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Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos hopped on the line with prominent investor, entrepreneur, thought leader, and Techstars co-founder Brad Feld to discuss the latest edition of his book “Venture Deals”, his advice to founders and investors, and his take on hot button issues of the day (including dual-class shares, direct listings, and what happened at WeWork).

In their conversation, Brad and Connie discuss the need to know information when it comes to preparing for, structuring and executing venture deals, and how that information has changed over the past several decades. Feld walks through the major topics that have been added in the latest edition of the book, such as how to handle venture debt, as well as tactical attributes that aren’t currently in the book, such as secondary market trading.

Brad also gives his take on the most effective fundraising tactics for founders, and what common pieces of advice might be overblown.

Brad Feld: “I think the approach to the amount of money that you’re raising is both nuanced and evolves based on what financing round you’re at. So if you’re in an early round, some of the characteristics are different than if you’re in a later round. But I think the general truism… that I like to use when people say, “Well, how much money should I raise?”

I start with two variables and you the entrepreneur get to define those two variables. The two variables are: the amount of money you raise and what getting to the next level means. The amount of money you should raise is the amount of money that you need to get your business to the next level. There are lots of different ways to define what next level is and by forcing yourself internally to define next level and then define what you need in terms of capital to get to that next level… when you’re raising that first round of financing or even the second or third round of financing, it helps you size rationally what you need versus reactively to whatever the market characteristics are.

I actually encourage entrepreneurs to raise the least amount of money they need to get to the next level, or at least that’s the number that they go out to market with. Not a range, not a big number because you’re trying to drive some kind of valuation characteristic off a big number, but the amount of money that you actually think you need to get to the next level. Then if you can be oversubscribed, that’s an awesome situation.”

Feld and Connie dive deeper into current issues in the startup and venture landscape, including Brad’s take on the impact of the SoftBank Vision Fund, what went down at internally and externally at both WeWork and Uber, as well as how boards, executives and founders can manage cult of personality and static company cultures.

For access to the full transcription and the call audio, and for the opportunity to participate in future conference calls, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free. 

Connie Loizos: I think the last time I saw you in person was out here in San Francisco at an event I was hosting and that was maybe two years ago?

Brad Feld: Yup, that’s right. That was at the Autodesk Lab if I remember correctly.

Loizos: Yes. It’s good to hear your voice, and thank you for joining us on this call. We have a lot of readers who are big fans of yours that are on the line and are eager to learn about your book “Venture Deals” and your broader thoughts about the current state of the market. And that said, I know you only have so much time, so let’s dive first into the book. So ‘Wiley’, your publisher has just put out the fourth edition of this book “Venture Deals”, and it’s really easy to appreciate why. I was looking through it and it’s so incredibly useful about how venture deals come together and possible pitfalls to avoid. And given there are always new entrepreneurs emerging, it continues to be highly relevant.

Can I ask you, so how do you go about updating a book like this, given that some things change and some things stay the same?

Revel, the New York-based shared electric moped startup, appears to be preparing to expand into Texas, according to job listings first spotted and reported by Thinknum Alternative Data.

The expansion into Texas would be Revel’s fourth market and its first west of the Mississippi River, a move that would be consistent with comments CEO and co-founder Frank Reig made earlier this week to TechCrunch.

Revel, which launched in 2018, has more than 1,400 mopeds in Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn and Queens, New York. The company announced Thursday that it raised $27.6 million in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors. The equity round included newcomer Toyota AI Ventures and further investments from Blue Collective, Launch Capital and Maniv Mobility.

Revel plans to use the funds to expand its fleet of scooters within the cities it currently operates as well as  into new markets. Reig wouldn’t name where Revel will launch next. However, he provided a few hints.

Revel is targeting about 10 cities by mid-2020, Reig said in an interview earlier this week. He added that likely candidates would be major U.S. cities with temperate weather conditions. That puts cities in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California as likely destinations.

Thinknum, which tracks companies and creates data sets that measure hiring, revenue and other factors, charted out job listings at Revel. What the company found was nearly a dozen jobs posted since July that will be based in Texas.

