Category: UNCATEGORIZED

WarnerMedia will discontinue HBO and WB TV channels in India, Pakistan, Maldives, and Bangladesh later this year as the entertainment conglomerate struggles to find a sustainable business model in South Asian despite operating in the region for over a decade.

The company said it will end HBO and WB TV channels in the aforementioned markets, where a cable subscription costs about $4 to $5 a month, on December 15. In India, for instance, it costs less than 25 cents to subscribe to both HBO (in HD) and WB atop a monthly cable plan, which costs about $2.

While HBO is a household name in the U.S. and several other developed markets, in India and other South Asian nations, its audience size remains tiny. Times Internet’s Movies Now, Star Movies, and Sony Pix had a considerably larger viewership than HBO in India last month, according to Broadcast Audience Research Council, India’s ratings agency.

Warner Media cited a dramatic market shift in the pay-TV industry for its decision. It said it will continue to offer Cartoon Network and Pogo in India, and distribute CNN International in the country.

“After 20 years of successes for the HBO linear movie channel in South Asia and more than a decade with the WB linear movie channel, this was a difficult decision to make. The pay-TV industry landscape and the market dynamics have shifted dramatically, and the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the need for further change,” said Siddharth Jain, SVP and Managing Director of WarnerMedia’s entertainment network in South Asia, in a statement.

HBO also maintains a content syndication partnership with Disney’s Hotstar in India. So the streamer will continue to offer HBO’s shows such as “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” — hopefully without any censorship — in the country.

“WarnerMedia has a strong interest in India and are committed to assessing optimal opportunities to serve valued customers here,” said Jain.

French startup WizVille is launching a new product called Local Monitor to help restaurant owners, haircut places, bakeries and all kinds of small shops track their Google Maps ratings and the ratings of their competitors.

While there are plenty of ratings services to compare places around you, such as Foursquare, Yelp and Tripadvisor, Google Maps has slowly been showcasing ratings more prominently. And chances are you’re now checking ratings on Google Maps more than ever before.

“I’ve been working for ten years in customer ratings. There’s something huge happening right now — Google and Google Maps are taking over the customer relationship with small shops,” co-founder and CEO Timothée de Laitre told me

And yet, many small business owners don’t pay attention to their Google My Business rating that customers can see on Google Maps and above Google search results. WizVille thinks this is most important metric you can track. And it’s also important to know how your competitors are doing.

When you add your business to WizVille Local Monitor, the company displays other places around you that provide the same products and services. You can choose up to five competitors from that list.

After that, you receive a report with your rating, your competitors’ ratings and the evolution over time. This way, you know how you rank compared to your competitors. The service sends you a new report every month so that you can track your progress.

Google Maps ratings are really not that smart as the company is calculating the average of all your ratings to determine your overall rating. You could have opened your business ten days ago or ten years ago — all your reviews will matter.

If you have more than one shop or you need more features, you have to switch to the full-fledged WizVille customer experience management service. For that service, the startup works with bigger clients, such as Total, Etam, Naturalia and Schmidt.

Longevity, as far as startups are concerned, tends to be a moonshot-y space where technologies like biotech and AI are experimentally applied in a sort of modern day alchemical quest — and the great hope is to (somehow) ‘hack’ biology and substantially extend the human lifespan. Or even end death altogether.

Coming considerably closer to Earth is Spanish startup Hearts Radiant, which says it’s in the “longevity tech” business but is taking a far more grounded and practical approach to addressing ageing. In short it believes it’s nailed a formula for helping people live to a ripe old age.

And — here’s the key — to do so healthily.

So its moonshot isn’t to help people get to a biblical 150 or even 120. It’s about supporting seniors to live well, up to a ‘good innings’ like 95, while (hopefully) retaining their independence and vitality through the application of technology that creates a structured and engaging lifestyle routine which works to combat age-related conditions such as frailty and social isolation.

Gently does it

The startup is coming out of stealth today to disclose a first tranche of pre-seed funding and chat to TechCrunch about its dream of supporting seniors to live a more active, fulfilling and independent life.

