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Saturday, September 12, 2020

Check out these Breakout Sessions at Disrupt 2020

We’re on the brink of the biggest Disrupt in TechCrunch history. It’s five days of education, exhibition, competition and connection that spans the globe. As you plan your schedule, keep this in mind: You’ll find some of the most insightful and downright interesting programming at Disrupt 2020 in our Breakout Sessions. And that, given our powerhouse agenda, is saying something.

Every Disrupt attendee can take part in the breakout sessions — they’re open to every pass level. Breakouts cover a range of topics and formats. You might watch startups pitch, attend a workshop or take in a panel discussion. No matter what, you’re bound to receive valuable insight that can inspire you and help your business.

Take advantage of our partners’ expertise and check out any (or all) of these breakout sessions. You’ll be glad you did.

 

Monday, September 14

11:00 am – 11:50 am

Sponsored by Adobe

How to Invest in Infrastructure to Deliver Experience 

Gabie Boko, Global VP Digital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise & Adobe VP of Platform Engineering, Anjul Bhambhri discuss digital transformation and experience delivery. 

 

12:00 pm – 12:30 pm

Sponsored by Taiwan Tech Arena

Taiwan Pavilion Pitch-off session 1

Featuring twenty startups in healthcare, IoT, blockchain, AR-VR, cyber security, E-learning, and green technology

 

Tuesday, September 15

9:00 am – 9:50 am

Sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank

Diversity as Disruption: Take action now to create a more diverse ecosystem

Recent events continue to demonstrate that change is not happening fast enough. How can we ensure the current social justice momentum is more than just talk? Guided by SVB’s recent research into the “4th wave of venture capital,” learn how three industry leaders are tackling the problem with real actions. By the close of the session, leave with tangible steps you can take today – whether as an individual or as a firm — to make a meaningful, move-the-needle impact in your organization.

 

9:00 am – 10:30 am

Sponsored by Taiwan Tech Arena

Taiwan Reception: Innovations and investment opportunities amid COVID19 Pandemics with Christine Tsai (500 Startups), Allan May (Life Science Angels)

Join Christine, Allan, Tico Blumenthal (Life Sciences Angels), and Laura Dietch (BioTrace Medical) to explore the investment and innovation framework in post-COVID19, and to discuss the driver of innovation healthcare amid the pandemic and economic collapse. TTA will also present the key anti-COVID19 innovative measurements in Taiwan to achieve the lowest infection rate around the world.

 

10:00 am – 10:30am

Sponsored by hub.brussels

Belgian Startup Pitch Competition

Hub.brussels invites you to join us for the 6th edition of our Belgian startup pitch competition.

 

12:00 pm – 12:30 pm

Taiwan Pavilion Pitch-off Session 2

Sponsored by Taiwan Tech Arena

Featuring twenty startups in AI solutions, softwares, big data, edge computing, and space technology

 

2:30 pm – 4:00 pm 

TC Include Reception sponsored by Sootchy

Sponsored by Sootchy

INVITE ONLY – TC Include kicks off this year’s founder cohort with organizational partners Black Female Founders, Female Founders Alliance, Latinx Startup Alliance and StartOut with remarks by Sootchy.

 

Wednesday, September 16

9:00 am – 9:50 am

Sponsored by Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco

“Grow North”: How Canada Empowers Investors and Founders

Come listen to a group of Canadian founders who will talk about their start-ups and how Canada has helped them grow and succeed globally.

 

10:00 am – 11:00 am

Sponsored by StartUp Bahrain

Bahrain: Your gateway to the Middle East and beyond

INVITE ONLY – With its supportive ecosystem, advanced digital infrastructure, flexible and pioneering regulations; rapid growth in funding opportunities and a liberal market, Bahrain is the ideal testbed for startups and scaleups to test their products and solutions before growing and expanding across the Middle East

 

10:00 am – 10:30 am 

Sponsored by JETRO

Japanese Startup Pitches

Come see the latest exciting technology and services coming from Japan.

 

11:00 am – 11:30 am 

Sponsored by KOCCA

Join Us to Watch Seven Amazing Startups from Korea

K-pop? K-Drama? K-Games? K-Entertainment? All startups with K-contents will show off during this Pitch Off

 

12:00 pm – 12:50 pm 

Sponsored by Envestnet | Yodlee

Making Data Meaningful for the FinTech Ecosystem

Open finance/banking represents a new era of financial data transparency. It brings an unprecedented opportunity for FinTechs to provide personalized guidance consumers need to improve financial wellness. Envestnet | Yodlee experts will discuss empowering the entire FinTech ecosystem with enriched financial data and insights, plus the future of open banking in the U.S.

 

Thursday, September 17

10:00 am – 11:30 am

Sponsored by Dassault Systèmes

Dassault Systemes’s 3DEXPERIENCE Lab Global Accelerator Program

INVITE ONLY – 3DEXPERIENCE Lab is Dassault Systèmes’s global innovation program that offers innovative startups free access to Dassault Systèmes collaborative Design, Engineering, Simulation & Data Intelligence solutions, along with mentoring, and marketing support for two years. Come; learn how the Lab selects, mentors and supports its startups!

