How has Y Combinator adapted its accelerator program to work through a pandemic? What does YC look for in a company in a year as rocky and unpredictable as this one?
Y Combinator President Geoff Ralston will join us on Extra Crunch Live later today to talk about all this and more, starting at 12 p.m PT/3 p.m ET.
Want to tune in? EC Members can find details for the live Zoom Q&A down below — and if you’re watching along live, you’ll be able to submit questions of your own.
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe.
Over the next few weeks, we will be ‘zeroing-in’ on Europe’s major cities, from A-Z, Amsterdam to Zurich, and many points in-between.
It’s part of a broader series of surveys we’re doing to help founders find the right investors.
Our survey will capture how each European startup is fairing, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the Coronavirus pandemic.
We’d like to know how your city’s startup scene is evolving, how the tech sector is being impacted by COVID-19, and generally how you things will evolve from here.
Our survey will only be about investors, and will only be sent to investors.
The shortlist of questions will require only brief responses, but the more you want to add, the better.
The deadline for entries is the end of next week, August 7th and you can fill it out here.
Obviously, investors who contribute will be published in the final surveys.
What kinds of things do we want to know?
Questions will include trends are you most excited? What startup do you wish someone would create?
Where are the overlooked opportunities? What are you looking for in your next investment, in general? How is your local ecosystem going? And how has COVID-19 impacted your investment strategy?
The survey will cover almost every European country, on the continent of Europe (not just EU members, btw), so just look for your country in the menu on the survey and please participate (if you’re a venture capital investor).
Thank you for participating. If you have questions you can email mike@techcrunch.com
Boom Supersonic, the Colorado -based startup working on creating a supersonic passenger jet to continue and dramatically advance the legacy of the original Concorde, has signed on Rolls-Royce to build the propulsion system for its Overture commercial aircraft. Boom is getting very close to actually beginning to fly its XB-1, a subscale demonstrator aircraft that will test and prove out many of the technologies that will be used to bring Overture to life.
This isn’t the first time Boom and Rolls-Royce have worked together: The two companies have had a number of different collaborations on aspects of their development process to date, Boom notes. Rolls-Royce has a history of developing engines for civil aircraft applications dating all the way back to World War II and is the second-largest maker of aircraft engines in the world.
Boom’s relative newcomer status should benefit greatly from the long tradition Rolls-Royce has in creating aircraft propulsion systems — and it doesn’t hurt that Rolls-Royce had a hand in creating the Olympus 593 turbojet that powered the original Concorde.
The Overture aims to be the world’s fastest passenger aircraft, with flights taking half the time they do on conventional commercial jets (New York to London in just three-and-a-half hours, for instance). The company aims to provide essentially dedicated business class service to a frequent business traveler clientele, and to do so sometime in the next five to 10 years.
The XB-1 demonstrator jet has a set reveal date of October 7 this year, which is the first time we’ll get a first-hand look at a fully functional aircraft that Boom really intends to fly.
You have a mere 48 hours left to join the first global Disrupt at the lowest possible price. Disrupt 2020 runs September 14-18 — five days packed with opportunity for founders, investors, entrepreneurs and every other role across the startup universe.
Your first opportunity — saving up to $300 on your Disrupt 2020 pass — expires on July 31 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Don’t put off saving when every dollar counts. Purchase your pass today, and then get ready to grab the keys to success and drive your business forward.
You can always count on Disrupt to deliver an outstanding lineup of speakers, and this year is no different in that respect. Leading industry movers and shakers will grace our virtual stages to share their hard-won insight, discuss trends and share their specific path to startup success.
Here’s just a taste of the Disrupt speaker lineup.
Celebrity speakers at Disrupt are nothing new, but they’re never there simply because they’re famous. Case in point, Kerry Washington will join us to talk about her recent move toward tech investment and operations. Plus, we’ll discuss the rapid shift toward streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Quibi, Disney+ and HBO and ways networks are trying to evolve.
You’ll also find plenty of content focused on helping early-stage startup founders build a stronger business. Head to the Extra Crunch Stage for sessions designed to provide actionable tips and tactics you can adapt and apply to your own business. Each session will be helmed by a leading expert — think marketing, investment and business development.
