Year: 2020

A LabCorp shareholder has filed a lawsuit against the laboratory giant, accusing its board of concealing details of two data breaches that affected millions of patients.

The derivative suit, filed on Tuesday by shareholder Raymond Eugenio, targets the company’s leadership and board members, including its chief executive Adam Schechter.

The first breach hit third-party billing provider AMCA in 2019, affecting 7.7 million LabCorp patients and millions more from other lab test providers, including Quest and BioReference. A second security lapse discovered by TechCrunch earlier this year involving the exposure of thousands of patient documents was also referenced in the suit.

At the heart of the complaint, the shareholder claims LabCorp’s “insufficient cybersecurity procedures” contributed in part to the two security incidents, and that the board fell short of its fiduciary duty by not disclosing the security incidents to shareholders. LabCorp is also accused of not informing patients and customers of the breach, and it’s claimed the company did not properly inform attorney generals’ offices within the time given under state data breach notification laws.

The suit also accuses LabCorp of failing to “disclose this breach in any widely disseminated public release or SEC filing,” adding that the incidents noted in the complaint were “unlawfully concealed from LabCorp shareholders.”

News of the suit was first reported by Bloomberg Law.

A spokesperson for LabCorp did not respond to a request for comment.

Achieving a sense of community has been the pursuit of businesses trying to attract the experience-over-items millennials and Gen Z who want their consumerism to have a positive impact on the world. “That’s what brands want — activism, human connection and how to be local,” Olu Alege, owner of the New York-based boutique strategic branding agency No Noise, said.  

“Community” is defined as a group of individuals with a common characteristic or interest within a larger society. The key to building a positive community is allowing members to speak and be heard and, subsequently, be provided for as they contribute. The same rules apply to building a business on the concept of community, and this foundation doesn’t suddenly change during a pandemic. Sure, the needs fluctuate (as do the funds), but voicing the need — hearing them and attempting to accommodate them — should not. 

The world is collectively shifting during the COVID-19 pandemic. The demand for community is arguably greater, as shelter-in-place directives have resulted in extreme isolation for some. And while these extraordinary circumstances have seen some purveyors of community step up, others have unfortunately fallen short and instead haphazardly execute “community” as a talking point rather than a reality that benefits … communities.

Co-working places and social clubs like SoHo House, WeWork, The Wing and New York’s Ethel’s Club hawk community to small businesses and entrepreneurs by bringing loosely like-minded people or those with similar lifestyles into the same space.  

Brick-and-mortar retailers like Nike’s Live locations have leveraged localized data to bring specific communities back out to shop in-store. Shopify’s Los Angeles location’s initiative is to foster community by offering educational programming and other resources within their permanent physical space. Both brands saw the value in organizing communities and adopted the concept to further their core business. 

Even before COVID-19 upended everyday life, cracks in the business of community began to hurt beloved brands, as pulling the curtain back revealed unethical treatment of team members and work environments unaligned with their outward-facing brand or company mission. 

Fitness brand and inclusive community Outdoor Voices’s “smoke and mirrors” utopia came crumbling down when 14 employees anonymously shared with BuzzFeed News stories of verbal abuse and a real life “Mean Girls” office environment.

The Wing’s downfall came when 26 employees shared with The New York Times stories of racism, virtue-signaling inclusivity and white-washed feminism. Seemingly, their motto “empowering women through community” was intended for a smaller set of women than their PR and marketing let hopeful members believe, despite each employee also being a card-carrying “Winglet.”  

And WeWork has been bleeding employees, investors and direction in the wake of Adam Neumann’s exaggerated investment in himself, such as when he personally trademarked the word “We” and subsequently net $5.9 million when WeWork was renamed We Co.

Since early March 2020, when we saw the shutdown of major sport events, the cancellation of conferences like CES and the postponing of festivals like Coachella, we’ve also seen these offenders continually fail their community with a lack of communication and foresight resulting in acts of desperation over safety in the face of coronavirus. 

Despite Neumann’s exit from WeWork in fall of 2019, company culture doesn’t change overnight, and their shaky idea of community persisted as the U.S. declared a state of emergency. WeWork opted to stay open despite shelter-in-place orders in cities with their largest locations, offering renters slashed rates and even incentivizing employees to come in with a $100 daily bonus, according to an internal memo received by The New York Times.  

