Year: 2020

Amazon on Monday announced it will now offer its cashierless store technology called “Just Walk Out,” to other retailers. The technology uses a combination of cameras, sensors, computer vision techniques, and deep learning to allow customers to shop then leave the store without waiting in line to pay. This is the same technology that today powers the Amazon Go cashierless convenience stores and Amazon’s newly launched Amazon Go Grocery store in Seattle. 

Reuters first reported the news just ahead of Amazon’s official announcement, adding also that Amazon says it has signed “several” deals with initial customers interested in using Just Walk Out in their own stores. Amazon did not say who those customers were, however.

Amazon has also now launched a website detailing how Just Walk Out works, and answering several questions about this new business line.

The website says that other retailers have expressed interest in the tech for years, which is why it decided to start offering Just Walk Out for sale. The system Amazon is offering includes “all the necessary technology to enable checkout-free shopping,” the site notes. That would mean Amazon is providing the camera hardware and sensor technology, in addition to the software systems. The site doesn’t mention pricing but says the system also comes with 24/7 support via phone and email.

The setup and installation of the system can take as little as a few weeks once Amazon has access to the retailer’s store, Amazon says. For new builds, Amazon can work with the retailer to integrate Just Walk Out during the construction phase or it can do the same as a store undergoes remodels. It can also try to install the technology to an existing store with minimal disruption to customers.

To be clear, the technology being sold is to allow retailers to offer their own customers the ability to shop and pay for items without having to wait in line to pay at a register. It’s not intended to allow retailers to run a franchise of the Amazon Go convenience stores.

For customers, a cashierless store can save time as it doesn’t require waiting to pay. This makes sense for stores like convenience stores or grocers, where people have either limited time to make purchases or where lines can be long as carts are filled with many items. It may not be work for a larger department store where there aren’t items on shelves and much more square footage to cover.

With Amazon’s Just Walk Out, customers can enter the store with their credit card, Amazon’s new website explains. Customers don’t need to have an app installed, nor do they need an Amazon account. As the customer shops, the cameras track the customer’s movements and shelf sensors register if an item is removed or returned. Items picked up by the customers will then be placed in a virtual cart. When the customer leaves, their card is charged for what they bought. Customers can also visit an in-store kiosk if they want a printed receipt, Amazon says. However, one will be emailed automatically, as well.

It’s unclear if such a system is ultimately a benefit to retailers’ bottom line, given the expense of installation and maintenance — even if it does allow the retailer to reduce headcount. And Amazon, of course, is not marketing the technology as a means of cutting down on store staff. Instead, Amazon says store staff can be repurposed to focus on other activities — like greeting customers and answering questions, stocking the shelves, and more. These are activities the retailer should already be staffed appropriately for, though, but that’s often not the case especially as stores have become hubs for online ordering.

Customer reception to such technology is still unknown, too. While Amazon’s stores are still something of a novelty, customers may balk if and when this sort of surveillance-like technology becomes the norm.

Welcome to the bloodbath.

This morning the major US indices opened sharply lower, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 872.42 (or 3.37%) to 24,9992.36, the S&P 500 slipping 193.41 (6.51%) to 2,778.96, and the Nasdaq off 90.16 or 6.96% at 1,205.58 to start the day.

The declines come after the Japanese stock market fell around 5%, Chinese stocks on the Shanghai index fell 3%, Australian stocks were off over 7%, and South Korean stocks fell by over 4% (in case you were wondering London and the FTSE is also down over 7% too).

Other economic indicators are landing somewhere between basement-level and molecular in their shrinking values. The price of oil? Down. US treasury yields? Record lows. Even cryptocurrencies are off sharply today, with leading bitcoin down below $8,000 as its retreat followed declines in other asset classes.

The impact for startups and other, private companies will take some time to be felt. But if the valuation of all comps is heading down, the value of related, or even competing startups will also fall. For startups that raised at optimistic valuations in 2019, 2020’s repricing is the opposite of welcome.

