How one VC firm wound up with no-code startups as part of its investing thesis

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. 

Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.

How one VC firm wound up with no-code startups as part of its investing thesis

Throughout all the chaos of 2020’s economic upheaval in the startup world, I’ve worked to pay more attention to low-code and no-code services. The short gist of chats I’ve had with investors and founders and public company execs in the past few weeks is that market awareness of no-code/low-code terminology is starting to spread more broadly.

Why? Again, summarizing aggressively, it seems that the gap between what different business units need (marketing, say) and what in-house or external engineering teams are capable of providing is widening. This means there is more total pain in the market, hunting for a solution, often with a tooling budget in hand.

Enter no-code and low-code startups, and even big-company services alike that can help non-developers do more without having to beg for engineering inputs.

I spoke with Arun Mathew this week. He’s a partner at Accel, a venture firm that has invested in all sorts of companies that you’ve heard of — including Webflow, which raised a $72 million Series A last August that Mathew led for his firm. (More on the round here, and notes from TechCrunch on Webflow’s early days here, and here, if you are curious.)

More interesting than that single round is how Accel wound up building a thesis around no-code startups. According to Mathew, Accel had made large investments into companies like Qualtrics, for example, when they were already pretty big and had found product-market fit. That same general approach led to the Webflow deal last year.

At the time, Webflow “wasn’t really defining what they were doing as n- code, they just said ‘we have a very simple drag and drop UI, to build websites, and soon full web applications, very simply,’ ” he told TechCrunch. But, according to Mathew, what Webflow was doing “lined up really well” with the “rising movement of no-code.”

From there, Accel “made a couple [more no-code] investments in Europe where [it has] an early-stage team and a growth team,” along with a few more in India. In the investor’s view, some of the investing activity was “thesis driven because we think [no-code is] a really interesting theme,” but some of the deals “happened opportunistically” where Accel had found “really talented founders in the space that we thought was interesting, executing on a vision that we found appealing.”

In the “span of a year, year-and-a-half,” Accel totted up “seven or eight companies in this no-code space,” which over the last five or six quarters became “a real thesis” for the firm, Mathew said. Accel now has “a global team” of around a dozen people “spending a lot of our time in and around no-code” he added.

Apologies for the length there, but what Mathew said makes me feel a bit less behind. After dipping a toe into learning more about no-code services and tooling (and, yes, low-code as well) it felt somewhat like I was playing catch-up. But as I covered that Webflow round and have since started paying more attention to no-code as well, perhaps you and I are right on time.

(We also recently ran an investor survey on the no-code topic, so hit it up if you want more VC scribbles on the topic.)

Market Notes

For Market Notes this week, we have four things. First, riffs from chats with two public company execs about the software market, some public market stuff and then some neat Airbnb spend data by which I am confounded:

• I spoke with Apple MDM company Jamf’s CFO Jill Putman this week, after her company reported its first set of earnings as a public company. I wanted to know a bit more about the education market — a hot topic here at TechCrunch, given outsized rounds and huge market demand — and the medical world.
• Regarding the software market for education, Putman noted that schools are buying lots of hardware, and that software sales should follow. Our read from that is that the boom in education software is not going to slow for some time as schools work on reopening.
• Ditto the medical market, where Jamf has found uptake as hospitals roll out hardware to patients and families thereof to facilitate all sorts of demand that COVID has engendered. (Hardware needs software, enter Jamf!)
• Chatting with the CFO our key takeaway was that there are still sectors that could generate a continued COVID tailwind, even if not all Jamf customers fit that bill. For startups that did catch a wave, this is probably good news.
• And then there was Yext, a company that helps other companies’ customers find accurate information about them around the Web, and has recently gotten into the search game. Yext launched at a TechCrunch conference back in 2009, which is a neat bit of history. Anyway, Yext is public company now and we wanted to chat about which industries are driving growth for the former startup, and how the general climate for software is for the company, so we got on Zoom with its CEO, Howard Lerman.
• So, which sectors are accelerating from Yext’s perspective? Government, education (again), insurance and financial services. Let that guide your take on the health of various startups.
• Turning to the business climate, Lerman had some notes: “I will tell you in Q2,” he said, “things came back a bit from Q1.” In what sense? Retention rates, for one, according to the CEO. A return to form is welcome, but Lerman did caution that some companies were slower to “pull the trigger on big deals.”
• Lerman also said that his perspective on the macro-climate has bounced back as well from a local-minima set around 30 days ago.

Public company execs are pretty guarded in how they talk because they have to be. But what Putman and Lerman seemed to intimate is that economic damage — provided you are selling to business, and not individuals — seems more contained on a per-sector basis than I would have anticipated. And that there are some good things ahead, at least in a handful of hot sectors.

Opening our aperture a bit, some SaaS companies struggled this week to meet investor expectations, even as more companies added themselves to the IPO queue. It’s going to be very busy for a few quarters. (Speaking of which, you can find the good and bad from the new Sumo IPO filing here.)

The economy is still garbage for many, but at least for companies it’s improving. And on that note, some data regarding Airbnb. According to the folks over at Edison Trends, things are going better for the home-booking site than I would have guessed. Per the group:

• Airbnb’s bookings recovery outstripped its traditional rivals, growing “32% week-over-week” from late April into early June.
• And, most critically: “Airbnb spending in July was up 22% over the previous July, and spending the week of August 17 was 75% higher than the equivalent week in 2019.”

Wild, right? Perhaps that’s why Airbnb has filed to go public.

