Year: 2020

Bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure platform Bugcrowd has raised $30 million in its Series D funding round.

The San Francisco-headquartered company said the round brings the total amount raised to $80 million since the company was founded in 2011. This latest round was led by Rally Ventures, which previously invested in the startup.

Bugcrowd acts as an intermediary between security researchers that find bugs and security flaws and the companies with products and services that need to be fixed. By mediating from the middle, the process ensures that bugs are appropriately triaged, mitigated, and rewarded, and that both sides follow the rules to protect both sides from potential abuse.

Reputable and mainstream bug bounty platforms are few and far between, but are in high demand. Bugcrowd for one has scored some major customer wins, including Mastercard, Fitbit, and other Fortune 500 companies.

As for the round itself, Bugcrowd CEO Ashish Gupta said the $30 million will help the company ramp up its expansion of its platform, particularly in Europe and Asia.

“The fight against cybercriminals is never-ending and attack surfaces are constantly expanding,” Gupta told TechCrunch. “We’re expanding our offerings, applying the intelligence from our crowd to a variety of different security use cases to help customers find and fix vulnerabilities faster, and continue to scale the platform.”

Gupta said Bugcrowd serves 65 industries in 29 countries. “We want to continue that growth trajectory,” he said.

Even though large swathes of the world have ground to a halt thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the security world hasn’t shown any signs of slowing. In fact, vulnerability reports during March are up 20%, Gupta said. And Bugcrowd as a business is largely unfazed by the stay-at-home orders, given that its staff are remote-first. “We did temporarily close our five physical world-wide offices but have seen no disruption of services,” he said.

The funding comes at an important time for the company. In the past year, Bugcrowd expanded its relatively new penetration testing offering, a service where companies ask trusted researchers to stress-test their systems to find and shore up holes before an attacker can. That side of the business — less than two years old — grew by 400% year-over-year since its debut, said Gupta.

“Our customers see a ten-times higher number of critical vulnerabilities from our pen test solution compared to other assessments because we bring the right researcher with the right skills to deliver insightful submissions,” said Gupta.

One of the efforts that’s been proposed to contain the spread of COVID-19 is a contact trace and track program, that would allow health officials to keep better tabs on individuals who have been infected, and alert them to potential spread. Contract tracing has already seemingly proven effective in some parts of the world that have managed to curb the coronavirus spread, but privacy advocates have big reservations about any such system’s implementation in the U.S.

There are a number of proposals of how to implement a contact tracing system that preserves privacy, including a decentralization proposal for a group of European experts. In the U.S., MIT researchers have devised a new method to would provide automated contact tracing that taps into the Bluetooth signals sent out by everyone’s mobile devices, tying contacts to random numbers that aren’t linked to an individual’s identity in any way.

The system works by having each mobile device constantly be sending out random strings of numbers that the the researchers liken to “chirps” (though not actually audible). These are sent via Bluetooth, which is key for a couple of reasons, including that most people have Bluetooth enabled on their device all the time, and that it’s a short-range radio communication protocol that ensures any reception of a “chirp” came from someone you were in relatively close contact to.

If any person tests positive for COVID-19, they can then upload a full list of the chirps that their phone has broadcast over the past 14 days (which at the outside, should represent the full time they’ve been contagious). Those go into a database of chirps associated with confirmed positive cases, which others can scan against to see if their phone has received one of those chirps during that time. A positive match with one of those indicates that an individual could be at risk, since they were at least within 40 feet or so of a person who has the virus, and it’s a good indicator that they should seek a test if available, or at least self-quarantine for the recommended two-week period.

MIT’s system sidesteps entirely many of the thorniest privacy-related issues around contact tracing, which have been discussed in detail by the ACLU and other privacy protection organizations: It doesn’t use any geolocation information at all, nor does it connect any diagnosis or other information to a particular individual. It’s still not entirely left to individual discretion, which would be a risk from the perspective of ensuring compliance, because MIT envisions a health official providing a QR code along with delivering any positive diagnosis that would trigger the upload of a person’s chirp history to the database.

The system would work through an app they install on their phone, and its design was inspired by Apple’s “Find My” system for locating lost Mac and IOS hardware, as well as keeping track of the location of devices owned by loved ones. Find My also uses chirps to broadcast locations to passing Apple hardware.

