Year: 2020

There are a lot of global efforts underway to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, including repurposing of existing drugs approved for use in treating other forms of coronavirus and respiratory diseases. Many of these efforts are just entering into the formal clinical study phase, which will be required before any treatment is certified for widespread use in patients diagnosed with the illness. Vaccines are still likely at least a year out from approvals, though some have already entered into clinical human trials at unprecedented speed owing to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic.

It’s definitely a challenge to keep up with all the existing efforts to pursue effective treatments and develop vaccines, but public health non-profit the Milken Institute has a new resource that aims to keep track of at least the efforts from leading research institutions and drug makers. Their COVID-19 treatment and vaccine tracker currently offers a list of nearly 60 treatments, as well as 43 vaccines in development.

This list details the type of treatment or vaccine being studied or developed, as well as their FDA-approved status (for other conditions – none have been approved specifically for treating COVID-19 to date). They also indicate who is doing the drug development or research, and what stage the research project is at (either pre-clinical or clinical). The table lists the source of funding, if available, as well as the anticipated timetable for the phases of the project if known. It provides sourcing for each, as well, including credible media sources, journals and the World Health Organization.

This kind of tracker is a good resource for anyone looking to keep tabs on the ongoing work that people are doing to take on COVID-19, though it’s a high-level view that is probably of most interest to other ongoing projects, as well as health and research professionals who might be able to assist in the development of these solutions, or to collaborate with partners. The Milken Institute says that it’s going to be updating the tracker daily at noon eastern with any additional fresh info from reliable sources.

As mentioned, even vaccines that are already in development, like the mRNA-based immune therapy that began human trials last week in the U.S., will take many months to come to market, and they still have to demonstrate their effectiveness, too. In the meantime, people should do everything they can to isolate and remain indoors in order to help buy time for the healthcare system to develop treatments that can mitigate the impact of the disease, and eventually, ways to introduce immunity in order to block its transmission.

When designers need to collaborate with other teams, they can currently turn to products like InVision and Zeplin. But Ceros creative director Jack Dixon said there’s a “pretty interesting gap in the market” — once you move beyond prototypes and start working with websites that are either live or in staging, the process starts to become fragmented, relying on screenshots and email/phone/Google Docs.

That’s why the company (which focuses on powering interactive content “experiences”) is launching a new product called MarkUp. The product was created by a team led by Greg DiNardo and Alex Bullington, who joined Ceros last August through the acquisition of their polling and market research startup Arbit.

Dixon, DiNardo and Bullington gave me a quick demo, showing off how users can mark areas of interest on a website, leave comments and tasks, then mark revisions as completed.

It all looked pretty simple and straightforward, but DiNardo suggested that it’s a real technical challenge — even more than he and Bullington had expected — to provide those kinds of features on top of a live site.

He added that the product’s simplicity was very much by design: “I don’t think we’re going to add a million features … The goal is honestly simplicity, something that graphic designers can kind of live in.”

Eventually, MarkUp could be used not just to solicit design feedback across teams, but also from the public at-large.

Ceros says MarkUp will function separately from the core Ceros Studio platform, but it will be available for free to Studio customers. In fact, it’s already being used by designers at the Huffington Post, Cushman & Wakefield and Informa.

“As of today we want to remove any friction or barrier to entry, so it’s 100 percent free to Ceros customers,” Dixon said. “Getting the  involvement of the broadest community and user bas is going to be critical for this. What we’re learning is that some of the enterprise clients might pay for bigger, more grown-up features [like white labeling]. We can figure out how to monetize later.”

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 look at mega-rounds: funding events of $100 million or more.

What’s fun about these rounds is that they experience less temporal lag than other venture financings. Generally speaking, the larger a venture round is, the faster it becomes public knowledge. This is why seed rounds are the laggiest of all startup rounds and as you progress up the Series ladder (from A to B to C to D), the rounds that you hear about are increasingly fresh.