While Revel’s job listings point to Texas, the company isn’t ready to talk.

“We can’t confirm specific launch timelines right now, but Revel is having productive conversations with markets in Texas among other places,” a company spokesperson said in response to TechCrunch’s inquiry. “We look forward to bringing our service to new cities in the coming months.”

Revel is different from other shared mobility-as-a-service providers, especially scooter companies, because it doesn’t use gig economy or contract workers. It only employs full-time workers. This would suggest that Revel isn’t merely experimenting with Texas; it has intentions to build out operations there.

The job listings include openings for a manager, mechanic and customer service support. Some of these jobs actually list Texas City, Texas as the destination. It’s not clear if this is actually where Revel will deploy. Texas City is about 42 miles southeast of Houston.

Instacart has long been at odds with its shoppers — the people who go to the grocery store on behalf of customers. From November 3-5, thousands of Instacart shoppers plan to protest with three demands. They want Instacart to change the default tip amount to at least 10%, ditch the service fee and commit to always giving 100% of the tip to the shopper.

“We did not arrive at the 10% figure arbitrarily, rather this is what the default tip amount was back when I and many others started working for Instacart,” Vanessa Bain, an Instacart shopper wrote on Medium this week. “We are simply demanding the restoration of what was originally promised.”

Back in 2016, Instacart removed the option to tip in favor of guaranteeing its workers higher delivery commissions. About a month later, following pressure from its workers, the company reintroduced tipping. Then, in April 2018, Instacart began suggesting a 5% default tip and reduced its service fee from a 10% waivable fee to a 5% fixed fee.

“We take the feedback of the shopper community very seriously and remain committed to listening to and using that feedback to improve their experience,” an Instacart spokesperson told TechCrunch.

This protest is on the heels of a class-action lawsuit over wages and tips, as well as a tipping debacle where Instacart included tips in its base pay for shoppers. Instacart, however, has since stopped that practice and provided shoppers with back pay. Though, Fast Company recently reported that Instacart delivery drivers’ tips are mysteriously decreasing.

But it’s a new day for gig economy workers — at least in California. Last month, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law gig worker protections bill AB-5. This legislation will make it harder for gig economy companies to classify their workers as 1099 independent contractors when it goes into effect in January. The victory came after gig workers made their voices heard through protests and other direct actions.

What’s clear at this point is that workers are refusing to stay silent and are more than willing to advocate for themselves. Organizers of the Instacart protest have outlined three ways for shoppers to get involved. The more active approach would entail shoppers signing up for as many hours as possible from Nov. 3 -5, but keep letting the batches time out. The more passive approach entails not signing up for any hours at all, and not accepting any on-demand batches.

“Despite loyalty to Instacart and the customers we’ve gotten to know over the years, many of us have been forced to find other gigs to make ends meet,” Bain wrote. “But not all Shoppers are so lucky or even have the ability to be so fluid with their careers or their time. A large portion of the working body are single parents, caregivers, are disabled or have other conditions or obligations that would make getting other work difficult or impossible. Instacart is highly aware of this and weaponizes this fact against us when turning the pay dials lower and lower.”

Polte has raised another $12.5 million. The company is building a service that leverages 4G (and potentially 5G) signal to track things around for commercial and industrial use cases. The main advantage of that is that using cellular signal uses a lot less battery than acquiring GPS location and transmitting it over cellular.

Today’s funding round is an extension of the company’s Series A round. In 2017, Polte raised $6 million — and the company is raising another $12.5 million this year. Polte isn’t disclosing the list of investors. The startup participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield.

There are many potential use cases for Polte, but most of them involve tracking stuff on the move with as little battery as possible. You could use it for your supply chain, if you’re running a logistics or transportation company, in the energy or automative industry, etc.

If you want to use an IoT device to track a package over multiple weeks, it can be a costly effort as you need to determine the location of the package using GPS and transmit the location of the package over the air. While GPS is insanely accurate, it also requires a ton of battery just to position a device on a map.

