Category: UNCATEGORIZED

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 under the California Unfair Competition Law, and another $2,500 for violations against senior citizens or people with disabilities.

“The companies, we believe and argue are shirking their obligation to their workforce,” Becerra said in a call today. By shirking those obligations, Becerra said, Uber and Lyft are shifting those costs to California taxpayers.

“American taxpayers end up having to help carry the load that Uber and Lyft don’t want to accept,” Becerra said. “These companies will take the workers’ labor, but they won’t accept the worker protections.”

This lawsuit comes after Uber and Lyft have spent millions of dollars to try to combat California law AB 5, which makes it harder for tech companies to classify workers as independent contractors.

Labor issues have been front and center amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Just yesterday, Amazon Web Services VP Tim Bray resigned from the company, citing Amazon’s firings of employees that were critical of the company. Meanwhile, gig workers have organized a number of strikes and protests to demand basic workplace protections like masks and gloves while they’re on the job.

But Uber and Lyft drivers have long been advocating for themselves. Last year, as both Uber and Lyft were gearing up to make their debuts on the public market, drivers staged a number of protests to demand better pay, benefits and the right to form a union.

We’ve reached out to Uber and Lyft and will update this story if we hear back.

This story is developing. Check back for updates.

In the startup world, the more confusing the sector is, the riper the opportunity to make a friendly user interface and rack in millions of dollars of venture capital. There’s Robinhood to make investing more transparent, Vested and Carta to make equity more transparent, and the list goes on. But when it comes to healthcare, a thorny, expensive, and ever-changing sector, consumer-friendly options don’t quickly come to mind.

That’s why Jason Bornhorst and Colin Anawaty teamed up to launch First Dollar, a healthcare savings platform with a focus on HSAs that’s targeted toward millennials and Gen Z. 

First Dollar launched out of stealth today with a $5 million seed round, led by Next Coast Ventures with participation from Meridian Street Capital. Other investors include former athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush,Everlywell CEO Julia Cheek, Bright Health CTO Brian Gambs and Capital Factory. 

“There’s just enough healthcare-ness that makes it a little hard, that’s why you haven’t seen traditionally fintech companies go at it,” Bornhorst said, of the company’s focus.  

First Dollar is launching on the thesis that it can help consumers get better use out of their healthcare savings accounts, or HSAs. HSAs are non-taxable savings accounts that can be used on medical expenses, doctor visit co-pays, or medical prescriptions. Think of it as a 401(k), but for healthcare. Some employers offer HSAs as a benefit, and some consumers choose to open their own. First Dollar works with both.

“I would argue HSA is the worst marketed healthcare benefit in the USA,” said Bornhorst. “This benefit is wholly misunderstood and underutilized by most Americans.”  

First Dollar works on both the front-end and back-end of HSA accounts. It charges employers a monthly administration fee to manage payroll contributions and HSA reporting.

From an end-user perspective, First Dollar lets consumers set up a free account through their site and manage their money there. The company also issues a First Dollar debit card, and makes money from a percentage of transactions on the debit card. Using First Dollar, a customer can see where they can get the most savings on certain medical products. The startup is first focusing on drug discounts and has partnered with RxSaver, a national drug discount program. 

Let’s talk through a customer experience to make this more clear. Users can transfer their existing HSA to First Dollar or create and fund a First Dollar HSA. The First Dollar account will show them discounted healthcare products and services. Then a user can receive the discount at a local pharmacy by showing the cashier a code from First Dollar.

First Dollar’s closest venture-backed competitor is Lively, which last raised $27 million back in October for its HSA product. The startup similarly targets millennials with low fees and online management, and focuses on getting users to treat HSAs as an investment account. Per Forbes, four other fintech startups also have HSA capabilities in beta testing. 

Bornhorst said that First Dollar differentiates from Lively by focusing on educational content and creating a marketplace for customers to find healthcare products and services at lower price points. So while Lively would be more on the saving and investment side, First Dollar would be focusing more on the saving and spending side of things. 

Additionally, the co-founders remain optimistic because of their track record: before First Dollar, Bornhorst and Anawaty launched and sold a company to Athenahealth, a massive healthcare company that works with millions of patients. 

Last month, the Extra Crunch Live team hosted conversations with folks from all over the venture community that ranged from the pre-seed world with Charles Hudson to shark territory with Mark Cuban. We’re starting off May with a packed agenda, including talks with Hunter Walk of Homebrew and Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures. 

Kirsten Green is one of the most respected VCs in the country, with investments in Bonobos, BirchBox, Dollar Shave Club, Glossier, Outdoor Voices, Rockets of Awesome, Hims and Modern Fertility. 