The €450k pre-seed round, which is led by JME.vc with participation from Kfund, Seedcamp and NextVentures, will be used for research and continued development of its Rosita Longevity digital coach. The app has been in beta testing in a limited form since January — currently only for Android devices, given seniors tend to have their relatives’ hand-me-down smartphone hardware (but iOS is on the roadmap) — offering livestreamed and on-demand video classes like cardio flamenco and age-appropriate yoga for its target 60+ year-olds. 

Rosita’s co-founders are husband and wife team, Juan Cartagena (CEO) and Clara Fernández (CCO), along with CTO David Gil. Their premise is that what humans really need, as they age, is guidance and motivation to stay as active as they can, for as long as they can — and that a digital platform is the best way to make personalized, ‘healthy habit’ forming therapy for seniors widely accessible.

“We believe that we have to be a habit engine,” says Cartagena, offering “health longevity” as another descriptor for the scope of what they’re aiming to achieve.

Fernández is drawing directly on her years of experience as CEO of Balneario de Cofrentes, a family business in Valencia, which she describes as a “longevity school” or camp for seniors — and which the website suggests is a combination of spa/hotel, physical therapy/rehabilitation and education center. There she’s been responsible for overseeing activity and education programs tailored to seniors, offering guided exercise and advice on things like disease avoidance and good nutrition.

“Over the last ten years we have developed a very comprehensive strategy on how to educate, how to create habits in the senior community so that they can increase their healthy lifespan,” she explains. “We have a specific methodology. We start with teaching seniors how to manage their current health situation and we progressively start educating them with lifestyle, prevention of the main diseases, and also education about the latest discoveries in the field of science.”

“I realized that the main way to expand this was taking it online,” she adds on the decision to package the program into a digital coaching app — “where a bigger percentage of the senior population could benefit”.

Lifestyle is a key part of the proposition. But they’re most comfortable with the badge of ‘longevity tech’.

“We are trying not to play in fitness for many reasons,” adds Cartagena. “It’s limited in scope. And we are trying to go beyond that — it’s just the starting point [for reducing frailty] and the issues related to that, including the final ‘disease’ which would be dependence.”

Since the premise underlying the Rosita app hinges on the proven health benefits of regular, moderate exercise as a means of combating a range of age-related conditions — such as muscle mass loss and reduced bone density leading to frailty (which in turn can lead to a fall, a broken hip, and a senior who’s suddenly dependent on personal care) — or, beyond that, as a general bolster for mental and brain health — they are squatting on established (rather than moonshotty) science.

Although they do still need to demonstrate that digitally delivered, personalized programs of lifestyle coaching — featuring familiar but still sometimes clunky technologies like AI and chatbots — can actually help reverse frailty (in the first instance) for seniors participating remotely, with no human physiotherapists on hand to help.

Hence some of the funding will go on researching how their bricks-and-mortar ‘longevity school’ program translates to a digital platform. And, more specifically, whether personalised digital coaching for 60+ year olds will yield tangible reductions in frailty (and thus gains in active years) in the same way that in-person group exercises have already been shown to. (One area that certainly merits close study is whether social human contact derived from a purely digital experience vs in-person group therapy makes a difference to treatment outcomes.)

It’s true that no smartphone in the world can transform a bog-standard bathroom into a full on luxury spa. But other elements of the Balneario’s program simply need digitizing and structuring to serve up similar benefits, is the thinking.

The sorts of digital activity programs they’re devising for the app are designed to be fun for seniors as well as beneficial and appropriate for a particular frailty level. Examples of classes currently offered include reduced mobility dance, burpee-free ‘cross fit’, and osteoarthritis-safe karate.

The onboarding process involves an assessment to determine a senior’s frailty level in order that users are offered content at an activity level that’s appropriate for their physical condition.

