Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Vaccine researchers have some good news, Google Maps adds end-to-end bikesharing directions and Roblox launches a new virtual event platform. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 20, 2020.

The big story: COVID-19 vaccine trials show promise

Two vaccine trials — one conducted at the University of Oxford, and another by researchers in Wuhan — both had promising results, with a vaccine leading to an increased antibody response, while also appearing to be safe for human use.

The Oxford team is now ready to move on to phase three trials — these are the large-scale human trials that come before approval. However, my colleague Darrell Etherington warns against getting prematurely excited about these results:

It is very early to make too many assumptions about what these early trials indicate, however. For instance, we still don’t really know how effective antibodies are in patients that have recovered from having COVID-19 once, so a lot more investigation is required by scientists in better understanding the efficacy of antibodies, and potentially vaccines, over the long term.

The tech giants

Snap turns on Minis, bite-sized third-party apps in Snapchat — Unveiled last month, Snap Minis are lightweight, simplified versions of apps that live within Snap’s Chat section.

Google Maps rolls out end-to-end directions for bikeshare users — Google Maps has long offered cycling directions, and it could already point users to bikesharing locations. The new update makes things even simpler, combining both walking and biking directions for end-to-end navigation.

GM details 12 upcoming electric vehicles from Cadillac, GMC, Chevrolet and Buick — In its latest sustainability report, General Motors said it’s on track to deliver 20 electric vehicles by 2023.

Startups, funding and venture capital

TC Early Stage is covering every aspect of operations, from legal to recruiting to finding product market fit — The event starts tomorrow!

Dumpling launches to make anyone become their own Instacart — The startup connects shoppers to all the resources they need to migrate off the Instacart platform and start their own personal-shopping business.

Roblox launches Party Place, a private venue for virtual birthday parties and other meetups — Party Place is based on the technology Roblox uses to host its own virtual events.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

‘Edtech is no longer optional’: Investors’ deep dive into the future of the market — In our latest survey, VCs look at the larger impact of rapid change on edtech.

From farm to phone: A paradigm shift in grocery — Signia Ventures’ Sunny Dhillon discusses how the grocery business has changed dramatically in recent months.

Despite Tesla-led hype, private investment in EV startups appears steady — In the latest edition of The Exchange, Alex Wilhelm investigates the latest data on electric vehicle investment.

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

Everything else

So long, TechCrunch — Our longtime COO Ned Desmond says goodbye.

Original Content podcast: ‘The Old Guard’ is extremely dumb fun — This Netflix action movie is soooo dumb, but my podcast co-host Darrell Etherington really liked it.

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.

Chris Cowart, the longtime IDEO product designer, Singularity University faculty member, and consultant to a variety of venture firms and tech projects, is joining the food preservation technology developer Treasure8 as its new chief innovation and strategy officer, according to a post on LinkedIn.

“In the last three years food has come to the fore as a theme,” said Cowart in an interview with TechCrunch. Cowart, who previously spent the majority of his time consulting on healthcare companies became interested in food through a year spent as an advisor to X, the Alphabet subsidiary that develops technologies and companies focused on sustainability, connectivity, and new computing paradigms.

At X, Cowart was looking at projects that would use artificial intelligence to accelerate circular economy projects and it was there that he began to focus on food waste. The gravity of the situation around America’s food waste and food insecurity in the country was driven home through Cowart’s research, he said. “We overproduce by double and we throw away 30 percent of our food,” said Cowart. “And in Santa Clara county one-in-six families are food insecure.”

After completing his project at X, Cowart went to Treasure8 and was immediately pulled into strategy conversations which led to him coming on board in June.

Unlike Apeel Sciences or Hazel Technologies, which have developed new preservative technologies to keep food fresh on store shelves (and raised several hundred million dollars), Treasure8’s technology is a new spin on freeze-drying, which lets perishable foods hold their nutritional value while they’re used as ingredients, supplements, or powders.

Brands can reform it with dehydration, or put it into their products or reuse pieces of the vegetables and fruits in their products. “There are byproducts that you can break down and start to use to pull out their nutrients into probiotics and nutraceuticals,” said Cowart.

