Category: UNCATEGORIZED

A court in Italy has dealt a blow to unalloyed algorithmic management after a legal challenge brought by three unions. The Bologna court ruled that a reputational ranking algorithm used by on-demand food delivery platform Deliveroo discriminated against gigging delivery workers by breaching local labor laws.

The ruling, reported earlier in the Italian press, found Deliveroo’s ranking algorithm discriminated against delivery couriers because it did not distinguish between legally protection reasons for withholding labour — namely not working because a rider was sick; or exercising their protected right to strike — and more trivial reasons for not being as productive as they’d indicated they would be.

In a statement, the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) called the Bologna court ruling “an epochal turning point in the conquest of trade union rights and freedoms in the digital world”.

Deliveroo has been contacted for comment on the ruling.

The court ordered Deliveroo to pay €50,000 per affected rider and publish the ruling on its website, according to Ansa.it — which has obtained a statement from Matteo Sarzana, general manager of Deliveroo Italy, who told it the company notes the judge’s decision but does not agree with it, as well as confirming that the shift reservation system linked to the algorithmic ranking is no longer in use in the market.  

“The fairness of our old system is confirmed by the fact that not a single case of objective and real discrimination emerged in the course of the trial. The decision is based exclusively on a hypothetical and potential evaluation without concrete evidence,” Sarzana added in the statement [which we’ve translated from Italian].

The on-demand delivery app has faced down a number of legal challenges on home turf — related to its classification of gig workers (as self employed couriers) and its opposition to collective bargaining rights for riders.

Although a 2018 inquiry led by UK MP Frank Field likened its ‘flexible’ labor model to 20th century dockyards — saying the dual labor market that Deliveroo generates works very well for some riders but very poorly for others.

The Bologna court ruling is also notable in light of a number of legal challenges against other gig platforms’ use of algorithms to manage large ‘self-employed’ workforces which have been filed in Europe in recent months.

This includes a group of Uber drivers who filed a challenge to Uber’s automated decision-making in the Netherlands last summer — making reference to pan-EU data protection law.

While ride-hailing company Ola is facing a similar challenge to its use of technological surveillance and data as a management tool to control a self-employed workforce.

Rulings on those cases are still pending.

At the same time, EU lawmakers have proposed new laws that would require large online platforms to provide regulators with information about how their algorithmic ranking systems function — with the aim of enabling wider societal oversight of AI-fuelled giants.

The move to enable oversight and accountability of platforms’ algorithms comes in response to concerns about a lack of transparency and the potential for automated decisions to scale bias, discrimination and exploitation. 

One Way Ventures, a venture capital firm that backs immigrant founders, has closed its second fund at $57.5 million. The close comes three years after One Way announced its debut fund, a $28 million investment vehicle.

The new fund will allow One Way to grow their check size from $500,000 to $1 million, giving them the ability to lead institutional seed rounds as a faster clip, says founding partner Semyon Dukach. The bigger fund is par-for-course now that the debut fund has been invested out, but also indicates how the seed boom is flourishing, forcing investors to recapitalize to stay competitive.

One Way is one of the few venture capital firms with an explicit focus on backing immigrant founders. Another firm that backs immigrants and helps them stay in the country is Unshackled Ventures, which last closed a $20 million fund in 2019.

Dukach says that the firm’s immigrant focus is one of its biggest competitive advantages to get into deals. One Way says it brings together immigrant founders into one community, and speaks the same language (metaphorically) of adapting to a new country, culture, and environment. While COVID-19 has limited the opportunity to meet in person, the firm is experimenting with the concept of virtual HQs and events to bring together its portfolio companies.

Community and translation in a closed-door world such as venture capital is “the reason we will almost always get into the rounds,” Dukach said.

“We’ve been able to get into competitive rounds because we were treated like an angel who provides a lot of value, even when part of the value is just the feeling of being part of something really cool.”

OneWay’s investments include Brex, Classtag, and Chipper. Of its 48 portfolio companies, two companies don’t have an immigrant co-founder. The generalist firm has bets in machine learning, fintech, and edtech prominently.

The immigration environment during the Trump Administration, both from a rhetoric and policy perspective, has impacted One Way, albeit lightly, according to Dukach. The firm has a venture partner in Montreal, Philippe Kalaf, to hedge against potential policy moves.

