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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 20, 2021. The week is finished, but our work to catch up with the torrent of technology, startup and venture capital news is not. Today we have software companies investing in hotels, profitable scooters, at-home rowing machines and TikTok radio? Oh, and apparently Elon is building a robot. It’s a great group of stories! — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Microsoft backs OYO: A while back TechCrunch broke the news that Microsoft might back Indian hotel upstart OYO. It was a bit of a wild story, as it didn’t seem to make that much sense. Well, the deal happened. Microsoft has invested $5 million into the company at a $9.6 billion valuation. Notably, that is only a slight discount from the company’s old $10 billion valuation. Next up for OYO is an IPO, we presume.
• Bird shows improving scooternomics: American scooter company Bird is going public via a SPAC — more here — and we got a look at the company’s most recent financial performance. In short, a shake-up of its operating model has improved its economics, even if the company still has a long way to go to turning a real profit.
• China shakes up its data privacy rules: For companies, that is, not the state; don’t expect the CCP to start respecting privacy anytime soon. But for companies in the country, a strict new law called the Personal Information Protection Law is coming into effect November 1. Per TechCrunch, the new set of rules will require “app makers to offer users options over how their information is or isn’t used, such as the ability not to be targeted for marketing purposes or to have marketing based on personal characteristics.”

Startups/VC

• Alerzo raises $10.5M to digitize Nigeria’s economy: Nigeria’s expanding startup scene got another boost today with Alerzo’s latest round. The “B2B e-commerce retail” startup wants to help bring the country’s informal economy online. According to TechCrunch that part of the Nigerian economy is worth some $100 billion.
• São Paulo-based QuintoAndar puts points on the board for Brazil: What does one do after raising a $300 million round? Well, if you are a Brazilian property technology company, you raise another $120 million. That’s what QuintoAndar just did, at an eye-popping $5.1 billion valuation. The company connects demand and supply in the country’s rental and home markets.
• For more on Africa’s startup market, head here. And if you want more notes on Brazil, we’ve got you covered.
• Breef wants to connect brands and agencies: Normally we’d try to make a pun about how we hope that this startup’s life is not, ahem, breef, but we’re more mature than that. Instead, we’ll note that the Greycroft-backed company just raised $3.5 million, and it connects teams at boutique agencies with larger, more long-term contracts with brands than what most freelance platforms offer.
• Cardiomatics does just what it says on the tin: Yes, Cardiomatics is an electrocardiogram-reading automation company, like you surmised from its name. And it just loaded its accounts with $3.2 million. The company helps “GPs and smaller practices offer ECG analysis to patients without needing to refer them to specialist hospitals,” TechCrunch reports.
• Rutter is building the Plaid of e-commerce data: API-delivered startups are hot these days. Connecting various services in a particular niche via API is a popular idea as well. And e-commerce is booming. At the intersection of those three trends is Rutter, which just raised $1.5 million and is building a “unified e-commerce API that enables companies to connect with data across any platform.” Very cool.
• If you need more startup news, we have just what you require on this week’s Equity podcast.

4 common mistakes startups make when setting pay for hybrid workers

In a recent survey, 58% of workers said they plan to quit if they’re not allowed to work remotely.

Startups that don’t offer employees work-from-home flexibility are at a competitive disadvantage, but figuring out how to pay hybrid workers raises a complex set of questions:

• Should you localize salaries for workers in different areas?
• How should you pay workers who have the same job when one is WFH and the other is at their desk?
• Are you being transparent with your staff about how their compensation is set?

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

• Peloton wants to get into erging: Do you like the Peloton model, but aren’t interested in stationary biking? Don’t worry, the company is building a rowing machine, it appears. We hope that the machine is a bit safer than the Peloton treadmill turned out to be. Frankly the decision makes sense as erging is popular and healthy and good, and it’s not like folks who row are famous for not having money.
• Sirius wants to be TikTok cool: This is the “How do you do fellow kids?” meme, but IRL. Sirius, the satellite radio company that is well known in the United States, has launched a radio station that plays songs popular on the social platform hosted by well-known TikTokers. Parents, get ready for rather annoying road trips.
• Spotify wants to retire shares: Spotify is spending another $1 billion buying its own shares back from the public markets. In short, Spotify is wealthy and generates enough cash to power all of its work without dipping into its reserves. So it is spending some of its extra cash buying back its own stock, which has seen its value decline in recent months.
• Elon Musk dressed a dude in a suit and promised a future robot: When are we going to stop falling for Elon vaporware? Around when those solar roofs launch, I reckon. This time Tesla chatted about a future humanoid robot. And the company dressed up a human in an unconvincing suit to demonstrate what it will look like? Er, sure. Not that we’re opposed to the tech. We aren’t. But what a weird way to announce a future product.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

Image Credits: SEAN GLADWELL (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

We’re reaching out to startup founders to tell us who they turn to when they want the most up-to-date growth marketing practices. Fill out the survey here.