 

10:00 am – 10:50 am

Sponsored by AppsFlyer

Advertising Disrupted: What User Privacy Means For Marketers

This session offers the unique opportunity to join a live recording of AppsFlyer’s industry podcast, Next in Marketing. Mike Shields, podcast host and former Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, AdWeek and Digiday editor along with guests (Brian Quinn, US President & GM, AppsFlyer and Ana Milicevic, Co-founder and Principal, Sparrow Advisers) will delve into the ecosystem’s pivotal privacy updates, including Apple’s IDFA opt-out and the impact of iOS 14 to measurement and attribution, as well as targeting in a cookieless world. You’ll also hear about the future of personalization post-regulations in this session that is sure to address the most pressing issues and headlines on the mind of marketers globally.

 

12:00 pm – 12:50 pm

Sponsored by KITE

It Takes An Ecosystem To Innovate: Startups, Corporations and the Connectors that Bring Them Together

Startups plus large enterprises can fuel each other’s growth and bottom line, whether it’s a partnership, investment or acquisition. But bringing the right ones together needs more than serendipity: it requires a dynamic ecosystem that includes consultants, accelerators and VCs (aka the connectors). We sit down with top leaders from around the ecosystem to learn how they discover innovative solutions — and get to outcomes — faster.

 

And for those who want to upgrade to a Disrupt Digital PRO Pass you can get access to these sessions:

Tuesday, September 15

10:30 am – 10:50 am

Sponsored by All Raise

Showing Your Work: VCs Investing in Diversity Share Their Secrets

More than 80% of venture capital firms don’t have a single Black investor and 68% of firms don’t have any female partners. As VCs across the country urgently seek to diversify both their investing teams and their portfolios, they could learn a lot from these amazing investors, who have made diversity a central part of their investing thesis from the start. Join us for a candid conversation about the power of investing in underrepresented founders and tapping into over $4.4 trillion in value. This panel will be moderated by Pam Kostka, CEO of All Raise featuring Sarah Kunst, Founder & Managing Director at Cleo Capital and Christie Pitts, General Partner at Backstage Capital who are both leading VCs who focus their investments on founders from underrepresented backgrounds.

 

11:30 am – 11:50 am

Sponsored by Toyota

Innovating with Fuel Cells

James Kast demonstrates how Toyota continues to navigate the innovation of fuel cells and the implementation across numerous industries.

 

That’s a mighty fine breakout lineup if we do say so ourselves. Yep, we’re tooting our own horn. Don’t let all that valuable expertise go to waste. Make sure you carve out time in your Disrupt schedule for insight and inspiration!



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Check out these Breakout Sessions at Disrupt 2020 https://ift.tt/33nsyKz

Is the vaunted cloud acceleration falling flat?

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.

Is the vaunted cloud acceleration falling flat?

This week we’re taking a look at the bad side of the cloud software market. In case you were avoiding the news over the last week, tech and software stocks are struggling. Not much compared to their 2020 gains, mind, but after months of only going up their recent declines have been notable. (As I write to you, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is headed for its worst week since March.)

The pullback makes some sense. Having watched SaaS and cloud valuations get stretched to historical highs, Slack’s earnings were an endcap on a good, but not-quite-as-good-as-expected set of results from public cloud and SaaS companies. 

As we’ve noted, most public software companies are not seeing their revenue growth accelerate. Some public software companies may be seeing their growth deceleration slow, but the number of public software companies actually accelerating in 2020 is tiny. The actually-accelerating group is Zoom, and maybe one or two other companies. 

Why is that, given all that we’ve heard about the presumably accelerating digital transformation? Slack earnings are a good explainer. The enterprise communications company’s recent filings explain that its COVID-bump has somewhat dissipated, while a number of COVID-related problems are persisting. 

Seeing recently risen valuations slip in the face of a lack of materially accelerated growth and some churn issues is reasonable. 

Does this matter for startups? Some. Public software valuations are still elevated compared to historical norms, which helps software startups defend their valuations and raise well. And there are plenty of startup hotspots as we’ve noted, including API-delivered startups enjoying time in the sun, as well as edtech startups that caught a COVID-related tailwind.

I am chatting with investors from a16z, Bessemer, and Canaan next week at Disrupt about the future of SaaS, collecting notes on the private-market side of this particular issue. So, more to come. But for now, I think we’ve seen the top of the peak and are now dealing more with reality than hype. Or, as public investors might say, the COVID trade has run its course and earnings will set the tone moving forward.

Market Notes

Moving on to market notes, a fintech stat, and some other bits of data for your consumption and edification:

A brief interlude: Disrupt is next week, you should come. You can enjoy it from the comfort of your couch. 

Various and Sundry

SaaS and cloud earnings continue to trickle in, which means I spent a good portion of my week talking to more execs at public companies. Short notes from Smartsheet, nCino and BigCommerce to follow, along with some final thoughts for your weekend.

