Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Turbo Systems, a three-year old, no-code mobile app startup, announced today it has brought on industry veteran Jen Grant to be CEO.

Grant, who was previously vice president of marketing at Box and chief marketing officer at Elastic and Looker, brings more than 15 years of tech company experience to the young startup.

She says that when Looker got acquired by Google last June for $2.6 billion, she began looking for her next opportunity. She had done a stint with Google as a product manager earlier in her career and was looking for something new.

She saw Looker as a model for the kind of company she wanted to join, one that had a founder focused on product and engineering, who hired an outside CEO early on to run the business, as Looker had done. She found that in Turbo where founder Hari Subramanian was taking on that type of role. Subramanian was also a successful entrepreneur, having previously founded ServiceMax before selling it to GE in 2016.

“The first thing that really drew me to Turbo was this partnership with Hari,” Grant told TechCrunch. While that relationship was a key component for her, she says even with that, before she decided to join, she spoke to customers and she saw an enthusiasm there that drew her to the company.

“I love products that actually help people. And so Box is helping people collaborate and share files and work together. Looker is about getting data to everyone in the organization so that everyone could be making great decisions, and at Turbo we’re making it easy for anyone to create a mobile app that helps run their business,” she said.

Grant has been on the job for just 30 days, joining the company in the middle of a global pandemic. So it’s even more challenging than the typical early days for any new CEO, but she is looking forward and trying to help her 36 employees navigate this situation.

“You know, I didn’t know that this is what would happen in my first 30 days, but what inspires me, what’s a big part of it is that I can help by growing this company, by being successful and by being able to hire more and more people, and contribute to getting our economy back on track,” Grant said.

She also recognizes that there is a lack of diversity in her new CEO role, and she hopes to be a role model. “I have been fortunate to get to a position where I know I can do this job and do it well. And it’s my responsibility to do this work, my responsibility to show it can be done and shouldn’t be an anomaly.”

Turbo Systems was founded in 2017 and has raised $8 million, according to Crunchbase. It helps companies build mobile apps without coding, connecting to 140 different data sources such as Salesforce, SAP and Oracle.

A voter contact and canvassing company, used exclusively by Republican political campaigns, mistakenly left an unprotected copy of its app’s code on its website for anyone to find.

The company, Campaign Sidekick, helps Republican campaigns canvass their districts using its iOS and Android apps, which pull in names and addresses from voter registration rolls. Campaign Sidekick says it has helped campaigns in Arizona, Montana, and Ohio — and contributed to the Brian Kemp campaign, which saw him narrowly win against Democratic rival Stacey Abrams in the Georgia gubernatorial campaign in 2018.

For the past two decades, political campaigns have ramped up their use of data to identify swing voters. This growing political data business has opened up a whole economy of startups and tech companies using data to help campaigns better understand their electorate. But that has led to voter records spilling out of unprotected servers and other privacy-related controversies — like the case of Cambridge Analytica obtaining private data from social media sites.

Chris Vickery, director of cyber risk research at security firm UpGuard, said he found the cache of Campaign Sidekick’s code by chance.

In his review of the code, Vickery found several instances of credentials and other app-related secrets, he said in a blog post on Monday, which he shared exclusively with TechCrunch. These secrets, such as keys and tokens, can typically be used to gain access to systems or data without a username or password. But Vickery did not test the password as doing so would be unlawful. Vickery also found a sampling of personally identifiable information, he said, amounting to dozens of spreadsheets packed with voter names and addresses.

Fearing the exposed credentials could be abused if accessed by a malicious actor, Vickery informed the company of the issue in mid-February. Campaign Sidekick quickly pulled the exposed cache of code offline.

One of the Campaign Sidekick mockups, using dummy data, collates a voter’s data in one place. (Image: supplied)

One of the screenshots provided by Vickery showed a mockup of a voter profile compiled by the app, containing basic information about the voter and their past voting and donor history, which can be obtained from public and voter records. The mockup also lists the voter’s “friends.”

Vickery told TechCrunch he found “clear evidence” that the app’s code was designed to pull in data from its now-defunct Facebook app, which allowed users to sign-in and pull their list of friends — a feature that was supported by Facebook at the time until limits were put on third-party developers’ access to friends’ data.

“There is clear evidence that Campaign Sidekick and related entities had and have used access to Facebook user data and APIs to query that data,” Vickery said.

