Author: azeeadmin

With more than 1,200 employees distributed across over 65 countries and a valuation of nearly $3 billion, GitLab is one of the world’s most successful fully remote startups.

Describing it as a textbook example of a remote company would be redundant, because the company actually wrote a textbook about it.

I recently had a chance to talk to GitLab’s head of Remote, Darren Murph, who filled me in on how they get stuff done, his advice for all the companies that had to suddenly shift to remote work and why GitLab gets rid of all its Slack messages after 90 days. (Fun fact: Darren wrote for TechCrunch’s corporate cousin Engadget in a past life, where he earned a Guinness World Record for writing an absolutely ridiculous number of posts.)

Darren and I chatted for quite a while, so I’ve split the transcript into two parts for easier reading. Part two coming tomorrow!

TechCrunch: So your official title is “Head of Remote.” What does that entail?

Darren Murph: It’s three things.

It’s telling our remote story to the world, it’s making sure that people who join the company acclimate to working in an all-remote setting and it’s building out the educational piece. The “all-remote” section of our handbook has dozens of guides on how we do everything remotely, from async, to meetings, to hiring and compensation, and I’m the author of all of that.

We do that to better the world; we put it all out there, it’s open source. We want other companies to read it, implement it and use it. We never saw COVID coming, but I kind of knew that down the road [this handbook] would be necessary. Thankfully, I started working on it in advance. Now that the world needs it… it’s been crazy. We packaged up our best thinking in that remote playbook, and it’s just been off the charts with companies downloading it. It’s been wild.

Why did GitLab go remote in the first place?

It was remote by default. The first three people to join the company were in three different countries… so the only way to do it was through the internet.

The one brief moment in time where there was a co-located wrinkle to the company… they’d moved to California for Y Combinator. I think there was like nine or 10 people at the time. Of course, coming out of Y Combinator, at the time, you just get an office — it’s just what you did.

I think that lasted about three days. Then people just stopped showing up.

[Laughs]

But work kept getting done! Because even in the office they were just communicating on… whatever it was at the time. It probably wasn’t Slack, I don’t think Slack existed.

Porsche has been placing more resources into developing digital services as it tries to match the tech demands of its customers. The latest effort borne out of its Porsche Digital subsidiary is an app that lets U.S. buyers who have ordered a 911 sports car to track its progress from production to the dealership.

The app, which is integrated with the My Porsche web portal, provides customers updates on 14 events, including production in Germany, the vehicle’s departure and trek across the Atlantic, port entry into the U.S. and its arrival at the dealership. The digital service, called Porsche Track Your Dream, provides background information about each milestone and shows a countdown in miles and days. 

The Porsche tracker is a niche product with a narrow customer base. It will only be offered to 911 buyers. The automaker sold last year 9,265 Porsche 911 sports cars in the United States. But the company does plan to add other vehicles in the future including its all-electric Taycan.

The app is part of a broader strategy to up its digital game. Earlier this month, Porsche Cars North America launched an online platform called Porsche Finder that lets customers search for used vehicles across its dealership network. The platform lets customers to search by vehicle model and generation and includes additional filters for price, equipment and packages, as well as interior and exterior vehicle colors.

In April, the automaker unveiled a line of head units designed to replicate the vintage look while still featuring modern connectivity such as Bluetooth, DAB+, and Apple CarPlay.

Porsche has been placing more resources into developing digital services as it tries to match the tech demands of its customers. The latest effort borne out of its Porsche Digital subsidiary is an app that lets U.S. buyers who have ordered a 911 sports car to track its progress from production to the dealership.

The app, which is integrated with the My Porsche web portal, provides customers updates on 14 events, including production in Germany, the vehicle’s departure and trek across the Atlantic, port entry into the U.S. and its arrival at the dealership. The digital service, called Porsche Track Your Dream, provides background information about each milestone and shows a countdown in miles and days. 

The Porsche tracker is a niche product with a narrow customer base. It will only be offered to 911 buyers. The automaker sold last year 9,265 Porsche 911 sports cars in the United States. But the company does plan to add other vehicles in the future including its all-electric Taycan.

The app is part of a broader strategy to up its digital game. Earlier this month, Porsche Cars North America launched an online platform called Porsche Finder that lets customers search for used vehicles across its dealership network. The platform lets customers to search by vehicle model and generation and includes additional filters for price, equipment and packages, as well as interior and exterior vehicle colors.

In April, the automaker unveiled a line of head units designed to replicate the vintage look while still featuring modern connectivity such as Bluetooth, DAB+, and Apple CarPlay.