Long is the road

Cartagena notes they’re working with Dr. José Viña, a professor at the University of Valencia, who is renowned in the longevity field. “He has proven he can revert frailty in the earliest stages by applying a certain methodology to specific muscles with a treatment of exercise-fusion — with some lifestyle habits. Now what has not been proven is whether that is applicable to a remote environment where people do it on their own,” he adds. “And this what we are doing right now. This pre-seed round is basically to take that uncertainty, put that in front of a few thousand [app] users, take that research… and see if in the next 12 months we improve [their frailty level].”

The actual Balneario is closed at the moment, in this health-stricken year of the novel coronavirus, but the plan is to reopen in March 2021 — and then introduce the annual intake to Rosita — garnering ongoing feedback on whether or not it’s steering them toward health-supporting habits.

“It’s all about understanding the customer so well and that’s where the competitive advantage of this company really comes from,” argues Cartagena. “By having 15,000 seniors per year coming to the school, every year we understand the customer very well, their habits, what they do, what they don’t. They come every year so we can ask them what did you do last year?

“That will be for us the way to have a massive focus group — let’s say a sliding window of focus group that we can see for ten days using the product — and we can iterate much faster by seeing not people just through our analytics but people who are using the product in front of us. One hundred or 500 people a day in our resort. And I think that will be a fundamental way in which we can actually build something that people really need and use and care about.”

The current version of the app doesn’t yet include AI-powered personalized coaching. But that’s again where the pre-seed funding comes in. “The initial coach for education and frailty itineraries should be ready in three weeks (together with our iOS app),” says Cartagena. “This solves a pressing problem our users have today.

“The personalized coach (pathologies, followups, context, atomization of exercises, etc) has a lot of logic behind and testing this properly will take more time. We will release that intelligence slowly and we should feel ‘proud’ by Christmas. That will become our Habits Engine. Together with our geroscience research plan, those are the uncertainties to get right with our current funding.”

Targeting chronic pain is another key aim for the app, although he concedes there may be some types of pain they won’t be able to address. The co-founders add that the app is intended to supplement not replace traditional healthcare — pointing out it’s being designed to be more forward-looking; aka that prevention of age-related problems is exactly the strategy to live better for longer.

“Telehealth is more about managing a disease — we’re more about preventing,” adds Fernández. “We’re more about discovering what are the indicators and the tools to make sure that the senior population… understand what it happening to their body, what is going to happen over the next ten years and start to slowly develop those habits so that they can minimize, reduce the evolution, the natural ageing process.”

Cartagena notes they are also working with researchers on developing sensor hardware that could go alongside the app to enhance their ability to predict frailty — suggesting it will allow them to define a wider/more nuanced range of user categories (the first version of the app has three categories but he says they want to be able to offer nine).

Smartphone and sensor hardware combined with AI technology has, for some years now, been enabling a new generation of guided physical therapy apps that seek to offer an alternative to pharmaceutical-based management for chronic pain — such as Kaia Health and Hinge Health, to name two. And of course mindfulness/guided mediation has become a huge app business. While the broader concept of ‘digital health’ has, over the past half decade or so, seen CBT-style therapy programs packaged up to be put on tap in people’s pockets. So there’s nothing inherently strange or exotic about the idea of a longevity coach for seniors.

Albeit, getting the user experience right could well be the biggest challenge. Cartagena says the app’s tone is important — talking in terms of not wanting to be “patronizing” or make seniors feel like Rosita is giving them “homework” — so they really click with the virtual coach and stay engaged.

Fernández too emphasizes the goal is to sustain good habits. Ergo, this is a (gentle) marathon not a sprint. 

If they can design a safe and engaging experience that seniors don’t find off-putting, tedious or confusing the potential to expand access to therapies, activities and information that can improve people’s quality of life looks huge. Frailty is also only the team’s first focus. As they develop the product and grow usage they want to be able to support their users to form healthy habits that could help stave off neurodegenerative conditions like dementia, for example. Combating loneliness and social isolation is another goal. So there’s a whole range of health plans they’re hoping Rosita will be able to deliver.