It’s also going to impact the ability of some of venture capital and private equity’s biggest bankrollers to … well… bankroll. Slashing the price of oil is going to start a race to the bottom among the folks who were shoveling heaps of oil dollars over to investment funds of all stripes. Profligate spending from Russian oligarchs and journalist-murdering Middle Eastern royalty may be put on hold right now. This could further ding the chances of Vision Fund 2 coming into existence.

Over the last few years it has became a meme to report that millennials are busy killing off things like bad restaurants, golf, and other suburban delicacies. Now it appears that boomers are killing off the stock market, after jacking up the national debt, entrenching the capital class, and spending our blood and treasure getting into a wars that they also now lack to finesse to get out off. Great work, everyone.

Anyway, it’s a mess out there. Hell, even SaaS stocks are off 4.84% percent.

After a week in which it looked like activist investor Elliott Management might try to force out Jack Dorsey as CEO of Twitter to help boost the social platform’s flagging growth, it looks like we have a truce of sorts between the two.

Today, Twitter announced that it has received a $1 billion investment from Silver Lake, one of the tech industry’s most prolific investors. And as part of that deal, it has also entered into an agreement with Elliott — which owns about 4% of Twitter — to use that investment plus cash on hand towards a $2 billion share repurchase program. Along with that, there are two new people joining Twitter’s board of directors, Silver Lake’s Egon Durban and Elliott’s Jesse Cohn; the company said it is also seeking a third to join as part of the agreement. It also said committed itself to a plan to grow its mDAU (a special metric Twitter uses for “monetizable” daily active users) at 20% or more, with revenue growth accelerating on a year-over-year basis.

Twitter’s stock is down nearly 6% in pre-market trading, which might be in response to this news, but more likely is being mitigated in what is an overall very tough morning for publicly traded stocks in the wake of uncertainty over Covid-19.

The news and deal put an end — at least for now — to the possibility of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey being removed as CEO of the company.

The threat was real enough that Dorsey took to the stage (and Twitter) at an investor conference to directly address some of the criticisms that he faced from investors and the public over how he manages the company. (Not all were convinced.) There were rumors that supporters were closing ranks in defense of Dorsey, and it seems that this is an attempt at mitigating a full-scale change (at least for now).

“Twitter serves the public conversation, and our purpose has never been more important,” Dorsey said today in a statement. “Silver Lake’s investment in Twitter is a strong vote of confidence in our work and our path forward. They are one of the most respected voices in technology and finance and we are fortunate to have them as our new partner and as a member of our Board. We welcome the support of Egon and Jesse, and look forward to their positive contributions as we continue to build a service that delivers for customers, and drives value for stakeholders.”

Twitter was clear to state that the agreement between Silver Lake, Elliott and the company will see the new directors unable to influence Twitter policies and rules and enforcement decisions. This is likely in relation to the implication that Elliott — started by a many called Paul Singer, who is often described as a “mega donor” to Republicans and Trump — might try to use its investment to steer Twitter to the Right side of the political spectrum, or at least make it more sympathetic to it.

Patrick Pichette, who is the independent director of the Twitter Board, will become the chair of the committee to find another board member. “Twitter has undergone remarkable change over the last several years,” he said in a statement.

“We are deeply proud of our accomplishments and confident we are on the right path with Jack’s leadership and the executive team. As a Board, we regularly review and evaluate how Twitter is run, and while our CEO structure is unique, so is Jack and so is this Company. To continue to ensure strong governance, we are pleased to create a temporary Board committee that will build on our regular evaluation of Twitter’s leadership structure. This committee, which I will chair, will provide a fresh look at our various structures, and report the findings to our Board on an ongoing basis. In an environment where certainty is scarce, I can say with certainty that today we have taken steps to meaningfully strengthen what is already a world-class Board.”

Whether or not Pichette is one of the tacit supporters of the current leadership status quo, it seems that for now investors are willing to give Dorsey a shot, provided there is more active input from board members who are investors.

“Twitter’s revolutionary platform is a cornerstone of the public discourse,” said Durban, who is the co-CEO and managing partner of Silver Lake. “We are impressed by Jack’s tireless work over the last few years to solidify the leadership team, improve the product and strengthen the Company. We are excited to partner with Twitter as an investor and a member of the Board. Jack is a visionary leader, and a critical force behind Twitter’s ongoing evolution and growth. I look forward to working alongside the entire Board and the executive team to drive Twitter’s long-term innovation and success.”

