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Since the pandemic began, have you been walking more, or do you know someone who bought a new car? Perhaps you ran your first errand on a rented e-bike or scooter?
Over the last year, I’ve experimented with different mobility options to see which ones best suit my needs, as have most people I know. It can be challenging to maintain a recommended physical distance on a bus or subway. (After a decade-plus hiatus, I even briefly considered rejoining the ranks of automobile owners!)
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It took some getting used to, but I now enjoy traveling around San Francisco on a scooter or e-bike. Pre-pandemic, I was leery of riding two-wheeled vehicles in a city with a high rate of injury collisions, but there are fewer cars on the road than there used to be.
COVID-19 has spotlighted many of the weakest points in our transportation system, but some of the rapid shifts in consumer behavior are creating opportunities for tech once considered fanciful, like sidewalk delivery robots and eVTOLs (electric vertical and takeoff vehicles).
Transportation editor Kirsten Korosec reached out to 10 investors to learn more “about the state of mobility, which trends they’re most excited about and what they’re looking for in their next investments.”
Here’s who she interviewed:
- Clara Brenner, co-founder and managing partner, Urban Innovation Fund
- Shawn Carolan, partner, Menlo Ventures
- Dave Clark, partner, Expa
- Abhijit Ganguly, senior manager, Goodyear Ventures
- Rachel Holt, co-founder and general partner, Construct Capital
- David Lawee, founder and general partner, CapitalG
- Sasha Ostojic, operating partner, Playground Global
- Sebastian Peck, managing director, InMotion Ventures
- Natalia Quintero and Rachel Haot, Transit Innovation Partnership/Transit Tech Lab
Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week!
Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist
A fraction of Robinhood’s users are driving its runaway growth
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
Yesterday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on the GameStop short squeeze saga was fairly typical: Most lawmakers used their time to grandstand and little new information was revealed.
But Alex Wilhelm found one tidbit: Much of Robinhood’s revenue is generated from payment for order flow (PFOF). Under the practice, market makers pay the trading platform for executing trades.
To get a sense of how much Robinhood’s high rollers contribute to the company’s general health, he calculated its PFOF revenues for the last three months of 2020.
“Borrowing a term from the casino trade, these whales generate the bulk of the company’s revenue stream.”
Why do SaaS companies with usage-based pricing grow faster?
Image Credits: John Lund (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
HubStop introduced usage-based pricing in 2011 to boost its retention rate, then near 70%.
When it went public three years later, its net revenue retention rate was edging close to 100%, “all without hurting the company’s ability to acquire new customers.”
Offering new users frictionless onboarding, customer support and free credits is a proven method for making them more active — and loyal.
So, why do public SaaS firms with usage-based pricing see faster growth?
“Because they’re better at landing new customers, growing with them and keeping them as customers,” says Kyle Powar, VP of growth at OpenView.
Paying $115B for Stripe or $77B for Coinbase might be quite rational
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
In October 2018, private-market money valued Coinbase at around $8 billion. As of this week, it’s valued at $77 billion.
Similarly, Stripe is valued at $115 billion on secondary markets. In the middle of last year, that figure was closer to $36 billion.
“Would I line up to pay $77 billion for Coinbase?” asked Alex. “Probably not, but that doesn’t mean that the public markets won’t.”
Pandemic-era growth and SPACs are helping edtech startups graduate early
Image Credits: Witthaya Prasongsin (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Natasha Mascarenhas reports that some edtech startups are hitching rides with special purpose acquisition vehicles so they can speed up their journey to the public markets.
To learn more, she interviewed Susan Wolford, chairperson of $200 million SPAC Edify Acquisition, and Nerdy CEO Chuck Cohn. Nerdy, parent company of Varsity Tutors, is going through a reverse merger with TPG Pace Tech Opportunities.
“It’s less about going into the public markets and more about that this transaction allows us to take an offensive position and lean into the big opportunities,” Cohn said.
Dear Sophie: Tips for filing for a green card for my soon-to-be spouse
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch
Dear Sophie:
My fiancé is in the U.S. on an H-1B visa, which is set to expire in about a year and a half.
We were originally planning to marry last year, but both he and I want to have a ceremony and party with our families and friends, so we decided to hold off until the pandemic ends. I’m a U.S. citizen and plan to sponsor my fiancé for a green card.
How long does it typically take to get a green card for a spouse? Any tips you can share?
— Sweetheart in San Francisco
Inside Rover and MoneyLion’s SPAC-led public debuts
Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window)
When I saw that Alex Wilhelm wrote on Tuesday about two more startups that were taking the SPAC route to public markets, I briefly wondered if we’ve been covering special purpose acquisition companies too frequently.