We’re talking topics that every early-stage founder needs to master — or at least understand well enough to hire or partner with the right people. Need to craft a more compelling pitch deck? Do you need a sales team and how do you build one? This is the place for you.
Disrupt 2020 offers so much more: Startup Battlefield, Digital Startup Alley, world-class networking with thousands of global attendees — and CrunchMatch to make finding and connecting with them fast, easy and organized.
Early-bird pricing — and up to $300 in savings — disappears in just 48 hours on July 31 when the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT). Don’t miss out on the lowest possible price. Buy your Disrupt 2020 pass now. Grab the keys and drive your business forward.
Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.
We asked, and you have delivered.
We first launched The TechCrunch List two weeks ago to help founders find VCs who are ready to write first and lead checks into 22 specific market verticals like enterprise applications or digital biotech. We based that initial list of 391 investors on direct recommendations from more than 1,200 founders, who often supplied a great level of detail about the investors who helped them on their journeys to build their startups.
I’m pleased to report that since that initial launch, we have had an avalanche of recommendations and emails flow into TechCrunch, and we are ready to unveil a full update to The TechCrunch List.
Now using more than 2,600 founder recommendations — more than double our original dataset — we have underscored a number of the existing investors on our list as well as added 116 new investors who have been endorsed by founders as investors willing to cut against the grain and write those critical first checks and lead venture rounds.
I’m pleased to report that we are starting to get a trickle of investors flowing in from outside the United States, particularly in Europe. That said, we still need more founder recommendations from Europe, LatAm, Africa, and Asia to round out the list. If you are a founder from these regions, you are particularly encouraged to help us identify the intrepid investors that are leading these ecosystems.
If you are a founder and haven’t submitted your recommendation yet, please fill out our very brief survey.
If you have questions about The TechCrunch List, we have put together a Frequently Asked Questions page that describes the qualifications and logistics, some of the logic behind the List, and how to get in touch with us.
Thank you to every founder who has helped us — our hope is that The TechCrunch List will be an up-to-date compendium of the best and most ambitious investors worldwide and a key tool in the chest for founders launching their fundraises.
Register now to attend the event on 8/6 at 10 AM PT. Registered attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions via Slido.
Next in our series of talks with virtual event masterminds, we’ll be meeting with Johnny Boufarhat, founder of virtual events platform, Hopin, about the virtual venue we’re developing together for Disrupt.
Hopin was founded in 2007 with the aim to help organizers recreate the in-person event experience virtually. So far, it’s hosted events with partners including the UN and Dell. In June of this year, Hopin announced that it had raised a $40 million Series A led by IVP.
In our discussion with Johnny, we will cover topics including: how COVID-19 has accelerated the demand for virtual events, his perspective on virtual venues, the Disrupt virtual venue, the attendee experience, the partner experience, how sponsors can leverage the event, and what the future of events might look like. If you’re interested in attending, becoming a sponsor, or learning more about Disrupt, this is for you.
In addition to our talk with Johnny next week, we’re hosting a session today at 10 AM PT with Tim Groot, the founder of the AI driven event networking solution, Grip, that we will use to power Disrupt (register here).
Join us for a conversation with the founder of Slido, the company we will use to power engagement at Disrupt. More on this soon!
At last week’s Early Stage virtual event, founders and investors shared some of their best insights about startup building and what they’re looking for in their next investments. We’ve assembled a compilation of insights covering different elements of entrepreneurship from a handful of founders and VCs:
Jess Lee has a whole framework for describing customers as if they were characters in a film.
“The way to think about it is as a fictional character who represents a particular user type that might use your product or company or your brand in a particular way,” she said. “And many companies have multiple personas.”
A more scientific way is thinking of your customers as a cluster of data points. The persona that emerges is at the center of that cluster.
Image Credits: TC Early Stage
“So if you map out all of the possible customers, you tend to see these clusters and then you describe who the person is at the center of that cluster,” Lee said.
What makes a good persona is someone who feels useful for product design but also memorable. That means creating a persona that has a clear story with real pain points, she said.
“And that’s the most important thing,” she said. “What do they care about and what problems are you trying to solve?”
Point, a new challenger bank in the U.S., is launching publicly today with an invite system. While Point is technically providing a bank account, the company focuses on rewards associated with a debit card.
