Year: 2019

India maintained a shutdown of the internet in the states of Assam and Meghalaya on Friday, now into 36 hours, to control protests over a controversial and far-reaching new citizen rule.

The shutdown of the internet in Assam and Meghalaya, home to more than 32 million people, is the latest example of a worrying worldwide trend employed by various governments: preventing people from communicating on the web and accessing information.

And India, the world’s second largest internet market with more than 650 million connected users, continues to exercise this measure more than any other nation.

On Thursday, India’s president Ram Nath Kovind approved the Citizenship Amendment Bill, a day after the country’s Parliament passed it. The law offers a path to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim minorities from three neighboring countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh) — not for the country’s own Muslim minority.

Shortly after the bill was passed, protests broke out in the streets in the northeastern states of Assam and Meghalaya, where residents have long been concerned about immigration from the aforementioned nations. In Meghalaya, texting services have been suspended, too.

Soldiers are seen through the wreckage of a vehicle which was set on fire by demonstrators during a protest against the government’s Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) in Guwahati on December 13, 2019. (Photo by BIJU BORO/AFP via Getty Images)

To contain the situation, the Indian government sent in troops and shut down the internet — a measure that the United Nations has condemned in the past, calling it a violation of human rights.

Officials in the state of Assam said, “Social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and YouTube are likely to be used for spreading of rumors and also for transmission of information like pictures, videos and text that have the potential to inflame passions and thus exacerbate the law and order situation.”

There is currently no official word on when the internet services would be resumed at these two places.

Preventing people from a medium that enables them to stay in touch with one another, and access news and information, is becoming a common phenomenon in several nations, though none come close to India.

Access Now, a digital rights group, reported earlier this year that India alone had about 134 of 196 documented shutdowns in 2018. According to Internet Shutdowns, a service operated by New Delhi-based digital advocacy group Software Law and Freedom Centre, there have been about 91 documented cases of internet shutdowns in India this year.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian government shut down the internet for 133 days after stripping the majority Muslim territory of its autonomy in August. The service has only been partially restored.

Increasingly, startups across the spectrum are looking to artificial intelligence (AI) to help them solve business problems and drive efficiency. The numerous benefits of building AI capability in  your startup shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone — in fact, the advantages for business are so far-reaching that PwC predicts that AI will add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

Contrary to popular belief, successfully implementing AI to drive impactful decisions requires a diverse team with expertise in several skill sets. Launching your AI journey is no simple feat — you need to ask probing questions to ensure that the relevant data science projects are embarked upon at the right time. Plus, you need to make sure that you build out an effective team that can turn data into decisions.

When should businesses take the AI leap?

Increasingly, startups across the spectrum are looking to artificial intelligence (AI) to help them solve business problems and drive efficiency. The numerous benefits of building AI capability in  your startup shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone — in fact, the advantages for business are so far-reaching that PwC predicts that AI will add $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

Contrary to popular belief, successfully implementing AI to drive impactful decisions requires a diverse team with expertise in several skill sets. Launching your AI journey is no simple feat — you need to ask probing questions to ensure that the relevant data science projects are embarked upon at the right time. Plus, you need to make sure that you build out an effective team that can turn data into decisions.

When should businesses take the AI leap?

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between.

Today we’re taking stock of a cohort of special companies: still-private startups that have reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). Our goal is to understand which startup companies are actually exceptional. This late in the unicorn era, hundreds of companies around the world have reached a valuation of $1 billion, making the achievement somewhat pedestrian.

Reaching $100 million in ARR, however, still stands out.

We explored the idea earlier this week, citing Asana, Druva and WalkMe as private companies that recently reached $100 million ARR. In addition to that trio, Bill.com and Sprout Social, both of which went public this week, also crossed the nine-figure annual recurring revenue mark in 2019.

After we posted that short list, four other companies either just shy of $100 million ARR, or with a little bit more, reached out to TechCrunch, touting their own successes. Given that our point was that companies which reach the revenue threshold million are neat, it’s worth taking a moment to look at the other companies joining the $100 million ARR club.

For extra fun I got on the phone with a number of their CEOs to chat about their progress. We’ll start with a look at a company that is nearly a member of the club, and then talk about a few that recently punched their membership cards.

The $100M ARR club’s up-and-comers

GitLab: Expects to reach $100M ARR in January, 2020

To be frank, I did not know that GitLab was as large as it is. Backed by more than $400 million in private capital, GitLab competes with the now-purchased GitHub as a developer resource and service. Its backers include Goldman Sachs, ICONIQ, GV, August Capital and Khosla.

GitLab became a unicorn back in September of 2018, when it raised $100 million at a $1 billion post-money valuation. Its more recent $268 million Series E raised this September pushed that valuation to nearly $2.8 billion.

