Year: 2020

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

Most “Dear Sophie” columns are only accessible for Extra Crunch subscribers; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie:

If I’m selected in this year’s lottery, how do we craft a strong H-1B petition? If I’m not selected, what are my other options?

— Hoping in Hayward

Dear Hoping:

Thank you for asking the questions that are on the minds of many H-1B first-timers. Don’t worry! Several options exist if you’re not selected.

It’s really important, especially for early-stage companies, to work with experienced attorneys to guide them through this process. Now that USCIS has changed it’s system, if you’re already selected, then having a great attorney is really important to mitigate any remaining risk in the rest of the process. There are lots of wonderful, experienced immigration lawyers out there to choose from.

This year’s new H-1B online lottery registration process ended on March 20. By March 31, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will notify companies whose H-1B candidates have been selected.

If USCIS selects you, your sponsoring employer will have 90 days to submit a complete H-1B petition. Employers can file an H-1B petition up to six months before a candidate’s intended start date.

Immigration law attorney Sophie Alcorn

It’s great that you’re already here in the U.S. H-1B candidates living outside of the U.S. seeking consular processing may face delays coming here for their employment start date depending on when coronavirus-related consulate closures and travel restrictions are lifted. These situations need to be addressed individually.

If meeting a deadline during any step of the process becomes difficult or impossible due to COVID-19, it’s possible to request special handling from the government. The federal government grants extensions under special circumstances, such as floods and hurricanes. The COVID-19 pandemic is a special circumstance.

Because COVID-19 is prompting policy and procedural changes with little or no warning, I recommend consulting an immigration attorney for assistance.

If you haven’t already, assemble the necessary documents as soon as possible. Obtaining documents may take longer now that most universities and companies are closed due to the pandemic.

Your sponsoring employer will need to assemble documents that demonstrate the appropriate policies and cash flow to hire you. Startups need to be extra careful to meet all the requirements. You should have easily accessible:

• Current resume
• Transcripts
• Diplomas and certificates
• Passports used to enter U.S.
• Past immigration documents (I-20, DS-2019, I-797, etc.)

A Labor Condition Application (LCA) approved by the U.S. Department of Labor is required with all H-1B petitions. For the LCA, your startup must promise to pay at least the prevailing wage to you and ensure that your employment conditions won’t negatively affect other workers.

If this is a startup and it’s the company’s first H-1B, it must get its Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN) verified by the Labor Department’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification before starting. That process typically takes a week or so. Timing is key to filing an LCA. Keep in mind that the Labor Department typically makes a decision on whether to certify an LCA within seven business days.

Employers do not need to submit evidence to the Labor Department for an LCA, but they must post a copy of the H-1B notification, which can be done electronically, as well as keep all supporting documents in a file and make it available for public viewing.

The employer will also need to fill out Form I-129 (Petition for a Nonimmigrant Worker), and assemble compelling evidence and supporting documents. Check and double check the form and your documents to avoid mistakes and omissions, which can prompt USCIS to deny a petition. Make sure the info contained in the LCA matches Form I-129. Remember to include all required signatures.

USCIS recently announced that scanned or photocopied signatures will be allowed on all documents and petitions during the COVID-19 emergency. Make sure you pay the proper fees and send your package to the correct address with a way to track that package.

USCIS recently announced the temporary suspension of premium processing for H-1B petitions. The agency expects to resume premium processing for individuals changing status from an F-1 student visa by May 27, and all others by June 29. For an extra fee, premium processing enables employers to receive a decision on a petition within 15 days. Without premium processing, the USCIS California Service Center is currently taking two to four months.

If you don’t get selected in the H-1B lottery, relax! Your startup can sponsor you for an H-1B again next year because there’s no limit on the number of years you can be entered in the lottery, whether you’re inside or outside the U.S. and whether you’re currently employed by them or not. In the meantime, several other visa options exist for individuals like you who qualify for an H-1B:

• O-1A Visa: If have “extraordinary ability” in the sciences, education or business, you could be eligible for an O-1A. However, the bar for qualifying for an O-1A is higher than for an H-1B.
• J-1 Visa: Most employers cannot directly sponsor an individual for a J-1 visa, which is a work-and-study visitor exchange program. The U.S. State Department designates public and private sponsor organizations to supervise the exchange programs and application process that can be used to support a J-1 at a specific company.
• L-1 Visas: If your employer has an office outside of the U.S. — or you can set up one for them — and you can work in that overseas office for 12 months or more, your employer can then transfer you back to the U.S. under an L-1A visa for executives and managers or an L-1B visa for employees with specialized knowledge. No annual quotas exist for L-1 visas, and these visas are “dual intent” and can lead to a green card.
• F-1 Visa: You could become a full-time student at an accredited college or university under an F-1 visa. Some graduate programs require Curricular Practical Training (CPT) or allow Optional Practical Training (OPT). Both training programs enable students to gain work experience in their field of study.

