Year: 2020

Most of NASA’s facilities around the country have been shut down, and while some teams can work (and drive a Mars rover) from home, others are knuckling down to get some crucial missions out the door — or face a half-billion dollar late fee, said agency head Jim Bridenstine.

In an interview with the Planetary Society published today, Bridenstine discussed a variety of interesting topics, but none more immediately salient than the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on NASA’s work.

With projects tentatively scheduled for as long as a decade out, there’s plenty of wiggle room. But not every mission has that luxury, he explained, and the two that have been deemed truly essential — and therefore warranting NASA employees actually coming in to work — are the Commercial Crew program and the Mars Perseverance rover (formerly known as Mars 2020 and recently renamed in a very cute contest).

Commercial Crew has SpaceX and Boeing competing to provide an American-built alternative to the Soyuz spacecraft we’ve been using exclusively to sent astronauts to the International Space Station since we retired the last Space Shuttle in 2011.

“That’s an essential function really for one reason. We have to make sure that we have access to the International Space Station, which is a $100 billion investment by the American taxpayer,” Bridenstine said. “So that mission is going forward.”

Going forward as early as next month, in fact, a date that has remained remarkably solid during a tough time for industries around the world, and in a program that has seen any number of speculative deadlines come and go.

Later in the interview he clarified that the Crew Dragon and Starliner capsules are not meant to be complete and permanent replacements for the Soyuz and Russian launch vehicles, but an alternative to make sure access is assured and the relationship to Russia isn’t one of dependency. Late last year a Soyuz failure nearly led to the ISS being empty for the first time ever, but quick work by investigators got things going again quickly. Having multiple vehicles ready to go would reduce the likelihood of that kind of crisis occurring.

The second mission that has been deemed essential is the next Mars rover, Perseverance.

“That’s mission essential for one reason and that is that we have a very limited launch window to go to Mars,” explained Bridenstine.

Unlike satellites going to orbit or even missions to the Moon, which have long and frequent launch windows, spacecraft going to Mars must be launched at times when our two planets are at very specific points in their orbit, in order to have shorter travel time and arrive precisely at the location planned. Interplanetary travel is a very exact science, and failing to get Perseverance out the door on time (July 17 in this case) would be disastrous.

“If we miss that launch window, it will cost us upwards of $500 million over the course of two years, if not wreck the mission altogether, which we do not want to have happen,” Bridenstine said.

He was careful to add that this would not be accomplished at the cost of NASA employees’ health.

They’re going to work with as many precautions as we can attain. We’re spreading the people apart. We’re putting people on different shifts, so they’re not at work at the same time. And then using PPE [personal protective equipment] when and where appropriate.

Look, if there’s anybody in the NASA workforce that doesn’t feel comfortable doing what they’re doing, we want them to say so and we want them to feel free to do something else. We wanna help them in fact do something else. We don’t want anybody to do anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Our employees are the number one highest priority of the agency and we want everybody to feel safe in this very unique moment in time. And so we’re giving people a lot of latitude so that they feel safe and there will be no judgment on them at all.

As for projects that may face delays after all, Bridenstine admitted that the agency’s next-generation launch vehicle, the Space Launch System or SLS, is in “a tough spot.” Its first test, Artemis I, is scheduled for the end of 2021 but may very well slip to 2022, he admitted. But he noted that Artemis II, the SLS’s second launch, is being prepared for independently and isn’t highly dependent on the timing of the first.

The ambitious plan to put boots on the moon in 2024 was already considered something of a long shot, and the pandemic is making it look significantly longer. But at least in the short term, NASA’s truly critical operations are continuing and this spring and summer will, if all goes well (and let us hope it does), host successful and historic missions.

You can read or listen to the full interview with Bridenstine on Planetary’s podcast here.

“Tigertail,” a new film on Netflix, weaves together the past and the present to tell the life story of Pin-Jui, who we first meet as a Taiwanese boy dreaming of moving to America.

