Author: azeeadmin

Successfully selling a business has much to do with timing. For many entrepreneurs, it’s the high-stakes end game where they cash out and reap the rewards of their efforts. At a certain point, when both buyers and sellers are working hard to close the deal, negotiations can move very quickly. If you’re the seller, this is not the time to discover unanticipated problems in your business.

Distressingly often, these problems are related to employment. Inattention to employment issues can have a significant impact on deals — from preventing closings and reducing the deal value to altering the deal terms or significantly limiting the pool of potential buyers.

Fortunately, such issues typically can be resolved well in advance with a little forethought and legal guidance. It’s important to get your employment ducks in a row long before you start planning your exit.

What follows is an overview of the three main categories of employment issues that can derail or delay a sale. For the most part, these assume an asset sale, but may vary in the case of a stock sale.

Compliance

By far the most significant problem is general employment law compliance. This means creating strong employment policies and practices that are documented, in place and operating long before you pursue a deal. The key area is wage and hour issues — timekeeping and payroll practices, worker classification issues (employee vs. independent contractor; exempt vs. non-exempt), meal and rest periods, PTO policies and payouts at termination.

Cleerly Coronary, a company that uses A.I powered imaging to analyze heart scans, announced a $43 million Series B funding this week. The funding comes at a moment when it seems that a new way of screening for heart disease is on its way. 

Cleerly was started in 2017 by James K. Min a cardiologist, and the director of the Dalio Institute for Cardiac Imaging at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical College. The company, which uses A.I to analyze detailed CT scans of the heart, has 60 employees, and has raised $54 million in total funding.

The Series B round was led by Vensana Capital, but also included LVR Health, New Leaf Venture Partners, DigiTx Partners, and Cigna Ventures. 

The startup’s aim is to provide analysis of detailed pictures of the human heart that have been examined by artificial intelligence. This analysis is based on images taken via Cardiac Computer Tomography Angiogram (CTA), a new, but rapidly growing manner of scanning for plaques. 

“We focus on the entire heart, so every artery, and its branches, and then atherosclerosis characterization and quantification,” says Min. “We look at all of the plaque buildup in the artery, [and] the walls of the artery, which historical and traditional methods that we’ve used in cardiology have never been able to do.”

Cleerly is a web application, and it requires that a CTA image specifically, which the A.I. is trained to analyze, is actually taken when patients go in for a checkup. 

When a patient goes in for a heart exam after experiencing a symptom like chest pain, there are a few ways they can be screened. They might undergo a stress test, an echocardiogram (ECG), or a coronary angiogram – a catheter and x-ray-based test. CTA is a newer form of imaging in which a scanner takes detailed images of the heart, which is illuminated with an injected dye. 

Cleerly’s platform is designed to analyze those CTA images in detail, but they’ve only recently become a first-line test (a go-to, in essence) when patients come in with suspected heart problems. The European Society of Cardiology updated guidelines to make CTA a first-line test in evaluating patients with chronic coronary disease. In the UK, it became a first-line test in the evaluation of patients with chest pain in 2016.

CTA is already used in the US, but guidelines may expand how often it’s actually used. A review on CTA published on the American College of Cardiology website notes that it shows “extraordinary potential.” 

There’s movement on the insurance side, too. In 2020, United Healthcare announced the company will now reimburse for CTA scans when they’re ordered to examine low-to medium risk patients with chest pain. Reimbursement qualification is obviously a huge boon to broader adoption.

CTA imaging might not be great for people who already have stents in their hearts, or, says Min, those who are just in for a routine checkup (there is low-dose radiation associated with a CTA scan). Rather, Cleerly will focus on patients who have shown symptoms or are already at high risk for heart disease. 

The CDC estimates that currently 18.2 million adults currently have coronary artery heart disease (the most common kind), and that 47 percent of Americans have one of the three most prominent risk factors for the disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or a smoking habit. 

These shifts (and anticipated shifts) in guidelines suggest that a lot more of these high-risk patients may be getting CTA scans in the future, and Cleerly has been working on mining additional information from them in several large-scale clinical trials.

There are plenty of different risk factors that contribute to heart disease, but the most basic understanding is that heart attacks happen when plaques build up in the arteries, which narrows the arteries and constricts the flow of blood. Clinical trials have suggested that the types of plaques inside the body may contain information about how risky certain blockages are compared to others beyond just much of the artery they block. 