“What we’re doing right now is focused especially on frailty — we’re developing the personalized AI coach on top of that — and what we’re going to do is start adding the layers of all the different health plans that we’re going to be establishing off the longevity coach,” says Fernández. “Nutrition, cognitive stimulation, relaxation and breathing, and on top of that we will put all the prevention strategies — and all the classes that we’re preparing for longevity.

“One of the things that we have tested in the clinic that is very important is to educate the user. Not just on what they need to do today — but on what is happening to their ageing process, what is happening to their metabolism, what is happening to their musculoskeletal system. How and why your body is ageing is fundamental so you can make small decisions. By empowering users through education they can understand and relate to why this specific thing that you’re telling them today is useful in the long run.”

“One of the most successful strategies that we have built is creating this whole course on longevity which is what is happening to your body — what science knows today about the field of longevity,” she adds. “And how you can minimize those symptoms. And those things we’re translating completely into the [app].”

Cartagena also points to the risk of a COVID-19 ‘4th wave’ of deaths that could result from seniors becoming more frail than they otherwise would after being forced into a more sedentary existence as a result of lockdown measures and concerns about their risk of exposure to the coronavirus.

Or, in other words, sitting at home on the sofa might help seniors stay free of virus but if abrupt inactivity risks their vitality that too could cut short a healthy lifespan. So tools to help older people stay active are looking more important than ever. And to that end he says the app will remain free throughout the pandemic — envisaging that could stretch into 2022.

The plan for the business model is b2c, likely focused on selling premium content — such as connecting users directly with a therapist to chat through their progress. In the meanwhile they’re relying on VC to get their digital “motivation engine” to market.

Right now they have 5,000 “pre-registrations” for the app and 1,000 seniors actively testing the product (all aged 60 to 80, in Spain). They’ve also just pushed out an update, moving the software out of the ‘early access’ phase — as they progress toward launching their “personalized AI coach for longevity.”

And while Rosita’s coaching is currently only available in Spanish — with the team having recorded “hundreds” of videos so far for different levels and chronic pathologies — the aim is to scale up in Europe (and perhaps beyond), starting with the U.K. market. Which makes English the next natural language for them to build out content.

Gogoro announced today that its Eeyo 1s is now available for sale in France, the smart electric bike’s first European market. Another model, the Eeyo 1, will launch over the next few months in France, Belgium, Monaco, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Czech Republic.

In France, the Eeyo 1s can be purchased through Fnac, Darty or, in Paris, Les Cyclistes Branchés. The Eeyo 1s is priced at €4699 including VAT, while the the Eeyo 1 will be priced at €4599, also including VAT.

The weight of Eeyo bikes is one of their key selling points and Gogoro says they are about half the weight of most other e-bikes. The Eeyo 1s weighs 11.9 kg and the Eeyo 1 clocks in at 12.4 kg.  Both have carbon fiber frames and forks, but the Eeyo 1s’ seat post, handlebars and rims are also carbon fiber, while on the Eeyo 1 they are made with an alloy.

Based in Taiwan, Gogoro first introduced its Eeyo lineup in May. The e-bikes are the company’s second type of vehicle after its SmartScooters, electric scooters that are powered by swappable batteries. The Eeyo bike’s key technology is the SmartWheel, a self-contained hub that integrates its motor, battery, sensor and smart connectivity technology so it can be paired with a smartphone app.

In an interview for the Eeyo’s launch, Gogoro co-founder and chief executive Horace Luke said the company began planning for Eeyo’s launch in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. While sale of e-bikes were already growing steadily before COVID-19, the pandemic has accelerated sales of e-bikes as people avoid public transportation and stay closer to home. Several cities have also closed some streets to car traffic, making riders more willing to use bikes for short commutes and exercise.

Founded in 2011 and backed by investors including Temasek, Sumitomo Corporation, Panasonic, the National Development Fund of Taiwan and Generation (the sustainable tech fund led by former vice president Al Gore), Gogoro is best known for its electric scooters, but it is also working on a turnkey solution for energy-efficient vehicles to license to other companies, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions in cities around the world.

