Author: azeeadmin

YouTube responded to reports that it is automatically deleting comments criticizing the Chinese government on Tuesday, explaining that the seeming censorship is actually an error in its automated moderation systems.

As the Verge reported, comments on the platform using the Chinese phrases for “communist bandit” or “50-cent party“—two terms tied to criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party were taken down almost instantly, even if those comments were positive. The latter term (五毛 or “wumao dang“) refers to China’s censorship efforts, particularly the idea that online commenters are paid to deflect criticism for the government.

Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey drew attention to the phenomenon on Monday.

In a statement, a YouTube spokesperson told TechCrunch that the auto-deletions were a result of “an error in our enforcement systems” that the company is looking into.

“Users can report suspected issues to troubleshoot errors and help us make product improvements,” the spokesperson said.

According to YouTube, the situation is an accidental side effect of the platform’s comment moderation system, which is designed to filter out hate speech, harassment and spam. The company didn’t offer further insight as to how the terms wound up flagged by its automated systems.

With the vast majority of their workforces out of the office, major tech platforms have leaned more heavily on AI moderation methods in recent months, even as they acknowledged that less human oversight would likely lead to more instances of content mistakenly being taken down.

The $100 million ARR club is a collection of private companies that have reached the revenue threshold. Originally, I posited the idea as a way to reclaim what the unicorn moniker once signified, a rare company that was of exceptional value.

As the unicorn club has grown to hundreds and hundreds of members, the tag has lost nearly all of its cachet. Not every unicorn has $100 million in revenue, let alone annual recurring revenue. And even more, not every company that is generating top line at a pace of $100 million each year is a unicorn.

By focusing more on revenue (ARR being the popular modern measurement), we’ve limited ourselves to far fewer companies to care about.

Catching you up, our current list of private companies that are at $100 million ARR or greater include GitLab, Egnyte, Asana, WalkMe, Druva, Braze, and O’Reilly. Today we can add a few more names to the mix.

In response to our prior work, Sisense noted that it passed the $100 million ARR mark earlier this year. Then there’s the case of Lemonade which we need to explore more at a later date (I’m looking into the larger insurtech market, especially as it relates to the financial performance of companies like Lemonade, Root Insurance, and MetroMile). Lemonade mostly fits our criteria, but if we want to count premiums as ARR is still something I’m working on.

But more important for us today is what to call these $100 million ARR companies? There have been a few suggestions.

Club names

The most common names proffered for members of the $100 million ARR club are

The $100 million ARR club is a collection of private companies that have reached the revenue threshold. Originally, I posited the idea as a way to reclaim what the unicorn moniker once signified, a rare company that was of exceptional value.

As the unicorn club has grown to hundreds and hundreds of members, the tag has lost nearly all of its cachet. Not every unicorn has $100 million in revenue, let alone annual recurring revenue. And even more, not every company that is generating top line at a pace of $100 million each year is a unicorn.

By focusing more on revenue (ARR being the popular modern measurement), we’ve limited ourselves to far fewer companies to care about.

Catching you up, our current list of private companies that are at $100 million ARR or greater include GitLab, Egnyte, Asana, WalkMe, Druva, Braze, and O’Reilly. Today we can add a few more names to the mix.

In response to our prior work, Sisense noted that it passed the $100 million ARR mark earlier this year. Then there’s the case of Lemonade which we need to explore more at a later date (I’m looking into the larger insurtech market, especially as it relates to the financial performance of companies like Lemonade, Root Insurance, and MetroMile). Lemonade mostly fits our criteria, but if we want to count premiums as ARR is still something I’m working on.

But more important for us today is what to call these $100 million ARR companies? There have been a few suggestions.

Club names

The most common names proffered for members of the $100 million ARR club are

Corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) are booming in the startup space as large companies look to take advantage of the fast-paced innovation and original thinking that entrepreneurs offer.

For startups, taking funding from CVCs can come with many benefits, including new opportunities for marketing, partnerships and sales channels. Still, no founder should consider a corporate investor “just another VC.” CVCs come with their own set of priorities, strategic objectives and rules.

