This Week in Apps: Apple launches a COVID-19 app, the outbreak’s impact on social and video apps and more

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry saw a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher...

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John Borthwick & Matt Hartman of betaworks discuss coronavirus adaptation strategies

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of hopping on Zoom with betaworks’ John Borthwick and Matt Hartman to discuss the tech world’s adaptation to this new locked-down world, the future of new media and answer questions from the audience. We discussed whether new media companies can raise capital right now, and touched on emerging trends around audio, voice, AR, live events, travel-related companies and many other topics. It was a delight, and I’m excited to do more of these in the future. For those of you who missed the Zoom, here’s a rundown of what...

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Rocket startup Skyrora shifts production to hand sanitizer and face masks for coronavirus response

One of the newer companies attempting to join the rarified group of private space launch startups actually flying payloads to orbit has redirected its entire UK-based manufacturing capacity towards COVID-19 response. Skyrora, which is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, is answering the call of the UK government and the NHS to manufacturers to do what they can to provide much-needed healthcare equipment for frontline responders amid the coronavirus crisis. Skyrorary says that the entirety of its UK operations, including all human resources and its working...

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Attract, engage and retain employees in the new remote-work era

Irene DeNigris Contributor Share on Twitter Irene DeNigris, chief people officer of iCIMS, has a passion for cultivating a highly engaged, high-performance culture. When looking for answers, where do people first turn? For many, it’s Google. During the first half of March, we saw Google searches for “work from home” reach a 12-month high, garnering at least 50% more search interest than the anticipated peak, which usually occurs within the first week of January. This number will continue to grow as outside circumstances evolve. This search...

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Bird lays off about 30% of workforce amid COVID-19 pandemic

Bird is the latest startup hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Bird laid off about 30% of its employees amid the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus, TechCrunch has learned. “The unprecedented COVID-19 crisis has forced our leadership team and the board of directors to make many extremely difficult and painful decisions relating to some of your teammates,” Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden wrote to staffers in a memo, obtained by TechCrunch, today. “As you know, we’ve had to pause many markets around the world and drastically cut spending. Due to...

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When is it time to stop fundraising?

Russ Heddleston Contributor Share on Twitter Russ is the co-founder and CEO of DocSend. He was previously a product manager at Facebook, where he arrived via the acquisition of his startup Pursuit.com, and has held roles at Dropbox, Greystripe, and Trulia. Follow him here: @rheddleston and @docsend More posts by this contributor What to expect when pitching European VCs First mover advantage: Does it matter in startup fundraising? No one wants to prepare for their fundraising round to fail. Many founders spend months (or even years)...

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Now might be the perfect time to rethink your fundraising approach

Russ Heddleston Contributor Share on Twitter Russ is the co-founder and CEO of DocSend. He was previously a product manager at Facebook, where he arrived via the acquisition of his startup Pursuit.com, and has held roles at Dropbox, Greystripe, and Trulia. Follow him here: @rheddleston and @docsend More posts by this contributor What to expect when pitching European VCs First mover advantage: Does it matter in startup fundraising? Many founders will have kicked off the new year with a new fundraising round. According to the data we...

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Daily Crunch: Clearstep’s chatbot offers in-depth COVID-19 screening

{rss:content:encoded} Daily Crunch: Clearstep’s chatbot offers in-depth COVID-19 screening https://ift.tt/3bxgTve https://ift.tt/2CoAoqu March 27, 2020 at 07:26PM We look at an in-depth screener app for COVID-19, U.S. stocks take another tumble and Apple extends its free trial for Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 27, 2020. Stay safe and socially distanced this weekend! 1. Clearstep’s COVID-19 chat-based screener goes in-depth to preserve healthcare resources There are a growing number of symptom checker and screening...

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Zyl resurfaces old photos to create collaborative stories

{rss:content:encoded} Zyl resurfaces old photos to create collaborative stories https://ift.tt/2UI9PoC https://ift.tt/3dzJW32 March 27, 2020 at 05:35PM French startup Zyl has released a major update of its mobile app for iOS and Android. The app is all about finding long-forgotten memories of important life events in your photo library. Zyl scans your photo library and magically finds photos that matter. Every day, the app sends you a notification to tell you that you can unlock a new memory — a new Storyl. It instantly brings you back to that...

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Zyl resurfaces old photos to create collaborative stories

French startup Zyl has released a major update of its mobile app for iOS and Android. The app is all about finding long-forgotten memories of important life events in your photo library. Zyl scans your photo library and magically finds photos that matter. Every day, the app sends you a notification to tell you that you can unlock a new memory — a new Storyl. It instantly brings you back to that special day with an automatically generated story. All your photos are already stitched together, the app is just waiting for you. With today’s update,...

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Telco metadata grab is for modelling COVID-19 spread, not tracking citizens, says EC

{rss:content:encoded} Telco metadata grab is for modelling COVID-19 spread, not tracking citizens, says EC https://ift.tt/2UmszuN https://ift.tt/31ZTbnw March 27, 2020 at 05:05PM As part of its response to the public health emergency triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Commission has been leaning on Europe’s telcos to share aggregate location data on their users. “The Commission kick-started a discussion with mobile phone operators about the provision of aggregated and anonymised mobile phone location data,” it said today. “The idea...

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Not all entrepreneurs are 30-year-old guys

Barbara Sprenger Contributor Share on Twitter Barbara Sprenger does double duty as CEO of The Satellite Centers, a network of flexible workspaces, and Satellite DeskWorks, cloud-based software to manage co-work spaces, executive suites and corporate flexible space. All co-working isn’t WeWork. And not all entrepreneurs are 30-year-old guys. I know this well, having built my first startup in the mid-1980s after a potential employer said women wouldn’t be accepted in technical sales. Within five years, their large computer manufacturing...

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Stripe goes Fast for $20M, D2C tips and tricks and what’s happening to tech internships?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The three of us were back today — Natasha, Danny and Alex — to dig our way through a host of startup-focused topics. Sure, the world is stuffed full of COVID-19 news — and, to be clear, the topic did come up some — but Equity decided to circle back to its roots and talks startups and accelerators and how many pieces of luggage does an urban-living person really need? The answer, as far as we can work it out, is...

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Social Bluebook was hacked, exposing 217,000 influencers’ accounts

A social media platform used to match advertisers with thousands of influencers has been hacked. Social Bluebook, a Los Angeles-based company, allows advertisers to pay social media “influencers” for posts that promote their products and services. The company claims it has some 300,000 influencers on its books. But at some point during October 2019, the company’s entire back-end database was taken in a data breach. TechCrunch obtained the database, containing some 217,000 user accounts — including influencer names, email addresses, and passwords...

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Clearstep’s COVID-19 chat-based screener goes in-depth to preserve healthcare resources

There are a growing number of symptom checker and screening tools that you can use at home if you suspect you might have contracted the new coronavirus that is causing the global COVID-19 pandemic. Most of these are relatively simple, including around three or four questions that basically cover the top reported symptoms experienced by anyone who has confirmed to have had the disease. Chatbot-based symptom checking software startup Clearstep has created its own COVID-19 screener, which goes more in-depth to combine symptom checking with screening...

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How child care startups in the U.S. are helping families cope with the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the lives of billions of people around the world. For many parents with young children in the United States, shelter in place orders implemented in different areas over the past few weeks mean they now spend each day balancing work with taking care of their families. For child care providers, a vital but often underappreciated part of the American economy, the crisis means dealing with economic uncertainty, but also adapting to serve new roles, including providing care for essential workers. Child care startups,...

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