It’s a good company for us to include, as it provides a good example of how far in advance a $1 billion valuation can precede a $100 million ARR business; in GitLab’s case, provided that it grows as expected, its unicorn valuation came nearly 1.5 years before reaching nine-figure ARR.

To understand more about the company’s growth, we caught up with its CEO Sid Sijbrandij (full discussion here), learning that he views the unicorn tag as a way to help a company brand itself, but something that is outside of his company’s control. Revenue, in his view, is “much more within your control.” According to Sijbrandij, GitLab is aiming for $1 billion in revenue in 2023 and has a November, 2020 IPO targeted.

GitLab is sharing its impending ARR milestone as it runs its whole business very transparently (hence why my chat with its CEO was live-streamed, and archived on YouTube). It will be super interesting to see if the company hits the ARR target on time, and then if it can also stick the landing with a Q4 2020 IPO.

The $100 million ARR club’s newest members

Egnyte: Reached $100M ARR in November 2019

Egnyte, a player in the enterprise productivity, storage and security spaces, has kept growing since its $75 million Series E it raised last October.

The company, backed by Goldman Sachs (again), GV (again) and Kleiner Perkins, has raised just $137.5 million to date. Reaching $100 million ARR on that level of funding means that Egnyte has run efficiently as a business. In fact, as TechCrunch has reported, Egnyte has occasionally made money on its path to the public markets.

TechCrunch has spoken to Egnyte’s CEO Vineet Jain a number of times, but it seemed appropriate to get him back on the phone now that his company is nearly ready to go public (at least in terms of size). According to Jain, in fresh data released to Extra Crunch:

• Egnyte passed the $100 million ARR threshold in November
• The company grew about 30% in 2019
• Egnyte expects growth to accelerate in 2020

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between.

Today we’re taking stock of a cohort of special companies: still-private startups that have reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). Our goal is to understand which startup companies are actually exceptional. This late in the unicorn era, hundreds of companies around the world have reached a valuation of $1 billion, making the achievement somewhat pedestrian.

Reaching $100 million in ARR, however, still stands out.

We explored the idea earlier this week, citing Asana, Druva and WalkMe as private companies that recently reached $100 million ARR. In addition to that trio, Bill.com and Sprout Social, both of which went public this week, also crossed the nine-figure annual recurring revenue mark in 2019.

After we posted that short list, four other companies either just shy of $100 million ARR, or with a little bit more, reached out to TechCrunch, touting their own successes. Given that our point was that companies which reach the revenue threshold million are neat, it’s worth taking a moment to look at the other companies joining the $100 million ARR club.

For extra fun I got on the phone with a number of their CEOs to chat about their progress. We’ll start with a look at a company that is nearly a member of the club, and then talk about a few that recently punched their membership cards.

The $100M ARR club’s up-and-comers

GitLab: Expects to reach $100M ARR in January, 2020

To be frank, I did not know that GitLab was as large as it is. Backed by more than $400 million in private capital, GitLab competes with the now-purchased GitHub as a developer resource and service. Its backers include Goldman Sachs, ICONIQ, GV, August Capital and Khosla.

GitLab became a unicorn back in September of 2018, when it raised $100 million at a $1 billion post-money valuation. Its more recent $268 million Series E raised this September pushed that valuation to nearly $2.8 billion.

It’s a good company for us to include, as it provides a good example of how far in advance a $1 billion valuation can precede a $100 million ARR business; in GitLab’s case, provided that it grows as expected, its unicorn valuation came nearly 1.5 years before reaching nine-figure ARR.

To understand more about the company’s growth, we caught up with its CEO Sid Sijbrandij (full discussion here), learning that he views the unicorn tag as a way to help a company brand itself, but something that is outside of his company’s control. Revenue, in his view, is “much more within your control.” According to Sijbrandij, GitLab is aiming for $1 billion in revenue in 2023 and has a November, 2020 IPO targeted.

GitLab is sharing its impending ARR milestone as it runs its whole business very transparently (hence why my chat with its CEO was live-streamed, and archived on YouTube). It will be super interesting to see if the company hits the ARR target on time, and then if it can also stick the landing with a Q4 2020 IPO.

The $100 million ARR club’s newest members

Egnyte: Reached $100M ARR in November 2019

Egnyte, a player in the enterprise productivity, storage and security spaces, has kept growing since its $75 million Series E it raised last October.

The company, backed by Goldman Sachs (again), GV (again) and Kleiner Perkins, has raised just $137.5 million to date. Reaching $100 million ARR on that level of funding means that Egnyte has run efficiently as a business. In fact, as TechCrunch has reported, Egnyte has occasionally made money on its path to the public markets.