Various and Sundry

We’re a tiny bit short on space, so I’ll keep our V&S dose short this week to respect your time. Here’s what I couldn’t not share:

• Read this a16z post on the IPO market. It does a great job pulling the Twitter-bullshit out of regular IPO complaints to make some salient points about what is actually good, and bad, about the venerable initial public offering.
• And then read this Fred Wilson piece on SPACs, and how he thinks about them today.
• Fast made a bunch of noise this week, launching its checkout product after a lot of hype. I thought they were doing something more than a product launch, given the sheer number of tweets I kept seeing. Not sure how I feel about the final thing, but I covered their raise earlier this year, so wanted to flag this all the same.
• And, finally, Palantir. In a new S-1 filing, Palantir kinda fessed up to the fact that its structure makes it look like a controlled company. Danny did the digging on the matter here. And then I shouted about it here.
• We got data on Boston’s venture capital results in 2020, broken down by month. Hot damn, that wasn’t really what we expected.
• The JFrog IPO pricing dance is going to tell us how much profits are worth in the SaaS world.
• And Zoom’s insane, bonkers, hell-yeah quarter.

And with that, we are out of room. Hugs, fist bumps and good vibes, and thank you so much for reading this little newsletter on the weekends. It’s a treat to write, and I hope you like it.

Hit me up with notes at alex.wilhelm@techcrunch.com. (I don’t know if you reply to this email if I will get the response. But try it so that we can find out?)

Alex

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Grab a Labor Day flash sale pass to Disrupt 2020 and save $100

No matter how you celebrate Labor Day weekend, we urge you to mask up, keep your distance when grilling burgers and dogs and — most of all — take advantage of our flash sale on Digital Pro passes to Disrupt 2020. Right now, you can save $100 on your pass — whether you observe the holiday or not. We don’t judge.

This sweet deal won’t last long. Buy your Digital Pro pass before Monday, September 7 at 11:59 p.m. (PT) when this sale disappears in, well, a flash.

A Digital Pro pass provides access to everything Disrupt 2020 offers from September 14-18. Our virtual venue makes it easy to explore Digital Startup Alley and discover hundreds of new startups from all around the world. That’s also where you’ll find this year’s TC Top Picks. TechCrunch editors hand selected this cohort of stellar startups from hundreds of applications. These startups span the tech spectrum, and you won’t want to miss an opportunity to connect and see their demos.

Don’t miss the one, the only, the always-epic Startup Battlefield. It’s the OG of pitch competitions, and we have roughly 20 international contenders ready to throw down hard. They’ll pitch and demo to this impressive list of judges until only one team remains to claim bragging rights, the storied Disrupt Cup and $100,000 in equity-free cash.

As always, we bring the top experts, leaders and visionaries to the Disrupt stages, and this year is no different in that respect. And since virtual equals global, we have time zone-friendly programming for Europe and Asia. Here’s a taste of the Disrupt 2020 agenda.

Looking into the Future: Roelof Botha is the U.S. head of Sequoia Capital. It’s a powerful position but it also comes with great responsibility, including to help steer the company’s portfolio companies through the pandemic and its ripple effects. Hear how Botha is advising founders and why, even in trying times, he expects startup founders to reshape the world.

Live Q&A with Mette Lykke: Come to this live Q&A prepared with your questions for Endomondo’s CEO and co-founder (11:00 AM, CET)

Looking Toward the Future of Tech in China and Silicon Valley: Edith Yeung, general partner at Race Capital and the creator of the China Internet Report, has invested in over 50 startups including Lightyear/Stellar, Silk Labs, Chirp and Fleksy. Join us in a conversation about which emerging technology trends in China and the United States will leave an impact (1 p.m. HKT).

We can’t fit five days of Disrupt 2020 into one post. You need to see and experience it for yourself, and this is your chance to save $100 off the price of a Disrupt Digital Pro Pass. The sale ends Monday, September 7 at 11:59 p.m. (PT) — now, go fire up that grill.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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The future of retail and office space is up in the air, and proptech investors are optimistic

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here.

The malls and grocery stores of the 20th century are being converted into industrial conveyor belts of goods and services traveling from the internet to your home. The customer is no longer even allowed inside, as Connie Loizos details this week in a closer look at Amazon and other online-first companies taking over commercial spaces near you.

Americans sort of knew this was coming. Still, the pace at which buildings of all sizes are being either built or converted into e-commerce fulfillment centers — and closer to city centers — has become a bit breathtaking. According to the commercial real estate services firm CBRE, since 2017 at least 59 projects in the U.S. have centered on converting 14 million square feet of retail space into 15.5 million square feet of industrial space, and that trend is “absolutely going to continue,” says Matthew Walaszek, an associate director of industrial and logistics research at CBRE.

Some huge portion of existing retail space is disappearing from public life. Meanwhile, remote work is simultaneously gutting office demand, the even more lucrative part of commercial real estate.

No doubt there will be wonderful new in-real-life experiences that commercial spaces provide for work and any other function. But the sector is taking massive systemic cuts and destroying landlords in one of the historically slowest moving industries in the world. This alone makes it incredibly exciting as a topic for TechCrunch to cover. The impact on startups makes the changes today profound. Will superstar cities and startub hubs retain the pull they’ve had in recent decades? Even if you want to be remote-first, what if you want to get out of the house and your team does too? What if you don’t want to live in a house, actually? 

To get more answers at the bleeding edge, Kirsten Korosec and your faithful correspondent did a fresh survey of 9 of the top investors in real estate and proptech (based on our TechCrunch List and other research). Extra Crunch readers can check out what they think will happen to startups soon in the middle of pandemic changes, and where they see proptech going along with the rest of the trends longer term. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts, from Brad Griewe of Fifth Wall:

We don’t believe that abandonment of central business districts will remain an issue following the pandemic. Because the concentration of startup and entrepreneurial activity occurring in cities such as San Francisco and New York is on the decline, we can expect smaller metro areas throughout the U.S. to benefit from a surge in innovation, and the pandemic only stands to accelerate this trend, with many entrepreneurs and knowledge workers having already discovered the benefits of remote work and life outside of high-density areas. While this will not alter our investment strategy, we’re spending time with the office landlords in our network considering alternative spaces for work (e.g., flexible workplace solutions, flex passes, smaller and scattered HQs, cross-purpose retail and dynamic food venues), advances in collaboration technology and the ways in which physical assets can accommodate strong connectivity.