When it comes to choosing a CVC with which to enter negotiations, the most important step is doing your own diligence beforehand. An entrepreneur’s goal is to find the perfect match to partner with and guide you as you grow your business. So before you start discussing terms, you’ll want to understand what’s driving the CVC’s interest in venture investing.

While traditional VCs are purely financially driven, CVCs can be in the venture game for a variety of reasons, including finding new technology that might generate marketplace demand for their products. An example is Amazon’s Alexa fund, which invested into emerging companies that drive use and adoption of Alexa. Alternatively, a CVC’s parent company may be looking to invest in tech that will help them operate their own products more efficiently, such as Comcast Ventures investing in DocuSign.

As a rule of thumb, the bigger CVC funds like GV and Comcast tend to be financially driven, meaning they’ll be approaching negotiations through a financial lens. As such, the negotiating process more closely resembles an institutional fund. You as a founder have to do the work to figure out what’s driving your CVC — is this a customer acquisition or distribution opportunity? Or are they seeking to find a source of knowledge transfer and/or bring new tech into their parent company?

“Before negotiating, always look at a CVC’s existing portfolio,” says Rick Prostko, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “Have they made a lot of investments, at what stage, and with whom? From this information you’ll see the strategic thinking of the CVC, and you can determine how best to position yourself when you begin negotiations.”

Corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) are booming in the startup space as large companies look to take advantage of the fast-paced innovation and original thinking that entrepreneurs offer.

For startups, taking funding from CVCs can come with many benefits, including new opportunities for marketing, partnerships and sales channels. Still, no founder should consider a corporate investor “just another VC.” CVCs come with their own set of priorities, strategic objectives and rules.

When it comes to choosing a CVC with which to enter negotiations, the most important step is doing your own diligence beforehand. An entrepreneur’s goal is to find the perfect match to partner with and guide you as you grow your business. So before you start discussing terms, you’ll want to understand what’s driving the CVC’s interest in venture investing.

While traditional VCs are purely financially driven, CVCs can be in the venture game for a variety of reasons, including finding new technology that might generate marketplace demand for their products. An example is Amazon’s Alexa fund, which invested into emerging companies that drive use and adoption of Alexa. Alternatively, a CVC’s parent company may be looking to invest in tech that will help them operate their own products more efficiently, such as Comcast Ventures investing in DocuSign.

As a rule of thumb, the bigger CVC funds like GV and Comcast tend to be financially driven, meaning they’ll be approaching negotiations through a financial lens. As such, the negotiating process more closely resembles an institutional fund. You as a founder have to do the work to figure out what’s driving your CVC — is this a customer acquisition or distribution opportunity? Or are they seeking to find a source of knowledge transfer and/or bring new tech into their parent company?

“Before negotiating, always look at a CVC’s existing portfolio,” says Rick Prostko, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “Have they made a lot of investments, at what stage, and with whom? From this information you’ll see the strategic thinking of the CVC, and you can determine how best to position yourself when you begin negotiations.”

Corporate venture capital (CVC) is booming, with more than $50 billion of CVC capital deployed in 2018. The rise in capital expenditures by CVCs between 2013 and 2018 was an impressive 400%, according to Corporate Venturing Research Data. There are currently more than a hundred active CVC investors, and some sources suggest that almost half of all venture rounds include a strategic investor.

This rise has been driven by two factors: 1) the tech landscape is moving at a faster pace and bigger companies know they need to innovate quicker to meet market demand; and 2) the number of startups seeking CVC capital is growing as founders look beyond traditional venture funds to help grow their businesses.

Kruze Consulting and Goodwin have worked with hundreds of startups through the funding process, including those working with CVCs. Together, the two firms and their principals have decades of experience advising founders during and after their capital raises.

To help startups navigate CVC transactions, we’ve created a guide to working with CVCs. In this segment, we’ll discuss the types of CVCs, the best way to approach each type and the key things to keep in mind during initial discussions.