The following options are available to you if you’re a citizen of Chile, Singapore, Australia, Canada or Mexico:

• H-1B1 Visa: If you’re a citizen of Chile or Singapore, you’re eligible for an H-1B1. Each year, 1,400 H-1B1 visas are reserved for Chileans and 5,400 are reserved for Singaporeans. Rarely are those visas exhausted.
• E-3 Visa: If you’re an Australian national, you’re eligible for an E-3 for “specialty occupation” professionals who have specialized theoretical or practical knowledge. An LCA is required. A maximum of 10,500 E-3 visas is available annually, but they rarely are exhausted.
• TN Visa: If you’re from Canada or Mexico, you could work temporarily under a TN (Treaty National) visa for certain occupations. TN visas have no annual quota and allow for unlimited extensions as long as the employer and conditions of employment remain the same.

Fingers crossed that you get selected in the lottery!

All my best,

Sophie

Have a question? Ask it here; we reserve the right to edit your submission for clarity and or space. The information provided in “Dear Sophie” is general information and not legal advice. For more information on the limitations of “Dear Sophie,” please view our full disclaimer here. You can contact Sophie directly at Alcorn Immigration Law.

Sophie’s podcast, Immigration Law for Tech Startups, is available on all major podcast platforms; if you’d like to be a guest, she’s accepting applications!

On-demand shuttle startup Via has hit a $2.25 billion valuation following a Series E funding round led by Exor, the Agnelli family holding company that owns stakes in PartnerRe, Ferrari and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

The Series E funding round, which included other investors, totaled $400 million, according to a source familiar with the deal. Exor invested $200 million into Via as part of the round, both companies said in an announcement. Noam Ohana, who heads up Exor Seeds, the holding company’s early stage investment arm, will join Via’s board.

New investors Macquarie Capital, Mori Building and Shell also participated in the round as well as existing investors 83North, Broadscale Group, Ervington Investments, Hearst Ventures, Planven Ventures, Pitango and RiverPark Ventures.

Via, which employs about 700 people, plans to use most of these funds to expand its “partnerships,” the software services piece of its business. Via has two sides to its business. The company operates consumer-facing shuttles in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York. But the core of its business is really its underlying software platform, which it sells to cities and transportation authorities to deploy their own shuttles.

When the company first launched in 2012 there was little interest from cities in the software platform, according to co-founder and CEO Daniel Ramot . The company started by focusing on its consumer-facing shuttles. Over time, and using the massive amounts of data it collected through these service, Via improved its dynamic, on-demand routing algorithm, which uses real-time data to route shuttles to where they’re needed most.

Via landed its first city partnership with Austin in late 2017, after providing the platform to the transit authority for free. It was enough to allow Via to develop case studies and convince other cities to buy into the service. In 2019, the partnerships side of the business “took off,” Ramot said in a recent interview, adding that the company was signing on 2 to 3 cities a week before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, the Via platform is used by more than 100 partners, including cities such as Los Angeles, Cupertino, Calif., and Arriva Bus UK, a Deutsche Bahn Company that uses it for a first- and last-mile service connecting commuters to a high-speed train station in Kent, U.K.

Raising funds in a pandemic

Via managed to close the funding round during an inauspicious time for startups that have found it increasingly difficult to lock in capital due to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19, a disease caused by the coronavirus, has upended markets along with every industrial and business sector from manufacturing and transportation to energy and real estate.

Via managed to raise a sizable fund, which just closed, despite the credit tightening and uncertainty. Ramot told TechCrunch that while he was worried the round might be delayed, he noted that Exor is a long-term and patient investor that shares the company’s “same vision of where transit is going.”

Even now, as nearly every category within transportation —including public transit, ride-hailing, shared micromobility and airlines — has seen ridership drop or dry up altogether, Ramot and Ohana see a promising future.