A pitch to offer artists a way to give geo-fenced, live events to fans around the world has brought the new Los Angeles startup Moment House $1.5 million in seed funding.

The money came from heavy hitters in the Los Angeles entertainment and investment scene including Scooter Braun, Troy Carter, Kygo’s Palm Tree Crew and Jared Leto. Patreon chief executive Jack Conte and Sequoia Capital partner Jess Lee also participated in the round.

Forerunner Ventures led the deal and the investment was made by Kirsten Green, the firm’s famous founder and managing partner. Kevin Mayer, the former chief executive of TikTok; GV chief David Krane; Aaron Levie from Box; the tech media and entertainment guru, Matthew Ball; and product maestro Eugene Wei all participated in the round as well.

Founded by Arjun Mehta, Shray Bansal, and Nigel Egrari, the company grew out of work the three men did while attending the USC Jimmy Iovine & Dr. Dre Academy for the Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation. 

The company touts itself as the simplest way for artists to create online events for their fans.

For its first foray into live entertainment, Moment House is going to host a geo-fenced, location-specific tour for the musician Yungblud. Other ticketed events from Kygo, blackbear, Kaytranada, Denzel Curry and Ruel will follow, the company said.

For musicians, the company’s pitch of ticketing security, merchandise integrations global payments support, must have been music to their ears — because all of those features add up to one thing… cash.

And performers on the platform take all of the ticket revenues, with Moment House earning money by charging fans a small fee.

In a statement, company co-founder Arjun Mehta said that the company’s technology and service wasn’t a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but rather a way to amplify the concert going experience with an online approximation.

“Moment House is empowering artists to deliver digital experiences that feel authentic and compelling,” said Leto, in a statement. “I was drawn to the unique design-driven approach because that’s what is needed to create a new category here.”

 

A pitch to offer artists a way to give geo-fenced, live events to fans around the world has brought the new Los Angeles startup Moment House $1.5 million in seed funding.

The money came from heavy hitters in the Los Angeles entertainment and investment scene including Scooter Braun, Troy Carter, Kygo’s Palm Tree Crew and Jared Leto. Patreon chief executive Jack Conte and Sequoia Capital partner Jess Lee also participated in the round.

Forerunner Ventures led the deal and the investment was made by Kirsten Green, the firm’s famous founder and managing partner. Kevin Mayer, the former chief executive of TikTok; GV chief David Krane; Aaron Levie from Box; the tech media and entertainment guru, Matthew Ball; and product maestro Eugene Wei all participated in the round as well.

Founded by Arjun Mehta, Shray Bansal, and Nigel Egrari, the company grew out of work the three men did while attending the USC Jimmy Iovine & Dr. Dre Academy for the Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation. 

The company touts itself as the simplest way for artists to create online events for their fans.

For its first foray into live entertainment, Moment House is going to host a geo-fenced, location-specific tour for the musician Yungblud. Other ticketed events from Kygo, blackbear, Kaytranada, Denzel Curry and Ruel will follow, the company said.

For musicians, the company’s pitch of ticketing security, merchandise integrations global payments support, must have been music to their ears — because all of those features add up to one thing… cash.

And performers on the platform take all of the ticket revenues, with Moment House earning money by charging fans a small fee.

In a statement, company co-founder Arjun Mehta said that the company’s technology and service wasn’t a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but rather a way to amplify the concert going experience with an online approximation.

“Moment House is empowering artists to deliver digital experiences that feel authentic and compelling,” said Leto, in a statement. “I was drawn to the unique design-driven approach because that’s what is needed to create a new category here.”

 

Khosla Ventures, the eponymous venture firm helmed by longtime Silicon Valley rainmaker, Vinod Khosla, is raising  $1.1 billion for its latest venture fund, according to documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing was first spotted by Ari Levy over at CNBC.

Khosla, whose investing career began at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (back when it was still called Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers) is rightly famous for a number of bets on enterprise software companies and was a richly rewarded co-founder of Sun Microsystems before venturing into the world of venture capital.

