Year: 2020

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week we’re continuing to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications, including a dig into Houseparty’s big surge, layoffs at VSCO, Google’s launch of a “Teacher Reviewed” tag, Bumble’s virtual dating, plus changes to Instagram in support of small business and live streaming, among other things. Also this week, Google changed its Play Store guidelines, TikTok launched parental controls, a report suggested Apple may be expanding its Search Ads and more.

Coronavirus Special Coverage

Instagram adds features for supporting small businesses during pandemic

One of the best tools we have to slow the spread of the coronavirus is, as you have no doubt heard by now, contact tracing. But what exactly is contact tracing, who does it and how, and do you need to worry about it?

In short, contact tracing helps prevent the spread of a virus by proactively finding people at higher risk than others due to potential exposure, notifying them if possible, and quarantining them if necessary. It’s a proven technique, and smartphones could help make it even more effective — but only if privacy and other concerns can be overcome.

Contact tracing, from memory to RAM

Contact tracing has been done in some form or another as long as the medical establishment has understood the nature of contagious diseases. When a person is diagnosed with an infectious disease, they are asked whom they have been in contact with over the previous weeks, both in order to determine who may have been infected by them and perhaps where they themselves were infected.

Until very recently, however, the process has relied heavily on the recall of people who are in a highly stressful situation and, until prompted, were probably not paying special attention to their movements and interactions.

This results in a list of contacts that is far from complete, though still very helpful. If those people can be contacted and their contacts likewise traced, a network of potential infections can be built up without a single swab or blood drop, and lives can be saved or important resources better allocated.

You might think that has all changed now what with modern technology and all, but in fact contact tracing being done at hospitals right now is almost all still of the memory-based kind — the same we might have used a hundred years ago.

It certainly seems as if the enormous digital surveillance apparatus that has been assembled around us over the last decade should be able to accomplish this kind of contact tracing easily, but in fact it’s surprisingly useless for anything but tracking what you are likely to click on or buy.

While it would be nice to be able to piece together a contagious person’s week from a hundred cameras spread throughout the city and background location data collected by social media, the potential for abuse of such a system should make us thankful it is not so easy as that. In other, less dire circumstances the ability to track the exact movements and interactions of a person from their digital record would be considered creepy at best, and perhaps even criminal.

But it’s one thing when an unscrupulous data aggregator uses your movements and interests to target you with ads without your knowledge or consent — and quite another when people choose to use the forbidden capabilities of everyday technology in an informed and limited way to turn the tide of a global pandemic. And that’s what modern digital contact tracing is intended to do.

Bluetooth beacons

All modern mobile phones use wireless radios to exchange data with cell towers, Wi-Fi routers, and each other. On their own, these transmissions aren’t a very good way to tell where someone is or who they’re near — a Wi-Fi signal can travel 100 to 200 feet reliably, and a cell signal can go miles. Bluetooth, on the other hand, has a short range by design, less than 30 feet for good reception and with a swiftly attenuating signal that makes it unlikely to catch a stray contact from much further out than that.

We all know Bluetooth as the way our wireless earbuds receive music from our phones, and that’s a big part of its job. But Bluetooth, by design, is constantly reaching out and touching other Bluetooth-enabled devices — it’s how your car knows you’ve gotten into it, or how your phone detects a smart home device nearby.

Bluetooth chips also make brief contact without your knowledge with other phones and devices you pass nearby, and if they aren’t recognized, they delete each other from their respective memories as soon as possible. But what if they didn’t?

The type of contact tracing being tested and deployed around the world now uses Bluetooth signals very similar to the ones your phone already transmits and receives constantly. The difference is it just doesn’t automatically forget the other devices it comes into contact with.

Assuming the system is working correctly, what would happen when a person presents at the hospital with COVID-19 is basically just a digitally enhanced version of manual contact tracing. Instead of querying the person’s fallible memory, they query the phone’s much more reliable one, which has dutifully recorded all the other phones it has recently been close enough to connect to. (Anonymously, as we’ll see.)