TechCrunch’s Jordan Crook and Natasha Mascarenhas will host the chat with Green and talk about how D2C is changing amidst the coronavirus pandemic. We’ll get into the opportunities ahead for consumer brands, advice she’s giving portfolio companies and how to spot a breakout company. Extra Crunch members can also ask their own questions, so come prepared! 

Green founded Forerunner Ventures in 2010 and has already seen a number of high-profile exits. One of the firm’s first checks went to Dollar Shave Club, which sold to Unilever for $1 billion in 2016. We’ll ask if her investment appetite has changed, which sectors she’s newly bullish on and what metrics are now more important than ever when pitching her. Of course, we’ll get the record on if Forerunner is open for business right now — but we have a feeling it is. 

Kirsten is a founding member of the female mentorship collective All Raise, so expect some conversation on how the landscape is changing for underrepresented founders. 

If we have time, we’ll get into influencer culture, misconceptions about D2C and how founders should think about pitching Green. 

During the call, audience members are encouraged to ask questions. We’ll get to as many as we can, but you can only participate if you’re an Extra Crunch member, so please subscribe here. 

Extra Crunch subscribers can find the Zoom Link below (with YouTube to follow) as well as a calendar invite so you won’t miss this conversation.

We’ve always wanted to make the Disrupt SF (September 14-16) experience available to people who can’t travel to San Francisco. Nothing like a global pandemic to shift priorities and spur innovation. We’ve reserved the Moscone Center for September 14-16, but if you can’t attend in person — for any reason — why not join us online with a Disrupt Digital Pass?

The Digital Pass offers unprecedented, interactive online access to a range of Disrupt SF content. As always, we offer different pricing tiers to keep Disrupt accessible to as many people as possible. You have your choice of two digital ways to play.

Looking for the most immersive, interactive Disrupt experience and the opportunity to engage with the global TechCrunch community? We’ve got you covered — and it won’t break the bank.

The Disrupt Digital Pro Pass is just $245 for a limited time and includes access to content from all stages via live-stream and videos-on-demand so you can watch on your own schedule. You’ll have live-stream and VOD access to:

The Extra Crunch Stage — where top experts (think growth gurus, investors, legal eagles and leading technologists) join TechCrunch editors to discuss the crucial topics founders need to succeed

The Q&A Stage — submit questions during live Q&A sessions with speakers who have appeared with TechCrunch editors on the Disrupt and Extra Crunch stages.

The Showcase Stage — watch as top founders exhibiting in Startup Alley step on stage, pitch their products and field questions from TechCrunch editors.

Startup Alley — peruse and interact virtually with hundreds of exhibiting startups, view product demos and schedule virtual one-on-one meetings with founders.

Disrupt wouldn’t be Disrupt without world-class networking, and that still holds true in 2020. Experience easy, effective networking from home with CrunchMatch. This AI-driven networking tool helps you find like-minded attendees, request meetings and connect via a private video conference. It’s the easiest way to network with the people who can help you move forward.

Engage with sponsors. They’re a smart bunch of folks, and Digital Pro pass holders will have plenty of opportunity to schedule one-on-one meetings with reps or watch sponsor presentations.

For those with tighter budgets, we created the free Disrupt Digital Pass. This pass provides access to the Disrupt Stage live stream and access to all the Disrupt Stage content via video on demand (VOD).

What happens on the Disrupt Stage? TechCrunch editors interview the biggest names in tech. Disrupt always features an amazing lineup of speakers with top founders, investors and experts from across the startup ecosystem. Case in point: Don’t miss the conversation with Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, who also knows a thing or two about investing in software, fintech, agriculture and energy.

Disrupt SF 2020 takes place on September 14-16, and even if you can’t join us in person, you can still experience all the opportunities Disrupt offers. Get your Disrupt Digital Pass today, and keep your startup moving forward.

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

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2020? Contact the sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

YouTube is joining the ranks of online platforms offering the graduating class of 2020 some consolation as ceremonies all over the world have been canceled or put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. The streaming platform revealed its list of guest speakers today, and it’s certainly giving other sites a run for their money, in terms of star power.

Former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama are headlong the June 6 event. Also on the docket for commencement speeches are musicians Lady Gaga and BTS, activist/Nobel Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, Alphabet (YouTube’s parent) CEO Sundai Pichai and former White House officials Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates.

Alicia Keys, Kerry Washington and a number of prominent YouTubers are listed among the “Special Appearances.” It’s nothing if not a diverse array of speakers, and arguably even more packed than Facebook’s May 15 event, which features Oprah Winfrey and Miley Cyrus, among others.

The livestream kicks off here June 6 at 12PM PT/3PM ET.

Gig workers have become an essential part of our society during the COVID-19 global health crisis. But even before the pandemic, gig workers had become a staple in the lives of many people who use services like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates. Despite the growing presence of gig workers, little has been known about them — with the exception that many are independent contractors who receive unpredictable pay and very few benefits. Thanks to a new survey about gig workers in San Francisco, that’s starting to change.