Like his former partner, John Doerr, Khosla also went all-in on renewable energy and sustainability both at Kleiner Perkins and then later at his own fund, which he reportedly launched with several hundreds of millions of dollars from his personal fortune.

Over the years Khosla Ventures has placed bets and scored big wins across a wide range of industries including cybersecurity (with the over $1 billion acquisition of portfolio company Cylance), sustainability (with the Climate Corp. acquisition), and healthcare (through the public offering of Editas).

And the current portfolio should also have some big exits with a roster that includes: the unicorn lending company, Affirm; the nuclear fusion technology developer, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (maybe not a winner, but so so so cool); delivery company, DoorDash; the meat replacement maker, Impossible Foods; grocery delivery service, Instacart; security technology developer, Okta; the health insurance provider, Oscar; and the payment companies Square and Stripe .

That’s quite a string of unicorn (and would-be unicorn) investments. And it speaks to the breadth of the firm’s interests that run the gamut from healthcare to fintech to sustainability and the future of food.

Khosla will likely benefit from the surge of interest in investments that adhere to new environmental, social responsibility and corporate governance standards.

There are billions of dollars that are looking for a home that can invest along those criteria, and for the last 16 years or so, that’s exactly what Khosla Ventures has been doing.

Brighteye Ventures, the European edtech VC firm, is announcing the $54 million first close of its second fund, bringing total assets under management to over $112 million.

Backing comes from a mixture of existing and new investors, made up primarily of unnamed international family offices. The fund’s second close is expected to take place next year and will include additional institutional investors.

Founded in 2017, Brighteye describes itself as a thesis-driven fund investing in startups that enhance learning. Unsurprisingly, the VC says it sees an unprecedented opportunity within the $7 trillion global education sector “as educators and students are adapting to distance learning en masse and millions of displaced workers are seeking to upskill’.

Out of this new fund, Brighteye will invest in 15-20 companies over the next three years at the seed and Series-A stage and write cheques of up to $5 million.

“We invest in startups that use technology to directly enable learning, skills acquisition or research as well as companies whose products address structural needs in the education sector,” Alex Spiro Latsis, managing partner at Brighteye Ventures, tells me.

“For example, Zen Educate addresses the systemic issue of teacher supply shortages in the U.K., via an on-demand platform that saves schools money whilst allowing educators to earn more. Litigate is an AI-driven coach and workflow tool improving results for legal associates, while Ironhack, the largest tech bootcamp in Europe and Latin America, gives young professionals the skills needed to enter the innovation economy and connects them to employers with a 90% job placement rate”.

The VC’s investments also includes Ornikar, the online driving school in France and Spain serving over 1.6 million students; Tandem, the Berlin-based peer-to-peer language learning platform with over 10 million members; and Epic!, a reading platform said to be used in more than 90% of U.S. schools.

“Sector specialisation means that our entire team is devoted to mapping, evaluating and building networks in the learning industry,” adds Spiro Latsis, when asked how Brighteye will compete for edtech deals when many generalist VCs are eyeing up the sector. “We understand what a differentiated approach looks like, can develop conviction quickly and make an offer based on that conviction. Once we invest, portfolio companies benefit from a network that includes not just potential clients and investors but also some of the best performing edtech companies in Europe”.

Meanwhile, Brighteye says it will be expanding its advisory team to support the new fund and expects to grow from three members to ten within the next 12 months. In addition, David Guerin has been promoted to principal to manage deal making and portfolio support in Paris, and the firm expects to open a DACH region presence by summer 2022.

Zoom has a new marketplace and new integrations, Spotify gets a new format and we review Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go. This is your Daily Crunch for October 14, 2020.

The big story: Zoom launches its events marketplace

Zoom’s new OnZoom marketplace allows anyone to host and sell tickets for virtual events. It’s also integrating the ability for nonprofits to accept donations.

The company made a couple other announcements at its Zoomtopia user conference. For one thing, it’s also integrating with a starting lineup of 35 third-party “Zapps,” allowing products like Asana and Dropbox to integrate directly into the Zoom experience.

