Year: 2020

Continuing our week’s coverage of new venture funds, this morning let’s dig into Kickstart’s latest capital pool.

Kickstart Seed Fund, based in Utah’s Salt Lake City, has raised a $110 million Fund V it announced this morning, its largest to date. The firm’s rise to investing prominence has largely coincided with Utah’s own emergence as a technology hub, with the pair’s success intertwined since the financial crisis when the fund was put together.

Founded in 2008, when Utah was far from known as a technology hub—let alone a printing press for billion-dollar startups—the firm has invested in over 100 companies and has seen 20 exits, Kickstart told TechCrunch in an interview.

The seed fund has backed firms like Podium, which recently raised $125 million at a unicorn valuation, and Lucid, which recently raised a $52 round itself and is also a unicorn. Those rounds come to mind as they were both announced this year, and each saw the firm in question announce that it had crested $100 million ARR.

Utah, COVID-19 and the future

Any idea that the mega-exit of Utah’s Qualtrics to SAP was a fluke, or perhaps an echo to some prior success that the state had seen, is now moot. And that means that Kickstart has a fresh bloc of funds to invest in a startup scene that has been hot for some time.

To get a handle on what’s changing, however, in the COVID-19 era for the state’s startups and investing scene, TechCrunch spoke with a number of investors from the fund before their new fund was announced.

Kickstart’s funds have grown as its local tech scene expanded. From just a few million in Fund I back in 2008 to a $26 million Fund II, the firm has added capital with each raise. Its third fund clocked in at $39 million bested by its Fund IV tally of $74 million. Now flush with $110 million, you might think that the firm is prepped to shake up its strategy.

Not really, as it turns out. Kickstart’s Curt Roberts told TechCrunch during a call that the firm has stuck close to the stage that it invests at over time. The market has changed the size of seed rounds some, however, leading to the firm taking on a bit more capital over time. “It is very fair to say that your average seed round has gone up in size slightly,” Roberts said, noting that “companies are just getting more done before they raise [a] seed round.”

As you can imagine, if startups are doing more before raising seed money, they can command a higher valuation. Curt agrees, telling TechCrunch that startups can “justify a little more valuation [at] a similar level of dilution” now when they raise.

Toss in some pre-seed investing, and the fact that Kickstart wants to protect its percentage in investments over time, and the larger funds make sense. The firm isn’t big on SPVs, as it turns out, so having more duckets in the till should help it maintain ownership a bit more easily over time.

Most importantly perhaps for Utah itself is that one if its best-known funds now has nine-figures of capital to disburse right when the economy is falling apart. If you are a startup ecosystem, having new buckets of capital land in your region is good news, especially when the business climate is worsening.

Per the group, the COVID-19 crisis isn’t causing endless mayhem in their scene. Yet, at least. The firm stressed Utah’s community cohesion as helping limit public unrest, in addition to the fact that as many of the state’s startups are B2B SaaS shops, making them less likely to get the legs kicked out from underneath them by a drop in consumer spending. TechCrunch has reported on the Utah startup world, and while its scene hasn’t been immune to layoffs it hasn’t seen as many other, similarly-sized ecosystems.

It’s still early days, however.

Kickstart’s investors also told TechCrunch that companies in its area do not run as heavy a burn rate as some other region’s startups, meaning that they are perhaps less exposed to economic hardship if their growth slows.

Utah’s first tech successes like Omniture have been overshadowed by its second wave of breakouts (Qualtrics most of all). And now with Galileo’s exit (a Kickstart company, it turns out), and Podium and Lucid’s latest raises, it’s clear that the third generation of firms in the region are going to be alright. Kickstart now has the capital to make sure that a forth and fifth can get off their feet and follow them.

A number of UK computer security and privacy experts have signed an open letter raising transparency and mission creep concerns about the national approach to develop a coronavirus contacts tracing app.

The letter, signed by around 150 academics, follows a similar letter earlier this month signed by around 300 academics from across the world, who urged caution over the use of such tech tools and called for governments that choose to deploy digital contacts tracing to use privacy-preserving techniques and systems.

