Author: azeeadmin

In hindsight, Dayna Grayson and Rachel Holt didn’t have the best timing. It was late in 2019 when the two, both Washingtonians who met six years ago through a mutual acquaintance, decided to act on earlier conversations and start a fund together.

At the time, Grayson spied an opportunity to create a new venture brand that focused largely on the types of manufacturing-related deals that she was funding inside of the investing giant, NEA, which she joined in 2012.

Holt, who’d joined Uber in 2011, rising from a city general manager in Washington to the eventual head of the company’s mobility unit in 2018, was also ready for a change and excited about the prospect of investing full time, having been brought into NEA by Grayson to scout out nascent deals on the side.

“Of course, we didn’t expect COVID,” Holt says now. Still, it didn’t stop them from moving forward with fundraising and, in the process, securing $140 million in capital commitments from what Holt describes as “the typical kind of institutional LP base, including endowments, foundations,” and also some peers, including Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, Josh Kopelman of First Round, and Grayson’s former NEA colleague, Scott Sandell.

In fact, Construct, which is focused primarily on five themes —  decentralized manufacturing, supply chain visibility, automation, transportation and mobility — is already actively writing checks, including investments in Chef Robotics, a startup focused on assembling food at high throughput and Copia, a food waste management platform that connects businesses that have leftover food with organizations that feed the hungry.

To get a better sense of the types of startups that might be ideal for the firm, we talked earlier with the pair, who recently signed a lease (Construct also has two junior investors) but who were working together today from Grayson’s home. Parts of that conversation follow, edited lightly for length and clarity.

TC: Rachel, what startups did you identify for NEA and how do they fit into your point of view as an investor?

RH: I was always attracted to business solving real-world problems, so among the investments [I made as a scout for] NEA is an auto-refinancing company called MotoRefi because that was a problem I saw firsthand, talking with Uber drivers. I’m still on the board of that company.

But Dana and I have both been attracted to what we called foundational industries. I saw [opportunities] on the transportation side, on the supply chain side on the logistics side [at Uber]. When we were running Jump [as part of the mobility unit of Uber], we were building an e-bike, which is actually a pretty complicated piece of equipment to pull together, and you would see that something had left a factory in China, then you would lose track of it for five weeks, then you would see that it entered a port in the U.S., and then you would lose track of it again and I knew there had to be a better way . . . and I think COVID only highlights the urgency around some of the cracks in the system.

TC: Right. I think we’ve all been stunned by the supply chain issues as they related to the vaccines and PPE, certainly. Are you focused on global supply chain opportunities or just domestically?

DG: We’re primarily focused domestically. We will do investments in Canada and occasionally in Europe. We would [invest in] Asia without some more dedicated personnel there, and that’s not in the scope right now.

What we’ve seen in COVID is just a huge acceleration of consumer demand, so if you’re a brand or an e-tailor and you were planning all these upgrades to meet that demand two years from now, that’s happening today, so it’s really put a crunch on the system. Companies like [the e-commerce optimization startup] Tradeswell, brings data visibility across the supply chain, from where sales are happening online to how they’re being fulfilled in inventory. That’s something that analysts and agencies could help you do, but when you’re looking at just the crunch of having to have that real time urgency and information at your fingertips, you can’t wait for human intervention anymore. You have to you have to automate.

TC: You invested in Tradeswell’s seed round and its Series A. Will that be typical going forward? Relatedly, what size checks will you be writing and how much ownership will you be targeting when you invest in a company?

RH: Our typical size is $2 million to $6 million checks. We like to lead those those rounds, but they can be part of a round that goes up to, say, $12 million.

DG: As for ownership, something is reasonable is close to 15%. We’re not going to have a huge portfolio. Every company really matters to the fund I think something, you know, reasonable sort of is close to 15% as we can. I mean, we’d like to be. I think the point that we like to emphasize is that we’re not gonna have a huge portfolio. Every company really matters to the fund, every company receives dedicated time and attention from us, there isn’t a cookie cutter approach where if you work with Construct, you get X. It depends on the entrepreneur and what they need.