Read one of the testimonials we’ve received below!

Marketer: Fernando Vitti, Nexforce

Recommended by: Raphael Freitas, Intuit

Testimonial: “Fernando is a strategic thinker. He’s a hard-working, data-driven and customer-obsessed individual that really contributed to our company’s growth.”

Community

Image Credits: Simon and Schuster

Join Danny Crichton on Tuesday August 24, at 3 p.m. PDT/6 p.m. EDT for a Twitter Spaces interview with Eric Dean Wilson, author of, “After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort.”

“Email impacts marketing strategy and enables better overall business success. It’s the lifeblood of an effective multichannel campaign,” says Melissa Sargeant, CMO at Litmus. “However, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection — announced earlier this summer with its iOS 15 update — attempts to eliminate metrics and data associated with email.”

This week in marketing, Sargeant dives into the changes that Apple is making through the new privacy protection in iOS 15 and how these updates affect marketers. Sergeant leaves no stones unturned, covering the impact on consumers and how marketers can prepare for this. Anna Heim, Extra Crunch daily reporter, interviewed some team members at Ascendant, a London-based agency, about the methods they use when working with startups, no matter what stage they’re in.

Ascendant was recommended to us through our Experts Survey. If there’s a growth marketer that you’ve enjoyed working with, we’d love to hear about them. Please fill out our survey.

Marketer: Jack Abramowitz
Recommended by: Frida Leibowitz, Debbie
Testimonial: “Jack is personable, sharp and overall a super helpful guy. He genuinely wanted to help and started adding value before we even formalized our relationship. Whether it’s making useful intros, or getting into the nitty-gritty details of campaign strategies, he rolls up his sleeves and gets right in the trenches together with the team. He’s really treated our project as his own.”

Marketer: Nate Dame, Profound Strategy
Recommended by: Diana Tamblyn, Danaher
Testimonial: “[I] did a fairly extensive search for a content partner. [I] was impressed with their expertise, their references (I spoke to three), and their growth forecasting.”

Marketer: Kyle Lacy
Recommended by: Natalie Beaulieu, Seismic
Testimonial: “Kyle is a marketing master of none, and successfully built a brand that is fun, engaging and lively out of the otherwise dull ‘sales readiness’ and ‘corporate LMS’ industries. When’s the last time a B2B brand had a llama for a mascot and sent golden llamas to its customers? He leads a team of writers, creatives, performance marketers and more as one cohesive team, fueling Lessonly’s growth through to its acquisition by Seismic. Can’t wait to see what he does at Seismic!”

(Extra Crunch) Apple is changing Mail Privacy Protection and email marketers must prepare: Melissa Sargeant wrote a guest column about email privacy changes and what it means for marketers. Sargeant says, “Litmus data collected from over a billion email opens worldwide found Apple Mail held a 48.6% total share across iPhones, Macs and iPads in June 2021. Though down slightly from April (51.1%), the data still suggests Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection will significantly impact email marketers, entire marketing teams and especially consumers.” Sergeant also covers how marketers can prepare for these changes.

For British agency Ascendant, growth marketing is much more than a set of tactics: Anna Heim spoke with Ascendant, a British growth agency, about their experience working with startups. Gus Ferguson, co-founder of Ascendant tells us, “We also know that probably one of the biggest barriers to growth is marketers being dependent on developers, which are such a rare resource. We address that by implementing marketing frameworks at a basic level of the business whereby marketers are able to at least control basic marketing operations directly.”

Is there a startup growth marketing expert that you want us to know about? Let us know by filling out our survey.

With the hasty U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan underway after two decades occupying the country, social media platforms have a complex new set of policy decisions to make.

The Taliban has been social media-savvy for years, but those companies will face new questions as the notoriously brutal, repressive group seeks to present itself as Afghanistan’s legitimate governing body to the rest of the world. Given its ubiquity among political leaders and governments, social media will likely play an even more central role for the Taliban as it seeks to cement control and move toward governing.

Facebook has taken some early precautions to protect its users from potential reprisals as the Taliban seizes power. Through Twitter, Facebook’s Nathaniel Gleicher announced a set of new measures the platform rolled out over the last week. The company added a “one-click” way for people in Afghanistan to instantly lock their accounts, hiding posts on their timeline and preventing anyone they aren’t friends with from downloading or sharing their profile picture.

