SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule has been docked at the International Space Station (ISS) since its historic first crewed launch in May, but it’s getting ready to make its return trip. NASA had planned to keep the spacecraft and astronauts at ISS for a while, depending on station mission needs, but they’re zeroing in on the exact time to cap the inaugural Crew Dragon human spaceflight mission with its return trip.

NASA Johnson Space Center public affair rep Kyle Herring tweeted the target date of August 2 as the planned return trip window, though he later clarified that there’s still a lot of work to be done before that gets pinned down.

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have been taking part in various scientific and maintenance work at the Space Station since their arrival, including Behnken taking part in four spacewalks, with three already completed and one planned for next week – a major upcoming endeavor cited by Herring as something that’ll require focus ahead of more concrete return trip planning. This first crewed Dragon flight is actually still a demonstration mission, not an official operational ISS crew launch, but NASA made the call to extend it to include Behnken and Hurley contributing to regular station operations during their time on orbit.

This return trip is just as critical to the overall success of SpaceX and NASA’s Commercial Crew collaboration as was the May launch; it’s obviously vital that SpaceX’s crew spacecraft be able not only to get astronauts to the Space Station reliably, but also to get them back home again safely, too.

During this return leg of the trip, the Crew Dragon capsule will perform an automated undocking and return flight maneuver, with Behnken and Hurley aboard. It’ll enter the Earth’s atmosphere and slow its descent once it’s in with a parachute system designed and tested by SpaceX, hopefully leading to a soft landing in the Atlantic Ocean for the astronauts, where they’ll be retrieved by a SpaceX dedicated retrieval crew.

Weather conditions need to be right for a return trip to proceed – and for this Demo-2 mission, the tolerances around what kind of wind speeds are allowable for the mission to proceed are pretty tight. That said, August tends to be a relatively calm month wind-wise in the target splashdown area, so that should help.

As Zoom and Microsoft and Google hammer it out for video-chat hegemony, startups are developing apps and services that either add on or compete with the major players.

There hasn’t been enough activity — yet — to call it a boom, but there’s enough going on to warrant our attention. Call it a boomlet, if you will, of startups looking to ride the wave of demand that video-conferencing has seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The big players are not sitting still. Zoom has spent lots of 2020 on platform security after a surge in popularity exposed some frayed ends. Google has been working to make Meet, its own video-chat service, better and easier to find. And Microsoft has been hammering Teams’s abilities into stronger form as it uses the same product to fend off both Slack and Zoom, which is a tall order.

Other giants are getting into the mix. Reliance Jio, the Indian telecom subsidiary of megacorp Reliance, recently launched JioMeet, which has turned heads for looking rather similar to Zoom. It also quickly raced to millions of downloads. (That Google just put billions into JioMeet’s parent is an odd twist in the video-chatting wars; Google has effectively helped fund a competitor in the country, it appears.)

TechCrunch’s parent company, Verizon, recently bought BlueJeans, giving the American telecom company its own video chatting service. (It’s also eyeing the Indian market.)

But that’s only part of the action. More recently we’ve seen interesting rounds for video-chat software startups Macro and Mmhmm. And we’ve seen money go into companies like Daily.co, which want to let any company bake video-chatting capabilities into their service. And Y Combinator-backed Sidekick has been in the press lately, after building a hardware solution in mind for today’s remote workers who need video comms.

An upstart boomlet, then, amid a war of the majors. But should we have expected anything less from the huge wave of demand that COVID-19 kicked off? Zoom was growing quickly before the pandemic. Now the public company and a host of rivals, big and small, all want a larger slice of an expanding pie.

Video-conferencing startups

The two most interesting recent venture rounds for video-conferencing startups are those belonging to Mmhmm and Macro.

Contrary to popular belief, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to success in Silicon Valley. Beyond raising traditional venture capital and beyond pursuing growth at all costs strategy, there are people in the start ecosystem that are finding success through less mainstream avenues.