A number of The Wing’s staff learned of the layoffs via this story on Vice that went up at 11:19 am EST on the day employees were supposed to be informed by 6:00 pm EST. SoHo House members shared that the club took until March 27 to allow members who requested it to pause memberships (which wouldn’t start until June 1), offering promises of complimentary food and drink until then. 

The glaring disconnect in these self-appointed authorities of community is the lack of care for the people that contribute to the community’s foundation and convenience-based investment in its members. 

“I have a problem with these companies that tend to talk about it when it’s convenient, when it’s okay for everyone to do it,” Alege shared. Some will argue that it’s for the better of the business, but that argument says more about the claimant than circumstance, as there are communities and businesses that are stepping up in this time of need. 

“Whether or not information is provided is where I feel like you can see the differences in a company’s mission,” Alege points out. He goes on to say companies that communicated to their teams and had everyone on board in preparation for an impending recession, or actively started to take precautions as the virus spread through other areas first, inherently care more for their teams and community, even if and when layoffs happen.

Brooklyn’s Ethel’s Club is the first private social and wellness club created intentionally for people of color with priority of their identity and experiences. On March 13, the club announced the precautionary shutdown of their HQ in anticipation for COVID-19. 

Upon making the decision, Ethel’s Club founder and owner Naj Austin said she took a lap around the club and asked some members their thoughts and what they’d like to see from Ethel’s Club should they shut down the space for a month or so. 

“They were like, ‘Oh, it’d be really cool if we could still have the community, somehow. Can you do it online?’ In my head, I’m thinking we have no capacity for this, but I guess we’re going to have to figure it out,” Austin added. “In exactly the same way that Ethel’s Club was started — by talking to our customers about what they wanted to see out of it — we used the same formula. It very much felt like we were starting the company all over again.”

Giving herself and her team a deadline of five days, they decided to pause the 225 members’ dues and open up a digital membership nationally for $17 a month. They’ve added more than 300 digital-only members to the existing members. 

The new digital membership still focuses on social and purposeful wellness. “In the morning we have programming that’s meant to intentionally address how you start your day, so super uplifting, assuming that you open your phone and read the news first thing. How can we combat that? How can we make your day successful?” Austin said. 

Strategically timed sessions include topics like “Radical Self Care For Radical Times,” full body at-home workouts and writing workshops, with the final session of each evening being loosely focused on celebrating the day. “When we’re in the new normal, I think people will still need this. I think people need the structure in this new world as people work from home more and just for whatever’s going to be on the other side.” Austin says this is to give members something to depend on, in this time where that is lacking.

They also launched their digital clubhouse, an Ethel’s Club members-only directory and portal for members to communicate. 

A community-based business model adopted by existing brands should be offering tools to foster the community. Communities formed on Instagram, Twitter and Slack have simply transformed without disappearing. 

IG Live has brought a plethora of wellness professionals live streaming — offering workouts to meditation — and resulted in legendary music producers Swizz Beatz and Timbaland bringing other recording artists together. This has resulted in the likes of T-Pain versus Lil’ Jon and Teddy Riley and Babyface going head to head and playing through their hits, as other musicians, producers and fans converse in the comments. 

Animal Crossing has seemingly established itself among these platforms as well, offering a place for existing communities to congregate despite being unable to be physically in the same room. 

New York-based DJ, Jubilee shared what the game has offered in this time, where she won’t be internationally touring for gigs like she normally does. “Yesterday I did a photo shoot with my DJ friend Teki Latex that lives in Paris. He had a bunch of us over at 10 pm his time. He even styled some of us and he got a photographer. It was so ridiculous, but it was also really fun and cute.”

With such uncertainty around when she will see her worldwide community, it seems Animal Crossing has allowed space for Jubilee and other creatives to still socialize, collaborate and have some variety in their creative output. 

Despite mounting privacy issues, Zoom has offered the quickest fix for those still working, while no-invite-necessary Houseparty offers video conferencing plus games for users to play together. 

Community-less platforms (and their users) like Netflix have benefited in this time of desperate need for community via the Netflix Party Chrome plug-in, which allows people to watch Netflix programming together from different locations. 