  • On the valuations front, Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader told TechCrunch that “investors are thinking about how to balance historically high multiples with historically high potential returns in the space that’s still very young.” 
  • He added that no one doubts that cloud “is going to be the answer” to a lot of stuff, or that “people are [going to] change how they work,” but did note that cloud companies are not impervious to macro headwinds, because “cloud companies serve non-cloud companies,” and not merely companies in sectors that are excelling.
  • This fits neatly into our notes on Slack above. More on Smartsheet’s earnings here.
  • nCino had a good quarter, beating expectations and guiding well during its first public earnings report. However, like many other SaaS and cloud companies, it has lost some valuation altitude in recent weeks. It’s still miles above its IPO price, however.
  • I was curious about how the post-IPO period has been for the company’s CEO, Pierre Naudé, and his response was fun. Like all new public company CEOs, he made sure to note how quickly his team got back to work after the debut, but he also told The Exchange that he does now spend time that he used to invest in customers and “innovation” talking to analysts and investors. 
  • Being a public company, therefore, has time and focus costs that are worth considering, as we see so many tech shops approach the public markets.
  • And then there was BigCommerce, which went public quite recently. I got back on the horn with CEO Brent Bellm, wanting to learn a bit more about the current state of the e-commerce market. 
  • Here’s what the CEO had to say, lightly edited and condensed for clarity:

“I think it’s staying pretty hot. The surprising thing in the post-pandemic weeks was just how rapidly growth accelerated, and consumer and business adoption grew. We all kept saying ‘well at some point stores will reopen, and the growth rates will come back down.’ But the growth rates for actual sales running through stores continued to be very strong. You know, whether you look at our customer set, or [at] credit card data from Bank of America or others […] you can see quite clearly that e-commerce remains very, very hot. It’s a permanent change in behavior. Consumers have found a lot more places where they now like to buy online and reasons to like to buy online, and companies have found new and more effective ways to sell.”

  • This is probably a good reminder to turn our attention back to e-commerce when we get a chance post-Disrupt. 
  • And, finally, read Natasha on why rolling funds are blowing up, something that we talked about on the podcast this week.

That’s all the room we have. Hugs, fist bumps, and good luck.

Alex



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Is the vaunted cloud acceleration falling flat? https://ift.tt/32p4BTZ

Snowflake, Unity, JFrog move towards IPOs despite public market turmoil

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.

Warren Buffet is eager to invest in a money-burning SaaS unicorn that is about to IPO. Despite recent tech stock declines and growing fears of US election turbulence, this is one reason that Snowflake is on track to be one of the biggest offerings of the year. And it is not the only company defying the pandemic and newer problems in order to get out of the gate soon.

First, here’s Alex Wilhelm with more Snowflake filing details:

The $75 to $85 per-share IPO price target values the firm at between $20.9 billion and $23.7 billion, huge sums for the private company. Its IPO could raise more than $2.7 billion for the startup. Snowflake  was last valued at around $12.5 billion when it raised a Series G worth $479 million earlier this year.

Built into those valuation projections are two private placements of stock in Snowflake, $250 million apiece from both Salesforce,  the well-known CRM player, and Berkshire Hathaway, better known for its investment returns in the 80s and 90s, Cherry Coke and Charlie Munger’s humor. Jokes aside, the inclusion of Salesforce in the IPO is notable, but not a shock, but Berkshire taking part in the public market debut of Snowflake, a company with historic losses that are nigh-tyrannical, is.

Today, “epic growth, improving gross margins and dramatically curtailed losses” are factors that lure investors like Buffett, Alex concludes.

In other pre-IPO analysis this week, Eric Peckham takes a deeper look at Unity this week, updating a massive analysis he had done last year. Basically, the game engine creator could be more central to our online future than many seem to realize today:

Much of the press about Unity’s S-1 filing mischaracterizes the business. Unity is easily misunderstood because most people who aren’t (game) developers don’t know what a game engine actually does, because Unity has numerous revenue streams, and because Unity and the competitor it is most compared to — Epic Games — only partially overlap in their businesses….

For those in the gaming industry who are familiar with Unity, the S-1 might surprise you in a few regards. The Asset Store is a much smaller business that you might think, Unity is more of an enterprise software company than a self-service platform for indie devs and advertising solutions appear to make up the largest segment of Unity’s revenue.

In an accompanying analysis for Extra Crunch, he digs into the filing and maps out the bear and bull cases for the company. Some of the biggest issues he notes are that it is still fairly reliant on advertising (even though it wants a SaaS multiple) and it is continuing to lose lots of money on ambitious expansions. So this is probably not Warren Buffett’s type of frozen dessert, if you will. Risk-seekers and futurists, however, will want to try this free sample of the bull case:

Game engines are eating the world… A vast swath of entertainment and work activities already center on interactive content. Unity has demonstrated value and early adoption across numerous industries for a long list of use cases; it is on the precipice of entering the daily workload of millions of professionals, from engineers to industrial designers to film producers to marketers. Its Create Solutions division is on a path to becoming something of a next generation Adobe ($11 billion in 2019 revenue): A creative suite used by design, engineering, marketing and sales teams across industries.