“We urge that the health benefits of a digital solution be analysed in depth by specialists from all relevant academic disciplines, and sufficiently proven to be of value to justify the dangers involved,” the UK academics write now, directing their attention at NHSX, the digital arm of the National Health Service which has been working on building a digital contacts tracing app since early March. 

“It has been reported that NHSX is discussing an approach which records centrally the de-anonymised ID of someone who is infected and also the IDs of all those with whom the infected person has been in contact. This facility would enable (via mission creep) a form of surveillance.”

Yesterday the NHSX’s CEO, Matthew Gould, was giving evidence to the UK parliament’s Science and Technology committee. He defended the approach it’s taking — claiming the forthcoming app uses only “a measure of centralization”, and arguing that it’s a “false dichotomy” to say decentralized is privacy secure and centralized isn’t.

He went on to describe a couple of scenarios he suggested show why centralizing the data is necessary in the NHSX’s view. But in the letter the UK academics cast doubt on the validity of the central claim, writing that “we have seen conflicting advice from different groups about how much data the public health teams need“.

“We hold that the usual data protection principles should apply: collect the minimum data necessary to achieve the objective of the application,” they continue. “We hold it is vital that if you are to build the necessary trust in the application the level of data being collected is justified publicly by the public health teams demonstrating why this is truly necessary rather than simply the easiest way, or a ‘nice to have’, given the dangers involved and invasive nature of the technology.”

Europe has seen fierce debate in recent weeks over the choice of app architecture for government-backed coronavirus contacts tracing apps — with different coalitions forming to back decentralized and centralized approaches and some governments pressuring Apple over backing the opposing horse with a cross-platform API for national coronavirus contacts tracing apps it’s developing with Android-maker Google.

Most of the national apps in the works in the region are being designed to use Bluetooth proximity as a proxy for calculating infection risk — with smartphone users’ devices swapping pseudonymized identifiers when near each other. However privacy experts are concerned that centralized stores of IDs risk creating systems of state surveillance as the data could be re-identified by the authority controlling the server.

Alternative decentralized systems have been proposed, using a p2p system with IDs stored locally. Infection risk is also calculated on device, with a relay server used only to push notifications out to devices — meaning social graph data is not systematically exposed.

Although this structure does require the IDs of people who have been confirmed infected to be broadcast to other devices — meaning there’s a potential for interception and re-identification attacks at a local level.

At this stage it’s fair to say that the momentum in Europe is behind decentralized approaches for the national contacts tracing apps. Notably Germany’s government switched from previously backing a centralized approach to decentralized earlier this week, joining a number of others (including Estonia, Spain and Switzerland) — which leaves France and the UK the highest profile backers of centralized systems for now.

France is also seeing expert debate over the issue. Earlier this week a number of French academics signed a letter raising concerns about both centralized and decentralized architectures — arguing that “there should be important evidence in order to justify the risks incurred” of using any such tracking tools.

In the UK, key concerns being attached to the NHSX app are not only the risk of social graph data being centralized and reidentified by the state — but also scope/function creep.

Gould said yesterday that the app will iterate, adding that future versions could ask people to voluntarily give up more data such as their location. And while the NHSX has said use of the app will be voluntary, if multiple functions get baked in that could raise questions over the quality of the consent and whether mission creep is being used as a lever to enforce public uptake.

Another concern is that a public facing branch of the domestic spy agency, GCHQ, has also been involved in advising on the app architecture. And yesterday Gould dodged the committee’s direct questions on whether the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) had been involved in the decision to select a centralized architecture.

There may be more concerns on that front, too. Today the HSJ reports that health secretary Matt Hancock recently granted new powers to the UK’s intelligence agencies which mean they can require the NHS to disclose any information that relates to “the security” of the health service’s networks and information systems during the pandemic.

Such links to database-loving spooks are unlikely to quell privacy fears.