At TechCrunch Disrupt on September 14-18, I’ll be chatting with Conductor CEO Seth Besnertnik, Driver’s Seat CEO Hays Witt and Aniyia Williams of Black & Brown Founders and Zebras Unite. These are not your “traditional” founders and CEOs. All three of them have taken alternative approaches in their entrepreneurial journeys, whether that’s been forming as a cooperative, buying back a startup from a tech giant and then turning it into a majority employee-owned operation or converting into a cooperative fund that invests in startups tackling social issues.

Besnertik sold Conductor to WeWork in March 2018 but a little more than a year later realized being part of WeWork wasn’t serving them. That’s when Besmertnik started exploring how to spin out Conductor from WeWork. Today, Conductor’s executives and more than 250 employees own about 90% of the company. And, more specifically, those employees are what Besmertnik calls “employee co-founders” who may appoint a representative to the board of directors.

“I want to be in an environment where we can all be owners in a company and participate in the good and bad,” Besmertnik previously told TechCrunch. “That was only made possible because of this situation.”

Conductor is not a co-op, but Driver’s Seat and Zebras Unite are. Depending on how it’s set up, a cooperative model offers workers and users true ownership and control in a company; any profits that are generated are returned to the members or reinvested in the company.

Driver’s Seat, led by Witt, is designed to help gig workers own and use their data so they can maximize their income. It works by requiring ride-hail drivers to install an app that educates them about how the co-op collects and uses their data. In exchange, the app gives them insights about their real hourly wages after expenses and how those wages relate to different driving strategies.

The company has yet to fully work out what percentage of the dividends will go back to drivers, but part of the requirement of operating as a limited cooperative association (LCA) means at least 51% of its surplus profits must go to patron member-owners.

“We incorporated as a cooperative because we want to commit to a business model where a majority of profits go back to drivers and the majority of governance is held by drivers,” Witt says. “We legally committed ourselves to that. That means we seek investors who are on board with that mission.”

Zebras Unite, co-founded by Williams, is focused on supporting startups that build businesses that tackle social issues while generating revenue. It’s a bit newer to the cooperative space and is still working out the classes of ownership, but the company aims to serve the tech ecosystem in a way where founders don’t have to make sacrifices around values.

At Disrupt SF on September 14-18, you’ll be able to hear from these founders about how they’ve built companies that prioritize profits, users and employees while putting VCs last. Disrupt is fully virtual this year and we have several Digital Pro pass types available that will allow you to experience Disrupt from the comfort of your home including a Digital Startup Alley Exhibitor Package that includes access for three people for just $445. There also are discounts available for students and government & NGO employees. You can buy those passes here.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week was full of news of all sorts, but as we recorded both Danny and Natasha “not Tash” Mascarenhas were still locked out of their Twitter accounts after a proletariat revolution on the social platform saw the ruling Blue Checkmark Class forced into silence. That’s not really what happened, but it sounds better than actually went down at Big Social.

Anyway, Twitter accounts or not, the three of us gathered to parse through a wave of news:

• The new TechCrunch List that Danny spent a very long time compiling has arrived! It’s live! You can find it here. It is good.
• And, if you want to know which VCs were even more fêted by founders, head here. (If you are irked that you did not make either list, please email Danny, not the show!)
• Moving on, Google is putting billions into Reliance Jio after every other company in the world did the same. Google is buying a bit less of the Indian telecom than the search giant, but between the two of them it’s been more than $10 billion in dealmaking. Perhaps Reliance Jio is done raising money? At last?
• Udemy is hunting up more capital at a higher valuation, reports say, providing Natasha with the perfect moment to let us know what is going with edtech.
• Turning to funding rounds, I was hype about the Macro round that TechCrunch covered this week, Danny wanted to chat about The Browser Company’s similarly-sized $5 million round, and Natasha talked us through LiteBoxer’s combined $6 million in new capital.
• Closing, we talked about IPOs for a hot second. The IPO window is open, and now that nCino and GoHealth have gone public, we want to know who is next.