As for closing a fund during a pandemic and election year, One Way closed nearly double the capital it initially planned to raise, adding to the parade of check-writing and cash in this year.

“We had a couple LPs hold off until after the election,” Dukach said. “They were more comfortable investing once Biden won.”

One Way is expectedly growing its team as it scores new capital. The firm expanded to San Francisco from Boston by adding Eugene Malobrodsky, the co-founder of a consumer privacy startup, as a partner.

The firm, similar to many venture capital firms, lags when it comes to the diversity of its decision-makers. Right now, all the partners at One Way are men. The firm plans to add Nadia Asoyan, former executive at Robinhood and Trusted Health, as a venture partner, which is different from a general partner. The venture partner role needs sign off from a GP in order to make a decision or write a check. Other female members of the team include Annie Patyk, a platform associate.

From a portfolio perspective, One Way has backed 10 female-founded or co-founded companies out of its 50 companies. Its portfolio also includes 19 companies with minority co-founders and 7 companies with Black or Latinx founders.

The ideal founder, according to Dukach, embodies the firm’s name in their strategy.

“Someone who went one way, bought the ticket without having a company or any certainty of where they’re going to end up, without having the language or the culture or the network,” Dukach said. “Someone who emerges through that? It’s just more predictive of future success. It’s more predictive of being able to disrupt a big industry.”

Healthcare startup Color has raised a sizeable $167 million in Series D funding round, at a valuation of $1.5 billion post-money, the company announced today. This brings the total raised by Color to $278 million, with its latest large round intended to help it build on a record year of growth in 2020 with even more expansion to help put in place key health infrastructure systems across the U.S. – including those related to the “last mile” delivery of COVID-19 vaccines.

This latest investment into Color was led by General Catalyst, and by funds invested by T. Rowe Price, along with participation from Viking Global investors as well as others. Alongside the funding, the company is also bringing on a number of key senior executives, including Claire Vo (formerly of Optimizely) as Chief Product Officer, Emily Reuter (formerly of Uber, where she played a key role in its IPO process) as VP of Strategy and Operations, and Ashley Chandler (formerly of Stripe) as VP of Marketing.

“I think with the [COVID-19] crisis, it’s really shone the light on that lack of infrastructure. We saw it multiple times, with lab testing, with antigen testing, and now with vaccines,” Color CEO and co-founder Othman Laraki told me in an interview. “The model that we’ve been developing, that’s been working really well, and we feel like this is the opportunity to really scale it in a very major way. I think literally what’s happening is the building of the public health infrastructure for the country that’s starting off from a technology-first model, as opposed to, what ends up happening in a lot of industries, which is you start off taking your existing logistics and assets, and add technology to them.”

Color’s 2020 was a record year for the company, thanks in part to partnerships like the one it formed with the the City of San Francisco to establish testing for health care workers and residents. Laraki told me they did about five-fold their prior year’s business, and while the company is already set up to grow on its own sustainably based on the revenue it pulls in from customers, its ambitions and plans for 2021 and beyond made this the right time to help it accelerate further with the addition of more capital.

Laraki described Color’s approach as one that is both cost-efficient for the company, and also significant cost-saving for the healthcare providers it works with. He likens their approach to the shift that happened in retail with the move to online sales – and the contribution of one industry heavyweight in particular.

“At some point, you build Amazon – a technology-first stack that’s optimized around access and scale,” Laraki said. “I think that’s literally what we’re seeing now with healthcare. What’s kind of getting catalyzed right now is we’ve been realizing it applies to the COVID crisis, but also, we started actually working on that for prevention and I think actually it’s going to be applying to a huge surface area in healthcare; basically all the aspects of health that are not acute care where you don’t need to show up in hospital.”

Ultimately, Color’s approach is to re-think healthcare delivery in order to “make it accessible at the edge directly in people’s lives,” with “low transaction costs,” in a way that’s “scalable, [and] doesn’t use a lot of clinical resourcing,” Laraki says. He notes that this is actually very possible once you re-asses the problem without relying on a lot of accepted knowledge about the way things are done today, which result in a “heavy stack” vs. what you actually need to deliver the desired outcomes.

