Author: azeeadmin

Tens of thousands of students and professionals move out of India each year to pursue higher education and for work. Even after spending months in a new country, they struggle to get a credit card from local banks, and end up paying a premium to access a range of other financial services.

Banks in the U.S., or in most other countries for that matter, rely on local credit scores to determine the worthiness of potential applicants. Even if an individual had a great credit score in India, for instance, that wouldn’t hold any water for banks in a foreign land.

That was the takeaway Raghunandan G, the founder of ride-hailing firm TaxiForSure (sold to local giant Ola), returned to India with after a trip. After months of research and assembling a team, Raghunandan believes he has a solution.

On Wednesday, he announced Zolve, a neobanking platform for individuals moving from India to the U.S. (or the other way around).

The startup works with banks in the U.S. and India to provide consumers access to financial products seamlessly — without paying any premium or coughing up any security deposit.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Raghunandan said the startup underwrites the risks, which has enabled banks in foreign countries to extend their services to Zolve customers. “Consumers can open an account with us and access all banking services as if they are banking with their national bank,” he said.

As part of the announcement, Raghunandan said two-month-old Zolve has raised $15 million in a seed financing round led by Accel and Lightspeed. Blume Ventures and several high-profile angel investors, including Kunal Shah (founder of Cred), Ashish Gupta (formerly the MD of Helion), Greg Kidd (known for his investments in Twitter and Ripple), Rahul Mehta (managing partner at DST Global) and Rahul Kishore (senior managing director of Coatue Capital), also participated in the round. So did Founder Collective (which has backed Airtable and Uber), in what is its first investment in an Indian startup.

Founder Collective barrels forward, closing its fourth and newest fund with $85 million

“Individuals with financial identities in multiple geographies need seamless global financial solutions and we believe the team’s strong identification with the problem will enable them to deliver compelling and innovative financial experiences,” said Bejul Somaia, Lightspeed India Partners, in a statement.

Before starting Zolve, Raghunandan founded TaxiForSure, a ride-hailing firm, that he later sold to Ola for $200 million. Image Credits: Zolve

Raghunandan acknowledged that a handful of other startups are also attempting to solve this challenge, but he said other firms are not making use of a consumer’s credit history from their origin nation. “We are the only one who is looking at this problem in a completely different light. We are not trying to solve the problem at the destination country where consumers face the challenges. We are finding the solution in the home country itself, where the consumers already have a reputation and credit history,” he said.

Once a customer has access to a credit card and other financial services in the new nation, they can quickly broaden their local credit history, something that otherwise takes years, he said.

“The global citizen community is largely underserved in terms of access to financial services and we believe that there is a huge market opportunity for Zolve. Raghu has a proven track record as a founder and we are delighted to partner with him again, on his latest venture. The team’s passion and commitment are commendable and we are positive that Zolve will create tremendous value for this community,” said Anand Daniel, partner at Accel, in a statement.

Headquartered in San Francisco and Bangalore, Zolve offers a range of compelling features even for those who don’t plan to visit a foreign land. If you’re in India, for instance, you can use Zolve to buy shares of companies listed at U.S. exchanges. You can also buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrency from exchanges based in the U.S. or Europe, said Raghunandan.

The startup, which has already amassed more than 5,000 customers, has formed revenue-sharing arrangements with its banking partners. Raghunandan said since Zolve currently onboards customers in India and generates much of its revenue from banking partners in the U.S., it’s already operating on a profitable model.

India’s BharatPe valued at $900 million in new $108 million fundraise

Tens of thousands of students and professionals move out of India each year to pursue higher education and for work. Even after spending months in a new country, they struggle to get a credit card from local banks, and end up paying a premium to access a range of other financial services.

Banks in the U.S., or in most other countries for that matter, rely on local credit scores to determine the worthiness of potential applicants. Even if an individual had a great credit score in India, for instance, that wouldn’t hold any water for banks in a foreign land.

That was the takeaway Raghunandan G, the founder of ride-hailing firm TaxiForSure (sold to local giant Ola), returned to India with after a trip. After months of research and assembling a team, Raghunandan believes he has a solution.

On Wednesday, he announced Zolve, a neobanking platform for individuals moving from India to the U.S. (or the other way around).

The startup works with banks in the U.S. and India to provide consumers access to financial products seamlessly — without paying any premium or coughing up any security deposit.

In an interview with TechCrunch, Raghunandan said the startup underwrites the risks, which has enabled banks in foreign countries to extend their services to Zolve customers. “Consumers can open an account with us and access all banking services as if they are banking with their national bank,” he said.