The three types of corporate VCs

Roughly put, CVCs fall into three categories:

1. The corporate version of an institutional venture platform, meaning that they look to leverage their parent company’s strategic assets with the goal of scaling their portfolio and driving real revenue. As Grant Allen, general partner at SE Ventures, the CVC arm of Schneider Electric, says, “this type of CVC looks just like a pure financial VC, except with a big company behind them, and the ability to open up real channel revenue.”
2. Strategically-minded CVCs are not driven exclusively by returns, but also value innovation. These CVCs are looking for outsourced ways to stay on the leading edge and to learn about new technology that might benefit their parent corporation. This category likely still cares about returns, but their view on ROI is more nuanced than a traditional investor.
3. So-called “tourists” often are made up of brand new and relatively inexperienced venture arms of companies that have done very few deals and haven’t had time to develop a strong process or dealflow strategy.

As the realm of CVCs becomes increasingly professionalized, more and more CVCs fall into the first category. For entrepreneurs seeking CVC investors, those in the institutional or strategic category can provide tremendous value — though it’s important that a startup know which type of CVC they’re speaking to, and have clear objectives going in that align with the CVC’s goals and strengths.

Determining which type of CVC you’re dealing with

Before engaging with a CVC, or any potential investor for that matter, the most important step is to do your research. Who is the individual you’re meeting with? What’s his/her background and what deals has he/she done with this venture group? These are Must Knows before walking into the initial meeting.

Once you’re in early discussions, ask the CVC whether he or she has carry in the fund and whether the venture arm is autonomous. The answers to these questions will help you clarify whether you’re dealing with institutional versus strategic CVCs.

“With corporate-backed venture funds, it’s really key up front to know who you’re talking to,” says Allen. “It’s dangerous to call all groups that are nontraditional investors ‘CVCs’ since some are far more serious than others. Most have some degree of strategic mandate but many are increasingly investing for financial gain.”

The next question is: Are you dealing with a financially driven CVC or a strategically driven one? From a founder’s standpoint, you’ll need to know whether you’re meeting with an investor who views deals through the lens of, “I’m looking for a great team, huge market and a chance to bring in funding and connections to make a business as strong as it can be” or, “I’m looking for a solution/product/platform that I can bring into my company or use to expose my company to a brand new marketplace or technology.”

Once again, the way to determine which type of CVC you’re dealing with is to ask the right questions. In the first meeting, ask about their investment process, how investments are made and whether strategic business unit sponsorship is required for a given deal. The answers will tell you whether the CVC falls into Group 1 or 2, and you’ll be in a strong position to then make choices about whether this potential investor is right for you.

“Look for someone who will understand your business, meet with you and decide that there’s something beyond just capital that will form the basis for that relationship,” says Rick Prostko, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “In today’s venture market, founders want money AND value. Seek out a CVC who has valuable experience to provide, and look for someone who’s been an operator in this segment previously or who has valuable insight and experience to offer.”

What you need to know before you engage with a CVC

Once you’ve done your initial diligence, developed a relationship and determined that a CVC could be a strong investor in your business, there are important factors to be aware of as you move into the next stage of discussions. These include:

Expect deeper product and technical diligence. CVCs can call on technical, product and market experts within their corporation during the due diligence process. As such, their level of product diligence is typically more rigorous than traditional VCs. Be prepared for some grilling by subject matter experts. On the flip side, this diligence process provides you with exposure to potential customers and partners inside the corporation, so use this time to your advantage.

Be aware that you’re going to share confidential information with a large company. “CVCs know that you’re only as good as your reputation,” says Eric Budin, director at Touchdown Ventures . “As such, there are very few examples of CVCs abusing confidential information, because news of it would get around so quickly.”

Still, for a founder, the goal is to be thoughtful and strategic with what you share, and to determine whether the CVC is truly interested in doing a deal before you hand over financial, technical and competitive information. It’s possible that commercial teams at the CVC sponsor could gain unfair advantage from seeing your information, or use their CVC to gain valuable intel on the competition.

On the other hand, sharing your intel could be a fantastic way to get in front of an internal team at the parent company. The key is to think carefully about what you are being asked to share and with whom, and set ground rules with the CVC before they begin diligence.