Those devices — and it’s important to note that it’s devices, not people — would be alerted within seconds that they had recently been in contact with someone who has now been diagnosed with COVID-19. The notification they receive will contain information on what the affected person can do next: Download an app or call a number for screening, for instance, or find a nearby location for testing.

The ease, quickness, and comprehensiveness of this contact tracing method make it an excellent opportunity to help stem the spread of the virus. So why aren’t we all using it already?

Successes and potential worries

In fact digital contact tracing using the above method (or something very like it) has already been implemented with millions of users, apparently to good effect, in east Asia, which of course was hit by the virus earlier than the U.S. and Europe.

In Singapore the TraceTogether app was promoted by the government as the official means for contact tracing. South Korea saw the voluntary adoption of a handful of apps that tracked people known to be diagnosed. Taiwan was able to compare data from its highly centralized healthcare system to a contact tracing system it began work on during the SARS outbreak years ago. And mainland China has implemented a variety of tracking procedures through mega-popular services like WeChat and Alipay.

While it would be premature to make conclusions on the efficacy of these programs while they’re still underway, it seems at least anecdotally to have improved the response and potentially limited the spread of the virus.

But east Asia is a very different place from the U.S.; we can’t just take Taiwan’s playbook and apply it here (or in Europe, or Africa, etc.), for myriad reasons. There are also valid questions of privacy, security, and other matters that need to be answered before people, who for good reason are skeptical of the intentions of both the government and the private sector, will submit to this kind of tracking.

Right now there are a handful of efforts being made in the U.S., the largest profile by far being the collaboration between arch-rivals Apple and Google, which have proposed a cross-platform contact tracing method that can be added to phones at the operating system.

The system they have suggested uses Bluetooth as described above, but importantly does not tie it to a person’s identity in any way. A phone would have a temporary ID number of its own, and as it made contact with other devices, it exchanges numbers. These lists of ID numbers are collected and stored locally, not synced with the cloud or anything. And the numbers also change frequently so no single one can be connected to your device or location.

If and only if a person is determined to be infected with the virus, a hospital (not the person) is authorized to activate the contact tracing app, which will send a notification to all the ID numbers stored in the person’s phone. The notification will say that they were recently near a person now diagnosed with COVID-19 — again, these are only ID numbers generated by a phone and are not connected with any personal information. As discussed earlier, the people notified can then take whatever action seems warranted.

MIT has developed a system that works in a very similar way, and which some states are reportedly beginning to promote among their residents.

Naturally even this straightforward, decentralized, and seemingly secure system has its flaws; this article at the Markup gives a good overview, and I’ve summarized them below:

• It’s opt-in. This is a plus and a minus, of course, but means that many people may choose not to take part, limiting how comprehensive the list of recent contacts really is.
• It’s vulnerable to malicious interference. Bluetooth isn’t particularly secure, which means there are several ways this method could be taken advantage of, should there be any attacker depraved enough to do so. Bluetooth signals could be harvested and imitated, for instance, or a phone driven through the city to “expose” it to thousands of others.
• It could lead to false positives or negatives. In order to maintain privacy, the notifications sent to others would contain a minimum of information, leading them to wonder when and how they might have been exposed. There will be no details like “you stood next to this person in line 4 days ago for about 5 minutes” or “you jogged past this person on Broadway.” This lack of detail may lead to people panicking and running to the ER for no reason, or ignoring the alert altogether.
• It’s pretty anonymous, but nothing is truly anonymous. Although the systems seem to work with a bare minimum of data, that data could still be used for nefarious purposes if someone got their hands on it. De-anonymizing large sets of data is practically an entire domain of study in data science now and it’s possible that these records, however anonymous they appear, could be cross-referenced with other data to out infected persons or otherwise invade one’s privacy.
• It’s not clear what happens to the data. Will this data be given to health authorities later? Will it be sold to advertisers? Will researcher be able to access it, and how will they be vetted? Questions like these could very well be answered satisfactorily, but right now it’s a bit of a mystery.

