Year: 2020

I’m supposed to get photos as soon as I take something out of the box. I know better. The rule is not to play with the gadget first. I’m going to crash the drone; I always do.

I crashed the DJI Mavic Air 2 and broke a landing peg. I flew the drone before I took pictures and of course, the drone found a tree. I swear it’s not my fault this time. I quickly discovered the Mavic Air 2 obstacle avoidance technology is not up to par with its competition.

And yet I still love this drone. The Mavic Air 2 builds on the success of the original and is loaded with updated technology. Now it can go faster, farther and take better pictures while preforming automated flight paths and object tracking.

Review

Flying the DJI Mavic Air 2 is a treat and has everything a drone needs: fast speed, high-res camera, long battery life, tremendous range and obstacle avoidance. And it’s relatively inexpensive at $799.

I’m satisfied. And that’s not something I often say when reviewing gadgets. There’s little missing from this product. It’s not perfect — the avoidance system has trouble detecting obstacles on the side of the drone — and yet I have no problem recommending this drone. The DJI Mavic Air 2 is the best consumer drone to date.

I wish I could show video from an epic kayaking trip where the Mavic Air 2 follows our boats down rapids and around a gnarly river. But I’m writing this review during the COVID-19 lockdown, so the best I can do is videos of my golden retriever, Nova, chewing on a stick and me mowing my yard.

It’s fast and capable of hitting 40 mph. The range is excellent — I was able to stream video from nearly the stratosphere. The automated flight paths are a great way to add drama to any video. Just select a person or lawn tractor, and the drone will follow it, even circling if instructed.

The Crash

I love the Mavic Air 2 even though it crashed while performing an automated video. Twice.

Here’s the thing. I’m known around TechCrunch as the guy who crashes drones. I want to think it’s because I use them a lot during the review process to find their limits and flaws. Maybe I’m just a lousy pilot. Our original DJI Mavic coverage was delayed because I crashed the drone into a birdhouse and snapped a handful of props. Replacements had to be shipped from China. With the Mavic Air 2, missed the birdhouse, but found a tree, and a landing leg snapped in half when it hit the ground. Later, when the drone was filming me on the mower, it got stuck in a tree after not sensing a massive tree limb.

I don’t think these crashes are my fault.

The DJI Mavic Air comes preloaded with flight routines. The idea has roots in the drone selfie — where someone stands on a picturesque cliff, and the drone takes off backwards, pointed at the waving group of people while revealing the stunning landscape. This DJI drone can do this automatically. Just select a subject — me on a mower — and hit start. The drone counts down from three and starts flying while keeping the person or object in focus.

As you can see in the video above, everything was going great. The drone took off from about 8 feet, skimmed the birdhouse that previously claimed another drone, and was slowly circling my yard until it found a tree. I assumed the drone’s obstacle avoidance system would have stopped the drone if it detected an object. That’s what happened during the previous dozen flights. But this time, the drone did not identify the branches and crashed.

I don’t think it’s my fault.

The drone has a hard time detecting objects when moving side to side. There are multiple sensors on the front, back, and bottom of the drone and none on the side. The second time it crashed, the drone was in a similar motion, moving side-to-side when it lodged itself on a large limb.

The drone survived both crashes and can still fly, and I’m having a blast. The drone is fast and stable. The range is incredible, though if the FAA is reading this, the drone never left my line of sight.

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Operation

DJI states the Mavic Air 2 has a video transmission range of 10km. In my experience, these range numbers are unachievable in the real world. More often, the range is more than half of that distance, but still impressive and well out of the operator’s sight range.

Drones are increasingly adding technology for capturing personal experiences rather than faraway objects. The Mavic Air 2 seems purpose-built for this task. Sure, it can fly forever in a straight line, but it has the capability of tracking an object and providing a unique vantage point.

The Mavic Air 2 packs DJI’s latest object tracking tech, and it works well as long as its limitations are understood. Just drag a box around an object, and the software will lock onto the object and keep it centered in the camera’s field of view. Combined with the obstacle detection sensors, this gives the Mavic Air 2 an impressive suite of capabilities.