Meanwhile, Venmo has been watching what’s transpired on their platform and started to send money to people who have been using Venmo for good. A quick search of #venmoitforward will show Venmo sending $20 to people who are pouring into their community, whether it’s sending money to healthcare workers for lunch or extra cash to musicians and DJs live streaming their performances. 

As we persevere through this pandemic under an administration built on divisiveness, community is becoming increasingly important, as a slow response from federal leadership has left a lot of additional responsibilities on local governments and essential workers. Whether you’re keeping it among your established community or participating or building new ones, doing your part can be as simple as staying home, and now more than ever, with access to the internet, you can find some sense of community. 

When California announced a statewide lockdown, Tony Martens and Maurits van de Ven decided to stay put instead of heading home to Amsterdam.

So, the co-founders of Plantible bought two trailers and started living at their HQ: a two-acre duckweed farm in San Diego.

Plantible uses duckweed, a tiny aquatic leaf, to extract a plant-based protein ingredient that will eventually allow food companies to make animal-based products into plant-based products. The offering would be attractive to companies that make baked goods or protein powder, and thus use lots of egg whites as part of their creation process.

The startup is selling a whey or dairy protein replacement, and is still working on FDA approval.

“We are firm believers that whatever is in nature should be sufficient to provide humanity the ingredients they need,” said Martens from the office trailer.

The startup recently did a series of trials with companies, and Martens says that Plantible validated it can be a replacement with baking ingredient companies and plant-based meat sellers. But the startup is not limited to current use cases.

“If the sector we had our eyes on is taking a while, but sports nutrition is taking off really fast, we’ll go there,” said Martens. “We need to prove the feasibility of our company.”

The trailers where Plantible co-founders have sheltered in place amid COVID-19 lockdowns.

Plantible is entering a crowded space. Recently, aquafaba, the liquid made from a can of chickpeas, has regained popularity amid other quarantine cooking hacks. Martens says that aquafaba might recreate foaminess, but it doesn’t recreate gelation (or the sizzle and fry look that comes when you pour a real egg white into a hot pan). Plantible claims to offer an egg-white replacement with no compromises on texture or nutrition.

The startup also has some increasingly well-funded alternative protein competitors. Plantible’s closest venture-backed competitors are Clara Foods and FUMI Ingredients, as both try to create egg-white replacements. Clara Foods uses yeast, instead of chickens, to make egg whites, and similarly sells to businesses that use egg whites in large quantities for items like macaroons, angel food cake and protein powders. It has the backing of Ingredion, a global ingredients solution company.

Plantible needs to have a faster, cheaper and more scalable operation to beat its competitors. From a supply perspective, Plantible is in a good place. Duckweed doubles in mass every 48 hours and grows year-round. Plus, it is more digestible than pea, soy or algae, the company claims.

The real expense comes from the extraction process.

Right now, Martens admits, Plantible is “lab scale, and lab scale is really expensive.”

To bring costs down, the company just raised a $4.6 million seed round, co-led by Vectr Ventures and Lerer Hippeau. Other participants include eighteen94 Capital (Kellogg Company’s venture capital fund) and FTW Ventures.

Plantible co-founders Maurits van de Ven and Tony Martens (from left to right).

Through the new capital, Plantible claims it will be cost-competitive with egg whites. Currently, two pounds of liquid egg whites cost $8 to $10 dollars to make and sell for $15 to $20 dollars.

“In the end it is about developing a scalable and cost-competitive supply chain that produces a desired ingredient. Since it is very hard to compete with nature, we have decided to embrace it as much as possible by identifying a highly functional and nutritional enzyme,” he said.

“The more you can leverage nature, the more scalable you become,” he said.

As with any seed-stage alternative-protein company, the proof that Plantible has legs to succeed will be in sales and capacity to produce. And it’s not quite there yet.

Lyft, which just had a massive round of layoffs where 982 people lost their jobs and 288 were furloughed, is also pumping the brakes on its scooter operations in a handful of cities.

In an email sent to Oakland riders yesterday, Lyft said scooters would no longer be available, effectively immediately.

“Thanks for riding our scooters,” Lyft wrote. “We know it’s tough to let them go. But don’t worry – Lyft is still moving forward in Oakland, and is here to help you get to where you need to go during this time.”