If we wanted to take a look at 2020’s largest rounds to date, for example, instead of staring at an incomplete picture that might tell us nothing at all, we could get a reasonable handle on what’s going on in the very late-stages of private equity financings.

This morning we’re looking at $100 million and greater rounds from January, February and March (through the 23rd) for both 2019 and 2020. As you will see, the data shows us that the late-stage private market for startup investments is in better health than we might have expected. This is true despite spotting weaknesses in other parts of the global venture scene (China venture data remains very weak, for example).

The unicorn era, for better or for worse, appears to be still standing for now, despite the chaos that surrounds it.

$100 million or bust

Audm, a startup that turns longform journalism into audio content, has been acquired by The New York Times Company, it announced this morning. While there are other services that turn news articles into audio, including read-it-later apps like Instapaper and Pocket, Audm differentiates itself by using professional voice actors to narrate the content, not automated voice technology.

That makes the content more enjoyable to listen to — more like listening to a podcast, for example.

The startup was founded by Ryan Wegner and Christian Brink, both 2007 Columbia grads with backgrounds in psychology and software development, respectively. The two didn’t know each other during college, but eventually met up in 2014 when their idea for an audio news app began to come together. Initially, the founders experimented with crowdsourced narration, but later landed on using professional voice talent to make their app stand out from others.

The company participated in Y Combinator’s startup accelerator in 2017 to further develop Audm’s business. At the time, Audm was working with a range of publishing partners, including Wired, The Atlantic, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Review of Books, ProPublica, London Review of Books, and several others. According to its website today, it also works with The Atlantic, Outside, BuzzFeed News, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, New York, Rolling Stone, and TexasMonthly.

Of course, The New York Times had also worked with Audm, but on a more limited basis. Currently, Audm only has a couple of NYT stories available, and both are from 2019. That should soon change, given the new acquisition.

The app allows users to subscribe to Audm for $8.99 per month or $59.99 per year, after a 3-day free trial. The Times Company hasn’t yet offered any detail as to if or how its business model will evolve, or if Audm’s service will be further integrated with its own NYT app.

On the App Store, Audm was well-ranked as No. 20 in the Magazines & Newspapers category, according to its App Store profile. The app is also available on Android but is not well-ranked there.

According to The New York Times’ announcement, Audm will continue to introduce hours of new stories every week, including from The New York Times and other publishers.

Wegner, the director of spoken-word audio production, and Brink, director of product for Audm, as well as the rest of the team, are joining the Times Company as a result of the deal.

Audm had raised early-stage funding from Y Combinator, Hack VC, Precursor Ventures, and Switch Ventures, per Pitchbook’s data.

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.

Equity was busy last week, so catch up if you missed anything. We interviewed the CEO of Y Combinator, hosted a call with the TechCrunch staff digging into our favorite Demo Day companies, hosted Equity Monday on a Tuesday, held a call with Niko from General Catalyst, and hosted a guest — remotely! — on the regular Equity episode. It’s been busy.

This morning, however, was very nearly a repeat. The things that were bad last week are still bad this week. Still, there were a few things to go over:

• SoftBank’s epic plan to unlock value in itself, something that investors are cheering.
• Uber and Ola are halting rides in India’s capital, a move that we expect to see in more markets over time.
• Cazoo, a used car sales portal, raised $116 million, a round that caught our eye as it was huge and seemingly incongruous to the news cycle.

In fact, that round was such an oddity that we ran a search of big rounds this morning on the show instead of looking at some Seed financings. We’ll get back to Seed next week.

Looking ahead, there isn’t much to celebrate. We are stuck between earnings cycles and every conference has been cancelled or moved online. Oh, and SaaS valuations are falling. That said, we still expect to be exhausted by the evening every day of the week.

So, let’s stick together and do our best to help one another. I look forward to starting the week with a different topic for once; Equity Monday was effectively born on the doorstep of the COVID-19 world. But we won’t get there without collective action. We can all help.

Big tech has been making a huge effort to mobilize its power to help people work better together to battle the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — whether it’s creating search and information portals or making sure the most authoritative voices are surfacing above the noise, or gathering compute power to supercharge research efforts to find vaccines.

