Bradley Tusk Contributor More posts by this contributor In London, Uber has won the battle but risks losing the war Shockingly, Congress acted responsibly in regulating autonomous cars… So what’s next? Every time we realize something new about the coronavirus, it’s always worse than we thought: maybe we don’t develop immunity to it; maybe six
Month: April 2020
The year’s already off to a rocky start for hardware companies, and we’re only beginning to see the true impact COVID-19 will ultimately have on the market. Arm — the U.K. company behind the designs of chips for everyone from Apple to Qualcomm to Samsung — is hoping to kickstart developing by offering up access
Stripe and Shopify have transformed the face of commerce for small business users, yet when it comes to putting that cash somewhere, SMBs have found that the banking options aren’t quite as transformative. Wise is a new challenger bank built specifically for small businesses. The startup is aiming to insert itself as an essential service
Edtech was long defined by stodgy sales cycles, sluggish adoption and splashy pitches to K-12 districts with tight budgets, but the COVID-19 pandemic turned that reputation on its head in short order. Now, companies in the space are entering Q2 — traditionally a slower time reserved for product development, not closing sales — busier than
The world has been turned upside down the past few weeks, but one lesson of business remains as important as ever: treating your customers well is the best avenue to future business strength, particularly at a moment of extreme stress. As businesses come to terms with the economic crisis underway, executives are moving resources from
Earlier this month, href=”https://www.zettavp.com/”>Zetta Venture Partners, a B2B, AI-focused venture outfit, announced a new $180 million fund. As new VC funds are anecdotally a bit thinner on the ground these days — and because we’re in the midst of economic upheaval, which is changing investing patterns and shaking up startup verticals — I got on
As coronavirus-hit financial markets continue to flip-flop in the wake of bad news followed by pockets of hope, a startup that aims to introduce ordinary consumers to investing has raised a big round of funding. New York-based Stash, which provides a mobile-first route to managing money through investment — as well as retirement, custodial and
Continuing our week’s coverage of new venture funds, this morning let’s dig into Kickstart’s latest capital pool. Kickstart Seed Fund, based in Utah’s Salt Lake City, has raised a $110 million Fund V it announced this morning, its largest to date. The firm’s rise to investing prominence has largely coincided with Utah’s own emergence as a
Twitter is making it possible for developers and researchers to study the public conversation around COVID-19 in real time with an update to its API platform. The company is introducing a new COVID-19 stream endpoint to those participating in Twitter Developer Labs — a program that offers access to new API endpoints and other features
The coronavirus pandemic is significantly slowing the growth of Facebook’s ads business, but investors seem pleased with the company’s performance in Q1 after Facebook released its earnings report Wednesday. The company beat Wall Street expectations on revenues, sharing that they had made $17.74 billion while falling short on earnings per share at $1.71. The company
The quarantine lockdown is driving a record number of users to Facebook’s products. On a conference call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed a number of new metrics highlighting a significant bump in Facebook usage during the broader quarantine lockdown. In the past month, more than 3 billion internet users logged onto a Facebook service, including its
Researchers at NYU have identified hundreds of groups of Instagram users, some with thousands of members, that systematically exchange likes and comments in order to game the service’s algorithms and boost visibility. In the process, they also trained machine learning agent to identify whether a post has been juiced in this way. “Pods,” as they’ve
Rapid7 announced today after the closing bell that it will be acquiring DivvyCloud, a cloud security and governance startup for $145 million in cash and stock. With Divvy, the company moves more deeply into the cloud, something that Lee Weiner, chief innovation officer says the company has been working towards, even before the pandemic pushed
Google today announced that it is making Meet, its video meeting tool for businesses that directly competes with the likes of Zoom, available for free to everyone. Until now, you could participate in a Meet call without being a paying user, but you needed a paid G Suite account to start calls. You won’t be
Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO. She’s replacing Deepak Giridharagopal, who became CTO in 2016. Kearns stepped down from her role at the Cloud Foundry Foundation earlier this month after holding that position since 2016. At the
