Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Given the endless drumbeat of layoff announcements — with deep cuts by Airbnb and Uber garnering much of the industry’s attention this week — it’s reasonable to wonder: what happens to all of the talent that’s being laid off? How does the changing supply and demand balance impact pay? Is anyone safe in this market?

Because the questions are top of mind for practically everyone everywhere right now, we reached out to recruiters in the one industry that we know — tech — to ask what they are seeing and what they predict will happen over the next three to six months. Unsurprisingly, they told us they’ve seen a steep drop-off in job searches and loads of salary cuts, but they also say there are silver linings in these turbulent times.

First the bad news, and for the moment, it’s mostly bad news.

Sales and marketing positions — particularly at consumer-facing startups — have been hard hit, and they aren’t coming back any time soon, possibly not even in 2020. Carolyn Betts, the founder of the national recruiting firm Betts Recruiting says when the “coronavirus hit and shelter-in-place notices came out, we saw 80% of our business freeze. And then it went down from there.”

Betts’s bootstrapped recruiting company — which fills sales, marketing and people operations roles — was forced to conduct its own layoffs because of the lost business, shedding 30 percent of its staff and cutting remaining employees’ pay by 20%, although though Betts says a PPP loan has allowed the company to adjust pay upward again by 10%.

In the meantime, she has had a front row to the nearly overnight switch from an employee market where rising salaries and signing bonuses had become routine, to an employer-driven market where candidates get what they get. “There’s so much talent in the market that there are backup candidates for backup candidates.” Indeed, her advice to job candidates right now is to recognize the game has changed and that if pushed, the hiring company might “just move on to the next candidate. Everyone is going to hire within their budgets right now, and they aren’t going to make exceptions for the most part.”

Executive searches are also, predictably, largely frozen right now. So suggests Teri McFadden, a VP of recruiting at the venture firm Norwest Venture Partners, where for nearly 12 years she has helped the firm’s portfolio companies fill key positions.

Before COVID-19 struck the U.S., the firm was staring at roughly “160 open active executive level searches in our portfolio — clearly more than my team at Norwest could handle,” says McFadden. (Like most venture firms, Norwest sometimes retains outside search firms.) Now, that number has fallen by more than half. Some, she says, are “full cancellations,” while “other people are just putting searches on pause to see what happens in the next couple of quarters.”

In the meantime, certain roles have been harder hit than others, says McFadden, who specifically cites marketing groups. She also notes that executive pay at companies that have been impacted most negatively by the coronavirus are coming down, an observation the public has seen play out in company announcement after company announcement in recent weeks. Generally speaking, she suggests, C-suite executives take a 20% reduction in salary while the next level of management takes a 10% pay cut and “anyone below a certain salary level” sees no pay cut. But it varies from company to company.

Even engineers in today’s climate aren’t being spared, suggests Sam Wholley, a longtime partner with the Silicon Valley recruitment firm Riviera Partners, which specializes in engineering, product and design leadership. While new jobs are paying roughly what they did two months ago, both Wholley and McFadden expect the market to soften in the coming months, with pay dropping 10 to 20 percent. (Wholley says pay for engineers was trending this way even before the virus sent everyone running for cover.)

A bigger problem is simple demand and supply. For the first time in more than a decade, the supply of engineering talent may exceed the need for it — or, at least, the ability to pay for it. Asked, for example, whether the younger companies continuing to receive funded might be able to absorb the engineers who’ve been let go by bigger companies, Wholley says that, “unfortunately, I don’t think so, and I don’t think it will be that for a while.” While new companies are always being created, he continues, “It could be up to a year to find that right match.” It might also mean “looking in a different industry or possibly a different geography than they have” looked in the past.

But wait! As promised, the news is not all terrible.

Because much of the tech sector is holding up better than elsewhere, there is still some movement on the hiring front. For her part, Betts says she’s beginning to see companies “up level” their teams, meaning parting ways with “bottom performers and replacing them with talent that has entered the market.” This is particularly the case with industries that “sell into the government, in security, that sell collaboration software, and in healthcare,” she observes.

Betts also notes that some customers in places like Texas where people are re-entering public spaces are “opening up” and starting to strategize about who they want to hire or re-hire.