TC: How important are board seats to you both?

RH: What’s more important to us is meeting the company where they are and understanding what does the entrepreneur need and how can we add value.

TC: You’re in Washington. As investors who focus on what you do, is there any special advantage to being there?

DG: We’re investing nationally. If we find great projects here, we’d love to be involved with them, but of our first investments, two are in the Bay Area and two are on the East Coast.

RH: Dana [had been operating remotely at times before COVID] and I was running teams in the U.S and Canada [at Uber]. We don’t have a backyard bias.

TC: So you’re likely to do more remotely, even after the world returns to normal.

DG: I definitely think some things are here to stay, and that it’s great for founders. Their ability to engage investors over Zoom, whether they’re down the street or across the globe, is really in their interest and I’m glad to see a more efficient fundraise happen for a lot of them.

RH: I think for entrepreneurs, trying to find the best fit for what they are building, versus just who is the person they know because they run into them at the gym, is a big net positive [to come out of this whole thing]. It also enables them to build companies in the place where they’re best-suited to build the company, rather than indexing for where they’ll be seen from a funding perspective.

For a fuller look at what the team is building, you can check out their blog post here.

Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin may be good for Elon Musk, but it’s definitely risky for the company that made him the world’s richest man, according to investors, analysts and money managers at some of the country’s largest banks.

As a standard bearer for the consumer electric vehicle industry and the broader climate tech movement rallying around it, Tesla’s bet to go all in on crypto could damage its climate bonafides and its reputation with customers even as other automakers pour in to the EV market.

Given Bitcoin’s current environmental footprint, the deal flies in the face of Tesla’s purported interest in moving the world to cleaner sources of energy and commerce.

Until the energy grid decarbonizes in places like Russia and China, mining bitcoin remains a pretty dirty business (from an energy perspective), according to some energy investors who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about Musk’s plans.

“We were talking about people doing this in Russia back in 2018 and how they were tapping coal power to run their mining operations,” one investor said. “The cost per transaction from an energy intensity standpoint has only gotten more intense. I don’t see how those things coalesce, climate and crypto.”

The stake makes Tesla one of the largest corporate hodlers of Bitcoin but represents a massive portion of the company’s $19 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand.

“Given the size of their treasury it feels irresponsible, IMO,” wrote one investor whose firm backed Tesla from its earliest days. The company’s move could be seen as another example of the absurdity of U.S. capital markets in today’s investment climate — and the underlying cynicism of some of its biggest beneficiaries.

Industry observers on Wall Street also criticized the company’s big bet on Bitcoin.

“Tesla buying $1.5 billion in BTC is interesting. Am assuming they haven’t hedged it, so they will either be cash rich in the future or have a hole in the balance sheet. Elon Musk stays wild,” wrote one capital planning executive at a major Wall Street bank who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the press. “[It’s] not dissimilar from a large company throwing cash into a wildly volatile emerging market currency.”

Still, in the short term, the deal is showing dividends. The price of Bitcoin has risen nearly $8,000, or 18.73%, over the course of the day since Tesla made its announcement. The question is whether any regulator will step in to punish Musk and Tesla.

Musk has been tweeting his support for Bitcoin and other, more arcane (or useless) cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin for the past several weeks, in what seems to be a violation of his agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The world’s richest man has previously been fined by regulatory agencies for his tweeting habits. Back in 2018, the SEC charged Musk with fraud for tweets about privatizing the electric vehicle company at $420 per share.

“Bitcoin jumped over 15% to a new high of $44,000 on Monday. This sort of hype-based price power should be worrying to investors and consumers alike – especially if this is to be used as medium of exchange,” wrote GlobalData analyst Danyaal Rashid, Head of Thematic Research at GlobalData.

“If Elon Musk can help dictate the price of this asset with a tweet or large order, the same could happen to send the price back down. The task of purchasing a vehicle should not be speculative. Consumers who may have thought of buying bitcoin to use as a substitute for fiat – could very easily end up with more or less than they bargained for.”