As part of the announcement, Raghunandan said two-month-old Zolve has raised $15 million in a seed financing round led by Accel and Lightspeed. Blume Ventures and several high-profile angel investors, including Kunal Shah (founder of Cred), Ashish Gupta (formerly the MD of Helion), Greg Kidd (known for his investments in Twitter and Ripple), Rahul Mehta (managing partner at DST Global) and Rahul Kishore (senior managing director of Coatue Capital), also participated in the round. So did Founder Collective (which has backed Airtable and Uber), in what is its first investment in an Indian startup.

Founder Collective barrels forward, closing its fourth and newest fund with $85 million

“Individuals with financial identities in multiple geographies need seamless global financial solutions and we believe the team’s strong identification with the problem will enable them to deliver compelling and innovative financial experiences,” said Bejul Somaia, Lightspeed India Partners, in a statement.

Before starting Zolve, Raghunandan founded TaxiForSure, a ride-hailing firm, that he later sold to Ola for $200 million. Image Credits: Zolve

Raghunandan acknowledged that a handful of other startups are also attempting to solve this challenge, but he said other firms are not making use of a consumer’s credit history from their origin nation. “We are the only one who is looking at this problem in a completely different light. We are not trying to solve the problem at the destination country where consumers face the challenges. We are finding the solution in the home country itself, where the consumers already have a reputation and credit history,” he said.

Once a customer has access to a credit card and other financial services in the new nation, they can quickly broaden their local credit history, something that otherwise takes years, he said.

“The global citizen community is largely underserved in terms of access to financial services and we believe that there is a huge market opportunity for Zolve. Raghu has a proven track record as a founder and we are delighted to partner with him again, on his latest venture. The team’s passion and commitment are commendable and we are positive that Zolve will create tremendous value for this community,” said Anand Daniel, partner at Accel, in a statement.

Headquartered in San Francisco and Bangalore, Zolve offers a range of compelling features even for those who don’t plan to visit a foreign land. If you’re in India, for instance, you can use Zolve to buy shares of companies listed at U.S. exchanges. You can also buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrency from exchanges based in the U.S. or Europe, said Raghunandan.

The startup, which has already amassed more than 5,000 customers, has formed revenue-sharing arrangements with its banking partners. Raghunandan said since Zolve currently onboards customers in India and generates much of its revenue from banking partners in the U.S., it’s already operating on a profitable model.

India’s BharatPe valued at $900 million in new $108 million fundraise

A space startup connected to the International Space Station raises $130 million, Atlassian releases a new version of Trello and bitcoin briefly passes $50,000. This is your Daily Crunch for February 16, 2021.

The big story: Axiom Space raises $130M

Founded in 2016, Axiom Space is working with NASA to add privately developed space station modules to the International Space Station. It’s also the service provider for the first private astronaut launch to the ISS, scheduled for January 2022 using a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket.

Eventually, the startup hopes to create its own orbital platforms. And in his story on the funding, Darrell Etherington says Axiom is emerging as “the leading linkage between private human spaceflight and the existing infrastructure and industry.”

The tech giants

Atlassian launches a whole new Trello — Trello is one of the most popular project management tools around, and in many ways it brought digital Kanban boards to the mainstream.

TikTok hit with consumer, child safety and privacy complaints in Europe — TikTok is facing a fresh round of regulatory complaints in Europe.

Reddit’s transparency report shows a big spam problem and relatively few government requests — Volume-wise, the largest problem by far is spam.

Startups, funding and venture capital

01 Advisors, the venture firm of Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, has closed fund two with $325M — Costolo and Bain previously served as Twitter’s CEO and its chief operating officer, respectively.

Shared scooter startup Revel adds electric bike subscriptions to its business — Revel will start offering monthly electric bike subscriptions in New York.

Tencent backs digital rights startup Pex in $57M round — The startup describes its Attribution Engine as the “licensing infrastructure for the Internet.”

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Inside Rover and MoneyLion’s SPAC-led public debuts — Looking at the financial health of two companies that we’ve heard about for ages and never got to see inside of.

Four strategies for deep tech startups recruiting top growth marketers — How do deep tech companies connect and cultivate strong relationships with talented nontechnical growth people outside of their industry?

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Bitcoin briefly breaks the $50K barrier as Coinbase’s direct listing looms — The hodl-crew are having quite the moment.