Contact tracing is an important part of the effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, and whatever method or platform is decided on in your area — it may be different state to state or even between cities — it is important that as many people as possible take part in order to make it as effective as possible.

There are risks, yes, but the risks are relatively minor and the benefits would appear to outweigh them by orders of magnitude. When the time comes to opt in, it is out of consideration for the community at large that one should make the decision to do so.

Here’s a nice thing. It’s not revolutionary or life-changing, but it’s nice. And right now we can all use a little bit of nice. Earlier this month, Samsung announced an addition to its line of “eco-packing” that will turn TV boxes in a wide variety of different “furniture.” I use furniture in quotes here because it is, in fact, still cardboard.

As someone who has transformed a box or two into a piece of pet shelter in his time, however, I’m pretty on-board with the whole thing.

It’s a bit like Nintendo Labo for grownups, with a QR code that unlocks instructions for transforming the containers into a wide range of different objects, including shelves, magazine racks and even cat houses. The longevity of each will be entirely dependent on usage and your specific cat.

To start, the boxes will be used to ship The Serif, Frame and Sero TV models. They’ll be shopping with the TVs starting this month. Samsung’s approach earned it a CES Innovation Award back in January. 

Here’s a nice thing. It’s not revolutionary or life-changing, but it’s nice. And right now we can all use a little bit of nice. Earlier this month, Samsung announced an addition to its line of “eco-packing” that will turn TV boxes in a wide variety of different “furniture.” I use furniture in quotes here because it is, in fact, still cardboard.

As someone who has transformed a box or two into a piece of pet shelter in his time, however, I’m pretty on-board with the whole thing.

It’s a bit like Nintendo Labo for grownups, with a QR code that unlocks instructions for transforming the containers into a wide range of different objects, including shelves, magazine racks and even cat houses. The longevity of each will be entirely dependent on usage and your specific cat.

To start, the boxes will be used to ship The Serif, Frame and Sero TV models. They’ll be shopping with the TVs starting this month. Samsung’s approach earned it a CES Innovation Award back in January. 

The diagnostics startup Curative has received an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its novel test to determine COVID-19 infection.

The company says that its tests have already been used by the City of Los Angeles since late March and have tested over 53,000 city residents.

Curative’s tests use an oral-fluid sample collected by having the subject cough to produce sputum, which release the virus from deep in the lungs, according to a spokesperson.

Here’s how the letter digitally signed by the FDA’s chief science officer, Denise Hinton, describes the Rucative test:

To use your product, SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid is first extracted, isolated and purified from oropharyngeal (throat) swab, nasopharyngeal swab, nasal swab, and oral fluid specimens. The purified nucleic acid is then reverse transcribed into cDNA followed by PCR amplification and detection using an authorized real-time (RT) PCR instrument. The Curative-Korva SARS-Cov-2 Assay uses all commercially sourced materials or other authorized materials and authorized ancillary reagents commonly used in clinical laboratories as described in the authorized procedures submitted as part of the EUA request. 

Curative, which was first covered by DotLA, is processing the tests in conjunction with Korva Labs, a testing facility associated with UCLA.

These tests hope to get around the supply chain shortages that constrain the number of tests the US can conduct. Currently, the US is still experiencing a shortage of test kits because the supply chain for critical components used in test kits has been disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, the company said.

Curative is working to build alternatives to many of the sample collection and extraction kit components and what it calls more scalable RNA extraction methods that don’t rely on the use of magnetic silica beads.

The company was initially founded in January 2020 to focus on a novel test for sepsis, but pivoted to focus on COVID-19 testing as the disease swept across the globe.

“Our goal is to assemble an orthogonal supply chain to supply coronavirus test kits. Doing so will help us avoid buying materials that would constrain public health and CDC laboratories from ramping up production,” the company said on its website. “We are also working to partner with other operations looking to spin up testing facilities to help them source necessary reagents.”