A trial on 25,251 patients found that, indeed, the percentage of construction in the arteries increases the risk of heart attack. But the type of plaque in those arteries identified high-risk patients better than other measures. Patients who went on to have sudden heart attacks, for example, tended to have higher levels of fibrofatty or necrotic core plaque in their hearts. 

These results do suggest that it’s worth knowing a bit more detail about plaque in the heart. Note that Min is an author of this study, but it was also conducted at 13 different medical centers. 

As with all A.I based diagnostic tools the big question is: How well does it actually recognize features within a scan? 

At the moment FDA documents emphasize that it is not meant to supplant a trained medical professional who can interpret the results of a scan. But tests have suggested it fares pretty well. 

A June 2021 study compared Cleerly’s A.I analysis of CTA scans to that of three expert readers, and found that the A.I had a diagnostic accuracy of about 99.7 percent when evaluating patients who had severe narrowing in their arteries. Three of nine study authors hold equity in Cleerly. 

With this most recent round of funding, Min says he aims to pursue more commercial partnerships and scale up to meet the existing demand. “We have sort of stayed under the radar, but we came above the radar because now I think we’re prepared to fulfill demand,” he says. 

Still, the product itself will continue to be tested and refined. Cleerly is in the midst of seven performance indication studies that will evaluate just how well the software can spot the litany of plaques that can build up in the heart.

This year we’re taking exhibiting in Startup Alley, the epicenter of opportunity at every Disrupt, to a whole new level at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 (September 21-23). Team TechCrunch will tap up to 50 exhibiting founders to take part in Startup Alley+, an exclusive, VIP experience designed to grow your business and increase your opportunities two months before Disrupt kicks off. Want a shot? Buy a Startup Alley Pass before they’re gone.

Pro Tip: The Startup Alley+ experience does not cost anything beyond what every founder pays to exhibit in Startup Alley. You will be notified if accepted into Startup Alley+ one week after your re

One of the many perks you’ll receive as a member of the Startup Alley+ cohort is access and warm introductions to leading investors — every startup founder’s favorite network connection. We’ll have a veritable volume of VCs available before Disrupt begins, and we’ll match founders and investors based on how their investment theses align.

You’ll meet with your curated VC on CrunchMatch, our investor-founder platform. Get comfy, because you’ll have access to the full list of investors attending Disrupt — use CrunchMatch to meet other investors before and during the conference.

What else comes with the Startup Alley+ experience? It kicks off July 8-9 with a complimentary founder pass to TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising. Check out the event agenda packed with presentations and breakout sessions, and don’t miss the pitch competition on day two.

In the run-up to Disrupt, you’ll also get to attend these masterclasses and learn from the best.

• Key Principles of the Lean Startup Methodology with John Lynn, founder of CELA Innovation  
• How to Create Product/Market Fit with Dan Olsen, author of “The Lean Product Playbook”
• Outreach Strategies for Contacting VCs and Press with Annie Kadavy of Redpoint Ventures and TechCrunch editor Danny Crichton

Get ready to compete in a mini pitch-off at one of these five Extra Crunch Live feed-back sessions. Whip your pitch into shape now — before you need to impress investors.

• Session 1: July 21
• Session 2 – August 4
• Session 3 – August 18
• Session 4 – September 1
• Session 5 – September 8

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place on September 21-23. We have only a handful of spots left if you want to exhibit in Startup Alley — and have a crack at joining the Startup Alley+ cohort. Buy your Startup Alley Pass, stand in the epicenter of opportunity and do what it takes to make your startup dream a reality.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Making the choice to adopt, or to find an adopting family, is a legally complex, emotionally taxing, expensive and time-consuming process. PairTree aims to make one part at least considerably easier and faster with its online matching platform where expectant mothers and hopeful adopters can find each other without the facilitation of an agency or other organization. The company has just raised a $2.25 million seed round, a rarity in the industry.

The path to adoption is different for everyone, but there are generally some things they have in common: once the process is started, it can take upwards of $50,000 and over a year and a half to organize a match. While some of this comprises the ordinary legal hurdles involved in any adoption, a big part of it is simply that there are limited opportunities for adoption and compatibility isn’t guaranteed. As many people considering adoption are doing so on the heels of unsuccessful fertility treatment, it can be a lot to take on and a dispiriting wait.