He also thinks that Treasure8 could use its process to become a provider of biochar that can be applied in more sustainable agriculture techniques.

Treasure8 initially launched with a focus on food preservation, but quickly pivoted into working with cannabis companies that wanted to work with the company to use more parts of the cannabis plant in products. For now, Treasure8 is operating off of its pilot facility on Treasure Island, the manmade island in the San Francisco Bay which is currently the site of a multi-billion dollar development project.

With its new innovation officer in tow, Treasure8 is now heading to market to raise a new round of financing, Cowart said. Targeting under $50 million, the new round could help the company as Cowart starts to think longer term about ways that Treasure8’s treatment process could contribute to the development of more functional foods.

“Taking food waste streams to make products and ingredients and letting it be something useful rather than something that harms the environment, that’s the interesting part,” Cowart said of his role at the company. “[And] if you’re able to go from food securty to nutritional security… If you can powder vegetables, and make them into bits and food that are stable and affordable.. All of this nutrition feeds into the food as medicine and functional food. We’re going to want to fight immunity and recover from viruses and we’re going to have to rebuild our food supply.”

SpaceX has completed another successful launch, this time on behalf of Lockheed Martin and its client South Korea. The payload is ANASIS-II, a dedicated military communications satellite (South Korea’s first), which the nation will use to help safeguard its national security.

The Falcon 9 carrying the ANASIS-II lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 5:30 PM EDT (2:30 PM PDT) on Monday, using a first stage booster that SpaceX flew under two months ago – on the Demo-2 mission that carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. This is a record in terms of the time required to recover a booster and turn it around for re-use – breaking the 63 day time of the booster used for Starlink’s fourth production launch in February.

Today’s booster only went 51 days between flights, beating the existing record by nearly two weeks. It’s especially impressive when you consider that the first time this first stage was used, it was for what is easily SpaceX’s most critical launch to date – the first carrying actual human beings on board. Just a few years ago, SpaceX typically configured its boosters in expendable mode for especially large and critical payloads, but it could conceivable even refurbish boosters for future crewed flights.

The launch for this mission included a re-entry attempt, which involved a controlled burn of the booster after it returned into the atmosphere for a landing on SpaceX’s drone ship. That also went to plan, meaning this booster has now flown two missions and can potentially be flown yet again. This is the 57th successful booster landing for SpaceX.

Today’s mission will also include an attempt to recover the fairing halves used to protect the satellite during launch, which are jettisoned once the payload reaches space. SpaceX isn’t detailing that part of the mission live, but will provide an update about its status later.

The ANASIS-II payload will now spend some time reaching its target orbit, at which point SpaceX will report whether or not that step was also successful, completing the overall mission.

SpaceX has completed another successful launch, this time on behalf of Lockheed Martin and its client South Korea. The payload is ANASIS-II, a dedicated military communications satellite (South Korea’s first), which the nation will use to help safeguard its national security.

The Falcon 9 carrying the ANASIS-II lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 5:30 PM EDT (2:30 PM PDT) on Monday, using a first stage booster that SpaceX flew under two months ago – on the Demo-2 mission that carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. This is a record in terms of the time required to recover a booster and turn it around for re-use – breaking the 63 day time of the booster used for Starlink’s fourth production launch in February.

Today’s booster only went 51 days between flights, beating the existing record by nearly two weeks. It’s especially impressive when you consider that the first time this first stage was used, it was for what is easily SpaceX’s most critical launch to date – the first carrying actual human beings on board. Just a few years ago, SpaceX typically configured its boosters in expendable mode for especially large and critical payloads, but it could conceivable even refurbish boosters for future crewed flights.

The launch for this mission included a re-entry attempt, which involved a controlled burn of the booster after it returned into the atmosphere for a landing on SpaceX’s drone ship. That also went to plan, meaning this booster has now flown two missions and can potentially be flown yet again. This is the 57th successful booster landing for SpaceX.

Today’s mission will also include an attempt to recover the fairing halves used to protect the satellite during launch, which are jettisoned once the payload reaches space. SpaceX isn’t detailing that part of the mission live, but will provide an update about its status later.

