Author: azeeadmin

The increasing regulation of ESG (environmental, social, governance) disclosure reporting may have started in the public markets, but will almost certainly have downstream effects for private market actors — for founders, companies and investors.

Since his confirmation as the chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April, Gary Gensler has made reforming ESG disclosures concerning climate change risk and human capital a top priority. The SEC’s regulatory agenda confirms as much. And Gensler is not alone in his focus on ESG at the federal level.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order encouraging regulators to assess climate-related financial risk. At the end of March, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote on Twitter that “our future livelihoods … depend on the financial sector to build a more sustainable and resilient economy.” Congress is considering measures that would require increased ESG disclosures, including the Improving Corporate Governance Through Diversity Act, the Diversity and Inclusion Data Accountability and Transparency Act and the Climate Risk Disclosure Act.

This renewed federal focus on ESG issues will bolster the SEC’s effort to create disclosure practices for public companies and mutual funds. Regardless of whether these federal policies around ESG come to pass, they reflect a momentum that will almost certainly impact private markets:

• Firms that want to go public — whether via SPAC, direct listing or traditional IPO — may have to seriously consider board diversity or environmental reporting in conjunction with — or well in advance of — their debuts.
• Private companies seeking to align with public companies as vendors or partners may be expected to meet specific ESG requirements before the engagement.
• Startup founders and venture funds raising capital may work to maintain the largest target market by proactively scoping ESG engagements to ensure they meet criteria for investors who may have their own ESG-focused investment requirements.

In his confirmation hearing before the Senate in early March, Gensler said, “Markets — and technology — are always changing. Our rules have to change along with them.”

The federal government is moving to increase regulation around ESG disclosure requirements with the goals of establishing greater transparency and metrics for public companies. These requirements are a response to the changing markets — demands from consumers, scrutiny from investors and a general insistence for higher corporate standards from society at large.

Private markets aren’t immune to these forces. Already, three-quarters of investors in a 2020 survey said it was very important to measure the success of sustainability initiatives, but they also said there’s been a lack of clarity on how to define and measure outcomes.

To be sure, private markets are not headed toward full-scale adoption of ESG regulations. They will not be subject to the same reporting or disclosures framework as their public counterparts. Not today, and possibly not for some time.

But we may begin to see private investors, funds and companies adapting to get ahead of ESG regulation and position themselves to effectively operate in a new — albeit adjacent — regulatory environment. In their case, the rules may not change — but the game could.

South Korea’s LG Chem has earmarked ₩6 trillion ($5.2 billion) over the next four years to build out its battery materials business. The investment comes as automakers and state regulators set targets to transition away from internal combustion engine vehicles, in a shift that will likely be the most transformative to the mobility industry since the invention of the car.

The investments will focus on boosting the production of anode materials, separation membranes, cathode binders, and other essential battery components. This includes plans to build a massive cathode plant in the South Korean city of Gumi, that will increase the industrial giant’s anode production capacity by seven-fold, from 40,000 tons to around 260,000 tons by 2026. LG Chem had already agreed to invest ₩500 billion ($424 million) in the plant, which was announced in July 2019.

LG is also planning to expand its production capacity of carbon nanotubes (CNT), an advanced material used to enhance the performance of lithium-ion batteries, from 1,700 tons this year to triple or more by 2025. To get there, it’s planning on scaling output at its CNT Plant 2 and commencing construction on a third CNT plant this year.

On the supply chain front, LG said its preparing a joint venture with a mining company for the supply of metals and other raw materials for battery components. The company will “actively pursue cooperation in various ways with companies possessing mining, smelting and refining technologies to strengthen its metal sourcing competitiveness,” it said in a statement.

LG Chem is already one of the largest manufacturers of batteries and battery materials, with customers including Volkswagen, General Motors, and Tesla. And the company only sees the global battery materials market expanding – from ₩39 trillion ($34 billion) in 2021 to ₩100 trillion ($87 billion) by 2026.