“A lot of people have received some relief regarding their growth plans,” says Betts, “but it’s May. When things get back [to a more normal state of affairs], [management teams] will be expected to put their foot on the gas to make up for lost time, and no one wants to be caught flat-footed. If you start hiring when everyone says ‘go,’ you missed your head start.”

McFadden and Wholly echoes the point, with Wholley saying that “strong hands are continuing to hire and McFadden offering separately that Norwest is seeing two categories of companies that are “poised to do well long term,” including those focused right now on product development and who have fewer mouths to feed and others that are finding even more demand for their products right now for one reason or another, like software tools made expressly for remote teams and even direct-to-consumer hair colorant companies.

“I think in general,” says McFadden, “companies are beginning to think about what does life look like after COVID-19, and it’s not all doom and gloom.”

A data breach at the U.S. Marshals Service exposed the personal information of current and former prisoners, TechCrunch has learned.

A letter, sent to those affected and obtained by TechCrunch, said the Justice Department notified the U.S. Marshals on December 30, 2019 of a data breach affecting a public-facing server storing personal information on current and former prisoners in its custody. The letter said the breach may have included their address, date of birth and Social Security number, which can be used for identity fraud.

But the notice didn’t say how many current and former prisoners are affected by the breach.

As the law enforcement arm of the federal courts, U.S. Marshals are tasked with capturing fugitives and serving federal arrest warrants. Last year, U.S. Marshals arrested over 90,000 fugitives and served over 105,000 warrants.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment by email or phone.

It’s the latest federal government security lapse in recent weeks.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, a Dept of Defense division charged with providing technology and communications support to the U.S. government — including the president and other senior officials — said a data breach between May and July 2019 resulted in the theft of employees’ personal information.

Last month, the Small Business Administration admitted that 8,000 applicants, who applied for an emergency loan after facing financial difficulties because of the coronavirus pandemic, had their data exposed.

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Friday that his state would issue a mail-in ballot to every registered voter for November’s election. Newsom issued the decision as an executive order in coordination with other California officials.

The order will require all county election officials to provide mail-in ballots to voters, but it also provisions for in-person voting stations for Californians with disabilities, those without an address due to homelessness and voters who need voting materials in a language other than English.

According to the order, the governor will coordinate with the Secretary of State and the California legislature to make in-person voting as safe as possible. In California, the Secretary of State is the top election official, tasked with overseeing voting equipment, security and accessibility.

“Today we become the first state in the nation to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by mailing every registered voter a ballot,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said of the decision. “We are meeting our obligation to provide an accessible, secure, and safe election this November. Sending every registered voter a ballot by mail is smart policy and absolutely the right thing to do during this COVID-19 pandemic.”

With the November election looming, states are moving swiftly to adapt to the unique challenges posed by a general election in the midst of a pandemic. The primary season offered a preview of the chaos that could come for states that fail to rethink their voting systems, particularly in Wisconsin, where photos depicted long lines and crowded polling stations. As many other states bought time by pushing their own primaries back, Wisconsin went ahead with in-person voting on its original date in spite of warnings from health experts and concern among voters.

While some political figures—President Trump chief among them—seek to frame vote-by-mail as a partisan issue, the reality is that election officials in both red and blue states are looking at sending residents ballots by mail come November.

Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah and Hawaii already safely use vote-by-mail as their primary method of voting and incidents of voter fraud in those states—and other states that allow some voting via absentee ballot—are statistically negligible.

The original Go was a mostly well-received addition to the Surface line when it arrived in late 2018. It was a nice, pint-sized alternatively, positioned fairly well to serve as a secondary device for some. It did the convertible double duty and traveled well, but otherwise was lacking in guts and versatility.

Launching at the height of a global pandemic, the Go 2 isn’t exactly the device of the moment. After all, the line has made a number of key sacrifices in the name of portability. It’s the kind of product whose shortcomings you’re willing to forgive for the ability to have it with you anywhere you need to be. Typing on it atop my home desk, on the other hand, only brings those shortcomings into sharp focus.