Curative says that its test is better for two reasons. Its sampling method reduces the risk of exposure for healthcare workers and requires less Personal Protective Equipment and its use of an alternative supply chain means it can scale tests rapidly.

The company can already process roughly 5,000 tests per day and is manufacturing 20,000 test kits over the same period. Test results can be delivered in around 31 hours.

“Broad access to testing is critical to our nation’s response to COVID-19 and with this authorization, we can continue scaling and distributing our test nationwide,” said Fred Turner, the chief executive and founder of Curative Inc. “Our work with the Cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach has helped thousands of people access testing at drive-through facilities and we are fully equipped to expand that access to help thousands more across the country. At the same time, we are continuing to work with the FDA to validate our test for at-home collection, which would expand access even more.”

With the new authorization, the company is going to begin working with additional distributors around the country.

The Curative tests are already used by Los Angeles, Long Beach and through testing organized by LA County and the LA County Fire and Sherrif’s Department. The tests aren’t being sold directly to consumers and must be ordered by a physician, the company said.

Backed by the venture firm DCVC, Curative has already been the subject of some controversy when its investor sent a letter to limited partners indicating they’d be able to get access to the Curative tests upon request.

The firm wrote:

“… please let us know as soon as possible if you are experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and are unable to get tested. Through a unique relationship with one of our portfolio companies, we will expedite delivery of a test kit (simple, fast, safe saliva/cheek swab) that should provide results within 1-3 days via return by mail.”

In a subsequent blog post, the partners at DCVC explained their outreach.

With changes in regulations enabling telemedicine across state lines, we wanted to make sure everyone DCVC knows was aware of Carbon’s excellent care and full suite of testing. And yes, that includes people who work at our Limited Partners, who are making difficult decisions for themselves and their families in difficult times like the rest of us.

With Carbon moving at the pace they do with their fast, friendly electronic on-boarding, and with Curative’s testing capability likely ramping to 10,000+ tests a day in the next ten days, the combined health care firepower can indeed “expedite” care for everybody.

Was our language a little boastful? Yes, no excuses. And we’re sorry if folks got the wrong idea. No one is “jumping in line.” We will always strive to point out to our friends and community where they can get quick access to quality care as well as access to other cutting-edge technology in our portfolio.

Accurate testing remains the most important feature of any effort to contain the COVID-19 outbreak and a number of startup companies are working on novel diagnostics.

As Harvard University epidemiologist, William Hanage told Business Insider, “Figuring out what’s actually going on in the community is the key part of dealing with this pandemic.”

Chinese investors, who have poured about $6 billion into Indian startups in the last two years, will be subjected to strict regulation for their future investments in the world’s second largest internet market.

India amended its foreign direct investment policy on Saturday to include China in the list of neighboring nations that will need to seek approval from New Delhi for their future deals in the country. Previously, only Pakistan and Bangladesh were subjected to this requirement.

The nation’s Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade said it was taking this measure to “curb the opportunistic takeover” of Indian firms that are grappling with challenges due to the coronavirus crises.

The new rule will also be applicable to “the transfer of ownership of any existing or future foreign direct investment in an entity in India, directly or indirectly,” the ministry said.

“There has been a growing concern across the globe that Chinese companies are buying cheap, distressed asset. Government may be thinking that if this is allowed to continue, this may cause some security concerns,” Bangalore-based lawyer Nikhil Narendran told TechCrunch in an interview.

The move comes at a time when major investors in India have cautioned local startups to prepare for a tough period ahead. Earlier this month, they told startup founders that raising fresh capital is likely be more challenging than ever for the next few months.

Data from research firm Tracxn showed that Indian startups have already started to face the pressure. Local startups participated in 79 deals to raise $496 million in March, down from $2.86 billion that they raised across 104 deals in February and $1.24 billion they raised from 93 deals in January this year, according to Tracxn. In March last year, Indian startups had raised $2.1 billion across 153 deals, the firm said.

Narendran said India is following similar efforts from other countries such as Australia that have tighten their foreign direct investment policies.