Notion, a popular note-taking and wiki creation app, revamped their personal pricing plans today stripping many of the user limitations from the free tier, bringing it on par with the functionality offered by the $5 per month paid plan of yore.

The company’s previous free tier had a fairly low usage limit (1,000 “blocks” which are Notion’s content units) that ultimately kept users from doing anything too robust without paying up. By completely removing this limit on the amount of text and data you’re able to log, Notion is ensuring that most paid users can get everything they need from a free account.

They’re not completely abandoning premium tier personal accounts, in fact all existing paid customers are being transitioned to “Personal Pro” accounts at the same price they were paying for before. The new plan, among other features, allows for file uploads larger than 5MB, unlimited guest collaborators and, most interestingly, upcoming access to a long-awaited Notion API which the company says is “coming soon, for real.” In September, Notion announced they were making the app free for students and teachers, now the company is rolling out access to the Personal Pro plan to these users as well.

Users that were tying multiple accounts to a single free account to manage some small shared database will be automatically transitioned to a free trial of the company’s teams product. Once they hit the 1,000 block limit, they’ll have to upgrade to the teams product or figure out a way to make the guest collaboration workflow on the free personal tier meet their needs.

Last month, Notion shared that they had closed a new round of funding at a staggering $2 billion valuation. It certainly seems they’ve determined their future revenues will rely on expanding their teams product rather than monetizing individual users quite as aggressively. Like many workplace tools companies, Notion has relied somewhat on bottom-up scaling so it’s likely they saw the opportunity of getting their platform in more users’ personal workflows and transitioning some of them to their teams products as a worthwhile long-term bet.

Over the years I’ve seen hundreds, probably thousands, of data breach notifications warning that a company’s data was lost, stolen or left online for anyone to grab.

Most of them look largely the same. It’s my job to decode what they actually mean for the victims whose information is put at risk.

Data breach notifications are meant to tell you what happened, when and what impact it may have on you. You’ve probably already seen a few this year. That’s because most U.S. states have laws that compel companies to publicly disclose security incidents, like a data breach, as soon as possible. Europe’s rules are stricter, and fines can be a common occurrence if breaches aren’t disclosed.

But data breach notifications have become an all-too-regular exercise in crisis communications. These notices increasingly try to deflect blame, obfuscate important details and omit key facts. After all, it’s in a company’s best interest to keep the stock markets happy, investors satisfied and regulators off their backs. Why would it want to say anything to the contrary?

The next time you get a data breach notification, read between the lines. By knowing the common bullshit lines to avoid, you can understand the questions you need to ask.

“We take security and privacy seriously.”
Read: “We clearly don’t.”

A phrase frequently featured in data breach notifications, we first wrote about companies taking security and privacy “seriously” last year. We found that about one-third of all notices filed with the California attorney general in 2019 had some variation of this line. The reality is that most companies have shown little compassion or care about the privacy or security of your data, but do care about having to explain to their customers that their data was stolen. It’s a hollow, overused phrase that means nothing.

“We recently discovered a security incident…”
Read: “Someone else found it but we’re trying to do damage control.”

It sounds innocuous enough, but it’s an important remark to get right. When a company says they’ve “recently discovered” a security incident, ask who actually reported the incident. All too often it’s a reporter — like me — who’s reached out for comment because a hacker dropped off a file containing their customer database and now the company is scrambling to take ownership of the incident because it looks better than the company being in the dark.

“An unauthorized individual…”
Read: “We don’t know who’s to blame, but don’t blame us.”

This is one of the most contentious parts of a data breach notification, and it boils down to a simple question: Who was to blame for a security incident? Legally speaking, “unauthorized access” means someone unlawfully broke into a system, often using someone else’s password or bypassing a login screen. But companies often get this wrong, or can’t — or don’t want to — distinguish between whether or not an incident was malicious. If a system was exposed or left online without a password, you’d blame the company for lax security controls. If a good-faith security researcher finds and reports an unprotected system, for example, there’s no reason to paint them as a malicious actor. Companies love to shift the blame, so keep an open mind.

“We took immediate steps…”
Read: “We sprung into action… as soon as we found out.”

Hackers aren’t always caught in the act. In a lot of cases, most hackers are long gone by the time a company learns of a breach. When a company says it took immediate steps, don’t assume it’s from the moment of the breach. Equifax said it “acted immediately” to stop its intrusion, which saw hackers steal nearly 150 million consumers’ credit records. But hackers had already been in its system for two months before Equifax found the suspicious activity. What really matters is when did the security incident start; when did the company learn of the security incident; and when did the company inform regulators of the breach?