That’s not Microsoft’s fault, of course, and this too shall pass, as we keep telling ourselves. Between the device’s design and low starting price of $399, the new Go is still best contextualized as a second travel device, in spite of a larger screen and improved specs. Nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s just worth noting before we get too far in that I can’t recommend the product as a primary device for most users.

It’s also worth noting what you actually get if you buy the $399 model. For starters, there’s no keyboard. And the keyboard is really the thing here. After all, that sort of convertibility is a huge part of the motivation for buying a Surface in the first place. Along with the full Windows 10 experience, you’ll want the sort of productivity that requires a keyboard. That will run you $99-$129.

A harder pill to swallow is the processor upgrade. Similar to the MacBook Air I just reviewed, the real top-line component refresh mentioned in the press material requires a not inconsequential premium. Microsoft heavily advertised the addition of the eighth-gen Intel core line, which was heralded as helping transform the Go into a proper laptop. The base level, however sports the Intel Pentium 4425Y, chip, far more in line with the original’s 4415Y — one of the bigger issues reviewers had with the first Go.

Models with the Intel Core M3 start at $630 (that price will also get the RAM and storage bumped from 4GB/64GB to 8GB/128GB). LTE is an option now, as well, but that model runs $730. You can see how things start to add up pretty quickly here. The LTE is certainly not a mandatory update for a majority of users, but I’d strongly recommend going with the M3 if you’re looking for anything but the most basic functionality here.

As configured, the system scored 739 and 1540 on the single and dual-core Geekbench 4 tests, marking a sizable performance bump over the previous generation. It’s a welcome change that will make notable difference in daily use — even if it’s one you have to pay extra for. With the upgrade in place, the Go starts to make a stronger case to become a daily driver for some users.

Expanding the screen from 10 inches to 10.5 is also welcome. At that compact size, even half an inch goes a long way. The nicest part is that Microsoft managed to so while maintaining a similar footprint as the original version. After all, make the device much larger and you’ll start to lose its core appeal.

The Go maintains the line’s signature rear-of-device kickstand, rather than relying on the keyboard case. This makes sense for those who want to use the tablet without the keyboard. Positioning the stand on the device itself means you can prop it up to, say, watch a movie without relying on an accessory.

My longstanding complaint about the setup stands, however. Attempting to use the laptop on, say, your lap, is just too awkward. The keyboard flops around and the tablet never stays up tight. You’ll spend half your time attempting to position it correctly. The typing experience itself isn’t bad. The Surface is pretty decent as far as tablet keyboard cases go — which is to say it’s not going to replace a dedicated laptop, but it works just fine. It’s a bit narrow and soft, but nothing you won’t get used to after a bit.

The port situation still leaves something to be desired. There’s one USB-C, a headphone jack and the proprietary Surface Connect port. It was time to retire the latter a few generations ago. I recognize the desire for backward compatibility, but it’s time add a second USB-C dock in its place. Meantime, you might want to consider investing $259 in that new Surface Dock 2.

The accessories and the upgrades add up pretty quickly. If you go in for the Core M3 Wi-Fi model, buy a keyboard case and the dock; that will set you back $1,017. It’s a far cry from the $399. At that point, it’s probably worth looking around at what the competition offers at that price point. If you don’t mind sacrificing a bit of functionality in order to save a few bucks, however, the Go continues to be a decent choice for those seeking a secondary Windows convertible.

Chris Lynch, a founder and former general partner at Boston-based seed-stage fund Accomplice, remembers “VC Mountain in Waltham.”

Back then, entrepreneurs on funding quests would visit a building overlooking the Waltham Reservoir near Boston where they pitched to a few investors: Matrix Partners, Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.

“And if they didn’t invest in you, you weren’t getting money to start your company,” Lynch said.

Since then, Lynch has watched the area’s startup ecosystem reach the point where seed-stage firms are ubiquitous, but in a city populated with firms waiting to make first bets, the scene is unsurprisingly undergoing a funding drought. Crunchbase data indicates that the city’s Q2 venture capital pace slowed dramatically, with April seeing far fewer rounds and dollars invested in 2020 than in 2019.

Boston saw just seven known equity funding rounds in April, investments worth a hair under $60 million. In the year-ago April, Boston recorded 24 equity funding rounds worth more than $500 million.