We soon see that he eventually made it to New York. In the present-day sequences, he struggles to connect with his adult daughter Angela, while also reflecting on his past — a past illustrated in vibrant flashbacks that show his hardscrabble childhood, followed by blossoming romance.

In many ways, “Tigertail” marks a more expansive, less funny treatment of the material that writer-director Alan Yang previously covered in an episode of “Master of None,” one that was all about adult children trying to understand their immigrant parents.

Not everything benefits from the feature-length treatment. The contemporary storyline can feel a bit repetitive — particularly in contrast with the richer, more eventful flashbacks — with one montage after another of Pin-Jui and Angela staring glumly into the distance. But the performances are compelling and the relationships feel believably strained.

And it’s rich thematic territory, prompting your Original Content podcast hosts to argue about the value of parental sacrifice, and to reflect on their own family relationships.

You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:44 “Tigertail” review (mild spoilers)
23:01 “Tigertail” spoiler discussion
47:33 Quibi update

Airwallex, a Melbourne-based cross-border financial startup that achieved “unicorn” status last year, announced today that it has raised a $160 million Series D. The round included ANZi Ventures, the investment arm of ANZ Bank, and Salesforce Ventures, along with returning investors DST Global, Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital and Horizons Ventures.

Founded in 2015, the company’s financial services include foreign currency accounts that let businesses receive money from around the world. Airwallex’s system uses inter-bank exchanges to trade foreign currencies at a mid-market rate and are targeted to companies that do business in several different countries. The new funding will be used on potential acquisitions; expansion in American, European and Middle Eastern markets; and the launch of new products, including payment acceptance tools.

Airwallex reached a valuation of over $1 billion last year when it closed its Series C funding, and has now raised a total of $360 million. Since that round, it has launched new operations in Tokyo, Bangalore and Dubai, and introduced products including Airwallex Borderless Cards in partnership with Visa and integration with accounting platform Xero. The company also now offers an API that enables companies to issue their own virtual cards.

In a press statement, Salesforce Ventures’ Head of Australia Rob Keith said, “Being able to transact and do business with customers all over the world is a key criteria for companies who are going through a digital transformation. We’re excited to partner with Airwallex at this critical time in its growth, expanding both its footprint globally and its product capabilities.”

Other startups that have also raised funding to help small- to medium-sized businesses deal with the challenges of doing trade in different currencies include Brex, another unicorn, and Hong Kong-based Neat.

US major stock indexes fell in Wednesday trading as new data from the Commerce Department and Federal Reserve indicated a collapse in manufacturing output and retail sales.

However, the declines did not completely erase yesterday’s gains in another sign that US investors and corporations may be better positioned to withstand the economic shocks caused by the COVID-19 epidemic than most of the employees of the same businesses.

The numbers coming from the Commerce Department were especially grim. The value of US retail sales have fallen 8.7% over the last month. That’s the biggest decline on records dating back to 1992. Factory production had its worst month since the end of World War II. Output from factories fell a stunning 6.3% in March.

Market declines could have been worse, given the extent of the bad news coming from the industrial and retail sector. Perhaps, investors were buoyed by the knowledge that stimulus checks could begin rolling out soon (if the addition of the President’s signature doesn’t slow down their release).

• Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.86 percent to 23,504.35 a decline of 445.41 points
• S&P 500 tumbled 2.20 percent to 2,783.36, a loss of  62.70 points
• Nasdaq fell 1.44 percent to 8,393.18, shedding 122.56 points

While the major indices fell, a collection of SaaS and cloud stocks actually posted gains on the day.

As TechCrunch reported this morning, the Dow and its peers are up a little under 30% from lows, though they remain under recent, record highs. So the markets are somewhat parked between their prior optimism, and more recent pessimism. No one is sure what’s going to happen next, perhaps.