DJI’s new object tracking is an improvement over past generations. It seemingly has no issues detecting large objects in front, behind, or under the drone.

In my experience, the Mavic Air 2 detected power wires, birdhouses and large tree branches as long as they were not on the drone’s side. And it sees people and vehicles fine. It has a hard time tracking Nova; more often than not, the drone loses him even when he’s walking. If the drone detects a potential collision, the controller starts beeping with fury.

With object tracking, it frees the operator from being in front of the camera. Suddenly, with this feature, the possibilities are endless. As detailed above, the Mavic Air 2 lacks sensors on the drone’s side, which is its limiting factor. Use it in a field or parking lot, and you’re good. Use it down a wooded river or trail, and you’ll have a bad time.

Skydio makes a consumer drone that has a similar feature set. However, in my experience, the Skydio drone’s object detection is superior to what’s found in the Mavic Air 2, making the tracking features more useful. With a Skydio drone, users are able to have the drone fly autonomously through area’s the Mavic Air 2 is unable to navigate.

The Mavic Air 2’s camera is fantastic considering the price of the drone. It easily captures the blue skies and wispy clouds, which is often hard for cameras in consumer drones. Colors pop, and landscape photos come alive. The 48MP sensor provides enough detail to zoom into areas with little loss of quality. The camera can shoot RAW files and DJI released a series of ND filters that can attach to the front of the lens, giving the user more control over lighting.

Best of all, the Mavic Air 2 has excellent battery life. I averaged around 30 minutes of flight time in moderate wind when using the drone in Normal mode. The battery life drops to around 25 minutes with high winds or spirited flying in Sport mode. During my time with the Mavic Air 2, I flew the drone over a dozen times. I don’t think I ever had to recharge the controller.

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Conclusion

The Mavic Air 2 was a long time coming. I’ve used nearly every DJI consumer drone since the original Phantom, and each generation leapfrogs the last in capabilities and convenience. The original Mavic freed me from carrying a large Pelican case with Phantom drone. The second generation Mavic added a better camera. The small DJI Spark made drones even more portable, but the camera and range were lacking. The DJI Mavic Mini filled that need with updated tech in a foldable design, and yet the camera is underwhelming.

The Mavic Air 2 builds on the success of the original but is loaded with updated technology. Now the Mavic Air 2 can go faster, farther, and take better pictures while preforming automated flight paths and object tracking.

The Mavic Air 2 is the drone for most consumers. It hits the sweet spot of capabilities for the price.

Boasting a technology that can dramatically increase the capacity of existing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing used to identify people infected with COVID-19 and other illnesses, ChromaCode has attracted new funding from Bill Gates-backed Adjuvant Capital. 

“We want a good solution for a resource-limited environment,” says ChromaCode founder and executive chairman Alex Wilkinson, a serial entrepreneur who has worked with CalTech researchers spinning out companies since the early 2000s.

The technology was based on research conducted by California Institute of Technology graduate student Aditya Rajagopal. A former researcher at Google[x] working on novel medical imaging methods, Rajagopal is the inventor of HDPCR, the tech at the heart of ChromaCode’s product.

With the help of Wilkinson, Rajagopal spun out the technology he’d developed to form ChromaCode in 2012, according to Crunchbase, and raised its initial capital to develop a diagnostic tool that could use algorithms and new sensing technologies to increase the number of targets that can be analyzed by traditional PCR analysis.

The polymerase chain reaction tests were invented in 1985 by Kary Mullis, who was working as a chemist at the Cetus Corp., and use copies of very small amounts of DNA sequences that are amplified in a series of cycles of temperature changes. It’s one of the foundations of genetic analysis. 

While traditional PCR testing relies on differentiation of targets by color, the HDPCR technology developed by ChromaCode’s co-founder uses signal intensity to identify multiple different targets and signify them as curve signatures encoded into a single color channel. Think of the technology as using color gradients to identify multiple targets in a test instead of just one color.

“It’s like image compression,” Wilkinson said.