TechCrunch has spoken to Egnyte’s CEO Vineet Jain a number of times, but it seemed appropriate to get him back on the phone now that his company is nearly ready to go public (at least in terms of size). According to Jain, in fresh data released to Extra Crunch:

• Egnyte passed the $100 million ARR threshold in November
• The company grew about 30% in 2019
• Egnyte expects growth to accelerate in 2020

Andy Dunn, the founder of menswear site Bonobos which sold to Walmart in 2017 for $310 million, is now parting ways with the retail giant. The executive, who joined Walmart as SVP of digital consumer brands at the time of the acquisition, officially announced his departure in a LinkedIn post titled “A Love Letter to Walmart.”

In it, Dunn praises the time he spent with the company and the knowledge he gained while working there. Specifically, he references several of Walmart’s bigger initiatives, including its transformation into an omnichannel retail serving customers online and offline, without distinction.

This is an area of Walmart’s business that’s been under pressure as the battle with Amazon heats up. A recent report by Bloomberg, for example, highlighted the internal corporate culture clash underway as Walmart’s e-commerce investments impacted stores and thinned margins.

Dunn also referenced Walmart’s growing grocery business, now helping to fuel its online sales, and the development of new Walmart brands like Allswell.

“I learned a lot more about retail transformation in the digital age at the world’s biggest company. I watched our strategy evolve as we uncorked our unique advantages on a new omni playing field – and began to identify where we aren’t just catching up, but where we are winning. The momentum with online grocery pickup opened my eyes: our thousands of supercenters are an asset nobody else has, so let’s use them,” wrote Dunn. “In our digital brands group, that led to development of a strategy built on omni, as we married our talent with the power of Walmart distribution to build brands like Allswell. With my departure, that incubator will now be plugged directly into the Walmart mothership,” he said.

Bonobos is one of several online brands that Walmart has now acquired to fill out its virtual shelves, along with Moosejaw ($51M), ShoeBuy, Jet.com ($3B), Hayneedle, in addition to Bonobos ($310M) and ModCloth ($75M). Dunn’s letter noted the more recent deal to buy plus-sized clothing brand ELOQUII ($100M) — an example of Walmart’s desire to deliver a better life for its core customers.

Walmart’s acquisition streak has since slowed. It also sold off Modcloth just two years after buying it, to stem the losses from its e-commerce business. Bonobos saw layoffs in 2019 and Walmart’s biggest acquisition, Jet.com, has been folded into the rest of Walmart’s e-commerce operations.

Dunn’s letter also spoke to Walmart’s more controversial decision to fully exit the handgun and handgun ammunition businesses, and ban open carry in its stores, following the mass shooting in its El Paso store.

“It’s a testament to what kind of company Walmart is that I entered thinking mostly about what I could offer, and ended up being the one who received so much,” said Dunn. “When it comes to making the world a better place, the world’s largest company is, 57 years later, just getting started. It’s a credit to the remarkable teamwork of 2.4 million of the hardest working people on planet Earth, all working together. As Sam said, the fact that we’re all in this together is the secret. At Walmart, it’s hidden in plain sight,” he concluded.

Vox previously reported on Dunn’s departure, citing a source, ahead of the official announcement.

Dunn’s departure will take place in 2020.

On the heels of Bill.com’s debut, Chicago-based social media software company Sprout Social priced its IPO last night at $17 per share, in the middle of its proposed $16 to $18 per-share range. Selling 8.8 million shares, Sprout raised just under $150 million in its debut.

Underwriters have the option to purchase an additional 1.3 million shares if they so choose.

The IPO is a good result for the company’s investors (Lightbank, New Enterprise Associates, Goldman Sachs, and Future Fund), but also for Chicago, a growing startup scene that doesn’t often get its due in the public mind.

At $17 per share, not including the possible underwriter option, Sprout Social is worth about $814 million. That’s just a hair over its final private valuation set during its $40.5 million Series D in December of 2018. That particular investment valued Sprout at $800.5 million, according to Crunchbase data.

So what?

Sprout’s debut is interesting for a few reasons. First, the company raised just a little over $110 million while private, and will generate over $100 million in trailing GAAP revenue this year. In effect, Sprout Social used less than $110 million to build up over $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) — the firm reached the $100 million ARR mark in between Q2 and Q3 of 2019. That’s a remarkably efficient result for the unicorn era.

And the company is interesting as it gives us a look at how investors value slower-growth SaaS companies. As we’ve written, Sprout Social grew by a little over 30% in the first three quarters of 2019. That’s a healthy rate, but not as fast as, say, Bill.com . (Bill.com’s strong market response puts its own growth rate in context.)

Thinking very loosely, Sprout Social closed Q3 2019 with ARR of about $105 million. Worth $814 million now, we can surmise that Sprout priced at an ARR multiple of about 7.75x. Thats a useful benchmark for private companies that sell software: if you want a higher multiple when you go public, you’ll have to grow a little faster.