Ohana said that the market is starting to understand the limits of ride-hailing — hurdles such as poor unit economics and an uncertain path to profitability. “On the other hand, the size of the market for an on-demand dynamic shuttle service is large and underappreciated,” Ohana said. “When we look at public transit today, there is a significant opportunity for Via, which already has impressive experience working with municipal and public transit partners across the globe.”

That doesn’t mean Via is immune to the widespread tumult caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Via’s consumer business has been negatively affected as ridership has dropped due to the spreading disease.

However, there has been some promise with its partnerships business, Ramot said.

Existing partners, a list that includes transit authorities in Berlin, Germany, Ohio and Malta, have worked with Via to convert or adapt the software to meet new needs during the pandemic. A city might dedicate its shuttle service to transporting goods or essential personnel. For instance, Berlin converted its 120-shuttle fleet transport to an overnight service that provides free transit to healthcare workers traveling to and from work.

“There has been a real interest in emergency services,” Ramot said, adding he expects to see more demand for the software platform and the flexibility it provides as the pandemic unfolds.

On-demand shuttle startup Via has hit a $2.25 billion valuation following a Series E funding round led by Exor, the Agnelli family holding company that owns stakes in PartnerRe, Ferrari and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.

The Series E funding round, which included other investors, totaled $400 million, according to a source familiar with the deal. Exor invested $200 million into Via as part of the round, both companies said in an announcement. Noam Ohana, who heads up Exor Seeds, the holding company’s early stage investment arm, will join Via’s board.

New investors Macquarie Capital, Mori Building and Shell also participated in the round as well as existing investors 83North, Broadscale Group, Ervington Investments, Hearst Ventures, Planven Ventures, Pitango and RiverPark Ventures.

Via, which employs about 700 people, plans to use most of these funds to expand its “partnerships,” the software services piece of its business. Via has two sides to its business. The company operates consumer-facing shuttles in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York. But the core of its business is really its underlying software platform, which it sells to cities and transportation authorities to deploy their own shuttles.

When the company first launched in 2012 there was little interest from cities in the software platform, according to co-founder and CEO Daniel Ramot . The company started by focusing on its consumer-facing shuttles. Over time, and using the massive amounts of data it collected through these service, Via improved its dynamic, on-demand routing algorithm, which uses real-time data to route shuttles to where they’re needed most.

Via landed its first city partnership with Austin in late 2017, after providing the platform to the transit authority for free. It was enough to allow Via to develop case studies and convince other cities to buy into the service. In 2019, the partnerships side of the business “took off,” Ramot said in a recent interview, adding that the company was signing on 2 to 3 cities a week before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today, the Via platform is used by more than 100 partners, including cities such as Los Angeles, Cupertino, Calif., and Arriva Bus UK, a Deutsche Bahn Company that uses it for a first- and last-mile service connecting commuters to a high-speed train station in Kent, U.K.

Raising funds in a pandemic

Via managed to close the funding round during an inauspicious time for startups that have found it increasingly difficult to lock in capital due to the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19, a disease caused by the coronavirus, has upended markets along with every industrial and business sector from manufacturing and transportation to energy and real estate.

Via managed to raise a sizable fund, which just closed, despite the credit tightening and uncertainty. Ramot told TechCrunch that while he was worried the round might be delayed, he noted that Exor is a long-term and patient investor that shares the company’s “same vision of where transit is going.”

Even now, as nearly every category within transportation —including public transit, ride-hailing, shared micromobility and airlines — has seen ridership drop or dry up altogether, Ramot and Ohana see a promising future.

Ohana said that the market is starting to understand the limits of ride-hailing — hurdles such as poor unit economics and an uncertain path to profitability. “On the other hand, the size of the market for an on-demand dynamic shuttle service is large and underappreciated,” Ohana said. “When we look at public transit today, there is a significant opportunity for Via, which already has impressive experience working with municipal and public transit partners across the globe.”

That doesn’t mean Via is immune to the widespread tumult caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Via’s consumer business has been negatively affected as ridership has dropped due to the spreading disease.

However, there has been some promise with its partnerships business, Ramot said.

Existing partners, a list that includes transit authorities in Berlin, Germany, Ohio and Malta, have worked with Via to convert or adapt the software to meet new needs during the pandemic. A city might dedicate its shuttle service to transporting goods or essential personnel. For instance, Berlin converted its 120-shuttle fleet transport to an overnight service that provides free transit to healthcare workers traveling to and from work.