Momentus, the in-space shuttle service for payloads, has bought six spaces on SpaceX SmallSat Rideshare Program missions.

The launches include five trips to Sun-Synchronous orbit and one to mid-inclined low Earth orbit, and after delivery, Momentus’ small space shuttles will carry customers’ payloads to customized drop-off altitudes and orbits.

The company’s Vigoride vehicles already have customers including Steamjet, NuSpace and Aurora Space Technologies, according to a statement from the company.

The company is part of a growing number of last-mile shuttle services — in space. The idea is to create more customized and less-crowded orbiting options for satellite companies as the number of satellites encircling the Earth proliferate.

“We hope to show that ridesharing from the Falcon 9 will be a game-changer. By ferrying  payloads to multiple orbits from a single launch, we multiply the capability of an already impressive system that has revolutionized access to space,” said Mikhail Kokorich, the chief executive officer of Momentus, in a statement.

The Vigoride vehicle can carry up to 300 kilograms of customer payload to various altitudes, orbits, and orbital planes, the company said in a statement. Its shuttle service can boost the range of drop-off orbits for SpaceX rideshare customers to altitudes ranging from 300 kilometers to 1200 kilometers for mid-inclined orbit and Sun synchronous orbits, the company said.

For customers, the functionality means opportunities to synchronize surveillance so satellites can capture images of a particular location at the same time of day — potentially making analytics and data easier to manage.

To date, Momentus has raised $50 million in venture funding from investors including Mountain Nazca, Quiet Capital, and Y Combinator .

 

 

While most technology companies are building up a surveillance state to serve political powers and private profiteering, Uptrust is using some of those same tools to make it easier to move people out of the criminal justice system.

And the San Francisco-based startup has just raised $1.3 million to expand its business.

Think of the company’s software as a customer relationship management tool for people who have interacted with the criminal justice system — which, in America, is a huge portion of the population.

Millions of Americans go to jail because they miss a court date or probation check-in, which can result in the revocation of bail or new criminal charges. Judges are less likely to release individuals who don’t make their court appearances and these people can receive higher bail terms, which leaves them with no recourse but imprisonment when they can’t post bail.

These fines, impositions, and incarceration penalties wind up costing local governments as much as $10 billion on pretrial incarceration and enforcing “failure to appear” penalties.

Since its launch in 2017, Uptrust has worked to provide a messaging service between public defenders and clients that is designed to ensure clients show up to court dates and the state avoids billions in unnecessary expenses.

So far, the company has reduced failure to appear penalties in the 50 state and county governments where it works by over 50%. That’s up to $5 billion in potential savings for cash strapped municipalities and state governments.

“From the county’s perspective we’re helping people comply with their mandatory appointment which over time saves them money,” says Uptrust co-founder and chief executive, Jacob Sills.

With the new money, Uptrust hopes to reach another 100 jurisdictions and serve one million defendants by the end of 2020.

“We had a belief that there was a large addressable market. We were building something that people wanted,” says Sills.

Uptrust is paid by local governments, not by the citizens who, for whatever reason, have been caught up in the criminal justice system. “We do not charge the end-user — the person that we’re helping — and we will never charge them,” says Sills. “All businesses in the space have made money on the backs of the individuals and we feel that’s bad business and bad for society.”

Uptrust, is, inarguably good for society and the founders think that it could be a huge business. “We look at how much money s spent on putting people in jail, pre-trial [and] we think there’s $9 billion wasted,” says Sills. Roughly one-quarter of the 4.5 million who are supervised by the criminal justice system end up back in jail.

“We think this business can generate several hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue by eliminating waste in the overall system,” Sills said. “It’s really bad to continually dehumanize folks and surveil them,” he continued. “And tere’s an opportunity for a business to be listening to the millions and millions of Americans that have been justice system-involved and be listening to them and serving their needs.”

Ultimately, Sills thinks that Uptrust can be a platform to provide services for the more than 60 million people with a criminal record. “People building products haven’t thought about them… or if they have, they’ve only thought about them in the old historical context, which is mass incarceration,” says Sills.

