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The pandemic has caused K-12 classrooms, chaotic at the best of times, to descend into Zoom call chaos. What’s more, thousands of teachers who must wrangle this new, weird system are doing so with just a single monitor, making it difficult to see their students and the lesson at the same time. Two Screens for Teachers hopes to help out educators with this elementary, but hugely important, home office upgrade.

It’s a charity, so right up front we might as well say if you like the idea, you can donate here — the average cost is about $150 and gets the teacher everything they need.

This isn’t a large operation, just a few people who noticed this need and decided to do something about it. In retrospect it seems obvious, but the truth is teachers are used to getting by with less than enough and probably had more important things to worry about (like almost everything else).

Few people have the luxury of putting together a real “home office” on such short notice, and teachers, like everyone else, have been making do. A couple teachers sent in their setups:

Image Credits: Two Screens for Teachers

Having used two monitors for a decade now, and large ones at that, I can’t imagine going back — and I’m just a writer. Imagine having 30 kids on a video call for hours at a time while also trying to get through presentations, homework assignments, emails and all the rest. On a laptop or a single monitor? Forget about it. Yet many teachers didn’t even know it was an option.

“Most teachers I spoke with had never considered getting a second monitor but they immediately understood the value of putting their students on one screen and lesson plans on the other,” he said. “When they get a new monitor the gratitude is intense.”

So far over 9,000 teachers have requested monitors through the site, Lerner told me, and over a thousand have been sent. It’s not just saying “me!” but filling out a form so it’s known what type of monitor and cable will be needed for maximum compatibility. That way donors can be told exactly what to order (on Amazon) and where to send it. Small operation, remember? No warehouses here, just people helping people.

That said, the crew isn’t flying completely by the seats of their pants. Two Screens for Teachers is partnering with DonorsChoose to make sure donations are tax-deductible, and they’re chatting with monitor providers like Dell to get bulk deals. Their ambitious goal is to distribute a quarter of a million monitors to teachers before the end of the year — and obviously they can only do that with 30 million bucks or so.

Hopefully they meet and exceed their goal. You can help by buying a monitor for a teacher, of course, but if you work for a company that has lots of spares or maybe a bit of budget set aside for social good, you might reach out to see if a larger gift can be arranged.

And of course, if you’re a teacher, feel free to sign up. Any full time teacher in the U.S. is eligible.

Google today announced an update to Google Maps that will bring a new COVID-19 layer to the service to help you better understand the number of cases in a given area. With the pandemic continuing to spread in many countries — and ahead of what many fear will be a second wave — Google Maps users can now enable this feature and see a color-coded map based on the number of cases per 100,000 people, as well as labels that indicate whether numbers are trending up or down.

Image Credits: Google

This data will be available for all the 220 countries and territories that Google Maps currently supports. Where possible, the data is granular down to the city level, but that obviously depends on the numbers Google is able to pull in.

Google says the data comes from a number of sources, including Johns Hopkins, the New York Times, and Wikipedia, which get their their information from local and intergovernmental government organizations. That’s the same sources Google pulls from when it displays COVID data on its search results pages.

This new layer is now rolling out for Google Maps on Android and iOS this week, so it may take a few days before you’ll be able to see it. It doesn’t look like Google plans to bring it Maps on desktop any time soon, though.

Glovo, a Spain-based delivery platform startup, is facing legal disruption in its home market after the country’s Supreme Court ruled against its classification of delivery couriers as ‘autonomous’ (i.e. self employed) — finding riders are instead in a laboural relationship with the platform.

It’s the latest in a string of legal rulings around the classification of Glovo riders in the country in recent years, some of which it has won. Although more recently momentum has been in the opposite direction, with a High Court decision late last year that also judged riders to be workers.

Today the country’s Supreme Court also refused to refer a preliminary question to Europe’s top court, arguing the defining characteristics of its contracts with riders concur, so it’s not clear where Glovo’s appeal can go next. A second ground for appeal was rejected for a formal compliance reason, per a judiciary press release (in Spanish).