Imagine a better future for social media at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice — We’ll discuss how much responsibility social networks have in the rise of toxic culture, deadly conspiracies and organized hate online.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

People who have spent time in jail or prison often face barriers to accessing stable jobs, housing and financial services. These types of barriers are a key driver of recidivism for the more than 600,000 people who are released from prison each year. Between 2005 and 2014, an estimated 68% of people released in 2005 were arrested again within three years. Within nine years, 83% of those released in 2005 were rearrested, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Justice Through Code, a semester-long coding and interpersonal skills intensive that takes place at Columbia University, aims to provide alternative paths for people once they reenter society.

Throughout the semester, students learn the fundamentals of Python and other computer science basics. They also receive career coaching, public speaking training, and learn negotiation skills and how to write a resume. Once students complete the program, Justice Through Code, which held its first cohort last year with just over 30 students, puts them in touch with its partners for paid internships and jobs.

Of the students in the first cohort who were interested in finding jobs or internships after the program, more than 80% of them were placed in relevant roles within six months, Justice Through Code founder Aedan Macdonald told TechCrunch. Antwan (pictured above) is one of the graduates who secured an internship after the program. Antwan has been interning full time at Columbia in the school’s IT department since December.

“It was just amazing that within one year of me coming across that flyer [for Justice Through Code] on Facebook, I’m actually working an internship at Columbia,” Antwan told TechCrunch. “And it’s just been tremendous. I mean, it’s been nonstop learning every single day.”

Before that, Antwan spent time at Emergent Works.

“It really gave me my first opportunity of using the theory that I learned in the program in a work setting,” Antwan said.

Justice Through Code works with a handful of tech partners to support its program and its students. Amazon Web Services, for example, provides laptops to students who need them while technologists from Google, Slack and Coursera speak to students on their experiences in tech.

AWS has yet to hire folks from the program but an AWS spokesperson says the company is excited to present opportunities to graduates.

“It’s definitely our intention to hire individuals from this program,” the spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Justice Through Code is now accepting applications for its third cohort, which Macdonald says he hopes will have a class size of up to 60 people. While Justice Through Code does not require applicants to have any prior coding experience, the program does want participants to be comfortable using computers. The application process also seeks to determine how well someone may be equipped to deal with the frustrations that come with learning how to code.

“So much of learning how to code is being in a kind of state where you don’t know everything,” Macdonald said. “And it can be highly frustrating. And so I think seeing how the process of how people work through problems [is beneficial]. We do a couple logic problems in the interview, and it’s really not a matter of does somebody have the answer to this, but we actually have questions in pairs. So if somebody struggles on one question, we’ll go through in detail how to solve that and then see what their process is of applying that same principle of logic to the subsequent question that utilizes the same principle. So … how people are responding in a learning environment, as well as kind of curiosity about the the industry and just a real drive to succeed if they’re selected to participate in the program.”

Justice Through Code is not the only program that serves folks impacted by the criminal justice system. The Last Mile teaches folks business and coding skills while incarcerated, and similarly has partnerships in place with tech companies to help returned citizens find jobs.

Macdonald, who himself spent time in prison, says he hopes Justice Through Code can help to shift “the negative stereotypes of the formerly incarcerated as not having any future beyond a minimum wage job.”

People who have spent time in jail or prison often face barriers to accessing stable jobs, housing and financial services. These types of barriers are a key driver of recidivism for the more than 600,000 people who are released from prison each year. Between 2005 and 2014, an estimated 68% of people released in 2005 were arrested again within three years. Within nine years, 83% of those released in 2005 were rearrested, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Justice Through Code, a semester-long coding and interpersonal skills intensive that takes place at Columbia University, aims to provide alternative paths for people once they reenter society.

Throughout the semester, students learn the fundamentals of Python and other computer science basics. They also receive career coaching, public speaking training, and learn negotiation skills and how to write a resume. Once students complete the program, Justice Through Code, which held its first cohort last year with just over 30 students, puts them in touch with its partners for paid internships and jobs.

Of the students in the first cohort who were interested in finding jobs or internships after the program, more than 80% of them were placed in relevant roles within six months, Justice Through Code founder Aedan Macdonald told TechCrunch. Antwan (pictured above) is one of the graduates who secured an internship after the program. Antwan has been interning full time at Columbia in the school’s IT department since December.

“It was just amazing that within one year of me coming across that flyer [for Justice Through Code] on Facebook, I’m actually working an internship at Columbia,” Antwan told TechCrunch. “And it’s just been tremendous. I mean, it’s been nonstop learning every single day.”