Stay tuned for part two of survey responses coming next week, looking at specific trends that investors are seeing now, like the ongoing growth of coliving.

As markets adjust to Softbank, will we see a slowdown in tech IPOs?

In addition to the numerous other reasons for real and unreal enthusiasm in the stock market, Softbank has been buying up huge shares of tech stocks, and propelling the market further upwards — until this information become clearer in the last few days and the market dropped below what had been surprising peaks. Here’s Alex Wilhelm summing up how the week ended and what’s next:

Tech stocks are taking the worst hits. And inside of tech stocks, SaaS and cloud stocks are enduring even bigger declines. As we’ve noted that some tech shares have taken lumps when their growth has underwhelmed investors, perhaps we’re seeing the entire SaaS sector see their growth expectations slip?

Bulls may say that the above declines are merely a few weeks’ gains and that the accelerated digital transformation is still a key tailwind for SaaS. Bears may say that this is the start of a real correction in the value of tech shares that had become simply too expensive for their fundamentals. What we can say with confidence is that software shares are in a technical correction, and other equities cohorts that we care about are not far behind.

Monday is an off day for stocks. Let’s see what happens Tuesday and if the bleeding stops or simply keeps on letting.

With this update in mind, here’s our ongoing coverage of the busy return (to date) of the IPO market after the pandemic:

The IPO parade continues as Wish files, Bumble targets an eventual debut

What happens when public SaaS companies don’t meet heightened investor expectations?

In amended filing, Palantir admits it won’t have independent board governance for up to a year

An IPO expert bats back at the narrative that traditional IPOs are for ‘morons’

Frugal startups should pay attention to how JFrog’s IPO prices

Everybody is racing to an IPO — even Laird Hamilton’s young ‘superfood’ company

Zoom’s Q2 report details some of the most extraordinary growth I’ve ever seen

The good and the less-good from Sumo Logic’s updated IPO filing

Image: TechCrunch

Snapchat a winner so far from TikTok ban threat

As the September 15 deadline looms for Bytedance, and the likelihood of either a full shutdown or hollow acquisition seem to grow, TikTok users are moving. Even if you’re not working on a consumer startup, the future may be getting rewritten now for your marketing plans on hot social platforms. Nearly every company these days needs to have a public brand presence and a growing number sell direct, after all. So get ready for… Snapchat.

Our resident app expert, Sarah Perez, writes that Snap’s app has a massive 28.5 million new app installs over August, a 29% year-over-year growth rate nearing or beating its past records, and well above July’s (pre-ban announcement) 9%. What about other platforms? It’s harder to track the impact on larger social sites like Facebook and Instagram, as she notes. But my guess is you’ll probably still be buying those Facebook ads well into the future, and probably for more videos too.

The bans probably aren’t done, either. India, which was first to ban TikTok, has added dozens more apps from China, as those two countries continue an armed face-off in real life. Manish Singh, our startup reporter in India, has been following the story closely, and writes for Extra Crunch that so far, TikTok replacements have not been emerging so clearly.

(Photo by Julien Mattia/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Investing in startup hubs around the world

Speaking of the uncertain future of startup hub cities versus the world, the EC team took a different angle to the question this week, by considering the question of how geography-focused investors remain by today? Here’s a blisteringly spicy take from resident former VC Danny Crichton:

It should never have mattered before, of course, but then, sometimes idiots Harvard Business grads need a global pandemic to prove that they can actually do their jobs in novel ways. The arbitrage that existed for geographical-focused venture funds is gone, and there is now functionally a nationwide market for VC investments compared to the archipelago of local regions that existed before.

There is still room for the absolute earliest capital in these regions, accelerators and pre-PMF funds that will invest in founders with no idea for a startup yet. For all other funds larger than a few million though, the transition is clear: they will likely build upon a successful portfolio company or an area of interest and become vertical-focused. The knowledge arbitrage for an industry vertical is much more defensible than knowledge that the 279 should be avoided at certain times of the day in downtown Pittsburgh or that Tomukun is the best Korean BBQ in Ann Arbor.

Editor-at-large Mike Butcher has also been getting at this question through a series of Extra Crunch surveys with investors across key European startup cities. This week he talked to dozens of investors across Paris and Berlin. The unsurprising theme is that basically everyone is investing across the Continent already, and maybe well beyond. At the same time, many investors in each city expressed a strong belief in the particular city where they are located. Maybe the future unicorns coming out of Europe won’t have massive headquarters in their home cities, but these companies will still be arising from the ether of local people who work in technology — so it won’t end up feeling that different? Here’s how Berlin-based Mathias Ockenfels of Vienna-headquartered Speedinvest explains it:

How much are you focused on investing in your local ecosystem versus other startup hubs (or everywhere) in general? More than 50%? Less?
The Network Effects team works from Speedinvest offices in Vienna, London, Berlin and Munich. We’ve made about 75% of our investments within these hubs, and more than half specifically in London and Berlin. While a local focus is very important to us, we do not shy away from making investments in what other investors may consider “fringe” locations, such as Utah in the U.S., Helsinki or Warsaw.

Which industries in your city and region seem well-positioned to thrive, or not, long term? What are companies you are excited about (your portfolio or not)? Which founders?
Berlin continues to be a major hub for fintechs  — despite not having a strong finance ecosystem. It also has a strong base of consumer tech companies, such as Zalando, Lieferando/TakeAway and Delivery Hero, but has seen a surge in more B2B-oriented startups in recent years.

I believe the startup ecosystem in Berlin will continue to grow and become even more diverse, as it attracts great talent from across the world and becomes a go-to “playground” for entrepreneurs. As the first batch of successful B2B founders are exiting their companies and inspiring other entrepreneurs, I expect more opportunities in the B2B space in the future.

Madrid and Barcelona-based investors, Mike is heading your way next — tell him your views on your cities and your own plans via this link.

