Month: September 2020

Europe’s justice commissioner has conceded there will be “no quick fix” for EU-US data transfers in the wake of the decision by the region’s top court in July that struck down a flagship data transfer agreement which was being used by thousands of businesses.

Despite the ‘Schrems II’ judgement being the second such CJEU strike in around five years, commissioners from the EU’s executive body and US counterparts in the U.S. Department of Commerce announced last month that they had begun discussions on a potential replacement for the now defunct EU-US Privacy Shield.

Justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, said today that talks on an ‘enhanced framework’ are continuing but he admitted there’s no fast track fix for the schism between Europeans’ fundamental rights and US surveillance law.

“There is a common willingness to fully comply with the judgement of the court — on both sides we want to find ways in which to address the issues raised by the court,” said Didier Reynders. “We will intensify our engagement with the US in the coming weeks but we also have to recognize that the judgement raises complex issues related to the sensitive area of national security. Therefore there will be no quick fix.”

He went on to suggest that changes to US law may be needed for any Privacy Shield 2 to be possible — giving the example of the lack of a redress mechanism for EU citizens as an area where legislation may be needed — before emphasizing that any such legislative change would clearly take time (he noted, for example, that the US election is looming — which bakes natural delay into any such timeline).

“We are working with the US counterparts to evaluate the possibility of a strengthened framework — and of course it’s possible to build on existing elements but of course it’s maybe also a necessity to have legislative changes,” he said. “That’s the real question that we have with the US authorities. And that will of course have an impact on the time needed to put in place a new framework.

“It’s a real political debate; it’s not just a technical issue. And if we look at the domestic developments and debates in the US around privacy at the state and federal level but also limitation for intelligence service program there are probably more common grounds to find viable solutions than when the Privacy Shield was negotiated. You have also seen that the reaction of US authorities were constructive; they want to explore where to address the issues raised by the judgement but again sometimes, on the base of actual elements, there is maybe some legislative changes [required].”

“What we need are sustainable solutions that deliver legal certainty in full compliance with the judgement of the court,” he added. “That is also the message I have clearly passed to my EU counterparts and on which I will keep insisting.”

Reynders was speaking to the EU Parliament’s civil liberties (LIBE) committee, which was holding a hearing into the implications of the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) invalidating the EU-US Privacy Shield — aka the Schrems II ruling.

The chair of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), Andrea Jelinek, had also been invited to speak, alongside Max Schrems himself, the European privacy campaigner who now has two successful strikes against EU-US data transfer mechanisms — after the CJEU invalidated Safe Harbor in 2015 and the EU-US Privacy Shield this July following his complaints. 

The discussion delved into the implications of the CJEU ruling for an alternative data transfer mechanism called Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) which were not invalidated by the court, even as their use for US data transfers is now larded with legal risk as a result of US surveillance overreach.

Reynders told the committee the Commission is continuing its work on modernizing SCCs to bring them into line with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) framework — saying it will produce a draft version this month and is aiming to complete the process before the end of the year.

“Now that the judgement has been assured we will of course preserve the elements of the existing SCCs that have led to the court to find them valid. At the same time we will try to reflect and operationalize in all texts the additional clarification provided by the court on the conditions under which SCCs can be used — taking also fully into account the guidance issued by the EDPB that it should help companies in their compliance effort,” he added. “But of course we need to see what kind of more longer term evolution in the US [law there might be].”

Reynders said the same the issues around data transfers will arise with the UK, post Brexit — as it seeks an adequacy agreement and the Commission will have to assess its domestic laws, including infamously draconian surveillance laws — and with other third countries like China where there’s no adequacy agreement in place (nor any prospect of a finding of privacy protections that are essentially equivalent to those in the EU).

“We want to stay open to those that apply the rules,” he added.

Jelinek said the EDPB has just set up a taskforce to work on around 100 strategic complaints filed last month by Schrems’ digital rights group, noyb, that target EU-based entities across the region which are using SCCs for data transfers for Google Analytics and/or Facebook Connect integrations.

noyb argues there’s no legal basis for those transfers and that DPAs should step in and suspend them.

“We are going to work not only close together but closer together than we’ve ever done [with EU data protection authorities] to solve this issue,” said Jelinek. “We will analyze the matter and ensure that we will go together in the same direction.”

Enforcement of EU data protection law is both a duty for supervisory authorities and “a matter of credibility”, she added. “You can be sure we are investigating all together within the taskforce but again I have to tell you that enforcement… is a matter of the national supervisory authorities. Each and every supervisory authority has to enforce in their own country those complaints which are ruled with them.”