For COVID-19 specifically, the use of ChromaCode’s technology could expand available testing capacity threefold, the company said.

“Right now the basic test looks at three different things,” said Wilkinson. “These machines have wells and they can do 96 tests at a time. The challenge is that you would typically use three of those wells for each test. We let them do all of the test in one well, which would give you a three times multiple.”

That means instead of testing 32 individuals using existing PCR equipment, labs would be able to perform 96 tests at a time.

Even more significant is the ability for ChromaCode’s technology to identify other illnesses alongside COVID-19. “What we’re planning for is the fall when we will be taking the existing COVID test and layering in flu and other diseases,” says Wilkinson.

The ability to test for multiple pathogens has important implications for the ability to adequately test, track and trace the spread of the disease in the low and medium income countries that are now undergoing their own outbreaks. “The problem in Africa is that someone has a fever and it might be COVID or that might be Dengue fever,” said Wilkinson. Using ChromaCode’s technology, diagnosticians and physicians can tell the difference without having to use new machines.

It’s the ability to work on existing technology that sets ChromaCode apart from competitors like BioFire Diagnostics and Cepheid, according to Wilkinson and his co-founder Greg Gosch.

“The supply chain on the tests will continue to be strained so people will be looking for more efficient mechanisms,” said Gosch.

Adjuvant Capital, the investment fund spun out from a collaboration between the Gates Foundation and JP Morgan Chase, had already identified ChromaCode as a potential investment target well before the pandemic hit, according to managing partner Jenny Yip.

The investment firm began speaking with ChromaCode in the summer of 2019, and was drawn to the company for its ability to expand testing capacity well before the COVID-19 outbreak brought the problems of adequate testing into stark relief.

“From a global health perspective, ChromaCode’s technology ability to be installed in the existing technology base is very powerful,” said Yip. Given the low resource base in some of the countries where testing is needed the most, requiring the installation of an entirely new suite of hardware and software tools is untenable — let alone developing a supply chain that can service and maintain the technology.  

The lack of adequate testing in the United States remains the biggest obstacle to safely fully re-starting the country’s economy and ensuring that any future outbreaks of the disease can be managed successfully, according to experts.

“Testing is your first fundamental step in a plan to keep infected people from susceptible people,” Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told The Atlantic.

“There’s a strong sense that the White House knows the amount of testing we need is far more than we have right now,” he said. “It is really stunning and disappointing.”

 

When he was still running Microsoft, Steve Ballmer caused quite the stir in the tech world by screaming “Developers! Developers! Developers!” Since the executive retired to spend more time with his basketball team, however, the tech giant’s current CEO is decidedly more…subtle in his approach.

In the kickoff keynote to the first all-virtual build conference, Satya Nadella delivered a speech in front of a large shelving unit packed with knickknacks and family photos. And there was “RGV2cw.” The seemingly nonsensical string of letters sat to the right of the CEO’s head. But these kinds of backdrops aren’t chosen at random. Surely there must be some meaning in the madness.

The letters sent twitter users scrambling to decode. One noted the presence of a user on a dev board with the name. Another quickly snapped up the handle to send Build related tweets. This user, however, appears to be the first to have cracked the code:

Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman confirmed the message. It was, quite literally, a coded message to developers. Specifically, it’s the word “devs” in the Base64 format. Here, run it through this decoder to see for yourself.

It doesn’t have the shouting, sweaty urgency of Ballmer, but it’s a nice tip of the fedora nonetheless.

Starting today, you’ll be able to browse and buy products directly from a business’ Facebook Page or Instagram profile.

Both Facebook and Instagram already supported a degree of ecommerce — for example, Facebook has its Marketplace and will likely make a bigger push through its Libra cryptocurrency initiative, while Instagram allows users to buy products featured in posts and ads. But the company’s new tools go further, enabling businesses that to create a full-fledged Facebook Shop.