Along with the battery investment, LG said it will pour an additional ₩3 trillion ($2.6 billion) into sustainable petrochemicals, like biodegradable polymers and plant-based bio-materials, and ₩1 trillion ($872 million) into its drug development business line.

CEO Hak Cheol Shin said the company is examining even more opportunities to shift toward an sustainable business portfolio. “This will be the most revolutionary change since the establishment of the company that will upgrade the value and sustainability of LG Chem, and tangible achievements will become available from the second half of this year,” he said.

When it comes to tough environments to build new technology, firefighting has to be among the most difficult. Smoke and heat can quickly damage hardware, and interference from fires will disrupt most forms of wireless communications, rendering software all but useless. From a technology perspective, not all that much has really changed today when it comes to how people respond to blazes.

Qwake Technologies, a startup based in San Francisco, is looking to upgrade the firefighting game with a hardware augmented reality headset named C-THRU. Worn by responders, the device scans surrounding and uploads key environmental data to the cloud, allowing all responders and incident commanders to have one common operating picture of their situation. The goal is to improve situational awareness and increase the effectiveness of firefighters, all while minimizing potential injuries and casualties.

The company, which was founded in 2015, just raised about $5.5 million in financing this week. The company’s CEO, Sam Cossman, declined to name the lead investor, citing a confidentiality clause in the term sheet. He characterized the strategic investor as a publicly-traded company, and Qwake is the first startup investment this company has made.

(Normally, I’d ignore fundings without these sorts of details, but given that I am obsessed with DisasterTech these days, why the hell not).

Qwake has had success in recent months with netting large government contracts as it approaches a wider release of its product in late-2021. It secured a $1.4 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security last year, and also secured a partnership with the U.S. Air Force along with RSA in April. In addition, it raised a bit of angel funding and participated in Verizon’s 5G First Responder Lab as part of its inaugural cohort (reminder that TechCrunch is still owned by Verizon).

Cossman, who founded Qwake along with John Long, Mike Ralston, and Omer Haciomeroglu, has long been interested in fires, and specifically, volcanos. For years, he has been an expeditionary videographer and innovator who climbed calderas and attempted to bridge the gap between audiences, humanitarian response, and science.

“A lot of the work that I have done up until this point was focused on earth science and volcanoes,” he said. “A lot of projects were focused on predicting volcanic eruptions and looking at using sensor networks and different things of that nature to make people who live in those regions that are exposed to volcanic threats safer.”

During one project in Nicaragua, his team suddenly found itself lost amidst the smoke of an active volcano. There were “thick, dense superheated volcanic gases that prevented us from navigating correctly,” Cossman said. He wanted to find technology that might help them navigate in those conditions in the future, so he explored the products available to firefighters. “We figured, ‘Surely these men and women have figured out how do you see in austere environments, how do you make quick decisions, etc.’”

He was left disappointed, but also with a new vision: to build such technology himself. And thus, Qwake was born. “I was pissed off that the men and women who arguably need this stuff more than anybody — certainly more than a consumer — didn’t have anywhere to get it, and yet it was entirely possible,” he said. “But it was only being talked about in science fiction, so I’ve dedicated the last six years or so to make this thing real.”

Building such a product required a diverse set of talent, including hardware engineering, neuroscience, firefighting, product design and more. “We started tinkering and building this prototype. And it very interestingly got the attention of the firefighting community,” Cossman said.

Qwake offers a helmet-based IoT product that firefighters wear to collect data from environments. Image Credits: Qwake Technologies

Qwake at the time didn’t know any firefighters, and as the founders did customer calls, they learned that sensors and cameras weren’t really what responders needed. Instead, they wanted more operational clarity: not just more data inputs, but systems that can take all that noise, synthesize it, and relay critical information to them about exactly what’s going on in an environment and what the next steps should be.

Ultimately, Qwake built a full solution, including both an IoT device that attaches to a firefighter’s helmet and also a tablet-based application that processes the sensor data coming in and attempts to synchronize information from all teams simultaneously. The cloud ties it all together.