It was a lovely time and there is a bit of show news. Namely that Equity is coming back to YouTube either this week or the next. So if you want to see us talk, soon you will be able to! Again!

Oh, and follow the show on Twitter. If you can, that is.

Podcasts are becoming big business — in part because of how well they can attract and keep audience at a time when so many other media formats are finding it hard to pin down that elusive metric of engagement. Now a podcast host who has built out a popular series around the world of startup investing is leveraging that growth to build out an investment vehicle of his own. Harry Stebbings, the 24-year-old London-based creator and host of Twenty Minute VC, is launching a micro VC fund of $8.3 million. Called 20VC, the plan is to invest in US startups across various stages alongside “tier 1” co-investors.

Stebbings spends a lot of his time talking to investors and about investments, and this is his second foray into actually putting money where his mouth is. He’s also a partner at Stride.vc, a firm he co-founded with Fred Destin in 2018 (joined later by a third partner, Pia d’Iribarne). He says that 20VC is scratching a different itch. The older fund focuses on investing in the UK and France, has an inclination (but not exclusivity) towards e-commerce disruptors and earlier stages of investment.

Stebbings’ newer effort, on the other hand, focuses on the US, and is positioned within what seems to be shaping up to a typical micro fund profile. Micro funds, as the name implies, are usually not huge, but they aim to pack a punch by offering other skills in the mix with their smaller investments. The concept has been growing in popularity over the last several years. (“I don’t know anyone who isn’t involved in at least one $5 million micro fund,” one former VC said to me.)

In the case of 20VC, it hopes to get its foot into the door on deals other VCs by offering Stebbings’ own set of skills in building and scaling companies as the selling point in exchange.

Typical deal sizes will range from $100,000 to $300,000 ($250,000 is the typical check size), and although Stebbings is announcing the fund today, some 12 investments have already been made out of it (Nex Health and Spiketrap are the only two that are public so far), investing alongside Sequoia, Index, Founders Fund, a16z.

20VC’s tie to the name of the podcast is intentional. The podcast has developed a brand of its own in the world of tech, with some 200,000 subscribers and 80 million downloads to date of the twice-weekly program. And 20VC isn’t just trading on Stebbings’ own experience as an entrepreneur: it has tapped the network of people that have been on the show, or know him because of the show, to assemble LPs.

There are some 64 of them in all, including founders and current and former execs from Atlassian, Yammer (David Sacks), Plaid (William Hockney), Superhuman, Airtable, Calm, Cazoo, Zenly, Alan, Spotify (Shakhil Khan) and Tray.io; GPs from Kleiner (Mamoon Hamid), Social Capital (Chamath) Thrive (Josh Kushner & Miles Grimshaw), Atomic, Founders Fund (Brian Singerman), Coatue, Index (Danny Rimer), True Ventures (Phil Black), and Beezer Clarkson, among many others. Having a popular podcast that highlights interesting investors and startups turns out to be a good way of networking to build a fund. Stebbings said that the call out was oversubscribed three times over within four weeks.

Boy VC

Stebbings’ entry into the world of investing in startups is something of a typical startup story of its own.

He came up with the idea for his podcast at a time when he was already intrigued by the world of venture capital, but was actually on the road to something else, with a place as a law scholar at Kings College in London (in the US you start law school as an undergraduate).

He says started the podcast with the idea of working on something that interested him, but more specifically to make some money. His mother has multiple sclerosis and she was having issues paying for her healthcare. Stebbings decided to start the podcast use the money it made off advertising around it to help cover his mother’s medical bills.

He was a nobody in tech, but he had a very specific plan, and a lot of smiley and positive enthusiasm, for how to get from zero to hero.

It started with finding just the right first guest, someone who had a high profile and respect but also appeared to be nice enough that if you got the approach right, you might get an agreement to be interviewed, or as Stebbings described it, “low hanging fruit.”