Around TechCrunch

Triller CEO Mike Lu to talk taking on TikTok at Disrupt 2020

Fabletics’ Adam Goldenberg and Kevin Hart to talk D2C at Disrupt 2020

Laura Deming, Frederik Groce, Amish Jani, Jessica Verrilli and Vanessa Larco are coming to Disrupt

How to craft the right pitch deck for your company at Disrupt 2020

Submit your pitch deck to Disrupt 2020’s Pitch Deck Teardown

Learn how to raise your first dollars at Disrupt 2020

Some of the brightest minds in Europe are joining us at Disrupt

Welcome to the most important panel on product development in the history of Disrupt

Across the week

TechCrunch

On the matter of who was really behind @VCBrags

Banks aren’t as stupid as enterprise AI and fintech entrepreneurs think

There’s a growing movement where startup founders look to exit to community

The startup world needs a ‘Black Minds Matter’ awakening

Building paths to funding for Black female founders

Dear Sophie: Can we sponsor an H-1B university researcher for an EB-1B green card?

Extra Crunch

Edtech startups find demand from an unlikely customer: Public schools

Your first sales hire should be a missionary, not a mercenary

Jeff Lawson on API startups, picking a market and getting dissed by VCs

What does GPT-3 mean for the future of the legal profession?

Media Roundup: Patreon joins unicorn club, Facebook could ban news in Australia, more

Venture capital LPs are the missing link to solving Silicon Valley’s diversity problem

#EquityPod: Edtech is the new SaaS

From Alex:

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering, with Chris Gates behind the scenes making it all work. An extra shout-out to Natasha this week as we spent a lot of time talking about edtech, a category that she spearheads for us and has brought to the show. It’s a big deal!

We’re on YouTube now, don’t forget, and with that, let’s get into the news:

• Climax Foods raised $7.5 million to help fuel its work to develop alt-foods that are not animal-based. The Equity crew votes that this is a tasty deal. And, Capchase has raised $4.6 million to help cash-out SaaS contracts ahead of their real revenue accrual. Our read is that more financing options for SaaS companies will lead to lower costs of capital for those startups that want it. And, the Envision Accelerator made it through batch one and is on to batch two.
• Then we chatted about edtech, with Natasha talking us through Owl Ventures raising huge new funds, Course Hero extending its Series B, Juni hitting $10 million ARR and raising about as much and Unacademy raising tons of cash from Vision Fund 2.
• Next up, Patreon also got a new check, which means that it eventually has to go public at some point, given that it is now a fancy unicorn.
• And speaking of IPOs, Bumble is thinking about going public in 2021, Wish has filed, albeit privately, and GoodRX is going public as well. And it makes money.
• What else? This a16z post on IPOs that we fangirl/fanboy’d over, as it is good. And we forgot to mention this Fred Wilson post, but it is also good.

And with that, we are nearly at the weekend, which is a long one thanks to a holiday, so expect Equity Monday to be, in fact, Equity Tuesday next week. Hugs and good vibes from the Equity Crew!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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Local governments that embrace digital services during challenging times can make real change happen

Bob Ainsbury Contributor

Bob Ainsbury is the Chief Product Officer at Granicus.

It has been a hard year. We wake up every morning to new developments in the tragedies of the moment spanning a pandemic, the greatest unexpected loss of life since 9/11, national civil unrest, natural disasters and a looming economic collapse.

In the face of these developments, a completely understandable message from government agencies to the public might be: We can’t serve you right now. Please take a number and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

But as we know now, this is an unacceptable path to successfully, and proactively, addressing the increasing needs of citizens facing public health risk and economic uncertainty. In fact, in the past few months, Americans have exhibited an unquenchable thirst for fast, effective government services and information. Resident demands of local government and community organizations are rising. Their voices are louder than ever before. People are bringing a new civic experience to the forefront of local governments that’s delivered on their terms — and aligned with growing demand for always-on, 24/7 information and services.

A hallmark of 2020 (so far) has been global developments impacting people at a very local level. For instance, a pandemic sparked a massive shift in American civic engagement around issues like public health and racial equality. The past few months have reinforced what the real power of local government is: To efficiently offer services and information that directly impact people’s lives. For cities and municipalities, the question now becomes: How can local leaders embrace this new era of civic engagement in the world of COVID-19 to deliver digital solutions that help everyone meet the moment?

Build a digital public square for the people

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has literally closed city halls and forced government agencies at all levels to rethink modernizing public sector work to digitally and equitably deliver citizen services. Mayors, city council members and local agency officials, in particular, need to embrace this complex moment in time as an opportunity to cultivate a more vibrant, straightforward, inclusive and participatory municipal experience. One way to do that is to invest in digital tools, technologies and talent that can help local governments develop online civic engagement and citizen service outlets. Platforms that not only offer needed government services, but also prioritize input from residents and encourage community dialogue guided by clarity, trust and accountability.

Service has always been at the core of local government. However, a main challenge facing public sector leaders today is how to transfer critical services online. More specifically, developing online services that allow people who no longer have the luxury of waiting in lines for in-person interactions to remotely register to vote, obtain or renew a permit, report downed power lines and more.

A recommended path toward solution(s): At the end of the day, citizens are consumers. They want around-the-clock access to government services and options for ways to interact with service providers that meet their needs while taking their personal comfort into account. For local government agencies in the midst of digital transformation, building convenience into in-house digital government offerings and solution procurements is crucial. Digital government service solutions must be designed — by agencies or contracted vendors — to be platform and device agnostic (or, at least, interchangeable) on the back end; taking an omnichannel approach that addresses the needs of citizens and agencies through web, mobile, social media and offline options on the front end.

Bring the value of local government home

An increased online presence of community members and remote workers during the pandemic offers municipalities a fresh and cost-effective opportunity to advance local government digital service. Until recently, seemingly table stakes actions like producing photos for identification cards, scanning important documents, digitizing forms and streamlining workflows and case management were only plausible if large government teams had the budget to purchase required technologies separately, then stitch them together. Budget and capacity-constrained communities were largely left in the dark.