The ANASIS-II payload will now spend some time reaching its target orbit, at which point SpaceX will report whether or not that step was also successful, completing the overall mission.

In an interview with Axios, Mark Zuckerberg shot down suspicions that Facebook is giving President Trump lenient treatment on the platform as part of a closed-door agreement.

“I’ve heard this speculation, too, so let me be clear: There’s no deal of any kind,” Zuckerberg told Axios. “Actually, the whole idea of a deal is pretty ridiculous.”

While Trump faces increasing scrutiny for rule violations on other social platforms—most notably Twitter—the president’s activity on Facebook has largely remained untouched. In October, Zuckerberg faced criticism for attending an undisclosed dinner at the White House with the president and Facebook board member and close Trump ally Peter Thiel.

“I accepted the invite for dinner because I was in town and he is the president of the United States,” Zuckerberg said, noting that he’d done the same during the Obama administration. “The fact that I met with a head of state should not be surprising, and does not suggest we have some kind of deal.”

In a company Q and A last week, the Facebook CEO defended his relationship with President Trump to employees.

“One specific critique that I’ve seen is that there are a lot of people who’ve said that maybe we’re too sympathetic or too close in some way to the Trump administration,” Zuckerberg said, arguing that “giving people some space for discourse” was not the same as agreeing with their beliefs

While there’s certainly a notably friendly dynamic between Facebook and the Trump administration, an explicit agreement designed to benefit Facebook isn’t that likely, if only because the firestorm it would ignite were it to come to light. The idea that Facebook could extract a deal from the president, say for less regulatory scrutiny, is also hard to imagine due the fact that any change to regulations governing Facebook would also apply to other online platforms. When President Trump signed an executive order designed to punish Twitter for taking action against his tweets, that threat applied across the board to all social media sites, including Facebook.

Still, the Justice Department, which often works closely with Trump’s White House to pursue the president’s own agenda, can choose which fights to pick in its antitrust pursuits. And Trump’s ability to mobilize his political allies in Congress against enemies of his choosing could create headaches for a company like Facebook around claims of political bias. Facebook’s seemingly conciliatory stance toward the White House and the Trump campaign isn’t likely to have gone unnoticed.

Zuckerberg’s reluctance to criticize Trump is well-documented, but he has been slightly more critical of the administration in recent days. Last week, he held a livestreamed chat with Anthony Fauci, a key voice for the scientific community’s pandemic response — and one currently on the outs with Trump. In the chat, Zuckerberg didn’t name Trump explicitly, but criticized the U.S. government’s failure to scale up national testing and the refusal for some parts of the administration to recommend mask-wearing as a protective measure.

In the blink of an eye, millennials, moms and grandparents alike have abandoned the decades-old practice of wandering dusty grocery aisles for the convenient and novel use of online grocery. While Instacart, Amazon Fresh and others have been offering an alternative to brick-and-mortar grocery for years, it is the pandemic that has classified them as essential businesses and more than ever afforded them a clear competitive advantage.

But these past couple months have seen not only drastic changes in consumer behavior, but also fundamental shifts in the business models adopted by grocers worldwide. These shifts are not temporary — indeed, they are here to stay, corona-catalyzed and permanent.

Fulfillment innovation can drive efficiency and cost savings

For the consumer, online grocery generally starts and ends the same way: They place their order on an app or website, and hours later it shows up at their door. But the ways those orders are being fulfilled run the gamut.

The most widely known approach comes from Instacart, which relies on hundreds of thousands of human shoppers fulfilling customers’ online grocery orders by shopping side-by-side with regular brick-and-mortar customers. The model clearly works for Instacart, which is valued at nearly $14 billion after its latest raise.

However, this model is far from ideal. Even pre-COVID, shoppers were known to crowd out regular customers, not to mention introduce high delivery costs and the element of human error to the fulfillment process.

One obvious solution has become the central fulfillment center, or CFC. CFCs are large, standalone warehouses — often serving distinct geographies — that can supply both brick-and-mortar stores and online grocery deliveries. As order volumes rise and consumers demand faster and faster delivery times, innovation has already been infused into the CFC model.