“Find My inspired this system,” ays Marc Zissman, the associate head of MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Cyber Security and Information Science Division and co-principal investigator of the project in a blog post describing the research. “If my phone is lost, it can start broadcasting a Bluetooth signal that’s just a random number; it’s like being in the middle of the ocean and waving a light. If someone walks by with Bluetooth enabled, their phone doesn’t know anything about me; it will just tell Apple, ‘Hey, I saw this light.’”

The system could be adapted to automate check-ins against the positive chirp database, and provide alerts to individuals who should get tested or self-isolate. Researchers worked closely with public health officials to ensure that this will suit their needs and goals as well as preserving privacy.

MIT’s team says that a critical next step to making this actually work broadly is to get Apple, Google and Microsoft on board with the plan. This requires close collaboration with mobile device platform operators to work effectively, they note. Extrapolating a step further, were iOS and Android to offer these as built-in features, that would go a long way towards encouraging widespread adoption.

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

This morning we’re taking a brief look at SaaS stocks ahead of earnings, making note of their recent movements (and recovery), and what those somewhat violent movements could mean for SaaS startups as we head into the new economic world.

Investors generally expect churn (revenue loss) to rise at SaaS firms. For modern software startups that need to raise new capital, more churn means slower growth. If public software companies trip over their earnings reports, clipping their valuations, it could set up a double-bind for a number of startups. Let’s explore.

A recovery, a return

Tracking the value of public SaaS companies is a fun way to understand a piece of the venture capital market. If public SaaS shares rise, their gains help founders raise new money at attractive prices, defending and extending private valuations. When SaaS stocks fall, they do the opposite.

It’s not quite business as usual in the world of business, but in tech, there is still a significant amount of money being raised and invested, both to help sustain the most promising startups, and to help find those emerging despite (or because of) the wider economic and social crises arising from the coronavirus pandemic. Today, one of the biggest names in VC, Index Ventures, announced that it has closed another $2 billion in funds –$1.2 billion that it plans to use for growth rounds (larger, later stage investments) and $800 million that it will put into emerging startups (smaller, earlier rounds, likely for younger companies).

At a time when it’s getting very tough for startups — which are often built not for immediate profit but growth, with big capital infusions to sustain themselves — Index will have its work cut out for it. To date, 70% of its initial investments are at Series A or earlier. Whether that will be a proportion it keeps remains to be seen.

The total amount is larger than Index’s last fund, dating from July 2018, which totalled $1.65 billion ($1 billion growth, $650,000 emerging), but it’s not clear if this was what the firm had intended to raise, or less or more. For some context, another huge VC firm, Insight Partners, last week announced a monster $9.5 billion round, which exceeded the company’s original target of just over $7 billion.

Like Insight, the focus for Index will be both to fund existing portfolio companies as well as seek out those diamonds in the rough that are being built now, a spokesperson confirmed to us.

Despite all the social distancing and tightening of purse strings due to unemployment and other indicators of economic struggle, there have been pockets of opportunity emerging around areas like delivery services, medical and healthcare technology, and of course anything that helps us live our lives in a more efficient and hopefully diversionary way online (which can come in the form of entertainment, but also better services for doing practical and necessary things, like shopping or have a work videoconference without websites falling over or getting hacked).

“Innovation is often born out of adversity,” said Jan Hammer, Partner at Index Ventures, in a statement. “The path to building a great company is not a straight line, with many obstacles and forks along the way. We take the long view and remain committed to investing in ambitious entrepreneurs at this unprecedented time.”

Yes, it is easy for a VC — who I’m guessing is probably not concerned about his income or health in the same way that a front-line healthcare worker or grocery check-out person might be — to wax lyrical about opportunity right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something that should be ignored. In fact, I’d argue that finding ways out of this is just as important as us all getting through it in one piece.

Index has remained one of the very active investors in the last several weeks, as a key backer in some of the biggest deals announced for Notion, Fast, Collibra and Safety Culture, “with more to follow,” the spokesperson said.

Other big startups (scale-ups perhaps being a more apt word) include Deliveroo, Glossier, Confluent, Figma, Revolut and Roblox. IPOs from its portfolio over the last couple of years have included Slack, Adyen and Datadog.