Facebook also removed the ability for users to view and search anyone’s friends list for people located in Afghanistan. On Instagram, pop-up alerts will provide Afghanistan-based users with information on how to quickly lock down their accounts.

The Taliban has long been banned on Facebook under the company’s rules against dangerous organizations. “The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law… This means we remove accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban and prohibit praise, support, and representation of them,” a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC.

The Afghan Taliban is actually not designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, but the Taliban operating out of Pakistan has held that designation since 2010. While it doesn’t appear on the list of foreign terrorist organizations, the Afghanistan-based Taliban is defined as a terror group according to economic sanctions that the U.S. put in place after 9/11.

While the Taliban is also banned from Facebook-owned WhatsApp, the platform’s end-to-end encryption makes enforcing those rules on WhatsApp more complex. WhatsApp is ubiquitous in Afghanistan and both the Afghan military and the Taliban have relied on the chat app to communicate in recent years. Though Facebook doesn’t allow the Taliban on its platforms, the group turned to WhatsApp to communicate its plans to seize control to the Afghan people and discourage resistance in what was a shockingly swift and frictionless sprint to power. The Taliban even set up WhatsApp number as a sort of help line for Afghans to report violence or crime, but Facebook quickly shut down the account.

Earlier this week, Facebook’s VP of content policy Monika Bickert noted that even if the U.S. does ultimately remove the Taliban from its lists of sanctioned terror groups, the platform would reevaluate and make its own decision. “… We would have to do a policy analysis on whether or not they nevertheless violate our dangerous organizations policy,” Bickert said.

Like Facebook, YouTube maintains that the Taliban is banned from its platform. YouTube’s own decision also appears to align with sanctions and could be subject to change if the U.S. approach to the Taliban shifts.

“YouTube complies with all applicable sanctions and trade compliance laws, including relevant U.S. sanctions,” a YouTube spokesperson told TechCrunch. “As such, if we find an account believed to be owned and operated by the Afghan Taliban, we terminate it. Further, our policies prohibit content that incites violence.”

On Twitter, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid has continued to share regular updates about the group’s activities in Kabul. Another Taliban representative, Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, also freely posts on the platform. Unlike Facebook and YouTube, Twitter doesn’t have a blanket ban on the group but will enforce its policies on a post-by-post basis.

If the Taliban expands its social media footprint, other platforms might be facing the same set of decisions. TikTok did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment, but previously told NBC that it considers the Taliban a terrorist organization and does not allow content that promotes the group.

The Taliban doesn’t appear to have a foothold beyond the most mainstream social networks, but it’s not hard to imagine the former insurgency turning to alternative platforms to remake its image as the world looks on.

While Twitch declined to comment on what it might do if the group were to use the platform, it does have a relevant policy that takes “off-service conduct” into account when banning users. That policy was designed to address reports of abusive behavior and sexual harassment among Twitch streamers.

The new rules also apply to accounts linked to violent extremism, terrorism, or other serious threats, whether those actions take place on or off Twitch. That definition would likely preclude the Taliban from establishing a presence on the platform, even if the U.S. lifts sanctions or changes its terrorist designations in the future.

General Motors is recalling even more Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles due to possible battery cell defects that could increase the risk of fire. This latest recall, announced by the automaker on Friday, marks the third time GM has issued the consumer notice for the Bolt.

The second recall, which was issued in July, covered 2017 to 2019 Bolt EVs. Now, GM is expanding that recall to include an additional 9,335 2019 model year Bolts, as well as 63,683 2020–2022 Bolt EV and EUV vehicles.

“In rare circumstances, the batteries supplied to GM for these vehicles may have two manufacturing defects – a torn anode tab and folded separator – present in the same battery cell, which increases the risk of fire,” the company said in a news release. It added that it was working with its cell supplier, South Korea’s LG, regarding the issue.

This recall is expected to cost GM an additional $1 billion – that’s on top of the $800 million the company has already estimated for the prior recalls. Costs associated with fixing defective Bolt batteries made up the lion’s share of GM’s $1.3 billion in warranty expenses last quarter, the automaker said in an earnings call earlier this month.

GM is recommending that included Bolt drivers to a 90 percent state of charge limitation and avoid depleting the battery below a 70 mile range. The automaker also suggests parking the vehicle outside right after charging and not leaving the vehicle charging indoors overnight – likely due to the risk of fire. The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration released its own recommendation to Bolt drivers to park their vehicles away from their homes to reduce fire risk.