Yet, while the numbers are slow, some Boston tech leaders think seed startups will continue to thrive thanks to accelerators and a healthy base of local early-stage investors. And Lynch, who left Accomplice in 2017, says the venture slowdown might help firms recalibrate their appetite for new deals to a more healthy pace.

“The advantage of more access to capital without a proportional increase in great ideas really waters down the fort,” he said, referring to upmarkets. “A lot of money has been invested in companies before they even proved their ideas were right, and I think even I fell into a trap of competing so hard for deals that I lost sight of a good deal.” He estimates that in our COVID-19 world, investors will start to again take three months for due diligence on a deal, versus three weeks to a signed term sheet.

If Boston’s seed investors becomes more conservative, that means that accelerators — homes of the brightest founders, often before they even have their first customer — will be pressed to react.

Accelerators

Venture Lane, a co-working space and startup incubator for early-stage companies, was nearing its one-year anniversary in the heart of Boston when COVID-19 hit the city.

The incubator, which traditionally hosts 10 startups at a time, made its whole program virtual and reworked existing content to help navigate the climate. Plus, per founder Christian Magel, its tips and workshops were opened up to any early-stage founder, not just the ones enrolled with Venture Lane. Hundreds have signed up, he said.

Four years ago, Adnan Asar, the founder of the new addiction prevention service Lucid Lane, was enjoying a successful career working as the founding chief technology officer at Livongo Health. It was the serial senior tech executive’s most recent job after a long stint at Shutterfly and he was shepherding the company through the development of its suite of hardware and software for the management of chronic conditions.

But when Asar’s wife was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, he stepped away from the technology world to be with his family while she underwent treatment.

He did not know at the time that the decision would set him on the path to founding Lucid Lane. The company’s mission is to help give patients who have been prescribed medications to address pain and anxiety ways to wean themselves off those drugs and avoid addiction — and its purpose is born from the struggle Asar witnessed as his wife wrestled with how to stop taking the medication she was prescribed during her illness.

Asar’s wife isn’t alone. In 2018, there were roughly 168.2 million prescriptions for opioids written in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lucid Lane estimates that 50 million people are prescribed opioids and another 13 million are prescribed benzodiazepines each year either after surgery or in conjunction with cancer treatments — all without a plan for how to manage or taper the use of these highly addictive medications.

For Asar’s wife, it was the benzodiazepine prescribed as part of her cancer treatment that became an issue. “She was hit by very severe withdrawal symptoms and we didn’t know what was going on,” Asar said. When they consulted her physician he gave the couple two options — quitting cold turkey or remaining on the medication.

“My wife decided to go cold turkey,” Asar said. “It was really debilitating for the whole family.”

It took nine months of therapy and regular consultations with psychiatrists to help with tailoring medication dosages and tapering to get her off of the medication, said Asar. And that experience led to the launch of Lucid Lane.

“Our goal is to prevent and control medication and substance dependence,” Asar said.

The company’s telehealth solution is built on a proprietary treatment protocol meant to provide continuous daily support and interventions, along with proactive monitoring of a personalized treatment plan — all on an ongoing basis, said Asar. 

And the COVID-19 pandemic is only accelerating the need for telehealth services. “COVID-19 has made telehealth a mandatory service instead of a discretionary service,” said Asar. “There’s a surge in anxiety, depression, substance use and medication use. We’re seeing a surge of patients who are reaching out to us.”

Asar sees Lucid Lane’s competitors as companies like Lyra Health and Ginger, or point solutions building digital diagnostics to detect anxiety and depression. But unlike some companies that are launching to treat addiction or addictive behaviors, Asar sees his startup as preventing dependency and addiction.

“A lot of people are sliding into these addictions through something that happens at the doctor’s office,” said Asar. ” Our solution does not prescribe any of these medications.”

The company is working on clinical studies that are set to start at the Palo Alto VA hospital, and has raised $4 million in seed funding from investors including Battery Ventures and AME Cloud Ventures, the investment firm founded by Jerry Yang.