“The odds should not be stacked against millions of Americans who get involved with the justice system. Uptrust is making a course correction through technology in the most obvious way: enabling communication and support through mobile devices that we all use and rely on every day,” said Jordan Blashek, Director at Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, which backed the company. “We are pleased to support Uptrust as it expands upon its mission to keep people out of jail that shouldn’t be there.”

The company said it would use the new funds product development — including launching a mobile app for public defender clients. The new app will be able to message multiple public agencies and services (including a a client’s attorney and social worker) and learn about local opportunities such as free or reduced transportation to court and expungement clinics.

“Uptrust is building a differentiated and sustainable business by creating value for all stakeholders in the system, and we’re excited to invest in its continued growth,” said Tony Davis, an investor in Uptrust and founder of Inherent Group, a leading ESG investor, in a statement. “Municipal customers save money that can be redirected toward other needs. Criminal justice and law enforcement professionals gain back the hours spent dealing with the fallout of FTAs. And most importantly, low income individuals navigating the justice system receive a tool that helps them meet their commitments — while avoiding the burden of fees that most for-profit enterprises have historically charged them.”

Uptrust is one of several companies which are trying to tackle injustices in the ways law enforcement and the legal system operate in the U.S.

Other companies like Appolition, founded by Dr. Kortney Ryan Ziegler, provide mechanisms for donating to bail relief. 

Promise,  which raised a $3 million round led by First Round Capital with participation from Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, enables case managers to monitor compliance with court orders and better keep tabs on people via an app and (more controversially) GPS monitoring.

Australia’s privacy watchdog is suing Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data breach — which, back in 2018, became a global scandal that wiped billions off the tech giant’s share price yet only led to Facebook picking up a $5BN FTC fine.

Should Australia prevail in its suit against the tech giant the monetary penalty could be exponentially larger.

Australia’s Privacy Act sets out a provision for a civil penalty of up to $1,700,000 to be levied per contravention — and the national watchdog believes there were 311,074 local Facebook users in the cache of ~86M profiles lifted by Cambridge Analytica . So the potential fine here is circa $529BN. (A very far cry from the £500k Facebook paid in the UK over the same data misuse scandal.)

In a statement published on its website today the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) says it has lodged proceedings against Facebook in a federal court alleging the company committed serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy.

The suit alleges the personal data of Australian Facebook users was disclosed to the This is Your Digital Life app for a purpose other than that for which it was collected — thereby breaching Australia’s Privacy Act 1988. It further claims the data was exposed to the risk of being disclosed to Cambridge Analytica and used for political profiling purposes, and passed to other third parties.

This is Your Digital Life was an app built by an app developer called GSR that was hired by Cambridge Analytica to obtain and process Facebook users’ data for political ad targeting purposes.

The events from which the suit stems took place on Facebook’s platform between March 2014 and May 2015 when user data was being siphoned off by GSR, under contract with Cambridge Analytica — which worked with US political campaigns, including Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and later (the now) president Donald Trump.

GSR was co-founded by two psychology researchers, Aleksandr Kogan and Joseph Chancellor. And in a still unexplained twist in the saga, Facebook hired Chancellor, in about November 2015, which was soon after some of its own staffers had warned internally about the “sketchy” business Cambridge Analytica was conducting on its ad platform. Chancellor has never spoken to the press and subsequently departed Facebook as quietly and serendipitously as he arrived.

In a concise statement summing up its legal action against Facebook the OIAC writes:

Facebook disclosed personal information of the Affected Australian Individuals. Most of those individuals did not install the “This is Your Digital Life” App; their Facebook friends did. Unless those individuals undertook a complex process of modifying their settings on Facebook, their personal information was disclosed by Facebook to the “This is Your Digital Life” App by default. Facebook did not adequately inform the Affected Australian Individuals of the manner in which their personal information would be disclosed, or that it could be disclosed to an app installed by a friend, but not installed by that individual.