For Stebbings, that person, it turned out, was Guy Kawasaki. In addition to getting the interview, Stebbings also asked Kawasaki for three recommendations of people he should have on the show next, and what he should ask them. Stebbings followed that up with asking those three for their recommendations, and so on. Pyramid scheme with purpose, I guess you could say.

“I view distribution quite scientifically,” said Stebbings — who I interviewed sitting in a bedroom, although I think he normally podcasts these days sitting in a studio as pictured, above. “I’m bringing as many people as possible to help in the content creation process.”

The whole format of “20 minutes” also stemmed from a calculation Stebbings made. He told me he used to struggle with his weight and finally managed to lose some pounds using Tim Ferriss’ 4-hour Body. It got him thinking about how timing is important, and on top of that he knew that the typical commute in London was around 30 minutes, and decided that 20 minutes was a reasonable amount of time to expect someone to listen regularly. (Spoiler: most of the podcasts these days are not 20 minutes, but longer.)

Things started to shift from interesting side hustle to main hustle after he featured Arielle Zuckerberg, Mark’s sister and a tech persona in her own right (she’s currently a partner at investment firm Coatue). That podcast saw 100,000 downloads, and all signs pointed to 20 Minute VC taking off. So he quit university to focus on the podcast full time. It was four weeks into his first term.

“I decided I love VC and all of this,” he said about his choice to drop out of school. “I decided that I’d rather have my shot at this than trying to live the life I didn’t want to live. It was a big decision. I was 18 and very unemployable at the time.”

As for his mother’s medical bills, they are still being paid for by the show, he said.

“There’s advertising at the beginning and end of the show. It’s fine, not lights out, but it pays for my mother’s healthcare and that’s all I need it to do.”

The show, and Stebbings himself, have benefitted from a perfect storm of circumstances to grow.

Podcasts have been around for years, but it’s only been in recent times that they have properly taken off in popularity. Leveraging mobile phones and apps for listening, they fit naturally into our multitasking, information-hungry routines; there is a huge variety out there, a podcast for every taste; and they’ve bettered the talk radio format by being there right when you need them. Having a very predictable program in that format — Stebbings’ show has been running twice a week, every week, for five years now — is not to be underestimated.

There is also the subject matter to consider. There has been a huge explosion in the role that technology is playing in our modern society and economy, and that has meant an audience that consists not just of those already working in the world of tech, but those with ambitions to be a part of it (like Stebbings himself), and simply a lot of enthusiasts.

Within that, venture capital has seen a veritable explosion of money, and while some believe that it’s the technical talent that fuels the startup engine, others would make a strong case for the funding that enables them to work holding that role. In any case, money has always held a lot of allure.

“VC is becoming more popular, and cool, and I think that had a lot to do with us getting to this size,” he said.

Stebbings himself is also a part of the formula. He’s not a journalist, and at a time when we seem to be seeing a lot of wariness and tension in the relationship between media and the tech industry, his position as an informal reporter and conduit of information and messaging, who remains friendly and non-combative with his guests, may see him getting a lot warmer of a reception from his target audience of guests and listeners.

Harry doesn’t seem to remember this, but I first met him several years ago, at a tech event in London, where he was working the room very smoothly, smiling and chatting and knowing enough people already that he was able to continue the momentum introducing himself and presuming familiarity with those he was just meeting for the first time. I remember being struck at the time by how young he was mingling amongst quite a lot of middle aged types.

When I recalled this and asked Stebbings if he ever felt like he’s found a place in this scene precisely for this reason — being around younger and flattering people sometimes makes older people feel less old, and possibly more important — he said he thought it was more that it’s about himself feeling natural in that environment.

“For me, it’s always about building relationships,” he said. “I was always like the 50 year old in the room when I was younger and I didn’t have many friends. I’ve made by best friends through the shows.”

Ironically, he says that these days he does get pinged by his older — that is, young and past — acquaintances who are hoping for connections to his powerful network to push whatever tech enterprise they are pursuing these days.

