Year: 2020

In the age of coronavirus, we all have to resist the urge to touch our faces. It’s how the virus can travel from doorknobs or other objects to your mucus membranes and get you sick. Luckily, a startup called Slightly Robot had already developed a wristband to stop another type of harmful touching — trichotillomania, a disorder that compels people to pull out their hair.

So over the last week, Slightly Robot redesigned their wearable as the Immutouch, a wristband that vibrates if you touch your face. Its accelerometer senses your hand movement 10 times per second. Based on calibrations the Immutouch takes when you set it up, it then buzzes when you touch or come close to touching your eyes, nose, or mouth. A companion app helps you track your progress as you try to keep your dirty mitts down.

The goal is to develop a Pavlovian response whereby when you get the urge to touch your face, you don’t in order to avoid the buzzing sensation. Your brain internalizes the negative feedback of the vibration, training you with aversive conditioning to ignore the desire to scratch yourself.

“A problem the size of COVID-19 requires everyone to do their part, large or small,” says Slightly Robot co-founder Matthew Toles. “The three of us happened to be uniquely well equipped to tackle this one task and felt it was our duty to at least try.”

The Immutouch wristbands go on sale today for $50 each and they’re ready for immediate shipping. You can wear it on your dominant hand that you’re more likely to touch your face with, or get one for each arm to maximize the deterrent.

“We’re not looking to make money on this. We are selling each unit nearly at cost, accounting for cost of materials, fabrication, assembly, and handling” co-founder Justin Ith insists. Unlike a venture-backed startup beholden to generating returns for investors, Slightly Robot was funded through a small grant from the University of Washington in 2016 and bootstrapped since.

Slightly Robot and Immutouch co-founders (from left): Joseph Toles, Justin Ith, and Matthew Toles

“We built Immutouch because we knew we could do it quickly, therefore we had the obligation to. We all live in Seattle and we see our communities reacting to this outbreak with deep concern and fear” Slightly Robot co-founder Justin Ith tells me. “My father has an autoimmune disease that requires him to take immunosuppressant medication. Being in his late 60’s with a compromised immune system, I’m trying my best to keep the communities around him and my family clean and safe.”

How to calibrate the Immutouch wristband

Based on a study using wearable warning devices to deter sufferers of trichotillomania from ripping out their hair, Immutouch could potentially be effective. University Of Michigan researchers found the vibrations reduced long and short-term hair pulling. Ith admits you have to actually heed the warnings and not itch to instill the right habit, and it doesn’t work while you’re lying down. The Immutouch stops short of electrically shocking you like the older gadget called Pavlok that’s designed to help people quit smoking or opening Facebook.

Perhaps smartwatch makers like Apple could develop cheap or free apps to let users train themselves using hardware they already own. But until then, Ith hopes that Immutouch can gain some initial traction so “we can order larger quantities, reduce the price, and make it more accessible.”

Modern technologies like Twitter for rapidly sharing information could encourage people to take the right cautionary measures like 20-second handwashing to slow the spread of coronavirus. But having phones we constantly touch — before, during, and after we use the restroom — and then press against our faces could create a vector for infection absent from pandemics of past centuries. That’s why everyone needs to do their part to smooth out the spike of sickness so our health systems aren’t overrun.

Ith concludes, “Outbreaks like this remind us how we each individually affect the broader community and have a responsibility to not be carriers.” 

We here at TechCrunch are watching the novel coronavirus situation closely, as most of you likely are. 

In addition to our editorial coverage of the effects of the novel coronavirus on the business of entrepreneurship — and the ways that technology can help — we have a number of events planned for 2020 including TC Early Stage in April in San Francisco and our TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility event in May in San Jose. 

As of now we have not cancelled any of our events for the year, but we continue to monitor the situation very closely on a daily basis. 

Our primary goal is to make sure we proceed in a conscientious and careful manner that takes into account local, state and federal guidance as well as our own personal care for all of our event attendees.  

Just as it is with all of the members of our editorial and business staff, you’re the TechCrunch family and we will make sure that any decisions we make have you at their heart, no matter what.

Much like the companies we cover, TechCrunch has always tried to stay nimble and adopt new ways of serving our readers. We’re in the process now of thinking hard about how to deliver on the promise of our events in a COVID-19 world. Stay tuned, we’ll have some interesting announcements ahead.

Over the years we’ve experimented with many virtual events like our huge Disrupt SF Virtual Hackathon and hosted hybrid virtual interviews on our stages like the memorable chat at Disrupt in 2014 with Clayton Christensen and Bill Hambrecht — not to mention our coverage of and experimentation with just about every virtual telepresence platform ever invented. Whatever happens, you can depend on us to find interesting and innovative ways to bring together tech entrepreneurs, students, academics, investors and anyone passionate about building to talk, inspire and innovate like hell. 

