invest in companies led by founders and entrepreneurs of color," according to an internal memo from SoftBank's COO Marcelo Claure, who said the fund will initially start with $100 million — meaning there is room for SoftBank or other limited partners to add more over time.

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Google pulls 'Remove China Apps' from Play Store

The top trending app in India, which was downloaded more than 5 million times since late May and enabled users to detect and easily delete apps developed by Chinese firms, was pulled from Android's marquee app store for violating Google Play Store's Deceptive Behavior Policy.

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Google pulls 'Remove China Apps' from Play Store image

Facebook and PayPal invest in Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Gojek

Facebook and PayPal are joining Google and Tencent as high-profile tech firms that have backed the five-year-old Southeast Asian ride-hailing startup, which also offers food delivery and mobile payments.

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The fundraising marketplace has stabilized. Or has it?

DocSend CEO Russ Heddleston said the last two weeks could be establishing a new normal for fundraising this year. Even though most VCs aren't taking in-person meetings, they were more active in the past month than they were in May of both 2019 and 2018. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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The fundraising marketplace has stabilized. Or has it? image

Image Credits: Steven Puetzer / Getty Images

Venture firms rush to find ways to support Black founders and investors

Firms like Benchmark, Sequoia, Bessemer, Eniac Ventures, Work-Bench and SaaSTR Fund founder Jason Lemkin all tweeted in support of the cause and offered to take steps to improve the lack of representation in their industry. But some Black entrepreneurs and investors are questioning the firms’ motivations.

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Lili raises $10M for its freelancer banking app

CEO Lilac Bar David suggested that no traditional banking solutions are really designed to solve the problems faced by freelancers — whether they're designers, programmers, fitness instructors, chefs or beauty professionals. She described Lili as the first "all-in-one" solution, offering both a bank account and a broader suite of financial tracking tools.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2020

Daily Crunch - Facebook employees virtually walk out

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Tuesday, June 02, 2020 By Anthony Ha

Facebook staff protests the social network’s stance on Trump posts, Volkswagen finalizes its $2.6 billion investment in Argo AI and we examine complaints about the layoff process at events and travel startup Pollen.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 2, 2020.

Facebook employees stage virtual walkout in protest of company's stance on Trump posts

Some Facebook employees virtually walked out yesterday to challenge the company's lack of response to President Donald Trump's posts — specifically his posts discussing the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd. Facebook has since acknowledged the walkout and said it will not require employees to use their paid time off.

Also, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Sunday night post that he will donate $10 million to “groups working on racial justice.”

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Facebook employees stage virtual walkout in protest of company's stance on Trump posts image

If your startup is struggling to be seen, TechCrunch has you covered

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One Digital Startup Alley Package ($445) allows three team members to exhibit at Disrupt from the comfort of their homes for weeks, not just days.

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Self-driving vehicle startup Argo AI completes $2.6B deal with Volkswagen, expands to Europe

The deal turns Argo into a global company with two customers — VW and Ford — as well as operations in the U.S. and Europe and an instant jump in its workforce. Autonomous Intelligent Driving, the self-driving subsidiary that was launched in 2017 to develop autonomous vehicle technology for the VW Group, will be absorbed into Argo AI.

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Former Pollen employees were asked to sign an 'NDA masked as a severance agreement'

Pollen, the U.K.-headquartered travel and events marketplace, describes its company culture as built on principles of "freedom" and openness, including a well-publicized pay transparency policy. However, that doesn't appear to always be the case with regards to the treatment of departing employees.

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Former Pollen employees were asked to sign an 'NDA masked as a severance agreement' image

LinkedIn introduces new retargeting tools

LinkedIn has already been testing these capabilities with a few advertisers, including TOPdesk, which says it's increased conversions by 20% while lowering the cost per conversion by 24%.

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12 top cybersecurity VCs discuss investing, valuations and no-go zones

We spoke to a dozen cybersecurity VCs to hear their thoughts on cybersecurity valuations during the pandemic, which companies are sparking investors' interests and the kinds of startups that aren't. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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12 top cybersecurity VCs discuss investing, valuations and no-go zones image

Image Credits: LeoWolfert / Getty Images

Twitter restricts Republican lawmaker's Antifa tweet for 'glorifying violence'

Twitter placed behind a warning label a tweet from a close political ally of the president, citing its policy prohibiting content that promotes violence. The tweet, from Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, suggested that the U.S. government "hunt down" anti-fascist activists in the country like it would pursue international terrorists.