Lyft has also permanently shut down its operations in Austin and San Jose. The decision to shut down permanently in Austin came after Lyft temporarily removed the scooters in mid-March and then brought them back in early April to better serve essential workers.

Moving forward, Lyft scooters will only be available in Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Monica and Washington, D.C., according to the company’s site. Right now, Lyft’s operations in Miami are still paused.

Lyft is not the only scooter operator that has been affected during the pandemic. Lime and Bird, for example, have both paused operations in certain markets. Bird has also similarly faced financial troubles during these times. In March, Bird laid off about 30% of its workforce.

But even before the pandemic, Lyft had ceased scooter operations in a number of cities. In November, for example, Lyft ended its operations in Nashville, San Antonio, Atlanta, the Phoenix area, Dallas and Columbus. At the time, Lyft also laid off 20 employees.

TechCrunch has reached out to Lyft and will update this story if we hear back.

Figma, the design platform that lets folks work collaboratively and in the cloud, has today announced the close of a $50 million Series D financing. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with partner Peter Levine and cofounding partner Marc Andreessen managing the deal for the firm. New angel investors, including Henry Ellenbogen from Durable Capital, also participated in the round alongside existing investors Index, Greylock, KPCB, Sequoia and Founders Fund.

Forbes reports that the latest funding round values Figma at $2 billion.

Figma launched in 2015 after nearly six years of development in stealth. The premise was to create a collaborative, cloud-based design tool that would be the Google Docs of design.

Since, Figma has built out the platform to expand access and usability for individual designers, small firms and giant enterprise companies alike. For example, the company launched plug-ins in 2019, allowing developers to build in their own tools to the app, such as a plug-in for designers to automatically rename and organize their layers as they work (Rename.it) and one that gives users the ability to add placeholder text that they can automatically find and replace later (Content Buddy).

The company also launched an educational platform called Community, which gives designers the ability to share their work and let other users ‘remix’ that design, or simply check out how it was built, layer by layer.

A spokesperson told TechCrunch that this deal was “opportunistic,” and that the company was in a strong cash position pre-financing. The new funding expands Figma’s runway during these uncertain times, with coronavirus halting a lot of enterprise purchasing and ultimately slowing growth of some rising enterprise players.

Figma says that one interesting change they’ve seen in the COVID era is a significant jump in user engagement from teams to collaborate more in Figma. The firm has also seen an uptick in whiteboarding, note taking, slide deck creation and diagramming, as companies start using Figma as a collaborative tool across an entire organization rather than just within a team of designers.

About a year ago, Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online, its online code editor based on the popular Visual Studio Code project. It’s basically a full code editor and hosted environment that lives in your browser.

Today, the company announced that it is changing the name of this service to Visual Studio Codespaces. It’s also dropping the price of the service by more than 50% and it’s giving developers the option to run it on relatively low-performance virtual machines that will start at $0.08 per hour.

In today’s announcement, Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman points out that the company learned that most developers who used Visual Studio Online thought of it as being much more than simply an editor in the browser.

“To better align with that sentiment, and the true value of the service, we’re renaming Visual Studio Online to Visual Studio Codespaces. (It’s true what they say, naming is hard!) Do you want a great experience working on your long-term project? Do it in a Codespace. Need to quickly prototype a new feature or perform some short-term tasks (like reviewing pull requests)? Create a Codespace! Your Codespaces are simply the most productive place to code.”

The new pricing will go into effect on May 19, the first day of Microsoft’s (virtual) Build developer conference. These are pretty significant price drops, down from $0.45 per hour to $0.17 for a machine with 4 cores and 8 GB of memory, for example (you also incur some relatively minor storage costs of $0.0088 for using a 64 GB SDD, too).

Hanselman also points out that a lot of developers don’t need quite that much power, so the company is now introducing a Basic plan with a 2-core machine and 4 GB of RAM for $0.08 per hour. Best I can tell, these will go live for around $0.24 per hour today and then see a price cut on May 19, too. Why not launch it at the reduced price? Only Microsoft knows, so we asked and will update this post once they tell us.