Before that, Antwan spent time at Emergent Works.

“It really gave me my first opportunity of using the theory that I learned in the program in a work setting,” Antwan said.

Justice Through Code works with a handful of tech partners to support its program and its students. Amazon Web Services, for example, provides laptops to students who need them while technologists from Google, Slack and Coursera speak to students on their experiences in tech.

AWS has yet to hire folks from the program but an AWS spokesperson says the company is excited to present opportunities to graduates.

“It’s definitely our intention to hire individuals from this program,” the spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Justice Through Code is now accepting applications for its third cohort, which Macdonald says he hopes will have a class size of up to 60 people. While Justice Through Code does not require applicants to have any prior coding experience, the program does want participants to be comfortable using computers. The application process also seeks to determine how well someone may be equipped to deal with the frustrations that come with learning how to code.

“So much of learning how to code is being in a kind of state where you don’t know everything,” Macdonald said. “And it can be highly frustrating. And so I think seeing how the process of how people work through problems [is beneficial]. We do a couple logic problems in the interview, and it’s really not a matter of does somebody have the answer to this, but we actually have questions in pairs. So if somebody struggles on one question, we’ll go through in detail how to solve that and then see what their process is of applying that same principle of logic to the subsequent question that utilizes the same principle. So … how people are responding in a learning environment, as well as kind of curiosity about the the industry and just a real drive to succeed if they’re selected to participate in the program.”

Justice Through Code is not the only program that serves folks impacted by the criminal justice system. The Last Mile teaches folks business and coding skills while incarcerated, and similarly has partnerships in place with tech companies to help returned citizens find jobs.

Macdonald, who himself spent time in prison, says he hopes Justice Through Code can help to shift “the negative stereotypes of the formerly incarcerated as not having any future beyond a minimum wage job.”

Reddit has published its transparency report for 2020, showing various numbers relating to removed content, government requests and other administrative actions. The largest problem by far — in terms of volume, anyway — is spam, which made up nearly all content taken down. Legal requests for content takedown and user information were far fewer, but not trivial, in number.

The full report is quite readable, but a bit long; the main points to understand are summarized below.

Of nearly 3.4 billion pieces of content created on Reddit (which is to say posts, comments, hosted images, etc.), 233 million were removed. These numbers are both up by 20%-30% from 2019. Of those 233 million, 131 million were “proactive” removals by the AutoMod system and 13.6 million were removed after user reports by subreddit moderators.

The remaining 85 million were taken down by Reddit admins; 99.76% of these were spam or “content manipulation” like brigading and astroturfing, with around 50,000 each of harassment, hate and sexualization of minors, smaller amounts of violent speech, doxing and so on.

Image Credits: Reddit

82,858 subreddits were removed, nearly four times more than 2019. The majority of these were for lack of moderation, followed by hate, harassment and ban evasion (e.g., r/bannedsub starts r/bannedsub2).

When it came to removing comments, hate, violence and harassment were much more prevalent. And 92% of private messages removed (of about 25,000 total) were for harassment.

Outside of spam and content manipulation, hate speech resulted in far more bans than any other infraction; more accounts were permanently banned for hate in 2020 than for all causes combined in 2019. (But far fewer for content violations than for spam and ban evasion.)

Government requests to remove content were relatively few. Overall Reddit received a couple hundred requests covering about 5,000 pieces of content or subreddits. For example, 753 subreddits had their access restricted to Pakistani users due to anti-obscenity laws there.

Requests from individuals or companies to remove things numbered in the hundreds, and copyright takedown notices asked for about half a million pieces of content to be removed (375,774 were), more than twice 2019’s. Only a handful of DMCA counter-notices were received.

Law enforcement came to Reddit 611 times for user information, up 50% from last year, and the company granted 424 of those requests. These are mostly subpoenas, court orders and search warrants. Since Reddit isn’t really a social network and accounts can be essentially anonymous or throwaway, it’s hard to say what level of disclosure this actually represents. Emergency disclosure requests numbered about 300 and were mostly complied with — these are supposedly life-or-death situations in which a Reddit account is concerned.

Lastly Reddit received somewhere between 0 and 249 secret requests for data, targeting somewhere between 0 and 249 users, same as last year. Sadly, federal law prohibits them from saying any more than this regarding FISA orders and National Security Letters.