Laraki doesn’t think the problem is easy to solve – on the contrary, he acknowledges that 2021 is likely to be even more difficult and challenging than 2020 in many ways for the healthcare industry, and we’ve already begun to see evidence of that in the many challenges already faced by vaccine distribution and delivery in its initial rollout. But he’s optimistic about Color’s ability to help address those challenges, and to build out a ‘last mile’ delivery system for crucial care that expands accessibility, while also making sure things are done right.

“When you take a step back, doing COVID testing, or COVID vaccinations is actually those are not complex procedures at all – they’re extremely simple procedures,” he said. “What’s hard is doing them massive scale, and with a very low transaction cost to the individual and to the system. And that’s a very different tooling.”

The new year is kicking off with the launch of a new streaming service — Discovery+, which offers programming from Discovery’s networks including HGTV, Food Network, TLC, ID, OWN, Travel Channel, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.

Discovery+ actually launched in the United Kingdom and Ireland last fall through a deal with Sky, but the company is treating today as the big launch, as the service becomes available in the United States.

Despite the crowded field of competing streaming services (including the similarly named Disney+, ESPN+, Apple TV+ and upcoming Paramount+), Discovery+ is aiming to stand out with a focus on documentary and reality content — it bills itself as “the definitive non-fiction, real-life subscription streaming service.”

Plus, it’s priced at just $4.99 per month, or $6.99 if you want to go ad-free. And it will be free to some Verizon and Vodafone subscribers. (Verizon owns TechCrunch.)

At launch, original shows available on Discovery+ include several “90 Day Fiancé” spinoffs, “Amy Schumer Learns to Cook: Uncensored,” “Bobby and Giada in Italy” with Bobby Flay, “House Hunters: Comedians on Couches Unfiltered” (in which comedians watch classic episodes of “house Hunters”), the nature documentary “Mysterious Planet,” “Judi Dench’s Wild Borneo Adventure and a whole lineup of preview episodes for the upcoming Magnolia Network.

Discovery says the service includes more than 55,000 total episodes, with plans to launch 1,000 hours of original in the first year. And the content goes beyond Discovery-owned brands, with nature documentaries from the BBC and programming from A&E, The History Channel and Lifetime.

Discovery+ is available on Amazon Fire TV devices, iOS devices, Google TV/Android TV/Chromecast devices, Microsoft Xbox One and Series S/X, Roku and Samsung smart TVs (2017 and later models). The plan is to launch in 25 markets this year, including the Nordics, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, as well as parts of Latin America and Asia.

“As we go live with discovery+ today in the U.S., we are thrilled to be working with best-in-class partners to make it available everywhere our fans are,” said Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav in a statement. “Our ambition is simple: bring consumers the definitive and most complete destination for real life entertainment at a price point that makes this the perfect companion for every household’s streaming and TV portfolio. There is nothing like it in the market today.”

A new agreement between Hulu and ViacomCBS will bring 14 new channels to Hulu’s live TV streaming service, while also renewing the deal that allows Hulu to carry various CBS broadcast stations and Showtime. According to ViacomCBS, the new multi-year distribution deal will for the first time allow Hulu + Live TV subscribers to stream cable networks like BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Network, VH1, CMT, Nick Jr., TV Land, BET Her, MTV2, NickToons, TeenNick and MTV Classic.

With the Hulu agreement in place, the two top live TV streaming services available in the U.S. will now carry the ViacomCBS channel lineup. Hulu with Live TV is the largest of the two, with 4.1 million subscribers as of Disney’s Q4 earnings. Meanwhile, YouTube TV has 3 million subscribers, as of Alphabet’s Q4 earnings.

ViacomCBS had forged its agreement with Google-owned YouTube TV earlier in 2020, which introduced the same channel lineup and had allowed the streamer to keep carrying CBS broadcast stations and the premium subscription channel Showtime.

Hulu + Live TV will now also be able to continue to carry CBS stations including CBS Sports Network, Pop TV, Smithsonian Channel, and The CW, as well as Showtime.

Offering the ViacomCBS cable lineup to live TV streamers represents a different strategy than Viacom had in the past, before the 2019 merger with CBS. In previous years, it allowed a deal with Hulu to fall through as well as those with other streamers, like the now-shuttered PlayStation Vue. In the meantime, the company focused on more traditional carriage agreements with pay TV operators.