“Our forensic investigation shows…”
Read: “We asked someone to tell us how f**ked we are.”

Incident responders help to understand how an intrusion or a data breach happened. It helps the company collect on cyber-insurance and prevent a similar breach happening again. But some companies use the term “forensics” loosely. Internal investigations are not transparent or accountable, and their outcomes are rarely scrutinized or published, whereas incident responders are independent, qualified assessors that will tell a company what it needs to hear and not what it wants to hear — even if their findings may still remain private.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we want to inform you of the incident.”
Read: “We were forced to tell you.”

Don’t think for a second that a company is doing “the right thing” by disclosing a security incident. In the U.S. and Europe, companies aren’t given a choice. Most states have some form of a data breach notification law that compels companies to disclose incidents that affect a certain number of residents and above. Failing to disclose a breach can lead to massive penalties. Just look at Yahoo (which, like TechCrunch, is owned by Verizon), which was fined $35 million in 2018 by a U.S. federal regulator for failing to disclose one of its data breaches that saw 500 million user accounts stolen.

“A sophisticated cyberattack…”
Read: “We’re trying not to look as stupid as we actually are.”

Just because a company says it was hit by a “sophisticated” cyberattack doesn’t mean it was. It’s hyperbole, designed to serve as a “cover your ass” statement to downplay a security incident. What it really tells you is that the company has no idea how the attack happened. After all, some of the biggest breaches in history happened because of unpatched systems, weak passwords or because someone clicked on a malicious email.

“There is no evidence that data was taken.”
Read: “That we know of.”

“No evidence” doesn’t mean that something hasn’t happened, it’s that it hasn’t been seen yet. Either the company isn’t looking hard enough or it doesn’t know. Even if a company says it has “no evidence” that data was stolen, it’s worth asking how it arrived at that conclusion.

“A small percentage of our customers are affected.”
Read: “It sounds way worse if we say ‘millions’ of users.”

The next time you see a data breach notification that says only a “small percentage” of customers are affected by a breach, take a minute to think what that actually means. Houzz admitted a data breach in January 2019, in which it said “some of our user data” was taken. Months later, a hacker posted some 57 million Houzz user records. CBS-owned Last.fm also said in 2012 that “some” of its passwords were stolen in a breach. It later amounted to 43 million passwords. If a company doesn’t tell you how many people are affected, it’s because they don’t know — or they don’t want you to know.

Over the past couple of years, Spotify has demonstrating a long-term commitment to the podcasting format by shelling out money hand over fist. The music streaming service has made a number of high profile acquisitions, including production company Gimlet and editing tool Anchor, but today’s news may well be the biggest of all.

The company has signed The Joe Rogan Experience to an exclusive multi-year licensing deal. The show will hit Spotify September 1, and become exclusive to the platform later in the year. Rogan is arguably the biggest and most influential voice in the medium.

The podcast has dominated Apple’s podcasting charts and YouTube views. Rogan currently has 8.41 million subscribers on YouTube, where his videos regularly rack up more than a million views. A recent interview with Elon Musk has already generated more than 13 million views. As of this writing, the show is currently #2 on Apple’s charts and comprises three of the service’s top ten episodes. “The talk series has long been the most-searched-for podcast on Spotify,” according to the service.

In an audio message attached the the release, Rogan noted that, “It will be the exact same show. I will not be an employee of Spotify.” It’s a key point, not just in order to ease the minds of a rabid fanbase, but because the left has often been critical of Rogan’s show and message. The program has often featured right-wing voices, including members of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web, Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes and de-platformed conspiracy trafficker, Alex Jones.

Other high profile guests include Elon Musk, who recently made another appearance on the program and Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders’ campaign came under criticism from the DNC establishment after promoting Rogan’s offhanded nomination for president. At the time, the Human Rights Campaign said Sanders “must reconsider” the endorsement, stating that Rogan has “attacked transgender people, gay men, women, people of color and countless marginalized groups at every opportunity.”

While the show has long been hosted on a variety of audio and video platforms, Spotify could well come under fire from similar groups from similar groups. Rogan has described himself as not belonging to any political party and holding largely libertarian views.

GM has a “big team” working on an advanced version of its hands-free driving assistance system Super Cruise that will expand its capability beyond highways and apply it to city streets, the automaker’s vice president of global product development Doug Parks said Tuesday.