After all, the pandemic has probably made consumers even more likely to treat Facebook and Instagram profiles as the go-to source of information on local restaurants and stores — if your favorite store has changed their hours, or switched to online delivery/curbside pickup, they’ve almost certainly posted about it on Facebook or Instagram. So why not allow visitors to make purchases without having to leave the Facebook and Instagram apps?

It’s also worth remembering that the pandemic’s economic fallout will likely kill off many small business — businesses that post and advertise on Facebook. So the company has a stake in helping those businesses survive in any way it can.

In a Facebook Live session today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described this as a way to help businesses suffering in the wake of COVID-19, though he acknowledged it will not “undo all the economic damage.”

He also suggested that this will remain useful after the pandemic, “I do think we’re going to continue living more of our lives online and doing more business online.”

Meanwhile, Instagram’s vice president of product Vishal Shah told me this as a big, global test of the feature with nearly 1 million businesses already signed up.

Those businesses will be able to create a Facebook Store for free — they just upload their catalogue, choose the products they want to feature, then customize it with cover image and accent colors. Visitors can then browse, save and order products without leaving the Facebook and Instagram apps.

While Facebook’s vice president of ads Dan Levy said the company will charge “small fees” on each purchase, the real monetization will come from driving more advertising.

Levy described this as a “build and render anywhere” solution, with Shah adding that “the shop itself will be very consistent, whether it’s on Facebook or instagram.” What will differ is how consumers discover the shops, whether it’s via the Facebook Marketplace or a product tagged in a photo on Instagram.

The company also plans to launch another experience called Instagram Shop this summer, allowing users to browse products directly from Instagram Explore and eventually from the app’s main navigation tab. There will also be ways for merchants to feature and link products from their Facebook Stores in their live videos, and for consumers to connect loyalty programs to their Facebook accounts.

As part of this announcement, Facebook said it’s partnering with Shopify, BigCommerce, Woo, Channel Advisor, CedCommerce, Cafe24, Tienda Nube and Feedonomics. Merchants will be able to use these third-party platforms to manage their Facebook Shops and the ads tied to those Shops.

“We’re living through extraordinary times,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella opened his Build 2020 keynote on a somber note. It was an odd tonal shift following the event introduction by hosts Seth Juarez and Dona Sarkar.

The pair spent kicked the 48 hour livestream off standing a CDC-approved social distance from one another behind a large desk, trading silly banter and dad jokes. That last bit, at least carries a sense of normality amidst these extraordinary times.

Awkward banter and goofy jokes are a mainstay in tech presentations, for better or worse — but there’s bound to be an extra level of strangeness when you strip away the live audience (particularly the overly enthusiastic employees planted in the audience). At best, it can have YouTube presenter energy and at worst, it’s like one of those videos of sitcom with the laugh track edited out.

As a necessary first time experiment, Microsoft’s Build 2020 keynote was probably more good than bad. It was arguably the first truly big tech company event on this level since pandemic really started locking things down. After all, Apple’s WWDC isn’t until next month, and Google essentially punted on I/O, removing even the online elements.

“Right now, the most important thing all of us can do is focus our attention on helping people with the new challenges we all face,” the company wrote at the time. “Please know that we remain committed to finding other ways to share platform updates with you through our developer blogs and community forums.”

It’s a difficult decision to make either way, of course. Certainly the gravity of the pandemic can make such an event seem inconsequential by comparison, but there’s also something to be said when a company can reintroduce a sense of normality — albeit through artificial means.

The Juarez/Sarkar bumpers are intended to serve as a through line through the two days of programming, and naturally a little vamping is going to be involved. In the case of the opener, it was five or so minutes of the cohosts scrolling through Twitter hashtag comments on a Surface Studio, in a bid to approximate the sense of community one has in attending an in-person developer conference.

Nadella’s presentation that followed struck a better balance. It was simple and likely pre-recorded, with the executive standing in front of a full shelving unit housing knickknacks and family photos. He addressed the camera, as the feed cut back and forth between him and clips. If things felt off, it was mostly due to the fact that it’s impossible to watch it without constantly comparing it to the pomp of previous years event.

