Category: UNCATEGORIZED

While it doesn’t appear to be completely down like it was yesterday morning, we’re hearing many reports from Gmail users that the email service is having major issues right now. If your Gmail is being weird, it’s not just you.

Some users are reporting that Gmail is particularly slow, while others are reporting constant error messages. One TechCrunch writer, meanwhile, noticed that emails he was sending to other Gmail accounts appeared to immediately bounce.

Google confirms the issues on its services dashboard, writing at 1:30 PM Pacific that they’re impacting a “significant” number of users:

We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior.

In a second update at 2:30 PM, Google says its teams are “continuing to investigate this issue.”

On Monday, Pluralsight, a Utah-based startup that sells software development courses to enterprises, announced that it has been acquired by Vista for $3.5 billion.

The deal, yet to close, is one of the largest enterprise buys of the year: Vista is getting an online training company that helps retrain techies with in-demand skills through online courses in the midst of a booming edtech market. Additionally, the sector is losing one of its few publicly traded companies just two years after it debuted on the stock market.

Investors and founders told Techcrunch that the Pluralsight acquisition is largely a positive signal that shows the strength of edtech’s capital options as the pandemic continues.

“What’s happening in edtech is that capital markets are liquidating,” said Deborah Quazzo, managing partner of GSV Advisors.

Quazzo, a seed investor in Pluralsight, said the ability to move fluidly between privately held and publicly held companies is a characteristic of tech sectors with deep capital markets, which is different from edtech’s “old days, where the options to exit were very narrow.”

Over the icy tundra of Siberia in 2009, a derelict Russian military satellite, Kosmos-2251, slammed into an active communications satellite, Iridium 33, at speeds in excess of 26,000 miles per hour. Both were immediately smashed to smithereens.

As a result of this single collision, approximately 1,800 large pieces of space debris, each capable of destroying any spacecraft unfortunate enough to cross its path, remain in orbit to this day and for the foreseeable future.

Depending on who you ask, space debris is either a nonissue that will solve itself or a critical problem that threatens the future of space exploration. We interviewed dozens of experts across industry, academia and the regulatory landscape to better understand which of these viewpoints is closer to the truth, and to consider what ought to be done going forward.

What is space debris?

Far from homogenous, space debris includes any nonfunctional human-made object in space, including rocket parts that have been abandoned in orbit after having completed their mission, defunct satellites, fragments from unintentional and intentional orbital collisions and items released during operations. These sources have multiplied to create a large amount of space debris orbiting Earth.

This debris is spread across all three of the main regions of space around Earth: low-Earth orbit (LEO), medium-Earth orbit (MEO) and geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO). As its name suggests, LEO is the closest to us, extending up to 2,000 km from the Earth’s surface.

It is the most crowded region of the three and, in addition to hosting the International Space Station, it is the region where SpaceX, OneWeb and other well-funded companies are currently sending tens of thousands of new satellites as part of their constellations. Perhaps not surprisingly, LEO is the region with the most debris. As a result, it tends to be the focus of much of the discussion around the issue.

Above LEO, satellites in MEO and GEO are also threatened by space debris. This is important because these orbits host a number of crucial satellites, including navigation systems in MEO such as the American GPS and European Galileo, and critical GEO-based communication satellites. Satellites in GEO are able to maintain a single point above the Earth (this special orbit is possible because the satellite is orbiting around Earth at the same speed the Earth is rotating).

Given the altitude of both MEO (2,000 km-36,000 km) and GEO (~36,000 km), de-orbiting the satellite is not a viable option — the current solution when satellites retire is to move them to unused orbits called “graveyard orbits,” further contributing to the growth of space debris above us.

Why does space debris matter?

The existence of space debris is concerning for many reasons, with physical collisions being the most obvious. The possible risk caused by space debris is magnified by the incredible speed at which debris typically travels. According to NASA, there are over 30,000 objects larger than a softball in orbit, traveling at speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour. At that speed, any one of these objects is capable of completely destroying a spacecraft.

Even debris just 1 cm in diameter can disable an operational spacecraft, while even smaller fragments can cause huge problems as well. Indeed, a fleck of paint was enough to damage a window on the International Space Station, which has been forced into maneuvers to avoid larger, potentially catastrophic debris 28 times since 1999, including three times in 2020 alone.