GM is also continuing to improve its existing Super Cruise product, Parks said during a webcasted interview at Citi’s 2020 Car of the Future Symposium.

“As we continue to ratchet up Super Cruise, we continue to add capability and not just highway roads,” Parks said, adding that a separate team is working on the hands-free city driving product known internally as “Ultra Cruise.”

“We’re trying to take that same capability off the highway,” he said. “Ultra cruise would be all of the Super Cruise plus the neighborhoods, city streets and subdivisions. So Ultra Cruise’s domain would be  essentially all driving, all the time.”

Parks was quick to add that this would not be autonomous driving. Advanced driving assistance systems have become more capable, but they still require a human driver to take control and to be paying attention.

“What we’re not saying is that Ultra Cruise will be fully autonomous 100% of the time, although that could be one of the end games,” Parks said.

Parks didn’t provide a timeline for when Ultra Cruise might be available. A GM spokesperson said in a statement after his interview that the company continues to expand its hands-free driver assistance system technology across its vehicle portfolio and has “teams looking at how we can expand the capabilities to more scenarios.”

GM said it “does not have a name or anything specific to announce today, but stay tuned.”

This new Ultra Cruise feature would put it in competition with Tesla’s Autopilot advanced driving system, which is largely viewed as the most capable on the market today. Tesla’s “full self-driving” package, a more capable version of Autopilot, can now identify stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows the car to a stop on approach. This feature is still considered to be in beta.

GM’s Super Cruise uses a combination of lidar map data, high-precision GPS,  cameras and radar sensors, as well as a driver attention system, which monitors the person behind the wheel to ensure they’re paying attention. Unlike Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system, users of Super Cruise do not need to have their hands on the wheel. However, their eyes must remain directed straight ahead.

GM has taken a slower approach to Super Cruise compared to Tesla’s method of rolling out software updates that gives early access to some owners to test the improved features. When GM launched Super Cruise in 2017, it was only available in one Cadillac model — the full-size CT6 sedan — and restricted to divided highways. That began to change in 2019 when GM announced plans to expand where Super Cruise would be available.

GM’s new digital vehicle platform, which provides more electrical bandwidth and data processing power, enabled engineers to add to Super Cruise’s capabilities. In January, GM added a feature to Super Cruise that automated lane changes for drivers of certain Cadillac models, including the upcoming 2021 Escalade.

This enhanced version of Super Cruise includes better steering and speed control. The improved version will be introduced starting with the 2021 Cadillac CT4 and CT5 sedans, followed by the new 2021 Cadillac Escalade. The vehicles are expected to become available in the second half of 2020.

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

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

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

Dear Sophie:

Fallout from COVID-19 is forcing our startup to downsize. What legal requirements do we need to consider if we’re laying off foreign-born employees or scaling back their hours?

— HR Manager in San Mateo

Dear HR Manager:

Thank you for your question; a lot of people are going through the same thing. Keep in mind that terminating an employee that your company sponsored for a visa or green card can have ramifications for future hiring.

I’m supposed to get photos as soon as I take something out of the box. I know better. The rule is not to play with the gadget first. I’m going to crash the drone; I always do.

I crashed the DJI Mavic Air 2 and broke a landing peg. I flew the drone before I took pictures and of course, the drone found a tree. I swear it’s not my fault this time. I quickly discovered the Mavic Air 2 obstacle avoidance technology is not up to par with its competition.

And yet I still love this drone. The Mavic Air 2 builds on the success of the original and is loaded with updated technology. Now it can go faster, farther and take better pictures while preforming automated flight paths and object tracking.

Review

Flying the DJI Mavic Air 2 is a treat and has everything a drone needs: fast speed, high-res camera, long battery life, tremendous range and obstacle avoidance. And it’s relatively inexpensive at $799.

I’m satisfied. And that’s not something I often say when reviewing gadgets. There’s little missing from this product. It’s not perfect — the avoidance system has trouble detecting obstacles on the side of the drone — and yet I have no problem recommending this drone. The DJI Mavic Air 2 is the best consumer drone to date.

I wish I could show video from an epic kayaking trip where the Mavic Air 2 follows our boats down rapids and around a gnarly river. But I’m writing this review during the COVID-19 lockdown, so the best I can do is videos of my golden retriever, Nova, chewing on a stick and me mowing my yard.

It’s fast and capable of hitting 40 mph. The range is excellent — I was able to stream video from nearly the stratosphere. The automated flight paths are a great way to add drama to any video. Just select a person or lawn tractor, and the drone will follow it, even circling if instructed.