In addition, Zoom said it will begin rolling out end-to-end encryption (a feature it’s been promising since acquiring Keybase in May) to users next week.

The tech giants

Spotify introduces a new music-and-spoken word format, open to all creators — The new format is designed to reproduce the radio-like experience of listening to a DJ talk about the music, and it also enables the creation of music-filled podcasts.

Microsoft reverse engineers a budget computer with the Surface Laptop Go — Brian Heater writes that the Laptop Go is a strange and sometimes successful mix of Surface design and budget decisions.

Google launches a suite of tech-powered tools for reporters, Journalist Studio — The suite includes a host of existing tools as well as two new products aimed at helping reporters search across large documents and visualizing data.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Getaround raises a $140M Series E amid rebound in short-distance travel — The rebound is real: I took my first Getaround this weekend.

Augury taps $55M for tech that predicts machine faults from vibration, sound and temperature — The startup works with large enterprises like Colgate and Heineken to maintain machines in their production and distribution lines.

Plenty has raised over $500M to grow fruits and veggies indoors — The funding was led by existing investor SoftBank Vision Fund and included the berry farming giant Driscoll’s.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

What the iPhone 12 tells us about the state of the smartphone industry in 2020 — While the iPhone 12 was no doubt in development long before the current pandemic, the pandemic’s global shutdown has only exacerbated many existing problems for smartphone makers.

Databricks crossed $350M run rate in Q3, up from $200M one year ago — The data analytics company scaled rapidly to put itself on an obvious IPO path.

Dear Sophie: I came on a B-1 visa, then COVID-19 happened. How can I stay? — The latest advice from immigration lawyer Sophie Alcorn.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. And we’re having a fall sale!)

Everything else

NASA loads 14 companies with $370M for ‘tipping point’ technologies — NASA has announced more than a third of a billion dollars’ worth of “Tipping Point” contracts awarded to over a dozen companies pursuing potentially transformative space technologies.

Harley-Davidson should keep making e-motorcycles — That’s Jake Bright’s takeaway after three weeks with the LiveWire e-motorcycle.

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.

Audrey Gelman, the former CEO of The Wing who resigned in June, today 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.”

A public apology from Gelman and The Wing COO Lauren Kassan is just one of the demands from members of Flew The Coup, a group of former staffers at The Wing. Another demand is for The Wing to drop the non-disclosure agreements in their contracts.

“Collectively, we have faced racism and anti-LGBTQIA rhetoric from management, HQ staff, and members,” the group wrote on Instagram back in June. “We have faced physical and psychological violence within the various Wing locations, and discrimination when attempting to move up within the company.”

The group went on to say that while The Wing was built on the idea of being a safe and inclusive place for women and non-binary folks, “we have continuously seen the exact opposite of this mission.”

The Wing has raised $117.5 million from a number of investors, including New Enterprise Associates, AlleyCorp, Sequoia Capital, Serena Williams and Kerry Washington. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Washington told me a bit about how she felt about the drama at The Wing.

“Well, you know, I’m not new to scandal, so there’s that,” Washington said. “I was and I am really deeply still inspired by the original vision of the company. And, I think like a lot of companies in this time, because of the several pandemics that we’re facing, whether it’s our awareness around racial injustice, or COVID, lots of people are in a moment of recalibration and self-reflection. So I think that there is incredible space to improve the dynamics. And as somebody who’s an investor, as a woman of color, it’s important to me that there is increased transparency and also accountability.”

Over the past few months, Washington said her role as an investor has been “really just supporting leadership in this transition,” as well as expressing to those leaders a “deep desire” for transparency and accountability.

The Wing, like many other tech companies, struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April, The Wing laid off or furloughed “the majority” of its workers, the company said. Then, in July, The Wing laid off another 56 people.

As part of Flew The Coup’s organizing, it’s also raising money to help support people who were laid off from The Wing. As of today, the group has raised more than $15,000 for its grant program. Its goal is to raise $100,000.

We’ve reached out to The Wing and will update this story if we hear back.