The good news is that today’s cloud-based solutions are complete, affordable and scalable to communities of all sizes. The market features solutions that are purpose-built for local governments to integrate with legacy IT systems while transitioning traditionally in-person services to digital interactions. And it’s possible to tap these solutions to fuel America’s new, more active brand of civic engagement and service citizens rapidly.

Further, the advent of accessible and affordable (or free) digital engagement platforms now complements an expanding recognition among American society that truly impactful things can come from government sources. The shift in thinking has produced civic engagement defined not by a sprint to profits, as is the case in the private sector, but by the ability for a representative community to actually influence policy and shape citizen services delivery.

A recommended path toward solution(s): In addition to always-on capabilities, digital government platforms need to be able to deliver goods and services to citizens directly and without friction. Whether accessing a government assistance application or applying for a park permit, citizens want their requests fulfilled without complications or inefficiencies plaguing the process — and going all-virtual or mostly remote during COVID-19 has made this more important than ever. In response, agencies should invest in the creation of digital forums for two-way communication to capture feedback that accurately reflects the demands and needs of the local community at the individual household level.

Boost digital forum accountability and representation moving forward

Today’s elevated energy around civic engagement is a direct result of the pandemic, expanding consumer activism and recent protests against systemic injustice. This confluence of factors offers local governments a fleeting opportunity to move beyond simply observing vocal citizen activity across the country. There’s now an opening to build upon, and actively grow, levels of civic engagement and community trust over time.

It’s now possible for local governments to reach more citizens by expanding their networks of interested subscribers and combat misinformation while keeping every resident informed. Agencies can advance on both fronts by providing civic leaders a two-way forum that encourages them to share progress being made in policy and procedures. After all, interacting with governments should be as simple and transparent for everyone as checking a bank account balance or reordering coffee pods from Amazon.

A recommended path toward solution(s): Municipalities should jump at this chance to really listen to diverse community voices pushing for change — especially as some powerful people in government and society seek to quiet or ignore them. They should consider developing long overdue digital solutions that amplify diverse community voices, deliver critical services and help to inform people broadly. Citizens, for their part, should be able to easily provide feedback, share ideas and voice their pressing needs to public sector officials or representatives who can help residents feel secure, listened to and taken care of. Expanded civic engagement impact entails reaching more people through their preferred channels, whether that’s email, text or snail mail, and establishing a dialogue that converts to action.

I’m confident that local governments throughout the country can rise to today’s unprecedented challenges by providing digital civic engagement outlets built to elevate individual perspectives on policy issues and surface life experiences that, in turn, inform inclusive civic action and real change.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Local governments that embrace digital services during challenging times can make real change happen Walter Thompson https://ift.tt/2F0TTcZ
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Brands that hyper-personalize will win the next decade

Evan Kohn Contributor

A digital marketing and customer experience leader, Evan Kohn is chief business officer at Pypestream, where he created PypePro, an AI onboarding methodology used by Fortune 500 firms.

More posts by this contributor

• Conversational analytics are about to change customer experiences forever

When people reach out to customer service, they’re seeking more than a solution to their immediate problem. They want empathy and understanding. What they’re often met with is a queue.

Nothing frustrates people more than calling customer support and getting stuck in a loop. According to a study by Vonage, 61% of consumers feel interactive voice response (IVR) actively poisons the customer experience — and only 13% found it more helpful than calling a human directly.

Like many solutions, IVR falls short in personalizing the customer experience (CX). A customer calls in for a specific task like paying a bill and instead cycles through a one-size-fits-all menu that in reality fits nobody. Experiences like this clearly indicate to customers a brand doesn’t care about them as a person, only as a case number.

Personalizing the experience is a start, but this isn’t the end. Customers will expect a one-on-one interaction the moment they enter your customer service channel. To make that happen, AI and analytics are creating scalable opportunities to show your customers how much they matter to you. Brands taking advantage of that opportunity can create unrivaled CX that sets them far ahead of their competition.

The personalization buzzword

Personalization has become a popular buzzword in recent years, but true personalization is much harder to attain than many companies realize. That was the case in 2016 when companies first hopped on the chat bandwagon. The potential for a new communication method was there, but the one-size-fits-all approach companies took in developing their interaction platforms created more problems for customers than it solved.

What they missed is how to create digital experiences in which customers converse with automation that adapts based on user context. Information like their product or service history and preferences should be pulled up the moment a customer engages. Data on disposition, tone, sentiment and stated intent should influence how the customer moves through the system and reaches their desired end goal. That navigation should be effortless and go well beyond text-based communications, including immersive UX options like maps, surveys, carousel selections and more — all in a spirit of lowering the cognitive weight for the customer.

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3 views on the future of geographic-focused funds

For many investors, the coronavirus has effectively taken geography out of the equation when it comes to vetting new opportunities.

While this dynamic opens up startups to more investment opportunities, venture capital firms that focus on a specific region are in a thornier spot. The competitive advantage they once had when raising — the notion that they’re focused on an area no one else is — is potentially threatened.

Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and Alex Wilhelm of the TechCrunch Equity crew discussed the future of geographic-focused funds given the uptick of remote investing:

• Natasha: Early-stage regional funds can win if they remain focused
• Alex: Geo-focused venture funds will be weakened, but won’t die
• Danny: Geo-focused venture funds are dead (and should never have existed)

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Natasha: Early-stage regional funds can win if they remain focused

Since 2014, Steve Case and his team have made an annual bus trip across the country to meet startups in emerging startup hubs. Five days, five cities, and at least $500,000 of investment dollars given to startups. Case would even offer to fly out promising and hard-to-reach startups to have them join the trip.

The Rise of the Rest fund, with over $300 million in assets under management, has invested in over 130 startups across 70 cities, including Austin, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C.