Unfortunately, tracking all of this debris has proven to be an arduous challenge. For starters, only objects larger than 10 cm in diameter are currently tracked by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). However, there are likely 900,000 objects less than 10 cm but larger than 1 cm, and tens of millions of objects smaller than 1 cm that are not tracked by the current system but that are still capable of causing significant damage. Of particular concern is the range between 1 cm and 10 cm, which has appropriately earned the moniker of lethal nontrackable debris, or LNT.

Space junk poses other challenges as well. Astronomers lament that light pollution from objects in orbit hampers observation of the night sky. The reliance of observatories — often involving equipment costing hundreds of millions of dollars — on long exposures makes debris particularly problematic. Another worry is “Kessler syndrome,” which takes its name from NASA scientist Donald Kessler.

In 1978, Kessler postulated that more space debris would increase the likelihood of collisions, which in turn would lead to more space debris, and so on, in an exponential growth that may end up compromising orbital operations. In other words, the issue could evolve into a never-ending spiral that eventually renders LEO unusable and possibly impenetrable.

Stakeholders

Before considering how to respond, it is important to understand the landscape of those affected by space debris.

Launch providers are among the most crucial players — after all, their business models hinge on their ability to put payloads into orbit. They are also part of the problem. Launcher parts (i.e., spent upper stages) left in orbit have been, in the words of professor Lorenzo Casalino of the Polytechnic University of Turin, “piling up for decades.”

He believes launch providers have been “among the most critical contributors to space debris.” However, some newer launch companies, such as Rocket Lab, do not leave any piece of their rockets in space. Instead, they de-orbit the stages, which causes them to burn up upon reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.

Satellite operators are also a crucial component of the ecosystem. On one hand, they are the ones most responsible for the overcrowding of space; on the other, they are the most likely victims of space debris. Mike Safyan of Planet, which has over 150 satellites in orbit, notes that mitigating space debris is “in the interest of satellite operators,” and that many are already incorporating maneuverability and de-orbiting technologies into their satellites.

For example, OneWeb, a large constellation operator, is designing its satellites to be “de-orbit ready.” Darren McKnight, Technical Director at Centauri, a satellite operator, explains that operators are faced with a “significant decline in overall reliability” as their systems are increasingly affected by a constantly growing space debris cloud, and thus incentivized to act. Sara Spangelo, CEO and co-founder of Swarm Technologies, says many private companies have already started to implement measures for space debris mitigation. Swarm Technologies has proven that it can consistently track its tiny satellites and recently added active attitude and propulsion control to maneuver out of the trajectory of debris.

These strategies help ensure that while the 10 cm by 10 cm by 2.8 cm (the size of a grilled cheese sandwich) satellites are providing connectivity around the world, they do not contribute to the growth of the space debris cloud.

An interesting role is played by insurance companies. Chris Quilty, a commercial space expert, notes that while satellite insurance remains relatively uncommon — fewer than a tenth of satellites in LEO are covered by insurance — insurers are likely to play an increasingly large role as the risk of collisions becomes more likely. Chris Kunstadter, global head of space at AXA XL, a major commercial insurance provider, adds that insurers have been active in terms of pushing for stricter regulation, as insurance is often a key component of regulatory proposals.

One group that is often overlooked, but that has the potential to strongly affect the future path toward the sustainable use of space, is comprised of the end users of space-based services. This encompasses anyone from telecommunications customers to users of imaging data to transportation companies relying on satellites to track their ships and planes. As OneWeb’s VP of Regulatory Affairs Ruth Pritchard-Kelly points out, if end users demand sustainability, as they have in other sectors (e.g., retail, mining, etc.), it would likely force launch providers and satellite operators to act.

Finally, there is a new stakeholder that is trying to solve the challenge of space debris. Startups such as Astroscale and D-Orbit are making progress toward commercializing the removal, or at least mitigation, of space debris. Another example is LeoLabs, a ground-based space mapping provider, whose phased-array radars are capable of tracking debris as small as 2 cm. Dan Ceperley, founder and CEO of LeoLabs, believes his company’s advanced tracking capabilities will allow launch providers and satellite operators to be responsible for the objects they put into space. If mapping, mitigating and removing space debris turn out to be profitable endeavors, the private sector may already have the incentives it needs to clean up its act.

Regulatory considerations

Notwithstanding the promise of space debris mitigation technology, it is possible that regulators will be forced into action. Due to the intricacies of the space sector and the many stakeholders, regulatory bodies could provide stability and a guiding framework for companies around the world. However, the regulatory picture is uncertain given how decentralized space regulation tends to be.