Today, it is the turn of Facebook: the company announced a number of initiatives around Messenger, its messaging platform with 1.3 billion users, to help use the service to facilitate better communication around the coronavirus outbreak. It is now partnering with developers to provide free services to government and UN health organizations to create better information tools for people to use; and it’s launching a virtual (online) hackathon to see how developers can create messaging solutions to help promote some of the important aspects of fighting the  virus, such as social distancing and more general information services.

The moves come at a critical time. Facebook hasn’t had the best couple of years when it comes to public opinion — with many users increasingly concerned about their privacy and data protection on the platform, and getting more aware of how it can be used as a tool for manipulating public opinion. But for now, there’s been a stay put on that whole mess.

Facebook has identified and been working hard to battle misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic on its site, and it has also emerged as a helpful platform when it comes how ordinary people are using it to manage  communication during the coronavirus pandemic. Many communities are turning to Facebook, and other tools that it owns like WhatsApp, to coordinate communication to help those who are self-isolating, or simply people looking for advice as they start to figure out how to work, live, educate and take care of themselves in these unprecedented circumstances.

The distancing measures that are getting put in place in many cities and countries — which include things like closing schools, restaurants, theaters, and other places where people congregate, and extend also to fully locked-down quarantines with people staying in their homes — are an unprecedented disruption of our daily lives, and that’s putting a lot of focus on communication platforms like Messenger and the internet to keep us connected.

“As is common in any crisis, people are using digital channels like Messenger to stay connected and get information from trusted health authorities that are on the front lines fighting this global pandemic,” writes Stan Chudnovsky, the VP of Messenger.

While there is no charge to put such services on Messenger at the moment, developers might normally charge organizations to build these experiences, which could include bots with automated responses to questions, or guidance on how to use Messenger to broadcast information and updates more effectively, or how to switch from automated response bots to direct conversations with live people when needed: that is the part that Facebook has now negotiated to be done for no charge.

The services are already being used by UNICEF, Pakistan’s Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations & Coordination (NHSRC), and Argentina’s Ministry of Health, which is working with Botmaker.com to answer questions from the public about the coronavirus, including advice.

As for the hackathon, it’s being organised with Devpost, and while it may sound like fun, these are often amazing testbeds to surface innovation. Yes, you might think that the most important innovation right now has to be on the drug research side, but innovation in messaging is also of huge importance as we look for ways of both keeping people informed and calm.

“Participants will be encouraged to build both global and local solutions and will receive unique access to Messenger-related content, including Facebook Live tutorials with product experts and a range of educational materials to support innovation,” Chudnovsky notes. Winners will get mentoring from Facebook engineers to help make these solutions a reality. They’ll also receive invitations to attend F8 2021, including flights and accommodations, and will be given the opportunity to participate in the F8 hackathon, he added.

When activist investors Starboard Value took a 7.5% stake in Box last September, there was reasonable speculation that it would begin to try and push an agenda, as activist investors tend to do. While the firm has been quiet to this point, today Box announced that Starboard was adding three members to the 9 member Box board.

At the same time, two long-time Box investors and allies, Rory O’Driscoll from Scale Venture Partners and Josh Stein from DFJ, will be retiring from the board and not seeking reelection at the annual stockholder’s meeting in June.

O’Driscoll involvement with the company dates back a decade, while Stein has been with the company 14 years, from its very earliest days, and has been a big supporter from almost the beginning of the company.

For starters, Jack Lazar, whose credentials including being chief financial officer at GoPro and Atheros Communications, is joining the board immediately. A second new board member from a list to be agreed upon by Box and Starboard will also be joining immediately.

Finally, a third member will be selected by the newly constituted board in June, giving Starboard three friendly votes and the ability to push the Box agenda in a significant way.