Erin Quick, CEO and co-founder (with CTO Justin Friberg) of PairTree, said that the modern adoption landscape is marked by the fact that nearly 95 percent of adoptions are open, meaning there is ongoing contact between a biological mother and adopting family.

“They’ll be working together forever, and that makes finding a highly compatible match that much more important,” Quick, herself a happy adopter, told TechCrunch in an interview. But because of the way adoption is generally done — through agencies licensed by states — there are limitations on how far anyone involved can reach.

“It’s so bound by geography,” she said. “It’s regulated at the state level and has been facilitated by state level, not because of state laws — there’s no rule saying you can’t adopt out of state — but because the facilitators are small nonprofits. They bind themselves to their geographic region because that’s what they can serve. We’re building a platform that makes what people are already doing much easier and more efficient.”

That platform is in many ways very like a dating app, though of course the comparison is not exact and does not reflect the gravity of choosing to adopt. But like in the dating world, in adoption you have a cloud of people looking to connect over something highly dependent on personality and individual needs.

Screenshot of the way expectant mothers can filter and search for compatible adopting families.

PairTree onboards both expectant mothers and adopters with personality tests — not the light-hearted stuff of OK Cupid but a broader, more consequential set of Jungian archetypes that signal a person’s high-level priorities in life. Think “wants to travel and learn” vs “wants to provide and nurture” (not that these are necessarily incompatible) — they serve as important indicators of preferences that might not be so easy summarized with a series of checkboxes. That’s not the only criterion, of course: other demographic and personal details are also collected.

The adopters are added to a pool through which expectant mothers can sift and, if desired, contact (in this, Quick suggested, PairTree mirrors Bumble, where women must message first). PairTree also does basic due diligence stuff like identify verification and confirmation of other important steps like home studies.

If a likely match is found, all the relevant information is passed to the adoption facilitator, who will be coordinating the other legal and financial steps. PairTree isn’t looking to replace these agencies — in fact Quick said that they have been huge proponents of the platform, since it can shorten wait times and improve outcomes. She said based on their existing successful adoptions that the wait can be cut by by a half or even two thirds, and thus the cost (which involves recurring payments as the agency searches and does the legal work) by a similar amount.

“These are small nonprofits, they don’t have a lot of tech chops. When we launched we went to attorneys first, actually, and we were surprised when agencies started reaching out,” she explained.

Agencies have been referring their adopters to PairTree, which has led to a lot of early traction, Quick said. And importantly, they’ve seen great diversity in their early success.

“Adoption has historically been denied by faith-based systems — LGBTQ families and single women have been subject to discrimination,” she noted. And in fact just last week a Supreme Court decision held up the right of religious adoption agencies to deny services to same-sex couples. Quick was proud to say that they have already facilitated adoptions by same-sex couples and single parents.

The company will also set aside 5 percent of its net profits (which hopefully will manifest in volume) for the Lifetime Healing Foundation, which offers counseling and support to birth mothers who have gone though the adoption process.

The $2.25M seed was led by Urban Innovation Fund, with Founder Collective, Female Founders alliance and Techstars participating. It will surprise few to hear that adoption is not a particularly hot industry for venture capital, but rising interest and investment in fertility tech may have shed light on opportunities in adjacent spaces. Adoption is one where significant improvements can be enabled by technology, meaning startups can grow fast while having a positive impact.

The company plans to use the money to expand its product portfolio, pursue more partnerships, and perhaps most importantly for its users, build a native mobile app, since 90 percent of the service’s viewership is mobile.

“We’re grateful to our expert and diverse group of investors who share our vision that adoption should be a
viable path to parenting for more people,” said Quick in the release announcing the raise. “Like us, our investors believe in the importance of supporting Biological and Adopting Families along with the Adoptees, because adoption is not a single transaction but a journey they’re taking over the course of a lifetime.”

Outschool founder Amir Nathoo has a message to the edtech sector, which recently found itself under a spotlight thanks to the pandemic: Add your voice, and don’t try to always appear neutral.

The founder of the unicorn business penned a statement, co-signed by other edtech leaders, promoting the continuance of teachers being allowed to teach critical race theory in classrooms across the country. The learning framework, which has been the subject of recent legislative debate, covers the acknowledgement of institutional, and systemic racism in the United States. Critics of critical race theory say that CTR can add more divisiveness to an already polarized world, while supporters see the framework as key to understanding the role that racism plays in society and how current systems perpetuate inequality.