So far, the company has design customers with the fire departments of Menlo Park, California and Boston. With the new funding, the team is looking to advance the state of its prototype and get it ready for wider distribution by readying it for scalable manufacturing as it approaches a more public launch later this year.

Superhuman co-founder and CEO Rahul Vohra joined us last week at TechCrunch Early Stage to provide an in-depth look at how he and his company worked to optimize and refine their product early to create a version of “growth hacking” that would not only help Superhuman attract users, but serve them best and retain them, too. Vohra articulated a system that other entrepreneurs should be able to apply to their own businesses, regardless of area or focus.

The only good hack isn’t a hack at all

Vohra started off by explaining that he’s happy to discuss anything relating to the early stages of startup growth (and welcomed DMs to his Twitter if you have any specific questions). He identified a number of key areas of concern early on in company-building, including growth, pricing and even traditional growth hacking, but he noted that one area of focus is more important than any other:

The most important of these is product-market fit. And this is sort of the standard disclaimer that anyone who you would ever talk to about growth would ever give you, which is you shouldn’t try and grow a thing that isn’t yet ready to grow. (Timestamp: 01:11)

Product-market fit is the No. 1 reason why startups succeed. And the lack of product-market fit is the No. 1 reason why startups fail. (Timestamp: 02:02)

Strong stuff, but Vohra backs up this assertion with endorsements from startup industry heavyweights like Paul Graham, Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen underlying the key importance of product-market fit — and prioritizing it early in a startup’s existence. Also, he points out that it can be easy to mistake the “feeling” of having good product-market fit as a leading indicator, when in fact it’s usually a lagging one.

After operating in beta for a year, Nooks, a virtual workspace space targeting distributed teams, has attracted thousands of users and millions of dollars in venture capital. The Stanford student-led upstart has raised a $5 million seed round led by Tola Capital, with participation from Floodgate and investors such as Julia and Kevin Hartz (CEO and chairman of Eventbrite, respectively) and Julia Lipton, the founder of Awesome People Ventures.

The financing signals yet another cadre of investors betting on a company within the world of virtual HQs, a cohort that includes dozens of startups that believe distributed employees are ready to graduate from Zoom and into “metaverses” built with productivity and gamification in mind. This is Kevin Hartz’s second investment in a virtual HQ, with his first in Gather. As of today, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo, Battery Ventures, Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Homebrew and Floodgate all have stakes in different virtual HQ startups.

In other words: Even with investors pouring money in, Nooks has its work cut out for it.

Nooks was launched in May 2020 by Stanford students Daniel Lee and Rohan Suri, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Andrew Qu. Like nearly every other person unexpectedly flung into the world of remote work, the trio experienced Zoom fatigue through school and classes. They soon saw a necessity to build a space for higher-performing teams and like-minded communities to enjoy working together.

The co-founders first piloted Nooks within Stanford, giving it to teaching assistants to use as an engaging layer to summer virtual classes. The initial use case for Nooks looked like office hours, and homework parties, says Lee. Since initially piloting in schools, Nooks has grown to focus more on helping distributed teams work, but the ethos has stayed consistent.

“There should be this persistent space where, instead of just being in an ephemeral space like a meeting, you can go somewhere to create more spontaneous connections,” Lee said.

Nooks’ hooks

When a user enters Nooks, they are greeted by a Slack-like interface. Instead of a panel of channels on the left, though, employees are invited to enter “spaces.” Each space can vary in purpose, from a front-desk mock-up to a beach hangout or a design huddle. Nooks has a space dedicated to bashing bugs that show up in code. Upon first entry into the platform, the Nooks UX stood out as different from some of its competitors. While companies like Branch and Gather look like video games with a productivity element, Nooks skips the avatar feel altogether, looking closer to Teamflow or Tandem. The company uses a video API to let each person take up little orbs of space, and adds integrations of platforms like Google Docs, YouTube, Asana or GitHub.

Image Credits: Nooks

Co-founder Suri said that the company decided to go for a simpler aesthetic to promote conversation, not more clicking.