During its first full year as a newly combined company, ViacomCBS in 2020 has pursued a different course. It got the major carriage deals done with Comcast, Dish, Verizon (TechCrunch’s parent), Nextstar, Meredith, Cox and Sinclair, but it also hashed out agreements with YouTube TV and Hulu for incremental revenues.

For streaming service customers, however, these deals aren’t always welcome. While it’s nice to gain access to new channels, agreements like this have also resulted in increased subscription prices. YouTube TV, for example, hiked its price 30% in June 2020 due to the addition of the ViacomCBS channels.

Hulu had announced in November 2020 that it would also raise the prices of its Live TV service to $65 per month starting on Dec. 18, 2020, due to the rising costs of programming. It didn’t attribute the price hike to any specific deal at the time, but it now seems clear the ViacomCBS-led expansion of its Live TV service was a factor in that decision.

The ViacomCBS deals with YouTube TV and now Hulu do raise the question as to how the company plans to attract customers to its own forthcoming streaming service, Paramount+. The service, which will be an expanded and rebranded version of CBS All Access, is set to launch in 2021. Though ViacomCBS channels are not its only draw, they do make up a far bit of its offering, in addition to the library content, CBS channels, and original series, like the new “Star Trek” shows.

“We are excited to have reached an expanded agreement with Hulu that underscores the value of our powerful portfolio of brands to next-generation TV platforms and viewers,” said Ray Hopkins, President, U.S. Networks Distribution, ViacomCBS, in a statement about the new deal. “Hulu continues to be a great partner, and this agreement ensures that Hulu + Live TV subscribers are now able to enjoy the full breadth of our leading content across news, sports and entertainment for the first time.”

Slack did its best to ease the working world back into their jobs this morning by breaking, ensuring that everyone’s return to the grind would be as chaotic and unproductive as possible.

Precisely when the downtime began is not clear, though problems amongst the TechCrunch staff began a little after ten o’clock in the morning. Slack itself posted at 10:14 am Eastern Time that there was a problem:

Downtime issues are not new for the workplace chat application that went public in mid-2019, before announcing a deal to sell itself to Salesforce towards the end of 2020. TechCrunch covered the service’s uptime issues in 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and so forth.

The downtime is embarrassing as Slack is in the midst of selling itself for a hefty check. For a service designed to help folks work, falling apart precisely when the users — customers! — you serve are trying to gear back up for a working year is simply awful.

I suppose we can call one another until Slack is back up.

To close, here’s the view from Redmond, with its competing Teams product:

Industrial sensor giant Teledyne is set to acquire sensing company FLIR in a deal valued at around $8 billion in a mix of stock and cash, pending approvals with an expected closing date sometime in the middle of this year. While both companies make sensors, aimed primarily at industrial and commercial customers, they actually focus on different specialties that Teledyne said in a press release makes FLIR’s business complimentary to, rather than competitive with, its existing offerings.

FLIR’s technology has appeared in the consumer market via add-on thermal cameras designed for mobile devices, including the iPhone. These are useful for things like identifying the source of drafts and potential plumbing leaks, but the company’s main business, which includes not only thermal imaging, but also visible light imaging, video analysts and threat detection technology, serves deep-pocketed customers including the aerospace and defense industries.

Teledyne also serves aerospace and defense customers, including NASA, as well as healthcare, marine and climate monitoring agencies. The company’s suite of offerings include seismic sensors, oscilloscopes and other instrumentation, as well as digital imaging, but FLIR’s products cover some areas not currently addressed by Teledyne, and in more depth.

Venmo this morning announced it will begin to offer a new check cashing service, “Cash a Check,” in the Venmo mobile app. The feature, which is being rolled out to select users starting today, can be used to cash printed, payroll and U.S. government checks, including the new stimulus checks, the company says. Though typically there will be fees associated with the Cash a Check feature, Venmo says these are being waived on stimulus funds for a limited time.

To be eligible to use Cash a Check, Venmo customers will need to have either Direct Deposit or a Venmo Debit Card enabled on their account, location services turned on, and a verified email address.

Customers who gain access to the feature will then be able take a picture of their endorsed check and send it to the Venmo app to review, much like they would if cashing a check in a mobile banking app. The check will be reviewed in a few seconds, though in special circumstances, the review may take several minutes or even up to an hour before the approval decision is made.

If approved, the money will be immediately transferred to the customer’s Venmo account.