As AR and VR technology expands into mainstream use over the decade ahead, Unity’s adoption will only expand further. The majority of AR and VR content is already made with Unity’s engine and Unity’s R&D is improving the ease of creating such content by less technical professionals (and students). This positions Unity to expand into key functions higher up in the tech/content stack of mixed reality by providing identity, app distribution, payment and other solutions across content experiences.

Elsewhere in our IPO coverage, Danny Crichton got the details about Palantir insiders accelerating their stock sales for Extra Crunch, and Alex dug into the fresh Sumo Logic and JFrog filings S-1 filings.

blank check SPAC

Image Credits: Lawrence Anareta / Getty Images

Two considerations of SPACs

Special purpose acquisition companies are a thing now for tech startups that want to go public, but are they the best thing? Here’s top seed-VC investor Josh Kopelman’s take, via an interview from this week with Connie Loizos.

On the one hand, just for fun, I made sure that we owned Lastround.com in case we ever wanted to launch our SPAC. [Laughs.] But it’s hard to know the true benefit of a SPAC. And I think that now that we’ve begun to see a market shift toward allowing direct listings with a fundraising component, you might see that as a far more viable and frequent fundraising or a liquidity device.

A fresh startup trend he’s more positive about is rolling funds (short-window raises for small very early investments, like the new offering from AngelList).

But back to SPACs. George Arison, cofounder and co-CEO of car-buying unicorn Shift, wrote a guest post for Extra Crunch this week about how he has approached taking his own company through a SPAC. Among other things, he says, private investments in public equity are not only good but essential:

There are some in Silicon Valley who think that raising a PIPE is a bad idea — quite frankly, this is patently false. A core reason why SPACs work today, and why they differ from the first generation of SPACs that often did not work, is because of the PIPE process. The PIPE period allows companies to raise more capital, to validate valuations, and it also creates a pathway to transition “special situations” investors to fundamental investors that you want as long-term shareholders.

A pause for Belarus, and PandaDoc employees

After Belarus-born PandaDoc CEO Mikita Mikado publicly supported opposition to his country’s dictatorship, state police raided the company’s large operation in the country and imprisoned four of its employees on spurious charges. As they fight for justice for their colleagues, and for the country’s political process, they’re planning to close operations in the country, and are joining with other startups to highlight the damage to the local tech scene. More about the movement in the subtitled video below:

Investor surveys: proptech’s future, Warsaw and more

We’ve been trying to understand what is really going on with real estate and proptech, given the various impacts the traditionally glacial sector has experienced lately (pandemic, remote work, retail issues etc.). On Tuesday we ran the second part of our most recent survey, focused on present and future opportunities. Here’s Clelia Warburg Peters, venture partner at Bain Capital Ventures, about making peace with real estate agents and focusing on financial and processing aspect that have not been disrupted in a very long time

Up until recently, the innovation in the residential space was all focused on disintermediating the real estate broker, and I think the most sophisticated entrepreneurs are increasingly understanding that service is a core component of a home sale… [T]he bigger opportunity is finding a way to leverage the position of the real estate agent (in whatever form) to sell affiliated products, including title, mortgage and home insurance or to innovate in those products themselves.

Elsewhere in survey work this past week, Mike Butcher checked in with investors focused on Warsaw and Poland, and is also looking for folks to talk to about the Vienna tech scene.

Around TechCrunch

Announcing the Startup Battlefield companies at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020

Meet the final round judges who will decide the winner of this year’s Disrupt Battlefield Competition

FaZe Clan’s Lee Trink, Troy Carter and Nick ‘Nickmercs’ Kolcheff are coming to Disrupt 2020

Drew Houston will talk about building a startup and digital transformation during COVID at TechCrunch Disrupt

Women exhibitors in Digital Startup Alley: Meet female-focused accelerators

Meet the TC Top Picks for Disrupt 2020

All the ways to meet someone and make connections at Disrupt 2020

Across the week

TechCrunch

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

It’s time to better identify the cost of cybersecurity risks in M&A deals

Why established venture firms should court emerging managers

Apple lays out its messy vision for how xCloud and Stadia will work with its App Store rules

Viral article puts the brakes on China’s food delivery frenzy

Extra Crunch

How to respond to a data breach

Use ‘productive paranoia’ to build cybersecurity culture at your startup

What’s driving API-powered startups forward in 2020?

Slack’s earnings detail how COVID-19 is both a help and a hindrance to cloud growth

VCs pour funding into edtech startups as COVID-19 shakes up the market

#EquityPod

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, and Chris Gates behind the scenes tweaking the dials as always. This week was a real team effort as we are heading into the maw of Disrupt — more here, see you there — but there was a lot of news all the same.

So, here’s what we got to:

We wrapped with whatever this is, which was at least good for a laugh. We are back next week at Disrupt, so see you all there!