“We don’t actually believe that in order to talk to someone you need to be a video gamer, have your avatar around and go walk up to them,” he said. “It should be as simple as seeing them in a room, and entering that room.”

Image Credits: Nooks

Of course, the company is working to balance that simplicity with an engaging environment, and includes customization of spaces and background music. There’s a “whisper feature” that allows peers to talk to each other during a presentation, virtual sales floors where Nooks creates leaderboards of top sellers and co-working spaces to promote cross-pollination of ideas.

Simplicity can come at the cost of spontaneity. While other virtual HQ platforms use spatial audio to create the feeling of a “bump in” — voices get louder when you are near other co-workers and quieter when you toggle away — Lee said that Nooks promotes impromptu collaboration and casual conversations by always making it so that there’s only “one click to talk to anyone.”

While frictionless communication is an important feature, it can’t be Nooks’ only hook. Platforms like Slack, Hangouts and even Twitter DMs only require one click (max two!) for a user to communicate with someone. Not to mention that Slack is releasing a series of communication tools around spontaneity and live communication.

Still, Nooks currently has thousands of weekly active users from teams and organizations like Stanford, Embroker and Workato. Teams using Nooks spend an average of six hours a day on the platform, the company said.

Hybrid work’s virtual growing pains

As the pandemic fades in parts of the world, startups like Nooks will need to figure out ways to adapt to the return of hybrid teams after a long stint of mostly remote work. The new challenge for these startups is how they position themselves to embed well into the new culture of work.

And proximity bias might make that hard to do.

Proximity bias is the idea that employees who go in-person are valued higher than employees who work virtually. It’s one of the realities that make hybrid work so hard to pull off at scale: Equity suffers when a group of employees is positioned as more important or prized only because they can travel to an office.

Virtual workspace startups, especially the ones that want to bring work culture online, could accidentally overly fragment those who work from home versus those who work in-person. The fragmentation will disproportionately impact historically overlooked individuals, which include minorities and women. Notably, of the virtual HQs out there, most have been built, run and funded by men.

When asked about how they are combating proximity bias, Lee said that “more frequent, fluid and casual conversation with remote employees helps them build stronger bonds with the rest of the team.” Sure enough, there’s an argument that many virtual HQ startups launched to extinguish proximity bias by bringing everyone in an office to the same digital world.

Ultimately, equalizing the playing field will require aggressive intention. How can a startup make sure virtual HQ employees have access to a spontaneous, in-person stand-up in Conference Room A? How does a platform give any employee, regardless of location, the chance to give input, disagree or share post-meeting banter? Can avatars, or floating video orbs, start to give subtle physical cues beyond a clap or thumbs up?

I’d wager that these features are the moonshot, and survival hack, for virtual HQ startups long-term.

Venture capital price discipline is out the window; venture funds are looking to make faster, earlier deals; and more unicorns were minted in the last three months than during any quarter in history. It’s a busy time for startups and their financial backers. Now weeks into July, it’s increasingly clear that 2021 is shaping up to be a record-setter for venture capital investment. And investors don’t expect the frenetic pace to slow.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

But while the dollars flowing into global startups are setting all-time records, deal volume is not tracking similar extremes. Global deal volume reached a record in the second quarter, but it just barely eked out a win over several quarters from 2018 and Q1 2021.

A flood of money invested against more modest deal flow has helped drive up startup valuations this year, along with deal sizes.

CB Insights data indicates, for example, that median Series A valuations rose to $42 million thus far in 2021. That’s far above 2020’s median Series A valuation of $33 million, also beating the previous record set in 2019 of $39 million. The same dataset indicates that Series B, C, D and E rounds also reached new highs in 2021 compared to years going back to at least 2015.

So startups are getting larger checks, earlier. Does that mean that many startups are landing investments with smaller revenues than their stage (or capital base) would normally require? Yep.