Drew Ryun, founder of Campaign Sidekick, told TechCrunch that its Facebook project was from eight years prior, that Facebook had since deprecated access to developers, and that the screenshot was a “digital artifact of a mockup.” (TechCrunch confirmed that the data in the mockup did not match public records.)

Ryun said after he learned of the exposed data the company “immediately changed sensitive credentials for our current systems,” but that the credentials in the exposed code could have been used to access its databases storing user and voter data.

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.

If you missed Friday’s main episode, it was a fun one so take the time if you have the minutes; we’re settling into a new hosting lineup that is shaping up to be our best ever, so we’re having a blast even if we have to record remotely instead of in the same room.

This morning was a bit of a mixed bag. The world is still in pretty bad shape as societies and governments work to combat COVID-19 and the private and public markets convulse. But there was still news to be found, so we hit on a few key news items, including: The return of HQ Trivia at a perfect time, Microsoft’s booming cloud services demand and the return of tech layoffs.

Not all news was bad, however, as we looked at three early-stage funding events and three seed rounds from Indo, Kaizo, and Lanistar.

Looking ahead left us little joy other than to note that it is very nearly earnings season; Q1 2020 business results should prove to be the most interesting in memory given how much the world changed during the three-month period. Regardless of whether or not you care about the financial side of business or not, it’s going to be a wild ride.

Wrapping today, unicorn layoffs are back in a big way. Bird, TripActions, ZipRecruiter, and others are cutting staff in big chunks. A lot of folks hired to help companies scale look pretty expensive when growth turns negative; layoffs suck and a struggling economy is crap for everyone, but the business cycle is real, so it’s not a huge shock to find ourselves here today. We’re going to cover the cuts, but only with a grimace and good thoughts for the laid off.

And that’s it for this week. Other than that the new Trivium single is epic, we’re out of here.

The global coronavirus pandemic has meant that there’s a widespread effort to develop and advance creative solutions to new problems, like worldwide shortages of necessary front-line medical equipment. One piece of gear that’s necessary for protecting the health of medical workers treating COVID-19 patients are N95 respirator masks, which are masks that specifically filter out very fine particles, including shed virus, with high efficacy. These are in extremely short supply, but a new FDA emergency use authorization could help significantly lessen that burden by opening a path to re-use of N95 masks originally intended for one-time use.

Research, development and lab management company Battelle has received special emergency authorization from the U.S. healthcare regulator to put into use a system it developed to decontaminate used N95 respirator masks using concentrated hydrogen peroxide. The system is able to turn single use respirators into masks that can be used up to 20 times, with a 2.5-hour decontamination process between each use.

The Battelle system is already in operation at its Ohio facility, with a decontamination capacity of up to 80,000 masks per day. That’s a considerable dent in a supply need that will be faced by essentially every healthcare facility faced with a high concentration of COVID-19 patients. The company is working with Columbus -based OhioHealth as its first healthcare system partner, but says that it’ll also start decontaminating masks for three other new major healthcare systems in the area beginning this week.

In order to ensure that everything is done as safely and transparently as possible, the N95 masks that Battelle collects for decontamination and re-use will all go back to the same healthcare facility from which they were collected, and they’ll be labeled with a serial number that provides tracking, which will also include the number of times they’re re-used.

Battelle actually worked with the FDA in 2015 to develop and demonstrate this technology – specifically in anticipation of a scenario where a global pandemic caused a shortage of available equipment. They’re also not the only ones using this technology: Duke University is also using vaporized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate used respirators, and it’s making the protocols that it established widely available, with compatibility with a number of existing decontamination systems already in use in healthcare facilities.

This technology and method actually aren’t new, and are frequently used in decontamination of equipment used in labs that deal with biohazardous material. Its use specifically for turning single-use N95 masks into reusable gear is new, however – but this EUA from the FDA could pave the way for broader authorized, safe use of the technology to help with the growing need for more equipment.

DLR, German’s space agency and NASA equivalent, is doing what it can to support the global shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) used by frontline healthcare workers in their efforts to treat those affected by COVID-19. DLR announced that it has successfully tested converting its on-site 3D printers, typically used for producing aerospace-grade parts, to creating medical equipment including protective face masks and ventilators.

There’s a need for various kinds of components and equipment worldwide, and healthcare workers are coming up with solutions that are far less than ideal and not necessarily approved for use by governing healthcare agencies, simply because they have no other options. DLR investigated what it could do working with its Sytemhaus Technik engineering and manufacturing group, which leveraged free and open resources including templates for PPE produced by groups working to address the global shortage.