“There has been a real interest in emergency services,” Ramot said, adding he expects to see more demand for the software platform and the flexibility it provides as the pandemic unfolds.

General Catalyst, the 20-year-old venture firm that has been bulking up in recent years, announced this morning that it has secured $2.3 billion in capital commitments across three funds: a $600 million early-stage fund, a $1 billion growth fund for companies with $10 million-plus in annual revenue, and a $700 million “endurance fund” to back large companies doing more than $100 million in sales, as reported earlier in Forbes.

It’s an impressive amount for the firm, which last closed a $1.4 billion fund that combined its early- and growth-stage investments — which was itself a huge leap from the $845 million in capital that General Catalyst raised in early 2016 across two funds.

Seemingly, the idea is to compete in more later-stage deals, which could well come down in price as other, non-traditional backers are forced to retrench a bit from the suddenly dicey market.

SoftBank, whose fortunes have shifted, is one example. Mutual fund investors that have flocked to privately held companies will likely startup committing less capital to illiquid startups right now, too, especially given that the IPO window is shut for now.

The firm tells Forbes it’s also looking to back sectors that are more relevant than ever in the era of coronavirus, including healthcare software, technologies for remote education and working. Indeed, just today, Olive, a Columbus, Oh.-based healthcare startup that’s looking to AI-enabled robotic process automation solution, said it has raised $51 million in funding led by General Catalyst, with participation from its earlier backers. FierceHealthcare has more here.

Still, the firm’s limited partners, including university endowments and pension funds, have also seen their assets hard hit by the sudden economic downturn. It will surely make the kind of commitments they’ve made to General Catalyst and other firms to recently announce giant funds a little trickier to execute.

While there’s no reason to think they won’t fulfill their obligations, during the last major downturn in the startup world back in 2000 (the 2008 recession hit Wall Street much harder than Silicon Valley), some venture firms wound up reducing the size of their funds, in part to ease the financial obligations of their limited partners, in part because they suddenly needed a lot less capital, and in part because they discovered that the more they raised, the harder it would be to produce venture-like returns.

General Catalyst has a number of high-flying bets in its portfolio. Among them: Stripe and Airbnb. It isn’t yet clear how Stripe is faring in the current environment, but Airbnb and its hosts around the world have been struggling as much of the world shelters in place. Though the company originally expected to go public in 2020, those plans seem highly unlikely now.

Stuck at home?

JK! I know you are! You’re not alone.

FirstMark Capital partners Rick Heitzmann, Amish Jani, Matt Turck and Beth Ferreira are also working from home. But neither distance nor virus can truly keep us all apart.

That’s why I’m thrilled to announce that tomorrow at 12pm EDT/9am PDT, we will be joined by these wonderful FirstMark partners for a live Zoom chat.

We’ll ask how they’re advising their portfolio companies during this challenging times, how Covid-19 has changed their investment thesis (if at all) and what trends are exciting to them. More importantly, guests of the Zoom will also be able to ask questions and have them answered live on the call.

FirstMark has an impressive portfolio that includes Shopify, Airbnb, InVision, Pinterest, DraftKings, Discord, and many, many more. The NYC-based firm is on its fourth early stage fund and second growth-stage fund, with $480 million between the pair. (TechCrunch covered FirstMark’s latest funds here.)

I’m amped to talk to Heitzmann, Jani, Turck and Ferreira and hope you’ll join us. Interested? Hit up this Zoom link at 12pm EDT/9am PDT to take part! (Please observe normal human manners: Wear clothes, don’t screenshare, generally be polite.)

We’ll publish a lightly edited audio recording and transcript to Extra Crunch on Thursday for folks who miss out! But for everyone who can make it, we’ll see you tomorrow at Noon Eastern. West Coast folks can dial in over breakfast.

The value of technology companies has fallen as the broader public markets have repriced themselves in light of COVID-19-related market and economic disruptions.

And as the public markets sort out the new value of a huge piece of global business, private companies are being shaken as well.

What happens in the public markets trickles into the private markets, so if we’re seeing the value of public tech companies fall, startups are going to take a hit. To understand that dynamic, we spoke with Mary D’Onofrio, an investor with Bessemer Venture Partners. She’s the right person to chat with about the links between private valuations and public share prices as she not only helps put capital into growing startups, she also helps run the Bessemer cloud index (now a partnership with Nasdaq, and trackable on a day-to-day basis).