In the PR — ahead of the release of the full judgement — the judiciary branch writes that the Plenary of the Fourth Chamber of the Supreme Court maintains Glovo is “not a mere intermediary in the contracting of services between businesses and distributors”.

“It is a company that provides delivery and courier services, setting the essential conditions for the provision of said service. And it is the owner of the essential assets to carry out the activity. For this, it uses delivery people who do not have their own and autonomous business organization, who provide their service inserted in the employer’s work organization,” it adds (via Google Translate).

We’ve reached out to Glovo with questions about how it intends to respond to the ruling.

In a statement reported by El Mundo it has called for policymakers to update regulation around gig worker platforms, writing: “Glovo respects the judgment of the Supreme Court and awaits the definition of an adequate regulatory framework by the Government and Europe.”

At the EU level, the bloc’s lawmakers have signalled an awareness of concerns about conditions for gig workers.

Setting out an ‘Agenda‘ for her five year term late last year, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said she would look at ways of improving the labour conditions of platform workers — although her suggested policy focus was a pretty soft one, of “skills and education”. So Europe’s courts may end up doing the heavy lifting on gig worker rights.

One key question is how viable is the ‘on-demand delivery’ model if the full cost of labor moves onto the balance sheet? It would certainly change the unit economics in markets where platforms can’t legally sidestep the costs of employing the thousands of humans they rely on to move packets around. (Hence some of these startups are shelling out on R&D to replace human riders with delivery drones/robots.)

In Glovo’s case, the company was in the news last week after it announced the sale (for $272M) of its LatAm business to German rival Delivery Hero — further concentrating its operations in the European market, after it exited the Middle East at the start of this year.

Last year it told us it was focused on trying to achieve profitability in 2021. Any such push would be complicated by requirements to reclassify large numbers of delivery riders as workers. So the Supreme Court ruling looks like it could have major implications for Glovo’s business.

It seems as if every month introduces a whole new paradigm to VC investing. First COVID-19 triggered a wave of changes as founders learned how to pitch their startups remotely and VCs learned how to judge quality without meeting their potential portfolio companies in person. Then we had the rise of SPACs and the rise of rolling funds, growth in secondary transactions including whole VC fund portfolios, and a frothing crypto investing market after years at a slow simmer.

In short, 2020 looks to be a watershed year for VCs, a pivot point for the industry as it learns to adapt to the new normals of startups, valuations, and ecosystems.

Given how important these changes are, we’re excited to announce the next edition of our Extra Crunch Live interview series, this time with two VCs from Index Ventures who are trailblazing tracks across this new environment in AI/ML, SaaS, and the future of work. We’re scheduled for Tuesday, September 29 at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 6pm GMT. Login details are below the fold for EC members, and if you don’t have an Extra Crunch membership, click through to signup.

First, we have Nina Achadjian, who officially joined Index Ventures several years ago out of the firm’s SF office and was promoted to partner earlier this year. Achadjian has been searching for and investing into some of the most interesting new collaborative companies that are rebuilding the enterprise from the ground up (which happens to have been a brilliant move given our remote-work world this year). Her investments include such companies as product-management service productboard, sales performance platform Gong, executive assistant marketplace Double, and real estate services platform ServiceTitan.

Second, we have Sarah Cannon, who joined Index in 2018 from CapitalG, and who is also based officially out of SF. Cannon made a splash earlier this year with her bullish bet on note-taking and team productivity wunderkind Notion, and has also invested in productivity tools like collaborative presentation software Pitch and smart team messaging app Quill.

Together, we’ll talk about remote work and all these productivity cult products, and then we’ll expand the conversation to the broader changes in the work of VCs today and how they’re adapting their own activities to match the world we see today.

Even better, we’ll be taking live questions from the audience, so definitely come bearing interesting questions otherwise I am going to have to do all the work myself and will be very sad.

Join us next week with these two great thinkers at Tuesday, September 29 at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 6pm GMT. Login details and calendar invite are below.

