Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Slack has started to strip uploaded photos of their metadata.

What may seem like an inconsequential change to how the tech giant handles storing files on its servers, it will make it far more difficult to trace photos back to their original owners.

Almost every digital file — from documents on your computer to photos taken on your phone — contains metadata. That’s data about the file itself, such as how big the file is, when it was created, and by whom. Photos and videos often include the precise coordinates of where they were taken.

But that can be a problem for higher-risk Slack users, like journalists and activists, who have to take greater security precautions to keep their sources safe. The metadata inside these files can out sources, deanonymize whistleblowers, or otherwise make it easier for unfriendly governments to target individuals. Even if a journalist removes the metadata from a photo before publishing, a copy of the photo — with its metadata — may remain on Slack’s servers. Whether a hacker breaks in or a government demands the data, it can put sources at risk.

Slack confirmed to TechCrunch that it’s now started to strip photo metadata, including locations.

We can confirm that we recently began stripping EXIF (exchangeable image file) metadata from images uploaded to Slack, including GPS coordinates,” said a Slack spokesperson.

TechCrunch tested this by uploading a photo to Slack containing location data, then pulling a copy of the image from the server. That server copy, when checked again, no longer had location data embedded in the document. Some metadata remains, like the make and model of the device that took the photo.

Slack did not say what prompted the change.

Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers are staging a caravan protest at Uber’s San Francisco headquarters to demand Uber comply with gig worker protections law AB-5, pay into the state’s unemployment insurance fund and drop the ballot initiative it proposed along with Lyft and DoorDash that aims to keep gig workers classified as independent contractors.

“Uber, Lyft and other gig companies are continuing in the same path of abusing and completely taking advantage of workers while putting them at risk,” rideshare driver and organizer with Gig Workers Rising Edan Alva told TechCrunch. “The thing is, it’s never been clearer than during these times how benefits, sick days and unemployment benefits are absolutely critical for workers, especially for workers who are considered essential and are the most vulnerable in society overall. What they earn immediately goes to sustaining themselves and their families.”

A recent survey in San Francisco found 45% of gig workers can’t afford a $400 emergency payment without borrowing and 78% of gig workers are people of color. As part of the protest, drivers also want shareholders to know that when they invest in companies like Uber or Lyft, “they become part of the problem,” Alva said. He added that they will shine the light on them in the same way they shine the light on Uber and Lyft.

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Additionally, if Uber and Lyft were to classify their drivers as employees, they would be required to contribute to state and federal unemployment funds. According to a recent study by UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, Uber and Lyft contributions in California would come out to $413 million in additional funding based on the wages of drivers from 2014 to 2019.

This protest comes shortly after California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with city attorneys from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, filed a lawsuit asserting Uber and Lyft gain an unfair and unlawful competitive advantage by misclassifying workers as independent contractors. The suit argues Uber and Lyft are depriving workers of the right to minimum wage, overtime, access to paid sick leave, disability insurance and unemployment insurance. The lawsuit, filed in the Superior Court of San Francisco, seeks $2,500 in penalties for each violation, possibly per driver, under the California Unfair Competition Law, and another $2,500 for violations against senior citizens or people with disabilities.

“We are incredibly ecstatic that the AG recently decided to follow through and enforce AB-5,” Alva said. “But Uber and Lyft are still trying to eliminate legislation that provides workers those rights. It’s such a level of entitlement and disregard to human lives. It’s good the state of California is going after these companies. From the perspective of the worker, I feel like we as workers need to come together and we need to send consistently and relentlessly a very clear message that this is unacceptable.”

Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the group behind the anti-AB-5 ballot initiative, Protect App-Based Drivers & Services, said the suit “threatens to eliminate rideshare and delivery services.” This group is mostly funded by Uber, Lyft and DoorDash. In August, each company put $30 million into the initiative. Since then, the initiative has gathered support from thousands of drivers, according to the group.

“When I saw what this initiative was, I just saw it as a win-win,” rideshare driver Jim Pyatt told TechCrunch. “In terms of the insurance, guaranteed income — how could I go wrong in supporting that.”