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Locus Robotics raises another $40M as retailers increasingly look to automate

Locus has already seen good traction here in the United States for its bin-moving robots. In February, the company announced that its robots have passed 100 million units picked.

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Monday, June 1, 2020

Daily Crunch - SpaceX's crewed spacecraft successfully launches and docks

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Monday, June 01, 2020 By Anthony Ha

SpaceX made history this weekend, tech executives respond to the ongoing protests against racism and Zynga announces a big acquisition.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 1, 2020.

SpaceX's first crewed spacecraft successfully docks with the International Space Station

SpaceX's Crew Dragon “Endeavor” successfully docked with the International Space Station as planned on Sunday morning, marking another key milestone during this historic Commercial Crew demonstration mission it's conducting with NASA. On-board were NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, the first people ever to make the trip to orbit aboard a spacecraft built by a private company.

Crossing this milestone means that essentially the first half of the mission has been completed successfully. So far, SpaceX has demonstrated that the launch process works as designed, as does manual control (the astronauts took over and ran two tests of that system) and automated docking.

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SpaceX's first crewed spacecraft successfully docks with the International Space Station image

Image Credits: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Simplify and Accelerate Modern App Development

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Build cloud-native applications powered by Apache Cassandra. You can minimize risk and optimize costs with DataStax Astra on Google Cloud Platform. Get started today!

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Tech companies respond to George Floyd's death, ensuing protests and systemic racism

Tech companies and CEOs have begun to weigh in on what amounts to a rather delicate topic for corporations not accustomed to rocking the boat on these manner of social issues. For example, Apple’s Tim Cook wrote, “This is a moment when many people may want nothing more than a return to normalcy, or to a status quo that is only comfortable if we avert our gaze from injustice. As difficult as it may be to admit, that desire is itself a sign of privilege.”

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Zynga acquires Turkey's Peak Games for $1.8B, after buying its card games studio for $100M in 2017

By making this deal, Zynga is picking up two very popular titles/franchises that it doesn't have do develop from scratch — Peak Games’ Toon Blast and Toy Blast together total more than 12 million DAUs.

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Zynga acquires Turkey's Peak Games for $1.8B, after buying its card games studio for $100M in 2017 image

Image Credits: Zynga

Global smartphone sales plummeted 20% in Q1 thanks to COVID-19

Gartner's latest report puts the global market at a 20.2% slide versus the same time last year, thanks in large part to fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. Every single one of the global top-five manufacturers saw large declines for the quarter, save for Xiaomi, which saw a slight uptick of 1.4%.

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6 VCs share their bets on the future of work

As loneliness mounts with shelter-in-place orders implemented in various forms across the world, investors are looking for products and services that foster true connection among a distributed workforce, as well as a distributed society. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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6 VCs share their bets on the future of work image

Image Credits: Alvarez / Getty Images

Bonusly, the platform for employee recognition, raises $9 million Series A

Bonusly launched in 2013 when co-founder and CEO Raphael Crawford-Marks saw the opportunity to reinvent the way employers and colleagues recognize and reward their employees/coworkers.

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This week's TechCrunch podcasts

The latest full-length episode of Equity discusses the future of work and whether tech talent is moving to smaller cities, while Monday’s news roundup discusses how startups and the VC world are responding to police brutality and systemic racism. And on Original Content, we review the new Netflix romantic comedy “The Lovebirds.”

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A brief programming note

Some of you may be disappointed or annoyed that today’s newsletter didn’t a provide total respite for the weekend’s headlines. Others may be wondering how we can care about stories like startup funding when there’s so many more important things going on.

So it’s probably worth stating this outright: The Daily Crunch rounds up the biggest headlines from TechCrunch’s coverage. While we’re not going to shoehorn big political headlines in here just for the sake of it, neither are we going to shy away from politics and other difficult topics when they affect the tech world, or vice versa.

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