“As a nation, we must take a stand that teaching the wrongs of racism is not ‘divisive’; it is imperative,” the statement reads. “Many of these new laws will require teaching ‘both sides’ of a lesson about race or current events, if permitted at all,” a nuance that would make it difficult for teachers to condemn history like lynching or Jim Crow’s legacy.

It goes on to pledge that, “as CEOs and Board Members of education technology companies, we are taking a stand to say that any new law that restricts teaching racism in a lesson is unacceptable.”

We stand with the thousands of teachers who have come together to protest these laws restricting racism lessons.
We stand with the millions of learners they will impact.
We are signing this letter today so that teachers and students can openly discuss the experiences of Black youth today in the context of the George Floyd protests of 2020.
Above all, we are signing this letter today to say racism is wrong and that hatred based on the color of someone’s skin, religious beliefs, gender, or sexual orientation is wrong, unequivocally wrong.

Signatures on the statement include a number of notable founders and investors in edtech, giving weight to the statement: 

Atin Batra, General Partner, 27V (Twenty Seven Ventures)
Michael Ke Zhang, CEO and Co-Founder of AI Camp
Joanna Smith, CEO and Founder of AllHere
Ilana Nankin, Ph.D. Founder & CEO of Breathe For Change
John Danner, Managing Partner, Dunce Capital
Erika Hairston, CEO and Co-Founder of Edlyft
Michael Haddix, Founder, Elevate
Alex Taussig, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners
Brian Swartz – CEO & Co-Founder Neighbor Schools
Bridget Garsh – COO & Co-Founder Neighbor Schools
Cedric McDougal – CTO & Co-Founder Neighbor Schools
Sabari Raja, CEO and Cofounder, Nepris
Sabari Raja, CEO and Co-Founder, Nepris
Amir Nathoo, CEO and Co-Founder of Outschool
Rita Rosa Ruesga, Co-Founder Pikitin Learning Projects
Garrett Smiley, CEO and Co-Founder of Sora Schools
Rethink Education III Team
Rebecca Kaden, Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures
Sara Mauskopf, CEO and Co-Founder of Winnie
Jo Boaler, The Nominelli-Olivier Professor of Education, Stanford University, Co-Founder of youcubed

Mission-oriented politics

There is a growing perspective in Silicon Valley that companies should only get involved in politics when it is related to their mission and can impact their business.

The conversation began with Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong publishing a memo that banned the debate of causes and politics internally that are unrelated to work. Coinbase has since been joined by Basecamp, and there’s a pseudonymous Twitter account, Mission Protocol, dedicated to helping other startups adopt a code of conduct that “follows in Brian Armstrong’s footsteps.”

“We started this project because existing codes of conduct and conversations around social responsibility didn’t have a voice for what is most important: staying focused on the good we actually deliver for society through our missions,” a tweet from the account reads.

In an interview, Nathoo said that critical race theory “is clearly related” to its mission, but that his company is also taking an “expansive view of how our community can be impacted.” The company says it intends to engage, and add their voice, to issues around race and inequality.

“Ideally, companies would stay out of politics but that’s not the reality that we live in,” he said. “We think it’s an abdication of corporate responsibility to try and pretend that there’s both sides to every argument. I don’t think that’s right, and we intend to take a different path on corporate responsibility than other startups might have taken.”

AllHere CEO Joanna Smith, who signed the statement, told TechCrunch that the statement is tied heavily to her mission. Her company developed a 24/7 chatbot to help families and kids that have issues with absenteeism at schools. The company focuses on supporting families, through two-way text and in-person intervention, to get better outcomes and lessen learning gaps.

“I think every startup has to be aware of the environment within which they operate,” she said. “I think specifically in education technologies, it would be very difficult to scale a company that’s directly interfacing and interacting with families and kids, if the company itself is not aware of, or reflective of the needs and priorities of those who they are attempting to serve.

“We don’t have the luxury of putting on blinders to the realities that families and kids live in, which, for AllHere, includes transportation, health care, absenteeism, mental health and, of course, how families see the world,” she added.