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Qualcomm-powered Chinese XR startup Nreal raises $40 million

Nreal, one of the most-watched mixed reality startups in China, just secured $40 million from a group of high-profile investors in a Series B round that could potentially bring more adoption to its portable augmented headsets.

Kuaishou, the archrival to TikTok’s Chinese version Douyin, led the round, marking yet another video platform to establish links with Nreal, following existing investor iQiyi, China’s own Netflix. Like other major video streaming sites around the world, Kuaishou and iQiyi have dabbled in making augmented reality content, and securing a hardware partner will no doubt be instrumental to their early experiments.

Other backers in the round with plentiful industry resources include GP Capital, which counts state-owned financial holding group Shanghai International Group and major Chinese movie studio Hengdian Group as investors; CCEIF Fund, set up by state-owned telecom equipment maker China Electronics Corporation and state-backed investment bank China International Capital Corporation; GL Ventures, the early-stage fund set up by prominent private equity firm Hillhouse Capital; and Sequoia Capital China.

In early 2019, Nreal brought onboard Xiaomi founder’s venture fund Shunwei Capital for its $15 million Series A funding. As I wrote at the time, AR, VR, MR, XR — whichever marketing coinage you prefer — will certainly be a key piece in Xiaomi’s Internet of Things empire. It’s not hard to see the phone titan sourcing smart glasses from Nreal down the road.

The other key partner of Nreal, a three-year-old company, is Qualcomm. The chipmaker has played an active part in China’s 5G rollout, powering major Chinese phone makers’ next-gen handsets. It supplies Nreal with its Snapdragon processors, allowing the startup’s lightweight mixed reality glasses to easily plug into an Android phone.

“Its closer partnership with Qualcomm will allow it to access Qualcomm’s network of customers, including telecoms companies,” Seewan Toong, an industry consultant on AR and VR, told TechCrunch.

Indeed, the mixed reality developer has already signed a deal with Japanese telco KDDI and in Korea, it’s working with LG’s cellular carrier LG Uplus Corp.

The latest round brings Nreal’s total raise to more than $70 million and will accelerate mass adoption of its mixed reality technology in the 5G era, the company said.

It remains to be seen how Nreal will live up to its promise, secure users at scale and move beyond being a mere poster child for tech giants’ mixed reality ambitions. So far its deals with big telcos are in a way reminiscent of that of Magic Leap, which has been in a legal spat with Nreal, though the Chinese company appears to burn through less cash so far. The troubled American company is currently pivoting to relying on enterprise customers after failing to crack the consumer market.

“Nreal is patient and not in a rush to show they can start selling high volume. It’s trying to prove that there’s a user scenario for its technology,” said Toong.

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Tinder’s interactive video event ‘Swipe Night’ will launch in international markets this month

Tinder’s “Swipe Night” is going global. The dating app announced today that its interactive video series will be available in Asia and other international markets starting on September 12, giving users another way to connect as they continue to stay at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As in the United States, where “Swipe Night” first launched last October, the international version of “Swipe Night” will be broadcast on the weekend. For audiences outside the U.S., three consecutive episodes are planned, starting with the first one on September 12 from 10 a.m. to midnight, and airing on consecutive Saturdays at the same time.

Similar to Netflix’s “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” and other interactive entertainment, “Swipe Night” presents viewers with a “choose-your-own-adventure” narrative, but each of its episodes is only seven minutes long and users’ choices are added to their profile, giving them another way to figure out if someone is a good match.

“Swipe Night” is not the first in-app event that Tinder has introduced over the past couple of years to increase user engagement as it competes with other dating apps for younger users. Other examples, held last year before the pandemic, included Spring Break mode and Festival Mode, which helped members in the United States find other people who were headed to the same vacation destinations or events.

Now that COVID-19 has made in-person meetups less safe, “Swipe Night” has become an important part of Tinder’s business strategy as it, and its competitors, focus on organizing more virtual events and hangouts. In today’s announcement, Tinder said during stay-at-home orders and social distancing, 52% more messages have been sent through the app globally, peaking on April 5, and “swipe volume” by users under 25 (or “Gen Z”) increased by 34%.

As a user engagement experiment, “Swipe Night” proved successful enough in the U.S. to warrant a second season even before stay-at-home orders started there. When it launched last fall, Tinder’s monthly usage was climbing, but users were opening the app less on a daily basis. By the time Tinder announced the second season of “Swipe Night” in February, Tinder said millions of users had tuned into the series and matches and conversations had increased by 26% and 12%, respectively.

“When lockdowns began, we saw an immediate increase in our members’ engagement on Tinder, so we know we play an important role in their stay-at-home experience. While the global health crisis continues, we believe ‘Swipe Night’ can bring a welcome change of pace to our members around the world,” said Tinder chief executive officer Jim Lanzone in today’s announcement.

Now Tinder will find out if audiences in the rest of the world, where its competes with a large roster of other dating apps, will respond to “Swipe Night” with the same level of enthusiasm. Tinder doesn’t break down its member numbers by country, but its APAC head of communications Papri Dev told TechCrunch that more than 50% of its members worldwide are Gen Z, the main audience for “Swipe Night,” and storylines are designed to provoke conversations.

“Having a high stakes story such as an apocalyptic themed event, felt like a strong forcing mechanism to make your choices or decisions really count,” she said. “Our members who are stuck at home are hungry for content, and based on what we’ve seen take off on other platforms, people seem to be open to a wide range of tones and topics. So we wanted to make Swipe Night available to our members in Asia, and around the world, as soon as we felt it would be appropriate.”

Content in Asian markets including Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia will have subtitles in local languages.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Tinder’s interactive video event ‘Swipe Night’ will launch in international markets this month Catherine Shu https://ift.tt/32YKKtB
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Palantir’s concentrated governance is great for execs, but what about shareholders?

A few days ago I wrote down a few notes making a bullish case for Palantir, searching to find good news amidst the company’s huge historical deficits.