The prospect of any enforcement of Schrems’ original SCC complaint to the Irish DPC — filed some seven years ago at this point — is still a distant one, according to what he told the committee.

“Enforcement is going to be a matter of credibility,” he said. “So far the understanding is that there will be no enforcement — or no serious enforcement — that’s also the reason we have filed a couple of complaints already to make sure that there’s some movement. And I think there needs to be some kind of highlight cases where the industry feels there’s a feeling where they actually have to comply with all of this.

“I also want to throw in real short that we got a letter this week that I cannot disclose yet from the Irish data protection regulator informing us that, defacto, they will probably not pursue this case that is ongoing for seven years for the next, I would assume one or two years… We’re very sorry to see that the regulator in Ireland, despite being under a court order that they have to enforce this judgement is apparently choosing not to do so.”

We reached out to the Irish DPC for a response to Schrems’ remarks and it told us he is “wrong” in that supposition but at the time of writing the regulator had not provided any further comment. We’ll update this report if we get more.

Schrems was withering is his view of the Irish DPC’s record, telling the committee that its handling of his complaint was not a pro-privacy case but a “pro-delay case”.

“We have already said at the beginning that this case could have been done by the DPC itself. And we now get back to exactly the problems we have outlined five years’ ago — that the DPC is now working on again.” he said.

“The bottom line is probably there’s not going to be a decision within the next two or three years — if they continue like that. Which means the original complaint I filed after Snowden will probably take up to ten years to get a first instance decision. Then we’ll have three layers of appeals in Ireland. So I’m probably going to be retired once this case is actually finally decided! I’m going to be grey and old and that’s not how fundamental rights in Europe should work — and I think we really have to work on that.”

Late last week we discussed how, this deep into the earnings cycle, it appeared that public SaaS and cloud companies had largely made it through the Q2 gauntlet unscathed. Sure, through last week there was a report or two that wasn’t stellar, but by and large the results had been good and SaaS valuations were happily near all-time highs.

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That’s still the case today, albeit with some caveats. Yesterday, a few public SaaS and cloud companies were dinged sharply by investors after reporting their earnings and I want to talk about why.

My hunch: many SaaS companies that investors expected to accelerate during this period of more-rapid-than-anticipated digital transformation are not, or at least not enough to match market hopes. And that means that their results were not quite what investors expected. And, thus, down went their share prices.

The analogy for startups is pretty clear here, just slower. Public valuations are updated far more often than private valuations, so the stuff we’re seeing today in SaaS stocks won’t show up in SaaS startup valuations for a bit. But I wonder if the same expectation/reality gap that we can discern in a number of recent SaaS results could hit startups as well, with boards that were expecting more than will be delivered in time.

Overall, SaaS and cloud valuations are still strong. Zoom crushed the period. Salesforce did well, too. And with valuations high, revenue multiples remain historically stretched. So, I don’t think that today’s news changes the general market dynamic towards public SaaS companies, and thus SaaS startups. But yesterday’s results are a bit of a warning sign all the same.

Let’s explore.

Whoops

Friend of the column Jamin Ball compiled a list of the SaaS companies reporting yesterday, including MongoDB, Guidewire, SmartSheet, CrowdStrike, PagerDuty and Zuora. Those are the companies whose results we are exploring today.

To keep this post from becoming interminably long, we’ll be brief and direct. So, in bullet points and with terse language:

• MongoDB: Shares up 2.2% in pre-market trading. MongoDB beat on revenue ($138.3 million vs. $126.8 million expected), and per-share profit. It also guided higher for current-quarter revenue than expectations ($137 million to $139 million vs. $130.6 million). So, MongoDB managed to crush earnings, smashed expectations, and was rewarded with a tiny 2.2% gain this morning. That result is not a counter-example to our thesis. It’s early confirmation.
  
  

Nintendo never ceases to surprise with a seemingly infinite numbers of ways of transforming its most beloved IP. Hot on the heels of some truly impressive Super Mario Bros. Lego kits comes Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. The new toy is a clever mashup of real-life RC cars the Nintendo Switch.

The hybrid portable gaming system utilizes cameras on-board the Mario and Luigi karts to offer an on-screen augmented reality first-person racing experience. There’s a teaser video out now, highlighting the game just below:

As you can see, it offers a familiar Mario Kart feel overlayed on top of your home. There’s a pretty simple set up process involved, with the user spacing out a series of gates to create a circular course — think of it a like a far more fun version of setting up Roomba boundaries. Right now there are only two characters —Mario and Luigi — available for now, each priced at $100. But up to four players can compete with the in-person mode.