That’s why some devices rely on Wi-Fi signal to triangulate a position with a database of Wi-Fi access points. But that’s not as accurate, especially in the countryside.

Polte turns data from the cell modem into location information. It works with existing modems, Polte is a software solution. None of the computing is done on the device itself. Polte-enabled devices transmit 300 bytes of data back to Polte’s servers so that the company can determine the location a few seconds later.

This way, you can use cheaper IoT devices to track packages. And if you’re running a company that wants to track thousands or millions of items, that could help you save a ton of money over the long run.

Waymo and Renault are working with the Paris region to explore the possibility of establishing an autonomous transportation route between Charles De Gaulle airport and La Défense, a neighbourhood just outside of Paris city limits that plays host to a large number of businesses and skyscrapers, including a large shopping center. This is part of the deal that Renault and Nissan signed with Waymo earlier this year, to work together on potential autonomous vehicle services in both Japan and France.

This route in particular is being explored as a lead-up project to potentially be ready in time for the Paris Olympic Games, which are taking in place in Summer 2024. The goal is to offer a convenient way for people living in the Île-de-France area where Paris is located to get around, while also providing additional transportation options for tourists and international visitors. The region is committing €100 million (around $110 million) to developing autonomous vehicle infrastructure in the area to serve this purpose, across a number of different projects.

“France is a recognized global mobility leader, and we look forward to working with the Ile-de-France Region and our partner Groupe Renault to explore deploying the Waymo Driver on the critical business route stretching from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport to La Défense in Paris,” said Waymo’s Adam Frost, Chief Automotive Programs and Partnerships Officer, in a emailed statement.

Defined routes designed to meet a specific need, especially in time for showcase events like the Olympics, seems to be a likely way that Waymo and others focused on the deployment of autonomous services will work in terms of pilot deployments, since it’s a perfect blend of demand, regulatory exemption and motivation and city/partner support.

Here in New York, the air is crisp and the leaves have begun to turn crimson and brown. That can only mean one thing: hardware season is upon us. Backdropped by cloudy, gray Manhattan skies, Google is set to take to the stage on Tuesday, October 15, to show off its just-in-time-for-the-holidays hardware line.

As ever, the event will be headlined by the latest version of the company’s flagship smartphone, the Pixel. But this event has always been packed. The Google Nest (née Home) line has long been a highlight. This time last year, we got our first peek at the company’s very good Home Hub smart display.

Based on the rumors, this year is shaping up to be a veritable deluge of Google Hardware news. In addition to multiple Pixel versions, we’re also anticipating a new addition to the Pixelbook line and, perhaps even a new take on the company’s lukewarmly received Pixel Buds.

As ever, let’s start with the main attraction.

This much we can say for sure. The Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL are coming. Google’s not done a particularly good job keeping its new device under wraps. The reasons are likely two-fold. First, leaks happen. There are a million points of failure when launching a new phone. Stuff gets out. That said, the company’s felt to pain of slowing smartphone sales as much as anyone. It’s certainly not above priming the rumor pump (check the above video).

The phone has been leaking for months now, including a fresh batch of marking photos that dropped this morning, courtesy of Evan Blass. The big constant among the leaks so far has been the company’s adoption of a similar trypophobia-inducing circle-in-square camera pattern as the latest iPhone. This is just how phones look now, I guess.

Google’s seemingly bucking the whole one camera is enough bit for the Pixel XL, with a dual set up (featuring a 16 megapixel telephoto). Given what the company has been able to accomplish with a single setup, we can probably expect some pretty impressive imaging from the device. Other new addition include face unlock and motion sensors, which let users do things like quiet calls and skip songs with hand gestures.

Expect Android 10 to come loaded on the device, because Google. 5G is also rumored for the device, but seems considerably less likely. Other rumors include a new emergency service feature and built in audio transcription capabilities, with could be a boon for people who do interviews for a living like yours truly.

Once again, the phones will be available in standard and XL versions. There’s also an orange version (“oh so orange,” as it were), continuing Google’s colorful experimentation.

