Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Election Day approaches! Still not sure where the nearest polling place or ballot drop box is? Google wants to help.

This morning the company rolled out a handful of features across Google Assistant, Google Maps, and Google Search, all meant to kick in when a user seems to be looking for information on voting locations.

On Google Search, for example, a search for “ballot drop boxes near me” will now bring up a dedicated tool for finding just that — punch in the address where you’re registered to vote, and it’ll help you find a drop box or polling place accordingly. The same tool will also pop up when you search for things like “how to find polling place” or “where to vote”, so there’s some flexibility in it.

Or if you’ve got an Assistant-powered device nearby (like a Nest Mini, Nest Hub, or an Android phone), you can say “Hey Google, where do I vote?” and Assistant should be able to figure it out accordingly based on your current location (with Assistant assuming, as it’ll note in its response, that your current location is where you’re registered to vote.)

The Maps integration is a bit more limited, but it gets the job done. Searching for “where do I vote” in the Google Maps mobile app results in a prompt that will toss you into the above web-based Google Search flow. Once you’ve found your location, tapping the “Directions” button will swing you back into the Maps app.

Google says it’s pulling its polling location information from the Voting Information Project as part of a partnership with Democracy Works. The company says they’ll be adding more polling places leading up until Election Day, expecting to have over 200,000 in the system when all is said and done.

Don’t want to get your polling place details from Google, or just want to double check things? There’s always sites like Vote.org (which, if you’re curious, is what Siri recommends when prompted with the “Where do I vote?” question), which also provides info on checking your voter registration status, becoming a poll worker, etc.

A New York Post story forces social platforms to make (and in Twitter’s case, reverse) some difficult choices, Sony announces a new 3D display and fitness startup Future raises $24 million. This is your Daily Crunch for October 16, 2020.

The big story: Twitter walks back New York Post decision

A recent New York Post story about a cache of emails and other data supposedly originating from a laptop belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter looked suspect from the start, and more holes have emerged over time. But it’s also put the big social media platform in an awkward position, as both Facebook and Twitter took steps to limit the ability of users to share the story.

Twitter, in particular, took a more aggressive stance, blocking links to and images of the Post story because it supposedly violated the platform’s “hacked materials policy.” This led to predictable complaints from Republican politicians, and even Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey said that blocking links in direct messages without an explanation was “unacceptable.”

As a result, the company said it’s changing the aforementioned hacked materials policy. It will no longer remove hacked content unless it’s been shared directly by hackers or those “acting in direct concert with them.” Otherwise, it will label tweets to provide context. As of today, it’s also allowing users to share links to the Post story.

The tech giants

Sony’s $5,000 3D display (probably) isn’t for you — The company is targeting creative professionals with its new Spatial Reality Display.

EU’s Google-Fitbit antitrust decision deadline pushed into 2021 — EU regulators now have until January 8, 2021 to take a decision.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Elon Musk’s Las Vegas Loop might only carry a fraction of the passengers it promised — Planning files reviewed by TechCrunch seem to show that The Boring Company’s Loop system will not be able to move anywhere near the number of people the company agreed to.

Future raises $24M Series B for its $150/mo workout coaching app amid at-home fitness boom — Future offers a pricey subscription that virtually teams users with a real-life fitness coach.

Lawmatics raises $2.5M to help lawyers market themselves — The San Diego startup is building marketing and CRM software for lawyers.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

How COVID-19 and the resulting recession are impacting female founders — The sharp decline in available capital is slowing the pace at which women are founding new companies in the COVID-19 era.

Startup founders set up hacker homes to recreate Silicon Valley synergy — Hacker homes feel like a nostalgic attempt to recreate some of the synergies COVID-19 wiped out.

Private equity firms can offer enterprise startups a viable exit option — The IPO-or-acquisition question isn’t always an either/or proposition.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

FAA streamlines commercial launch rules to keep the rockets flying — With rockets launching in greater numbers and variety, and from more providers, it makes sense to get a bit of the red tape out of the way.

We need universal digital ad transparency now — Fifteen researchers propose a new standard for advertising disclosures.

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.

Twitter has taken another step back from its initial decision to block users from sharing links to or images of a New York Post story reporting on emails and other data supposedly originating on a laptop belonging to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The story, which alleged that Hunter Biden had set up meeting between a Ukrainian energy firm and his father back when Biden was vice president, looked shaky from the start, and more holes have emerged over time. Both Facebook and Twitter took action to slow its spread — but Twitter seemed to take the more aggressive stance, not just including warning labels whenever someone shared the story, but actually blocking links.