Atlassian is about as ubiquitous to software engineers as Google is to the rest of us. The Sydney-based company, which launched in 2002, develops tools and services for enterprise collaboration and marched efficiently to a public offering in 2015. So it goes without saying that we’re thrilled to have Atlassian cofounder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes
Earlier today at the National Assembly, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe gave a lengthy speech about post-lockdown measures in France ahead of a debate with deputies. The government originally planned to discuss France’s contact-tracing app StopCovid. It broadened the subject of the debate to post-lockdown policies a couple of days ago. But Philippe said that
European VC firm Atomico announced this week that it has hired Sasha Astafyeva as a new investment partner. Astafyeva previously spent three years as a principal at Felix Capital . In her new role, she’ll lead “sourcing, due diligence, and management” of consumer tech companies, according to a company statement. Originally from Ukraine, Astafyeva was
Is it feast or famine for food delivery startups during the coronavirus pandemic? The UK’s Deliveroo has confirmed it’s axing more than 350 staff — or around 15% of its global headcount. Late yesterday the Telegraph reported that the London-based startup will be cutting 367 staff and furloughing a further 50 out of a total headcount
A number of UK computer security and privacy experts have signed an open letter raising transparency and mission creep concerns about the national approach to develop a coronavirus contacts tracing app. The letter, signed by around 150 academics, follows a similar letter earlier this month signed by around 300 academics from across the world, who
I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may prove important in the world of tech and startups. This week: one step closer to self-powered on-skin electronics; people dressed as car seats; how to
WhatsApp, which began testing its mobile payments feature in India two years ago, could offer at least one more financial service to people in its biggest market: credit. In a filing with the local regulator in India, the company has listed credit as one of the areas it plans to explore in the country. The
The makers of the world’s most ethical smartphone, the Fairphone 3, have teamed up for a version of the device with even less big tech on board. The Netherlands-based device maker has partnered with France’s /e/OS to offer a “de-Googled” version of its latest handset, running an Android AOSP fork out of the box that’s
TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world’s most valued startups (ByteDance), continues to grow rapidly despite suspicion from the U.S. as more people look for ways to keep themselves entertained amid the coronavirus pandemic. The global app and its Chinese version, called Douyin, have amassed over 2 billion downloads
Despite all evidence to the contrary, there’s more to building a startup than raising venture capital. Founders are finding success without overly relying on VC dollars; some are even sharing profits with their respective employees and customers without the help of traditional funding and Silicon Valley power dynamics. As some investors slow down their funding
An emergency room physician for the past 12 years, Dr. Robert Mittendorff joined Norwest Venture Partners eight years ago as a healthcare investor; the firm invests in a number of healthcare startups, including Talkspace, which raised a $50 million Series D last year, and TigerConnect. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, Mittendorff is spending his weekdays
Online lending firms might be beginning to feel the heat of the coronavirus pandemic in Southeast Asia, but investors’ faith in digital insurance startups remains unflinching in the region. Jakarta-based Qoala has raised $13.5 million in its Series A financing round, the one-year-old startup said Tuesday. Centauri Fund, a joint venture between funds from South
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. As global startup markets enter a slowdown — more on that shortly — we’re starting to get notes on when growth-oriented firms are going to run short of cash. Of course, startups around the world
OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), has put together a new, $750 million fund to invest in both Europe and North America. The capital vehicle is larger than the group’s preceding European and North American funds combined. In 2019 OMERS Ventures announced a €300 million fund Europe-focused
Oriente, a Hong Kong-based startup that develops tech infrastructure for digital credit and other online financial services, has raised $50 million for its ongoing Series B round. The funding was led by Peter Lee, co-chairman of Henderson Land, one of Hong Kong’s largest property developers, with participation from investors including website development platform Wix.com. Launched
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