All the same, the IPO is a win for Chicago, and a win for their number of investors. We’ll update this piece later with how the stock performs, once it begins to trade.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

We have something special this week and it’s not just because Kate’s in Berlin for TechCrunch Disrupt Europe and Alex’s in the throws of a cross country move! No, we’ve had this episode in the works for a while, and we’re excited to finally present our deep dive on direct listings with Chris Mayo, the head of primary markets at the London Stock Exchange.

If you’re unfamiliar with direct listings, no need for concern. Chris walks us through the basics and even the more complicated stuff. Before you jump in. Here’s a quick refresher on the new and innovative method of going public. Direct listings allow companies to exit by listing existing shares held by insiders, employees and investors directly to the market, rather than the traditional method of issuing new shares. If you’re interested, we’ve written quite a bit on the subject like this, this, this and more.

As for Mayo, before landing at the London Stock Exchange in 2014 he was a consultant at EcoLogic Systems and a director of equity capital markets, Central and Eastern Europe.

Hope you enjoy our conversation. Thanks for stopping by once again.

Porsche typically concerns itself with terrestrial vehicle designs, but for a new project it worked with Lucasfilm designers in collaboration on a new starfighter for the Star Wars universe.

The starfigher, called the Tri-Wing S-91x Pegasus, obviously doesn’t exist in full-scale flyable form, but it is being built out as a 5-foot long highly-detailed sub-scale model, which will be unveiled at the Rise of Skywalker premiere in LA this month.

Note that the S-91x won’t actually be in the movie – it’s more of a design exercise and promotional thing than something that is actually intended to feature in narrative Star Wars universe content. But the collaboration is interesting because it combines Porsche sensibilities and direct design inspiration from that company’s 911 and Taycan real-world vehicles, with authentic Lucasfilm touches like an astromech slot behind the cockpit and the somewhat ‘lived-in’ detailed industrial look of Star Wars universe technology.

Porsche designers even zeroed in on cockpit comfort and ergonomics with this spacious three-seater design, which is more than you can say for whoever created the cramped and pretty austere interior of the X-Wing, or the submarine-during-combat-maneuvers cabin lighting of the TIE Fighter cockpit.

No word on pricing, but a well-appointed model with the highest trim level is bound to set you back quite a few credits. More than used Corellian YT-1300 freighter that’s for sure.

If you didn’t watch last night’s Game Awards, you may of missed it. But Xbox Series X is the company’s  next generation console, and will be arriving in late 2020. Thankfully, Microsoft has kindly catalogued all of the images, media and even a little information online. Oh, and we’ll almost certainly be hearing a LOT more about the Xbox Series X before it arrives holidays 2020.

Xbox Head Phil Spencer has a pretty long break down over on the the official blog. But let’s start with the obvious here. The Series X looks…different. Surely the meme makers are already working overtime on this one, but to my mind, it looks a more traditional PC or maybe even a router.

It’s tall (around three times as tall as its predecessor), it’s rectangular, it’s black. It’s fairly minimalist. A lot of people seem to be comparing it to a refrigerator, which, fine. Honestly, I think it’s got that working for it. Surely plenty of people are looking for something that more seamlessly blends in with its surroundings.

The last few generations have found consoles transforming from specialty items into catchall media players, and there’s something to be said for a product that can sit on your shelf, largely undetected. Notably, the blocky design means that the console can be oriented either vertically or horizontally, depending on your spacing needs.

The latest version of the Xbox Wireless Controller arrives alongside the new system, because, well, you’re going to need something to control it with. It’s a bit smaller than the previous version, “refined to accommodate an even wider range of people,” per Spencer.

The buttons are largely in tact, with the addition of a Share button for taking screenshots and game clips. The new controllers ship with the system and will be capable with both the Xbox One and Windows 10 systems.

Speaking of older systems, the Series X is set up to support backward compatibility for all older systems, along with Xbox One accessories. Per Spencer,

Building on our compatibility promise, with Xbox Series X we’re also investing in consumer-friendly pathways to game ownership across generations.

Leading the way with our first-party titles including Halo Infinite in 2020, we’re committed to ensuring that games from Xbox Game Studios support cross-generation entitlements and that your Achievements and game saves are shared across devices.

Spec information is still pretty light for this first pass, but Spencer promises 4K playback at 60FPS (with potentially up to 120FPS) and support for both Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and 8K capability.

Powered by our custom-designed processor leveraging the latest Zen 2 and next generation RDNA architecture from our partners at AMD, Xbox Series X will deliver hardware accelerated ray tracing and a new level of performance never before seen in a console. Additionally, our patented Variable Rate Shading (VRS) technology will allow developers to get even more out of the Xbox Series X GPU and our next-generation SSD will virtually eliminate load times and bring players into their gaming worlds faster than ever before.

The Series X will also, naturally, have an eye on cloud gaming, in addition to native hardware. Tonight’s unveil also featured a sneak preview of the upcoming Ninja Theory title, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.