That’s not the only bit of irony in 20VC and Stebbings’ latest venture: the whole of his podcast was built from the ground up, funded by ads and not a penny of outside investment. It means that the lesson from Stebbings is not just how to grow and scale, but how to do so with no VC involvement at all.

That’s not the norm, however, and so this will be about bringing more along that proverbial check.

“Everyone in the valley has money, but very few have been part of an enterprise that has scaled to include contact machines and brands. I’ll have thousands of tips and lessons on scaling and customer acquisition costs. It’s about the cadence and distribution, and how ton build a brand.”

Western intelligence agencies say they’ve found evidence that Russian cyber espionage is targeting efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine in a number of countries.

In an advisory report, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said the Russia-linked cyber espionage group commonly known as ‘APT29’ — which is also sometimes referred to as ‘the Dukes’ or ‘Cozy Bear’ — has targeted various organisations involved in medical R&D and COVID-19 vaccine development in Canada, the US and the UK throughout 2020.

Per the report, APT29 is using custom malware known as ‘WellMess’ and ‘WellMail’ to target a number of organisations globally, including those involved with COVID-19 vaccine development.

WellMess and WellMail have not previously been publicly associated to APT29, it notes.

The NCSC, which is a public facing branch of the UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency, said it believes it “highly likely” that the intention of the malware attacks is to steal information and IP related to the development and testing of COVID-19 vaccines.

The findings in the report are also endorsed by Canada’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and the US National Security Agency (NSA).

“In recent attacks targeting COVID-19 vaccine research and development, the group conducted basic vulnerability scanning against specific external IP addresses owned by the organisations. The group then deployed public exploits against the vulnerable services identified,” the advisory adds.

It concludes by assessing APT29 is “likely” to continue to target organisations involved in COVID-19 vaccine R&D — as “they seek to answer additional intelligence questions relating to the pandemic”.

“It is strongly recommended that organisations use the rules and IOCs [indicators of compromise] in the [report] appendix in order to detect the activity detailed in this advisory,” it adds, flagging compromise indicators and detection and mitigation advice contained in the document.

Responding to the advisory the UK government condemned what it called Russia’s “irresponsible” cyber attacks against COVID-19 vaccine development.

“It is completely unacceptable that the Russian Intelligence Services are targeting those working to combat the coronavirus pandemic,” said foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in a statement. “While others pursue their selfish interests with reckless behaviour, the UK and its allies are getting on with the hard work of finding a vaccine and protecting global health.”

“The UK will continue to counter those conducting such cyber attacks, and work with our allies to hold perpetrators to account,” he added.

Last month EU lawmakers named Russia and China as states behind major disinformation campaigns related to the coronavirus which they said had targeted Internet users in the region.

The European Commission is working on a pan-EU approach to tackling the spread of damaging falsehoods online.

Russian election meddling

The NCSC advisory follows hard on the heels of an assertion by Raab that Russia attempted to influence the 2019 UK election via the online amplification of leaked documents.

“On the basis of extensive analysis, the government has concluded that it is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election through the online amplification of illicitly acquired and leaked government documents,” Raab said in a statement yesterday.

The Guardian reports that UK intelligence agencies have spent months investigating how a 451-page dossier of official emails ended up with the opposition Labour party during the election campaign — providing an opportunity for then leader Jeremy Corbyn to make political capital out of details related to UK-US trade talks.

Back in 2017 former UK and Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, also warned publicly that Russia was trying to meddle in Western elections. However she failed to act on a series of recommendations from a parliamentary committee that scrutinized the democratic threats posed by online disinformation.

The timing of this latest flurry of Russian cyberops warnings from UK state sources is especially interesting in light of a much delayed report by the UK parliament’s Intelligence & Security Committee (ISC) into Russia’s role in election interference.

Publication of this report was blocked last year on orders of prime minister, Boris Johnson. But, this week, an attempt by Number 10 to install Chris Grayling, a former secretary of state for transport, as chair of the ISC was thwarted after Conservative MP Julian Lewis sided with opposition MPs to vote for himself as new committee chair instead.

