blogger better: 2020-04-19

Friday, April 24, 2020

If we let the US Postal Service die, we’ll be killing small businesses with it

Laura Behrens Wu Contributor Share on Twitter Laura Behrens Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Shippo, which is building a shipping platform for 21st century e-commerce. Since moving to the United States, I’ve come to appreciate and admire the United States Postal Service as a symbol of American ingenuity and resilience. Like electricity, telephones and the freeway system, it’s part of our greater story and what binds the United States together. But it’s also something that’s easy to take for granted. USPS delivers 181.9 million pieces of...

For pre-seed startups, precarious times are baseline until they secure their first customer, first hire and first check. But no matter how built-in turbulence might be for a pre-seed founder, we’re entering a period where stresses are amplified and outlooks are unpredictable. In light of the new market conditions, a harder fundraising market and slower expected growth, Charles Hudson (founder and general partner of Precursor Ventures) is urging his portfolio companies to reassess their futures with a refreshingly human question: “Are you excited...

Matt Ocko, co-founder of venture firm Data Collective (DCVC), was among a small group of VCs viewed as alarmists when they began tweeting about the coronavirus’s imminent appearance in the U.S. back in January. In retrospect, those individuals were prescient, so we spoke with Ocko last week about why he was so certain the U.S. was about to get walloped by COVID-19, and asked how some of the startups in DCVC’s portfolio — which has long had a strong biotech focus — are trying to get us back to a state of normalcy. This conversation has been edited...

Divergent, the Los Angeles-based startup aiming to revolutionize vehicle manufacturing, has cut about one-third of its staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has upended startups and major corporations alike. The company, which employed about 160 people, laid off 57 workers, according to documents filed with the California Employment Development Department. Founder and CEO Kevin Czinger didn’t provide specific numbers. However, he did confirm to TechCrunch that he had to reduce staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A core team remains, he said. “Whenever...

In a small suburb of Melbourne, two entrepreneurs are developing a technology that could mean big changes for the packaging industry. Stuart Gordon and Mark Appleford are the co-founders of Varden, a company that has developed a process to take the waste material from sugarcane and convert it into a paper-like packaging product with the functional attributes of plastic. Their technology managed to grab the attention of — and $2.2 million in funding from — Horizons Ventures, the venture capital fund managing the money of Li Ka-shing, one of...

Suzanne Borders Contributor Share on Twitter Suzanne is the CEO and co-founder of BadVR. She thrives at the intersection of data, art, technology and poetry. As a small business owner, I was excited to learn about the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act that offers low-interest loans to firms impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as I read through the details and began to apply, it became clear that this legislation — while well-intentioned — may not be enough to help many SMBs and startups. Here’s a...

{rss:content:encoded} Facebook to launch ‘virtual dating’ over Messenger for Facebook Dating users https://ift.tt/2KwqYgr https://ift.tt/3aCsoAB April 24, 2020 at 08:15PM Facebook will soon allow users to go on “virtual dates,” the company announced today. The social network is planning to introduce a new video calling feature that will allow users of its Facebook Dating service to connect and video call over Messenger, as an alternative to going on a real-world date. This sort of feature is much in demand amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has...

{rss:content:encoded} Facebook launches drop-in video chat Rooms to rival Houseparty https://ift.tt/3cLA84C https://ift.tt/3aDHmWW April 24, 2020 at 08:15PM Facebook is co-opting some of the top video chat innovations like Zoom’s gallery view for large groups and Houseparty’s spontaneous hangouts for a new feature called Rooms. It could usher in a new era of unplanned togetherness via video. Launching today on mobile and desktop, you can start a video chat Room that friends can discover via a new section above the News Feed or notifications Facebook...

Facebook will soon allow users to go on “virtual dates,” the company announced today. The social network is planning to introduce a new video calling feature that will allow users of its Facebook Dating service to connect and video call over Messenger, as an alternative to going on a real-world date. This sort of feature is much in demand amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced people to stay home and practice social distancing. But for online dating apps which aim to connect people in the real world, it’s a significant challenge for their...

Facebook is co-opting some of the top video chat innovations like Zoom’s gallery view for large groups and Houseparty’s spontaneous hangouts for a new feature called Rooms. It could usher in a new era of unplanned togetherness via video. Launching today on mobile and desktop, you can start a video chat Room that friends can discover via a new section above the News Feed or notifications Facebook will automatically send to your closest pals. You can also just invite specific friends, or share a link anyone can use to join your Room. For now, up...

Jay Prasad Contributor Share on Twitter Jay Prasad is chief strategy officer for LiveRamp TV, a data-connectivity platform leveraged by brands and their partners to deliver exceptional experiences. As the nation struggles with a pandemic and economic uncertainty, fundamental shifts in consumer habits are leading marketers to rethink existing strategies and budgets allocated to influencers and streaming TV. These significant shifts are nothing new; just as the dot-com bubble reduced landline penetration and boosted mobile phone adoption,...

{rss:content:encoded} Daily Crunch: AT&T CEO steps down https://ift.tt/2Y4TdL4 https://ift.tt/2CoAoqu April 24, 2020 at 06:10PM AT&T is getting a new boss, the first piece of Apple and Google’s COVID-19 contact tracing program should be available soon and Snap is looking to raise more debt. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 24, 2020. 1. Randall Stephenson to step down as AT&T chief, succeeded by COO John Stankey A big changing of the guard is underway at one of the world’s biggest names in telecoms and media. The change is effective...

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. The crew at Bessemer released their new, yearly cloud report this week. It’s a useful lens into how venture capitalists are thinking about cloud and SaaS startup performance metrics. Bessemer’s cloud and SaaS exits include Twilio, Shopify, PagerDuty, Box, and a few others, so they’re worth listening to at least a little on the topic. I bring all this up as I finally got the chance to read the 2020 report (here, if you want to dig...

Billionaire. Entrepreneur. Investor. Shark. Mark Cuban is one of tech’s best-known entrepreneurs, so we are amped to have him join us for an upcoming Extra Crunch Live, our virtual speaker series that connects the brightest minds in tech directly with our Extra Crunch audience. Starting out as a salesman for one of Dallas’s earliest PC software resellers, Cuban was fired after he ignored his boss’ orders and asked another employee to cover for him while he picked up a check for a $10,000 sale. He went on to create his own software reseller/system...

{rss:content:encoded} Indian smartphone market grew by 4% in Q1, but projected to decline by 10% this year https://ift.tt/3cKXYxz https://ift.tt/354pDqp April 24, 2020 at 04:23PM India has emerged as one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the last decade, reporting growth each quarter even as handset shipments slowed or declined elsewhere globally. But the world’s second largest smartphone is beginning to feel the coronavirus heat, too. The Indian smartphone market grew by a modest 4% year-over-year in the quarter that ended on March...

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had a choice of all sorts of news, but as we cut the show together as a group Danny pushed all the funding rounds up. So, when Alex and Natasha jumped into the show we had a bunch of good news to cover. We’re avoiding COVID-19 news, but the pandemic is just a part of the broader stories we want to tell. For the foreseeable future, coronavirus will be always be part of our interviews. But the conversation...

Instant messaging service Telegram has amassed 400 million monthly active users, it said today, up from 300 million active users the seven-year-old service disclosed to the SEC last October. The service — founded by Pavel Durov, who also created Russian social networking site VK — said it adds about 1.5 million users each day and is the most downloaded social media app in over 20 nations. Telegram is working on bringing a secure video call feature to its users this year in response to the growing popularity of Zoom and Houseparty, it said. The...

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