Cynthia Perry, a former manager at Salesforce who left earlier this month, posted her resignation letter on LinkedIn that detailed her negative treatment at the company, Protocol first reported. In it, Perry, a Black woman, alleges she experienced “countless microaggressions and inequity” during her time there.

Ultimately, Perry said she left her job because she had been “Gaslit, manipulated, bullied, neglected, and mostly unsupported” by folks she chose not to name.

“Salesforce, for me, is not a safe place to come to work,” she wrote. “It’s not a place where I can be my full self. It’s not a place where I have been invested in. It’s not a place full of opportunity. It’s not a place of Equality for All. It’s not a place where well-being matters.”

Salesforce has long been vocal about the importance of equality. In 2016, Salesforce named Tony Prophet as its first-ever chief equality officer. That came about a year after Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said its major diversity focus was “the women’s issue.”

Salesforce was one of the many companies that came out in support of the Black people in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.

“Now more than ever we must support one another as allies and speak up for justice and equality,” the company said in a tweet.

But companywide, Salesforce is just 3.4% Black in the U.S. while its leadership team is only 2.3% Black, according to its November 2020 diversity report.

Perry is the latest Black female tech worker to speak out about her negative experience at a tech company. Last year, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks came forward with allegations of racial and gender discrimination at Pinterest. Then, Dr. Timnit Gebru said she was fired for speaking out about diversity issues in artificial intelligence at Google. That was shortly before Google former diversity recruiter April Curley alleged Google fired her for calling the company out “on their racist bullshit.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Salesforce and will update this story if we hear back.

DoorDash acquires a salad-making robotics startup, Twitter confirms subscription plans and Tesla makes a big bet on bitcoin. This is your Daily Crunch for February 8, 2021.

The big story: DoorDash acquires Chowbotics

DoorDash has acquired the Bay Area startup behind Sally, a salad-making, vending machine-style robot that added contactless ordering last fall.

DoorDash says the acquisition will “improve consumer access to fresh and safe meals, and enhance our robust merchant offerings and logistics platform,” though it isn’t getting specific about how it plans to use Chowbotics’ tech in its delivery platform.

This continues exploratory work that DoorDash has done with robotics, for example with Starship Technologies to test delivery robots.

The tech giants

Twitter confirms plans to experiment with new models, like subscriptions, in 2021— The company confirmed that it’s researching and experimenting with new models, but declined to provide details.

Tesla buys $1.5B in bitcoin, may accept the cryptocurrency as payment in the future — As the news broke, the price of bitcoin instantly rose by around 7% to more than $40,000 per coin.

Amazon warehouse workers to begin historic vote to unionize — On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board rejected Amazon’s attempt to delay a union vote set to begin today.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Clubhouse is now blocked in China after a brief uncensored period — Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening.

WeWork is apparently doing better, not that SoftBank wants you to talk about that — Buried in the footnotes of SoftBank’s earnings report today is some good news related to WeWork.

Automattic acquires analytics company Parse.ly — Parse.ly is now part of WPVIP, the organization within Automattic that offers enterprise hosting and support to publishers and marketers, including TechCrunch.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Oscar Health’s IPO filing will test the venture-backed insurance model — While Oscar has shown a strong ability to raise private funds and scale revenues, it’s a deeply unprofitable enterprise.

Container security acquisitions increase as companies accelerate shift to cloud — Why is there so much M&A action now?

Two $50M-ish ARR companies talk growth and plans for the coming quarters — In this installment of Alex Wilhelm’s series, we look at SimpleNexus and PicsArt.

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

Everything else

Silenced No More Act seeks to ban use of NDAs in situations involving harassment or discrimination — This proposed bill would expand the protections workers currently have through the Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act, which went into effect in 2019.

MIT is building a ‘one-stop shop’ for 3D-printing robots — The university’s CSAIL department showcased “LaserFactory,” a new project that attempts to develop robotics, drones and other machines than can be fabricated as part of a one-stop shop.