“It’s important to understand how the corporate fund is structured and how they handle any information that’s shared,” says Prostko. “It might be in your interest to loop in a business unit [within the parent company] that could benefit from learning about your business. On the flip side, if the CVC is a potential competitor, you’ll want to be more careful about what you reveal.”

There will be a risk of regime change. Large companies operate like, well, large companies. People leave, management changes happen and priorities shift. At the outset, ask questions such as: Who will support your company if the commercial manager leading your investment leaves? What will happen to the CVC if the person leading the venture arm is fired? Will they do their pro-rata if the person leading your deal is gone? What happens to any commercial relationships that you might be working on? It’s important to have a keen understanding of internal dynamics before you enter the relationship.

“In general, the more successful a firm is, the more likely the CVC will stick around,” says Allen. “Be sure to look at the individual’s history at the firm, how long he or she has been there, and whether he or she has jumped from fund to fund. If the investing partner has come out of the corporate ‘mother ship,’ and lacks any credible venture experience, buyer beware.”

The CVC may be subject to regulatory rules. Depending on the industry, government regulations may impact how your deal is structured. Banks, for example, are subject to rules that can restrict the percentage of voting stock they can own. Foreign investors may need to comply with CFIUS regulations if your company provides certain specified technologies. Generally, the CVCs will understand the regulations that apply to them. They may not, however, bring them up until late in the process, which could lead to delays.

Commercial transactions with the corporate arm can slow things down. Purely strategic CVCs (Group 2) often require a commercial transaction to happen in connection with a venture deal. The process involved in these transactions often takes longer than the financing process, which can cause issues if the CVC is a key (but not sole) investor in the round. If you’re dealing with a Group 2 CVC, discuss this issue ahead of time to see if you can decouple the two transactions and close the investment prior to inking the commercial deal.

The best way to think about CVC investment

CVCs offer a wealth of capital, human resources and corporate partnerships for startups. But whether you choose to take CVC capital or not, you can benefit from merely approaching CVCs if you have business units operating in either the same space or a tangential space. An initial meeting both gives you an opportunity to do a sales pitch and offers the CVC a chance to vet a product or team and gain some deal insight. For founders, you gain a powerful sales opportunity that might have otherwise taken months or years to obtain.

“Even if you’re told ‘no’ by a CVC, the meeting could result in a good business relationship that could turn into a sales opportunity for you in the near future,” says Prostko.

The WRONG way to think about approaching CVC investors is something along the lines of, “I can’t raise what I want from financial VCs so I’ll go to CVCs as my second choice, since they’re more likely to say ‘yes’ and/or give me better terms.” This attitude will shut doors and cut you off from valuable partners, capital and opportunities to strategically grow your business.

Above all, stay informed as you choose whom to bring in as a partner. Ultimately, it’s your business and the responsibility to ensure that you bring in the right capital partners lies with you.

Corporate venture capital (CVC) is booming, with more than $50 billion of CVC capital deployed in 2018. The rise in capital expenditures by CVCs between 2013 and 2018 was an impressive 400%, according to Corporate Venturing Research Data. There are currently more than a hundred active CVC investors, and some sources suggest that almost half of all venture rounds include a strategic investor.

This rise has been driven by two factors: 1) the tech landscape is moving at a faster pace and bigger companies know they need to innovate quicker to meet market demand; and 2) the number of startups seeking CVC capital is growing as founders look beyond traditional venture funds to help grow their businesses.

Kruze Consulting and Goodwin have worked with hundreds of startups through the funding process, including those working with CVCs. Together, the two firms and their principals have decades of experience advising founders during and after their capital raises.

To help startups navigate CVC transactions, we’ve created a guide to working with CVCs. In this segment, we’ll discuss the types of CVCs, the best way to approach each type and the key things to keep in mind during initial discussions.

The three types of corporate VCs

Roughly put, CVCs fall into three categories:

1. The corporate version of an institutional venture platform, meaning that they look to leverage their parent company’s strategic assets with the goal of scaling their portfolio and driving real revenue. As Grant Allen, general partner at SE Ventures, the CVC arm of Schneider Electric, says, “this type of CVC looks just like a pure financial VC, except with a big company behind them, and the ability to open up real channel revenue.”
2. Strategically-minded CVCs are not driven exclusively by returns, but also value innovation. These CVCs are looking for outsourced ways to stay on the leading edge and to learn about new technology that might benefit their parent corporation. This category likely still cares about returns, but their view on ROI is more nuanced than a traditional investor.
3. So-called “tourists” often are made up of brand new and relatively inexperienced venture arms of companies that have done very few deals and haven’t had time to develop a strong process or dealflow strategy.