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 PodcastsOvercastSpotify and all the casts.



https://ift.tt/2GVveHP Snowflake, Unity, JFrog move towards IPOs despite public market turmoil https://ift.tt/32ouzHb

Disrupt 2020 kicks off tomorrow — are you ready?

Happy Disrupt 2020 Eve, startup fans! It’s been a crazy mad dash to transform our annual flagship San Francisco event at Moscone Center into the first all-virtual Disrupt (thanks, COVID-19). Then again, going global seems an appropriate way to celebrate 10 years of Disruption. It all starts tomorrow with a pre-show session to explain how to access the different platforms we’ll use during the event — are you ready?

Wait, what? Did you just say you don’t have your Disrupt 2020 pass yet? Talk about a vinyl record scratch moment. Okay, don’t panic. You can still join your early-stage startup community and discover untold opportunities to build your business. Let’s break down the different pass options, access levels and current pricing.

Important note: Pricing for all passes increase tomorrow, September 13 at 11:59 p.m. (PT), so don’t drag your feet a moment longer. Choose and buy your pass right now.

 

Disrupt Digital Pro Pass ($345): You receive online access to all the programming on the Disrupt stage and the Extra Crunch stage. We’re talking live stream and replays on demand. Interactive sessions let you ask questions, participate in polling and engage with speakers. Your pass includes CrunchMatch to make virtual networking easy, organized, efficient and effective. It will come in handy as you find and meet attendees from around the world — and explore and connect with hundreds of early-stage startups in Digital Startup Alley — the show’s expo area. Meet the Startup Battlefield competitors and the TC Top Picks!

Disrupt Digital Pro Pass — Investor ($345): You receive all the features listed above and special opportunities to connect and network with the investor community. Plus, you receive a guide to the exhibitors in Startup Alley to simplify connecting with early-stage startups both during and after the event.

Digital Pro Pass — Students ($125), military personnel, active government employees and non-profit agency employees ($145): If you belong to any of the aforementioned groups, congrats, you qualify for a discount for full access to Disrupt 2020. Your pass provides the same level of access as the standard Digital Pro Pass but your status must be verifiable.

Disrupt Digital Pass ($45): You receive live access only to the Disrupt Stage, Breakout Sessions (workshops, product demonstrations, startup pitches, networking receptions) and access to the Digital Startup Alley expo area.

A multitude of ways and price points to make Disrupt 2020 accessible and to help you discover opportunities that can take your business forward to the next level and beyond. Get on board, buy your pass before 11:59 p.m. (PT) tomorrow night and save. We can’t wait to see where Disrupt takes you!



https://ift.tt/2GRGwwB Disrupt 2020 kicks off tomorrow — are you ready? https://ift.tt/3k9ZsoM

Rocket startup Astra’s first orbital launch attempt ends early due to first-stage burn failure

Alameda-based rocket launch startup Astra finally got the chance to launch its first orbital test mission from its Alaska-based facility on Saturday, after the attempt had been delayed multiple times due to weather and other issues. The 8:19 PM PT lift-off of Astra’s ‘Rocket 3.1’ test vehicle went well – but the flight ended relatively shortly after that, during the first-stage engine burn and long before reaching orbit.

Astra wasn’t expecting to actually reach orbit on this particular flight – it has always said that its goal is to reach orbit within three test flights of Rocket, and prior to this first mission, said that the main goal was to have a good first-stage burn on this one specifically. This wasn’t a nominal first-stage burn, of course, since that’s when the failure occurred, but the company still noted in a blog post that “the rocket performed very well” according to their first reviews of the data.

The mission ended early because of what appears to be a bit of unwanted back-and-forth wobbling in the rocket as it ascended, Astra said, which caused an engine shutdown by the vehicle’s automated safety system. That’s actually also good news, since it means the steps Astra has taken to ensure safe failures are also working as designed. You can see in the video above that the light of the rocket’s engines simply go out during flight, and then some time later there’s a fireball from its impact on the ground.

It’s worth noting that most first flights of entirely new rockets don’t go entirely as planned – including those by SpaceX, whose founder and CEO Elon Musk expressed his encouragement to the Astra team on Twitter. Likewise, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck also chimed in with support. Not to mention that Astra has been operating under extreme conditions, with just a six-person team on the ground in Alaska to deploy the launch system, which was set up in under a week, due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Astra will definitely be able to get a lot of valuable data out of this launch that it can use to put towards improving the chances of its next try going well. The company notes that it expects to review said data “over the next several weeks” as it proceeds towards the second flight in this series of three attempts. Rocket 3.2, the test article for that mission, is already completed and awaiting that try.



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Rocket startup Astra’s first orbital launch attempt ends early due to first-stage burn failure https://ift.tt/2FnG2Or

DCM has already made nearly $1 billion off its $26 million bet on Bill.com

David Chao, the cofounder of the cross-border venture firm DCM, speaks English, Japanese, and Mandarin. But he also knows how to talk to founders.