At the time it announced it was taking a stake in Box, Starboard telegraphed that it could be doing something like this. Here’s what it had to say in its filing at the time:

“Depending on various factors including, without limitation, the Issuer’s financial position and investment strategy, the price levels of the Shares, conditions in the securities markets and general economic and industry conditions, the Reporting Persons may in the future take such actions with respect to their investment in the Issuer as they deem appropriate including, without limitation, engaging in communications with management and the Board of Directors of the Issuer, engaging in discussions with stockholders of the Issuer or other third parties about the Issuer and the [Starboard’s] investment, including potential business combinations or dispositions involving the Issuer or certain of its businesses, making recommendations or proposals to the Issuer concerning changes to the capitalization, ownership structure, board structure (including board composition), potential business combinations or dispositions involving the Issuer or certain of its businesses, or suggestions for improving the Issuer’s financial and/or operational performance, purchasing additional Shares, selling some or all of their Shares, engaging in short selling of or any hedging or similar transaction with respect to the Shares…”

Box CEO Aaron Levie appeared at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise, the week this news about Starboard broke, and he was careful in how he discussed a possible relationship with the firm. “Well I think in their statement actually they really just identified that they think there’s upside in the stock. It’s still very early in the conversations and process, but again we’re super collaborative in these types of situations. We want to work with all of our investors and I think that’ll be the same here,” Levie told us at the time.

Now, the company has no choice, but to work more collaboratively with Starboard as it takes a much more meaningful role on the company board. What impact this will have in the long run is hard to say, but surely significant changes are likely on the way.

Want to join a Zoom meeting in the browser without having to download its app to do so? Check out this browser plug-in — which short-cuts the needless friction the videoconferencing company has baked into the process of availing yourself of its web client.

As we noted last week Zoom does have a zero download option — it just hides it really well, preferring to push people to download its app. It’s pretty annoying to say the least. Some have even called it irresponsible, during the coronavirus pandemic, given how many people are suddenly forced to work from home — where they may be using locked down corporate laptops that don’t allow them to download apps.

Software engineer, Arkadiy Tetelman — currently the head of appsec/infrasec for US mobile bank Chime — was one of those who got annoyed by Zoom hiding the join via browser option. So he put together this nice little Zoom Redirector browser extension — that “transparently redirects any meeting links to use Zoom’s browser based web client”, as he puts it on Github.

“When joining a Zoom meeting, the ‘join from your browser’ link is intentionally hidden,” he warns. “This browser extension solves this problem by transparently redirecting any meeting links to use Zoom’s browser based web client.”

So far the extension is available for Chrome and Firefox. At the time of writing submissions are listed as pending for Opera and Edge.

As others have noted, it does remain possible to perform a redirect manually, by adding your meeting ID to a Zoom web client link — zoom.us/wc/join/{your-meeting-id} — though if you’re being asked to join a bunch of Zoom meetings it’s clearly a lot more convenient to have a browser plug-in take the strain for you vs saddling yourself with copypasting meeting IDs. 

While the COVID-19 pandemic has generally fuelled the use of videoconferencing, Zoom appears to be an early beneficiary — with the app enjoying a viral boom (in the digital sense of the term) in recent weeks that’s been great for earnings growth (if not immediately for its share price when it reported its Q4 bounty). And unsurprisingly it’s forecasting a bumper year.

But it’s not all positive vibes or Zoom right now. Another area where the company has faced critical attention in recent days relates to user privacy.

Over the weekend another Twitter user, going by the handle @ouren, posted a critical thread that garnered thousands of likes and retweets — detailing how Zoom can track activity on the user’s computer, including harvesting data on what other programs are running and which window the user has in the foreground.

The thread included a link to an EFF article about the privacy risks of remote working tools, including Zoom.

“The host of a Zoom call has the capacity to monitor the activities of attendees while screen-sharing,” the digital rights group warned. “This functionality is available in Zoom version 4.0 and higher. If attendees of a meeting do not have the Zoom video window in focus during a call where the host is screen-sharing, after 30 seconds the host can see indicators next to each participant’s name indicating that the Zoom window is not active.”

Given the sudden spike in attention around privacy, Zoom chipped into the discussion with an official response, writing that the “attention tracking feature is off by default”.