Event Details

Volkswagen unveiled Wednesday the ID.4, an all-electric crossover that’s part of the German automaker’s plan to sell 1 million EVs annually by 2025.

The unveiling ceremony was virtual, but a few days before TechCrunch got a chance to get an up close view of the vehicle and experience a truly surreal and lonely reveal that only the COVID-19 pandemic could provide.

Image Credits:

The ID.4, which at launch will come with a 82-kilowatt-hour battery pack and a single, 201-horsepower motor on the rear axle, will start at $39,995 before federal tax incentives. The first edition version of the ID.4 has an estimated EPA range of 250 miles.

The ID.4 is the first under the automaker’s new ID label to be headed to the United States. It’s the second electric vehicle under the ID badge to go into production. The ID.3, the electric hatchback that will only be sold in Europe, is the first vehicle. All of the ID vehicles will have the same underlying MEB platform, a flexible modular system — really a matrix of common parts — for producing electric vehicles that VW says make it more efficient and cost-effective.

Volkswagen has already started series production of the ID.4 at the company’s Zwickau factory in Germany.

Here’s a closer look at the vehicle inside and out. A few things to note in the photos below. This is the highest end version of the ID.4, called the 1st Edition. This limited run variant will start at $43,995 and comes a few extras touches like a bigger 12-inch touchscreen and trim colors. Notice the lighting under the door handle, the storage pass through in the middle seat and a lighting feature that runs along the dash and communicates various bits of information, like battery charge, to the driver.

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Facebook garnered the ire of some virtual reality developers last year when they announced that they would be more aggressively curating the content that was for sale in the Oculus Store on their then-upcoming Quest headset. Developers who had been used to a more self-serve experience on the PC storefront were unexpectedly put in the position of being told their VR app wasn’t good enough.

SideQuest co-founder Shane Harris was one of those developers, but after his app was rejected, he moved to craft a workaround. He and his wife Orla started building a software platform that could sidestep the bureaucracy and easily side-load apps onto the Quest device even if the title wasn’t available in Facebook’s store. Users didn’t need to jailbreak their device to access SideQuest, they simply need to switch their headset into a “developer mode,” a straightforward process that Oculus has not taken meaningful steps to complicate over the years. The platform quickly took off, giving developers a place to test their own creations and users a place to demo titles that were a bit experimental or a bit more unfinished than Facebook’s more hand-polished app store.

Some of the platform’s hits include work-in-progress Quest ports of existing PC VR titles, wholly new creations and add-ons to Oculus Store titles like the popular Virtual Desktop app. Co-founder Orla Harris says that 800 new apps have been released on the store in the past six months.

As the app began reaching major usage milestones, attracting hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to its site, the husband-and-wife co-founding team began to seek out some cash to expand their team. They Belfast-based duo ended up opting to join the BoostVC accelerator for its latest class, albeit remotely, raising $500k per its standard terms. They also went on to receive checks from The Fund and, notably, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. The team raised $650k in total and has used that funding to bring on engineers, a community manager and a designer.

Founders Shane and Orla Harris. Photo via SideQuest.

Luckey, who has backed a handful of VR startups as an angel investor since departing Facebook, said that SideQuest’s software followed in the footsteps of early developer products that his team had been building out before the Facebook acquisition and was promoting a more open Oculus platform. “No HMD manufacturer should have a stranglehold on the VR ecosystem or unilateral control over what people run on their VR headsets, and when I look at Sidequest, I see the spirit of Oculus Share,” Luckey said in a statement.

SideQuest has tried their best to stay in the good graces of Facebook and Oculus.

That has meant abiding by the company’s developer terms which have admittedly complicated their monetization path. Most app stores make money by charging a percentage of revenues from sales of paid apps, but doing this would likely garner the ire of Facebook, the co-founders say, leaving the SideQuest team to mainly rely on paid promotion inside the store as a path towards revenues. They note that this path has forced them to get creative about what services they plan to offer down the road, but that it also has made the storefront more attractive to developers who are earning a full cut of app download revenues.