Some grocers, notably Kroger, believe that introducing robotic automation into CFCs via solutions such as Ocado can create economies of scale for fulfillment. These CFCs deploy fulfillment robots, controlled by air-traffic control tech, that run along a grid system and move goods via categorized crates. Kroger is continuing its investment in the model, recently announcing three new Ocado-automated CFCs in the West, Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions of the United States. The smallest location is over 150,000 square feet.

While Kroger remains uniquely attached to the CFC model, Albertsons/Safeway, Walmart and many others prefer the microfulfillment center (MFC). MFCs, typically far smaller in size (think ~10,000 square feet), are automated warehouses carved out of the back of existing stores that drive faster fulfillment times in a smaller geographic area, allowing chain stores to use their numerous geographic locations to act as effective fulfillment/delivery hubs for e-grocery coverage.

Carnegie Mellon today showed off new research into the world of robotic navigation. With help from the team at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), the university has designed a semantic navigation that helps robots navigate around by recognizing familiar objects.

The SemExp system, which beat out Samsung to take first place in a recent Habitat ObjectNav Challenge, utilizes machine learning to train the system to recognize objects. That goes beyond simple superficial traits, however. In the example given by CMU, the robot is able to distinguish an end table from a kitchen table, and thus extrapolate in which room it’s located. That should be more straightforward, however, with a fridge, which is both pretty distinct and is largely restricted to a singe room.

“Common sense says that if you’re looking for a refrigerator, you’d better go to the kitchen,” Machine Learning PhD student Devendra S. Chaplot said in a release. “Classical robotic navigation systems, by contrast, explore a space by building a map showing obstacles. The robot eventually gets to where it needs to go, but the route can be circuitous.”

CMU notes that this isn’t the first attempt to apply semantic navigation to robotics, but previous efforts have relied too heavily on having to memorize where objects were in specific areas, rather than tying an object to where it was likely to be.

Clover Health, the medicare advantage health insurance provider for older Americans said it will triple its geographic coverage through an expansion to eight states.

The company is adding Mississippi to its roster of states covered under its insurance plans and will expand its footprint in a number of states it already operates within. The company said it would be adding 74 new counties in Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

Clover touts its ability to offer care recommendations to physicians and ensure that primary care providers are receiving the latest evidence-based protocols, the company said.

“We knew that if we wanted to successfully bring great healthcare to every senior, including those in traditionally underserved communities, it was essential for us to actively provide value to the system, and we couldn’t play the same games as other insurers who shuffle risk and exploit flaws in the MA program,” says Andrew Toy, President and Chief Technology Officer of Clover Health, in a statement. “Through our unique ability to power two-way conversations with clinicians at the point of care, Clover Assistant gathers and shares the most accurate data on a member’s disease burden, which is critical to developing and validating care plans.”

Clover focuses on rural communities where insurance coverage is sparse.

Individuals eligible for Medicare in these new counties can sign up for Clover’s plans during the Annual Election Period, which runs from October 15 to December 7, with coverage starting on January 1, 2021, the company said.

Companies like Uber, Lyft, Beyond Meat, Peloton, Slack, Zoom and Pinterest all made public market debuts in 2019, creating wealth and liquidity for many of the 2019 IPO class of founders.

This year, stockholders have seen anxiety-inducing volatility in their holdings, leading many to realize that they need to rethink their approach to their concentrated post-IPO stock position.

In this guide, I’ll walk through a framework of how to think about post-IPO or concentrated stock holdings objectively. While this is written specific to public company stock, many of the same fundamental concepts apply to private stock and the decision whether or not to sell. Some risks should be understood if you are relying on one stock to achieve all of your financial goals since that subjects you to having “too many eggs in one basket.” Many shareholders in the 2019 IPO class have experienced this risk over the last few months and are reevaluating their situations.

Nevertheless, following my advice may be challenging since we all have heard of someone who made it big by swinging for the fences. The key is understanding the true success rate and risks involved with this approach; it is all too common to hear others share their standout victories, while more common failures are rarely mentioned.

What do I do now?