These moves have drawn a range of criticism. There have been predictable cries of censorship from Republican politicians and pundits, but there have also been suggestions that Facebook and Twitter inadvertently drew more attention to the story. And even Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey suggested that it was “unacceptable” to block links in DMs without an explanation.

Casey Newton, on the other hand, argued that the platforms had successfully slowed the story’s spread: “The truth had time to put its shoes on before Rudy Giuliani’s shaggy-dog story about a laptop of dubious origin made it all the way around the world.”

Twitter initially justified its approach by citing its hacked materials policy, then later said it was blocking the Post article for including “personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.”

The controversy did prompt Twitter to revise its hacked materials policy, so that content and links obtained through dubious means will now come with a label, rather than being removed entirely, unless it’s being shared directly by hackers or those “acting in concert with them.”

And now, as first reported by The New York Times, Twitter is also allowing users to share links to the Post story itself (something I’ve confirmed through my own Twitter account).

Why the reversal? Again, the official justification for blocking the link was to prevent the spread of private information, so the company said that the story has now spread so widely, online and in the press, that the information can no longer be considered private.

Lawmatics, a San Diego startup that’s building marketing and CRM software for lawyers, is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding.

CEO Matt Siegel used to practice law himself, and he told me that even though tech companies have a wide range of marketing tools to choose from, “lawyers have not been able to adopt them,” because they need a product that’s tailored to their specific needs.

That’s why Siegel founded Lawmatics with CTO Roey Chasman. He said that a law firm’s relationship with its clients can be divided into three phases — intake (when a client is deciding whether to hire a firm); the active legal case; and after the case has been resolved. Apparently most legal software is designed to handle phase two, while Lawmatics focuses on phases one and three.

The platform includes a CRM system to manage the initial client intake process, as well as tools that can automate a lot of what Siegel called the “blocking and tackling” of marketing, like sending birthday messages to former clients — which might sound like a minor task, but Siegel said it’s crucial for law firms to “nurture” those relationships, because most of their business comes from referrals.

Lawmatics’ early adopters, Siegel added, have consisted of the firms in areas where “if you need a lawyer, you go to Google and start searching ‘personal injury,’ ‘bankruptcy,’ ‘estate planning,’ all these consumer-driven law firms.” And the pandemic led to accelerated the startup’s growth, because “lawyers are at home now, their business is virtual and they need more tools.”

Siegel’s had success selling technology to lawyers in the past, with his practice management software startup MyCase acquired by AppFolio in 2012 (AppFolio recently sold MyCase to a variety of funds for $193 million). He said that the strategies for growing both companies are “almost identical” — the products are different, but “it’s really the same segment, running the same playbook, only with additional go-to-market strategies.”

The funding was led by Eniac Ventures and Forefront Venture Partners, with participation from Revel Ventures and Bridge Venture Partners.

“In my 10 years investing I have witnessed few teams more passionate, determined, and capable of revolutionizing an industry,” said Eniac’s Tim Young in a statement. “They have not only created the best software product the legal market has seen, they have created a movement.”

Welcome back to Human Capital, where we look at the latest in tech labor and diversity and inclusion.

Because election day is quickly approaching and given that California’s Prop 22 puts the “future of labor” at stake, as Instacart worker and co-organizer at Gig Workers Collective Vanessa Bain told TechCrunch this week, we’re paying close attention to this ballot measure. Gig companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart have put more than $180 million into Prop 22, which seeks to keep their drivers and delivery workers classified as independent contractors.

Before we jump in, friendly reminder that Human Capital will soon be a newsletter…starting next week! Sign up here so you don’t miss it.

Gig Work

Instacart began asking workers to pass out Yes on Prop 22 propaganda to customers

Vanessa Bain, Instacart shopper and co-founder of Gig Workers Collective, tweeted about how she was instructed to pass out Yes on 22 stickers to customers. Many people, including Bain, questioned whether it was legal or not. 

Instacart, however, told CNN the initiative was allowed under campaign finance rules. Additionally, I reached out to the Fair Political Practices Commission, but was told by Communications Director Jay Wierenga that “only an investigation by FPPC Enforcement (or a DA or the AG’s Office) determines whether someone or group violated the Political Reform Act.” 