Beyond AB-5, however, drivers protesting today are also of concerned about the lack of masks, hand sanitizer and disinfectants being made available to them. Both Uber and Lyft have begun taking some steps to provide drivers with personal protective equipment. But not enough was being done before Alva ultimately decided to stop driving in April.

“By the time I stopped working for Lyft, I was making $5 an hour,” he said. “There was no point in putting myself at risk and at the same time earning that little. If they invest half of what they invest on trying to repeal AB-5, I’m sure our workers would have been well-equipped at this point.”

Mekela Edwards, a rideshare driver and organizer with We Drive Progress, has similarly stopped driving during the pandemic. Edwards, who is self-isolating at the direction of her doctor, told TechCrunch she helped organize the protest because she wants to bring attention to the problems drivers are facing. One of the biggest issues, she said, is that drivers are misclassified in California. Beyond that, Edwards says she and many other drivers have faced difficulties trying to get financial assistance from Uber.

Uber first announced its financial assistance policy in March. At the time, only drivers who were diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed in quarantine by a public health authority were eligible. Since then, Uber has expanded it to include drivers and delivery people who have been told to “individually quarantine” because of a pre-existing condition that puts them at a higher risk of facing serious illness from the coronavirus.

Edwards, whose doctor advised her it wasn’t safe to drive due to her asthma, said she applied for financial assistance from Uber but never heard from the company. And instead of spending millions on the ballot initiative, Edwards wishes Uber would use that money to better support drivers during the pandemic.

“That’s money they could be spending to support us,” she said. “We enjoy the work we do. We just want to be respected and appreciated like any worker should be.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Uber. We’ll update this story if we hear back.

This story is developing…check back for updates.

Heading into earnings season, you might have expected Uber and Lyft to suffer.

After all, global travel slowed toward the end of Q1, so how could these companies have done well? Continuing the same line of thinking, given that they are both unprofitable and are valued more on growth than trailing earnings, with growth slowing would there be much to celebrate?

The answer was a resounding “yes.” Uber and Lyft both rallied toward the end of last week following their successive earnings reports.

Today, let’s go back and remind ourselves how Uber and Lyft performed against Q1 expectations and what they said about the hits they took in March (Q1) and early April (Q2). Then we’ll ask ourselves why their shares rallied despite telling investors that their businesses had begun to fall sharply in the COVID-19 world.

(And, no, the answer to everything isn’t Uber Eats. More on that at the end.)

Expectations

Lyft reported earnings first, telling investors its Q1 results on May 6. Here’s how they stacked up:

• Lyft lost $1.31 per share against revenue of $955.7 million in Q1.
• The firm missed expectations on profit (-$0.64 expected), and beat on revenue ($897.9 million expected).

Uber reported the next day. Here are its top-line numbers from May 7:

• Uber lost $1.70 per share in Q1 against revenue of $3.54 billion in Q1.
• The firm missed expectations on profit (-$0.83 expected), and beat slightly on revenue ($3.51 billion expected).
  
  

We recently interviewed Jon McNeill to learn more about his newest project, a startup studio called DeltaV Ventures. But we also wanted to hear about what it’s like to work inside of Tesla and Lyft.

McNeill spent two-and-a-half years as the carmaker’s president, heading up global sales, marketing, delivery and government relations before heading to Lyft in early 2018, where he served as COO for 18 months. (He left four months after the ride-hail company’s IPO last year.)

He shared his take on his experience at both places, and what, from each, he is using and eschewing at DeltaV. Our conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

TechCrunch: What was it like working with Elon Musk?

Jon McNeill: To me, it was fascinating. He’s the best practitioner of my craft as an entrepreneur. It’s hard to name another entrepreneur who has started four companies, all of which are worth more than $10 billion in market cap [and] several of which are worth more than $50 billion.

We were in hyper-growth mode, and there were no playbooks. Like, literally, when I started, the company had about $2 billion in annual run rate revenue, and three years later, it had $20 billion in annual run rate revenue. And there are no playbooks for that, so we were innovating constantly to either try to get ahead of that growth or just to keep up with it.