If you want to keep track of current updates to our plans for TechCrunch events throughout the year, please use this page as your resource of record.

As always, we’ll keep you posted. Thank you.

When Zapier was founded in 2011, it was a side project for three friends from Missouri who wanted to make it easier to connect any one web app to another. Nine years, millions of users and around 300 employees later, it’s one of the most highly valued companies to ever go through Y Combinator — and they did it all with a team that is entirely remote.

I chatted with Zapier co-founder and CEO Wade Foster to find out why they decided to go remote from the start, and how the company addresses the challenges of scaling up a distributed team. Here’s our chat, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

TechCrunch: Why remote?

Wade Foster: I’ll give you a little of the origin story.

We started as a side project… and side projects can’t afford offices. So we’re kind of working via coffee shops, our apartments, wherever we could get the job done. 

We moved out to the Bay Area from Columbia, Missouri for [Y Combinator] . That summer, we were all three in the same apartment — the only time in the company’s life cycle where the whole company was together. At the tail end of that, Mike, one of my co-founders, moved back to Missouri to be with his then-girlfriend/now-wife as she was wrapping law school. So we were remote by necessity there.

On Monday, Facebook announced the addition of two new names to its board of directors, Nancy Killefer and Tracey T. Travis.

Killefer brings potentially valuable government insight to Facebook, as she served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration. With last year’s departure of former Clinton administration chief of staff Erskine Bowles, Facebook’s board lost one of its voices with deep government experience.

In addition to her time in the treasury, Killefer held various leadership roles at global consulting firm McKinsey & Company over 30 years and currently serves on the board of Cardinal Health. She previously held a board seat with Avon.

“I’m excited to join the board of Facebook, a company that is at the center of the biggest debates about technology and society,” Killefer said in the investor press release. “The next few years are likely to shape the internet for generations to come and I hope to contribute to Facebook’s efforts to be a responsible force for good in the world.”

Travis, Facebook’s other board pick, joins from Estée Lauder, where she currently serves as EVP and CFO for the cosmetics company. While Killefer brings public sector experience, Travis offers a “strong finance and corporate leadership background,” per Zuckerberg, and plenty of consumer and retail finance experience from roles with Ralph Lauren, Limited Brands, Inc., Pepsi and General Motors. In a press release, Travis expressed optimism about Facebook and the “power of technology and innovation to change our world for the better.”

Facebook lost three board members last year, first Bowles and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, known to clash openly with Zuckerberg, and later Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Last month, Facebook added Mark Zuckerberg’s close personal friend Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to its board. This month’s additions fill in the remaining gaps.

Facebook’s board now consists of Zuckerberg, PayPal’s Peggy Alford, Marc L. Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst’s Kenneth I. Chenault, Dropbox’s Houston, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel, Cranamere Group’s Jeff Zients, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and the two new names. With the addition of Killefer and Travis, the board is at its most gender-balanced yet, with four women and six men filling the seats.

In recent years, Facebook has faced multiple outside proposals from shareholders to remove Zuckerberg from his chairman position, but his board has historically held fast. It’s unlikely that the company has brought anyone on particularly willing to rock the boat, but we’ll be following the new dynamics as the company’s latest board members settle in.

Cadillac has cancelled the upcoming debut of the Lyriq, an all-electric mid-sized SUV designed to be an entry point into luxury brand’s new EV lineup, over concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak.

GM’s luxury brand had planned to reveal the Lyriq on April 2 at an event in Los Angeles.

COVID-19, a disease caused by a new virus that is a member of the coronavirus family and a close cousin to the SARS and MERS viruses that have caused outbreaks in the past, has caused governments and companies to cancel tech, business and automotive events around the world. The Geneva International Motor Show was canceled as well as MWC in Barcelona and the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

The GM brand said in a statement that the event was being canceled “out of an abundance of caution.”

Here’s the statement from Cadillac:

As you are aware, the situation in relation to the COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) outbreak in the U.S. continues to develop. Now, several states have declared a State of Emergency and the number of cases continues to climb.

Out of an abundance of caution, we have made the difficult decision to cancel the Cadillac LYRIQ reveal in Los Angeles, California on April 2^nd.  We are currently evaluating future plans and will be touch soon with an update.  Our top priority is the safety of our media guests and employees. We have been working with GM Medical and Security to monitor the situation closely and have been following recommendations for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.

The Lyriq is just one in a roster of electric vehicles that GM plans to bring to market in the next two years. The automaker revealed March 4 a sweeping plan to produce and sell EVs that hinges on a new electric architecture that will support a wide range of products across all of its brands, including Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC. The EV portfolio will include everything from compact cars and work trucks to large premium SUVs and performance vehicles.