The Crash

I love the Mavic Air 2 even though it crashed while performing an automated video. Twice.

Here’s the thing. I’m known around TechCrunch as the guy who crashes drones. I want to think it’s because I use them a lot during the review process to find their limits and flaws. Maybe I’m just a lousy pilot. Our original DJI Mavic coverage was delayed because I crashed the drone into a birdhouse and snapped a handful of props. Replacements had to be shipped from China. With the Mavic Air 2, missed the birdhouse, but found a tree, and a landing leg snapped in half when it hit the ground. Later, when the drone was filming me on the mower, it got stuck in a tree after not sensing a massive tree limb.

I don’t think these crashes are my fault.

The DJI Mavic Air comes preloaded with flight routines. The idea has roots in the drone selfie — where someone stands on a picturesque cliff, and the drone takes off backwards, pointed at the waving group of people while revealing the stunning landscape. This DJI drone can do this automatically. Just select a subject — me on a mower — and hit start. The drone counts down from three and starts flying while keeping the person or object in focus.

As you can see in the video above, everything was going great. The drone took off from about 8 feet, skimmed the birdhouse that previously claimed another drone, and was slowly circling my yard until it found a tree. I assumed the drone’s obstacle avoidance system would have stopped the drone if it detected an object. That’s what happened during the previous dozen flights. But this time, the drone did not identify the branches and crashed.

I don’t think it’s my fault.

The drone has a hard time detecting objects when moving side to side. There are multiple sensors on the front, back, and bottom of the drone and none on the side. The second time it crashed, the drone was in a similar motion, moving side-to-side when it lodged itself on a large limb.

The drone survived both crashes and can still fly, and I’m having a blast. The drone is fast and stable. The range is incredible, though if the FAA is reading this, the drone never left my line of sight.

[gallery ids="1990797,1990795,1990800,1990794,1990791"]

Operation

DJI states the Mavic Air 2 has a video transmission range of 10km. In my experience, these range numbers are unachievable in the real world. More often, the range is more than half of that distance, but still impressive and well out of the operator’s sight range.

Drones are increasingly adding technology for capturing personal experiences rather than faraway objects. The Mavic Air 2 seems purpose-built for this task. Sure, it can fly forever in a straight line, but it has the capability of tracking an object and providing a unique vantage point.

The Mavic Air 2 packs DJI’s latest object tracking tech, and it works well as long as its limitations are understood. Just drag a box around an object, and the software will lock onto the object and keep it centered in the camera’s field of view. Combined with the obstacle detection sensors, this gives the Mavic Air 2 an impressive suite of capabilities.

DJI’s new object tracking is an improvement over past generations. It seemingly has no issues detecting large objects in front, behind, or under the drone.

In my experience, the Mavic Air 2 detected power wires, birdhouses and large tree branches as long as they were not on the drone’s side. And it sees people and vehicles fine. It has a hard time tracking Nova; more often than not, the drone loses him even when he’s walking. If the drone detects a potential collision, the controller starts beeping with fury.

With object tracking, it frees the operator from being in front of the camera. Suddenly, with this feature, the possibilities are endless. As detailed above, the Mavic Air 2 lacks sensors on the drone’s side, which is its limiting factor. Use it in a field or parking lot, and you’re good. Use it down a wooded river or trail, and you’ll have a bad time.

Skydio makes a consumer drone that has a similar feature set. However, in my experience, the Skydio drone’s object detection is superior to what’s found in the Mavic Air 2, making the tracking features more useful. With a Skydio drone, users are able to have the drone fly autonomously through area’s the Mavic Air 2 is unable to navigate.

The Mavic Air 2’s camera is fantastic considering the price of the drone. It easily captures the blue skies and wispy clouds, which is often hard for cameras in consumer drones. Colors pop, and landscape photos come alive. The 48MP sensor provides enough detail to zoom into areas with little loss of quality. The camera can shoot RAW files and DJI released a series of ND filters that can attach to the front of the lens, giving the user more control over lighting.

Best of all, the Mavic Air 2 has excellent battery life. I averaged around 30 minutes of flight time in moderate wind when using the drone in Normal mode. The battery life drops to around 25 minutes with high winds or spirited flying in Sport mode. During my time with the Mavic Air 2, I flew the drone over a dozen times. I don’t think I ever had to recharge the controller.