“Once enabled, hosts can tell if participants have the App open and active when the screen-sharing feature is in use,” it added. “It does not track any aspects of your audio/video or other applications on your window.”

However the company did not explain why it offers such a privacy hostile feature as “attention tracking” in the first place.

While a number of companies who currently offer at-home medical and health diagnostics had rushed to produce kits that would allow for self sample collection by people who passed a screening and believed they might have contracted the new coronavirus, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has updated its Emergency Use Authorization guidelines to private labs that specifically bar the use of at-home sample collection. This means startups including Everlywell, Carbon Health and Nurx will have to immediately discontinue their testing programs in light of the clarified rules.

The FDA issued the updated guidance on March 21, and though some of the companies had already begun to ship their sample collection kits to people, and even begun to receive samples back to their diagnostic laboratory partners, even any samples in-hand will not be tested, and will instead be destroyed in order to compel with the FDA’s request. Carbon Health is continuing testing at its physical clinics, and notified TechCrunch of this update on Sunday evening, and an individual who ordered the Carbon Health test and sent back their sample provided the following email explaining the decision and what happens next:

We have been working hard to provide our patients every opportunity for COVID-19 testing and treatment, including exploring different avenues for testing.

This evening, we were notified by our lab partner, Curative Inc, that the 3/21/2020 FDA update for COVID-19 testing clarified that at-home sample collection is not covered under the EUA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization). Carbon Health is discontinuing distribution of the at-home sample collection kits effective immediately.

Based on this update by the FDA, we sincerely regret to inform you that you will not get a test result. If you have already shipped your kit back, the specimen will be destroyed by Curative, Inc using standard biohazard disposal. If you have not received your kit yet, please discard it upon receipt.

Please schedule an in-clinic visit at a Carbon Health clinic near you, if possible, to be tested using our traditional specimen collection by a clinician. The turn-around time for results is about 3-5 days from time of specimen collection.

Our goal was to facilitate at home specimen collection in order to keep patients safely in their homes while also providing another avenue for patients to be tested. This is a very dynamic time and we are working tirelessly to work with new partners to expand COVID-19 testing for our communities, as soon as possible. We are truly sorry for the frustration and inconvenience this has caused.

All three of the companies we spoke to that were working to distribute these tests had partnered with labs that were approved under the FDA emergency guidelines to perform COVID-19 diagnostics, and it was the understanding of all parties that at-home self collection via swab kits was included in the authorization. All three also said they were offering their tests at-cost, and seeking ways to defray even that cost to consumers through potential healthcare agency partnerships. Each also offered telehealth consultations for both the sample-gathering process, as well as for delivery of the results.

The FDA’s goal with its emergency use authorization is to enable testing without sticking to its usual qualification process, but it must always balance accuracy and safety. It did grant emergency use approval to Cepheid’s rapid point-of-care test last Friday, as well, which should expand availability of tests on-site in locations like hospitals and emergency medical care clinics, but this updated rule means that at-home tests will not, in the near-term, be a path towards expanding testing coverage in the U.S.

Another startup, Scanwell, has developed an in-home test that includes the diagnostics, using a serological test that looks for the presence of antibodies in a person’s blood. This is still pending FDA approval, and the company is seeking that under the emergency use authorization, with an anticipated approval process time of around six to eight weeks.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus pandemic has put a freeze on many in-person sales and transactions for goods and services, so in what might be a sign of the times for funding in the startup world, today a company in the UK that’s been building a portal to carry out car sales in the virtual world is announcing a large fundraise.

Cazoo, a startup modelled on the Vroom/Beepi-type model that buys in used cars and then sells them online and delivers to your door, today is announcing that it has raised £100 million ($116 million), funding that it plans to use to continue expanding its business. The company has now raised £180 million since first being founded 18 months ago.