The debate is more complex than pro-Coinbase and anti-Coinbase. For example, both companies present an alternative to how startups should address politics: Tie it to the mission, and view the mission as wide-ranging and inclusive.

Nathoo said that a small number of edtech leaders were invited to sign the edtech statement to start. Of those who didn’t sign, the main reasons were disagreement with messaging, or worry about getting involved in politics.

Edtech startups are in a unique spot to address racism because of the content and mission that many have. Quizlet has a number of free, downloadable lessons for educators to address topics like mass incarceration and policing, the fight for women’s suffrage, and the coronavirus in Black America, for example. Outschool has a number of classes offered about anti-racism, including an $11 one-time class for kids ages 4-6. There’s still a lot of work to be done.

Nathoo expects that Outschool’s business, which was recently valued at over $1 billion, will benefit from this choice because of “greater trust and connection” with the community and staff. Medium, for example, recently lost more employees after CEO Ev Williams published a culture memo, in the wake of a failed unionization attempt.

Even with this perspective, Nathoo admits that the company “is not where it wants to be” on diversity, and thinks that there is work left to be done. It’s up to future employees on if today’s effort, rallying against the diminishment of critical race theory and for more conversations of racism, will either be an attractive, or dissuasive, reason to join the team.

The days of a scrolling to the end of your Instagram feed look to be coming to an end. After adding algorithmic suggestions to the bottom of the app last year, Instagram is running a test that would splice more recommended posts from accounts you don’t follow into the feed with those you do.

In the next few days, the company will begin testing an expansion of “Suggested Posts” which would sprinkle that content through the regular feed. As it stands now, Suggested Posts appear at the bottom of Instagram after you’ve scrolled through all of the content from people you follow and hit the “You’re all caught up” message that the app implemented in 2018. Depending on how many accounts you follow, it’s possible to not run into that message or Instagram’s recommendations very often, if at all.

In addition to boosting the prominence of Suggested Posts, Instagram will test an option that lets users “snooze” the feature, removing it from the feed for 30 days. Anyone in the test will be able to offer feedback when a specific post doesn’t interest them, but it sounds like you won’t be able to disable Suggested Posts in the feed in a permanent way.

The Suggested Posts expansion will be accompanied by a way for users to shape what they see through managing their interests — stuff like cats, makeup or basketball. If you’ve seen enough cats, you can toggle that interest off or tell Instagram that you never wanted to see those damn cats to begin with when it shows you the next one.

A Facebook spokesperson described the expansion of Suggested Posts to TechCrunch as an “extension” of the Instagram feed, noting that the ratio of these algorithmic recommendations to posts from followed accounts will be variable based on how someone uses the app.

The test will roll out to a small number of users in English-speaking countries only, though the company declined to specify how many accounts will be involved.

The experiment might not make it into the final product, but from the way the winds over at Facebook have been blowing lately it looks pretty likely. Like we mentioned, Instagram and parent company Facebook introduced some tools to give people more control over their own behavior on the notoriously addictive-by-design apps back in 2018, including the “You’re all caught up” message and a way to track time spent.

Those tools weren’t a sea change for a company that generally values keeping people glued to its services (and its ads) at all costs, but they showed that Facebook was at least mildly self aware of the conversation about social media addiction sweeping through the tech world at the time.

In 2020, it sounds like Facebook is done humoring those concerns. The new way Suggested Posts work is just a test for now, but mixing algorithmic suggestions into the feed with posts from accounts you follow would be a pretty big change to the core way the app works. As it stands, if people want a truly endless Instagram experience they could turn to the Explore tab or scroll past the “caught up” message. Many doubtless did to stave off boredom, to the likely detriment of their mental health.

But under the test, it will be less possible to use Instagram to only keep up with just the accounts that you’ve got a personal interest in, whether they’re friends, local businesses or influencers of your choosing. Instagram wants to inject more of what it wants you to see into that experience, or what the company believes you’d want to see but you just don’t know it yet.

The end result might not be that noticeable for people who follow huge swaths of accounts already and rarely meet the end of their feed, but it strays even further from the original product — a distant memory at this point — while giving Instagram a way to keep people on the app for longer while serving them more ads.

Five-year old self-driving truck startup Embark Trucks Inc. said Wednesday it would merge with special purpose acquisition company Northern Genesis Acquisition Corp. II in a deal valued at $5.2 billion.