There is also concern about how involved the UK’s data watchdog has been in the detail of the app’s design process. Last week the ICO’s executive director, Simon McDougall, was reported to have told a public forum he had not seen plans for the app, although the agency put out a statement on April 24 saying it was working with NHSX “to help them ensure a high level of transparency and governance”.

Yesterday Gould also told the committee the NHSX would publish data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) for each iteration of the app, though none has yet been published.

He also said the software would be “technically” ready to launch in a few weeks’ time — but could not confirm when the code would be published for external review.

In their letter, the UK academics call on NHSX to publish a DPIA for the app “immediately”, rather than dropping it right before deployment, to allow for public debate about the implications of its use and in order that that public scrutiny can take place of the claimed security and privacy safeguards.

The academics are also calling for the unit to publicly commit to no database or databases being created that would allow de-anonymization of users of the system (other than those self reporting as infected), and which could therefore allow the data to be used for constructing users’ social graphs.

They also urge the NHSX to set out details on how the app will be phased out after the pandemic has passed — in order “to prevent mission creep”.

Asked for a commitment on the database point, an NHSX spokesman told us that’s a question for the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care and/or the NCSC — which won’t salve any privacy concerns around the governments’ wider plans for app users’ data.

We also asked when the NHSX will be publishing a DPIA for the app. At the time of writing we were still waiting for a response.

As coronavirus-hit financial markets continue to flip-flop in the wake of bad news followed by pockets of hope, a startup that aims to introduce ordinary consumers to investing has raised a big round of funding.

New York-based Stash, which provides a mobile-first route to managing money through investment — as well as retirement, custodial and more routine banking — accounts has picked up $112 million, money that it will use to continue expanding its business, which as of this month had 4.5 million users and $1 billion in assets under management.

The company says it will use the funding to continue expanding its customer base, marketing and adding more services.

The Series F round is being led by publicly-listed online lending platform LendingTree, with accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Breyer Capital, Goodwater Capital, Greenspring Associates, Union Square Ventures, and others participating. Several of these were previous investors in the company.

We’re asking for a valuation, but for some context, the first close of this Series F ($85 million) appeared to value the startup at $785 million, according to PitchBook. Potentially, this puts the valuation here at around $812 million.

Stash is part of a growing list of fintech startups that are disrupting the financial industry, and specifically big banks and brokerages, by making some of the more arcane aspects of engaging in financial services like investing and borrowing money more transparent and accessible to the consumer masses, using smartphones, automated services and easily explained instructions. Others in the same category include Robinhood, Acorns, YieldStreet, Kabbage and Revolut.

As we’ve pointed out before, the average age of a Stash user is 29 and average income is less than $50,000 per year. Users can invest in increments as small as $28, with flat fees on top of that at $1, $3, and $9 for monthly subscriptions depending on what services you are using. (It also entices people with a Stock-Back loyalty rewards program to incentivise people with extra shares based on their investing. This launched a year ago with Green Dot and has now reached the 10-million mark.)

What’s interesting is that even with all the economic turmoil we’ve seen — economists believe that the US, for example, could see unemployment in the double digits for at least a year after this health pandemic subsides — investing, at least via Stash, has not been as impacted as you might think.

It notes that in its most recent quarter, it had an over 100% increase in weekly customer deposits across banking and investing, “a proof point to the power of the platform even amid recent market volatility and economic downturn.”

“We are very fortunate to bring together world class investors, to help accelerate Stash’s goal of bringing digital banking, investing plus financial education and advice to the millions of middle class Americans working hard every day to make ends meet,” said Brandon Krieg, Stash cofounder and CEO, in a statement. “This massive group has attempted to make financial progress within a system that simply does not serve their best interests or meet their needs. It’s time for them to reconsider the current financial servicing industry as the ‘status-quo’ and take control of their financial life with the customer-obsessed solutions we provide at Stash.”

One reason for this might be exactly what one would hope would be the reason for many investing: the bar is relatively low thanks to apps like these, and one thing that this current downturn has shown us is that not all of us can rely on our jobs and savings to get us through all crises. Having a nest egg by way of investments could be one way to diversify and offset that volatility.