Many gig workers, for example, are people of color, according to a study conducted by San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) and led by UC Santa Cruz professor Chris Benner. The study, which surveyed 643 gig workers across platforms like DoorDash, Instacart, Shipt and others, also found that many are in financially precarious situations and are struggling to make ends meet.

Here are some stats based on those surveyed:

• 78% of gig workers are people of color
  • 29% Asian
  • 23% Latinx
  • 22% white
  • 12% black
  • 13% mixed race
• 56% of gig workers are immigrants
• 21% of gig workers do not have health insurance
• 15% of gig workers need some sort of public assistance, like food stamps or housing vouchers
• 71% of gig workers work more than 30 hours a week
• Before expenses, ride-hailing drivers earn $900 per week on average; food and grocery delivery workers earn an average of $500 per week
• For delivery workers, tips account for 30% of their estimated earnings

This survey comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has shined a brighter spotlight on this essential workforce and the basic protections they often lack.

“This is a very critical workforce for a number of reasons,” Benner previously told TechCrunch. “They are particularly vulnerable and susceptible, especially early on with drivers taking people to and from the airport. But now as we’re potentially seeing a spike in the online ordering of groceries and food delivery, these people doing the deliveries are providing essential services during this time of having to shelter in home and are potentially vulnerable. And if they’re not being careful in handling food and groceries, they could potentially be spreading [COVID-19].”

Now that these results are out, the survey will help the city to shape policy as it relates to gig workers. What’s become clear is that gig workers need better economic security, unemployment benefits and access to good health care.

Some progress is being made in this area, but not quickly enough. The progress also tends to come with pushback from tech companies. As California gig worker protections bill AB5 was becoming law, for example, Uber, Instacart and Lyft put millions of dollars behind a ballot initiative that would enable them to continue classifying workers as independent contractors. And while gig workers are eligible for unemployment benefits, many are struggling to get that relief.

To better support gig workers, crucial reforms need to happen, Shahid Buttar, an activist and attorney who is running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi, told TechCrunch.

“A crucial reform that I think meets the needs of gig workers and working-class Americans, generally, is creating a national health plan — Medicare for all — establishing a right to healthcare without being continent on people needing to pay for insurance or deductibles or their co-pays on the private market,” he said. “That will not only ensure that gig worked have access to care but if you think particularly about gig workers in the time of the pandemic, especially through the lens of undiagnosed potential transmitters, they are people who need care and they need equipment. So the personal protective equipment for gig workers is important and crucial, not just for their rights and workplace safety, but for public health as well.”

Be sure to check out the executive summary here and the full results here.

Mozilla today launched version 76 of its Firefox browser and with that, it’s launching a couple of new features that you’ll likely notice if you’re already using the open-source browser.

The highlight of today’s release is the enhanced password manager. Firefox Lockwise, as it is called these days, will now ask you for your device password when you try to copy and paste credentials from your “Logins and Passwords” page in the browser. After you’ve confirmed your device password, you can see and copy your credentials for five minutes. This should make it a bit harder for others to access password-protected sites on your machine, especially if you’re on a computer you regularly share with others.

Also new Lockwise are alerts for vulnerable passwords that are identical to those that have been stolen in a known breach (but you would never reuse a password, right?), as well as warnings when a website you use has been breached and your logins and passwords were likely stolen.

In addition, Lockwise’s password generator now works with more sites and will help you find 12 random letters, numbers and symbols for you to use as your password.

With version 76, Firefox now also includes a picture-in-picture mode for video sites like YouTube. With this, you can keep watching a video in the corner of your screen while you continue with other tasks (though you can’t browse away from YouTube, for example, while you’re watching in the pop-out window). I wish I could have more control over the size of that picture-in-picture window since it’s pretty large, but that’s just how it is for now.

If you’re an avid Zoom user, you’ll be happy to hear that Firefox has now made a few changes that allow you to use it in Firefox without the need for any additional downloads and WebRender, which uses the GPU to render websites faster, is now enabled on even more machines.

Tom Cruise is talking to SpaceX about taking the ultimate step to top his crazy movie stunts, Apple and Google’s exposure notification API will not provide access to detailed location data and we survey seven VCs about the new media landscape.

Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 5, 2020.

1. Tom Cruise reportedly talking to SpaceX about shooting a movie in space

Perennial action star Tom Cruise, who has a penchant for striving for ever bigger and more blustery stunts and set pieces, may be aiming for the crowning action movie achievement of them all: Shooting a movie in space.

Deadline reports that Cruise is in early discussions with Elon Musk’s SpaceX about the possibility of filming a feature film in space, with NASA also involved in the early chats. (Somehow, the film in question is not the next Mission Impossible sequel.)