But while the stock market might be a mixed-message, Amazon, a famous tech company, reached an all-time share price high today. Closing the day worth $2,307.68 per share, Seattle’s ecommerce and computing giant closed the day up just over 1%. In a down market, Amazon was the day’s obvious standout.

Houseparty, the popular video chat application acquired by Fortnite maker Epic Games in 2019, has seen massive growth due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With government lockdowns keeping people from being able to visit friends and other loved ones in person, consumer demand for video chat apps has skyrocketed. This has resulted in the video conferencing category of apps hitting record numbers in March, app store intelligence firm App Annie recently reported. Until now, however, Houseparty had remained quiet about its own metrics.

Today, that changed, as Houseparty revealed that in the past month, its app has seen 50 million sign-ups — a figure that’s around 70 times above normal.

According to data from Apptopia, Houseparty has seen record mobile downloads, as well, with installs spiking in recent weeks. During the past 30 days, Houseparty has seen 17.2 million new installs across iOS and Android, by its estimates.

But the app is also available for Mac and Chrome, which aren’t included in that figure.

The increased consumer demand has also seen the app topping the mobile app stores’ charts in a number of markets, the company said.

Houseparty became the No. 1 Social app in 82 countries, including the U.S. App Store. It was also No. 3 Social app on the U.S. Google Play store.

The app grew to become the No. 1 Overall app in 16 countries, as well. And in the U.S. App Store, it got as high as the No. 3 Overall app. On Google Play, it reached as high as No. 10.

The company said users have engaged with the app for long session times, with the average time in conversation per user remaining at over 60 minutes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these average times were sometimes even as high as 80+ minutes.

Houseparty has typically appealed to younger users than those on other video chat apps, as it’s designed for social hangouts. For starters, the app integrates with Snapchat. And like Snapchat, it also heavily relies on gesture-based navigation that older users tend to struggle with. Plus, it offers in-app games to play, like trivia or Ellen’s popular “Heads Up,” among others.

Meanwhile, video chat rivals — like Zoom, Skype and Google Hangouts — are often used by remote workers and in a corporate setting, in addition to their emerging consumer use cases. This tends to have the apps skew a bit older and distances them from the idea of being “fun.”

That being said, with the increases in usage tied to COVID-19, Houseparty claims people of all ages and backgrounds are now joining the app.

In addition, Houseparty’s users are connected to an average of 23 friends and nearly half of users having conversations are playing games — a figure the company had not previously revealed.  (The company recently made all its games free to play, which has likely impacted usage).

While the U.S. has always been Houseparty’s largest market, App Annie last month reported on Houseparty’s growth, noting it had seen particular demand in Europe. This included countries like Italy and Spain where installs during the week of March 21 surged at 423x and 2360x the average weekly number of installs in Q4 2019. What’s remarkable about the growth is that some of the countries, like Spain, were markets where Houseparty never had wide-scale penetration before the COVID-19 crisis.

Though Houseparty tends to keep its core metrics under wraps — like total users or revenue, for example — it likely released its new numbers today for a variety of reasons.

For one, Houseparty may just want to redirect focus from an odd situation where it was recently accused of a data breach by way of social media posts from users. Through tweets, users claimed their Houseparty user data was being used to access other accounts, like Netflix and Spotify. But Houseparty denied the breach and even suggested that the social media posts were a part of a “paid commercial campaign” aimed at harming its business. It offered a $1 million reward for any evidence that proved this theory. Nothing yet has come of that and some of the posts have since disappeared.

In addition, Houseparty rival Zoom was recently been criticized for a variety of security and privacy issues, which the CEO Eric Yuan has since apologized for and promised to fix. But in the meantime, Houseparty may hope to boost its install base further, by appealing to those who are now looking for a Zoom alternative. (Although Houseparty has its own privacy issues, it’s not been as widely reported).

Finally, there’s the fact that there aren’t that many times in a company’s life where it can detail its outsized growth like this. It’s unprecedented for there to be some 158 million Americans being told to stay at home, plus millions more worldwide, which creates an ideal climate for video chat apps to thrive.