It’s worth a lot. Consider that DCM should see more than $1 billion from the $26.4 million it invested across 14 years in the cloud-based business-to-business payments company Bill.com, starting with its A round. Indeed, by the time Bill.com went public last December, when its shares priced at $22 apiece, DCM’s stake — which was 16% sailing into the IPO — was worth a not-so-small fortune.

Since then, Wall Street’s lust for both digital payments and subscription-based revenue models has driven Bill.com’s shares to roughly $90 each. Little wonder that in recent weeks, DCM has sold roughly 70 percent of its stake for nearly $900 million. (It still owns 30 percent of its position.)

We talked with Chao earlier today about Bill.com, on whose board he sits and whose founder, René Lacerte, is someone Chao backed previously. We also talked about another very lucrative stake DCM holds right now, about DCM’s newest fund, and about how Chao navigates between the U.S. and China as relations between the two countries worsen. Our conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

TC: I’m seeing you owned about 33% of Bill.com after the first round. How did that initial check come to pass? Had you invested before in Lacerte?

DC: That’s right. Renee started [an online payroll] company called PayCycle and we’d backed him and it sold to Intuit [in 2009] and Renee made good money and we made money. And when he wanted to start this next thing, he said, ‘Look, I want to do something that’s a bigger outcome. I don’t want to sell the company along the way. I just want this time to do a big public company.’

TC: Why did he sell PayCycle if that was his ambition?

DC: It was largely because when you’re a first-time CEO and entrepreneur and a large company offers you the chance to make millions and millions of dollars, you’re a bit more tempted to sell the company. And it was a good price. For where the company was, it was a decent price.

Bill.com was a little bit different. We had good offers before going public. We even had an offer right before we went public.  But Renee said, ‘No, this time, I want to go all the way.’ And he fulfilled that promise he’d made to himself. It’s a 14-year success story.

TC: You’ve sold most of your stake in recent weeks for $900 million; how does that outcome compare with other recent exits for DCM? 

DC: We actually have another recent one that’s phenomenal. We invested in a company called Kuaishou in China. It’s the largest competitor to Bytedance’s TikTok in China. We’ve invested $49.3 million altogether and now that stake is worth $3.8 billion. The company is still private held, but we actually cashed out around 15% of our holdings. and with just that sale alone we’ve already [seen 10 times] that $30 million.

TC: How do you think about selling off your holdings, particularly once a company has gone public?

DC: It’s really case by case. In general, once a company goes public, we probably spend somewhere between 18 months to three years [unwinding our position]. We had two big IPOs in Japan last year. One company [had] a $1 billion market cap; the other was a $2 billion company. There are some [cases] that are 12 months and there are some [where we own some shares] for four or five years.

TC: What types of businesses are these newly public companies in Japan?

DC: They’re both B2B. One is pretty much the Bill.com of Japan. The other makes contact management software

TC: Isn’t DCM also an investor in Blued, the LGBTQ dating app that went public in the U.S. in July?

DC: Yes, our stake wasn’t  very big,  but we were probably the first major VC to jump in because it was controversial.

TC: I also saw that you closed a new $880 million early stage fund this summer.

DC: Yes, that’s right. It was largely driven by the fact that many of our funds have done well. We’re now on fund nine, but our fund seven is on paper today 9x, and even the fund that Bill.com is in, fund four, is now more than 3x. So is fund five. So we’re in a good spot.

TC: As a cross-border fund, what does the growing tension between the U.S and China mean for your team and how it operates?

DC: It’s not a huge impact. If we were currently investing in semiconductor companies, for example, I think it would be a pretty rough period, because [the U.S.] restricts all the money coming from any foreign sources. At least, you’d be under strong scrutiny. And if we invested in a semiconductor company in China, you might not be able to go public in the U.S.

But the kinds of deals that we do, which are largely B2B and B2C — more on the software and services side — they aren’t as impacted. I’d say 90% of our deals in China focus on the domestic market. And so it doesn’t really impact us as much.

I think some of the Western institutions putting money into the Chinese market — that might be decreasing, or at least they’re a little bit more on the sidelines, trying to figure out whether they should be continuing to invest in China. And maybe for Chinese companies, less companies will go public in the U.S., etcetera. But some of these companies can go public in Hong Kong.

TC: How you feel about U.S. administration’s policies?  Do you understand them? Are you frustrated by them?

DC: I think it requires patience, because what [is announced and] goes on the news, versus what is really implemented and how it truly affects the industry, there’s a huge gap.



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J DCM has already made nearly $1 billion off its $26 million bet on Bill.com https://ift.tt/2FdsvZV

Friday, September 11, 2020

Extra Crunch Friday roundup: Edtech funding surges, Poland VC survey, inside Shift’s SPAC plan, more

I live in San Francisco, but I work an East Coast schedule to get a jump on the news day. So I’d already been at my desk for a couple of hours on Wednesday morning when I looked up and saw this:

As unsettling as it was to see the natural environment so transformed, I still got my work done. This is not to boast: I have a desk job and a working air filter. (People who make deliveries in the toxic air or are homeschooling their children while working from home during a global pandemic, however, impress the hell out of me.)