“We believe that entrepreneurs hold the keys to the world’s recovery, and we couldn’t support them without the backing of our investors, our limited partners,” said partner Mike Volpi in a statement. “Many of them have been with us for two decades, and we’re especially thankful for their continued commitment in times like these. The success of our entrepreneurs in turn helps to fund the research organizations, universities, medical institutes and the pension funds our limited partners represent, and we couldn’t be more proud to have them as part of the Index Family.”

Indian grocery startup BigBasket has raised $60 million as it scales its business in the country to meet growing demand from customers stuck at home.

Alibaba and other existing investors including Mirae Asset and CDC Group participated in the bridge-round, Vipul Parekh, co-founder of BigBasket, told TechCrunch in an interview. Parekh said the startup intends to close a larger financing round in the next six to nine months.

The eight-year-old startup, which attained the unicorn status last year, has raised about $720 million in venture capital and debt financing to date, according to CBInsights. Indian news outlet Entrackr first signaled about the bridge-round.

Parekh said the startup is aggressively trying to hire more delivery personnel to service the ever growing demand from customers. New Delhi ordered a nation-wide lockdown last month, which has disrupted several businesses.

The volume of orders on BigBasket has surged by up to five times in recent weeks, said Parekh. But the startup is struggling to find enough people to deliver items to customers as many workers have moved to their hometowns or are cautious about working in the current environment, he said.

In the last one week, BigBasket has partnered with Uber and two-wheeler mobility firm Rapido to deliver groceries in parts of India. The startup, like several others, faced severe challenges last month after the 21-day lockdown was enforced as it worked with local state authorities to continue its delivery operations. At one time, it had over 400,000 inventories that it needed to ship but was sitting in its warehouses.

BigBasket operates in more than two dozen cities in India and offers tens of thousands of grocery products to customers. As far as securing inventories is concerned, Parekh said the startup is currently not seeing any issues.

BigBasket’s rival, SoftBank -backed Grofers has also seen a surge in volume of orders. The startup said this week that it delivered in 1 million homes in three weeks.

But despite the growth, Grofers co-founder and chief executive Albinder Dhindsa said online grocery still accounts for only 0.2% of the overall retail market. “I think at the end of this crisis we will probably reach 0.5%, but that is still an insignificant share,” he said.

There could be more demand for electric vehicles post COVID-19 crisis, believes Energica founder Livia Cevolini.

The CEO of the high-performance Italian motorcycle manufacturer offered that point of optimism, as her Modena based EV company remains closed by government decree.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced Energica to hit the brakes on production of its battery powered machines that can reach top speeds of 168 mph.

From lockdown in her Northern Italy home, Cevolini shared perspective on the future of motorcycling, acquisition offers and plans to recharge her company when the COVID-19 crisis subsides.

At a time when her country has been hit particular hard by the coronavirus, she offered some upbeat thinking.

Energica CEO Livia Cevolini on lockdown in Modena, Italy

“I don’t want to look only at the negative…Maybe there are things that are positive that come out of this bad crisis,” Cevolini told TechCrunch on a video call.

One of those is greater demand for EVs after the pandemic. Cevolini highlighted greater awareness of the smog internal combustion mobility creates and scientific evidence that air pollution exacerbates viruses as factors that could swing more folks to electric.

Reporting has made much of urban areas attaining visibly cleaner air — featuring before shots of global cities with smog and after shots of clear skies since COVID-19 forced traffic off the roads.

“Maybe at the end of this situation we will have a greater awareness on climate change. Then people will approach electric with more consciousness,” Cevolini said.

Before the health crisis shutdown most of Italy, Energica had already seen larger demand for its high-performance e-motos, with a price range of $17,000 to $23,000. The company — that has has a California office and U.S. general manager (Stefano Benatti) — filled more orders in the first two months of 2020 than all its sales for 2019, according to Cevolini.

As an EV venture, Energica is located in the famed Italian motor valley and positions itself similar to its neighbors — Lamborghini, Ducati, Ferrari — in offering a merger of sleek design and elite performance.

MotoE Worldcup racing, Image Credits: Energica

The venture is also one of the few e-motorcycle companies drawing engineering tips from competition. In 2018, Energica was named the sole manufacturer to the MotoE Worldup — an electric version of MotoGP motorcycle racing. MotoE riders use the company’s EGO model as their base bike.

Harley’s entry followed several failed electric motorcycle startups — including Mission Motors — and put it in the market with existing EV ventures, such California startup Zero, with 200 dealers worldwide.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

When it comes to core e-motorcycle specs — such as performance, charge-times and range — Energica has held advantages with its 145 horsepower machines that can charge in 20 minutes for max ranges of 140 to 250 miles.