Embark takes a different approach to autonomous trucking: As opposed to manufacturing and operating a fleet of trucks themselves, which is the route rival TuSimple is taking, Embark offers its AV software as a service. Carriers and fleets can pay a per-mile subscription fee to access it. The company includes carriers Mesilla Valley Transportation and Bison Transport, and companies Anheuser-Busch InBev and HP Inc., amongst its partners.

Carriers purchase trucks with compatible hardware directly from OEMs, so Embark says it has designed its system to be “platform agnostic” across multiple components and manufacturers. The company says its software can simulate up to 1,200 60-second scenarios per second, and make adaptive predictions using those scenarios for the behaviour of other vehicles on the road.

Embark said in an investor presentation for the SPAC deal that it was targeting “driver-out,” or operating on roads without a safety driver, by 2023 and launching at a commercial scale across the American sunbelt the following year. However, Embark still has technical milestones yet to achieve, noting in the presentation that the software still needs to accomplish actions such as interactions with emergency vehicles, and responding to blown tires and other mechanical failures.

Upon closing, the transaction will inject Embark with around $615 million in gross cash proceeds, including $200 million in private investment in public equity (PIPE) funding from investors including CPP Investments, Knight-Swift Transportation, Mubadala Capital, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management.

Embark also said former Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao was joining its board, likely a boon for a company operating in the autonomous trucking industry, which is still only authorized for commercial deployment in 24 states.

Embark was founded in 2016 by CEO Alex Rodrigues and CTO Brandon Moak, who worked together on autonomous driving while completing engineering degrees from Canada’s University of Waterloo. After launching out of Y Combinator, the company quickly went on to raise $117 million in total funding, including a $30 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital and a $70 million Series C led by Tiger Global Management.

The transaction is anticipated to close in the second half of 2021. The company joins competitor AV trucking developer Plus in going public via a SPAC merger. TuSimple opted for a traditional initial public offering in March.

Inspired by this Hunter Walk tweet and the ensuing chatter.

TechCrunch recently sat down with Leading Investor from Well Known Firm to chat about their investing theses, the state of today’s venture capital market, and why prices are so high for early-stage startups.

We’ve been hunting down Leading Investor for some time, so it’s great to get their thoughts on today’s startup market and the larger venture capital industry. Let’s have some fun!

TechCrunch: To kick things off, the early-stage startup market has been super active lately. How has the accelerating cadence of deal-making impacted how you and Well Known Firm invest?

Leading Investor: We’ve made no changes to our process. Everyone who has is weak of conviction and poor of wallet.

TC: Got it, got it. The rapid-fire, early-stage market, though, does seem expensive at times. At least compared to historical norms. Are you worried about overpaying for nascent startup shares?

LI: Every deal that we’ve been a part of has been fairly priced. Every deal that we didn’t win was overpriced. Every deal we didn’t see was stupid.

TC: Cool. Sure. Let’s talk about the technology market more generally. Where are you seeing the most startup opportunity? Or perhaps more simply, where are you paying the most attention today for future deals?

LI: Please consult our portfolio page. Here is a name of a startup we’ve backed. Here’s another. Those are the hot areas and the hot companies. All other areas are ice-cold, overpriced, and generally over-hyped.

TC: So —

LI: Let me cut you off there to name drop Eric from Zoom, with whom I have a great relationship. Salesforce. Snowflake. On-demand pricing. Historical Twilio reference. Also have you read Recently Published Book? Someone gave me a copy and I read the dust cover. Books are good. I read them.

TC: Right. Turning to the venture capital market, how competitive is Well Known Firm these days? Other firms are offering more services in addition to capital than you are. Does that impact your win rate in competitive deals?

LI: Our firm’s services are real and impactful and accretive. Other VCs offer services but don’t deliver. You have to deliver. Delivery is key. We’re like the AWS of service delivery. Except free. We only demand the right to profit from founder success while enriching ourselves as the cost of our fine, free services.

TC: All right. Let’s talk about the exit market. We’ve seen a pretty active IPO market, and TechCrunch has heard that SPACs are getting incredibly frisky, even pinging Series B-funded companies in case they want to go public. What’s your take on that?