Chinese giants Alibaba and Tencent have emerged as some of the biggest investors in Indian startups in recent years. Over a dozen additional firms and venture funds in China have stepped up their efforts in scouting deals in India.

Some of India’s biggest startups including Flipkart, Paytm, ShareChat, and Zomato are backed by Chinese VCs.

Rahul Gandhi, the former head of political party Indian Nation Congress, urged the ruling government earlier this month to take measures to prevent “foreign interests from taking control of any Indian corporate at this time of national crisis.”

Crowdfunding platform for startups Republic has acquired crowdfunding platform for games Fig, joining forces to help creators get their ideas off the ground. Users of each service will be happy to know they’ll continue as-is for the foreseeable future.

The model of publicly accessible micro-equity has proven an effective one, and both platforms have recent successes under their belts. Startups of a wide variety have raised hundreds of thousands on Republic, while Fig has had a great year with games like the critically acclaimed (and popular) Outer Wilds and What the Golf.

The scale of the sites is small compared with Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but the projects are more carefully curated and although they are all crowdfunding platforms, the Republic/Fig model is different, awarding equity rather than product. Or in addition to product — who can resist wanting to have their own weird new Intellivision console?

The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the general idea is to merge the two sites without compromising either. Ideally both will see an increased audience, and users will see an increased variety of projects to potentially back. Gaming is a growing area of investment, especially niche indie games that might be the next big unexpected hit, so Republic saw Fig as a natural extension of its existing platform.

“One of the best things going for Fig is how successful they’ve been in making positive returns for investors. Capital raised is used to develop the game, games are sold, and sales revenue is shared with investors,” said Republic CEO Chuck Pettid in a statement sent to TechCrunch. Most private investments take 7-10 years for investors to get meaningful returns. Fig has accelerated that outcome and even boasts 3 straight years (2017, 2018, and 2019) of positive returns for investors. There isn’t another crowdfunding platform in the world that can say that.”

Fig’s CEO, Justin Bailey, will stay on as a board member at Republic and help guide the intelligent integration of the two sites.

“Fig will continue on and over time will slowly become a part of Republic,” he said. “Republic will keep the core parts of Fig’s community publishing platform and then add in its ingredients such as its commitment to diversity which will create an even stronger platform for indie game developers. In the end, Fig’s mission is to help support independent developers and making games possible that wouldn’t be.”

Both CEOs went out of their way to mention that the sites especially value underserved and underrepresented groups, which may find crowdfunding the only way to collect enough capital to pursue an idea. “More than half of the campaigns featured on Republic have come from underrepresented founders,” said Pettid. “In the past few years, the tech and video game industry has pushed the diversity message, but not enough is being done.”

Bailey noted that the pandemic has led to a major disruption of traditional investment methods. Crowdfunding is already successful, but in the modified post-coronavirus world it may be even more valid.

“Developers should always be rethinking how to raise funding,” he said. “Innovation and creative thinking leads to the best campaigns, and we will be there to assist them.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic shook up the world and reshaped the economy, Boston was quietly setting records.

According to new venture data compiled by TechCrunch, the region set what was at least a local maximum in venture capital raised in the space of a single quarter in Q1 2020.

But while Boston’s startup market announced a number of huge rounds that bolstered its total venture dollars raised in the first quarter, there were signs of weakness: Deal volume was its best since Q2 2019, according to a set of data compiled and released by PwC and CB Insights, but was still a little under the pace set in 2018.

So Boston’s startups raised lots of money, but couldn’t match prior highs when it came to the number of checks written. And those results were largely recorded before COVID-19 shuttered the city. Since then, we’ve seen a number of area startups lay off staff, something we explored last week.

Now, with fresh data in hand, we can take a closer look at the city’s first quarter of 2020. To better understand what we’re unpacking, we asked a number of local venture capitalists to weigh in. Let’s look back at Boston’s Q1 as we stride into Q2 with the help of Venture Lane, .406 Ventures, Volition Capital and Flybridge Capital Partners.