But the competition is closing in on some of the Italian EV maker’s numbers. In 2019, Zero launched its high-performance SR/F, with 110 horsepower and a top-speed of 120 mph. And the entire motorcycle industry — gas and electric — could face competitive pressures from new EV entrant Damon Motors. The Vancouver based startup debuted its 200 mph, $24K Hypersport this year, which offers proprietary safety and ergonomics tech for adjustable riding positions and blind-spot detection.

On top of strong competition in the e-moto space, there’s a growing uncertainty on the buying appetite for motorcycles that could persist into 2020 — and beyond — given the COVID-19 pandemic gripping the world.

In the U.S., new motorcycles sales didn’t weather the last recession very well, dropping 50% in 2008 and remaining stagnant since. In addition to Energica, other manufacturers, such as Harley Davidson have been forced to stop production due the coronavirus.

Energica CEO Livia Cevolini believes her company has a leg up on its e-moto competitors and an ability to rebound, once it restarts operations.

She flags the manufacturer’s racing connection as something that will continue to give Energica an edge in product development. Speaking to competition with Zero Motorcycles in particular, “We are in a different category,” she said. “They have less power, less range and less fast charge capability.”

Energica has also created another revenue stream through a joint-venture to provide battery, computing and drive-train technology to Dell’Orto, a supplier to the global scooter market.

As more of the major gas motorcycle companies enter the EV market, Cevolini is open to a merger or acquisition, but only on her terms.

“If someone comes to me with a real proposal…that you want to grow our business and our company and not destroy it, we can talk,” she said. “Otherwise, we prefer to go our own way.”

Image Credits: Energica

Energica is prepared to restart production, and has done contingencies for adaptations — such as safe and socially distanced operations — when it gets the go head from the Italian government to reopen.

“We’re ready to fulfill the orders we received before the shutdown and take more,” she said.

When Energica is able to switch on the plant electricity again, Cevolini suspects her niche market of motorcycle enthusiasts will be eager to roll.

“Our customers are telling us they are just waiting to ride again. And as soon as they can ride again, they will ride again,” she said.

Mergers and acquisitions largely grinded to a halt at the end of March, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic spreading around the world, but today comes news of a deal out of Europe that underscores where pockets of activity are still happening. Avira, a cybersecurity company based out of Germany that provides antivirus, identity management and other tools both to consumers and as a white-label offering from a number of big tech brands, has been snapped up by Investcorp Technology Partners, the PE division of Investcorp Bank. Investcorp’s plan is to help Avira make acquisitions in a wider security consolidation play.

The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed in the companies’ joint announcement, but the CEO of Avira, Travis Witteveen, and ITP’s MD, Gilbert Kamieniecky, both said it gives Avira a total valuation of $180 million. The deal will involve ITP taking a majority ownership in the company, with Avira founder Tjark Auerbach retaining a “significant” stake of the company in the deal, Kamieniecky added.

Avira is not a tech startup, or not in the typical sense. It was founded in 1986, and has been bootstrapped, in that it seems never to have taken any outside investment as it has grown. Witteveen said that it has “tens of millions” of users today of its own-branded products — its anti-virus software has been resold by the likes of Facebook (as part of its now-dormant antivirus marketplace) — and many more via the white-label deals it makes with big names. Strategic partners today include NTT, Deutsche Telekom, IBM, Canonical, and more.

He said that the company has had many strategic approaches for acquisition from the ranks of tech companies, and also from more typical investors, but these were not routes that it has wanted to follow, since it wanted to grow as its own business, and needed more of a financial injection to do that than what it could get from more standard VC deals.

“We wanted a partnership where someone could step in and support our organic growth, and the inorganic [acquisition] opportunity,” he said.

The plan will be to make more acquisitions to expand Avira’s footprint, both in terms of products and especially to grow its geographic footprint: today the company is active in Asia, Europe and to a lesser extent in the US, while Investcorp has a business that also extends deep into the Middle East.

Cybersecurity, meanwhile, may never go out of style as an investment and growth opportunity in tech. Not only have cyber threats become more sophisticated and ubiquitous and targeted at individual consumers and businesses over the last several years, but our increasing reliance on technology and internet-connected systems will increase the demand and need to keep these safe from malicious attacks.