After investigative reporting revealed his undisclosed involvement in shooting at a synagogue with KKK members at age 17, the CEO of Banjo will leave the company he founded.

In a short blog post, the company announced a “change in leadership” and the resignation of its founder and CEO Damien Patton. The Utah-based company will transition “to a new, reconstituted leadership team effectively immediately.”

“I am confident Banjo’s greatest days are still ahead, and will do everything in my power to ensure our mission succeeds,” Patton said in the post. “However, under the current circumstances, I believe Banjo’s best path forward is under different leadership.”

Patton leaves the company as valuable contracts with its home state of Utah went on hold in light of the explosive report, published in OneZero. The story revealed that at age 17, Patton drove a KKK member past a synagogue while he shot at the building. He reportedly went into hiding at a white supremacist training camp after the incident.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Utah’s Attorney General office said it was “shocked and dismayed” at reports of Patton’s prior affiliation with hate groups.

The company’s CTO Justin R. Lindsey, who joined the company full-time less than a year ago, will step into the top role.

Even prior to revelations of Patton’s past, Banjo had come under scrutiny by privacy advocates for its pivot from a social tech company into a real-time intelligence platform for law enforcement. Last year, the company’s director of government affairs for Utah told a group of public officials that Banjo “essentially [does] most of what Palantir does, we just do it live.”

In its blog post announcing Patton’s departure, the company emphasized its “unswerving commitment” to protecting private data and characterized its work as “technology solutions that protect privacy.”

Twitter on Monday announced it will begin to add warning messages and labels to tweets spreading disputed or misleading information about COVID-10. The labels will direct users reading these tweets to a Twitter-curated page or to external resources that offer additional information and context about the claims being made in the tweet. The warnings, meanwhile, will cover the tweet — requiring an extra click to view the content.

According to the screenshots Twitter published, tweets sharing potentially harmful, misleading information will be labeled with a link that reads “Get the facts about COVID-19.” This link will be preceded by an icon of an exclamation mark in a circle in order to draw the user’s attention.

Twitter says some tweets may instead be labeled with a warning message, based on the tweet’s “propensity for harm” and the type of misleading information it presents. For example, people who are tweeting advice that directly conflicts with public health experts’ guidance may see their tweets labeled with a warning, not just an informational link.

In these cases, the tweet itself is covered up by a warning that reads:

“Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet conflicts with guidance from public health experts regarding COVID-19. Learn more.” 

Users can still opt to see these tweets by clicking the “View” button next to the warning, however.

The system of labeling tweets in this way is something Twitter had already developed for labeling tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media, like “deepfake” videos. Meanwhile, the company in March had expanded its definition of harm to include content that directly contradicts the guidance from authoritative sources of global and local health information.

That gave it permission to remove content it believed could risk people’s health and well-being as well as the ability to add the “public interest notice” to tweets posted by world leaders that would otherwise have violated its COVID-19 guidelines.

However, Twitter’s use of labels and warnings with COVID-19 disinformation seems to have been more hurriedly rolled out, following the spread of a new conspiracy video about COVID-19. The video comes from a well-known vaccine conspiracist, discredited scientist and fired researcher-turned-book author. Its high production values and tone of gravity have easily convinced some of its validity, leading to its rapid spread across social media.

On Friday, Twitter said it would assess individual clips from the video to determine if they’re in violation of its rules. It said it would add a warning label to any tweets with links that point to the full video. Twitter also clarified that it’s not taking down tweets with the links because many people are using them when disputing the content.

Today’s news indicates that Twitter is formalizing its decision around the viral video to include any other COVID-19 disinformation, as well.

Twitter didn’t fully detail how it determines how tweets are caught and labeled, but shared a chart that shows how which tweets get a label vs. a warning, or have no action taken.

“Our teams are using and improving on internal systems to proactively monitor content related to COVID-19,” the company explained in an announcement. “These systems help ensure we’re not amplifying Tweets with these warnings or labels and detecting the high-visibility content quickly. Additionally, we’ll continue to rely on trusted partners to identify content that is likely to result in offline harm. Given the dynamic situation, we will prioritize review and labeling of content that could lead to increased exposure or transmission,” said Twitter.