What is clear, however, is that it goes against what many workers want. We actually caught up with Bain ahead of the relaunch of TechCrunch Mixtape, where she discussed why she’s anti Prop 22. The episode goes live next week, but here’s a bit of a teaser from our conversation:

“The future of labor is at stake,” Bain told us earlier this week. “I would argue the future of our democracy, as well. The reality is that, you know, it establishes a dangerous precedent to allow companies to write their own labor laws…This policy was created to unilaterally benefit companies at the detriment of workers.”

Hundreds took to SF’s streets in protest of Prop 22

In San Francisco, there was a massive protest against Prop 22. While Prop 22 would provide more benefits than workers currently have, many drivers and delivery workers say that’s not enough. For example, Prop 22 would institute healthcare subsidies, but it falls short of complete healthcare.

Speaking of SF, 76% of app-based workers in the city are people of color

And 39% are immigrants, according to the latest survey of gig workers conducted by the Local Agency Formation Commission and UC Santa Cruz Professor Chris Benner.

This study surveyed 259 workers who drive or deliver for DoorDash, Instacart or Amazon Fresh. Other findings were:

• 71% of workers get at least 3/4 of monthly income from gig work
• 57% of workers completely rely on gig work for their monthly income
• On average, workers make $450 per week. After expenses, that averages drops to $270 per week.

California appeals court heard arguments in the Uber, Lyft gig worker classification case

CA 1st District Court of Appeal judges heard arguments from Uber and Lyft about why they should be able to continue classifying their drivers as independent contractors. The hearing was a result of a district judge granting a preliminary injunction that would force Uber and Lyft to immediately reclassify their workers as employees. Uber and Lyft, however, appealed the ruling and now here we are.

As Uber and Lyft have argued drivers would lose flexibility if forced to be employees, an appeals court judge asked what part of AB 5 would require companies to take away that flexibility. Spoiler alert: there’s nothing in AB 5 that requires such a thing.

But a lawyer for Lyft, which has said it would leave California if forced to reclassify its workers, said he doesn’t “want the court to think that if the injunction is affirmed, that these people will continue to have these earnings opportunities because they won’t.”

Uber’s survey of workers on Prop 22 shows strong support for the ballot measure

But it’s important to note that of the more than 200,000 Uber drivers in California, only 461 workers participated in the study. Uber conducted this survey from September 23 through October 5 to see how drivers felt about Prop 22 and being an independent contractor. In that survey, 54% of respondents said they would definitely vote yes on 22 if the election were today while 13% said they would definitely vote no.

Image Credits: Uber

Those surveyed also weighed in on whether they prefer to be independent contractors. 54% of those surveyed said they strongly prefer being an independent contractor while 9% said they strongly prefer being an employee.

Image Credits: Uber

This week, Uber also encouraged riders to talk to their drivers about Prop 22 to see how they feel about it.

“First and foremost, the conversation about Proposition 22 should be about what gig workers actually want,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement. “That’s why we are encouraging everyone who uses Uber or Uber Eats to ask their driver or delivery person how they really feel about Prop 22.”

Based on the wording of the in-app message, Uber seems confident most drivers do support Prop 22.

Image Credits: Uber

Stay woke

Facebook and Twitter ban Holocaust-denial posts 

Both Facebook and Twitter took a step in their ongoing battles against hate this week by removing posts that deny the Holocaust, the systematic and state-sponsored mass murder of around 6 million Jewish people. On Monday, Facebook announced it would block posts that deny the Holocaust. Facebook said its decision was driven by the rise in anti-Semitism and “the alarming level of ignorance about the Holocaust, especally among young people.” On Wednesday, Twitter announced a similar stance.

BLCK VC launches Black Venture Institute

In partnership with Operator Collective, Salesforce Ventures and U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business, BLCK VC’s Black Venture Institute wants to help more Black entrepreneurs become angel investors. The goal is to train 300 students over the next three years to be in a position of writing checks. 

“It is these closed networks that have helped contribute to the lack of access for the Black community over the years,” BLCK VC co-founder Frederik Groce told TC’s Ron Miller. “Black Venture Institute is a structural attempt to create access for Black operators — from engineers to product marketing managers.”