Yesterday in a public discussion of startups valued at $1 billion or more — unicorns, in our modern parlance — Boldstart Ventures’ Shomik Ghosh said something that matched what The Exchange has heard from other investors, albeit in more private conversations. The Exchange estimated that the percentage of unicorns with valuations between $1 billion and $2 billion with $100 million in revenue was small. Ghosh took note of that approximation and wrote the following:

Let me translate: Here the Boldstart investor is saying that it’s now common to invest in startups at a valuation that works out to 40 to 50 times those companies’ annual recurring revenue, or ARR. LTM stands for last 12 months, indicating in a somewhat slang fashion that we’re not discussing forward numbers.

That’s what NTM means: next 12 months. Ghosh’s statement indicates that some startups are actually able to raise capital at even higher multiples of their current revenue, enjoying pricing that can work out to 100 times their ARR for next year.

This yields some questions. For example, The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims asked if low startup revenues compared to their valuations indicates that there are a great many houses of cards set to fall in time. The answer is maybe, but probably not. Let’s talk about why the math can work out for startups with minimal revenues, rich valuations and lots of cash.

In 2020 and 2021, we all became well-acquainted with nasal swabs. But small sticks we stuck up our noses, it turns out, were harder to come by than anyone could have predicted. A May 2020 survey of 118 labs in the US found that 60 percent reported limited swab supplies – making lack of swabs the most commonly reported supply-chain problem.

One small company that stepped into the fray of swab production was the two year old OPT Industries, a Massachusetts-based company with fifteen employees involved in additive manufacturing (think 3D printing) of dense microfiber structures. The company’s printers and software can print more than just swabs, but the first product the company has focused on since 2020 is the InstaSwab – a 3D printed swab used in COVID-19 tests. 

In four months in 2020, OPT Industries manufactured 800,000 nasal swabs for commercial partners like Kaiser Permanente and medical products distributor Henry Schein. After that trial run, the company foresees an uptick in production capability. Using newer, modular machines, Ou notes that each machine can now produce about 30,000 swabs per day. 

“I think the pandemic has given us an opportunity to show a specific medical area where our technology can shine,” Ou tells TechCrunch. 

While the pandemic is still a global disaster, the vaccines have changed the game when it comes to testing. OPT Industries is betting that it will survive a downturn in COVID-19 testing in the US by creating a superior swab, and pivoting to a home-testing market. 

The pandemic was an early test-run for OPT, which at this point, has raised about $5 million in seed funding. The company is currently not seeking investment, notes founder Jifei Ou, but rather has moved into another testing phase for their swab products, the results of which were released today. 

Statistics released today by OPT Industries, the company reports that on average their 3D printed nasal swabs were able to transfer 63 percent of viral genes into detection assays. Meanwhile in those tests, flocked fiber swabs transferred 36 percent and polyester swabs about 14 percent. 

The performance of OPT Industries’ InstantSwab compared to two traditional swabs

These tests were performed at Boston University Medical Center, but the results were not published in a peer-reviewed journal (though Ou has more studies that are striving for this). They were also not conducted in human COVID-19 patients, but in vitro. 

In theory, the InstaSwabs are better at picking up traces of the virus in the back of the nose and throat. Ou’s argument is that with the right type of swab, specifically, one designed with his dense microfiber structures, may help capture more of the virus and help prevent false negatives – Especially in the early days of infection, when there’s a lower viral load in the body to begin with. 

There are countless studies looking to estimate the false negative rates for the litany of COVID-19 tests used. Case in point: one systematic review of 34 studies found estimates ranging from a 2 percent false negative rate to a 29 percent.

There is also evidence linking low viral load to false negatives. One study conducted at the Public Health Laboratory in Alberta Canada, analyzed 100,001 COVID-19 tests taken from about 95,000 patients (some patients were tested two or three times). Of that group, the authors were able to confirm five false negative test results. 

The false negatives were attributed to low amounts of viral RNA in the body, which the authors note, was a factor of when the samples were collected. It’s not that the swabs missed the virus, it’s that there wasn’t much virus there to pick up in the first place. 