From the videos, at least, it looks like a pretty rich experience right out of the box, combining real world obstacles with familiar characters and environments like snowy levels and Piranha Plant-filled jungles.

Each kits includes one racer, four gates and two sign boards. They go up for pre-order soon and start shipping October 16.

Nintendo never ceases to surprise with a seemingly infinite numbers of ways of transforming its most beloved IP. Hot on the heels of some truly impressive Super Mario Bros. Lego kits comes Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. The new toy is a clever mashup of real-life RC cars the Nintendo Switch.

The hybrid portable gaming system utilizes cameras on-board the Mario and Luigi karts to offer an on-screen augmented reality first-person racing experience. There’s a teaser video out now, highlighting the game just below:

As you can see, it offers a familiar Mario Kart feel overlayed on top of your home. There’s a pretty simple set up process involved, with the user spacing out a series of gates to create a circular course — think of it a like a far more fun version of setting up Roomba boundaries. Right now there are only two characters —Mario and Luigi — available for now, each priced at $100. But up to four players can compete with the in-person mode.

From the videos, at least, it looks like a pretty rich experience right out of the box, combining real world obstacles with familiar characters and environments like snowy levels and Piranha Plant-filled jungles.

Each kits includes one racer, four gates and two sign boards. They go up for pre-order soon and start shipping October 16.

Amazon wants to bring Alexa to property managers. The company this morning launched a new service, Alexa for Residential, that aims to make it easier for property managers to set up and maintain Alexa-powered smart home experiences in their buildings, like condos or apartment complexes. At launch, IOTAS, STRATIS, and Sentient Property Services will be among the the first smart home integrators to use the Alexa for Residential service.

The idea is to make Alexa a tool for smart home management, even for those without their own Amazon account. The way the service works, new residents won’t have to purchase their own device or set anything up to get started. Instead, they can just speak to Alexa to control the various smart home features available at their residence and use basic Alexa features. like timers, alarms, or getting information like news and weather.

Property managers can choose to create custom Alexa skills for each unit, allowing the residents to submit maintenance requests, make amenity reservations, or even pay their rent via Alexa.

If the residents do have their own Amazon account, they can go through a few steps to link it to their in-home Echo device. Once linked, the residents would then be able to use Alexa’s full range of features, including the ability to listen to music playlists or call friends and family from the Alexa device, for example.

The property manager would have no access to the customer’s personal data, in this case — it would be as if the customer had set up their own Alexa device. In addition, the resident’s voice recordings are deleted on a daily basis under the new service.

However, when the resident’s lease is up or they move out, the service allows property managers to remotely reset the device to the default settings to be ready for the next resident, without disrupting the device’s existing configurations for smart home management.

The launch sees Amazon further investing in a market which would allow it to expand Alexa’s footprint without having to increase direct sales of Echo devices to consumers.

Amazon has worked on partnerships in this area before, having teamed up in November 2018 with Zego, now a subsidiary of PayLease, to roll out Alexa smart home devices to 30,000 apartments. Also in 2018, RedAwning partnered with Amazon to launch property management tools, enabled by Amazon’s Alexa for Hospitality service, originally aimed at hotels. Vacation rentals have leveraged Alexa in their own properties for similar integrations, too, as have senior living centers. There are also independent smart home technology technology platforms aimed at property managers and Alexa skills designed for this space.

More broadly, Amazon has rolled out other services and announced partnerships that could scale Alexa use in homes through B2B deals, as with its 2018 launch of Alexa for Hospitality or its deal with home builders, like Lennar, to integrate devices in their new construction. The success of these efforts have been hit or miss, as some felt shared devices raise privacy concerns and other deployments have been badly managed. 

Amazon is pitching the idea for this latest service as a way for property managers to increase revenues, however. The company cited National Apartment Association data which said 84% of renters want an apartment with smart home amenities and 61% said they would pay a monthly fee for a voice assistant. That data, of course, may not reflect the current economy where the coronavirus pandemic has led to widespread unemployment and has wreaked havoc on the economy. Alexa devices — and an extra fees for their use — may now be seen as more of a luxury, not a necessity.

Your startup is special and different, and you need to explain that to distracted investors in just a few short slides. The pandemic has added to your challenge, because more investors have been looking through more decks than ever online — and spending less time on each.