Not coincidentally, two of the Extra Crunch stories that ran since our Tuesday newsletter tie directly into what’s going on outside my window:

As this guest post predicted, a suboptimal attempt I made to track a delayed package using interactive voice response (IVR) indeed poisoned my customer experience, and;

Sheltering in place to avoid the novel coronavirus — and wildfire smoke — is fueling growth in the video-game industry, perhaps one factor in Unity Software Inc.’s plan to go public ahead of competitor Epic Games. In a two-part series, we looked at how the company has expanded beyond games and shared a detailed financial breakdown.

We covered a lot of ground this week, so scroll down or visit the recently redesigned Extra Crunch home page. If you’d like to receive this roundup via email each Tuesday and Friday, please click here.

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch; I hope you have a relaxing and safe weekend.

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor
@yourprotagonist


Bear and bull cases for Unity’s IPO

In a two-part series that ran on TechCrunch and Extra Crunch, former media columnist Eric Peckham returned to share his analysis of Unity Software Inc.’s S-1 filing.

Part one is a deep dive that explains how the company has grown beyond gaming to develop multiple revenue streams and where it’s headed.

For part two on Extra Crunch, he studied the company’s numbers to offer some context for its approximately $11 billion valuation.


10 Poland-based investors discuss trends, opportunities and the road ahead

The Palace of Culture and Science is standing reminder of communism in Warsaw, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland.

Image Credits: Edwin Remsberg (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

As we’ve covered previously, the COVID-19 pandemic is making the world a lot smaller.

Investors who focus on their own backyards still have an advantage, but the ability to set up a quick coffee meeting with a promising investor is no longer one of them.

Even though some VCs are cutting first checks after Zoom calls, regional investors’ personal networks are still a trump card. Tourists will always rely on guide books, however, which is why we continue to survey investors around the world.

A Dealroom report issued this summer determined that 97 VC funds backed more than 1,600 funding rounds in Poland last year. With over 2,400 early- and late-stage startups and 400,000 engineers in the country, it’s easy to see why foreign investors are taking notice.

Editor-at-large Mike Butcher reached out to several investors who focus on Warsaw and Poland in general to learn more about the startups fueling their interest across fintech, gaming, security and other sectors:

  • Bryony Cooper, managing partner, Arkley Brinc VC
  • Anna Wnuk-BÅ‚ażejczyk, investor relations manager, Experior.vc
  • RafaÅ‚ Roszak, investment director, YouNick Mint
  • Michal Mroczkowski, partner, Market One Capital
  • Marcus Erken, partner, Sunfish Partners
  • Borys Musielak, partner, SMOK Ventures
  • Mathias Ã…sberg, partner, Nextgrid
  • Kuba Dudek, SpeedUp Venture Capital Group
  • Marcin Laczynski, partner, Next Road Ventures
  • MichaÅ‚ Rokosz, partner, Inovo Venture Partners

We’ll run the conclusion of his survey next Tuesday.


Brands that hyper-personalize will win the next decade

Customer Relationship Management and Leader Concepts on Whiteboard

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

Even for fledgling startups, creating a robust customer service channel — or at least one that doesn’t annoy people — is a reliable way to keep users in the sales funnel.

Using AI and automation is fine, but now that consumers have grown used to asking phones and smart speakers to predict the weather and read recipe instructions, their expectations are higher than ever.

If you’re trying to figure out what people want from hyper-personalized customer experiences and how you can operationalize AI to give them what they’re after, start here.


VCs pour funding into edtech startups as COVID-19 shakes up the market

For today’s edition of The Exchange, Natasha Mascarenhas joined Alex Wilhelm to examine how the pandemic-fueled surge of interest in edtech is manifesting on the funding front.

The numbers suggest that funding will far surpass the sector’s high-water mark set in 2018, so the duo studied the numbers through August 31, which included a number of mega-rounds that exceeded $100 million.

“Now the challenge for the sector will be keeping its growth alive in 2021, showing investors that their 2020 bets were not merely wagers made during a single, overheated year,” they conclude.


How to respond to a data breach

Digital Binary Code on Red Background. Cybercrime Concept

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

The odds are low that someone’s going to enter my home and steal my belongings. I still lock my door when I leave the house, however, and my valuables are insured. I’m an optimist, not a fool.

Similarly: Is your startup’s cybersecurity strategy based on optimism, or do you have an actual response plan in case of a data breach?

Security reporter Zack Whittaker has seen some shambolic reactions to security lapses, which is why he turned in a post-mortem about a corporation that got it right.

“Once in a while, a company’s response almost makes up for the daily deluge of hypocrisy, obfuscation and downright lies,” says Zack.


Shift’s George Arison shares 6 tips for taking your company public via a SPAC

Number 6 By Railroad Tracks During Sunset

Image Credits: Eric Burger/EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

There’s a lot of buzz about special purpose acquisition companies these days.

Used-car marketplace Shift announced its SPAC in June 2020, and is on track to complete the process in the next few months, so co-founder/co-CEO George Arison wrote an Extra Crunch guest post to share what he has learned.