Venmo will temporarily waive fees on stimulus checks rolling out now and over the next couple of weeks, but eventually 1% fees will apply to any government or payroll check cashed in the app with a pre-printed signature, with a minimum fee of $5.00. Other checks, including hand-signed payroll and government checks, will have a 5% check cashing fee, or $5.00 minimum, according to PayPal’s terms.

At launch, the Cash a Check service is provided by partners First Century Bank, N.A. and Ingo Money, Inc. Ingo Money already offers a similar feature to Venmo parent company, PayPal, to allow users to cash checks in the PayPal app. 

“We’re always looking for new ways to make it easier for our community to access and manage their money, especially as people continue to experience financial hardships amidst the global pandemic,” said Darrell Esch, Venmo SVP and GM, in a statement about the new service.

“We know that with health and safety top of mind for many, having a safe way to access stimulus payments is essential for many of our customers, especially those who are receiving paper checks and traditionally would have to visit a physical check-cashing location,” he said. “By introducing the Venmo Cash a Check feature, we are not only enabling our customers to access their money quickly and safely from the comfort of their own homes but are also waiving all fees for cashing government issued checks to ensure customers can use their stimulus funds to pay for the things they need most,” he added.

The company’s move into check cashing doesn’t make the peer-to-peer payment app an alternative to online banking, however. Instead, it serves largely as a way for Venmo to benefit from the influx of stimulus payments that are rolling out now to its U.S. users.

Fintech companies have been scrambling to prove their worth to customers by offering faster and easier access to stimulus payments. Banking startups like Current and Chime, for example, began sending out payments to customers ahead of other traditional banking institutions.

In addition, the stimulus funds can help boost Venmo’s bottom line beyond just the fees it charges. As Venmo users gain access to their stimulus payments or payroll in the app, they may then use that money to make transactions with online merchants or with their Venmo debit card. This transactions allow Venmo to make money through transaction fees, as well.

Venmo said the feature is rolling out now to mobile app users on iOS and Android. The company recommends users download the latest version of the app and updated to the latest operating system on their mobile device for the best performance.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out the second of our two holiday eps, the most recent looking at what we think might happen this year.

What did we get into today? A great question. Here’s the rundown:

• Tesla reported pretty strong deliveries, as did smaller electric vehicle companies. What the strong figures could mean for startups, however, remains to be seen.
• Bitcoin had a pretty good end to the year, which could bolster Coinbase’s impending IPO.
• Hundreds of workers at Alphabet want to unionize.
• Didi could go public this year, which means we could see a third ride-hailing company provide us access to its numbers. Please!
• CRED raised $81 million in a huge Series C. Our reporting indicates that the company is now worth more than $800 million.
• Disco, a legaltech startup, has raised $40 million in debt to cap off a $100 million round.
• And here’s the Seed link, as promised.

Mostly we’re still making sure that our brains still work and that the return of work really is here. Taking a break was nice. Now the news is coming back, so we are as well. Hugs, and chat Thursday.

ShareChat, which added Twitter as an investor in 2019, is in talks to add two more American giants to its captable.

The Indian social network is in advanced stages of talks to raise money from Google and Snap, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The new financing round — a Series E — is slated to be larger than $200 million with Google alone financing more than $100 million, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the talks are private. The round values ShareChat at more than $1 billion, two sources said.

Twitter as well as a couple of other existing investors are also engaging to participate in the round. ShareChat, Google, and Snap did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The terms of the deal could change and the talks may not materialize into an investment, the sources cautioned. Local TV channel ET Now reported last year that Google was in talks to acquire ShareChat.

ShareChat’s marquee and eponymous app caters to users in 15 Indian languages. In an interview with TechCrunch last year, Ankush Sachdeva, co-founder and chief executive of ShareChat, said the app was growing “exponentially” and that users were spending, on an average, more than 30 minutes on the app each day.

If the deal goes through, it would be the first investment from Snapchat’s parent company into an Indian startup. Google, on the other hand, has been on a spree of late. The Android-maker last month invested in DailyHunt and InMobi’s Glance, both of which operate short-video apps.

Like the two, ShareChat also operates a short-video app. Its app, called Moj, had amassed more than 80 million monthly active users as of September last year, the startup said at the time.

Last year, Google said it would invest $10 billion in India over the course of five to seven years. Days later, the company invested $4.5 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms.

More to follow…