LI: Here’s a generic answer that doesn’t answer your question but ensures that my portfolio companies continue to receive all possible inbound in case we need to float a company that won’t make it as a venture-backed, private company. Public investors are dumb and will happily hold our bags. They are the valets of the investing world.

TC: Last question, how are returns at your firm? You’ve raised successively larger funds over the years. Is your IRR holding up as you’ve taken more capital under management?

LI: Recall that Well Known Firm invested in Very Old Company, so our returns have historically been strong. Regarding Every Deal Since Then, it’s a bit too soon to tell. But recall Very Old Company that did well. That’s how we do things at Well Known Firm.

TC: Sorry one more before we let you go. Your firm still only has male partners and nearly all of them are white. Why has progress been so slow in building a more diverse team at Well Known Firm?

LI: Sorry, I have a hard stop that started 15 second ago.

The notorious Clop ransomware operation appears to be back in business, just days after Ukrainian police arrested six alleged members of the gang.

Last week, a law enforcement operation conducted by the National Police of Ukraine along with officials from South Korea and the U.S. saw the arrest of multiple suspects believed to be linked to the Clop ransomware gang. It’s believed to be the first time a national law enforcement group carried out mass arrests involving a ransomware group.

The Ukrainian police also claimed at the time to have successfully shut down the server infrastructure used by the gang. But it doesn’t seem the operation was completely successful.

While the Clop operation fell silent following the arrests, the gang has this week published a fresh batch of confidential data which it claims to have stolen from two new victims — a farm equipment retailer and an architects office — on its dark web site, seen by TechCrunch.

If true — and neither of the alleged victims responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment — this would suggest that the ransomware gang remains active, despite last week’s first-of-its-kind law enforcement sting. This is likely because the suspects cuffed included only those who played a lesser role in the Clop operation. Cybersecurity firm Intel 471 said it believes that last week’s arrests targeted the money laundering portion of the operation, with core members of the gang not apprehended.

“We do not believe that any core actors behind Clop were apprehended,” the security company said. “The overall impact to Clop is expected to be minor although this law enforcement attention may result in the Clop brand getting abandoned as we’ve recently seen with other ransomware groups like DarkSide and Babuk.”

Clop appears to still be in business, but it remains to be seen how long the group will remain operational. Not only have law enforcement operations dealt numerous blows to ransomware groups this year, such as U.S. investigators’ recent recovery of millions in cryptocurrency they claim was paid in ransom to the Colonial Pipeline hackers, but Russia has this week confirmed it will begin to work with the U.S. to locate cybercriminals.

Russia has until now taken a hands-off approach when it comes to dealing with hackers. Reuters reported Wednesday that the head of the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov was quoted as saying it will co-operate with U.S. authorities on future cybersecurity operations.

Intel 471 previously said that it does not believe the key members of Clop were arrested in last week’s operation because “they are probably living in Russia,” which has long provided safe harbor to cybercriminals by refusing to take action.

The Clop ransomware gang was first spotted in early 2019, and the group has since been linked to a number of high-profile attacks. These include the breach of U.S. pharmaceutical giant ExecuPharm in April 2020 and the recent data breach at Accellion, which saw hackers exploit flaws in the IT provider’s software to steal data from dozens of its customers including the University of Colorado and cloud security vendor Qualys.

Video game giant Electronic Arts is continuing to make M&A moves as it looks to bulk up its presence in the mobile gaming world.

Fresh off the $2.4 billion acquisition of Glu Mobile this past April, their biggest purchase to date, Electronic Arts announced Wednesday that they are buying Warner Bros. Games’ mobile gaming studio Playdemic for $1.4 billion in an all-cash deal. The Manchester studio is best known for its release “Golf Clash” which the studio boasts has more than 80 million downloads globally.

The rather ominously-named startup is being jettisoned to its new home ahead of the $43 billion WarnerMedia-Discovery deal where the rest of the Warner Bros. Games division will live post-merger.

Electronic Arts is the second-largest Western video games company with a market cap around $40 billion. Their success has largely come from desktop and console titles including titles in their most popular franchises like Battlefield, Star Wars and Titanfall. Mobile dominance hasn’t come easy to the company which has spent much of the past decade or so trying to keep pace with competitors like Activision Blizzard which struck gold with its 2016 King acquisition. 

Electronic Arts has been on a studio buying spree as of late — in 2021 they’ve announced three major acquisitions worth some $5 billion combined.