“It’s clear that UK consumers are ready to buy cars online in a convenient, hassle-free way,” said Alex Chesterman, Founder & CEO of Cazoo, in a statement. “Cars are an important form of transport for many in our society, whether conducting deliveries or getting to essential jobs and we want to ensure that those who need one can continue to get one. This new round of funding is a strong signal from investors of the scale of the opportunity. Our mission is to deliver the best experience for car buyers across the UK by delivering better selection, value, convenience and quality. That mission is now also focused on keeping consumers safe by not having to leave their homes to buy a car. We are also looking at how Cazoo can help other organisations move essential supplies around the country via our fleet of car transporters in these difficult times.”

This round is being led by DMG Ventures with General Catalyst, CNP (Groupe Frère), Mubadala Capital, Octopus Ventures, Eight Roads Ventures and Stride.VC also participating.

Cazoo has so far not revealed its valuation (we are asking). PitchBook notes that as of September 2019 its valuation was around $220 million, which on a basic straight curve would put its valuation now at around $336 million.

It may seem like a crazy time to be raising money for a startup — much less one that is not only focused on vehicles to get people around at a time when governments the world over are urging people to stay at home; but one that is passing used vehicles from one owner to another at a time when people don’t fully understand how the coronavirus infection spreads, and how long it might last on surfaces and in enclosed spaces (like cars).

There are a few reasons for why it did, it seems.

The first of these is the business of Cazoo itself: it notes that in the first three months of commercial operations, it has had £20 million in sales, which seems to point to a strong trajectory of growth (at least up to now). That’s before we consider some of the other challenges that startups in this space have seen because of the difficulties of balancing costly inventories and executing on sales and deliveries at strong enough margins without burning a lot of cash: at its heart it’s an interesting business model and someone will eventually get it right.

In addition to that, there is the pedigree of the startup. Cazoo is founded by Alex Chesterman, a repeat entrepreneur who first founded film rental/streaming service LoveFilm (which was thought of as ‘the Netflix of Europe’) and then sold it to Amazon, where it became a cornerstone of its Prime Video operation, making the £200 million price it paid for it sound like a song. Then he founded and eventually sold the property sales and rental portal Zoopla (for £3 billion, to Silver Lake).

No company can operate right now in a bubble separate from what is happening around the coronavirus pandemic, and the same very much goes for Cazoo.

The FAQ’s on the company’s site cut right to the chase in trying to reassure customers about how vehicles are sold and delivered at the moment. The company says that it “fully reconditions” all its vehicles before selling and delivering them, and the handover process is now being done “at a safe distance” to protect both customers and employees. “As with other retail marketplaces, the current Coronavirus situation is accelerating the shift from offline to online transactions given its unique delivery proposition,” it added.

It’s also taking the very specific step of not carrying out any deliveries to people who are self-isolating, although as with many of the measures that are being put in place, a lot of the execution is down to personal willpower and judgement.

“If you are self-isolating due to being in contact with someone with the virus or you are unwell or in an at-risk group, we’re currently unable to make the delivery for your safety and the safety of our Delivery Specialists,” it notes. “We will put your order on hold until we can rearrange a suitable delivery time and you won’t be charged for rescheduling. If you have chosen to self-isolate, have no symptoms and are not in a group at risk then the delivery can still go ahead. Our handovers will take place from a safe distance and our Delivery Specialists will wear personal protective equipment to keep you both safe. They’ll also remain outside of your car whilst they talk you through the features.”

It’s hard to tell right now what the next three months are going to look like in the UK, as well as the world, economy, so we may well be seeing a lot of rounds coming up specifically from VCs betting not just on businesses that have a chance of faring well in the current climate, but those that are strong enough that you don’t want to see them disappear and so are throwing them lifelines of runway and support. Many will fall into both of those camps, hopefully.

“We are very excited to continue to support Alex and the team at Cazoo. The pace of what they’ve achieved and the level of adoption they’ve seen in the first few months since launch is remarkable,” said Manuel Lopo de Carvalho of DMG Ventures in a statement. “With almost 8 million used car transactions a year in the UK, there is a clear opportunity to provide a more convenient way to buy a car and shift part of the market online.”