Publication of the long delayed Russia report is now imminent, after the committee voted unanimously for it to be released next week before parliament breaks for the summer.

Last November The Guardian newspaper reported that the dossier examines allegations Russian money has flowed into British politics in general and to the Conservative party in particular; as well as looking into claims Russia launched a major influence operation in 2016 in support of Brexit.

In 2017, under pressure from the DCMS committee, Facebook admitted Russian agents had used its platform to try to interfere in the UK’s referendum on EU membership — though it claimed not to have found “significant coordination” of ad buys or political misinformation targeting the Brexit vote.

Last year, former ISC chair, Dominic Grieve, called for the Russia report to be published before election day — saying it contained knowledge “germane” to voters.

Instead, Johnson blocked publication — going on to be elected with a huge Conservative majority.

Carolina Brochado, the former Atomico partner and most recently a partner at Softbank Vision Fund’s London office, has joined EQT as part of its plans to launch a new fund dedicated to growth-stage investments, TechCrunch as learned.

According to multiple sources, Brochado is part of a new growth fund team at EQT that will sit between its existing earlier-stage EQT Ventures and the more majority ownership-oriented EQT private equity. She’s currently thought to be out recruiting additional members of EQT Growth.

Confirming Brochado’s appointment, Lucy Wimmer, Communications Partner at EQT Ventures, gave TechCrunch the following statement:

“Carolina Brochado has joined EQT to work on the strategy and preparation of its Growth initiative, which is positioned between Ventures and Private Equity. We’re thrilled to welcome Carolina to the EQT team – based in the London office – and her background across several investment disciplines, including private equity, venture capital and growth, will be invaluable as we develop the Growth initiative”.

Meanwhile, the recruitment of Brochado by EQT is quite a coup, after things didn’t entirely pan out during her relatively short stint at Softbank (reading between the lines and given recent events, Softbank Vision Fund probably isn’t for everyone, to put it diplomatically). Well respected within the European ecosystem and beyond, and regarded highly by founders she’s invested in, Brochado led investments in a number of promising companies at Atomico, including logistics company OnTruck, healthtech company Hinge Health, and restaurant supply chain app Rekki. At Softbank, she backed gym access company Gympass and data analysis and cybersecurity company Behavox.

Brochado first came to prominence in the European startup ecosystem when she was made a partner at Atomico in 2016 but had actually been associated with the firm for six years, having first interned at Atomico in 2012 while studying for her MBA at Columbia. She then re-joined the VC firm as principle in 2014 after a stint as COO at now defunct London e-commerce startup ThePresent.Co. Prior to that she had spent time in the U.S. in corporate finance and private equity.

In late 2018, Brochado was poached by Softbank, news that TechCrunch broke. Based in Vision Fund’s London office, she focused on growth investments within fintech, digital health and marketplace startups. Things appeared to be working out, seeing Brochado promoted to partner, before reportedly resigning in April this year.

Apple flexes its muscles in China with another megastore that unveiled on Friday. Located in Beijing’s upscale shopping district Sanlitun, the outlet replaces and more than doubles the size of Apple’s first store in China in the same location, which instantly caused a sensation back in 2008.

The landmark building reopened in the heat of U.S. scrutiny over the hardware behemoth’s ties with China. In a speech delivered on Thursday, Attorney General William Barr attacked a raft of American tech companies, including Apple, for playing by China’s rules. He singled out Apple for being “acquiescence to the Chinese Communists.”

Apple has long relied on China not just for manufacturing partners but also generating revenues from App Store (especially games) and iPhone sales. Nonetheless, local smartphone makers such as Huawei — which opened its largest store to date in June — have been chipping away at Apple’s Chinese market share in recent quarters, leaving the American giant in the fifth place with about 10% of total shipment, according to Counterpoint research.