To help you create the right fundraising presentation, we’ve put together a panel of expert investors at Disrupt 2020 from September 14-18 who have been backing early-stage companies through good times and bad. We’re also providing daily pitch deck teardown sessions, that this session can serve as a guide for (here’s how to submit your own if you’ve already registered for Disrupt 2020).

Ann Miura-Ko is the cofounder of Floodgate and a leading early-stage investor (and computer security expert) with investments including Lyft, Xamarin, Clover Health, Clever and many more. She’s been one of our most popular guest authors and speakers over the years, covering topics like building a minimum viable company and finding the inflection point.

Lo Toney is a long-time founder and product leader who spent much of this past decade investing with Comcast Ventures’s Catalyst Fund and Google Ventures, before founding Plexo Capital in 2018 (and serving as a mentor at Mucker Capital during this time). His focus includes investing in diverse founders globally, as well as backing other funds with the same mission. Some of his recent investment include PlayVS, Replicated and StyleSeat on the company side, and Precursor, Boldstart, Female Founders Fund and WorkBench on the fund side.

Rajan Anandan is the leader of Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s “rapid scale-up” program for founders in India and Southeast Asia. He previously served as Google’s top business executive in the region for more than 8 years, held executive roles in Microsoft and Dell operations before that, and has invested in dozens of startups in India and around the world.

Join us at this pitchdeck teardown and so much more at Disrupt 2020 happening from September 14-18. Grab your Disrupt Digital Pro pass today and during our Labor Day Flash Sale, you can save an extra $100! Hope to see you there!

A program run by the National Security Agency that collected details on billions of Americans’ phone calls was ruled illegal by a U.S. appeals court on Thursday.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the NSA’s “bulk collection” of call records violated the law, but the judges fell short of ruling the program unconstitutional.

The NSA used new powers in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks — known as Section 215 for its place in the law books — to scoop up billions of phone records every year by compelling U.S. phone giants to turn over daily call logs, which the agency uses to make connections between targets of interest. Those call records include who is calling who and when — but not the contents.

Details of the program were exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.

But the call records program, beset with problems, overcollection, and questions about its legality, was shut down last year.

Patrick Toomey, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said the ruling was a “victory” for privacy rights.

“The ruling makes plain that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records violated the Constitution. The decision also recognizes that when the government seeks to prosecute a person, it must give notice of the secret surveillance it used to gather its evidence,” said Toomey. “This protection is a vital one given the proliferation of novel spying tools the government uses today.”

The case at the Ninth Circuit involved Basaaly Moalin and three others, who were found guilty in 2013 for sending money to the militant group, Al-Shabaab. Moalin was convicted in part through call records collected by the NSA, but the role that the data played was so small that it did not undermine their convictions, reports Politico.

The NSA has long claimed that the program was vital for protecting the U.S. homeland stopping terrorist attacks. Past administrations claimed that the program stopped more than 50 attacks. But after congressional scrutiny, that figure was revised down to one identified individual — Moalin.

Although the court did not overturn Moalin’s conviction, the three-judge panel criticized the government’s previous statements and comments about the usefulness and effectiveness of the program, which the court said were “inconsistent with the contents of the classified record.”

Julian Sanchez, a civil liberties expert and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, tweeted: “The upshot of this Ninth Circuit opinion is that the NSA’s bulk phone record collection was illegal and probably unconstitutional, but it doesn’t matter because the program was also worthless.”

When asked if the NSA stood by its earlier statements, spokesperson Mike Dusak declined to comment.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. workers will eventually return to their offices.

But when they do, their big-city workplace will not only have a smaller footprint and operational strategy, it might be in a different town altogether, according to a recent TechCrunch survey of top real estate and proptech investors.

TechCrunch surveyed nine investors who are writing checks today for startups in the sector. Optimism still runs high for startup hubs as well as supercities like New York and San Francisco. However, the move towards e-commerce and remote work — a trend that started before COVID-19 upended the way people live, work and play — has accelerated. 

The responses below get into these and other looming matters, such as the role that government support is playing to support the market … for now. Next week, we will publish the second installment of responses focused on the opportunities and risks for startups that these investors are betting on (or not).