While the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) exists to promote international cooperation in outer space, it is lacking in its ability to enforce regulations at the international level, being limited to providing secretarial support to the COPUOS (Committee for Peaceful Use of Outer Space). As a result, regulation in the industry has always been a tricky patchwork of country-level rules, with parties occasionally resorting to adopting “flags of convenience” in search of the nation offering the most favorable regulatory conditions.

In spite of this patchwork, the United States has emerged as the most powerful potential source of regulation given both its weight within the industry as well as its International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). ITAR is a U.S. regulatory regime controlling the manufacture, sale, distribution and use of defense and space-related articles that has made it costly and difficult — if not impossible — for U.S. players in the space industry to flag-shop or otherwise do business without adhering to U.S. regulations. As a result, any effective regulations governing space debris are likely to emerge from the U.S.

One of the many observations that has echoed through numerous interviews revolves around how U.S. regulations have not kept up with the rapid development of technology, with rules and guidelines dating back to a period when only NASA and the Soviet space program launched satellites into space, and when the idea of private entities possessing the ability to easily and inexpensively access space was “unthinkable,” in the words of Alessandro Rossi of the Italian National Research Council.

Over the last decade, launch costs have decreased by an order of magnitude; this, combined with the development of CubeSats and other miniature satellites, has dramatically lowered the cost of sending payloads to space. The private sector has responded by promising to send thousands of satellites into LEO over the next few years. It is unlikely that rules designed to regulate a handful of satellites the size of school buses will be adequate for this new reality.

Within the U.S., several agencies deal with the use of space, and the best source of future regulation remains a point of contention. A 2018 White House directive sought to make the Commerce Department the “traffic cop” of space. Meanwhile, some believe the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which already regulates launches and reentries, is in the best position to effect change. Another key player is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is responsible for regulating satellite transmissions.

According to Laura Montgomery, an expert in space law and the former head of the FAA’s space law branch, the FCC “certainly interprets its regulatory mandate as extending to space debris.”

The experts we spoke to generally seemed to believe that these agencies are unlikely to aggressively pursue new regulations in the near term. Professor Montgomery noted that regulators “tend to move slowly,” and that the collisions that have happened to date have “yet to lead to Congressional action” on this issue. Professor Zac Manchester of Carnegie Mellon University suggested regulatory agencies are “often understaffed and lacking the technical expertise” to address the problem of space debris anytime soon.

Others noted that while the FCC implemented new rules to mitigate orbital space debris back in April, these rules did little to change the status quo — operators will now be required to submit more safety disclosures, but the body “stopped short of introducing stricter orbital debris criteria.” To summarize, it appears that new overarching regulations are unlikely to be implemented anytime soon.

Where many see regulatory bodies as the ones holding the stick, there has been a push toward the creation of a carrot, an incentive for stakeholders to play an active role in addressing space debris. This is what the World Economic Forum (WEF), together with MIT’s Space Enabled Research Group at their Media Labs, European Space Agency, University of Texas at Austin, and Bryce Space and Technology, has been working on with the development of the Space Sustainability Rating (SSR).

WEF’s Nikolai Khlystov describes the SSR as a voluntary rating system for space (not dissimilar to what already exists for the energy class of home appliances or LEED for buildings) that aims at incentivizing good behavior. The hope is that the SSR, or a similar system, will be widely adopted by the industry. As an example, the WEF sees insurance companies making good use of the rating, as it could be used to determine premiums, offer discounts or even refuse insurance for underperformers.

The case for action

At this point, the space industry and its stakeholders have two options. They can either set up a framework that can address the problem of space debris, or continue on the current path, with little regulatory oversight and even less enforceability on a global level surrounding the sustainable use of space.

Looking at the history of space debris, we can safely assume that if nothing changes, the amount of debris will continue to grow, particularly within the more crowded LEO orbits. Without a comprehensive framework for end-of-life, it is only a matter of time before more collisions like the Kosmos-Iridium one will cause an order of magnitude increase in space debris, making it nearly impossible to clean up LEO.

There is a saying in aviation: “Regulations are written in blood.” The implication is that regulations are often founded on lessons learned from events that cost property or lives. One more major collision could force the hand of the international space community and lead to harsh regulations that could be negative for those within the private space industry that have not already adopted sustainability as a business imperative.