“I started Point as a solution about everything that is frustrating and complicated about credit cards. The incentives between credit card companies and cardholders are misaligned,” Point co-founder and CEO Patrick Mrozowski told me.
When Mrozowski first got a credit card, he was spending a ton of money to reach a certain level of spending and unlock the sign-up bonus. At the end of the month, he ended up with credit card debt for no valid reason.
“What would American Express would look like today?” he says to sum up Point’s vision. It comes down to two important principles — being in charge of your budget so that you don’t end up with debt and unlocking rewards from brands that you actually interact with.
Many challenger banks want to provide a simple banking experience for the underbanked. Point doesn’t have the same positioning. Creating a Point account is more like joining a membership program.
When you sign up, you get a debit card with some level of insurance as it’s a Mastercard World Debit card. You can expect some trip cancellation insurance, rental car insurance, purchase insurance, etc.
As the name of the startup suggests, you earn points with each purchase. You get 5x points on subscriptions, such as Spotify and Netflix, 3x points on food, grocery deliveries and ride sharing, and 1x points on everything else. Points can be redeemed for dollars — each point is worth $0.01. In addition to that, Point is going to create a feed of offers with discounts, content, events and more.
Due to its premium positioning, Point isn’t free. You have to pay $6.99 per month or $60 per year to join Point. Point doesn’t charge any foreign transaction fees.
You can connect your Point account with another bank account using Plaid. It lets you top up your account using ACH transfers. Behind the scene, Point works with Radius Bank for the banking infrastructure, an FDIC-insured bank.
The company announced earlier this month that it has raised a $10.5 million Series A led by Valar Ventures with Y Combinator, Kindred Ventures, Finventure Studio and business angels also participating.
Image Credits: Point
Amazon has said the number of demands for user data made by U.S. federal and local law enforcement have increased during the first half of 2020 than during the same period a year earlier.
The disclosure came in the company’s latest transparency report, published Thursday.
The figures show that Amazon received 23% more subpoenas and search warrants, and a 29% increase in court orders compared to the first half of 2019. That includes data collected from its Amazon Echo devices and its Kindle and Fire tablets.
Breaking those figures down, Amazon said it received:
The number of requests to the company’s cloud services, Amazon Web Services, also went up compared to a year earlier.
But it’s not clear what caused the rise in U.S. government demands for user data. A spokesperson for Amazon did respond to a request for comment.
But the company saw the number of overseas requests drop by about one-third compared to the same period a year earlier. Amazon rejected 92% of the 177 overseas requests it received, turning over partial user data in 10 cases and all requested data in four cases.
Amazon also said it received between 0 and 249 national security requests, flat from previous reports. Justice Department rules on disclosing classified requests only allow companies to respond in numerical ranges.
Amazon was one of the last major tech companies to issue a transparency report, despite mounting pressure from privacy advocates. But its report remains far lighter on details compared to its Silicon Valley rivals.
The company’s Ring smart camera division, despite facing criticism for its poor security practices and its close relationships with law enforcement, has yet to release any data related to police requests for user data.
If you look at the most successful startups today, you’ll find plenty of proof that the hardware-enabled service (Haas) model works: Peloton, Particle, Latch and Igloohome all rely on subscriptions along with product sales. Even tech giants like Apple are rapidly reinventing themselves as service companies.
Yet, if you currently rely on device sales, the prospect of changing your entire business model might seem daunting.
At Minut, we are building smart home monitors (privacy-safe noise, motion and temperature monitoring) and recently made the transition despite the lack of resources on the process. Here are the seven lessons we learned:
Hardware has one advantage over software: customers understand there is a cost to your product. Now, this allows hardware startups to generate revenue with their first iteration, but it’s unsustainable as the company grows and needs to innovate: the software and user experience need continuous improvement and excellent support, just like in a software-only startup.
That’s why we see most hardware startups eventually launching a subscription model and limit what’s available for free. Even established companies — think Strava or Wink — often end up having to radically limit free features after years of operations.
Experienced founders and financial markets favor subscription models and recurring revenue. Market valuation multiples are typically much higher for companies that benefit from service revenue in addition to sales.