Microsoft perhaps took a note from Nintendo, which switched from live keynotes to a prerecorded Tree House presentation at E3 several years ago. It’s a tradeoff that loses some of the excitement of the standard format, but adds the ability to perfect a presentation through multiple takes. Nintendo above all benefits from the use of countless game trailers. B-roll is an extremely important piece of that puzzle. 

The curse of the live demo is gone, if you want it. Though the heavy reliance on Skype conversations in a followup Microsoft presentation really hammered home the fact that few of us live in home studios. Plane noises and lawnmowers were a regular reminder that things are just going to be weird for a while. Not bad, necessarily, but weird.

There’s certainly good to come out of this forced reformatting. For one thing, Build is accessible through a free registration. The official chat (which was a train wreck for reasons I won’t go into here) was full of excited developers and observers announcing that this was their first-ever Build. Ticket prices, travel and the limitations of in-person event spaces are difficult hurdles for many.

The next few months will determine whether this is the new normal for these sorts of events. It would be hard to blame organizers for continuing with an abundance of cautious into 2021. I suspect many will return to the in-person event, but hopefully the added accessibility of the virtual element will live on beyond the threat of COVID-19.

TikTok enlists a big name from Disney as its new CEO, Walmart is shuttering its Jet e-commerce brand and EasyJet admits to a major data breach.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 19, 2020.

1. Disney streaming exec Kevin Mayer becomes TikTok’s new CEO

Mayer’s role involved overseeing Disney’s streaming strategy, including the launch of Disney+ last fall, which has already grown to more than 50 million subscribers. He was also seen as a potential successor to Disney CEO Bob Iger; instead, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Chairman Bob Chapek was named CEO in a sudden announcement in February.

Mayer was likely an attractive choice to lead TikTok not just because of his streaming success, but also because hiring a high-profile American executive could help address politicians’ security concerns about the app’s Chinese ownership.

2. Walmart says it will discontinue Jet, which it acquired for $3B in 2016

Walmart tried to put a positive spin on the news, saying, “Due to continued strength of the Walmart.com brand, the company will discontinue Jet.com. The acquisition of Jet.com nearly four years ago was critical to accelerating our omni strategy.”

3. EasyJet says 9 million travel records taken in data breach

EasyJet, the U.K.’s largest airline, said hackers have accessed the travel details of 9 million customers. The budget airline said 2,200 customers also had their credit card details accessed in the data breach, but passport records were not accessed.

4. Where these 6 top VCs are investing in cannabis

The results paint a stunning picture of an industry on the verge of breaking away from a market correction. Our six respondents described numerous opportunities for startups and investors, but cautioned that this atmosphere will not last long. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

5. Brex brings on $150M in new cash in case of an ‘extended recession’

Where upstart companies aren’t cutting staff, they are often reducing spend — which is bad news for Brex, since it makes money on purchases made through its startup-tailored corporate card. But co-founder Henrique Dubugras seems largely unbothered on how the pandemic impacts Brex’s future.

6. Popping the hood on Vroom’s IPO filing

Yesterday afternoon, Vroom, an online car buying service, filed to go public. What does a private, car-focused e-commerce company worth $1.5 billion look like under the hood? (Extra Crunch membership required.)

7. Experience marketplace Pollen lays off 69 North America staff, furloughs 34 in UK

Founded in 2014 and previously called Verve, Pollen operates in the influencer or “word-of-mouth” marketing space. The marketplace lets friends or “members” discover and book travel, events and other experiences — and in turn helps promoters use word-of-mouth recommendations to sell tickets.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

One usual characteristic of a bootstrapped company is that its growth is slower than its VC-backed competitors. Bootstrapped marketing spend relies on revenue, revenue often relies on marketing spend, and the tension between the two can force slower growth. VC-backed companies, in contrast, can afford to spend ahead of revenue, often allowing them to grow more quickly.

Byte has found a much faster bootstrapped path to growth. The company, which was founded in 2017 and launched its products at the beginning of 2019, is on track to reach a $100 million revenue run rate in Q2 of this year, according to president Neeraj Gunsagar.