GV finally has a Black female partner, Terri Burns

Terri Burns recently made partner at GV, formerly known as Google Ventures. Burns is now the only Black female partner at GV, which is wild. But, you know, progress not perfection. 

Throwback to when Burns spoke a bit about racial justice in tech and venture capital. 

“Venture capital certainly plays a role,” Burns, then a principal at GV, told TechCrunch about the overall lack of diversity in tech. “VC is a tool that can enable businesses to scale greatly and quickly, and historically, this tool hasn’t been equally distributed. For example, VC has traditionally focused on founders from a small number of institutions and pedigrees that are not particularly diverse (in 2016 we learned from Richard Kerby, general partner at Equal Ventures, that 40% of VCs went to either Harvard or Stanford). With more equal distribution of funds across backgrounds, underrepresented people will have a greater chance at success.”

The Wing co-founder admits her mistakes 

Audrey Gelman, the former CEO of The Wing who resigned in June, posted a letter she sent to former employees of The Wing last week. In it, Gelman apologized for not taking action to combat mistreatment of women of color at The Wing. She also acknowledged that her drive for success and scaling quickly “came at the expense of a healthy and sustainable culture that matched our projected values, and workplace practices that made our team feel valued and respected.”

That meant, Gelman said, The Wing “had not subverted the historical oppression and racist roots of the hospitality industry; we had dressed it up as a kindler [sic], gentler version.”

Here are some other highlights from her letter:

• “Members’ needs came first, and those members were often white, and affluent enough to afford The Wing’s membership dues.”
• “White privilege and power trips were rewarded with acquiescence, as opposed to us doubling down on our projected values.”
• “When the realization set in that The Wing wasn’t institutionally different in the ways it had proclaimed, it hurt more because the space we claimed was different reinforced the age-old patterns of women of color and especially Black women being disappointed by white women and our limited feminist values.”

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PearPop a new Los Angeles-based company, is on its way to racking up nearly 25,000 users in less than a month, and has already landed seed funding from the firm Rocket One Capital.

The company’s premise is simple. Allow fans to bid for shared screen time with their favorite TikTok celebrities, and it’s one that’s attracted the attention of a few of the platform’s stars with several million followers.

The company was able to hook 3,000 users with one post from Anna Shumate, a TikTok star with 6.5 million followers who goes by the handle of “annabananaxdddd,” according to the company’s founder, Cole Mason.

PearPop’s platform works by letting TikTok celebrities set a price for sharing screen time. They can accept bids and preview the content to approve to make sure it’s aligned with their persona on the platform. The payment is made through Stripe and the software verifies payment. Once paid, the celebrity posts the shared screen video.

“We built it for the influencer,” said Mason. “If you’re a fan trying to access your favorite TikTok star, then they can access them through PearPop instead of trying to contact a manager and pay for legal fees. You can simplify that and do that super easily.”

Promotional message from Anna Shumate for PearPop. Image Credit: PearPop

Mason thinks the company can rack up 100,000 users over the next three months and will head out to raise a seed round once he reaches that milestone. An Android and iOS version of the service is expected to launch in November, according to Mason

The journey to founding PearPop began on the floor of an apartment in New York City. Mason was an aspiring model and serial entrepreneur who sold homemade wooden crosses door-to-door as a child and graduated to selling gloves for gamers in high school, Mason had moved to New York when he was signed to Ford Models.

After sleeping on the floor of a friend’s apartment on St. Marks Place in Manhattan’s East Village, Mason tried to land modeling gigs but found more success as a promoter and manager of model apartments (places where young, pretty people can stay for free in exchange for making appearances at a few clubs around New York).

“I hated it,” Mason said. “I always wanted to get into stuff in tech.” 

Mason took the cash from his promotion work and turned his attention to the tech industry soon after. As a struggling model who was building a network of friends in social media, he realized that the problem with the platform was breaking through.

His initial solution was to build a platform called GramEnvy, which tried to find a way to growth hack Instagram.

“The only way to grow your own Instagram was to have people post with you or about you and leverage their huge following.” Mason said. It was something easier said than done, and it was made harder by algorithmic changes that ultimately forced GramEnvy to close.

But Mason was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, and was inspired by the growing success of Cameo to come up with another way that would enable popular minor celebrities on social media platforms (who were working a tier below the A-listers with tens of millions of followers) to monetize their performance on various platforms.