When it came to analyzing how the swabs themselves influenced test results, the authors found that both swab types used by the laboratory had produced false negative results. Though that may imply that swab type didn’t influence false negative rate, the authors argue that more data was needed to reach that conclusion definitively. 

That’s not to say that improving the way that samples are collected and stored can’t influence testing accuracy. One June 2021 paper argued that using less transport medium fluid (which would result in less dilution of samples) and redesigning swabs to pick up more virus and spend less time in patients’ noses could also help optimize testing. 

What OPT will need to prove is that a superior swab can truly pick up significant amounts of viral RNA in the early stages of disease and that this greater pickup rate actually has an impact on false negatives. 

While OPT Industries’ study (not peer-reviewed) seems to suggest the swabs can collect more virus, it doesn’t have enough information to prove that secondary thesis: that these swabs improve the accuracy of COVID-19 tests done in humans. 

“We are right now working with two clinical partners to do clinical research on that,” Ou notes.  “The result of this study and the result of the coming one will be combined together and we are preparing a manuscript to be published in a peer-reviewed publication.”

Should OPT prove that they can 3D print a superior swab, the bigger question is what market they’ll be poised to enter. As vaccines began to proliferate in early Spring of 2021, demand for Covid-19 tests plunged by about 46 percent nationwide, The Wall Street Journal reported (strangely, this didn’t seem to slow the explosion of testing startups, though). 

The US is conducting an average of 504,048 new COVID-19 tests per day as of July 2021, down from an average of about 1,992,273 in January. (Even with the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant upon us, the CDC still notes that vaccinated people can refrain from routine testing.) 

Ou still sees potential growth in the world of at-home testing – in this case, for COVID-19, though Ou notes that the company can 3D swabs for pretty much any bodily excretion that needs swabbing. 

“One of the things that we’ll observe is that in the US, the majority of testing is shifting from a point of care or at a hospital to home testing. So this is our current focus and we’re looking at partnering and collaborating with the home testing kit company,” he says. 

The company has secured “several” partnerships with home-testing companies, though an NDA prevents him from naming the companies, says Ou. 

At-home testing in general (for both COVID-19 and other maladies) does have some interesting players entering the market, most recently, Amazon. Amazon plans to offer at-home testing kits for COVID-19 as well as STIs.

Perhaps OPT will be able to ride a new at-home swab wave beyond the pandemic.

Cybereason, a US-Israeli late-stage cybersecurity startup that provides extended detection and response (XDR) services, has secured $275 million in Series F funding. 

The investment was led by Liberty Strategic Capital, a venture capital fund recently founded by Steven Mnuchin, who served as U.S. Treasury Secretary under the Trump administration. As part of the deal, Mnuchin will join Cybereason’s board of directors, along with Liberty advisor Gen. Joseph Dunford, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump until his retirement in 2019.

Lior Div, CEO and co-founder of Cybereason, tells TechCrunch that the startup’s decision to work with Liberty Strategy Capital came down to the firm’s “massive network” and the “understanding of the financial and government markets that Mnuchin and Gen. Joseph Dunford bring to our team.”

“For example, the executive order on cybersecurity put out by the Biden Administration recommends that endpoint detection and response solutions be deployed on all endpoints,” Dior added. “This accelerates the importance of solutions like ours in the public market, and Liberty Strategic Capital has the relationships to help accelerate our go-to-market strategy in the federal sector.”

This round, which will be used to fuel “hypergrowth driven by strong market demand,” follows $389 million in prior funding from SoftBank, CRV, Spark Capital, and Lockheed Martin. The company didn’t state at what valuation it raised the funds, but it is estimated to be in the region of $3 billion.

Cybereason’s recent growth, which saw it end 2020 at over $120 million in annual recurring revenue, has been largely driven by its AI-powered platform. Unlike traditional alert-centric models, Cybereason’s Defense Platform is operation-centric, which means it exposes and remediates entire malicious operations. The service details the full attack story from root cause to impacted users and devices, which the company claims significantly reduces the time taken to investigate and recover from an enterprise-wide cyber attack. 