2. Apple and Google release sample code, UI and detailed policies for COVID-19 exposure-notification apps

The first version of the Exposure Notification API was released to developers last week along with beta updates of iOS and Xcode. Today, Apple and Google are providing new sample resources for developers, along with new policies (like a prohibition on accessing detailed geolocation data) that any developers working with the API must adhere to in order to get their apps approved.

3. Seven VCs discuss how COVID-19 is changing the media startup landscape

We checked in a variety of top VCs about the new media landscape, where they’re investing and what kind of advice they’re giving their portfolio companies. The consensus? You can’t count on the ad business to recover in the next few months, but there are still opportunities for startups exploring new formats and new business models. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

4. N26 raises another $100 million in Series D extension

N26’s Series D seems like a never-ending list of big numbers. In January 2019, the company announced a $300 million Series D at a $2.7 billion valuation. In July 2019, the company added $170 million at a $3.5 billion valuation. And now, here comes another $100 million.

5. As Uber (reportedly) squeezes Lime, scooter startups run low on juice

The Information recently reported that Uber may invest in Lime at a dramatically lowered valuation, with an option to buy the company at a later date. Alex Wilhelm discusses why Uber might be doing this, especially when Uber already has its own micro-mobility bet. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Back Market raises $120M for its refurbished device marketplace

Back Market doesn’t refurbish devices in-house. Instead, it partners with certified sellers and let them list their items on the site.

7. Watch the first trailer for Netflix’s Space Force starring The Office’s Steve Carell

The show arrives on May 29 (coincidentally just two days after NASA and SpaceX are set to mark a return to U.S. crewed spaceflight with their first Commercial Crew astronaut demonstration mission), and stars Steve Carell alongside John Malkovich, Diana Silvers, Tawny Newsome, Lisa Kudrow and Ben Schwartz.

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.

Back in March, Apple joined a rapidly growing number of companies announcing an online-only model for their annual tech events. At the time, SVP Phil Schiller promised that the event would be “an innovative way to millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience,” as planners across the world scrambled to make adapt to the newfound realities of a growing viral pandemic.

This morning, Apple is offering a lot more information about what WWDC will look like amid social distancing and stay at home requirements. The annual developer conference is now set for June 22. As previously noted, the event will consist of online sessions focused on iOS, iPadOS and MacOS developers.

In a release, Schiller once again set a positive note about launching the new format during an uncertain time. “WWDC20 will be our biggest yet, bringing together our global developer community of more than 23 million in an unprecedented way for a week in June to learn about the future of Apple platforms,” the executive said. “We can’t wait to meet online in June with the global developer community and share with them all of the new tools we’ve been working on to help them create even more incredible apps and services. We look forward to sharing more details about WWDC20 with everyone as we get closer to this exciting event.”

Developing…

Sleuth, an early stage startup from three former Atlassian employees, wants to bring some much-needed order to the continuous delivery process. Today, the company announced it has raised a $3 million seed round.

​CRV led the round with participation from angel investors from New Relic, Atlassian and LaunchDarkly.

“Sleuth is a deployment tracker built to solve the confusion that comes when companies have adopted continuous delivery,” says CEO and co-founder Dylan Etkin. The company’s founders recognized that more and more companies were making the move to continuous delivery deployment, and they wanted to make it easier to track those deployments and figure out where the bottle necks were.

He says that typically, on any given DevOps team, there are perhaps two or three people who know how the entire system works, and with more people spread out now, it’s more important than ever that everyone has that capability. Etkin says Sleuth lets everyone on the team understand the underlying complexity of the delivery system with the goal of helping them understand the impact of a given change they made.

“Sleuth is trying to make that better by targeting the developer and really giving them a communications platform, so that they can discuss the [tools] and understand what is changing and who has changed what. And then more importantly, what is the impact of my change,” he explained.

Image Credit: Sleuth

The company was founded by three former Atlassian alumni — Ektin along with Michael Knighten and Don Brown — all of whom were among the first 50 employees at the now tremendously successful development tools company.

That kind of pedigree tends to get the attention of investors like CRV, but it is also telling that three companies including their former employer saw enough potential here to invest in the company, and be using the product.

Etkin recognizes this is a tricky time to launch an early-stage startup. He said that when he first entered the lock down, his inclination was to hunker down, but they concluded that their tool would have even greater utility at the moment. “The founders took stock and we were always building a tool that was great for remote teams and collaboration in general, and that hasn’t changed… if anything, I think it’s becoming more important right now.”

The company plans to spend the next 6-9 months refining the product, adding a few folks to the five person team and finding product-market fit. There is never an ideal time to start a company, but Sleuth believes now is its moment. It may not be easy, but they are taking a shot.