Opendoor, the seven-year-old, San Francisco-based company that has from the outset aimed to help people buy and sell homes with the “push of a button” or nearly, just laid off more than a third of its staff.

According to a statement sent to us by cofounder and CEO Eric Wu, the company has laid off 600 of its employees, which constitutes 35% of its overall team, says Wu.

Like so many sectors of the economy, the residential real estate market has taken a hit as U.S. residents are asked to stay indoors and all but essential services are shut down in most of the country. (Florida continues to operate by its own rules and yesterday decided that World Wrestling Entertainment is an essential service.)

Home sales haven’t fallen as far or as fast as one might imagine, thanks to staggered shutdowns around the country and, to some extent, virtual tours. According to Realtor.com, the number of U.S. homes for sale declined 15.7% year-over-year in the month of March, but the national median listing price grew 3.8%, to $320,000. Those numbers are starting to change as the weeks wear on, however, with the number of newly listed properties falling by 13.1% the week ending March 21 and by 34.0% for the week ending March 28.

In his statement, Wu didn’t include details regarding the degree to Opendoor has been impacted by the Covid-19 shutdown, saying only that because the pandemic has “had an unforeseen impact on public health, the U.S. economy, and housing,” the company has “seen declines in the number of people buying, selling, and moving during this time of uncertainty.”

He adds in the statement that the reduction in force is “necessary to ensure that we can continue to deliver on our mission and build the experience consumers deserve.”

Asked if the company was planning to also furlough some employees, as some other tech companies are choosing to do, Wu did not respond to the question.

Every company’s management team is handling layoffs differently, of course. In the case of Opendoor, its separation package seems fairly generous as these things go, with laid-off employees receiving eight weeks of full pay and 16 weeks of reimbursement for health insurance coverage.

Wu says he will also be donating his 2020 salary to a relief fund for Opendoor employees who may be in “more challenging financial or health circumstances” owing to the virus and that an unspecified number of other executives are also contributing to the fund.

Opendoor has raised $4.3 billion in equity and debt funding over the years, including $1.3 billion in equity. Backed early on by Khosla Ventures, then GGV Capital, the company had in more recent funding rounds, strengthened its ties to the traditional real estate market by adding to is backers one of the country’s largest home construction companies, Lennar Corporation.

The idea behind the relationship was for OpenDoor to help get customers into Lennar-built homes faster, as well as to encourage them to “trade up” where possible.

Opendoor was also the recipient of one of the SoftBank Vision Fund’s enormous checks, trading a minority stake in the company in September 2018 for a $400 million check from the Japanese conglomerate, which also installed managing director Jeff Housenbold on the company’s board.

It was roughly one year ago that Opendoor announced its most recent round — a $300 million financing, including from General Atlantic and others, that established its valuation at $3.8 billion.

It’s unclear to what extent the current market will impact that number going forward. It’s also unclear given the scale of its cutback whether OpenDoor will continue to operate in the 21 cities where its services are currently available when the market slowly re-opens.

For now, the company has stopped making cash offers on homes. It says on its site that in the meantime, it is continuing to work with third-party buyers who may be able to provide home sellers with cash offers, as well as connecting customers with listing agents in cases where they are needed.

The startup world is going through yet another evolution. A few years ago, VCs were focused on growth over profitability. Now, making money is just as important, if not more, than sheer growth. And we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, which has brought the economy to a crawl and forced entrepreneurs to rethink both their short and long-term priorities.

Startups want to hear from the voices they trust for guidance on how to navigate this difficult situation. That’s why we’re excited to introduce Extra Crunch Live, a virtual speaker series complete with live Q&A for our Extra Crunch members. We’re also thrilled to announce that Aileen Lee and Ted Wang, partners at Cowboy Ventures, will be joining us for our very first Extra Crunch Live call on April 20 at 10:30am PT / 1:30pm ET. (Full details at the bottom of the post.)