Unlike bootstrapped startups with first-time founders, byte (it’s officially lowercase) was founded by serial entrepreneurs Scott Cohen and Blake Johnson. Cohen founded his first company in 2011 (acquired by Deluxe Corporation in 2016) and his second company, Currency, alongside Blake Johnson in 2016, which sold to a private equity firm in 2019.

The duo brought on Gunsagar, formerly CMO at TrueCar where he spent eight years, to help lead the next phase of growth at the company and prepare the organization for international expansion and the next product rollout.

But let’s back up. Byte is an invisible-aligner-for-teeth company that has entered the ring with behemoths like Invisalign and SmileDirectClub, as well as a smattering of smaller at-home braces startups, like Candid. But there are several big differences between byte and its competition.

The first is its technology. Alongside impression kits and invisible aligners, byte also includes a device called HyperByte in all of its treatment plans. HyperByte is an extra in-mouth device that uses high-frequency vibrations (HFV) to send micropulses through the roots of the teeth and the surrounding bone, speeding up the process of alignment.

HFV treatment is FDA-approved and offered in orthodontist offices around the country, but usually at a steep price.

HyperByte comes included with the cost of using byte’s service, which comes out to $1,895. (Folks can also pay via payment plan, called BytePay, which comes out to $349 down and $83/month for a little over two years.) The company also includes a whitening solution that can be used in conjunction with aligners.

Byte’s treatment plans are overseen and reviewed by licensed orthodontists each and every time, and customers can be connected to an orthodontist or dentist should they run into any clinical issue during treatment.

In some cases, insurance may reimburse customers for their byte treatment.

In other words, byte is working to bring down both the cost of aligners and the time it takes to treat patients. Importantly, byte focuses exclusively on Phase 1 malocclusions, or small misalignments in the teeth like tiny gaps or slightly crooked teeth, and not complicated issues like overbites.

Most interestingly, byte saw explosive growth in the first quarter of 2020 — the company saw 10x revenue growth over the last three months, compared to the same period of 2019, and says that it is continuing at that 10x growth rate through Q2. Byte also told TechCrunch that it generated “positive EBITDA business pre-[COVID-19].” (As is the case with all private companies, these numbers come from byte and are not independently verified by TechCrunch.)

Part of that profitability story is improving economics. Toward the end of 2019, byte’s cost to acquire customers (CAC) averaged $189 for initial impression kits, a figure that dropped to $88 by the end of April 2020.

The sharp CAC decline is due to several factors. According to Gunsagar, the price of Google keywords dropped dramatically in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the company has seen its direct and organic traffic double, perhaps driven by the coronavirus pandemic spurring increased interest in self-improvement.

Byte isn’t the only company caught in the self-improvement updraft. “There’s sort of this trend toward self-improvement and using this time constructively,” Jaimee Minney, SVP of marketing and PR at Rakuten Intelligence, told CNBC. “Book sales increase, games and puzzles, and we have seen health and beauty start to grow as well, especially when you look at it on a year-over-year basis. That’s one I might keep an eye on, the self-improvement piece.”

Gunsagar explained that, historically, other companies may have thrown even more marketing money at this type of environment to boost growth even more.

“We won’t sacrifice our customer experience and we won’t sacrifice profitability as we grow the business,” said Gunsagar. “We don’t want to have too many impression kits going through the system because we want to make sure we can support it from a technology and experience standpoint. Every dollar we spend is still super profitable. I could go spend more money and still stay below our CPC goal of $150 and blow past $100 million in revenue this year, but I just wouldn’t be super confident that our NPS score or our customer experience wouldn’t be penalized.”

In formulating this careful growth strategy, Gunsagar and byte aren’t just looking at the broader tech ecosystem, where we’ve seen growth at all costs backfire on companies. They can find examples in their own industry — SmileDirectClub grew fantastically ahead of its initial public offering in September of 2019 only to feel backlash from some customers who were reportedly asked for an NDA in exchange for a refund.