The system may also evolve over time with new labels being added, Twitter noted.

Another chapter is opening up for Fair.com, the car subscription startup backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from SoftBank and others: today the company announced that Bradley Stewart, who had been CEO of aviation startup XOJet from 2013 to 2018 (when it was acquired by Vista Global), is joining as CEO. At the same time, Stewart confirmed in an interview that Fair is working on raising another round of funding — size as yet unknown, but including both equity and debt — to push ahead on its business now focused squarely on car subscriptions for consumers.

“As we pivot and scale, more capital will be needed to pursue that, to grow the market and for customer acquisition, and to allow us to buy more cars. That process is under way,” Stewart said, adding that despite everything going on in the market, there is still funding to be had. “I was shocked by how it is going right now,” Stewart said.

Stewart’s appointment comes in the wake of a dramatic six months for Fair, which was once valued as high as $1.2 billion and has already raised hundreds of millions in debt and equity for a business built around the concept of subscription-style car usage, longer than typical rentals and shorter and with more flexible terms than your average lease.

Aimed both at consumers and those — like Uber drivers — using cars for work, Fair’s original idea was ambitious, but ultimately fell afoul of tightening governance from its lead investor, smarting from the debacles of WeWork and Uber.

Fair’s fall included a large round of layoffs and the sacking of its CFO; the abrupt departure of its co-founder, serial car-startup entrepreneur Scott Painter, as CEO (he remains as chairman); and a pivot away from what was billed as a lucrative business leasing cars to Uber drivers. Stewart replaces Adam Hieber, a CFA from SoftBank who had been interim CEO after Painter stepped down. Hieber will go back to being an operating partner at SoftBank and will also stay on Fair’s board.

Fair’s problems were not due only to tighter policies from SoftBank: they also underscore the bigger challenges faced by car startups around balancing user demand, cash burn, and a heavy asset load in the form of car inventory.

But even so, those demands don’t always end in pivots and restructuring. Just today, it was reported that a startup focused on car sales, Vroom, has confidentially filed for an IPO provisionally (optimistically?) scheduled for June.

That’s one reason why investors and Fair itself continue to tinker with its own model to get the business on the right footing. There’s clearly opportunity, and at a time when people need more financial flexibility in their lives, and have moved away from ride sharing and public transport — both results of the COVID-19 pandemic — that opportunity could come in the form of changing ownership habits for cars and more demand for the likes of Fair’s vehicles.

As for what Stewart has in store, he comes from the world of private equity — he’s ex-TPG — and sees the Fair opportunity both through that lens and that of his previous role in an aviation startup.

“The tailwinds are long term and enduring,” he said of Fair and the car market. “You can see the shift from ownership to rental, and the push within the consumer market to be more savvy about depreciation and value orientation.” He also noted that the fragmentation in the current car market will give a company like Fair to get more economy of scale through a more national approach. 

Stewart’s only getting started now — the announcement was made to the company just this morning — so there is not a lot to draw out yet on how he plans to steer the company in the coming months, in particular at a time when consumer spending has taken a big hit, and many automakers are feeling the pinch.

But he did say that so far he feels Fair’s biggest “gaps” have been in the area of pacing and refining the company’s go-to-market proposition. “Those will be the big focus for me,” he said,”making sure that the pitch is right and that we’re meeting the needs of our customers. You’ve got to learn and the data has to be looked at critically.”

Stewart added that he’d like Painter to be involved “as close as he wants to work with me” in the newly pivoted startup. Painter was not available for an interview but in a statement endorsed his replacement.

“Fair is transforming the car from an owned asset that loses much of its value over time into a service that can be turned on or off like the countless other subscriptions people access on their phones,” he said. “Brad’s passion for Fair’s unique offering is evident and exciting, and his experience innovating a mobility model that eliminates unwanted elements of ownership makes him the perfect choice to lead Fair into the future.”