That has become no more apparent than in recent weeks, when much of the world’s population has been confined to shelter in place. People have in turn spent unprecedented amounts of time online using their phones, computers and other devices to read news, communicate with their families and friends, entertain themselves, and do critical work that they may have in part done in the past offline.

“In the current market you can imagine a lot are concerned about the uncertainties of the technology landscape, but this is one that continues to thrive,” said Kamieniecky. “In security we have seen companies develop quite rapidly and quickly, and here we have an opportunity to do that.”

Avira has been somewhat of a consolidator up to now, buying companies like SocialShield (which provided online security specifically for younger and social media users), while ITP, with Investcorp having some $34 billion under management, has made many acquisitions (and divestments) over the years, with some of the tech deals including Ubisense, Zeta Interactive and Dialogic.

ClimateView, a Swedish software development company working on monitoring and visualization tools for greenhouse gas emissions, said it has raised $2.5 million in its latest round of financing.

While the world is gripped by the material and economic toll of the COVID-19 epidemic, the problems society faces from longterm global climate change have not gone away.

It’s against this backdrop that investors including the Norrsken Foundation, an impact investment firm established by Klarna co-founder Niklas Adalberth; and Nordic Makers, an angel syndicate composed of founders from Zendesk, Sitecore, and Unity Technologies, decided to invest in ClimateView. Nordic Makers, Max Ventures, and GGV Capital also participated in the funding, the company said.

Using ClimateView’s software, cities around the world have a window into their climate data — including emissions and other sustainability and resilience information — so that they can plan accordingly for how best to proceed with decarbonization efforts and climate change mitigation plans.

So far, around 1,348 municipalities, townships, and villages in 26 countries have declared a climate emergency, but there’s no real effort to understand from a systems perspective what steps need to be taken to mitigate the worst impacts of the changing global climate, the company said.

“It’s an exciting time for ClimateView as we work to reinvent the way in which society works with the climate challenge,” said founder and chief executive Tomer Shalit, in a statement. “Our solution-focused approach to climate action is already gaining traction in a number of cities across the globe and we hope that, with this investment, we can continue to lay the groundwork for decision making so that, together, the world’s cities and nations can forge a common path towards global carbon neutrality.”

Historically, environmental policy and planning has been limited by a lengthy decision-making, planning-intensive process that hasn’t been able to access the latest data visualization tools and projections to make decisions based on current developments, the company said.

ClimateView’s software provides a central hub of all development, emissions, and projected urban planning data to accelerate the planning process.

The company’s premier project has been its work with the Swedish Climate Policy Council, which used the ClimateView software and suite of services to release a publicly available digital roadmap using the company’s Panorama software.

“Norrsken invests in startups that make the world better, so ClimateView is an ideal fit for us,”said Tove Larssen, a general partner with Norrsken. “We are really intrigued by their ambition to provide a global platform that makes it possible to fight climate change faster and more efficiently, and are delighted to be on board to help them achieve this goal.”

Commercial real estate owners, brokers, and landlords have collectively made many hundreds of billions of dollars a year in recent years as the economy zipped along.

Now, they’re getting clobbered by the pandemic-fueled economic crisis. Worse, their industry may be forever changed by it.

It isn’t news that extracting rent — from nearly anyone right now — is problematic. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, just 69 percent of U.S. households had paid their rent by April 5 compared with the 81 percent who’d paid by March 5 and the 82 percent who paid by the same time last year. That statistic will almost certainly look a lot worse by May 5, given that the numbers of laid-off and furloughed employees grows by the day.

On the commercial side, the problem is beginning to look as dire. In addition to the countless small retail and restaurant businesses that may be forced to permanently vacate their commercial spaces because they can no long afford to keep them running, a growing number of corporate chains is also beginning to prove unwilling or able to pay their rent.

WeWork, for example, has stopped paying rent at some U.S. locations while it tries to renegotiate leases, according to the WSJ, even as the co-working company continues to charge its own tenants.

Staples, Subway and Mattress Firm have also stopped paying rent as a way to pressure building owners into rent reductions, lease amendments and other measures designed to offset the losses they are incurring owing to the impact of coronavirus.

The question begged is what happens next. While some may see opportunities in distressed assets, it’s very possible that more broadly, the commercial real estate market will never look the same.