Heading into the next phase of Palantir’s march to the public markets, I was very curious to see how the company would hone its S-1 filing to give itself the best possible shot during its impending debut.

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The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

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And we finally did get a new S-1/A filing, a document that our own Danny Crichton quickly parsed and covered. What he found was a set of amendments that seem to increase the chance that three Palantir insiders will control more than 50% of the company’s voting power forever, possibly making it a controlled company which would loose the firm from select regulatory requirements.

Danny dryly noted that “given the diminished voting power of employee and investor shares, it is possible that these voting provisions will negatively impact the final price of those shares.” That’s being polite.

Mulling this over this morning, I kept thinking about Snap, which sold stock in its IPO that gave new shareholders no votes at all, and Facebook, which is controlled by Mark Zuckerberg as his personal fiefdom. The two are not alone in this matter. There are a number of other public tech companies that provide certain groups of pre-IPO shareholders more votes than others on a per-share basis, though perhaps to a smaller degree than what Facebook has managed.

It feels like many startups (and former startups) have decided over time that having material shareholder input is a bad idea. That, in effect, they must run companies as not merely monarchies, but unquestioned ones to boot.

I am not entirely convinced that this is the best way to create long-term shareholder wealth.

If you are on the other side of this particular fence, I understand. After all, Facebook is a global juggernaut and Snap has finally managed to eke out stock-market gains to bring its value it back where it was around when it went public. (A three-year journey.)

But those arguments are only so good. You could easily argue that the two companies could have done much more with less self-sabotage (Facebook) and a bit more spend discipline (Snap).

https://ift.tt/2YAJc8v Palantir’s concentrated governance is great for execs, but what about shareholders? https://ift.tt/31YPksP

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Mustard raises $1.7M to improve athletic mechanics with AI

Athletic coaching is a massive, multi-billion-dollar industry. No surprise, really, given the massive revenue some top athletes are able to generate. Mustard is working to supplant — or at least augment — some of that pricey coaching with the launch of a new mobile app designed to analyze an athlete’s mechanics and offer corrective tips to help them improve.

The company was co-founded by Tom House, a former reliever whose coaching career has earned him the reputation as one the “father[s] of modern pitching mechanics.”

“Too many kids miss out on the power of play and the many physical and mental benefits of sports—studies show that 70% of kids stop playing sports by the age of 13 due to cost and lack of access to quality coaching. Mustard offers every kid access to the same coaching programs and extensive biomechanical analysis used by the best athletes in the world, and the same personalized training protocols that I use with the Hall of Famers I see in person,” House says in a release tied to the news. “We want to make elite personalized coaching accessible to all.”

Mustard announced this week that it has raised $1.7 million to improve its tool, led by Shasta Ventures and Intersect VC, along with a number of angel investors, including David Novak and Mike Dixon, and all-star athletes Nolan Ryan and Drew Brees. Ryan, in fact, has become one of the main faces of the company, gracing its home page, along with a color scheme that appears inspired by his days with the Astros.

The name isn’t great. It’s a reference to the phrase “put some mustard on it” — which refers to the act of adding a bit of an edge to a throw.

The app is opening up for a limited, free public beta, focused solely on baseball to start. “The product will be entirely free at first,” CEO Rocky Collins tells TechCrunch. “Over time, we will add premium features for a low monthly subscription. Even when premium features are added, we plan to continue to offer a free version of the app that offers tremendous value to users.”

The system relies on the smartphone’s camera and then uses proprietary AI algorithms to monitor the player’s motion and approximate human athletic coaching. For the baseball side of things, the company has employed engineers from Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM). Future sports will be added at some point down the road.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Mustard raises $1.7M to improve athletic mechanics with AI https://ift.tt/2GyzCMR

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Teemyco creates virtual offices so that you can grab a room and talk with colleagues

Meet Teemyco, a Stockholm-based startup that wants to reproduce office interactions in a virtual environment. The company wants to foster spontaneous interactions and casual collaboration with a room-based interface. Each employee moves from one room to another just like in a physical office.

If you’re no longer working from an office, chances are you rely heavily on email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet or a combination of all those tools. While those tools work perfectly fine for what they’re designed to achieve, many companies feel like important information is getting lost. It’s harder to bump into a colleague next to the coffee machine and ask a quick question.

With Teemyco, each person is working in a virtual room. By default, you work in the lobby. You can consider it as an open space with multiple desks. When you want to get together for a planned or unplanned meeting, you can pull someone from the lobby and create another room.

In that room, you can start an audio call or a video call. You can see your colleagues in the corner of your screen and stay focused on a document at the same time, or you can put a video call in full screen. When someone is done, they can leave the room.

Those interactions are less formal than what you get with video-conferencing services. You don’t have to send a link to a Zoom room, you don’t have to send a calendar invite. People hop in and hop out.

If you’re working on something important, you can move to a focus room so that you don’t get interrupted every fifteen minutes. Other people won’t be able to pull you from your virtual desk. If you have to run some errands, you can also put yourself in a room that says you’re not there — those rooms can act as a status.

Teemyco also helps you work next to your favorite colleague. You can create a room and use a walkie-talkie feature for quick interactions throughout the day. And, of course, you can create a break room for non-work related discussions.

Teemyco is still a young company. The product is only available in beta. The company raised a $1 million seed round led by Luminar Ventures with Antler, Gazella and various business angels also participating.

It’s also not going to work for all companies. I’m not sure it scales well for a company with hundreds of employees for instance. Introverts might not be fans of real-time communication either.

If you’re a remote-first company, you know that it’s important to have a culture of transparency. And written information is always more transparent than video conferences.

And yet, depending on your corporate culture, something like Teemyco can be useful. It can augment information stored in shared documents and internal communication tools.

It’s an interesting product that proves that the inevitable debate between physical offices and remote teams is not a binary problem. There is some granularity and companies can adjust the knob depending on specific needs.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Teemyco creates virtual offices so that you can grab a room and talk with colleagues https://ift.tt/31ZwWjA

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Cyber threat startup Cygilant hit by ransomware

Cygilant, a threat detection cybersecurity company, has confirmed a ransomware attack.