As she’s versed on both sides of the public-private divide, we asked her how she values startups in normal market conditions and in more turbulent times like today. We also dug into how founders are reacting to the changing world that may no longer be as amenable to their business plans. Pulling from our conversation, D’Onofrio told TechCrunch that startups want to be valued like companies were a few months ago, while investors want to pay today’s market prices.

But enough introduction, let’s get to the conversation. This interview has been edited for length and clarity; thanks to Holden Page and Walter Thompson for help with the transcription.

TechCrunch: During our last conversation, we discussed how to value startups. You explained a method in which you consider the future value of cash flows. How do you value startups today versus how much you think they’ll be worth down the road?

Mary D’Onofrio: I think what’s important to know is that outside of a market disruption, which I think was the the nature of the question to begin with, cloud software tends to trade on revenue and revenue growth. Companies should fundamentally be valued on the present value of their future free cash flows. But I think with cloud software, in particular, there’s a prioritization of taking [market]share, and then applying a very long term healthy margin structure on a very massive revenue base once you get there, and generating cash then.

And so I think in bull markets, when capital is readily available, prioritizing growth makes a lot of sense because you want to capture as much share as you can. And then losses are also tolerable because the capital is available to fund that massive growth. And there are actual measurable metrics that validate that structure, with CLTV to CAC [customer lifetime value to customer acquisition costs] being one of them.

Dark Sky, the popular weather app, has been acquired by Apple . News of the acquisition comes by way of Dark Sky’s own blog.

The company says that there will be “no changes” for users on iOS right now — but for DarkSky users on Android, the forecast isn’t so good. The company says it’ll shutdown the service on Android in just a few months time.

From their post:

Android and Wear OS App:

The app will no longer be available for download. Service to existing users and subscribers will continue until July 1, 2020, at which point the app will be shut down. Subscribers who are still active at that time will receive a refund.

The company will also no longer accept new signups for its API, which allowed other developers to tap Dark Sky’s database of “weather forecasts and historical weather data“. The company is committing to running that API through the end of 2021, but it’s unclear what’ll happen to it after that.

Story developing…

Tina Sharkey, the founder and former CEO of the recently closed D2C brand Brandless, has today been appointed to the board of directors of PBS. Sharkey is an independent board member.

Before her time at Brandless, Sharkey spent years in the media world. She scaled Johnson & Johnson’s platform for new and expecting moms called Baby Center, oversaw AOL’s transition from a closed network to the open web, and cofounded iVillage. She also served as President of the Sesame Street Digital Group, the non-profit behind Sesame Street with a mission of making educational storytelling available to anyone.

PBS, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, has more than 300 partner stations and a presence on most digital platforms.

“PBS is so committed to universal access to the arts and educational storytelling,” said Sharkey in an interview with TechCrunch. “You may not know that they invented closed captioning. They still maintain the Public Emergency Broadcast System. They have all kinds of streaming services with distribution on Amazon, Roku, YouTube. They have their own app. But most importantly, they are able to quickly adapt in this moment of Covid-19 to become one of the world’s largest classrooms.”

Sharkey joins a 27-person board that includes Professional Directors (station leaders), General Directors (lay members of the board) and the PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger.

Sharkey is best known in the tech world for her time at Brandless, a D2C brand that sold household supplies, grocery items, and pet products for $3/item. The company controlled most of the full stack, from manufacturing through to sales, and delivered an interesting alternative to Amazon. Also garnering attention from the tech world: Brandless raised nearly $300 million in funding, including $240 million from Softbank’s Vision Fund.

Brandless shuttered in February of this year, but Sharkey says there are lessons that can be carried over from her experience at the D2C startup.

“Brandless tapped into something very powerful around democratizing access to better things,” said Sharkey. “Better should be available to everyone. With Brandless, it was about better stuff. For PBS, it’s about better access and better educational tools and better stories. So it’s a different product, but it’s the same belief system, and that’s that communities want to be convened and be seen and everyone has a story to tell.”

Sharkey added that some of her favorite PBS programming includes FrontLine, News Hour, and the shows that offer more democratized access to the arts, such as live performances and Broadway shows.