Facebook failed to take reasonable steps to protect those individuals’ personal information from unauthorised disclosure. Facebook did not know the precise nature or extent of the personal information it disclosed to the “This is Your Digital Life” App. Nor did it prevent the app from disclosing to third parties the personal information obtained. The full extent of the information disclosed, and to whom it was disclosed, accordingly cannot be known. What is known, is that Facebook disclosed the Affected Australian Individuals’ personal information to the “This is Your Digital Life” App, whose developers sold personal information obtained using the app to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, in breach of Facebook’s policies.

As a result, the Affected Australian Individuals’ personal information was exposed to the risk of disclosure, monetisation and use for political profiling purposes.

Commenting in a statement, Australia’s information commissioner and privacy commissioner, Angelene Falk, added: “All entities operating in Australia must be transparent and accountable in the way they handle personal information, in accordance with their obligations under Australian privacy law. We consider the design of the Facebook platform meant that users were unable to exercise reasonable choice and control about how their personal information was disclosed.

“Facebook’s default settings facilitated the disclosure of personal information, including sensitive information, at the expense of privacy. We claim these actions left the personal data of around 311,127 Australian Facebook users exposed to be sold and used for purposes including political profiling, well outside users’ expectations.”

Reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson sent this statement:

We’ve actively engaged with the OAIC over the past two years as part of their investigation. We’ve made major changes to our platforms, in consultation with international regulators, to restrict the information available to app developers, implement new governance protocols and build industry-leading controls to help people protect and manage their data. We’re unable to comment further as this is now before the Federal Court.

The European Parliament has instructed vulnerable staff with a pre-existing health condition to work from home on account of increased personal risk related to the outbreak of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus, according to sources and an email reviewed by TechCrunch.

The European Commission confirmed its first cases of coronavirus last week, after a staffer at the European Defence Agency and another at the Council of the European Union tested positive. The former had recently returned from Northern Italy, while the latter is reported to have picked up the virus via local transmission in Belgium.

In the email sent to European Parliament staff yesterday its administrative body gives authorization for all staff with “known pre-existing illnesses to stay home and apply for teleworking”.

Parliament staff who have traveled to a high risk zone for the spread of the infection — listed in the email as: China, Hong Kong, Macau, South-Korea, Singapore, Iran, Japan and regions of Northern Italy — had previously been instructed to self isolate for 14 days after returning from a trip.

The email includes some smaller “local clusters” — namely, in France: the Departments of Oise, Haute-Savoie, Morbihan and Haut-Rhin; and in Germany: Landkreis Heinsberg in North Rhine-Westphalia — as active enough to also merit self isolation.

“If during the last 14 days you have been in one of the areas or clusters that have been added, you must stay at home for 14 days following your return,” is the latest instruction to parliament staff. “That also applies if you might already have been back in the office after your return.”

Those staff who have been teleworking for 14 days already after a trip are told they can return to the office — “provided that you have absolutely no symptoms and none of your family members has been infected”.

The email also reiterates guidance that staff who feel ill or unwell should self isolate at home — urging those who may have some flu-like symptoms but do not feel too unwell to work to “ask for teleworking”.

In a separate coronavirus-related email sent to staff of the European Commission yesterday, commissioner Johannes Hahn reiterates the importance of employees taking precautionary measures — such as high standards of hand hygiene, replacing missions with video-conference and “no more handshaking or kissing”.

“I encourage you to follow these measures as they help to protect all of us,” he writes. “I wish to recall our basic principle that staff who have symptoms should stay at home.”

Per this email, Commission staff in Italy are continuing to be offered teleworking options with what Hahn describes as “the needed flexibility in those exceptional circumstances in line with the host countries’ measures”.

While staff returning from trips to affected regions of Northern Italy are “invited to telework for 14 days on their return”. Although the email notes that this decree does not apply retroactively — and staff who returned to work last week from one of the affected regions are specifically told they can come to work.

“You are invited to monitor your health status until 14 days after you returned. If you develop any symptoms, you should stay at home,” is the alternative suggestion.

The memo to Commission staff also makes reference to a Commission staffer who tested positive last week.

“Let me underline that necessary precautionary measures were already taken last week to protect the colleague and others -– and I can reassure you that we will continue doing so. As we are all taking part in public life, nobody can exclude that more colleagues might be affected in the future. Therefore, I invite you all to deal with these situations with care and comprehension,” Hahn writes.