Overall the picture painted of Reddit in 2020 is of a growing community plagued by spam and inauthentic activity, plus a significant and growing contingent of hate, harassment and other prohibited content (though last year was surely an exceptional one for this). Lacking much fundamental access to or use of personally identifiable data, Reddit isn’t much of a target for three-letter agencies and law enforcement. And with “free speech”-focused alternatives to Reddit and other platforms popping up, it’s likely that the hate and harassment that were deplatformed will roost elsewhere in 2021.

Reddit has published its transparency report for 2020, showing various numbers relating to removed content, government requests and other administrative actions. The largest problem by far — in terms of volume, anyway — is spam, which made up nearly all content taken down. Legal requests for content takedown and user information were far fewer, but not trivial, in number.

The full report is quite readable, but a bit long; the main points to understand are summarized below.

Of nearly 3.4 billion pieces of content created on Reddit (which is to say posts, comments, hosted images, etc.), 233 million were removed. These numbers are both up by 20%-30% from 2019. Of those 233 million, 131 million were “proactive” removals by the AutoMod system and 13.6 million were removed after user reports by subreddit moderators.

The remaining 85 million were taken down by Reddit admins; 99.76% of these were spam or “content manipulation” like brigading and astroturfing, with around 50,000 each of harassment, hate and sexualization of minors, smaller amounts of violent speech, doxing and so on.

Image Credits: Reddit

82,858 subreddits were removed, nearly four times more than 2019. The majority of these were for lack of moderation, followed by hate, harassment and ban evasion (e.g., r/bannedsub starts r/bannedsub2).

When it came to removing comments, hate, violence and harassment were much more prevalent. And 92% of private messages removed (of about 25,000 total) were for harassment.

Outside of spam and content manipulation, hate speech resulted in far more bans than any other infraction; more accounts were permanently banned for hate in 2020 than for all causes combined in 2019. (But far fewer for content violations than for spam and ban evasion.)

Government requests to remove content were relatively few. Overall Reddit received a couple hundred requests covering about 5,000 pieces of content or subreddits. For example, 753 subreddits had their access restricted to Pakistani users due to anti-obscenity laws there.

Requests from individuals or companies to remove things numbered in the hundreds, and copyright takedown notices asked for about half a million pieces of content to be removed (375,774 were), more than twice 2019’s. Only a handful of DMCA counter-notices were received.

Law enforcement came to Reddit 611 times for user information, up 50% from last year, and the company granted 424 of those requests. These are mostly subpoenas, court orders and search warrants. Since Reddit isn’t really a social network and accounts can be essentially anonymous or throwaway, it’s hard to say what level of disclosure this actually represents. Emergency disclosure requests numbered about 300 and were mostly complied with — these are supposedly life-or-death situations in which a Reddit account is concerned.

Lastly Reddit received somewhere between 0 and 249 secret requests for data, targeting somewhere between 0 and 249 users, same as last year. Sadly, federal law prohibits them from saying any more than this regarding FISA orders and National Security Letters.

Overall the picture painted of Reddit in 2020 is of a growing community plagued by spam and inauthentic activity, plus a significant and growing contingent of hate, harassment and other prohibited content (though last year was surely an exceptional one for this). Lacking much fundamental access to or use of personally identifiable data, Reddit isn’t much of a target for three-letter agencies and law enforcement. And with “free speech”-focused alternatives to Reddit and other platforms popping up, it’s likely that the hate and harassment that were deplatformed will roost elsewhere in 2021.

Toxic culture, deadly conspiracies and organized hate have exploded online in recent years. We’ll discuss how much responsibility social networks have in the rise of these phenomena and how to build healthy online communities that make society better, not worse at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3.

Join us for a wide-ranging discussion with Rashad Robinson, Jesse Lehrich and Naj Austin that explores what needs to change to make social networks more just, healthy environments rather than dangerous echo chambers that amplify society’s ills.

Naj Austin is the founder and CEO of Somewhere Good and Ethel’s Club. She has spent her career building digital and physical products that make the world a more intersectional and equitable space. She was named one of Inc. magazine’s 100 Female Founders transforming America, a HuffPost Culture Shifter of 2020 and Time Out New York’s 2020 list of women making NYC better.

Jesse Lehrich is a co-founder of Accountable Tech. He has a decade of experience in political communications and issue advocacy, including serving as the foreign policy spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, where he was part of the team managing the response to Russia’s information warfare operation.

Rashad Robinson is the president of Color Of Change, a leading racial justice organization driven by more than 7.2 million members who are building power for Black communities. Color Of Change uses innovative strategies to bring about systemic change in the industries that affect Black people’s lives: Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, Washington, corporate board rooms, local prosecutor offices, state capitol buildings and city halls around the country.