Barr lambasted Apple for yanking apps on behalf of the Chinese government. Motives behind these bans can range from muting political sensitive services, like a map used in Hong Kong protests, to closing a regulatory loophole, which resulted in the removal of thousands of unlicensed games in China.

The new premise features Apple’s first integrated solar array in a retail store in China, allowing it to provide power to the store below like all Apple facilities worldwide running exclusively on renewable energy. The company claims it’s supporting enough clean energy in China to power more than 450,000 homes each year.

Over the last 12 years, the Sanlitun store has grown from 52 staff to 185 and has attracted more than 22 million visitors.

A U.S. federal court judge ruled on Thursday that WhatsApp and parent company Facebook’s lawsuit against Israeli mobile surveillance software company NSO Group can go forward. Phyllis Hamilton, Chief Judge of the United Stated District Court of the Northern District of California, denied most of the arguments NSO Group made when it filed a motion to dismiss the suit in April (a copy of her decision is embedded below).

Last October, WhatsApp and Facebook filed a complaint alleging that NSO Group exploited an audio-calling vulnerability in the messaging app to send malware to about 1,400 mobile devices, including ones that belonged to journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats and senior government officials.

WhatsApp and Facebook also claim that NSO Group developed a data program called Pegasus that extracted data, including messages, browser history and contacts, from phones, and sold support services to customers including the Kingdom of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Mexico.

In its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, one of NSO Group’s arguments was that its business dealings with foreign governments, which it said use its technology to fight terrorism and other serious crimes, granted it immunity from lawsuits filed in U.S. courts under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA). In her decision, Judge Hamilton wrote that NSO Group failed to qualify because it was not incorporated or formed in the U.S.

In an email to TechCrunch, a WhatsApp spokesperson said “We are pleased with the Court’s decision permitting us to move ahead with our claims that NSO engaged in unlawful conduct. The decision also confirms that WhatsApp will be able to obtain relevant documents and other information about NSO’s practices.”

TechCrunch has also contacted NSO Group for comment. When the lawsuit was filed in October, the company stated, “In the strong possible terms, we dispute today’s allegations and will vigorously fight them.”

WhatsApp vs NSO Group, cour… by TechCrunch on Scribd

As you may have heard, we’re taking our entire events lineup fully virtual in 2020. This is of course in response to Covid-19. We’re working hard to make sure that, despite limitations, this year’s events will be some of the best we’ve ever produced. To make that happen, we’re partnering with virtual event masterminds like Bizzabo and Grip to bring our vision to life.

Now I’m sure you have many questions on how it will all work. To answer your questions, we’ll be hosting an Ask-Me-Anything series where we cover everything from what the attendee experience will look like, sponsorship opportunities, the technology stack that will be powering it all, and more. 

In this series, we’ll interview the founders that built our event platforms as well as a few event experts that have had virtual event experience. We’ll ask them to share their POV on virtual events as well as how they will work for TechCrunch in the coming months.

Register for one (or all) of the following AMAs now:

7/24: Joey Hinson

Joey Hinson, the Director of Operations at TechCrunch will take you through the platform that we assembled for Disrupt, Mobility, and Space. In this AMA, you’ll have the chance to see the virtual venue, how virtual networking works, and what the end to end experience will look like at our upcoming events. If you’re thinking about attending, sponsoring, or you’re an event geek, this AMA is for you. 

Register now!

7/28: Bizzabo CMO Alon Alroy on the future of Virtual Events

We’ll interview Alon Alroy from Bizzabo, the registration platform behind TechCrunch events. We will discuss the future of virtual events and what Bizzabo has in store for the next chapter of event technology. Registered attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions via Slido. 

7/30: Grip CEO, Co-founder Tim Groot on Virtual Event networking

Tim Groot, the founder of virtual networking solution Grip will dig into how TechCrunch’s virtual networking platform, Crunchmatch will be brought to life, what networking looks like when taken fully virtual, and how to integrate if you’re a partner. Registered attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions via Slido.