One other important piece of byte’s strategy is an upcoming bytePro launch in conjunction with dentists and orthodontists. The idea is to grow alongside the dental and orthodontic industry, rather than cut these healthcare professionals out of the food chain.

With bytePro, which launches next month, dentists and orthodontists are included even more in the process. Incoming clients can ask to work with their own dentist or orthodontist as they go through the byte aligner process, and even get their impression kits in their dentist’s office rather than order them online. On the other side, dentists and orthodontists can join the bytePro network to be matched with new patients. Moreover, folks that purchase byte show an increased interest in caring for their teeth year round, according to the company, whether that be cleanings or other dental work. Byte aims to connect those folks with a good dentist or orthodontist to protect the investment they’ve made in their new smile.

Though byte is not venture-backed, the company has taken a small investment from actress and investor Kerry Washington, who has also invested in The Wing and Community. Washington serves as Creative Director at byte.

“When I was looking at ways to continue growing my portfolio, I focused on companies that I can be really proud to be associated with, and that pride comes from the quality of the product and how it improves the quality of people’s lives,” said Washington. “The idea of having a voice is really important. With byte, I said really early on ‘if you can’t open your mouth, you can’t find your voice’ and when you hear the stories from real customers, people were afraid to smile and afraid to speak and that’s when I realized that this is a tool that can better people’s lives in so many ways.”

As cashiers across the country take precautions to limit interactions with customers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s hard to think of a better time for the rollout of an Amazon Go vision of autonomous retail.

Standard Cognition CEO Jordan Fisher has been building towards that future for the past several years. His startup has raised over $86 million from investors like CRV, Initialized Capital and Y Combinator to create a system for building and retrofitting a new generation of retail experiences where consumers can walk into a store, pick up their items and walk out of the store without checking out. In the midst of the pandemic, the early technology is getting renewed attention though the tech isn’t widespread enough to make an impact.

“It’s unfortunate that the industry is where it’s at today, I wish that we were five years ahead to be much more widely deployed and be able to actually make a major difference on these risk profiles,” Fisher told TechCrunch. “But I think we’re going to be thinking with a COVID mentality for years to come. This is definitely piece of investing for the future to make sure that we’re opening up our retail world in as safe a way as possible.”

As Standard Cognition prepares to scale in a world more amenable to skipping checkout, the San Francisco startup is making international movement, acquiring a competitor based in Italy called Checkout Technologies for an undisclosed sum. The startup is tackling a lot of the same problems that Fisher’s team was working on; this acquisition brings Checkout’s talent, tech and partnerships to Standard Cognition.

Fisher said the two teams had been communicating since the middle of last year and that COVID-19, which struck Italy particularly hard, had “added complications” to wrapping up the deal, though he says they were in final diligence stage by the time the pandemic had fully reared its head.

“There’s going to be consolidation in the autonomous checkout space,” Fisher says. “We’ve always been interested in being international because there are specific retailers we’re interested in.”

The Italian startup had a partnership with a “top 150 retailer” in Italy, Fisher says, which Standard Cognition will continue to work with. Checkout Technologies’ 13-person team will stay put in their Milan offices as Standard Cognition continues to look for opportunities in that market.

On the international front, Standard Cognition has also detailed plans to roll out its tech in Japan, which Fisher frames as an ideal market for the technology based on consumer habits around visiting convenience stores. Stateside, the startup says they’re currently working on multiple retrofits to bring their tech to existing storefronts and that they’ve also landed a partnership with the Red Sox to showcase their tech in the baseball team’s new stadium.

During his Build keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today confirmed that the company has acquired Softomotive, a software robotic automation platform. Bloomberg first reported that this acquisition was in the works earlier this month, but the two companies didn’t comment on the report at the time.

Today, Nadella noted that Softomotive would become part of Microsoft’s Power Automate platform. “We’re bringing RPA – or robotic process automation to legacy apps and services with our acquisition of Softomotive,” Nadella said.

Softomotive currently has about 9,000 customers around the world. Softomotive’s WinAutomation platform will be freely available to Power Automate users with what Microsoft calls an RPA attended license in Power Automate.