The agency’s equipment is now being certified by healthcare agencies for medical use, and meanwhile, DLR and Systemhaus Technik are working to share their findings and know-how with other institutions, science and research facilities to help them use their own resources to spin up similar production capacities.

So far, DLR can produce “up to 10 protective masks or 15 valves for ventilators per day,” but it says it hopes to work on building out a network of facilities that can ramp up production to higher rates of output.

The need for this equipment globally is such that any added capacity can help make a difference, but more important might be the knowledge that is developed and shared about doing the same thing on similar 3D printing equipment. Putting aerospace engineers to work on developing solutions that can be repeated in other manufacturing environments, and that meet medical-grade specification requirements, could ultimately help save a lot of lives as health agencies globally work to deal with the influx of patients requiring advanced care as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

While economic conditions and the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic may not make for the best atmosphere for raising funding, some companies are still announcing round closures with significant money committed. Cambridge-based ElevateBio, for instance, revealed a $170 million Series B funding on Monday, with participation from new investors The Invus Group, Surveyor Capital, EDBI, and Vertex Ventures, along with existing investors F2 Ventures, MPM Capital, EcoR1 Capital, Redmile Group and Samsara BioCapital.

ElevateBio, which was officially launched to the public less than a year ago, specializes in development of new types of cellular and genetic therapies, and operates by the creation of new companies under its portfolio each dedicated to the development and manufacturing of a specific type of therapeutic approach. This funding brings the total raised by ElevateBio to over $300 million, on top of a $150 million Series A round that the company announced last year, led by Swiss investment bank UBS’ Oncology Impact Fund.

The biotech company has ramped up quickly, nearing completion of a 140,000 square foot facilitating in Massachusetts to focus on R&D. It also launched a company called AlloVir that’s working on T-cell immunotherapy for combating viruses that specifically arise stem cell transplantations, and is already in the later stages of clinical trials. Finally, it launched another company called HighPassBio, which is also aimed at helping treat stem cell-related diseases using T-cell therapies, in this case specifically around the potential relapse of leukaemia following a transplant.

As you might expect, ElevateBio is also turning the attention of some of its efforts towards research focused on mitigating the impact of COVID-19; specifically, its AlloVir subsidiary has expanding an existing research agreement in place with the Baylor College of Medicine to work on developing a type of T-cell therapy that can help protect patients with conditions that compromise their immune systems and put them at increased risk for COVID-19.

The coronavirus pandemic has all but halted a lot of business activity, but today comes news of a deal that underscores how M&A is still happening in some sectors despite (not because of) everything else going on. One.com — the big hosting provider in Europe with around 1.5 million customers, itself acquired just over a year ago by PE firm Cinven — has acquired Hostnet, a smaller Netherlands-based competitor with about 210,000 customers.

Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed but a spokesperson for One.com said that it includes all of Hostnet’s existing business — which includes management of 810,000 domain names and 85,000 websites; domain registration, web hosting and SaaS applications services; and managed and virtual private services — and its existing employees.

The spokesperson added that the deal has been in the works for several weeks and closed in the last couple of weeks, with the teams “working through the coronavirus pandemic” to finalise it.

“We are pleased to announce the acquisition of Hostnet given its focus on operational excellence and high brand awareness,” said Stephan Wolfram, Group CEO of One.com, in a statement. “As a result of this transaction, we are now a leading operator in the Dutch hosting market that is core to the development of our business strategy. We look forward to working with the team at Hostnet and significantly enhancing our European presence and product range for our customers.”

You might wonder if Hostnet and One.com are being impacted by the pandemic — specifically, whether the fact that both count small businesses, which have been some of the hardest-hit in terms of operations, as a primary customer base, and whether that is impacting their own bottom line or leading to payment delinquency. The spokesperson said that this was not a factor in this deal or in the financial terms.

There is some data to support that: the consolidation of multiple smaller hosting providers has been a theme for a while now, with companies looking for more economies of scale.

“Hostnet is a highly regarded player in the hosting market with capabilities, awareness and products that will contribute to further accelerate the development of one.com’s business,” Harold Douwes, founder and CEO of Hostnet, said in a statement. “Within the consolidating hosting market, it was important for Hostnet to connect with a strong partner. We found it in one.com, an ambitious party with a lot of knowledge and experience. This offers plenty of possibilities and opportunities for the future.”