The email also highlights a two-day school closure at an unnamed European school which was waiting for test results of one child. In that case the test was negative, and the school will reopen this week, but Hahn adds: “Naturally, flexible working arrangements will be facilitated in such cases.”

We’ve reached out to the European Commission with additional questions on its approach to tackling COVID-19 — including asking whether it has any contingency plans to expand teleworking to additional staff.

A previously secret document from 2010 warned that classified diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks would likely result in “observable changes” in the tactics and techniques used by foreign spies, potentially making it easier to avoid detection by U.S. agencies.

The document, recently declassified through a Freedom of Information request by the non-profit National Security Archive and shared with TechCrunch, reveals a rare glimpse inside U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s main cyber-warfare unit, which feared that the leaked diplomatic cables of communications between U.S. foreign embassies would uncover and hamper its ongoing offensive cyber operations.

Michael Martelle, a research fellow for the National Security Archive’s Cyber Vault Project, said the subsequent publication of the cables by WikiLeaks gave the adversaries a “period of heightened advantage.”

The publication of the document comes almost exactly a decade after U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning downloaded and forwarded 750,000 classified cables to leak-publishing site WikiLeaks. Manning was subsequently sentenced to 35 years in prison for what was then the largest leak of U.S. classified material in its history. Her sentence was commuted by then-president Barack Obama in 2017.

Cyber Command wrote its findings in a so-called situational awareness report dated December 2010, just days after The New York Times and several other news outlets published the full cache of diplomatic cables, albeit with redactions to protect sources. The highly redacted assessment warned that the military cyber unit expected to see foreign intelligence services active in cyber-espionage against the U.S. to “use the information” published by WikiLeaks to their own advantage.

According to the assessment, the leaked cables “clearly state” that the U.S. government entities at the time “have knowledge” of specific tactics and techniques used by foreign adversaries, including “malware, toolsets, IP addresses, and domains used in intrusion activity.”

It went on to warn that those same adversaries are “expected to modify their current infrastructure and intrusion techniques” to evade U.S. cyber-defenses.

Although the redactions in the declassified document makes it unclear exactly which adversaries Cyber Command was referring to, Martelle said that only one specific adversary — China — was mentioned in the entire cache of unredacted documents, which Wikileaks published a year later, much to the chagrin of the news outlets.

Just one month before the first cables were published, Google had publicly accused Beijing of launching targeted cyberattacks against its network. Several other companies, including antivirus maker Symantec and defense contractor Northrop Grumman, were also hit by the attacks, in an offensive cyber campaign which became known as Operation Aurora.

Google subsequently withdrew from China following the furore.

Cyber Command’s assessment said that all Dept. of Defense divisions and U.S. intelligence agencies “remain vigilant” to anomalies amid fears that its adversaries will “leverage this new information” to “further their cyber initiatives.”

When reached, a spokesperson for Cyber Command did not comment. Google also did not comment. An email to WikiLeaks went unreturned. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is currently detained and awaiting extradition to the U.S. for publishing the classified cables.

Box has joined a number of tech companies supporting employees to work remotely from home in response  the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19.

It’s applying the policy to all staff, regardless of location.

Late yesterday Box co-founder Aaron Levie tweeted a statement detailing the cloud computing company’s response to COVID-19 — to, as he put it, “ensure the availability of our service and safety of our employees”.

In recent days Twitter has similarly encouraged all staff members to work from home. While companies including Amazon, Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft have also advised some staff to work remotely to reduce the risk of exposure to the virus.

In its response statement Box writes that it’s enacted its business continuity plans “to ensure core business functions and technology are operational in the event of any potential disruption”.

“We have long recognized the potential risks associated with service interruptions due to adverse events, such as an earthquake, power outage or a public health crisis like COVID-19, affecting our strategic, operational, stakeholder and customer obligations. This is why we have had a Business Continuity program in place to provide the policies and plans necessary for protecting Box’s operations and critical business functions,” the company writes.

In a section on “workforce resilience and business continuity” it notes that work from home practices are a normal part of its business operations but says it’s now extending the option to all its staff, regardless of the office or location they normally work out of — saying it’s doing so “out of an abundance of caution during COVID-19”.