Hasselblad X1D II 50C: out of the studio and into the streets — We took the $10,000 camera kit out for a socially distanced spin.

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.

Vaccine misinformation has been around since well before the pandemic, but ensuring that anti-scientific conspiracies don’t get boosted online is more crucial than ever as the world races against the spread of a deadly, changing virus.

Now, Facebook says it will expand the criteria it uses to take down false vaccine claims. Under the new rules, which Facebook said it made in consultation with groups like the World Health Organization, the company will remove posts claiming that COVID-19 vaccines aren’t effective, that it’s “safer to get the disease” and the widely debunked longstanding anti-vaxxer claim that vaccines could cause autism.

Facebook says it will place a “particular focus” on enforcement against groups, Pages, groups and accounts that break the rules, noting that they may be removed from the platform outright.

Facebook took steps to limit COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in December, preparing the platform for the vaccine rollout while still lagging well behind the rampant spread of anti-vaccine claims. The company began removing posts containing some misinformation about the vaccine, including “false claims that COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips” and content claiming that the vaccine is being tested on portions of the population without their consent.

Why this kind of stuff didn’t already fall under Facebook’s rules against COVID-19 misinformation is anyone’s guess. The company came out of the gate early in the pandemic with a new set of policies intended to prevent an explosion of potentially deadly COVID-related conspiracies, but time and time again the company fails to evenly and firmly enforce its own rules.

Income-share agreements or ISAs have been gathering force as an alternative financial model for students, particularly at non-traditional schools like coding boot camps and trade schools. We’ve done some pretty deep dives into the space over the years in terms of how these loan products incentivize students and colleges to work together for better professional outcomes. Given their novelty though, one of the largest barriers to wide adoption remains the lack of capital for these models.

That’s starting to change, and companies like Blair are leading the charge.

Blair told TechCrunch that it has raised $100 million in a new debt facility to fund what it is dubbing “Blair Capital” to fund ISAs at partner institutions. The money came from an undisclosed investor, which was described by Blair CEO Mike Mahlkow as an “institutional capital partner with more than $10 billion under management.”

My colleague Mike Butcher first profiled Blair when it was coming out of YC back in summer 2019. When Blair first got started by co-founders Mahlkow, Constantin Schreiber, and David Nordhausen, it was focused exclusively on the direct-to-consumer market for ISAs. The idea was that students would go to Blair and secure an ISA with a set amount of upfront cash to cover tuition and cost of living, and then choose a school to attend. Underwriting was based on the future income potential of the student.

Blair’s technology platform allowed it to service ISAs for students, such as collecting their payments, tracking their requirements, and giving them updates on their remaining terms. But to really scale up the platform, Blair needed capital to actually underwrite ISAs and increase loan volumes on its platform.

So it looked to raise a debt facility — and then COVID-19 hit. “It was very, very, difficult to raise any kind of debt capital for direct-to-consumer ISAs,” Mahlkow explained in the milieu of a pandemic. But, “we got a lot of inbound demand from education institutions,” and particularly from alternative schools like coding boot camps.

Blair’s team. Photo via Blair.

So Blair rejiggered its platform (now dubbed Blair Servicing) away from D2C lending to being a technology servicing layer for schools offering ISAs as part of their programs. From there, it constructed Blair Capital, this new $100 million facility which can be used by its partner schools to fund their own ISA programs. That means these schools won’t have to raise their own debt capital for their ISAs if they don’t want to.

Unlike Blair’s original approach focused on consumers, underwriting for ISAs is now based on the quality of an individual school, and even more specifically an individual program. So rather than underwriting a person, Blair knows that certain programs have a given return profiles and can underwrite terms of the ISA to fit that risk.

Terms can vary widely between programs. Mahlkow explained that the company more or less has merely floors and ceilings on terms but otherwise is flexible. For instance, the company won’t do income shares above 20% (and often gets queasy even going near that number), and there are repayment caps and limits on repayment time periods as well, with most ISAs it offers being between 1-2 years or a maximum of three years.