For one thing, while small retailers and restaurants melt away, some of their online rivals are gaining ground. Amazon, despite no shortage of bad publicity, gains market share by the day. In fact, it this week again became a trillion-dollar company.

The online streetwear marketplace StockX is also booming, as we reported a few weeks ago. As said its CEO, Scott Cutler, at the time: “We thought we’ve always been a marketplace of scarcity, but now you can’t actually go into a real retail location, so you’re coming to StockX.”

The landscape may change particularly quickly in markets like San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York, where not only is there a density of independent shops and restaurants, but startup employees and other white collar workers are suddenly working from home — and perfecting the art of working as part of a distributed team.

“Remote work is something we’re thinking a lot about right now,” says Colin Yasukochi, director of research and analysis at the commercial real estate services giant CBRE. “People are right now being forced to do it,” but “I think some will inevitably stick” to working remotely, he says. “The question of how many, and for how long, is unknown.”

Certainly, it’s not the trend CBRE or others in the real estate world were expecting this year. An “outlook” report on 2020 published by CBRE last November sounded understandably rosy. “Barring any unforeseen risks,” it said at the time, “resilient economic activity, strong property fundamentals, low interest rates and the relative attractiveness of real estate as an asset class ” were among the primary factors that supported its prediction that this year would be a “very good year” for commercial real estate.

In the ensuing months, of course, that unforeseen risk has prompted shutdowns that have led to layoffs across nearly every sector of the economy. It has also — by the very nature of it being a viral contagion — made it highly likely that even when people are allowed to re-occupy commercial spaces, they’ll be less enthusiastic about dense workspaces. This is doubly true if they know they can get their work done outside the office.

It could well lead to reduced demand for office space later on. It could also mean the same amount of space — or perhaps even more —  with reconfigured office layouts. No one yet knows, including commercial estate brokers.

Mark George, a San Jose, Calif.-base broker with the commercial real estate company Cresa, is currently working from home, where he shares an office with his wife, who is also working remotely for the first time. It’s nice to be home with their children, says George, but being housebound makes it harder to get a pulse on industry changes, particular in his industry.

Brokers are “somewhat isolated,” he says. ” Touring activity has dried up because we can’t show space. City Hall is closed in every municipality, so you can’t pull permits. The industry is really shut down.”

George said that “deals that were at the finish line probably got signed” before the coronavirus really took hold in the U.S. But the “deals that were close and not quite there? Every deal I’ve seen has been put on ice. Everyone is in a holding pattern.”

A Cresa colleague of George in San Francisco, Brandon Leitner, echoes the sentiment, saying that “things are not moving fast.” Still, Leitner expects the firm, which handles clients as big as Twitter to Series A and even seed-stage companies, will see a deluge of activity once the city’s current stay-in-place mandate is lifted and brokers can start showing companies properties again.

Specifically, Leitner expects the market to come down by “at least 10% and probably 20% to 30%” from where commercial spaces in San Francisco has priced in several years, which is $88 per square foot, according to CBRE. He expects 2 million square feet will come onto the market in the city, space that companies “want to get off their books.”

That’s a lot, particularly given that there is already about 3.2 million square feet of commercial space available already, according to CBRE’s Yasukochi, who says a “good amount” came onto the market in the last six months alone.

Landlords, for their part, are “hesitant right now to put a new number on the market,” says Leitner, so they are likely to “make as many concessions as they can” to hang on to and attract new tenants.

Eventually, however, they may have no choice. There’s only so much they can do, and they typically have debt to deal with, meaning they’ll be relying on their relationships with lenders.

According to George, Lenders will be inclined to help in order to preserve their own investments. The Federal Reserve may also give the banks the ability to defer mortgage payments, which will make it easier for property owners to put off charging rent.

Whether that will be enough to get the commercial real estate all the way back after Covid-19 remains to be seen.

“This [pandemic] is something we’ve never experienced before,” notes Yasukochi. He says CBRE’s economists estimate the next two quarters will be “very tough.” Still, he says, the market “might see a substantial” uptick in the four quarter. “It really depends on whether demand bounces back, and whether expansion plans will be put on hold, or permanently [shelved].”

For now, he’s choosing to remain optimistic. It “feels like things go wrong really fast in the Bay Area,” says Yasukochi. “But typically, they come back really fast, too.”

A lot of industry players are surely hoping so.