Under Rashad’s leadership, Color Of Change designs and implements winning strategies for racial justice, among them: forcing corporations to stop supporting Trump initiatives and white nationalists; framing net neutrality as a civil rights issue; holding local prosecutors accountable to end mass incarceration, police violence and financial exploitation across the justice system; forcing over 100 corporations to abandon ALEC, the secretive right-wing policy shop; changing representations of race and racism in Hollywood; moving Airbnb, Google and Facebook to implement anti-racist initiatives; and forcing Bill O’Reilly off the air.

Be sure to join us for this conversation and much more at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3.

Toxic culture, deadly conspiracies and organized hate have exploded online in recent years. We’ll discuss how much responsibility social networks have in the rise of these phenomena and how to build healthy online communities that make society better, not worse at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3.

Join us for a wide-ranging discussion with Rashad Robinson, Jesse Lehrich and Naj Austin that explores what needs to change to make social networks more just, healthy environments rather than dangerous echo chambers that amplify society’s ills.

Naj Austin is the founder and CEO of Somewhere Good and Ethel’s Club. She has spent her career building digital and physical products that make the world a more intersectional and equitable space. She was named one of Inc. magazine’s 100 Female Founders transforming America, a HuffPost Culture Shifter of 2020 and Time Out New York’s 2020 list of women making NYC better.

Jesse Lehrich is a co-founder of Accountable Tech. He has a decade of experience in political communications and issue advocacy, including serving as the foreign policy spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, where he was part of the team managing the response to Russia’s information warfare operation.

Rashad Robinson is the president of Color Of Change, a leading racial justice organization driven by more than 7.2 million members who are building power for Black communities. Color Of Change uses innovative strategies to bring about systemic change in the industries that affect Black people’s lives: Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Hollywood, Washington, corporate board rooms, local prosecutor offices, state capitol buildings and city halls around the country.

Under Rashad’s leadership, Color Of Change designs and implements winning strategies for racial justice, among them: forcing corporations to stop supporting Trump initiatives and white nationalists; framing net neutrality as a civil rights issue; holding local prosecutors accountable to end mass incarceration, police violence and financial exploitation across the justice system; forcing over 100 corporations to abandon ALEC, the secretive right-wing policy shop; changing representations of race and racism in Hollywood; moving Airbnb, Google and Facebook to implement anti-racist initiatives; and forcing Bill O’Reilly off the air.

Be sure to join us for this conversation and much more at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3.

Reentering society after having been incarcerated by the criminal justice system can be daunting. Advances in technology and the continued, unchecked march of capitalism place obstacles in paths that can generally be difficult to overcome.

Fortunately for these returning citizens there are a variety of programs and resources designed to help get them up to speed. One such organization, The Last Mile, aims to help incarcerated folks learn skills so that they have a shot to get jobs after they reenter society. Some companies, like Slack, have committed to hiring returned citizens.

At TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3, we’ll examine the importance of opportunities for returning citizens upon release from incarceration with a panel of people working in this important transition space. Joining us for the virtual discussion will be Aly Tamboura, strategic advisor at the newly formed Justice Accelerator Fund; Jason Jones, remote instruction manager for The Last Mile; and Deepti Rohatgi, head of Slack for Good and Public Affairs.

Aly Tamboura graduated from The Last Mile program while at San Quentin. Until recently, Tamboura was a manager in the Criminal Justice Reform Program at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, where he helped to guide the organization toward one of its stated goals, to reform the American criminal justice system. Just last week, the Justice Accelerator Fund announced that Tamboura joined the grant-making organization as its first strategic advisor. Tamboura will work alongside Founder and Executive Director Ana Zamora to “operationalize the fund and launch its first grant-making strategy later this year.”

Jason Jones also graduated from The Last Mile in 2018. Upon his release from San Quentin, he joined the organization as its remote instruction manager. He is a web developer and volunteers at West Oakland’s McClymonds High School teaching coding.

Slack decided to build its own take on programs like The Last Mile with Next Chapter, which helps train up formerly incarcerated individuals for jobs in tech and has hired a few itself. Deepti Rohatgi leads Slack for Good, which developed the program, though other companies have signed on to give it a try.

Join us on March 3 at TC Sessions: Justice to hear from Tamboura, Jones and Rohatgi about how the ability to start from a place of strength can help set folks up for success, as well as what the tech industry can do to help foster this environment. You can get your $5 ticket here.