Growing ad revenue has left the company to make some decisions that have been controversial with its users, including the removal of adult-themed apps from the store earlier this year. The team tests all content that is submitted to the store, rejecting apps that are deemed NSFW or violate copyright. The SideQuest team curates what apps are listed in the user-facing storefront, but the app can also be used as a means for side-loading APK files onto the device that aren’t downloaded from the store.

Orla and Shane Harris say that they have worked to maintain a friendly relationship with the Facebook team, but acknowledge that they have an awful lot riding on that good rapport, noting that any move by Facebook to block SideQuest from working on the Quest would likely mean game-over.

As companies like Apple attract regulatory attention due to their monolithic app storefronts, having a hobbyist marketplace operating in the background could offer some unforeseen long-term benefits for Facebook as they build out their VR efforts. The startup’s founders see their product as a positive development for all parties involved, noting that SideQuest offers budding VR developers a path to improving their demos and getting user feedback in a process that doesn’t exist elsewhere pre-release. During our conversation, Shane Harris proudly noted that a popular puzzle app in the SideQuest store called Cubism had recently “graduated” to the official Oculus Store, though he was quick to note that the developer had also just released another experimental mode of the game just for SideQuest

Leonardo DiCaprio is making a significant commitment to the Los Angeles-based investment firm, Struck Capital, as part of the actor’s commitment to building LA into a tech development powerhouse.

It’s part of what Struck Capital founder Adam Struck called a vision of making Los Angeles “a leading hub for innovation to save the world.”

Struck Capital, which is currently investing out of a $55 million second fund, would not disclose the size of DiCaprio’s stake, but said that the investment is significant.

“Los Angeles has a creative and innovative spirit like nowhere else, and I’m excited to be investing in the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders in my hometown,” said DiCaprio, in a statement.

DiCaprio has already made a number of investments in startup companies that have done very well for the Academy Award-winning actor. Two investments, the mattress retailer Casper and the meat alternative manufacturer, Beyond Meat, are now both publicly traded companies. In fact, Beyond Meat was one of the best performing public offerings of the last year.

And the two investments highlight themes of consumer innovation and sustainability that are a through-line across the startup commitments DiCaprio has made public, according to CrunchBase. Other investments include the lab grown diamond manufacturer, Diamond Foundry; the tea company promoting sustainable rainforest preservation, Runa Tea; recycling technology developer, Rubicon; the sustainable meal prep company, Love The Wild; and Magnus, an app that bills itself as a Shazam for art. DiCaprio is also investor in the Los Angeles-based ethically and sustainably focused financial services firm, Aspiration.

“He sees this as a way to support LA,” said Struck of DiCaprio’s commitment.

In addition to his commitment to the fund, DiCaprio will be making co-investments alongside the Struck Capital team. In fact, the actor has already investment in Raptor Maps, a company that uses drones to analyze the productivity and operations of solar farms.

“He chose us because he already appreciates our mandate,” said Struck. And while the firm may not be an impact investment fund by design, Struck said the company’s deals focus on financial inclusion, sustainability, and technological innovation as first principals. 

“I think, fundamentally, if a business is mission driven, they’re most likely going to acquire higher enterprise values and retain more talent,” Struck said.

Struck is now the fourth largest dedicated seed fund in Los Angeles, and has nearly $150 million in assets under management. Its portfolio companies include: Sendoso, ScratchPay, Mythical Games, and Brainbase and has backed and exited a number of later stage companies like Mojo Vision, Postmates, Nutanix, Latch, Grab, and Wunder Mobility.

“Alongside the team at Struck Capital we’re creating a community, where the next generation of LA’s leaders can grow their business, learn from one another, achieve their visions, and improve our world,” DiCaprio said in a statement.

It’s been a long road for Palantir as it has submitted amendment after amendment with the SEC related to its S-1 filing over the past two months. But after weeks of back and forth, it’s official: Palantir’s S-1 has been marked effective, which means that it has been accepted by the SEC and its target market the NYSE and should be ready to go as the company heads toward a public direct listing.