This modular architecture, called “Ultium,” will be capable of 19 different battery and drive unit configurations, 400-volt and 800-volt packs with storage ranging from 50 kWh to 200 kWh, and front-, rear- and all-wheel drive configurations.

The Cruise Origin, a self-driving, electric shared vehicle that was shown in January, was the first product under this new EV strategy to be revealed to the public. The reveal of Cadillac Lyriq SUV was supposed to come next, followed by the GMC Hummer EV on May 20. The Hummer event has not been cancelled.

Today was an awful day for the stock market, with global and domestic equities falling sharply as the world digested a collapse in oil prices, and yet another weekend of the spread of COVID-19. All major U.S. indices were down, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq falling the least of the three, slipping a comparatively modest 7.29%, to 7,950.68 on the day.

However, while the tech index didn’t fare as poorly as other American indices, a critical portion of the technology market actually fell further than the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500: SaaS and cloud stocks, as measured by the Bessemer-Nasdaq index.

Indeed, the BVP Nasdaq Emerging Cloud Index was off 8.28% today, closing at 1,134.51. That’s the lowest level that the index has traded at since last October. Putting the basket’s swings into context, the index is just 7% above its 52-week lows, but 21% off its recent highs (52-week range data via the excellent Financial Times).

That means that SaaS and cloud stocks are off the requisite 20% needed to classify as in a bear market. A correction is defined as a 10% decline from recent highs. A bear market is 20%. Other major indices are near the bear market mark, but are still above it. They could easily reach the threshold tomorrow, but SaaS got there first.

What the hell?

It was just three days ago that SaaS stocks approached the correction threshold. Covering that marker earned me some flak on Twitter, as some folks invested in the success of SaaS read the news item as a dis of the category itself. To the contrary, really, SaaS companies are still richly valued — far above historical norms — and it seems unlikely that investors are about to price them more cheaply than other types of companies.

However, what does seem clear is that there is less short-term optimism about SaaS than there was just a few weeks ago, when, in mid-February, companies in the sector set all-time record highs on the public markets. (We’ve been covering the SaaS run for some time now.)

The carnage today was widespread, but not that bad when we take into account resulting revenue multiples. For example:

• Atlassian was off 7.87% today, but still had a price/sales multiple of over 23, per YCharts data.
• Slack was off 6.13% today, but had a price/sales multiple at the end of day of 21.24, again according to YCharts.

This doesn’t undercut the pain that public SaaS companies felt today, or the gut-drop that SaaS startups felt as they watched their leading lights get pummeled on the stock market. But SaaS highfliers are still just that, and the whole category is still expensive. So, pour one out, but just one. Another day or two like today, however, and worry becomes a bit more understandable.

At least it’s over.

The markets endured their worst day of trading of this young year as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2,000 points to close at 23,850.79  — a 7.79% decline. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 624.94, to close at 7,950.68, and losses to the S&P 500 triggered a temporary halt on trading in the early morning hours. The S&P itself closed down 225.81 at 2,746.56, 7.6% loss on the day. 

Stocks were set up for fall on Monday as every major financial indicator turned south.

Oil was down over a scuttled OPEC deal which will now mean that Russia and Saudi Arabia will flood the global oil market with cheap crude. The price war pushed the price of crude down to roughly $30 per-barrel.

Meanwhile, markets are still trying to absorb all of the latest news around the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The disease continues to spread in the U.S. with 607 total confirmed cases so far, according to data compiled Johns Hopkins University. Schools are closing, businesses are encouraging their employees to work remotely if they can, and nearly everyone is canceling non-essential business travel.

Hits to oil and gas companies and airplane manufacturers were always going to weigh heavily on the Dow. And now there’s an open discussion in the halls of the U.S. government about the possibility for industry bailouts.

That kind of talk doesn’t bode well for the overall health of the U.S. economy, nor do fears over large hits to the nation’s services sector.

And the Federal Reserve has basically flipped all of the switches it possibly can to keep the U.S. economy humming, driving interest rates down to near zero in an effort to encourage investment in the stock market.

None of this seems to be helping, yet. And startups have as much to fear from a market contraction as the rest of the world. Less money flowing in financial markets reflects fewer dollars getting spent in the real world — and more cautious decision-making around how to spend the money a company has.

A small consolation in the growing COVID-19 crisis is that some of our moderate germophobia has begun to feel like a minor super power. As I got settled for a cross-country flight last week, I took out my hand wipes and did a whole number on the screen, tray table and arm rests, and this time no one looked at me funny.