And while Cameo is a way for celebrities to monetize their following, it doesn’t create the exposure that would-be social media stars are looking for. That’s the problem that Mason thinks he’s solved with PearPop. 

Other entrepreneurs, like Spencer Markel, the chairman of the Los Angeles-based children’s clothing and entertainment brand, CubCoats, think so too.

Markel was introduced to Mason by a mutual friend from New York and has come on as an adviser to the company since Mason began working on it roughly 10 months ago. For Markel, the potential to actually share screens via TikTok’s platform makes PearPop a potentially more lucrative option for celebrities.

“There’s a lot of different ways that this is going to address a gap in the market,” said Markel. He believes that the service should be a strong monetization opportunity for the TikTok stars who find themselves one level down from their higher-wattage peers with tens of millions of fans. 

Four years ago, Ping Identity was at a crossroads. A venerable player in the single sign-on market, its product was not a market leader, and after 14 years and $128 million in venture capital, it needed to find a new path.

While the company had once discussed an IPO, by 2016 it began putting out feelers for buyers. Vista Equity Partners made a $600 million offer and promised to keep building the company, something that corporate buyers wouldn’t guarantee. Ping CEO and co-founder Andre Durand accepted Vista’s offer, seeing it as a way to pay off his investors and employees and exit the right way. Even better, his company wasn’t subsumed into a large entity as likely would have happened with a typical M&A transaction.

As it turned out, the IPO-or-acquisition question wasn’t an either/or proposition. Vista continued to invest in the company, using small acquisitions like UnboundID and Elastic Beam to fill in its roadmap, and Ping went public last year. The company’s experience shows that private equity offers a reasonable way for mature enterprise startups with decent but not exceptional growth — like the 100% or more venture firms tend to favor — to exit, pay off investors, reward employees and still keep building the company.

But not everyone that goes this route has a tidy outcome like Ping’s. Some companies get brought into the P/E universe where they replace the executive team, endure big layoffs or sell off profitable pieces and stop investing in the product. But the three private equity firms we spoke to — Vista Equity, Thoma Bravo and Scaleworks — all wanted to see their acquisitions succeed, even if they each go about it differently.

Viable companies with good numbers

Analogue’s beautiful, functional retro gaming consoles provide a sort of “archival quality” alternative to the cheap mini-consoles proliferating these days. The latest system to be resurrected by the company is the ill-fated, but still well-thought-of TurboGrafx-16 or PC Engine.

The Duo, as Analogue’s device is called, is named after a later version of the TurboGrafx-16 that included its expensive CD-ROM add-on — and indeed the new Duo supports both game cards and CDs, provided they have survived all this time without getting scratched.

Like the rest of Analogue’s consoles, and unlike the popular SNES and NES Classic Editions from Nintendo (and indeed the new TurboGrafx-16 Mini), the Duo does not use emulation in any way. Instead, it’s a painstaking recreation of the original hardware, with tweaks to introduce modern conveniences like high-definition video, wireless controllers, and improvements to reliability and so on.

Image Credits: Analogue

As a bonus, it’s all done in FPGA, which implies that this hardware is truly one of a kind in service of remaking the console accurately. Games should play exactly as they would have on the original hardware down to the annoying glitches and slowdowns of that era of consoles.

And what games! Well, actually, few of them ever reached the status of their competitors on Nintendo and Sega consoles here in the U.S., where the TurboGrafx-16 sold poorly. But titles like Bonk’s Adventure, Bomberman ’93, Ninja Spirit, Splatterhouse, and Devil’s Crush should be played more widely. Shmup fans like myself were spoiled with originals and arcade ports like R-Type and Blazing Lazers. The Ys series ( also got its start on the PC Engine (if you could afford the CD attachment). Here’s a good retrospective.

I wouldn’t mind having an HDMI port on the back of my SNES. Oh, Analogue makes one…

Analogue’s consoles are made for collectors who would prefer not to have to baby their original hardware, or want to upscale the signal and play wirelessly without too much fuss. I still have my original SNES, but 240p just doesn’t look as crisp as it did on a 15-inch CRT in the ’90s.

At $199, it’s more expensive than finding one at a garage sale, but good luck with that. The original and its CD add-on cost a fortune, so if you think about it from that perspective, this is a real bargain. Analogue says limited quantities are available, and will be shipping in 2021.