In Power Automate, Microsoft will use Softomotive’s tools to enable a number of new capabilities, including Softomotives low-code desktop automation solution WinAutomation. Until now, Power Automate did not feature any desktop automation tools.

It’ll also build Softomotive’s connectors for applications from SAP, as well as legacy terminal screens and Java, into its desktop automation experience and enable parallel execution and multitasking for UI automation.

Softomotives other flagship application, ProcessRobot for server-based enterprise RPA development, will also find a new home in Power Automate. My guess, though, is that Microsoft mostly bought the company for its desktop automation skills.

“One of our most distinguishing characteristics, and an indelible part of our DNA, is an unswerving commitment to usability,” writes Softomotive CEO and co-founder Marios Stavropoulos. “We have always believed in the notion of citizen developers and, since less than two percent of the world population can write code, we believe the greatest potential for both process improvement and overall innovation comes from business end users. This is why we have invested so diligently in abstracting complexity away from end users and created one of the industry’s most intuitive user interfaces – so that non-technical business end users can not just do more, but also make deeper contributions by becoming professional problem solvers and innovators. We are extremely excited to pursue this vision as part of Microsoft.”

The two companies did not disclose the financial details of the transaction.

Roelof Botha’s career is the stuff dreams are made of — that is, if the dream is to become one of the topmost investors in the U.S. venture capital industry.

Not only has Botha had tremendous success in his investing career, including an early bet on the mobile payments company Square (on whose board he still sits five years after its IPO), but in 2017, Botha was made the U.S. head of the venture firm he first joined 17 years ago, Sequoia Capital.

Considering that Sequoia is widely considered the most powerful venture firm in the country, that’s quite a position to hold. In fact, on Forbes’s 2020 Midas List, Botha was ranked the third-best VC in the world, just two spots behind the number-one ranked investor. That person: Neil Shen, who is the founder and managing partner of  Sequoia Capital China. (Doug Leone is the firm’s global managing director.)

It’s because of Botha’s position and the insights that he brings to the role that we’re very pleased to announce that he is joining us this year at Disrupt 2020, which runs September 14 to September 16.

Certainly, there’s a lot to talk about. While Botha’s career has seemingly moved in one direction, he has lived through numerous economic ups and downs dating back more than 20 years and has seen what it takes to get through tough times.

When he first came to the U.S. from his native South Africa, it was as a former McKinsey consultant looking to nab an MBA from Stanford. He graduated just as the tech economy was imploding inn 2000, but he managed to connect with a fledgling payments startup, PayPal, joining as a director of corporate development before becoming its VP of finance and later its CFO.

A role at Sequoia Capital would follow, and a young Botha didn’t waste the opportunity. Instead, he led the firm’s investment in YouTube, sitting on its board before Google purchased the then 1.5-year-old startup in 2006 for what seemed at the time like an ungodly sum: $1.65 billion. (Last year, YouTube produced $15 billion in revenue for the company.)

It hasn’t all been a walk in the park. Today, in fact, Botha has portfolio companies that are facing an uphill battle. Eventbrite, for example, on whose board he sits, had to cut 45% of its staff last month because of the impact of COVID-19 on the events business.  Another of his portfolio companies, Bird, the buzzy micro-mobility company, has conducted its own mass layoffs as much of the U.S. remains at home in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.

We’ll talk with Botha about how he’s advising these startups, as well as about his outlook for the broader venture industry. More specifically, we’ll discuss how startups strike a balance right now between continuing on their paths and succumbing to false optimism about how quickly the “black swan of 2020,” as Sequoia has described the coronavirus in a letter to its founders, is resolved.

If you care about the global shifts that are reshaping the tech industry right now, this is one conversation you won’t want to miss.

Disrupt 2020 runs September 14 to September 16 and we have several Digital Pass options to be part of the action or to exhibit virtually, which you can check out here.

We’ll be announcing more speakers over the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

(Editor’s Note: We’re watching the developing situation around the novel coronavirus very closely and will adapt as we go. You can find out the latest on our event schedule plans here.)