Typically, this is the kind of announcement Microsoft would make at its annual Build developer conference. And while some other companies have decided to fully scrap their events and aren’t even hosting a virtual conference, Microsoft is moving full steam ahead with its Build conference in the middle of May. I expect we’ll hear more about how that event will play out in the near future.

When I first thought of the idea for what would become Jobber, I never could have imagined that I would one day be the CEO of a tech company with nearly 100,000 active customers in more than 45 countries. And that I would do this alongside a complete stranger who I met during a chance encounter at a coffee shop.

When you’re first thinking about starting a company, most people would either go at it alone or partner with someone they know, like a friend, family member, or former colleague. Few would consider pursuing their entrepreneurial dream with a stranger. Without proper due diligence, co-founding a company with a stranger can feel like putting a down payment on a new house without opening the front door. While this might not be the right path for everyone, it was absolutely the best move for me.

Jobber is proof that starting a company with a stranger isn’t just doable, it can even be an advantage.

Pursuing a business partnership without a prior relationship has allowed my co-founder Forrest Zeisler and I to be more honest and forthcoming with each other as we worked toward a clear, common objective from the start. The ability to arrive at big decisions and have productive debate without the baggage and bias of a preexisting relationship helped to establish Jobber’s feedback-oriented culture, which is ingrained in the DNA of the company. I attribute our company’s early success to our focus on building a strong and honest business partnership first.

For aspiring entrepreneurs looking to launch a company, I’ve identified five tips that really helped me build trust, camaraderie and mutual understanding with my co-founding partner — a partnership that can withstand intense competition and the test of time.

Start small and aim big

I didn’t know that Forrest would become my co-founder when we first met. As a self-taught developer, I was looking for more sophisticated development help on the project I was working on. During the early stages of our relationship, I would present a problem, such as technical aspects with code, and he would help me with it. Through these initial interactions, it became clear how Forrest’s mind works, and we learned that we worked really well together. At the time, I wasn’t thinking of these tasks as “tests” on compatibility, but in retrospect, they were. If you can’t overcome the small hurdles amicably and efficiently, then how do you expect to take on the big stuff? It’s not a good sign for a long-term business relationship.

Zoom is not having a good month. As it scales to meet pandemic demand, it has been beset by security issues, which it has had to explain and fix. Today, The Verge reported that the company just changed a blog post, which had previously listed 300 million daily active users (DAUs) to active participants. The company says that figure was misrepresented by an employee

According to a company spokesperson, CEO Eric Yuan reported 300 million Zoom participants per day in webinar earlier this month. The company claims an employee then wrote a blog post interpreting that statement as DAUs and published it in the blog post the next day.

Daily active user or DAUs are a standard industry metric measuring the number of unique users per day. Participants on the other hand can participate in multiple meetings per day, something that most of us are doing as we work more from home and try to stay connected with with work and family. The second number is likely to be much higher and give an inflated sense of how well the company is doing.

When the error was discovered, the company says that it changed the information, but didn’t leave a note initially that the data point had been changed, or make any kind of public statement, even though the incorrect 300 million DAU number was picked up and widely reported (including by this publication).

“We want to be clear: this was first announced in our April 22 webinar as 300 million daily participants by our CEO Eric Yuan. In a follow-up blog post on April 22 recapping this webinar, in addition to referring to participants as “participants,” we also inadvertently referred to them as “users” and “people.” When we realized this error on April 23, we corrected the wording to “participants.” This was a genuine oversight on our part,” the company stated.

In a follow up to explain why they hadn’t updated the note or released a public statement regarding the error, the company said they had since added a footnote after it was pointed out to them that this was a problem.

“We updated the blog with a footnote and we have updated inaccuracies in the past as we did in the April 1 blog, but for this one in particular it was an oversight which we now have corrected,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Here is the text of the correction:

NASA has selected the companies that will provide them with the human landing system for their Artemis Moon missions, including a lander vehicle which will carry astronauts from space to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. Blue Origin, SpaceX and Dynetics were picked from a larger field of competitors to develop and build human landing systems (HLS) to carry the first woman and the next man to the Moon, a goal which NASA still hopes to accomplish by 2024.