As the realm of CVCs becomes increasingly professionalized, more and more CVCs fall into the first category. For entrepreneurs seeking CVC investors, those in the institutional or strategic category can provide tremendous value — though it’s important that a startup know which type of CVC they’re speaking to, and have clear objectives going in that align with the CVC’s goals and strengths.

Determining which type of CVC you’re dealing with

Before engaging with a CVC, or any potential investor for that matter, the most important step is to do your research. Who is the individual you’re meeting with? What’s his/her background and what deals has he/she done with this venture group? These are Must Knows before walking into the initial meeting.

Once you’re in early discussions, ask the CVC whether he or she has carry in the fund and whether the venture arm is autonomous. The answers to these questions will help you clarify whether you’re dealing with institutional versus strategic CVCs.

“With corporate-backed venture funds, it’s really key up front to know who you’re talking to,” says Allen. “It’s dangerous to call all groups that are nontraditional investors ‘CVCs’ since some are far more serious than others. Most have some degree of strategic mandate but many are increasingly investing for financial gain.”

The next question is: Are you dealing with a financially driven CVC or a strategically driven one? From a founder’s standpoint, you’ll need to know whether you’re meeting with an investor who views deals through the lens of, “I’m looking for a great team, huge market and a chance to bring in funding and connections to make a business as strong as it can be” or, “I’m looking for a solution/product/platform that I can bring into my company or use to expose my company to a brand new marketplace or technology.”

Once again, the way to determine which type of CVC you’re dealing with is to ask the right questions. In the first meeting, ask about their investment process, how investments are made and whether strategic business unit sponsorship is required for a given deal. The answers will tell you whether the CVC falls into Group 1 or 2, and you’ll be in a strong position to then make choices about whether this potential investor is right for you.

“Look for someone who will understand your business, meet with you and decide that there’s something beyond just capital that will form the basis for that relationship,” says Rick Prostko, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “In today’s venture market, founders want money AND value. Seek out a CVC who has valuable experience to provide, and look for someone who’s been an operator in this segment previously or who has valuable insight and experience to offer.”

What you need to know before you engage with a CVC

Once you’ve done your initial diligence, developed a relationship and determined that a CVC could be a strong investor in your business, there are important factors to be aware of as you move into the next stage of discussions. These include:

Expect deeper product and technical diligence. CVCs can call on technical, product and market experts within their corporation during the due diligence process. As such, their level of product diligence is typically more rigorous than traditional VCs. Be prepared for some grilling by subject matter experts. On the flip side, this diligence process provides you with exposure to potential customers and partners inside the corporation, so use this time to your advantage.

Be aware that you’re going to share confidential information with a large company. “CVCs know that you’re only as good as your reputation,” says Eric Budin, director at Touchdown Ventures . “As such, there are very few examples of CVCs abusing confidential information, because news of it would get around so quickly.”

Still, for a founder, the goal is to be thoughtful and strategic with what you share, and to determine whether the CVC is truly interested in doing a deal before you hand over financial, technical and competitive information. It’s possible that commercial teams at the CVC sponsor could gain unfair advantage from seeing your information, or use their CVC to gain valuable intel on the competition.

On the other hand, sharing your intel could be a fantastic way to get in front of an internal team at the parent company. The key is to think carefully about what you are being asked to share and with whom, and set ground rules with the CVC before they begin diligence.

“It’s important to understand how the corporate fund is structured and how they handle any information that’s shared,” says Prostko. “It might be in your interest to loop in a business unit [within the parent company] that could benefit from learning about your business. On the flip side, if the CVC is a potential competitor, you’ll want to be more careful about what you reveal.”