Alternative schools with track records of student achievement can use Blair Capital right away. For newer schools without the same operating history, Blair will help guide those schools to build the early track record they need so that the company can underwrite their ISAs in the future. Either way, all schools can use Blair Servicing to handle their loans.

The school dashboard within Blair Servicing. Photo via Blair.

Blair Servicing takes a percentage fee of the money that flows back from an ISA after graduation, while Blair Capital takes an origination fee plus joins in the upside of the ISA itself. The goal is to incentive-align the loans for all parties involved.

The company, which is based in SF, remains lean at six employees. With $100 million capital to fund ISAs though, it hopes to have an outsized impact on this burgeoning industry.

Micro-mobility startup Helbiz, which now operates across Europe and the USA, is merging with a special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”) to become a publicly listed company, giving it a war-chest to potentially roll-up smaller competitors in the space, as well as the resources to expand into ‘cloud’ or ‘ghost’ kitchens as part of a move into food delivery.

Helbiz intends to merge with GreenVision Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: GRNV), in the second quarter of 2021. The combined entity will be named Helbiz Inc. and will be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the new ticker symbol, “HLBZ.”

The transaction includes $30 million PIPE anchored by institutional investors and approximately $80 million in net proceeds will be fed into Helbiz’s micro-mobility and advertising businesses, which have 2.7 million users.

Helbiz says the merged entity will have a valuation of $408 million, and by run Helbiz’s existing management under CEO Salvatore Palella.

Palella said: “Through this transaction, we’re committed to fulfilling our vision in revolutionizing transport by using micro-mobility to become a seamless last-mile solution.”

He further revealed to me that the company plans to establish ‘ghost Kitchens’ in Milan and Washington DC later this year, with the aim of introducing a 5 minute delivery time.

Helbiz has tried to differentiate itself from other players like Lime and Bird by offering e-scooters, e-bicycles, and e-mopeds all on one platform.

Key to Helbiz’s offering is an integrated geofencing platform that tends to appeal to city authorities who don’t want scooters left in random places, as well as a swappable battery that enables easier charging of the devices. Its subscription service allows users to take unlimited 30-minute trips on its e-bikes and e-scooters every month.

In Italy, the company currently operates a fleet of e-scooters and e-bicycles in Milan, Turin, Verona, Rome, Madrid, Belgrade, and in the US it operates in in Washington, DC, Alexandria, Arlington and Miami.

David Fu, Chairman, and CEO of GreenVision, commented: “Helbiz has distinguished itself as the only company to offer e-scooters, e-bicycles, and e-mopeds all on one user-friendly platform… Helbiz has a proven and capital-light business model that combines hardware, software, and services with extensive customer relationships.”

Unless you’ve got someone’s Amazon Wish List, gift giving today can still be fairly difficult. You don’t necessarily know a friend or family member’s shipping address, their sizes or their particular tastes, at times. A new startup called Goody, backed by a recent $4 million fundraise, wants to help. Through its newly launched mobile gifting app, Goody lets you celebrate your friends, family and other loved ones with a gift or, soon, even just an “IOU” that lets them know you’re thinking of them.

To do so, you first download the Goody mobile app for iOS or Android, then browse across the hundreds of brands and products it offers. You also can filter these by occasion, like birthdays or holidays, or by a specific need, such as gifts to say congratulations or get well.

Image Credits: Goody

When you find a gift you like, you just enter the recipient’s phone number. Goody then sends a text that lets the recipient know that you’ve sent them something. The recipient clicks the link to accept the gift, which opens a website where they can see what you’ve selected, while also customizing any specific options — like their clothing size, color preferences or what flavor of cupcakes they’d like, for example.

Here, they also provide their shipping address, and the gift is sent. Afterwards, they can choose to send a thank you note, as well.