The case for caution

On the other hand, the space industry and regulatory bodies could come together to shape guiding transparent rules to deal with the challenges posed by space debris without hindering progress in the private space sector.

Any framework addressing the issue of space debris should be a cooperative, international effort. Regulatory bodies can leverage the fact that the sustainable use of space is in the interest of all market participants — after all, space debris is a costly problem, as well as a potential safety issue, for both operators and users. Today, many companies in the private space sector are in favor of greater accountability for this reason.

In addition, the case could be made that private companies would be more effective than governments at removing space debris from highly congested orbits. The technology of space debris removal is still in its early stages — Astroscale and other startups have not yet launched their services. However, they are beginning to make significant progress, and it is hard to imagine a future where this industry will not be critical in cleaning up space debris.

The path forward

Ideally, we hope to see the private sector rise to the occasion. Surely market participants acknowledge the long-term importance of keeping space free of debris, and we believe this represents an attractive problem for startups to tackle. We would also welcome creative ideas, such as prizes for researchers who come up with the best solutions for removing space debris.

However, at some point, it is likely that the issue of space debris will need to be addressed with regulation. In particular, we would urge the regulators best-positioned to act — those in the United States — to tackle the issue, as they stand the best chance of crafting enforceable regulation.

One of the biggest obstacles currently is that different agencies touch different parts of the satellite ecosystem (e.g., the Commerce Department, the FAA and the FCC) and responsibilities often overlap. We would encourage Congress to clarify this issue and empower a single agency to take the lead in setting rules to address the issue of space debris.

We would, however, caution against sweeping regulation that fails to consider the long-term consequences of such action. Professor Montgomery puts it best, “As a former writer of regulations, I know that they tend to get set in stone, and this has the potential to hamper innovation.”

This was the key issue with the debacle surrounding the Kicksat-2 project, says Professor Manchester. The project was meant to demonstrate the cutting-edge technology of microsatellites in a safe manner, but was delayed for years due to concerns from the FCC before being approved in 2019 with zero modifications to the original design. Montgomery adds that, “If regulators act too quickly, they run the risk of creating rules that are not ideal and that are almost impossible to fix.”

For this reason, we would encourage regulators to take their time to understand the issue and to work closely with other stakeholders to develop a set of guidelines over time, rather than rushing to a conclusion too soon.

Ultimately, we hope regulators and the commercial players can work together to find a lasting solution in the relatively near future, rather than waiting for a catastrophic failure before taking action.

BoxCast, a Cleveland-based company aiming to make it easy to livestream any event, has raised $20 million in Series A funding.

Co-founder and CEO Gordon Daily said that when the company first launched in 2013, “streaming wasn’t something that everyone understood,” and you needed professional help to livestream anything. BoxCast is supposed to make that process accessible to anyone.

BoxCast has created several different video encoder devices, but Daily said the “small box” is just a small piece of the platform, which is supposed to cover all your livestreaming needs, with support for 1080p broadcasting; streaming to Facebook Live, YouTube and your own website; analytics and more — plus there are add-ons like automatic scoreboard displays and event ticketing.

Pricing starts at $99 per month for the “essential” streaming plan, plus $399 for a BoxCast encoder. (You can also just stream from an iOS device.)

And it’s no surprise that 2020 has been a “watershed moment” for the company, as Daily put it, with the company now livestreaming millions of events per year — everything from sports to religions services to virtual safaris offered by Sri Lanka’s tourism board.

BoxCast dashboard

“When you can’t even meet in-person … we knew that there was going to be higher usage,” he said. “What caught me off-guard was the volume increase — it’s new customers, it’s existing customers, at peak times there’s a 10x increase [from pre-pandemic usage].”

And while in-person events will hopefully become more common next year, Daily said livestreams will still be a valuable tool to reach audiences who can’t attend, and to promote your business or organization with new kinds of programming.

COO Sam Brenner added that while BoxCast employed fewer than 40 people before the pandemic, the team has grown to 56, and will likely double within the next 12 months.

The Series A was led by Updata Partners, with participation from audio equipment manufacturer Shure.

Following recent reports, Periscope announced today that it will end operation as a standalone app by March 2021. The Twitter -owned referred to its current operations as “unsustainable” in an open letter posted today. It also cited a decline in usage in recent years as a driving factor.

“Leaving it in its current state isn’t doing right by the current and former Periscope community or by Twitter,” the company noted.