I go to a lot of conferences and trade shows and have to shake a lot of hands (though I’ve taken to the elbow bash in recent weeks) before handling my phone. Years ago, I switched from Purell bottles to hand wipes for two reasons:

1. Hand sanitizer feels like lacquering the dirt on. This is probably another weird quirk, so do with that what you will.
2. I touch my phone — and computer — a lot. I almost never leave the house without a product like Wet Ones in my bag. Hell, I included them in a travel gift guide last year. Merry Christmas, Billy, here’s the packet of antibacterial wipes you wanted but were too afraid to ask.

For those concerned about damage to your devices, fear not. Apple, which has never been prone to recklessness for such things, just gave disinfecting wipes a green light on its “How to clean your Apple products” that covers Mac, iPad, iPhone and iPod, among others.

Using a 70 percent isopropyl alcohol wipe or Clorox Disinfecting Wipes, you may gently wipe the hard, nonporous surfaces of your Apple product, such as the display, keyboard, or other exterior surfaces. Don’t use bleach. Avoid getting moisture in any opening, and don’t submerge your Apple product in any cleaning agents. Don’t use on fabric or leather surfaces.

iPhones these days sport IP67 or IP68 ratings. If it detects moisture in the Lightning port, it will throw up a “Charging not Available” warning. It’s best to avoid getting the port wet if you can, but that’s a nice fall back.

So, wipe, wipe away. Assuming, of course, you can still find them.

The novel coronavirus is raging across the planet. Millions are quarantined, the stock market is violently gyrating and one of the preeminent VC firms in the Valley is back to saying RIP Good Times. The daily stream of news is terrifying, and we are going to learn even more in the coming weeks.

For founders, the biggest challenge is inoculating their teams from the vagaries of the market so they can do their jobs, continue building momentum against this market adversity and, ultimately, ensure there is enough cash in the bank to avoid layoffs and sustain their company for growth.

I want to talk today about the money details, saving some of those other topics for future posts. What does VC fundraising look like today? What’s going to change in the VC market? What might actually get better about fundraising today than just a few months ago? The daily headlines can be traumatizing, but with the right approach, you can navigate these waters safely.

Volatility affects different VCs differently

Reddit, the popular discussion site visited by over 430 million people per month, is opening up some of its most valuable screen real estate to advertisers with the launch of its first trending ad product, the Trending Takeover. The new ad unit will allow brands to reach visitors on two of the most heavily visited areas of Reddit’s website: the Search tab and the Popular feed.

The ad format allows the brands’ campaigns to run across the largest trends on Reddit’s site for 24 hours, Reddit says. The trends section is where users can see what’s currently buzzing and being discussed across the site, similar to the Trends section on Twitter, which can also be targeted by advertisers.

Reddit already offers advertisers the ability to run campaigns across its site in order to raise brand awareness, drive conversions, or generate website traffic, app installs, or video views, among other things. But the new Trending Takeover ad product will allow brands to reach even more potential eyeballs, as Reddit says the Popular feed alone is used by a third of the site’s visitors daily and the Search tab also reaches millions every day.

In addition to the increased visibility, the benefit to this sort of ad format is that a campaign can be designed to align with what’s being talked about in real-time during the day it runs. For instance, a brand could run a trending ad on the day their brand became a part of the trending section organically.

According to eMarketer, Reddit was forecast to generate $119 million in net U.S. ad revenues in 2019, giving it a 0.1% of the overall U.S. digital ad market. But the analyst firm believes that figure will more than double to $261.7 million by 2021, noting how the company continued to roll out new formats like its autoplay in-stream video, cost-per-click, Top Post Takeover slots, and more.

“With millions of searches taking place every day and over one-third of users coming to Reddit’s Popular feed daily, brands can now be part of where cultural trends are born online — Reddit,” said Shariq Rizvi, Vice President of Ads Product and Engineering at Reddit, in a statement. “For Reddit, a large focus for 2020 is about maximizing new and premium opportunities for brands to authentically engage with Reddit users,” Rizvi added.

In beta tests of Trending Takeover, Reddit worked with over 15 partners across entertainment, consumer tech, CPG, automotive, and QSR verticals, it says, including Spotify, Method, and Adobe. The company claims these early testers saw both an increase in conversions and click-throughout rates that were two times more than industry standards for social.

For example, Method used a combination of hand-picked keywords and its own custom creative on the Trending Takeover landing page and saw click-throughs at over two times industry standards. It also was able to use the format to drive video views with a completion rate of four times that of Reddit’s usual Promoted Posts format. The brand had specifically targeted communities like r/houseplants, r/gardening, and r/malelivingspace for a campaign about its household cleaners.

According to a media buyer cited by AdWeek, Promoted Trends on Twitter can cost around $250,000 per day, although pricing is customized. Reddit’s new Trending Takeover ad would probably be a minimum of around $100,000, they estimated. Reddit was not confirming pricing.

Reddit says it’s now selling Trending Takeovers on a reservation, not programmatic, basis. The ads run on both desktop and mobile.