The company will begin trading on Wednesday, September 30th, under the ticker PLTR. Palantir originally had planned to start trading today, but moved the date back to the 29th a few filings ago, and finally ended up with the 30th. It is not floating new stock, although the company effectively raised “IPO money” back in July of about $1 billion from the private markets.

Palantir yesterday also offered revenue guidance to fill out the rest of its calendar year. The company estimated it would target roughly $1.05 billion in revenue for 2020, with non-GAAP operating income (excluding stock-based compensation and some other major line items) of $116-126 million. It expects its head count to remain roughly flat, growing just 4%.

Palantir had revenue of $595 million in 2018 and $743 million in 2019 according to its S-1 filing. If it hits its new target revenue, that would be a growth rate of 41% from last year, an acceleration from the roughly 25% growth rate in the previous year. The company’s Q3 revenue is estimated to reach $278-280 million with a growth rate of 46-47%, according to the company’s projections. So it seems to be accelerating every so slightly in the back half of this year as customers presumably start ramping up their IT purchases following the global pandemic.

While we have talked extensively about Palantir’s woes on governance, the reality behind the company is reasonably decent: it’s a quick if not rapid growth company, predominantly in software rather than services, with a growing customer base including both government and enterprise customers. The company has very recently started to talk more about its Apollo product, which has helped it cut sales times and make more of its product self-service, or at least, reduced-service.

For comparison though, check out Snowflake, which is also in the data infrastructure space although a bit lower in the stack and just went public last week. In most of 2018 (the company has a Feb 1 fiscal calendar), the company generated $97 million in revenue, and then grew to an astonishing $265 million for most of 2019. Snowflake had a net loss of 131% of revenue, compared to Palantir, which had a net loss of 78% of revenue last year.

Snowflake was considered one of the best IPOs of the year, given its high net dollar retention rate, extremely rapid growth, and huge market size waiting to be tapped. Palantir is a much larger company in terms of revenues, but growing significantly slower, but with a bit better cash flow position, particularly in the last two years as it has made its operations much more efficient.

We’ll have to wait a week to see how the markets react. For now though, it looks like Palantir has gotten out of its own way and can finally start trading.

Blue Origin founder and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has made no secret of his ambition to eventually create orbiting space stations that act as places for people to live and work – he outlined a vision based on space settlement designs first conceived by physicist Gerard K. O’Neill at a Blue Origin event, including its lunar lander reveal, last year. Now, however, Blue Origin has issued a job posting seeking a person who will be tasked with leading its efforts around “Orbital Habitat Formulation” (via Space News).

The job posting seeks a person who will be responsible for developing the ultimate vision of “millions of people living and working in space,” with a near-term goal of developing space stations in low Earth orbit that take cues from the existing International Space Station (ISS), but that also go “beyond” that existing shared international research structure, in part by fostering “value-creating economic activity.”

Here’s the core description from the listing:

As Blue Origin’s Formulation Lead for the Orbital Habitat product line, you will lead development of technical concepts, product strategies, business cases, customer relationships, market-shaping outreach, industrial partnerships, implementation approaches, and supply chain. Partnering with business development professionals, you will develop a detailed understanding of NASA, other government, and commercial needs and guide the iterative development of product strategy. You will be accountable for capturing external and internal sponsorship funding to establish viable LEO destination systems in the 2020s. You will directly impact the history of human spaceflight.

Blue Origin also says that what they’re building will be “fundamentally different” from stations like the ISS, which are designed for “small, professional trained crews.” It sounds like they want to make them quite a bit more habitable and practical for non-expert users, who are there primarily for commercial purposes – not to be astronauts first and foremost.

We’re probably still quite a ways away from the idealistic concept vision that Bezos shared at last May’s event, pictured above. But depending on how badly he wants it to happen, we could have Blue Origin commercial space habitats in orbit sooner than some might think.