What makes this experience work is that — unlike some gifting startups in the past — Goody doesn’t require the recipient to download an app, nor do you need to know anything other than a phone number of the person you want to send a gift to.

Image Credits: Goody

The idea for Goody comes from co-founder and serial entrepreneur and startup investor Edward Lando, whose prior company, YC-backed GovPredict, was recently acquired. He was also the first investor in Misfits Market, serves on the board at Atom Finance and is a managing partner at Pareto Holdings, based in Miami, where Lando now lives.

Joining him on Goody are Even.com tech lead Mark Bao and Lee Linden, who notably sold his prior gifting startup Karma Gifts to Facebook back in 2012.

Lando says he was interested in working on the idea because he loves to send gifts, but thinks there’s a lot of friction involved with the process as it stands today. Meanwhile, gifts that are easier to send, like gift cards, can lack a personal touch.

“The most important thing for us is for Goody to feel highly personal,” Lando explains. “If someone sends you something through Goody [it should feel like], wow, they really thought about me — they picked out something for me. We don’t want it to feel like someone is just sending you a dollar value,” he says.

The mobile app launched in mid-December and now works with a couple dozen brand partners. Many of these are in the direct-to-consumer space or are otherwise emerging companies, like non-alcoholic aperitif Ghia, workout experience The Class, pet company Fable, wellness company Moon Juice, Raaka Chocolate and others.

Image Credits: Goody

Goody’s model involves a revenue share with its partners, where its cut increases the more sales its makes on the partner’s behalf.

Brands are interested in working with Goody, Lando explains, because it can help them acquire new customers with little effort on their part.

“There’s so many direct-to-consumer brands these days — thousands of them — selling online — coffee, chocolate, all these cool things,” Lando says. “And for now, their only way of getting discovered is buying ads on Facebook. We’re another way for people to discover them. We’re like a giant shopping mall for people to discover these things,” he adds.

The app, however, wants to be useful to those who also just want to stay in touch with friends and family. On this front, it’s rolling out free gifts this week called “IOUs,” for telling someone you’re thinking of them — for example, by saying something like “I owe you dinner next time I’m in town” or sharing some other more symbolic gift.

The app will also later integrate a calendar that will help you track important occasions, like birthdays and other major life events.

Goody was founded in March 2020 and the app launched in mid-December of the same year. So far, around 10,000 gifts have been sent using its service, Lando says.

In addition to the holiday season, of course, the pandemic may have played a role in Goody’s early traction.

“I think the pandemic has been a big problem for everyone. And one of the things that people frankly don’t talk about enough, in my opinion, is the psychological toll the pandemic is taking on everyone…we are all creatures that enjoy social interaction. It feels good to see other people — especially the people you care about. And when you don’t, it really drains you of energy,” Lando says.

“This is obviously not the same as seeing people in person, but I do think that Goody is a nice injection of warmth and positivity…Everyone who uses it says they feel good after using it, which I think is rare,” Lando notes.

Image Credits: Goody ad in NYC

The startup, meanwhile, has raised a little more than $4 million in early funding from investors including Quiet Capital, Index Ventures, Pareto Holdings, Third Kind Venture Capital, Craft Ventures and the founders of Coinbase (Fred Ehrsam) and Quora (Charlie Cheever), among others.

Goody is a team of nine full-time employees, based in Miami and elsewhere, working remotely. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, the company snagged a spot on a Times Square billboard to advertise its app, in the hopes of gaining new users during one of the bigger gifting holidays of the year.

The app is available as a free download on the App Store and Google Play.

Late Friday, Oscar Health filed to go public, adding another company to today’s burgeoning IPO market. The New York-based health insurance unicorn has raised well north of $1 billion during its life, making its public debut a critical event for a host of investors.

Oscar Health lists a placeholder raise value of $100 million in its IPO filing, providing only directional guidance that its public offering will raise nine figures of capital.

The eight-year-old company, launched to capitalize on the sweeping health insurance reforms passed under the administration of President Barack Obama offers insurance products to individuals, families and small businesses. The company claimed 529,000 “members” as of January 31, 2021. Oscar Health touts that number as indicative of its success, with its growth since January 31 2017 “representing a compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 59%.”