SpaceX’s Starship was selected as a lander that will launch using the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket. Starship is the spacecraft that SpaceX currently has in development, which is designed as a fully reusable spacecraft for missions to orbit, to the Moon and to Mars . Super Heavy is also currently in development, and will act as a fully reusable booster that’s capable of propelling the large mass of Starship to orbit with a full payload. Starship as a lander choice is an interesting one, because it’s a very different model and design from landers that have made the trip previously.

Blue Origin’s Blue Moon is more traditionally designed, as far as dedicated landers go, and involves a multipart descent and ascent system that’s less integrated than Starship. At last year’s International Astronautical Congress, Jeff Bezos presented a more detailed look at Blue Origin’s bid for the job, along with his partners and what roles they’ll play. That “national team” sees Lockheed Martin building the ‘ascent element’ part of the launch system, which will provide liftoff for their HLS, while Northrop Grumman will provide the system for transferring the lander craft from the launch vehicle to its descent position, and then Blue Origin is building the lander and the descent system for actually bringing it down to the Moon’s surface. Draper is providing avionics and descent guidance.

The companies vying for this contract included Blue Origin, with Jeff Bezos’ company taking the lead for its collaborative industry-spanning team; Boeing, which is one of NASA’s providers for its Commercial Crew program; SpaceX, which developed the other vehicle for Commercial Crew, and is targeting its first crewed flight for late May; and other smaller companies including Sierra Nevada Corportation, which has been developing a reusable space plane for use in various missions including space station resupply, and Dynetics, which was a surprise winner in the race.

The award here reflects NASA’s stated goal to have at least two systems in parallel development from multiple providers, which offers redundancy in case of any major setbacks, and which also means that the agency will theoretically have at least two human landing systems to choose from going forward. The purpose of Artemis is to not only return humans to the lunar surface, but help NASA establish a permanent deep space presence for human exploration, including to Mars and potentially beyond.

Developing…

Twitch is doubling down on esports in this new era of social distancing where a number of traditional sporting events have been cancelled. The company this week introduced a new esports directory on its site that will make it easier for viewers to find live matches, information on players, games with active competition leagues, a directory of players, and more.

The goal, Twitch says, is on making Twitch easier to navigate with regard to this sort of gaming content — particularly at a time when its site is seeing a surge of growth due to the COVID-19 lockdown. According to a recent report from Streamlabs, the pandemic has since pushed Twitch to reach all-time highs for hours watched, hours streamed and average concurrent viewership in the first quarter of 2020.

Notably, it surpassed 3 billion hours watched for the first time — a significant milestone.

The new esports directory will help Twitch to centralize its content in an easy-to-find and easy-to-navigate section on its site.

At the top, users can click on favorite games to see matching content. Below, current live matches are featured, followed by replays and highlights further down.

Viewers will also be shown a players directory at the bottom of the page that lets you see who’s currently live.

Twitch says the directory will be populated with competitive and premier esports around the world, including ESL Katowice, Rocket League Championships Series, Twitch Rivals, and the League of Legends World Championship, among others. Over time, Twitch plans to add more events, channels and pros to keep the content fresh.

In addition, users browsing the dedicated section will be recommended content based on their own viewing history, increasing the chance that they’ll find an esports stream they’ll want to watch.

However, the site is also organized for discovery, as a click on the “All Games” option lets you easily see a variety of games and recaps being offered through the site.

Twitch says the directory launched on Wednesday but is rolling out over the “coming days” — meaning, if you don’t have it just yet, check back in a bit. (The dedicated URL for the new directory is twitch.tv/directory/esports if you want to visit directly.)

Though more people are going online for gaming entertainment due to the coronavirus outbreak, the esports market overall will take a slight hit from the pandemic in the near-term.

According to Newzoo, the global esports market will generate revenues of $1,059.3 million in 2020, down from its previous estimate of $1,100.1 million. This is mainly due to coronavirus-related cancelations and postponements of live events. Twitch’s new directory is an attempt to get ahead of the trend that will see many esports events shifted to digital-only formats.

This shift will actually lead to higher streaming revenues in the future, as global quarantines send more users online and encourage new entrants to join the market. As a result, Newzoo’s forecast for team streaming revenues increased from $18.2 million to $19.9 million in 2020, and $31.6 million to $34.4 million in 2023.