Usually, I advocate for reducing concentrated positions in IPO stock upon lockup expiration, or via scheduled selling for more significant positions; however, for those that have not sold, it is clear that the unexpected macroeconomic downturn has materially increased the volatility of some high-valuation company share prices. If you find yourself in this position here are a few items to consider:

1. What is your time horizon? Are your investments intended for the long term or the short term?
2. What are your liquidity needs? Do you need to raise cash to pay for taxes or upcoming expenses? Do you need cash in the upcoming 1-2 years?
3. What other assets do you have?
4. How does this impact your financial plan? Can you tolerate possible further declines?

It is not comfortable to be in this position, and decisions at this juncture can be critical in achieving long-term goals. I suggest you find an advisor to talk to if you are unsure what the best choice is. Below we review some considerations that can help build more confidence in your decision.

What’s the plan?

The decision of what to do with your stock should start at a higher level. Where does this stock fit into your investment strategy, and where does your investment strategy fit into achieving your long-term goals?

Your goals should drive your investment strategy, and your investment strategy should drive the decisions regarding your stock, not the other way around. With the proper goals set, you can use the investment portfolio, and the company stock(s) within it, as tools to achieve your goals.

For example, a goal could be to work ten more years, then partially retire and do some consulting. Defining goals helps you make objective decisions on how to best manage concentrated stock positions. There is a trade-off between maximizing the potential return in your investment portfolio, by maximizing risk with concentrated portfolios, and minimizing the risk of a catastrophic loss, by having a well-diversified portfolio. This decision is unique to each individual. The best way to maximize the odds of achieving your goals is different from the best route to maximizing your portfolio’s return possibilities.

FOMO

In these discussions, there is always an immense fear of missing out. What if this stock becomes a multibagger over time? It’s easy to look to the Zuckerbergs and Bezos of the world, who have amassed great wealth through holding concentrated stock, and think that holding a concentrated stock for the long term is the way to go.

There is also no doubt some public stocks have been runaway financial home runs, like investing in Apple or Amazon. If you had invested in those stocks since the beginning, you could have earned a 40,000% or 100,000% return. However, a rational, evidence-based decision process presents a very different picture. A statistical analysis on how IPOs and concentrated portfolios have fared in the past is covered in part two of this three-part series.

Concentration involves risks you may not have considered. In part two, I will walk you through critical considerations when maintaining a high concentration of company stock and things to consider from a big-picture perspective. I also dive into the benefits of diversification, taking it beyond the basics to show you the advantages of having a more balanced portfolio.

One reason some venture capitalists and founders don’t enter edtech is because the space has a sluggish stereotype, thanks to red tape, slow sales cycles, and, in America, a fragmented customer base.

But data suggests that edtech’s reputation is not entirely earned. Byju’s is India’s second-most-valuable company. Since 2013, there have been 300 acquisitions in the space. And if you only understand success in terms of unicorns, two edtech businesses, Quizlet and ApplyBoard, were recently added to the $1 billion valuation club.

The tension between edtech’s stereotype and its potential for return, plus the surge in remote learning due to coronavirus-related shutdowns, poses an interesting challenge for the market.

In the beginning of the pandemic, TechCrunch talked to a group of edtech investors to get their knee-jerk reaction to the remote learning boom. Unsurprisingly, many commented that the heat-up of the sector will materially impact K-12 and higher education and unlock new opportunities. Others warned early-stage edtech startups about how newfound competition could hurt content, quality and effectiveness of their end product. Overall, the general message was that the boom is here, everyone is excited and waiting to see what happens next.

Fast forward a few months, mistakes and extended school closures later, edtech now has a better inkling on what the next billion-dollar business needs to get right. Today, we talked to a number of top venture capitalists to get an eagle-eye view of what rapid change, adaptation, and for lack of better phrasing, popularity does for the market.

Today you’ll hear from the following investors:

• Ian Chiu, Owl Ventures
• Shauntel Garvey and Jennifer Carolan, Reach Capital
• Jan Lynn-Matern, Emerge Education
• David Eichler, TCV
• Jomayra Hererra, Cowboy Ventures