However, while Oscar has shown a strong ability to raise private funds and scale the revenues of its neoinsurance business, like many insurance-focused startups that TechCrunch has covered in recent years, it’s a deeply unprofitable enterprise.

Inside Oscar Health

To understand Oscar Health we have to dig a bit into insurance terminology, but it’ll be as painless as we can manage. So, how did the company perform in 2020? Here are its 2020 metrics, and their 2019 comps:

• Total premiums earned: $1.67 billion (+61% from $1.04 billion).
• Premiums ceded to reinsurers: $1.22 billion (+113%, from $572.3 million).
• Net premium earned: $455 million (-3% from $468.9 million).
• Total revenue: $462.8 million (-5% from $488.2 million).
• Total insurance costs: $525.9 million (-8.7% from $576.1 million).
• Total operating expenses: $865.1 million (+16% from $747.6 million).
• Operating loss: $402.3 million (+56% from $259.4 million).

Let’s walk through the numbers together. Oscar Health did a great job raising its total premium volume in 2020, or, in simpler terms, it sold way more insurance last year than it did in 2019. But it also ceded a lot more premium to reinsurance companies in 2020 than it did in 2019. So what? Ceding premiums is contra-revenue, but can serve to boost overall insurance margins.

As we can see in the net premium earned line, Oscar’s totals fell in 2020 compared to 2019 thanks to greatly expanded premium ceding. Indeed, its total revenue fell in 2020 compared to 2019 thanks to that effort. But the premium ceding seems to be working for the company, as its total insurance costs (our addition of its claims line item and “other insurance costs” category) fell from 2020 to 2019, despite selling far more insurance last year.

Sadly, all that work did not mean that the company’s total operating expenses fell. They did not, rising 16% or so in 2020 compared to 2019. And as we all know, more operating costs and fewer revenues mean that operating losses rose, and they did.

Oscar Health’s net losses track closely to its operating losses, so we spared you more data. Now to better understand the basic economics of Oscar Health’s insurance business, let’s get our hands dirty.

Ifeoma Ozoma, a former Pinterest employee who alleged racial and gender discrimination at the company, is co-leading new legislation with California State Senator Connie Levya and others to empower those who experience workplace discrimination and/or harassment. Introduced today, the Silenced No More Act (SB 331) would prevent the use of non-disclosure agreements in workplace situations involving all forms of discrimination and harassment.

“It is unacceptable for any employer to try to silence a worker because he or she was a victim of any type of harassment or discrimination—whether due to race, sexual orientation, religion, age or any other characteristic,” Levya said in a statement. “SB 331 will empower survivors to speak out—if they so wish—so they can hold perpetrators accountable and hopefully prevent abusers from continuing to torment and abuse other workers.”

This proposed bill would expand the current protections workers have through the Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act, also authored by Levya, that went into effect 2019. Ozoma, along with former coworker Aerica Shimizu Banks, came forward with claims of both racial and gender discrimination last year. They eventually settled with Pinterest, but the STAND Act technically only protected them for speaking out about gender discrimination. This new bill would ensure workers are also protected when speaking out about racial discrimination.

“It was a legal gamble,” Ozoma told TechCrunch about coming forward with claims of both racial and gender discrimination, despite having signed an NDA. Pinterest could’ve decided to sue both Ozoma and Banks, Ozoma said, but that would’ve required the company to admit wrongdoing.

“Technically, we weren’t [supposed to talk about racial discrimination] and that’s what most companies bank on,” she said.

It’s a long road ahead for the bill, which needs to be passed by the legislature and ultimately signed into law by CA Governor Gavin Newsom, but it would represent a monumental shift in the tech industry, if passed.

“It would be huge and not just for tech, but for your industry as well,” she told me. “I believe that we don’t have real progress unless we approach things intersectionally and that’s the lesson from all of us.”