Developing…

The past eight or so months have been profoundly difficult for musicians. With touring ground to a halt and streaming services offering fractions of cents, livelihoods have been utterly upended for countless artists. Since March, however, Bandcamp has been a rare beacon for many musicians.

On the first Friday of every month, the service has waved its fees, letting artists and labels reap the benefits in the process. Over the course of nine such Fridays, the service has generated some $40 million, as nearly 800,000 people have purchased music on those days. Artists have received, on average, 93% of the proceeds (transaction fees making up the remainder), versus 82% on normal days.

While the arrival of vaccines are a reason to be hopeful, it’s clear we’re not out of the woods yet. As such, the service announced today that Bandcamp Fridays will be extended at least through May of 2021. Those dates include, February 5, March 5, April 2, and May 7.

Other online services have been less proactive. In July, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek told the media, “Some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.”

In spite of criticism around music royalty payments, Spotify has spent hundreds of millions to bolster its library of exclusive podcasting content.

Airbnb, which recently went public and became a $100 billion company, has set two goals to try to improve diversity at the home-sharing and experiences company because it “is nowhere near satisfied with the status quo,” the company wrote in a blog post.

By the end of 2025, Airbnb is aiming for 20% of its U.S. workforce to be underrepresented minorities, which includes folks who self-identify as American Indian or Alaska Native, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latinx, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Currently, underrepresented minorities make up just 12% of the company’s employee base.

The second goal is to increase the representation of women to 50% by the end of 2025. Currently, Airbnb says it is 46.9% female worldwide, but it’s worth noting Airbnb has not released a full diversity report since 2019 when it disclosed its 2018 numbers.

These goals come after Airbnb committed in June to making its Board of Directors and executive team 20% people of color by the end of 2021. Currently, Airbnb has one Black director on its board, Kenneth Chenault and one Black person on its executive team, Melissa Thomas-Hunt, who is head of global diversity and belonging.

This is also not the first time Airbnb has set goals. In 2016, Airbnb committed to increasing the percentage of employees from underrepresented groups from 9.64% to 11% by the end of 2017. Airbnb achieved that goal, which supports the claim that setting goals are helpful in increasing DEI.

Zoox, the autonomous vehicle company that was acquired this year by Amazon, revealed this week the product of six years of work: A purpose-built self-driving vehicle designed to carry people — and someday maybe even packages — in dense urban environments.

The company’s story has captured the attention of skeptics and supporters alike, perhaps because of its secretive nature and outsized mission. Unlike its rivals, Zoox is developing the self-driving software stack, the on-demand ride-sharing app and the vehicle itself. Zoox also plans to own, manage and operate its robotaxi fleet.

It’s been an expensive pursuit that almost led to its demise before Amazon snapped it up — and the mission is still far from over. But today, as an independent Amazon subsidiary, it has the financial support of one of the world’s most valuable public companies.

TechCrunch interviewed Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson about the company’s milestone, the vehicle design, its exit to Amazon and what lies ahead.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

TechCrunch: What was your trick or how did you remain focused for six years on something that is futuristic, expensive and possibly could fail? What did you personally do to keep that focus?

Jesse Levinson: Well, doing something like this is definitely challenging and it requires patience. I think the advice I would give is first to convince yourself that what you’re doing makes sense and is important and worth doing. If you’re starting a company because your goal is to make as much money as possible, if it turns out to be hard it’s going to be really difficult to convince yourself and your team and investors to stick with the idea.

One of the great things about Zoox is that the idea itself just makes a lot of sense. From first principles, there’s really a compelling reason to solve the problem the way we’ve been solving it and the market opportunity is unquestionably enormous. So armed with those facts and a team of wonderful employees and investors who strongly believed in that, we were able to weather some of the ups and downs of the industry, even though it’s not always been an easy ride.

Let’s go back in time to the very first concept when you started to think of what a purpose-built vehicle would look like. Those early drawings showed a very, very different looking type of vehicle.

Are you referring to maybe like the sports-car-looking vehicle? We were actually never planning on launching a sports car as our first product; that was more of like a vision statement. Honestly, if you’re trying to move people around cities, it makes much more sense to have the kind of compact carriage like we showed this morning. We were never actually building a sports car. 

What is it like to create a long-term, cutting-edge product that exists at the edge of regulation? It seems like a very unique problem. 

I would say that if you have a big idea and you’re confident that it makes sense, you should at least explore the idea, rather than giving up because the current regulations aren’t designed for it.