The data

Starting with a programming note is counter-flow, but bear with us. TechCrunch is starting a regular, monthly series on Boston and its startup market. This is a second prelude of sorts. Normally we’d hold news and interviews for a later date so that we’d have plenty of material for a column. In the face of relentless change, however, we didn’t want to hold off on reporting and synthesizing new information. When things are more normal, our pace will follow.

Per PwC and CB Insights, here’s the last few quarters of data, along with a few yearly totals to draw you the picture we can now see:

The Mendel Air Sensor app is the first app I open every morning. Before Reddit, before Gmail, before NYT. I roll over, grab my phone, and check my plants. I don’t know if there’s a higher honor I can bestow on an app.

The Mendel Air Sensor is a game-changer for indoor growers. It offers a sophisticated suite of sensors that collects critical information about growing conditions. With a price of $99, there’s very little else on the market that offers the same sort of data collection at an affordable price.

The company behind the Mendel Air Sensor started by building similar sensors for at-home aquariums. This group knows data collection and teamed up with an experienced manufacturer to develop and ship the Mendel Air Sensor.

I know very little about growing plants indoors. I’ve watched some YouTube videos, read a lot of blog posts and asked friends for advice. And yet I have a small growing operation in my basement: tomatoes, romaine lettuce, carrots, and, you know, other leafy greens.

Several weeks in, I’m starting to appreciate the data behind growing plants. There’s a lot to consider from the temperature to types and amount of light, to humidity and how the plants react to humidity through a calculation to determine the vapor pressure deficit (VPD).

I have a Mendel Air Sensor hanging in one grow tent (pictured at the top), and it’s my new obsession. The small green device collects four data points every 15 minutes and displays the information through a web app or smartphone app. This is allowing me to fine-tune the controlled environment through exhaust fans, light placement, and humidifier levels.

As I’ve found, it’s critical to watch this data throughout the day. I’ve yet to stabilize the environment to a point where I set it and forget it. About twice the day, because of the Mendel Air Sensor, I make slight changes to the growing tent, which resulted in dramatic changes to the environment. Without access to this data, I Wouldnt know something is off until the plant shows warning signs — and as I understand it, that’s when it’s too late.

At $99, it’s a good value, and there are only a few competitors in the space. Most are double or triple the price though their charting products seem more mature.

CEO Nate Levine tells TechCrunch Mendel started as a 50/50 partnership with another bootstrapped company RapidLED out of the Bay Area. This company has sold lights for indoor growers for the last few years and already has an established base of customers in this field. But Levine didn’t start to build a product for monitoring plants; instead, he created, FishBit, a product for monitoring aquariums.

The parallels between the two markets helped Levine’s team jump into the indoor gardening space. As Levine told TechCrunch, the consumer demands are similar, and like with aquariums; indoor growers are increasingly looking for ways to increase capabilities. Instead of keeping fish alive, though, they’re trying to get more tomatoes. Or weed.

Levine said that unlike with aquariums, indoor growers can be less stingy with their cash, though, right now, with cannabis, margins are slim. There isn’t a gold rush, he said, but noted that the cannabis market, in particular, is at the right spot for companies to launch new products.

The company is marketing the same product to home growers, and commercial growers thought this could be a challenge with the current web app. It lacks robust features found on other products. For a small grower like me, it’s okay, but I expect commercial customers expect better logging, more detailed analysis, and a variable monitoring cycle instead of just every 15 minutes.

To make it available for international users, the company needs to swap out the USB power supply.

Don’t call this is a pivot. Or at least Levine doesn’t call it a pivot. As he told TechCrunch if he goes back to the original pitch deck, the company is still driving at the same for FishBit, and everything the team learns on Mendel is implemented in FishBit too. The goal is to build an entire product line of smart hardware and software for the indoor grower.

RapidLED approached Levine and the team at an aquarium conference and offered to build the hardware if Levine could make the software. My plants are happy that the two companies forged the partnership.