Facebook today revealed its plans to celebrate the 2020 graduates this week across both Facebook and Instagram. The series of events, starting today on May 11, will include the company’s previously announced plans to air a virtual graduation ceremony on May 15, featuring celebs like Oprah Winfrey, Awkwafina, Jennifer Garner, Lil Nas X, Simone Biles and Miley Cyrus, among others. Facebook will also now introduce a range of new graduation-themed products and programming across both Facebook and Instagram, including AR effects, chat filters, stickers, challenges, student spotlights and homages, contests, gift guides, collaborative films, and more.

The events serve a dual purpose. In addition to celebrating grads, Facebook aims to extend the time students, their families and friends spend on its apps, outside of the virtual graduation ceremony itself.

To that end, it programmed a week’s worth of online activities for graduates and others to participate in.

Starting today, May 11, Instagram will add a new graduation countdown sticker for Stories that will promote the May 15 graduation ceremony. Users can also re-share from the main @instagram Story and set a reminder for themselves about the event. Instagram is additionally introducing two new hashtag challenges, including a throwback #GradPhotoChallenge and #MySeniorQuote challenge to feature quotes from seniors across the U.S.

On Facebook, the company is beginning the “Student Spotlight” series that will celebrate this year’s outstanding grads.

Both platforms will also gain grad-themed AR effects. This includes Instagram’s AR graduation speech and cap filters with customizable tassels and Facebook grad cap and walk stickers on Stories. Facebook will offer profile frames, as well, in a variety of school colors.

A grad-themed video chat filter will launch on Messenger, featuring a grad cap experience in a range of styles. College-themed grad cap and gown experiences will also launch in the Effects gallery in Instagram’s Stories.

On Tuesday May 12, Instagram will host a virtual senior night focused on athletes, featuring star athletes including Sabrina Ionescu, Myles Powell, Shay Knighten and Andrew Pryts.

Wednesday, May 13 begins a virtual Instagram comedy show featuring Quinta Brunson, Cameron J. Henderson and Christine Snaps. Meme creator Daquan is also launching an exclusive graduation meme on @instagram and @daquan.

Facebook on Wednesday will being airing a feature film by Jenn Nkiru of Iconoclast, which gives voice to this year’s graduates as they share excerpts of Marina Keegan’s, “The Opposite of Loneliness” essay using imagery from their own school years.

Facebook will also on Wednesday began to share grad walks on its Facebook app Page’s Stories section, and encourage others to do the same using the hashtag #GradWalk2020.

Thursday, May 14, starts Superlative Day on Instagram, where featured creators will share some of the best superlative from students. Instagram will also be home to an art contest co-hosted by @brooklynmuseum and @design which is asking for student portraiture which will appear in a virtual “art show” on both accounts, with support from Instagram’s own @creators, as well. Five winners will be awarded $5K grants from Instagram.

The @creators account will additionally feature Bryce Xavier, Nia Sioux and Livvy Dunne and “yearbooks on Instagram,” starting on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Instagram’s @shop will open up a graduation gift guide featuring products from a number of small businesses that can be shopped right in the app.

Friday, May 15, is the big day with the virtual ceremony, #Graduation2020, at 11 AM PT/2 PM ET via Facebook Watch within the Facebook app and on facebook.com/facebookapp. Highlights from the event will be posted to the @instagram account and on contributors’ own social media.

Facebook today announced new additions to the ceremony, which was already set to include an introduction by Sheryl Sandberg, an address by Oprah, and performance by Miley Cyrus (“The Climb.”)

It’s now adding Cardi B, DJ Khaled, La La Anthony, Kristen Bell, Selena Gomez, Sterling K. Brown, Matthew McConaughey, and Milo Ventimiglia to the event and has released a full list of other contributors who will join at some point during the broadcast.