The company’s premium line of ChromeOS devices is reportedly getting a new family member. The Pixelbook Go. Per 9to5Google, the device is less a direct sequel to the original than a new take on the line. The device is said to eschew the more convertible form factors of the original and the Pixel Slate, instead going for something more like a straightforward laptop design.

Google’s admittedly been a bit…wishy washy when it comes to the future of the line, but given how successful the broader Chromebook category has been, it would be silly to abandon it altogether. The smart approach would be offering a premium take on the category at a budget price, though it sounds like the new version will more or less be the same price as the other models.

Leaks suggest a 13.3 inch touchscreen device that can be spaced up to 4K. The laptop will reportedly sport the the same two USB C port setup as the original, which is a bit of a disappointment, as a lack of ports was one of the bigger complaints on the original.

New Pixel Buds?! Hey, why not. Google admittedly whiffed a bit with the originals. But with every other hardware company tackling the space, why wouldn’t Google give it another go? The company’s got some stiff competition from Apple/Beats, Samsung and Sony, but Google’s got the software smarts to make a compelling play. Probably.

Details for the product are still sparse, at the moment.

The Nest/Home line is getting a bunch of updates next week (most likely). Google’s best selling Home Mini is finally getting an update. There’s a new Nesty name and a few new bits and bobs, including better sound and new colors. Otherwise it’s probably mostly the same, which is fine assuming, the price stays low.

Another long awaited refresh is a new version of Google Wifi. That, too, is becoming a Nest product. It’s also going to bring more smart home synergy by building a smart speaker into the product, per rumors.

The event kicks off at 10AM ET on Tuesday, October 15. Join us live here on TechCrunch.com, won’t you?

Uber will acquire Cornershop, a grocery delivery startup that began life serving the Latin American market and recently shifted to offer service in Toronto, its first North American city. Uber announced on Friday that it expects that its acquisition of a majority ownership stake in Cornershop in early 2020, once it receives all the necessary regulatory sign-off.

Cornershop was founded in 2015 by Oskar Hjertonsson, Daniel Undurraga and Juan Pablo, and it’s headquartered in Chile. The company will continue to operate under that leadership in its current form for now, Uber says, and will report to a board that counts Uber leadership in the majority of its overall makeup.

Over the course of four rounds of funding, Cornershop raised $31.7 million, from investors including Accel, Jackson Square Ventures and others. The on-demand grocery company was supposed to be acquired by Walmart in a deal valued at $225 million announced in September, but that deal ultimately fell apart in June when Mexican anti-trust regulators blocked it from going through.

Meanwhile, Walmart has continued to work with Cornershop, expanding its service offerings in Toronto with the startup as recently as yesterday. Uber has previously experimented with grocery delivery, including in partnership with Walmart, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said that grocery delivery is a natural place for the company to expand its business given the success of Uber Eats. It’ll face competition from entrenched players including Instacart and Postmates, but Uber Eats also faced competition from much more established players at its genesis, too.

The deal is also still subject to regulatory approval, as mentioned, and that’s exactly where the planned Walmart acquisition stumbled before for Cornershop, so it’s worth keeping a close eye on this one. Still, Uber’s not making any secret of its intentions with the grocery category, so that looks likely to take shape one way or another.

Accessory maker Nomad already offers a couple of excellent wireless chargers that work great with Apple and other Qi-compatible devices, but they’re introducing a new one that could be their most versatile yet. Using technology provided by partner Aira called ‘FreePower,’ the new Nomad Base Station Pro will be able to charge up to three devices at once placed in any orientation on its surface – cool both because of the three device simultaneous support, and the fact that you don’t have to make sure the gadget you’re charging is lined up exactly right on the charger, as is typically the case.

This is pretty similar to what Apple’s AirPower promised, before its unfortunate demise. The hardware similarly makes use of a matrix of multiple charging coils, which interlink to offer charging capabilities across the surface of the Base Station Pro. Perhaps intentionally, Aira’s website URL is ‘airapower.com,’ one letter off from Apple’s shelved first-party accessory.