Step one: “If you go the SPAC route, you’ll need to become an expert at financial engineering.”


Dear Sophie: What is a J-1 visa and how can we use it?

Image Credits: Sophie Alcorn

Dear Sophie:

I am a software engineer and have been looking at job postings in the U.S. I’ve heard from my friends about J-1 Visa Training or J-1 Research.

What is a J-1 status? What are the requirements to qualify? Do I need to find a U.S. employer willing to sponsor me before I apply for one? Can I get a visa? How long could I stay?

— Determined in Delhi


As direct listing looms, Palantir insiders are accelerating stock sales

While we count down to the September 23 premiere of NYSE: PLTR, Danny Crichton looked at the “robust secondary market” that has allowed some investors to acquire shares early.

“Given the number of people involved and the number of shares bought and sold over the past 18 months, we can get some insight regarding how insiders perceive Palantir’s value,” he writes.


Use ‘productive paranoia’ to build cybersecurity culture at your startup

Vector illustration of padlocks and keys in a repeating pattern against a blue background.

Image Credits: JakeOlimb / Getty Images

Zack Whittaker interviewed Bugcrowd CTO, founder and chairman Casey Ellis about the best practices he recommends for creating a startup culture that takes security seriously.

“It’s an everyone problem,” said Ellis, who encouraged founders to promote the notion of “productive paranoia.”

Now that the threat envelope includes everyone from marketing to engineering, employees need to “internalize the fact that bad stuff can and does happen if you do it wrong,” Ellis said.



https://ift.tt/2FwTsHr Extra Crunch Friday roundup: Edtech funding surges, Poland VC survey, inside Shift’s SPAC plan, more https://ift.tt/2DSWeXb

Unicorn layoffs prompt more startups to consider acqui-hiring

Alex Zajaczkowski was just months into her role at Toast, a restaurant point-of-sale software company, when she was let go during COVID-19 layoffs. Toast, last valued at $5 billion, cut 50% of its staff through layoffs and furloughs.

Zajaczkowski said she started applying for jobs within a week.

“I think I got on the boat a little bit quicker than others because I wanted that security a little bit faster,” she said. She and former Toast colleagues formed a Slack to communicate about layoffs, their job searches and what lay ahead. Toast created an opt-in spreadsheet for recruiters that listed laid-off employees.

The sheet brought Zajaczkowski to Stavvy, an online mortgage startup also based in Boston, for an interview. Today, a majority of Stavvy’s team are ex-Toasters, including Zajaczkowski.

“I think one of the benefits of recruiting from an organization that is sort of an iconic Boston company, is that you know what the hiring practices are,” Ligris said. “There’s been a level of vetting that has occurred.”

Stavvy’s onboarding of former Toast employees suggests that the layoffs which rocked startups in March could be an opportunity for smaller startups to scoop up star talent that already has chemistry. While acqui-hiring is not a new concept, it has new weight in an environment reeling from mass layoffs and a shift to remote-first work.

Stavvy co-founders Kosta Ligris and Josh Feinblum, though, say hiring a pod of employees can backfire without proper diligence.



https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Unicorn layoffs prompt more startups to consider acqui-hiring https://ift.tt/2Zu0PGZ

China may kill TikTok’s US operations rather than see them sold

The controversial push to force Chinese tech unicorn ByteDance to divest part or all of its smash-hit TikTok social media service to a U.S.-based company could be in doubt after a report today indicated that China’s government may oppose the transaction. According to reporting by Reuters, the Chinese government may prefer TikTok to simply shutter its U.S. operations instead of allowing it to be sold to an American company.

The potential divestment of TikTok is not a regular business transaction. Instead, the deal is being demanded by the U.S. government, as President Donald Trump directs foreign and economic policymaking via executive fiat. Leaning on his own fabled business acumen, the American premier has also demanded that his government receive a portion of any final sale price. It is not clear if that concept is legal.

As the U.S. and China spar around the globe for both economic and political supremacy, the deal is a flashpoint between the countries with a muddle of companies stuck in the middle. ByteDance is in the mix, along with Microsoft, Walmart and other companies to a lesser degree, like Oracle. The Trump administration has set a mid-September timeline for a deal being struck, though as the month burns away it is not clear if that timeline could be met.

The United States is not alone in taking steps to curb Chinese influence inside its borders, as the TikTok sale comes after India banned the app, along with dozens of other China-based applications.

The deal is also under pressure from a changing regulatory environment in China, with the country’s autocratic leadership changing its export rules to possibly include elements of TikTok that could limit a transaction, and perhaps scuttle its sale.

For ByteDance, the situation is a nightmare. For lead-suitor Microsoft, the transaction is a shotgun marriage that it might not be entirely enthused about. For the Trump administration, it’s an attempt at a power play. And for China’s increasingly authoritarian government, the deal could feel like submission. So, if the deal does manage to come together it will be more surprise than eventuality.



from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J China may kill TikTok’s US operations rather than see them sold Alex Wilhelm https://ift.tt/33krYgD
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