As for my plants, I’ve learned a few things because of the Mendel Air Sensor. First, my grow lights put out much more heat than I expected, and I need to dump the cheap set and get a name brand unit. Second, the humidity was much lower than I had expected, so I added a humidifier. Finally, monitoring the VPD is much easier than it seems if the calculations are automated.

Another startup has turned to downsizing and fund raising to help weather the uncertainty around the economy amid the global coronavirus health pandemic. People.ai, a predictive sales startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Iconic, Lightspeed and other investors and last year valued at around $500 million, has laid off around 30 people, working out to about 18% of staff, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed.

Alongside that, the company has quietly raised a debt round in the “tens of millions of dollars” to make strategic investments in new products and potentially other moves.

Oleg Rogynskyy, the founder and CEO, said the layoffs were made not because business has slowed down, but to help the company shore up for whatever may lie ahead.

“We still have several years of runway with what we’ve raised,” he noted (it has raised just under $100 million in equity to date). “But no one knows the length of the downturn, so we wanted to make sure we could sustain the business through it.”

Specifically, the company is reducing its international footprint — now, big European customers that it already has on its books will now be handled from its US offices rather than local outposts — and it is narrowing its scope to focus more on the core verticals that make up the majority of its current customer base.

He gave as an example the financial sector. “We create huge value for financial services industry but have moved the functionality for them out to next year so that we can focus on our currently served industries,” he said.

People.ai’s software tracks the full scope of communication touch points between sales teams and customers, supposedly negating the tedious manual process of activity logging for SDRs. The company’s machine learning tech is also meant to generate the average best way to close a deal – educating customer success teams about where salespeople may be deviating from a proven strategy.

People.ai is one of a number of well-funded tech startups that is making hard choices on business strategy, costs and staffing in the current climate.

Layoffs.fyi, which has been tallying those losing their jobs in the tech industry in the wake of the Coronavirus (it’s based primarily on public reports with a view to providing lists of people for hire), says that as of today, there have been nearly 25,000 people laid off from 258 tech startups and other companies. With companies like Opendoor laying off some 600 people earlier this week, the numbers are ratcheting up quickly: just seven days ago, the number was just over 16,000.

In that context, People.ai cutting 30 may be a smaller increment in the bigger picture (even if for the individuals impacted, it’s just as harsh of an outcome). But it also underscores one of the key business themes of the moment.

Some businesses are getting directly hit by the pandemic — for example, house sales and transportation have all but halted, leaving companies in those categories scrambling to figure out how to get through the coming weeks and months and prepare for a potentially long haul of life and consumer and business behaviour not looking like it did before January.

But other businesses like People.ai, which provides predictive sales tools to help salespeople do their jobs better, is (for now at least) falling into that category of IT is still in demand, perhaps even more than ever in a shrinking economy. In People.ai’s case, software to help salespeople have better sales conversations and ultimately conversions at a time when many customers might not be as quick to buy things, is an idea that sells right now (so to speak).

Rogynskyy noted that more than 90% of customers that are up for renewal this quarter have either renewed or expanded their contracts, and it has been adding on new large customers in recent weeks and months.

The company has also just closed a round of debt funding in the “tens of millions” of dollars to use for strategic investments.

It’s not disclosing the lender right now, but it opted for debt in part because it still has most of its most recent round — $60 million raised in May 2019 led by Iconic — in the bank. Although investors would have been willing to invest in another equity round, given that the company is in a healthy position right now, Rogynskyy said he preferred the debt option to have the money without the dilution that equity rounds bring.

The money will be used for strategic purposes and considering how to develop the product in the current climate. For example, with most people now working from home, and that looking to be a new kind of “normal” in office life (if not all the time, at least more of the time), that presents a new opportunity to develop products tailored for these remote workers.

There have been some M&A moves in tech in the last couple of weeks, and from what we understand People.ai has been approached as well as a possible buyer, target and partner. All of that for now is not something the company is considering, Rogynskyy said. “We’re focused on our own future growth and health and making sure we are here for a long time.”