Genomics health technology startup Color is doing its part to address the global COVID-19 pandemic, and has detailed the steps its taking to support expansion of testing efforts in a new blog post and letter from CEO Othman Laraki on Tuesday. The efforts include development of a high-throughput lab that can process as many as 10,000 tests per day, with a turnaround time of within 24 hours for reporting results back to physicians. In order to provide the most benefit possible from the effort of standing this lab up, Color will also make the design, protocols and specifics of this lab available open-source to anyone else looking to establish high-capacity lab testing.

Color’s lab is also already nearly ready to begin processing samples – it’s going live “in the coming week,” according to Laraki. The Color team worked in tandem with MIT’s Broad Institute, as well as Harvard and Weill Cornell Medicine to develop its process and testing techniques that can allow for higher bandwidth results output vs. standard, in-use methods.

The focus of Color’s efforts in making this happen have been on using automation wherever possible, and seeking techniques that source parts and components, including reagents, that can come from different supply chains. That’s actually a crucial ingredient to being able to ramp efforts at scale nationally and globally, since if everyone is using the same lab processing methods, you’re going to run up against a bottle neck pretty quickly in terms of supplies. Being able to process tens of thousands of tests per day is great on paper, but it means nothing if one ingredient you need to make that happen is also required by every other testing lab in the country.

Color has also made efforts to address COVID-19 response in two other key areas: testing for front-line and essential workers, and post-test follow-up and processing. To address the need for testing for those workers who continue to operate in public-facing roles despite the risks, Color has redirected its enterprise employee base to providing, in tandem with governments and employers, onsite clinical test administration, lab transportation and results reporting with patient physicians.

For its post-test workflow, Color is working to address the challenges reported by other clinicians and health officials around how difficult it is to be consistent and effective in following up on the results of tests, as well as next steps. So the company is opening up their own platform for doing so, which they’ve re-tooled in response to their experience to date, and making that available to any other COVID-19 testing labs for free use. These resources include test result reporting, guidelines and instructions for patients, follow-up questionnaires around contact tracing, and support for how to reach out to potentially exposed individuals tied to a patient who tests positive.

To date, Color says that its been able to operate at cost, in part backed by support by philanthropic public and private donations. The company is encouraging direct outreach via its covide-response@color.com email in case anyone thinks they can contribute to, or benefit from the project and the resources being made available.

Amazon faces worker complaints over its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, General Motors says it’s moving fast to manufacture face masks and we’ve got some numbers quantifying the video conferencing boom. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 31, 2020.

1. Amazon warehouse workers are walking out and Whole Foods workers are striking

Yesterday, warehouse workers on Staten Island in New York walked off the job in protest of Amazon’s treatment amid the crisis. Meanwhile, workers at Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, are organizing a “sick out” strike to demand better protections on the job, Vice reports.

“We have taken extreme measures to keep people safe, tripling down on deep cleaning, procuring safety supplies that are available, and changing processes to ensure those in our buildings are keeping safe distances,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “The truth is the vast majority of employees continue to show up and do the heroic work of delivering for customers every day.”

2. General Motors spins up global supply chain to make 50,000 face masks a day

The automotive giant said in a released statement that it expects to deliver 20,000 masks on April 8 — and soon after, it should be able to produce 50,000 masks a day once the production line is at full capacity.

3. Videoconferencing apps saw a record 62M downloads during one week in March

According to a new report from App Annie, business conferencing apps have been experiencing record growth and just hit their biggest week ever in March, topping 62 million downloads during the week of March 14-21. Meanwhile, social networking video app Houseparty has also seen phenomenal growth in Europe during lockdowns and home quarantines.

4. Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer, where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. In his Medium post announcing the shift, Camp signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea.”

5. Leading VCs discuss how COVID-19 has impacted the world of digital health

We asked several of the VCs who participated in our last digital health survey to update us on how COVID-19 is impacting digital health startups and broader healthcare systems around the world. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Niantic squares up against Apple and Facebook with acquisition of AR startup 6D.ai

The studio behind Pokémon Go has acquired 6D.ai, a promising augmented reality startup focused on building software that allowed smartphone cameras to rapidly detect the 3D layouts of spaces around them.

7. Disney+ to launch in India on April 3

The service, available globally in about a dozen markets, will launch in India on Hotstar, one of the most popular on-demand streaming services in the country (it’s also owned by Disney). The company said it is raising the yearly subscription cost of the combined entity, Disney+Hotstar, to Rs 1,499 ($20), up from Rs 999 ($13.20).

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