Christina Lattuca, Cygilant’s chief financial officer, said in a statement that the company was “aware of a ransomware attack impacting a portion of Cygilant’s technology environment.”

“Our Cyber Defense and Response Center team took immediate and decisive action to stop the progression of the attack. We are working closely with third-party forensic investigators and law enforcement to understand the full nature and impact of the attack. Cygilant is committed to the ongoing security of our network and to continuously strengthening all aspects of our security program,” the statement said.

Cygilant is believed to be the latest victim of NetWalker, a ransomware-as-a-service group, which lets threat groups rent access to its infrastructure to launch their own attacks, according to Brett Callow, a ransomware expert and threat analyst at security firm Emsisoft.

The file-encrypting malware itself not only scrambles a victim’s files but also exfiltrates the data to the hacker’s servers. The hackers typically threaten to publish the victim’s files if the ransom isn’t paid.

A site on the dark web associated with the NetWalker ransomware group posted screenshots of internal network files and directories believed to be associated with Cygilant.

Cygilant did not say if it paid the ransom. But at the time of writing, the dark web listing with Cygilant’s data had disappeared.

“Groups permanently delist companies when they’ve paid or, in some cases, temporarily delist them once they’ve agreed to come to the negotiating table,” said Callow. “NetWalker has temporarily delisted pending negotiations in at least one other case.”

As ransomware gets craftier, companies must start thinking creatively

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How to craft the right pitch deck for your company at Disrupt 2020

Your startup is special and different, and you need to explain that to distracted investors in just a few short slides. The pandemic has added to your challenge, because more investors have been looking through more decks than ever online — and spending less time on each.

To help you create the right fundraising presentation, we’ve put together a panel of expert investors at Disrupt 2020 from September 14-18 who have been backing early-stage companies through good times and bad. We’re also providing daily pitch deck teardown sessions that can serve as a guide (here’s how to submit your own if you’ve already registered for Disrupt 2020).

Ann Miura-Ko is the co-founder of Floodgate and a leading early-stage investor (and computer security expert) with investments including Lyft, Xamarin, Clover Health, Clever and many more. She’s been one of our most popular guest authors and speakers over the years, covering topics like building a minimum viable company and finding the inflection point.

Lo Toney is a long-time founder and product leader who spent much of this past decade investing with Comcast Ventures’s Catalyst Fund and Google Ventures, before founding Plexo Capital in 2018 (and serving as a mentor at Mucker Capital during this time). His focus includes investing in diverse founders globally, as well as backing other funds with the same mission. Some of his recent investment include PlayVS, Replicated and StyleSeat on the company side, and Precursor, Boldstart, Female Founders Fund and WorkBench on the fund side.

Rajan Anandan is the leader of Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s “rapid scale-up” program for founders in India and Southeast Asia. He previously served as Google’s top business executive in the region for more than eight years, held executive roles in Microsoft and Dell operations before that and has invested in dozens of startups in India and around the world.

Join us at this pitch deck teardown and so much more at Disrupt 2020 happening from September 14-18. Grab your Disrupt Digital Pro Pass today and during our Labor Day Flash Sale you can save an extra $100! Hope to see you there!

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J How to craft the right pitch deck for your company at Disrupt 2020 https://ift.tt/3lWwfiW

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Exhibitors at Disrupt 2020: Register now to meet accelerators next week

Disrupt 2020 is all about helping startups find and create ways to drive their business forward in these most challenging times. We partnered with cela to give exhibitors in Digital Startup Alley one sweet opportunity — networking with 13 accelerators.

If you’re exhibiting — or plan to — don’t miss out on your chance to meet with up to 13 accelerators and pre-interview for their upcoming virtual cohorts. The first in our series of accelerator sessions — where you’ll gather information and pitch your product — takes place next week. Here’s everything you need to know.

Date: September 8

Time: 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. (PT)

Accelerator focus: The following four accelerator programs are designed for the more established startups. You are have a customer base. If that describes your startup, review the accelerator websites below. If you’re interested in scheduling a meeting — and you meet the program’s requirements — you can register now on CrunchMatch.

Participating accelerators

• NUMA helps early and growth stage international tech startups fast-track their growth and scale in the U.S. through virtual and in-person startup acceleration programs. You’ll find application requirements here.
• Techstars helps grow entrepreneurial ideas into world-changing businesses. You’ll find application requirements here.
• Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator combines seed capital and hands-on help with an expert team to positively impact the trajectory of early-stage startups. You’ll find application requirements here.
• Plug and Play’s health program connects the best startups in the world to corporations who want to disrupt the healthcare industry. You’ll find application requirements here.

It’s not too late to take advantage of our accelerator speed networking sessions and reap the benefits that come with exposing your startup to thousands of Disrupt attendees from around the world. Simply purchase a Digital Startup Alley Exhibitor Package, and you’re eligible to meet and potentially pitch your way into an accelerator cohort that could change the trajectory of your business.

None of the above-mentioned accelerators fit your startup? Don’t worry, we have two more accelerator sessions on tap.

Date: September 9

Time: 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. PT

Accelerators: She Gets Sh!t Done, Halo Incubator, Startup Boost Pre- Accelerator, Global Startup Ecosystem (Her Future Summit)

Date:  September 10

Time: 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. PT

Accelerators: Plug and Play (IoT),  Backstage Capital,  Plug and Play (enterprise tech), StartEd Accelerator, Quake Capital 

Don’t miss your chance to connect with accelerators — and apply to their virtual programs. The first opportunity takes place on September 8, and it’s available only to startups exhibiting in Startup Alley at Disrupt 2020. Want in? Grab a Digital Startup Alley Exhibitor Package today and crack open a giant can of possibility.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Exhibitors at Disrupt 2020: Register now to meet accelerators next week https://ift.tt/3bt35mv

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