These include:

AdamRayOkay (as Rosa), Amy Schumer, AnnaSophia Robb, Antoni Porowski, Ashley Graham, Becky Lynch, Bailey Sok, Bobby Berk, Bretman Rock, Cardi B, Charles Melton, Chiney Ogwumike, Chris Paul, Chrissy Metz, Cookie Monster & Grover, Daddy Yankee, Damian Lillard, David Dobrik, David Oyelowo, Desus & Mero, Dillon Francis, Diplo, Dixie D’amelio, DJ Khaled, Drew McIntyre, Dude Perfect, Emily Ratajkowski, Gloria Estefan, Gordon Ramsay, Hailee Steinfeld, Huda Kattan, Iliza Shlesinger, Jess & Gabriel Conte, J.J. Watt, Jonathan Van Ness, John Mayer, Joshua Bassett, Julian Edelman, Kandi Burruss, Karamo Brown, Kofi Kingston, Kristen Bell, La La Anthony, Lacy Evans, Lana Condor, Lisa Leslie, Lisa Vanderpump, Lizzy Greene, Luis Fonsi, Marlee Matlin, Marsai Martin, Marshmello, Matthew McConaughey, Milo Ventimiglia, Nick Kroll, Olivia Rodrigo, Ronny Chieng, Roman Reigns, Sasha Banks, Selena Gomez, Sterling K. Brown, Steve Aoki, Sofia Carson, Sofia Wylie, Steve Harvey, The Miz, Tim Tebow, Tori Kelly, Whitney Cummings, Wilmer Valderrama and Winnie Harlow.

Also on Friday, friends and family and other community members will be invited to share advice and well-wishes with the Class of 2020 as part of a “Dear Grads, Love Groups” initiative. These will be compiled into a film directed by Chris Wilcha and made available on the Facebook app after the commencement. Instagram’s @shop will then close the week of events with a Stories takeover from small business founders who will also share their advice with grads.

In the weeks following graduation, Facebook will begin allowing students, teachers, and alumni in the U.S. to offer and request assistance in their college communities in its Community Help feature. This will focus on categories like career help, housing, moral support, fitness, and supplies.

The week-long list of events is only one of several online graduation celebrations that students can join this week, as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced schools to cancel their planned in-person ceremonies due to the pandemic and forced lockdowns. While many schools are offering some sort of virtual experience for graduates, some students said these have been disappointing and report feeling sad, depressed and having missed the chance to celebrate an important milestone.

Along with Facebook, other online events include YouTube’s virtual gradation on June 6 featuring commencement addresses by former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, plus participation from BTS, Lady Gaga and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. There are also a number of graduation-themed TikTok challenges, and individual schools are often promoting their own social media hashtags for their virtual celebrations.

But despite the star-studded nature of some of these virtual events, they may not address students’ feelings of loss. The pandemic has taken away many things, but students having to miss out on milestone events like prom and graduation are particularly difficult because they can’t be revisited at some later, “safer” date further down the road.

Tesla turns to litigation in an attempt to reopen its California factory, we review Microsoft’s Surface Go 2 and Mount Sinai hospital starts using Nest cameras to monitor patients.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 11, 2020.

1. Tesla sues Alameda County to force California factory reopening

Tesla filed a lawsuit Saturday in an effort to invalidate orders that have prevented the automaker from reopening its factory in Fremont, California.

It seems that Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk has allies in the Trump Administration, since U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC this morning that that California needs to work with Tesla so Musk can quickly and safely open the factory.

2. Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

Brian Heater notes that the Surface Go 2 has made a number of key sacrifices in the name of portability — the kind of thing you’d forgive in a device that you can use anywhere. The timing of the launch may be a bit awkward, since using the device exclusively at home brings its shortcomings into sharp focus.

3. Mount Sinai deploys Google Nest cameras for COVID-19 patient monitoring and communication

Using Nest Camera helps healthcare professionals, including nurses and doctors, limit their potential exposure to COVID-19. With the cameras they can centrally monitor and provide care while limiting person-to-person interaction to only extremely necessary contact.

4. Balderton Capital backs Primer, a fintech helping merchants consolidate the payments stack

Founded by ex-PayPal employees – via PayPal’s acquisition of Braintree — Primer is busy building out a payments API to (hopefully) rule them all, with the explicit aim of bringing greater transparency to a merchant’s payment stack. The thinking is that larger merchants, especially those that operate in more than one geography, have to support an array of payments methods.