• Clelia Warburg Peters, venture Partner at Bain Capital Ventures
• Brad Greiwe and Brendan Wallace, co-founders and managing partners, Fifth Wall
• Zach Aarons, co-founder and general partner, MetaProp
• John Helm, managing director, Real Estate Technology Ventures
• Adam Demuyakor, co-founder and managing director, Wilshire Lane Partners
• Casey Berman, founder and managing director, Camber Creek
• Florian Reichert, partner, Picus Capital
• Stonly Baptiste, co-founder and partner, Urban Us
• Andrew Ackerman, managing director, DreamIt Ventures

For additional context on where top investors believe the market is headed, be sure to check out our real estate and proptech investor survey from late March and the previous ones from late last year (when everyone thought 2020 would be something different).

Clelia Warburg Peters, venture partner at Bain Capital Ventures

Early evidence suggests that there is a reversal of the New Urbanism movement that defined the past several decades in the U.S., with the pandemic combining with existing trends in this direction. How will this migration affect your investment decisions, especially given foundational changes to residential, office and retail? How does this compare with what you may be seeing in other countries?

There is no doubt that in the United States the pandemic is serving as an accelerant in the ‘diffusion’ of the model where economic activity is concentrated in a few primary urban centers. This diffusion was already underway – so-called ‘secondary’ or ‘tertiary’ cities have been growing in population and economic relevance for more than a decade. But I do think this is a period which will likely cement the permanent significance of many of those cities, where people feel like they can live more comfortably and affordably while enjoying many of the benefits of urban living (jobs, culture, restaurants, and walkability). I actually think this in line with the new urbanism movement – which emphasized the need to make cities more walkable, green, and friendly for living and not just working.

I also don’t see the pandemic altering people’s feeling or perception about the appeal of the ‘1950’s suburban ideal’ in which someone (usually a father in a grey suit) commutes daily into a nearby urban center of activity – in fact, I think what the current interest in the suburbs confirms is that people don’t want to commute and that they feel more interested in suburban environments as they imagine them transitioning into ‘mini-urban’ environments where commuting is limited, ideally, there is walkability, and where they have access to restaurants, culture and shopping through a mix of local and digital experiences.

I think technology is going to be a significant part of the transitions in how we live and work in the next few years, and I am bullish about Proptech during this period. There was always the anticipation that, across the industry, tech adoption would be accelerated during a downturn because tech can often drive efficiency and bring down costs. I think the pandemic will serve as an accelerant to this as well, and will also allow more disruptive models in both the residential and office sectors to gain greater market share. (In an environment where business as usual doesn’t exist, I think tenants and consumers are going to be more willing to experiment). On the office side, so far we are seeing an investment bump primarily focused around technologies that support the back to work experience on the office side, but I think we will start to see much more dynamic models evolve.

The U.S. is unique in that we have so many layers of urban models – some of this disruption will not be as great in other countries where the country itself really has only 1 or 2 primary cities or conversely, where the contrast between the economic development of cities and the countryside is really stark. (I don’t think you will see as much discussion of the idea that everyone is going to leave London in the UK – there just isn’t another area which has the same multi-faceted infrastructure. Nor is this ‘flee the cities’ discussion relevant in China or other areas where it would be logistically difficult to work in the same way outside of many urban environments). This may mean that office and retail are less impacted in these places, and this combined with the fact that these countries are emerging from the pandemic more smoothly, may make international expansion a priority for a lot of Proptech start-ups.

More specifically, startup hubs have been synonymous with superstar cities like San Francisco and New York — do you see the centers of innovation spreading out more widely, to smaller cities, college towns, versus the last decade?

I do believe that startup hubs will continue to spread out more widely, but I do also think that venture is a business that is heavily reliant on networks and relationships, so I think these ‘hives’ will not disperse as quickly as roles in many other industries.

If you belong to the global early-stage startup community, you labor your keister off every day. Here in the states, we observe Labor Day every September to celebrate workers — with sales on everything from cars to mattresses (how very American). Not to be outdone, we’re holding a Disrupt 2020 flash sale and — in that Crazy Eddie sort of way — our prices are INSANE!

Well, more like mildly wacky. Starting today you can save $100 off the price of a Disrupt Digital Pro Pass. Don’t drag your feet, folks because this sale won’t last long. Your insane savings disappear on Monday, September 7 at 11:59 p.m. (PT).

Disrupt 2020 (September 14-18) is all virtual but the benefits and opportunities awaiting you are 100 percent real. Here’s what you can do with your Digital Pro pass.

Enjoy five days of stellar programming across all the Disrupt stages. That’s two extra days to experience everything Disrupt offers. Some of the biggest names and brightest startup minds will take part in one-on-one interviews, moderated panel discussions and interactive Q&As. They’ll address critical issues of the day, including COVID-19. Here are just two examples, and you can check out the Disrupt agenda here.