The company, whose competitors include the likes of BlackBerry-owned Cylance and CrowdStrike, also this week expanded its channel presence with the launch of its so-called Defenders League, a global program that enables channel partners to use its technology and services to help their customers prevent and recover from cyberattacks. Cybereason claims its technology has helped protect customers from the likes of the recent SolarWinds supply-chain attack and other high-profile ransomware attacks launched by DarkSide, REvil, and Conti groups. 

Today’s $275 million funding round is likely to be Cybereason’s last before it goes public. Div previously said in August 2019 the company planned to IPO within two years, though he wouldn’t be pressed on whether the company is gearing up to go public when asked by TechCrunch. However, the company did compare its latest investment to SentinelOne‘s November 2020 Series F round, which was secured just months before it filed for a $100 million IPO.

Twilio, a company best known for its tools that help developers build text message/phone call-powered apps, is branching out into a new category: live streaming.

This morning the company announced Twilio Live, a platform meant to help developers more easily integrate live video/audio features into their apps.

Details are still a bit light, but here’s what we know so far:

• Twilio Live is launching today but in invite-only Beta mode — so not everyone will get access immediately.
• It’ll support iOS, Android, and all “major browsers”.
• In addition to the content streaming tools, Twilio is also building out interactivity features to support things like text chat, audience polling, screen sharing, and bringing audience members up as speakers.

We saw a massive rush of Clubhouse clones hit the market after that app’s spike in popularity, with even huge names like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Discord rushing to replicate its best features. With Twilio effectively turning that feature set into a plug-and-play SDK here, I’d expect to see a lot more of that.

One of the biggest challenges of reinventing the wheel when it comes to live streaming is one of scaling; what might work beautifully for one hundred viewers could grind to a halt when you have that viral moment that brings a sudden influx of ten thousand. Twilio has spent the last decade figuring out infrastructure scaling and latency — chances are, they’re starting on pretty good footing here.

No details seem to be available currently as to how Twilio Live’s pricing will work.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is hardly new, but this sector — pretty much the default business model for B2B and B2C startups — just keeps growing along with a rapidly expanding ecosystem. TC Sessions: SaaS 2021, a day-long focused look at the current state and future generations of SaaS, takes place on October 27, and it’s designed to help startup founders, investors and developers keep tabs on this increasingly sophisticated industry.

It also provides a huge opportunity for startups to demo their SaaS tech and talent to the industry’s top movers, shakers and unicorn makers. We have a limited number of Startup Exhibitor Packages available, and procrastination is not your friend. Jump on this offer and secure your virtual demo booth right now.

The $299 Startup Exhibitor Package includes your virtual booth space, four passes and full access to the event, breakout sessions, lead generation capabilities, networking, videos on-demand and a free, one-month membership to Extra Crunch.

Here’s another great reason to exhibit. You might connect with and impress the SaaS equivalent of Rachael Wilcox. Wilcox, a creative producer at Volvo Cars, attended TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 (along with both Disrupt and Early Stage that same year). Here’s why:

“I go to TechCrunch events to find new and interesting companies, make new business connections and look for startups with investment potential. It’s an opportunity to expand my knowledge and inform my work.”

As for the conference programming, we’re busy building out our agenda. But like every TechCrunch event ever created, you can count on hearing from the leading experts, icons, founders and investors.

Speaking of investors, we can share that Sarah Guo, Kobile Fuller and Casey Aylward will join us to talk about what they look for in SaaS startups. We’ll announce other exciting speakers in the weeks to come, so watch this space.

Yes, you’ll be busy exhibiting and networking, but you’ll also have time to take in some of the presentations. Come ready to engage because these presentations will be highly interactive. That’s just one of the benefits of a virtual event — more time to get those burning questions asked and answered.

So, bottom line: Exhibiting at TC Sessions: SaaS 2021 on October 27 is your chance to place your innovative, ground-breaking SaaS startup in front of a very targeted, very influential audience. Buy your Startup Exhibitor Package now and get ready to impress for success.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: SaaS 2021 – Marketing & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.