(Indeed, Stash cites data from the Federal Reserve’s Annual Economic Wellbeing report that notes the average American often doesn’t even have $400 put away for emergencies.)

It’s not clear if LendingTree is a strategic or financial backer here, but you can see where having connections with credit lines might make sense for an investing app.

“We’ve always seen ourselves as a consumer champion—committed to helping people get the most out of their hard-earned money,” said Doug Lebda, founder and CEO of LendingTree, in a statement. “Stash’s mission to help Americans achieve financial progress is complementary to ours in every way, and we’ve been impressed with Stash’s speed of execution and commitment to positive customer outcomes. The focus on meaningful financial progress is so relevant, especially in today’s economic environment which has only been amplified by the current pandemic. Giving customers a way to make real strides in achieving financial security is incredibly powerful to our combined missions.”

Twitter has said that tweets posted early Tuesday morning by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that irresponsibly call for restrictions put in place to defend against the spread of COVID-19 don’t violate its guidelines around inaccurate or disputed information about the coronavirus that could cause harm. Musk tweeted a series of things on Tuesday, including an endorsement of a controversial Wall Street Journal op-ed with the caption “Give people their freedom back!”

A Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch that these tweets, which also include an urging to “FREE AMERICA NOW,” are “not currently in violation of the Twitter rules. According to the company, it has said previously that it’s not enforcing punitive or corrective action on each instance of tweets about COVID-19 that don’t provide a full picture or that appear to contain info that’s disputed by other sources.

Twitter says that it has removed over 2,400 Tweets since March 18 when it implemented its new policy, and that it’s automated filtering systems have addressed in some way or another as many as 3.4 million accounts which seemed to be spamming or providing manipulative info regarding COVID-19 discussions. Thus far, however, some of the most influential sources of have not been subject to punitive or corrective action under the policy.

President Trump’s tweets calling to “liberate” states, for instance, which bear a content and formatting similarity to the new tweets by Musk, have not been removed or disputed by the social network, and Twitter provided a similar statement about those missives not currently violating its rules.

Trump and Musk represent some of the most influential Twitter users, with 78.9 million and 33.3 minion users respectively, so their voices have outweighed impact on the community and public discourse relative to spam or automated misinformation accounts. In both cases, these messages indirectly seek to encourage the curtailing or disruption of social distancing, isolation and quarantine measures, even as the U.S. surged past 1 million diagnosed cases this week, with many more likely undiagnosed and therefore unaccounted for in the total.

States are already beginning to ease restrictions, and seeing resurgences in case numbers. Some more rural states that previously seemed less impacted are seeing spikes, even as they began to partially reopen, including Iowa. Leading experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci of the U.S. federal coronavirus task force have warned against the consequences of relaxing rules too soon, and the WHO and CDC are still warning of the impact of opening up too soon as well.

Over the last number of years, Latin America has emerged as a significant growth market for big tech, including Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook, Coursera and others.

It has also become a growing and vibrant homegrown startup ecosystem. The region has sprouted 19-plus unicorns, several exits and even a billion-dollar, single-round financing. The coronavirus pandemic, however, is having an outsized impact on Latin America’s startup activity compared to other regions, judging by Q1 2020 activity numbers — and this is just the beginning.

When including the U.S., Western Europe (WEU), U.K., China and Latin America, the global startup innovation landscape experienced a 27% drop in Q1 2020 in terms of the number of deals completed compared to the previous quarter. Giving some comfort to venture capitalists and startup founders alike is that the amount of invested capital remained essentially constant. The average deal size increased across these regions — up a matching 27%. So, from a global perspective, the venture capital community did fewer but larger deals, on average, during the quarter where COVID-19 started wreaking major havoc in the economy.

Looking at each of these innovation hubs individually, we see different levels of impact from, presumably, COVID-19 between Q4 2019 and Q1 2020. Deal count for the U.S., WEU and U.K. each went down approximately 20% each. Fairly modest, all things considered. China’s deal count, however, suffered almost a 50% drop while Latin America’s deal count went down almost 60%.