Other measures the company says it’s taken to further reduce risk include suspending all international travel and limiting non-essential domestic travel; reducing large customer events and gatherings; and emphasizing health and hygiene across all office locations — “by maintaining sanitation supplies and encouraging an ‘if you are sick, stay home’ mindset”.

It also says it’s conducting all new hire orientation and candidate interviews virtually.

Box names a number of tools it says it routinely uses to support mobility and remote working, including its own service for secure content collaboration; Zoom’s video communication tool; the Slack messaging app; Okta for secure ID; plus additional unnamed “critical cloud tools” for ensuring “uninterrupted remote work for all employees”.

Clearly spying the opportunity to onboard new users, as more companies switch on remote working as a result of COVID-19 concerns, Box’s post also links to free training resources for its own cloud computing tools.

Goodlord, the London ‘proptech’ startup that offers cloud-based software to help estate agents, landlords and tenants manage the rental process, appears to have achieved somewhat of a turn-around after it fell into difficulty two years ago. Since then the company installed a new CEO and CTO, and raised further funding. Today Goodlord is announcing its next milestone: £10 million in “Series B” funding.

Backing comes from Finch Capital, which led the startup’s previous round (also called a Series B!), and Latitude Ventures, the growth-stage “sister” fund to London seed firm LocalGlobe (another previous investor). Also participating is new investor Oxx Capital, the recently outed SaaS-focused venture capital firm founded by Richard Anton and Mikael Johnsson.

Goodlord says it will use the additional capital to invest in its engineering, product, and customer facing teams. Despite layoffs back in early 2018, the company grew from 47 to 97 employees last year and currently has a number of open positions.

Founded in 2014, unlike other startups in the rental market space that want to essentially destroy traditional brick ‘n mortar letting agents with an online equivalent, Goodlord’s Software-as-a-Service is designed to support all stakeholders, including traditional high-street letting agents, as well as landlords and, of course, tenants. Its SaaS enables letting agents to “digitize” the moving-in process, including utilising e-signatures and collecting rental payments online, while tenants benefit from a tenant dashboard and more transparency.

In a brief call with Goodlord CEO William Reeve, who co-founded LoveFilm and was also a founding director of Zoopla, he revealed that he only initially agreed to step into the role on a temporary basis to steady the ship. However, upon joining, he says he’s been energised by the vision and enthusiasm of the team and the startup’s broader mission of solving problems faced by “generation-rent”.

He says that, as it stands, Goodlord is mostly focused on the transactional element of renting (contracts, payments etc.), but argues (rightly) that this vantage-point provides a host of future opportunities post-move in where more value can be created — and captured. This already includes things like help with switching or setting up utilities, such as broadband, once a tenancy has been signed.

To solve another pain-point for tenants and landlords/agencies, Goodlord has introduced “virtual banking technology” for customers. Provided in partnership with fintech Modulr — a company also used by the likes of Revolut — Goodlord provides each tenant with a dedicated bank account number to pay their rent into. This makes it easier to track payments and accelerate a move-in date since payments don’t need to be reconciled in a central landlord bank account and the whole process is infinitely more transparent.

It’s also a good example of embedded fintech (or evidence backing up the “every company will be a fintech company” thesis recently made popular by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz).

Reeve also tells me that Goodlord is adding value on the landlord side by helping navigate recent regulation in the U.K. that bans tenant fees. By using the SaaS and the processes it has digitised, landlords can ensure they remain compliant.

Lastly, I asked Reeve to provide an example of a big decision he has taken since becoming CEO and he said the biggest changes have been around technology. Not only did Goodlord recruit an experienced CTO — Donovan Frew, formerly CTO of Secret Escapes — but Reeve put into deep freeze a project to entirely re-factor the startup’s software platform, which he saw as unnecessary and not driven by the needs of customers, who, he said, loved the product.

More broadly, he said he’s not a fan of re-factoring for the sake of it or in pursuit of the latest, greatest shiny new tech. Instead, he prefers an “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” approach, and says that tech decisions should always be to the benefit of customers.