Aileen Lee founded Cowboy Ventures, a well-known early-stage firm, after serving as a partner at KPCB from 1999 to 2012. She coined the term “unicorn” (in a TechCrunch article, no less) and has been named one of Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women, The Top Women Investors on Midas and The Times’ 100 Most Influential People.

She has worked hands-on with companies such as Bloom Energy, Blue Nile, One Kings Lane, Rent the Runway, Shopkick and Tellme (acquired by Microsoft) during her time at KPCB, and has investments in StyleSeat, Textio, August Home, Brit+Co, Crunchbase, Dollar Shave Club and Drop via Cowboy Ventures . Lee is also a co-founder of AllRaise, a nonprofit to accelerate the success of women in the tech ecosystem.

Ted Wang was one of the country’s leading tech startup lawyers, at Fenwick & West, before joining Cowboy Ventures. At the law firm, he served as outside counsel to some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Square, Sonos, Spotify, Jet, Stripe and Wealthfront.

Wang’s specialty is helping early-stage startups understand the metrics they need to hit to go from seed to Series A and beyond, and he likes to say one of his investment focuses is “Unsexy Tech,” with an interest in both consumer and enterprise tech.

We’re excited to talk to Lee and Wang about how they’re advising their portfolio companies during COVID-19, if there are new and innovative ways for early-stage startups to secure capital beyond the traditional VC route, and whether startups should hunker down or lean in during these uncertain times.

We have plenty of questions of our own, and you’ll also be able to ask your own questions. Make sure you come prepared! But you’ll need to be an Extra Crunch member to participate in the call.

We’ll be announcing more speakers very soon! Sign up for Extra Crunch to be the first to hear about the upcoming schedule. Information to join Aileen Lee and Ted Wang can be found below:

Earlier today a grip of new data presented a sharply negative picture of the American economy. And this afternoon, news broke that a trio of well-known, heavily-backed unicorns were cutting staff.

With stocks down as well, we’ve received negative signals from the private market, the public market and the economy as a whole in the same day. Let’s take a minute to set the macro stage, and then go over the latest cuts from Carta (first reported by Bloomberg), Zume (Business Insider broke that particular story) and Opendoor (via The Information).

Economic malaise

The backdrop for today’s cuts is a faltering American economy. A glance at recent news is sufficient. In the last few hours, home builder confidence recorded the “biggest drop in history,” while retail sales fell 8.7% in March, what CNBC noted was “the most ever in government data,” and CNN Business reported that American factories’ output fell 5.4% in March, “their steepest one-month slowdown since 1946.”

It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that we’ve seen unicorn layoffs all year. In January the news was Vision Fund-backed companies cutting burn to skate closer to profitability. Then, the first round of COVID-19-forced staff cuts landed at big companies; firms like Bird and TripActions slashed staff as their companies were rent by a slowdown in their core operations by the pandemic and its related economic and social changes.

Slimmer cuts at smaller companies have happened on a nearly chronic basis, something that TechCrunch has covered, as well.

Today, however, saw three cuts from three unicorns (private companies worth $1 billion or more) that have long been objects of TechCrunch’s attention. So, let’s talk about them briefly:

• Opendoor, a San Francisco-based home sales-focused startup with backing from SoftBank, announced deep cuts to its staffing today. In a statement provided to TechCrunch, the company’s CEO Eric Wu said that 35% of its employee base would be eliminated to “ensure that we can continue to deliver on our mission.” The CEO also said that exiting staff would get paid for eight weeks and “reimbursement of 16 weeks of health insurance coverage.” Wu is also donating his 2020 salary to a fund to support staff. Opendoor was most recently valued at $3.8 billion in a $300 million funding round announced last March.
• Carta, a San Francisco-based private company equity service platform, announced cuts worth 16% of its staff, or 161 roles, according to a memo that the company shared publicly. Previously eShares, Carta has grown from a provider of equity management for small private companies into a larger, broader service and software play supporting yet-private firms. Carta most recently raised $300 million at a $1.7 billion valuation last May.
• And finally, Zume. Zume didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of publication and did not post a public note that we could find. Still, Business Insider reports that the company is cutting 200 more staff after earlier 2020 personnel reductions. The firm will be left with around 100 employees, working on compostable boxes. Zume last raised $375 million at a valuation of just under $1.9 billion (post-money) in November 2018.