We also see a stark difference between these regions from an invested capital perspective. The U.S., WEU and U.K. each invested approximately 28% more capital in Q1 2020 as compared to Q4 2019, while China’s and Latin America’s invested capital both went significantly down. China deployed a bit over one-third less capital and Latin America deployed a very significant two-thirds less.

You know that old saying, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone?” Sometimes that’s quite literally true. Take Shoelace, a social app introduced by Google’s Area 120 incubator last summer. There are a number of reasons you likely haven’t heard of the thing. For starters, it was considered an “early experiment” by Google. Also, it was limited to New York City users with an invite.

In her writeup, Sarah described the project as, “ a bit like a mashup of Facebook Events with a WhatsApp group chat, perhaps. But it’s wrapped in a clean, modern design that appeals more to the millennial or Gen Z user.”

And now it’s gone. It is, after all, easy come, easy go in the world of social app. And in the world of Google social apps in particular, it’s seemingly more go than anything. Of course, while the company has had a rocky history with social networks like Google+, the on-going COVID-19 pandemic has caused a many to reprioritize their life and work.

The Shoelace team suggests that that’s ultimately what caused Google to pump the brakes on this experiment. Understandably, an app built around fostering in-person meetings is also probably not anyone’s top priority, these days.

“Like all projects within Area 120, Shoelace was an experiment,” the company writes on its Google Doc. “We’re proud of the work that we accomplished and the community that we built, but given the current health crisis, we don’t feel that now is the right time to invest further in this project.”

The team has no plans to revive the product after the COVID crisis.

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

Yesterday news broke that Uber’s CTO Thuan Pham would leave the company (confirmed), and that the American technology giant is contemplating a huge staffing cut to reduce its cost structure. COVID-19 has changed how much people move around, hampering the ride-hailing company’s business.

If the cuts come to pass at the scale The Information reports is possible, they would be the steepest layoffs that we’ve heard of at Uber. And they would cap a reversal in fortune the company, which after a somewhat rocky IPO was enjoying fresh momentum in the later parts of 2019 and the start of 2020.

This morning we’re going back in time to rewind through Uber’s post-IPO financial timeline. The company reports earnings on May 7, 2020, a little over a week from today. With that event coming up, we’d best be caught up.

Uber’s last year

It’s hard to choose where to start today. We could go all the way back to Uber’s May 2019 IPO, for example. Instead, we’re going to kick off a month later (it will be clear why in a moment). Also we must be somewhat summary in the following, so not everything that happened is included. We’re only talking about the bits we need most. Let’s go:

The coronavirus pandemic has sent record numbers of new users to video chat apps. Now, video messaging app Marco Polo aims to capitalize on the increases it’s also seeing to launch its new subscription business, Marco Polo Plus. The service delivers a handful of new features — including support for HD video, voice-only messaging options, custom emoji, expanded speed controls and more — for $5 per month with an annual subscription of $59.99.

On a monthly basis, the service costs $10 per month.

Marco Polo had already carved out its own space on the market before the coronavirus outbreak. Instead of focusing on live video calls or group video chats, Marco Polo focuses on asynchronous communication. That is, users leave a video message for friends and family, which the other party can watch at their convenience, then reply to.

This works particularly well for people who have different work schedules or those who are spread out among various timezones. It also works for adults who have less free time to chat than the teens who virtually “hang out” in group video chat apps, like Houseparty.

With the new Marco Polo Plus subscription, the company is offering an expanded feature set that will appeal to its most frequent users. However, it will remain an optional upgrade — free users will still be able to use Marco Polo as before.

Subscribers, meanwhile, will be able to message their friends and family in HD or have the option to respond using only their voice, for those times you’re not camera-ready.

The subscription will also expand its set of built-in reaction emoji, which today includes a smiley face, sad face, heart, prayer hands, and thumbs up — to now include support for adding any emoji from your keyboard.