There will be a risk of regime change. Large companies operate like, well, large companies. People leave, management changes happen and priorities shift. At the outset, ask questions such as: Who will support your company if the commercial manager leading your investment leaves? What will happen to the CVC if the person leading the venture arm is fired? Will they do their pro-rata if the person leading your deal is gone? What happens to any commercial relationships that you might be working on? It’s important to have a keen understanding of internal dynamics before you enter the relationship.

“In general, the more successful a firm is, the more likely the CVC will stick around,” says Allen. “Be sure to look at the individual’s history at the firm, how long he or she has been there, and whether he or she has jumped from fund to fund. If the investing partner has come out of the corporate ‘mother ship,’ and lacks any credible venture experience, buyer beware.”

The CVC may be subject to regulatory rules. Depending on the industry, government regulations may impact how your deal is structured. Banks, for example, are subject to rules that can restrict the percentage of voting stock they can own. Foreign investors may need to comply with CFIUS regulations if your company provides certain specified technologies. Generally, the CVCs will understand the regulations that apply to them. They may not, however, bring them up until late in the process, which could lead to delays.

Commercial transactions with the corporate arm can slow things down. Purely strategic CVCs (Group 2) often require a commercial transaction to happen in connection with a venture deal. The process involved in these transactions often takes longer than the financing process, which can cause issues if the CVC is a key (but not sole) investor in the round. If you’re dealing with a Group 2 CVC, discuss this issue ahead of time to see if you can decouple the two transactions and close the investment prior to inking the commercial deal.

The best way to think about CVC investment

CVCs offer a wealth of capital, human resources and corporate partnerships for startups. But whether you choose to take CVC capital or not, you can benefit from merely approaching CVCs if you have business units operating in either the same space or a tangential space. An initial meeting both gives you an opportunity to do a sales pitch and offers the CVC a chance to vet a product or team and gain some deal insight. For founders, you gain a powerful sales opportunity that might have otherwise taken months or years to obtain.

“Even if you’re told ‘no’ by a CVC, the meeting could result in a good business relationship that could turn into a sales opportunity for you in the near future,” says Prostko.

The WRONG way to think about approaching CVC investors is something along the lines of, “I can’t raise what I want from financial VCs so I’ll go to CVCs as my second choice, since they’re more likely to say ‘yes’ and/or give me better terms.” This attitude will shut doors and cut you off from valuable partners, capital and opportunities to strategically grow your business.

Above all, stay informed as you choose whom to bring in as a partner. Ultimately, it’s your business and the responsibility to ensure that you bring in the right capital partners lies with you.

Last Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook’s 48,000 employees that he expects upwards of 50% of the company will be working remotely within 10 years. After outlining many of the advantages that remote work confers — including to “potentially spread more economic opportunity around the country and potentially around the world” — he added that those who choose to move to other places in the U.S. or elsewhere will be paid based on where they live.

“We’ll localize everybody’s comp on January 1,” Zuckerberg said. “They can do whatever they want through the rest of the year, but by the end of the year they should either come back to the Bay Area or they need to tell us where they are.”

Facebook isn’t pioneering something entirely new. The concept of localized compensation has been around for some time, and it’s used by tech companies like GitHub that have primarily distributed workforces. Still, questions about whether it’s fair to pay employees based on their location are sure to grow as more outfits adopt remote-work policies.

Despite Facebook’s uncharacteristic transparency about its thinking, not everyone thinks the tactic makes sense.

One longtime Bay Area recruiter who typically focuses on executive searches calls “disparate pay for the same work” a “dangerous place to be.” Explains the recruiter, Jon Holman, “Even if you invoke the geographic disparity arithmetic based almost entirely on housing costs, what if a new openness to telecommuting means that more women or people of color can aspire to some of these jobs? Are you going to pay them less than the mostly white and Asian-American engineers in the Bay Area? I doubt it.”

Sony has taken aim at the suddenly enormous market of people who want to self-produce high-quality video with a minimum of setup. Its ZV-1 mutates the versatile RX100 series into a selfie video machine, and it could be the all-in-one solution many a vlogger has been searching for.