[gallery ids="1990732,1990734,1990733,1990731"]

Conclusion

The Mavic Air 2 was a long time coming. I’ve used nearly every DJI consumer drone since the original Phantom, and each generation leapfrogs the last in capabilities and convenience. The original Mavic freed me from carrying a large Pelican case with Phantom drone. The second generation Mavic added a better camera. The small DJI Spark made drones even more portable, but the camera and range were lacking. The DJI Mavic Mini filled that need with updated tech in a foldable design, and yet the camera is underwhelming.

The Mavic Air 2 builds on the success of the original but is loaded with updated technology. Now the Mavic Air 2 can go faster, farther, and take better pictures while preforming automated flight paths and object tracking.

The Mavic Air 2 is the drone for most consumers. It hits the sweet spot of capabilities for the price.

Boasting a technology that can dramatically increase the capacity of existing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing used to identify people infected with COVID-19 and other illnesses, ChromaCode has attracted new funding from Bill Gates-backed Adjuvant Capital. 

“We want a good solution for a resource-limited environment,” says ChromaCode founder and executive chairman Alex Wilkinson, a serial entrepreneur who has worked with CalTech researchers spinning out companies since the early 2000s.

The technology was based on research conducted by California Institute of Technology graduate student Aditya Rajagopal. A former researcher at Google[x] working on novel medical imaging methods, Rajagopal is the inventor of HDPCR, the tech at the heart of ChromaCode’s product.

With the help of Wilkinson, Rajagopal spun out the technology he’d developed to form ChromaCode in 2012, according to Crunchbase, and raised its initial capital to develop a diagnostic tool that could use algorithms and new sensing technologies to increase the number of targets that can be analyzed by traditional PCR analysis.

The polymerase chain reaction tests were invented in 1985 by Kary Mullis, who was working as a chemist at the Cetus Corp., and use copies of very small amounts of DNA sequences that are amplified in a series of cycles of temperature changes. It’s one of the foundations of genetic analysis. 

While traditional PCR testing relies on differentiation of targets by color, the HDPCR technology developed by ChromaCode’s co-founder uses signal intensity to identify multiple different targets and signify them as curve signatures encoded into a single color channel. Think of the technology as using color gradients to identify multiple targets in a test instead of just one color.

“It’s like image compression,” Wilkinson said.

For COVID-19 specifically, the use of ChromaCode’s technology could expand available testing capacity threefold, the company said.

“Right now the basic test looks at three different things,” said Wilkinson. “These machines have wells and they can do 96 tests at a time. The challenge is that you would typically use three of those wells for each test. We let them do all of the test in one well, which would give you a three times multiple.”

That means instead of testing 32 individuals using existing PCR equipment, labs would be able to perform 96 tests at a time.

Even more significant is the ability for ChromaCode’s technology to identify other illnesses alongside COVID-19. “What we’re planning for is the fall when we will be taking the existing COVID test and layering in flu and other diseases,” says Wilkinson.

The ability to test for multiple pathogens has important implications for the ability to adequately test, track and trace the spread of the disease in the low and medium income countries that are now undergoing their own outbreaks. “The problem in Africa is that someone has a fever and it might be COVID or that might be Dengue fever,” said Wilkinson. Using ChromaCode’s technology, diagnosticians and physicians can tell the difference without having to use new machines.

It’s the ability to work on existing technology that sets ChromaCode apart from competitors like BioFire Diagnostics and Cepheid, according to Wilkinson and his co-founder Greg Gosch.

“The supply chain on the tests will continue to be strained so people will be looking for more efficient mechanisms,” said Gosch.

Adjuvant Capital, the investment fund spun out from a collaboration between the Gates Foundation and JP Morgan Chase, had already identified ChromaCode as a potential investment target well before the pandemic hit, according to managing partner Jenny Yip.

The investment firm began speaking with ChromaCode in the summer of 2019, and was drawn to the company for its ability to expand testing capacity well before the COVID-19 outbreak brought the problems of adequate testing into stark relief.

“From a global health perspective, ChromaCode’s technology ability to be installed in the existing technology base is very powerful,” said Yip. Given the low resource base in some of the countries where testing is needed the most, requiring the installation of an entirely new suite of hardware and software tools is untenable — let alone developing a supply chain that can service and maintain the technology.  

The lack of adequate testing in the United States remains the biggest obstacle to safely fully re-starting the country’s economy and ensuring that any future outbreaks of the disease can be managed successfully, according to experts.

“Testing is your first fundamental step in a plan to keep infected people from susceptible people,” Ashish Jha, the K. T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told The Atlantic.

“There’s a strong sense that the White House knows the amount of testing we need is far more than we have right now,” he said. “It is really stunning and disappointing.”