5. Kingsoft Cloud IPO Defies Expectation as Vroom angles for debut

Alex Wilhelm is “nigh-incredulous” about the public debut of Kingsoft Cloud — the company has been growing quickly, but there were some real problems under the hood. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Spotify officially launches a shared-queue feature called Group Session

This will allow two or more of Premium users in the same space to share control over they music being played. Think of it as a “party mode” for Spotify.

7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The latest episode of Equity asks whether its’ better to be a private or public company right now, while the Original Content crew reviews “Waco” (a Paramount Network show that recently started streaming on Netflix) and the new science fictional comedy “Upload.”

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 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Four years ago, Brandon Gell was an architecture student who spent most of his time working on 3D printing modular housing. Now, he’s the founder of Clyde, an extended warranty startup that wants to help small e-commerce businesses offer product protection.

Today, the company announced it has raised a $14 million Series A led by Spark Capital with participation from Crosslink, RRE, Rea Sea Ventures, and others. 

How do you go from being a product person to the founder of an insurance startup? According to Gell: a stint at a 4-person 3D scanner startup in Columbus, Ohio.

Since the team and resources were small, Gell was put in charge of finding an insurance company to work with to protect their expensive end product of scanners.  

“I spent 6 months trying to find a company,” he said. After seeing how seamless it was to work with fintech customer support tools from companies like Stripe, Shopify, Affirm, and others, he said it was clear that insurance, and especially the extended warranty space, wasn’t as mature. So he set up an office in his grandma’s New York apartment. 

Clyde is a platform that connects small retailers to insurance companies to launch and manage product protection programs. 

Using Clyde, customers can access a dashboard, and e-commerce apps to manage their protection programs. For example, a user can see how many contracts were sold, how much revenue total those bring, and gross profit in real-time. It can also see which products are most often purchased with an extended warranty contract. 

“It’s a similar type of offering as Affirm or Stripe,” he said. “We give you access to large insurance companies and we enable you to launch the program live on your website or physical point of sale and store wherever you sell.” It has a Shopify plugin so store owners on the site can add on Clyde to their small businesses. 

Clyde’s most critical metric is that it has an 18 percent attachment rate on average, which means that 18 percent of people that go through a Clyde-powered purchasing path end up purchasing extended warranties or protection plans. 

The reason businesses care about extended warranty is two-fold. First, insurance benefits the customer experience. Second, insurance purchases are often the highest-margin product that companies sell to their customers. Product protection alone is a $50 billion market. Gell said that Best Buy drives about 2 percent of its annual revenue from the sale of extended warranties, but that generates more than half of its profit. 

Clyde helps small businesses, like a 4-person startup in Columbus Ohio, get a bite of this profitable pie. Most ecommerce businesses have to work with Amazon, thus giving a lot of that cash to the big company versus putting it in their own pocket, per Gell. He says that when Amazon sells an extended warranty on a seller’s product, it doesn’t share any revenue with the seller on how the product performs, which prevents a seller from both a stream of revenue and data analytics.

“Our sort of mantra is that the retailers that we work with are basically everybody that’s not Amazon and Walmart,” he said.  

Clyde’s goal is different from Upsie, another venture-backed startup focusing on warranty. Upsie is looking to be a direct-to-consumer warranty replacement, while Clyde works on behalf of the retailer and insurance company to connect the two parties.  

Closer competitors to the startup include Mulberry and Extend, which were both founded after Clyde and have raised less in venture capital funding. Gell thinks his competitive advantage is partnerships with top insurance companies, and a strong product-focused platform. Clyde’s entire founding team is made up of a product people. 

Startups right now need to prove that they are viable in both a pre-coronavirus and post-coronavirus world. And Clyde might be exactly in that sweet spot, since it focuses on ecommerce businesses. 

The Series A round closed a few weeks ago before the COVID-19 craziness began, but he said that the pandemic has led to more inbounds and interest than ever before. Gell sas it’s a mix of ecommerce being more important than ever, and customer behavior. 

“It’s a shift of customers that want to buy online more, but also protect their purchases more than ever,” he said. “Companies are realizing how important it is.”

New cash in hand, Clyde’s growing while its customer-based is looking for new ways to bring in revenue and take care of customers. If the startup can handle the influx of attention and importance right, sticky harmony will follow.