It’s getting hard to keep track of all the cuts. Heck, I helped break Modsy layoffs recently with TechCrunch’s Natasha Mascarenhas, and we were first to the BounceX cuts as well. It’s a rough, bad economy, and it’s harming growth-oriented companies that like startup unicorns.

More when we have it, probably sooner than we’d like to report.

As silently and swiftly as it has devastated families and communities around the world, COVID-19 has also left many startups gasping for air. Emerging companies with strong 2020 revenue forecasts have seen their high-confidence plans reduced by 60%-80% in a matter of days. Even in the best of times, startups must reach value-unlocking milestones to successfully raise new capital. But today, a globally synchronized halt to business activity has made irrelevant normal benchmarks for financing rounds.

Obtaining payroll support from the recently enacted special government programs for small businesses will not resolve the cascading problems startups are grappling with, regardless of whether or not they are VC-backed.

Product development roadmaps in many innovation-driven industries are changing in ways that may permanently alter a company’s future strategic direction. Merger and acquisition discussions are being shelved. Normal financing rounds, in process and contemplated, are contracting or being abandoned altogether. Many venture funds, including corporate venture programs, have unilaterally “taken a pause” to reevaluate the radically changing landscape for their early-stage company portfolios.

I last experienced this phenomenon in the aftermath of the Great Technology Bubble: 2002-2003. And all signs show that we are at the beginning of a new round of punitive “incentives” for venture investors to keep their companies alive.

Several of my current portfolio companies have recently proposed “emergency bridge” convertible note financings of between $5 million and $15 million, each featuring a painful feature for non-participants: multiple liquidation preferences benefiting only the new money above 3x, with discounts greater than 20% on conversion in a new equity financing. Of course, these financings are open to both existing and new investors. But the likelihood of another round is actually diminished by this type of structure.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the manufacture of the Coventor ventilator, a new hardware design first developed by the University of Minnesota. The project sought to create a ventilator that could provide the same level of life-saving care as existing ventilator models, but with a much lower cost to help ramp production quickly and make them affordable to the health institutions that need them.

The Coventor becomes the first of these types of novel ventilator designs to earn an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA. Just like it sounds, an EUA isn’t a full traditional medical device approval like the drug and device regulator would ordinarily issue, but an emergency, temporary grant in the interest of helping provide access to resources in short supply, or without the usual full chain of approvals, in times of crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic is potentially the best example of such a crisis in modern memory, and the respiratory illness caused by COVID-19 requires treatment including intubation and ventilator breathing support for the most severe cases. Ventilator hardware has been in short supply given the volume of cases, both in the U.S. and abroad, and a number of solutions have been proposed including new hardware designs and modifications to other types of medical breathing apparatus to account for the gap.

U of M’s Coventor, developed with a team including engineering and medical school faculty, is a desktop-sized device that costs around $1,000 to produce, making it a much more viable alternative if sold at cost to medical facilities when compared to the $20,000 to $25,000 retail price of your average existing hospital-grade ventilator hardware.

Both medical device maker Medtronic (the company that’s also working with Tesla on its ventilator manufacturing plans) and Boston Scientific (which will be producing the Coventor for distribution following this approval) contributed to the development of the design. The University also announced today that it would be making the Coventor’s specs open-source so that it can be manufactured globally, provided other companies seek and secure similar approvals from the FDA and relevant international health authorities.