Tech, Test and Treat: Healthcare Startups in the COVID-19 Era: Both Carbon Health and Color have shifted significant portions of their business to focus on addressing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll talk to them about the challenges of making that quick turn, and about how healthcare innovation can address our pandemic needs.

How to Invest in Infrastructure to Deliver Experience (Adobe): Gabie Boko, Global VP Digital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise & Adobe VP of Platform Engineering, Anjul Bhambhri discuss digital transformation and experience delivery.

Want to improve your startup skills? Attend one of the many Pitch Deck Teardown sessions where top investors go through your submitted pitches live on stage. They’ll talk through the nuts and bolts of what does — or does not — make a great deck.

You’ll find even more actionable tips and tricks over at the Extra Crunch Stage where the interactive programming focuses on growing your business. Learn how to pivot in the face of a crisis, build a sales team, craft a pitch deck and a whole lot more.

Connect with the right people and expand your empire with CrunchMatch, our AI-powered platform that takes the pain and uncertainty out of networking. Register for Disrupt 2020, answer a few quick questions and you can start reaching out to people right now — before Disrupt officially begins.

There’s so much more — hundreds of stellar startups exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley, the epic Startup Battlefield competition — waiting for you at Disrupt 2020. Act now — take advantage of our Crazy-Eddie moment, buy a Digital Pro Pass before Monday, September 7 at 11:59 p.m. (PT), and you’ll save $100 off the price of admission.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

It is clear that as the pandemic has taken hold in 2020, in-person meetings have gone by the wayside. Yet sales teams still need a way to demo their products for potential customers, particularly SaaS vendors. Enter Demodesk, an early stage startup and Y Combinator Winter 2019 grad, which is building an online sales demo platform.

Today the company announced an $8 million Series A led by Balderton Capital with participation from Target Global. The company has now raised a total of $10.3 million including its seed round announced last year.

Demodesk has built a platform to deliver online sales demos remotely with a dash of intelligence to help busy sales people set up the meetings in a more automated fashion. Even though the startup wasn’t thinking about raising money until next year, COVID has accelerated the need for a tool like this in the market, says CEO and co-founder Veronika Riederle.

“We originally planned to raise our next round around the beginning of next year, but because COVID happened, we were able to raise earlier and the money basically enables us to grow a little bit faster now and to build the tool faster because there so much demand in the market,” Riederle told TechCrunch.

The demand has increased because during COVID, sales teams still need to meet with customers, and Demodesk provides a way to do that. Riederle says that the product is significantly different from general meeting software like Zoom, WebEx or GoToMeeting.

While these tools generally allow screen sharing, she says DemoDesk does something different that separates it from these offerings. Instead of a live version of your desktop or a recording where the two parties are seeing the same thing, Demodesk provides a virtual desktop in the cloud where the salesperson can see notes and other information that the customer can’t see, while still letting the customer view the presentation or demo.

What’s more, the virtual approach enables companies to capture data about the demo to help sales teams understand what worked well and what didn’t, something that wouldn’t be possible with traditional screen sharing.

In addition, the company added a new scheduling tool to the product this year that lets customers and sales teams share available times. “You can just select a time that works for you, fill out some data and then we automatically send a calendar invite, put it in the sales person’s calendar, send out a reminder, and then of course automatically prepare the meeting because we know who the meeting is with beforehand. So we do everything from scheduling, preparing the meeting, then assisting you during the meeting,” Riederle explained.

When the meeting is over, Demodesk can share the notes from the meeting automatically with Salesforce or other CRM tool.

The company has 22 employees today, but the goal is to get to 50 by the end of next year. As she grows the company, Riederle says that diversity and inclusion is a key consideration. In fact, diversity is part of the company’s five core values. As an international company, she says that makes diversity even more important, but it’s also about not having just one way of thinking.

“If you have a more diverse set of employees on the team, you just typically come up with better ideas because you are more creative. You think in different ways and have more interesting discussions,” she said.

The company, which launched in 2017 has grown to 150 customers. While these are mostly software companies, Riederle reports she is seeing other industries use the platform like a solar panel company, which was going door-to-door prior to the pandemic, and has used the tool to continue doing business when visiting customers isn’t possible.

She sees this trend continuing, even post-COVID because doing online demos is more efficient, less costly and better for the environment because you don’t have to travel to the meeting.