At the same time, it’s very important to be respectful of the regulatory process, and you can’t assume that you can ignore it. I think companies that have tried that approach have usually found that doesn’t work very well either. We’ve taken a very proactive approach to working with regulatory agencies at the local, state and federal level, and we’ve been very forthcoming with “this is how we look at the problem” and “this is what we want to do.”

We’ve also been fortunate because over time the regulations on the local, state and federal level have really evolved to accommodate what we’ve been working on since 2014, even though when we started the company in 2014, those regulations did not exist. 

The vehicle today, was that what you had in your mind, or what the team had in mind, from the very beginning? Or was it a bit different?

Yeah, honestly, there have been very few substantive changes to the vehicle’s design since we started working on it in 2014 and 2015. Obviously, we refined it and actually had to make it work from an engineering and crash perspective. But if you look at some of the drawings that we were exploring in 2014 and 2015, it’s extremely similar.

Frank, a startup best known for helping college students secure and manage financial aid, is expanding into a new part of the edtech world. Namely, finding and taking online classes, with the company helping students deploy their financial aid money to open digital slots at more than 100 colleges.

As a company, Frank straddles the ground between consumer fintech, which helps regular people better manage their money, and edtech, the application of tech to the venerable business of learning. TechCrunch covered the company’s 2017-era Series A, and recently discussed the company when it raised $5 million earlier in the year.

According to its CEO, Charlie Javice, her company has grown by around a factor of three this year. And, with Javice telling TechCrunch that Frank’s new class-finding service — dubbed Classfinder — could become “a primary driver” for her startup in time, we decided to dig in a little.

Classfinder

Frank is teaming up with colleges to offer discounted classes, hoping to match its users with unfilled slots in classes that are already set to take place. And the startup will help its user base utilize financial aid to help pay for their selected classes, possibly helping folks take more credits without extra debt.

There are 125 schools offering classes on the platform today, out of a rotating cadre of over 350. The Classfinder website claims 7,520 courses up for selection as of today.

TechCrunch asked Javice if offering access to online classes was a deviation from Frank’s better-known effort to help more students get more financial assistance in their college pursuit. In the CEO’s view, Classfinder fits inside what she views as her company’s mission, namely higher-education affordability.

If Classfinder works as well as the company hopes, that could bear out, even if the new product does appear to be more an evolution of Frank’s product lineup than merely a continuation of its initial vision.

Provided the model works, it could net out to a win for all involved parties. Colleges have spare digital capacity for students, and lots of students don’t have money for school, so if Frank can help those same kids get financial aid and deploy it to discounted, accredited classes, no one loses.

TechCrunch was curious about transferring credits — would classes taken with Classfinder count at other schools? Per the company, yes, and Frank will help prepare the needed information. Of course, some colleges may balk, but for some students the system could be a way to boost college affordability while not sacrificing learning.

Digital education became the norm this year, to middling results. Amongst children, the move to online schooling has been widely panned. But for higher education, online instruction was already an evolved industry even before the pandemic. Perhaps it will become even more normal in time.

How large the addressable market is for taking one-off classes is unclear, though the success of Guild Education could point to a large pool of potential students. Guild, which became a unicorn in 2019 after raising a $157 million Series D, helps corporate employees take continuing education classes to help bolster their careers. Even as the world of online classes clutters up, Frank’s decision to focus on college instead of the broader life-long learning market means that it thinks higher ed isn’t disappearing as fast as some edtech enthusiasts might think.

We’ll check back in with Frank in a quarter or two to see how the new product is helping, or not, its growth trajectory. If it does, Frank could raise a Series B in the next few quarters. Chegg, a public edtech company that previously backed the company, is worth $11 billion as of today’s trading. So if Frank keeps growing, there should be money available to it.

Extra Crunch is excited to announce we’re renewing our Partner Perk with DocSend. Annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch that are new to DocSend can get up to 90% off an annual plan. 

DocSend is a secure document-sharing platform that not only lets you share your documents with ease, but it also provides you with real-time actionable analytics. Whether you’re a founder, executive or VC, DocSend’s unique blend of security and control can help communicate more efficiently as you strengthen your business relationships. Whether you’re sending out a pitch deck, completing due diligence or sharing investor updates and board packs, DocSend gives you a strategic advantage with page-by-page insights. You also can connect DocSend to Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook, IFTTT and Zapier to get even more out of the product.