In addition, subscribers will have more granular control over playback speed. While free users can choose to 2x their video messages, paying users will be able to access speed control options of anywhere between 1.5x and 3x speed.

They’ll also gain a time scrubber for more easily moving to different parts of the video and a scratchpad for personal notes. The latter is especially helpful for jotting down the different parts of the message you want to respond to — something that can be hard to remember after listening to a long video.

Subscribers will be able to share their $5 per month subscription in the form of “Plus Passes” you can dole out to friends and family, as well.

Like many apps in the space, Marco Polo has seen a sizable jump in usage due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it says.

In March 2020, Marco Polo saw a 16x increase in new sign-ups for its service and a 3x increase in activity versus the prior month. In one 24-hour period in April, Marco Polo even saw a record 20 million video messages shared in its app. And its social media campaign designed at reaching out to others, #PoloTogether, resulted in over 1 million check-ins.

According to data from Sensor Tower, Marco Polo has seen nearly 56 million lifetime installs across iOS and Android since January 2014. Publicly, Marco Polo says it has “millions” of users and 3 billion messages sent to date. Across its 1.7 million user reviews on both app stores, the app averages a 4.8 rating.

The new subscription program is only one way Marco Polo is working to gain traction for its app in the coronavirus era.

The company also recently launched a program called Channels by Marco Polo into beta testing, which allows creators to reach fans through the Marco Polo platform, but via a dedicated app.

The program is aimed at those with a following — like leaders, speakers, facilitators, creators, fitness instructors, and health and career coaches — who want to offer their content to a paid membership base.

While these creators could publish to social media platforms and then try to monetize in other ways, like through ads or brand deals, Marco Polo offers a way to facilitate more private one-to-many interactions.

The advantages of this program is that the content won’t be at the mercy of changing algorithms or interrupted with ads. However, as a paid membership program, it limits exposure. That means it would likely only supplement the efforts creators made across social media to raise awareness of their offerings and their personal brand, in order to gain new subscribers.

The program is not broadly available, but is being used by a handful of testers today.

The Channels program is also aimed at helping Marco Polo generate revenue, as the company takes a 10% cut of the monthly membership fees charged by the creators.

The new Marco Polo Plus subscription service replaces an older, less feature-rich service that never gained traction. Along with the new Channels program, the company hopes stay ad-free and turn a profit.

“From the time Marco Polo was founded, we’ve never shown ads in the app. We will never use social comparisons or manipulate algorithms, as so many social networking companies must do for their business model,” explains CEO and co-founder Vlada Bortnik. “We believe that Marco Polo Plus is the best version of our app to date, and subscription is an important part of our strategy to achieve profitability. Based on our early pilot of Channels by Marco Polo, we’re optimistic that it also has the potential to contribute significantly to our monetization goals,” she continued.

“I know we can become a sustainable business in a way that feels true to our brand values of authenticity and trust,” Bortnik added.

Marco Polo’s parent company Joya Communications has raised at least $25 million in funding from investors including Benchmark, Stanford’s StartX Fund, Matrix Partners, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures, Evolve Ventures, and others, according to Crunchbase. The company declined to comment its total raise or investor lineup, however.

Zoom is an enterprise software company built to help employees meet virtually, it was never intended to be the social platform that guided a disconnected world through a lockdown.

On the back of a big quarantine usage bump, Squad, a social screen-sharing mobile app popular with teen girls, is looking to eat away at Zoom’s social growth and widen its app’s appeal with the launch of a desktop web version designed to help people binge TV shows and movies together.

While the quarantine has upended plenty of consumer-centric startups, Squad has seen record growth with teens stuck at home and socially distanced from friends. Over the first two weeks of March, CEO Esther Crawford says usage of the platform climbed 54%. As teens further settled into lockdown and schools went fully remote, usage of Squad exploded, climbing 1100% in the last two weeks of March.