As we have pointed out before, web hosting and related services represent a significant, if not wildly evolving, part of the tech landscape. So, for as long as businesses and consumers continue to use the web — and, as everyone is staying at home, we have had even more web traffic of late than ever — there will be a need for companies who sell and host domain names and provide various cloud services around that.

But since there  is a lot of competition in this space, that means prices are competitive to customers, and that, in turn, also means that margins, particularly in the resale of SaaS tools, are low. In other words, we’re likely to see more consolidation in this area over time.

Now backed by Cinven, One.com itself has been pursuing that strategy over the last year. Its other acquisitions have included other regional leaders such as SYSE and Digital Garden in the nordics.

Online learning looks likely to be a key beneficiary of the social distancing and quarantine measures that are being applied around the world as countries grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.

In turn, this looks set to buoy some relative veterans of the space. To wit: Preply, a 2013-founded tutoring marketplace, is today announcing a $10 million Series A. It said the funding will be used to scale the business and beef up its focus on the US market, where it plans to open an office by the end of the year.

The Series A is led by London-based Hoxton Ventures, with European VC funds Point Nine Capital, All Iron Ventures, The Family, EduCapital, and Diligent Capital also participating.

Preply’s press release also notes a number of individual angel investors jumped aboard this round: Arthur Kosten of Booking.com; Gary Swart, former CEO of Upwork; David Helgason, founder of Unity Technologies; and Daniel Hoffer, founder of Couchsurfing.

The startup said it has seen a record number of daily hours booked on its platform this week. It also reports a spike in the number of tutors registering in markets including the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain — which are among the regions where schools have been closed as a coronavirus response measure.

Also this week Preply said some countries have seen the number of tutor registrations triple vs the same period in February, while it also reports a doubling of the number of hours students are booking on the platform in some markets.

The former TechStars Berlin alum closed a $1.3M seed back in 2016 to expand its marketplace in Europe, when it said it had 25,000 “registered” tutors — and was generating revenue from more than 130 countries.

The new funding will be used to help scale mainly in North America, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK, it said today.

Another core intent for the funding is to grow Preply’s current network of 10,000 “verified” tutors, who it says are teaching 50 languages to students in 190 countries around the world. So tackling the level of tutor churn it has evidently experienced over the years — by getting more of those who sign up to stick around teaching for a longer haul — looks to be one of the priorities now it’s flush with Series A cash.

It also plans to spend on building additional data-driven tools — including for assessments and homework.

The aim is to increase the platform’s utility by adding more features for tutors to track students’ progress and better support them to hit learning goals. “Preply wants to engage and enable tutors to develop alongside the platform, giving them the opportunity to explore training and lessons plans so they can streamline their income and maximize their classes,” it said in a press release.

Another area of focus on the product dev front is mobile. Here, Preply said it will be spending to boost the efficiency and improve the UX of its Android and iOS apps.

​“The new funding allows us to bring a more in-depth, immersive and convenient experience to both tutors and learners all over the world. Today, we are laser focused on language learning, but ultimately, I envision a future where anyone can learn anything using Preply,” said Kirill Bigai, CEO of Preply, in a statement.

“Getting to know Kirill and the team at Preply we were most impressed with their tremendous growth already in the US market as well as the size of the global market in online language tutoring. We believe the team has vast opportunity ahead of it, especially in the English-learning segment of the market where Preply already demonstrates market leadership,” added Hoxton Ventures’ Rob Kniaz in another supporting statement.

To date, Preply says some two million classes have been taken with teachers of 160 nationalities, via its marketplace. The platform maintains a strong focused on language learning, although topic-based lessons are also offered — such as maths and physics.

The business model entails taking a lead generation fee — in the form of the entire fee for the first lesson — after which it takes a revenue share of any lessons booked thereafter. The average price of a lesson on the platform is $15 to $20 per hour, per Preply, with tutors having leeway to set prices (within some fixed bounds, such as a minimum per lesson price).

The company currently employs 125 staff, based out of Kyiv (Ukraine) and Barcelona (Spain) and says its revenues have grown tenfold in the last three years.

A core tech component of the marketplace is a machine-learning matching system which it uses to increase the efficiency of pairing tutors with learners — touting this as a way to make “smarter connections” that “crack the code of effective language learning”.

In plainer language, it’s using automated decision-making to help users find a relevant teacher without having to do lots of search legwork themselves, while the platform can use AI-matching to drive bookings by managing the experience of tutor discovery in a way that also avoids students being overwhelmed by too much choice.