Nomad’s charger inherits the same aesthetics of the company’s existing chargers, which means you get a black soft leather surface for putting your devices on top of, and the surrounding frame is made of slate gray aluminum. The charger should look and feel very premium, if Nomad’s other Base Stations are any indication.

The Base Station Pro supports charging speeds of up to 5W each, which is not the max supported by the iPhone or other devices, but which will still work just fine for a top up or for overnight. And since it supports up to three devices at that speed, you could use it to charge say, two iPhones and AirPods with Apple’s wireless charging case all at once.

Nomad also includes a 27W USB-C charger with Power Delivery in the box with the Base Station Pro, and a USB-C cable to connect to the charger. This probably will be a fairly premium priced piece of hardware, but we’ll find out for sure when pre-ordes begin in November.

The one significant way this differs from what Apple was building, at least for Apple fans, is that it doesn’t provide charging for the Apple Watch. Nomad has a Base Station model that offers an integrated Apple Watch charger, but of course with that you’re not getting the ‘place anywhere’ overlapping coil design built for this new model.

Club Factory, a Chinese e-commerce platform that sells fashion and beauty items and electronics accessories, has raised $100 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprints in India.

The new financing round — Series D — was led by Qiming Venture Partners Bertelsmann, IDG Capital, and” other Fortune 500 companies from the U.S. and Asia,” the five-year-old Hangzhou-headquartered startup said. Club Factory, which raised $100 million in its previous financing round early last year, has raised $220 million to date.

Club Factory has amassed over 70 million users on its platform, about 40 million of which live in India. The startup cited figures from app analytics firm App Annie to claim that Club Factory is now the third-largest e-commerce platform in India.

Club Factory does not charge local sellers any commission fee, which has helped it drive its marketplace. Number of sellers on its platform in India has grown by 10 times in last six months, the startup claimed. The startup, which has about 5,000 sellers in India, plans to double that figure by year-end.

“At the same time, we have also pioneered to strengthen the ‘store-within-platform’ concept in India’s e-commerce industry, allowing direct contact between buyers and sellers through our application,” said Vincent Lou, co-founder and chief executive of Club Factory.

He added, “We have changed the status of the Indian e-commerce industry that monopolized information of buyers and sellers, allowing SMEs to own their customers and run their business better. All this, combined with our strategy to reduce the transaction costs of buyers and sellers and allow more local players to enter the ecosystem, has worked very well for us in India.”

Twitter has returned to the Mac with the debut of a new Catalyst-powered app for mac OS Catalina, launched on Thursday. The company in June had been among the first to announce its plans to take advantage Mac Catalyst — Apple’s new toolset for bringing iPad apps to the Mac desktop — following Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, where Catalyst had been officially introduced.

The idea with Catalyst is to make it easier for iOS developers to create software for the Mac ecosystem, by allowing them to leverage their existing iOS project and source code, then layer on native Mac features, and convert touch controls to the keyboard and mouse.

Twitter had been one of the more highly-anticipated Catalyst apps to arrive, not only because of how it was created, but also because Twitter had decided to kill off its Mac desktop client last year, telling desktop users to just use its website instead.

That left users who prefered a native Mac experience to turn to third-party apps like TweetDeck, Twitterific 5, or Tweetbot 3. The former is designed more for those who work in social media or are heavy consumers or power users. The latter two, while great alternatives to an official client, are paid applications with a lot more bells and whistles than some require.

Twitter’s new Catalyst app is free and offers a consistent experience with the rest of the Twitter platform apps. The interface is familiar thanks to the code base sharing, and there’s even a dark mode option available. However, its timeline doesn’t refresh in real-time — which has surfaced as one of users’ common complaints about the new app.

Others pointed out that the full-screen experience is lacking and that the double toolbar seemed like a poor fit.  Plus, there are other odd differences between the desktop client and web app.

That said, the general sentiment is one where people are glad to have an official app back on the desktop. And it’s possible some of the other complaints will be addressed in time.

The app only works on macOS Catalina, which not everyone has installed just yet. It’s a free download from the Mac App Store here.