Squad has designed a social platform around watching friends browse through stuff on their phones, virtually. On mobile, the most common use case has been teens hanging out while browsing through TikTok clips. Crawford hopes that where the mobile app has succeeded in allowing users to bond over short-form content, Squad’s new desktop web app will let users settle in and binge long-form content.

Crawford hopes that the app’s youthful users can use the platform to bond during an unprecedented time of social distancing.

“There’s already this global loneliness epidemic and it’s even worse for Gen-Z,” Crawford says. “I would imagine the coronavirus is accelerating this trend.”

The killer feature of Squad’s new desktop app is watching TV shows and movies with each other on streaming networks like Netflix; this hasn’t been possible on Squad previously.

To combat piracy, most premium video mobile apps disable screen sharing functionality, a total blackout that has stopped apps like Squad from even sharing video with a few friends, something that the big platforms historically haven’t seemed to mind. Desktop browsers don’t have these same limitations and can allow desktop Squad users to watch premium content together, all streamed from a single user’s account.

Quick controls in the desktop interface allow users to quickly bring up YouTube videos, TikToks and free access content from Pluto TV.

Squad is still focused on intimate hangs and won’t be allowing groups to swell beyond 9 people. Keeping groups small will help minimize some of the issues faced by Zoom, but will likely also help the social app sidestep pissing off a Netflix or a Hulu.

As Squad looks to outdo Zoom on social screen-sharing, one thing Crawford has no intention of doing is competing with their own workplace product. This, despite Crawford hearing that Squad has ended up in the toolsets of some designers and PMs that use the app to commiserate over mobile builds.

“If we were to expand to enterprise and have a Squad for business, it would just be a distraction,” she says.

Squad raised a $5 million Series A last year from First Round Capital, and Crawford tells me the company recently topped up on a bit of new funding to ensure the company is well-positioned to handle some of the broader economic uncertainty. The startup has now raised $7.2 million to date.

Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO. She’s replacing Deepak Giridharagopal, who became CTO in 2016.

Kearns stepped down from her role at the Cloud Foundry Foundation earlier this month after holding that position since 2016. At the time, she wasn’t quite ready to reveal her next move, though, and her taking the CTO job at Puppet comes as a bit of a surprise. Despite a lot of usage and hype in its early days, Puppet isn’t often seen as an up-and-coming company anymore, after all. But Kearns argues that a lot of this is due to perception.

“Puppet had great technology and really drove the early DevOps movement, but they kind of fell off the face of the map,” she said. “Nobody thought of them as anything other than config management, and so I was like, well, you know, problem number one: fix that perception problem if that’s no longer the reality or otherwise, everyone thinks you’re dead.”

Since Kearns had already started talking to Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar, who took the job in January 2019, she joined the product advisory board about a year ago and the discussion about Kearns joining the company became serious a few months later.

“We started talking earlier this year,” said Kearns. “She said: ‘You know, wouldn’t it be great if you could come help us? I’m building out a brand new executive team. We’re really trying to reshape the company.’ And I got really excited about the team that she built. She’s got a really fantastic new leadership team, all of them are there for less than a year. they have a new CRO, new CMO. She’s really assembled a fantastic team of people that are super smart, but also really thoughtful people.”

Kearns argues that Puppet’s product has really changed, but that the company didn’t really talk about it enough, despite the fact that 80% of the Global 5,000 are customers.

Given the COVID-19 pandemic, Kearns has obviously not been able to meet the Puppet team yet, but she told me that she’s starting to dig deeper into the company’s product portfolio and put together a strategy. “There’s just such an immensely talented team here. And I realize every startup tells you that, but really, there’s actually a lot of talented people here that are really nice. And I guess maybe it’s the Portland in them, but everyone’s nice,” she said.

“Abby is keenly aware of Puppet’s mission, having served on our Product Advisory Board for the last year, and is a technologist at heart,” said Wassenaar. “She brings a great balance to this position for us – she has deep experience in the enterprise and understands how to solve problems at massive scale.”

In addition to Kearns, former Cloud Foundry Foundation VP of marketing Devin Davis also joined Puppet as the company’s VP of corporate marketing and communications.