“We see great potential for Lucid Lane, as it has developed a scalable solution to one of the biggest problems facing society today,” said Battery general partner Dharmesh Thakker, in a statement. “Telehealth solutions have emerged as highly capable of addressing complex problems, and Lucid Lane has embraced remote care from its beginning. Its design enables care anytime, anywhere for patients in their moment of need. This can make a tremendous difference in the battle between recovery and relapse. We believe that it will help millions of people lead better lives.”

Joining Asar in the development of the company and its healthcare protocols are a seasoned team of health professionals, including Dr. Ahmed Zaafran, a board certified anesthesiologist at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and assistant professor of anesthesiology (affiliated) at Stanford University School of Medicine; and advisors like Dr. Vanila Singh, who was also previously chairperson of the HHS Task Force in conjunction with the DOD and the VA to address the opioid drug crisis; Dr. Carin Hagberg, the chair of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine of MD Anderson Cancer Center; and Sherif Zaafran, the president of the Texas Medical Board and chair of multiple national committees on pain management, including the subcommittee Taskforce on Pain Management Services for HHS, as well as the department’s Pain Clinical Pathways Committee.

“Lucid Lane provides a patient-centered solution that allows for the best clinical outcomes for patients after surgery and those bravely finishing chemotherapy,” said Dr. Singh, in a statement. “For the many patients who require short-term opioids and benzodiazepine medications, Lucid Lane’s treatment can limit the risk of prolonged dependence of these medications while also ensuring effective pain control with a resulting improved quality of life and functioning.”

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TechCrunch is mindful of the COVID-19 issue and its impact on live events. You can follow our updates here.

Tesla has not been given the “green light” to open its factory in Fremont, California, Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Erica Pan said in a videostreamed town hall meeting Friday.

Tesla said in an internal email sent to employees Thursday, which TechCrunch has viewed, that it was planning to restart “limited operations” at the Fremont factory, which is located in Alameda County. Tesla’s decision is in in direct conflict with a stay-at-home order in Alameda County.

Alameda health and county officials are working with Tesla and have reviewed their safety plans for reopening, Pan said. “We’ve asked them to wait,” she added.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Employees received two emails — one from CEO Elon Musk and another from Valerie Workman, the company’s human resources director — indicating that the factory would open as early as Friday. The decision to open was based on new guidance from Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said Thursday that manufacturers could resume operations. However, Newsom’s guidance included a warning that local governments could keep more restrictive rules in place.

Alameda County, which along with several other Bay Area counties and cities, issued revised stay-at-home orders that will last through the end of May. Those revised orders did ease some of the restrictions. However, it did not lift the order for manufacturing.

Below is a screenshot of an email sent to TechCrunch from a Tesla employee.

Image Credits: Kirsten Korosec

Pan and health officials from the other Bay Area counties want companies like Tesla to wait until they can be sure there isn’t an impact from the loosening restrictions. They also want to make sure that businesses have proper time to plan their reopening to ensure they’re following best practices.

“We are really asking our facilities within the county that our local health order still prevails and to wait until we have another week or so under our belt to see what has happened after we did that first round of lifting restrictions,” Pan said.

Developing….

Saar Gur is adept at identifying the next big consumer trends earlier than most: The San Francisco-based general partner at CRV has led investments into leading consumer internet companies like Niantic, DoorDash, Bird, Dropbox, Patreon, Kapwing and ClassPass.

His own experience stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred his interest in three new investment themes focused on the next generation of games: those built for VR, those built on top of Twitch and those built for video chat environments as a socializing tool.

TechCrunch: We’ve been in a “VR winter,” as it’s been called in the industry, following the 2014-2017 wave of VC funding into VR drying up as the market failed to gain massive consumer adoption. You think VR could soon be hot again. Why?

Saar Gur: If you track revenues of third-party games on Oculus, the numbers are getting interesting. And we think the Quest is not quite the Xbox moment for Facebook, but the device and market response to the Quest have been great. So we are more engaged in looking at VR gaming startups than ever before.

What do you mean by “the Xbox moment,” and what will that look like for VR? Facebook hasn’t been able to keep up with demand for Oculus Quest headsets, and most VR headsets seem to have sold out during this pandemic as people seek entertainment at home. This seems like progress. When will we cross the threshold?