The new camera is very much based on the highly successful and acclaimed RX100, which over the years has grown in both price and capabilities but remains something the user is behind, rather than in front of. The ZV-1 rethinks the camera for people who need to work the other way round.

The 1″, 20-megapixel sensor and 24-70mm equivalent, F/1.8-2.8 lens are borrowed from the RX100, meaning image quality should be excellent (though vloggers may want a wider angle lens). But the camera has been customized with an eye to selfie-style operation.

That means the electronic viewfinder is gone, but there’s now a fully articulating touchscreen display. A powerful new microphone array takes up a large portion of the camera’s top plate, and the ZV-1 comes with a wind baffle or deadcat that attaches to the top hot shoe, giving the camera a flamboyant look.

Image Credits: Sony

A huge new dedicated record button is placed for perfect operation by a left hand holding the camera from the front, and the zoom dial should be thumbable from there as well. A new “background defocus mode” uses the widest possible aperture, naturally narrowing the depth of field with no need for all the AI rigmarole found on smartphones — and it’s smart enough to switch focus to the product a vlogger is being paid to promote when they hold it up close.

All told this could be a convincing works-out-of-the-box solution for people who may be juggling a panoply of hardware from multiple generations to get the same thing done. The proven RX100 image quality and reliability combined with ergonomic tweaks to make it more selfie-friendly might entice people thinking of putting together more complex setups.

At $800, or $750 if you order in the next month, it’s certainly more expensive than an entry-level setup but probably cheaper (and definitely easier) than getting a mirrorless, lens, mic, and other accessories you might need to match it.

President Trump is again testing Twitter’s stomach for misinformation flowing from its most prominent users.

In a flurry of recent tweets, Trump floated conspiracy theories about the death of Lori Klausutis, an intern for former congressman Joe Scarborough who was found dead in his Florida office in 2001—a freak accident a medical examiner reported resulted from a fall stemming from an undiagnosed heart condition. Scarborough, a political commentator and host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, is a prominent Trump critic and a frequent target for the president’s political ire.

The medical evaluation and lack of any evidence suggesting something nefarious in the former intern’s death has not been enough to discourage Trump from revisiting the topic frequently in recent days.

“When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder?” Trump tweeted in mid-May. A week later, Trump encouraged his followers to “Keep digging, use forensic geniuses!” on the long-closed case.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Twitter expressed that the company is “deeply sorry about the pain these statements, and the attention they are drawing, are causing the family.”

“We’ve been working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly,” a Twitter spokesperson said.

When asked for clarity about what product and policy changes the company was referring to, Twitter pointed us to its blog post on the labels the company introduced to flag “synthetic and manipulated media” and more recently COVID-19 misinformation. The company indicated that it plans to expand the use of misinformation labels outside of those existing categories.

Twitter will not apply a label or warning to Trump’s recent wave of Scarborough conspiracy tweets, but the suggestion here is that future labels could be used to mitigate harm in situations like this one. Whether that means labeling unfounded accusations of criminality or labeling that kind of claim when made by the president of the United States remains to be seen.

In March, Twitter gave a video shared by White House social media director Dan Scavino and retweeted by Trump its “manipulated content” label—a rare action against the president’s account. The misleadingly edited video showed presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden calling to re-elect Trump.

According to the blog post Twitter pointed us to, the company previously said it will add new labels to “provide context around different types of unverified claims and rumors as needed.”

Even within existing categories—COVID-19 misinformation and manipulated media—Twitter has so far been reluctant to apply labels to high profiles accounts like that of the president, a frequent purveyor of online misinformation.

Twitter also recently introduced a system of warnings that hide a tweet, requiring the user to click through to view it. The tweets that are hidden behind warnings “[depend] on the propensity for harm and type of misleading information” they contain.

Trump’s renewed interest in promoting the baseless conspiracy theory prompted the young woman’s widower T.J. Klausutis to write a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey requesting that the president’s tweets be removed.

In the letter, Klausutis told Dorsey he views protecting his late wife’s memory as part of his marital obligation, even in her death. “My request is simple: Please delete these tweets,” Klausutis wrote.

“An ordinary user like me would be banished from the platform for such a tweet but I am only asking that these tweets be removed.”