After I read his first sentence, I realized Alex made exactly the right call because the trend that emerged in 2020 may be turning into a actual wave: This week, pet e-commerce company Rover and fintech startup MoneyLion both announced that they’re planning SPAC-led debuts.
On Monday, Alex covered the news that Lerer Hippeau Acquisition Corp. and Khosla Ventures Acquisition Co. I, II and III. filed S-1 filings last week.
“You have to wonder if every VC worth a damn in the future will have their own raft of SPAC offerings,” says Alex.
Wrote Lerer Hippeau Acquisition Corp.:
With our portfolio now maturing to the stage at which many are considering the public markets, we view SPACs as a natural next step in the evolution of our platform.
“If we are not careful, every entry of this column could consist of SPAC news,” writes Alex.
From dorm rooms to board rooms: How universities are promoting entrepreneurship
Image Credits: CasarsaGuru (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Fifteen U.S.-based institutions of higher learning have joined forces to create the University Technology Licensing Program LLC (UTLP).
The program makes it easier for entrepreneurs and investors to find IP that can drive their companies forward, but it’s also an attempt to repair what one participant calls “the somewhat broken interface between universities and very large companies in the tech space.”
4 strategies for deep tech companies recruiting top growth marketers
Image Credits: Mallika Wiriyathitipirm/EyeEm (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Here’s some real talk for technical founders: if you find it frustrating to work with growth experts and marketing professionals, the feeling’s probably mutual.
“Incredible growth people are independent and creative and are drawn to environments that explicitly value these traits,” says Jessica Li, a content/growth professional who was previously a VC.
To land top talent, “demonstrate that you have a team structure in place where a growth marketer could fit in and thrive.”
9 investors discuss hurdles, opportunities and the impact of cloud vendors in enterprise data lakes
Image Credits: Donald Iain Smith (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Before my first cup of coffee this morning, I’d already interacted with four different devices that transmitted details about my behavior to a data lake.
Hopefully, the response I sent to an automated text while waiting for the kettle to boil will generate a discount offer in my inbox later today. (And hopefully, the raw data I’m transmitting has been properly secured and cataloged.)
Enterprise reporter Ron Miller interviewed nine investors to learn more about their approach to the lucrative data lake market:
- Caryn Marooney, general partner, Coatue Management
- Dharmesh Thakker, general partner, Battery Ventures
- Casey Aylward, principal, Costanoa Ventures
- Derek Zanutto, general partner, CapitalG
- Navin Chaddha, managing director, Mayfield
- Jon Lehr, co-founder and general partner, Work-Bench
- Peter Wagner, founding partner, Wing Ventures
- Nicole Priel, managing director, Ibex Ventures
- Ilya Sukah, partner, Matrix Partners
Felicis’ Aydin Senkut and Guideline’s Kevin Busque on the value of simple pitch decks
Image Credits: Felicis Ventures / Guideline
When it comes to building a durable relationship between a founder and an investor, “the trust starts in the pitch deck,” says Guideline CEO Kevin Busque.
Busque joined Extra Crunch Live last week with Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senku to discuss the seed round Senku declined to join — and the Series B he led a short while later.
In keeping with our new format, the pair also offered feedback on pitch decks submitted by members of the audience. Read highlights, or watch a video with the full conversation.
Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, the founder and former co-lead of the company’s ethical AI team. Mitchell announced the news via a tweet.
Google confirmed Mitchell’s firing in a statement to TechCrunch, Google said:
After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as well as of our security policies, which included the exfiltration of confidential business-sensitive documents and private data of other employees.
In January, Google revoked corporate access from AI ethicist Margaret Mitchell for reportedly using automated scripts to find examples of mistreatment of Dr. Timnit Gebru, according to Axios. Gebru says she was fired from Google while Google has maintained that she resigned.
Earlier this month, Mitchell published the email she said she sent to Google’s press team the day her corporate email access was cut off. The email spoke about Gebru’s firing and how it appeared to be “fueled by the same underpinnings of racism and sexism that our AI systems, when in the wrong hands, tend to soak up.”
Mitchell’s letter, which you can read in full here, details the different ideas and structures at play that led to Dr. Gebru’s departure from Google. Mitchell argues what happened to Gebru “appears to stem from the same lack of foresight that is at the core of modern technology, and so itself serves as an example of the problem.”
Mitchell adds:
The firing seems to have been fueled by the same underpinnings of racism and sexism that our AI systems, when in the wrong hands, tend to soak up. How Dr. Gebru was fired is not okay, what was said about it is not okay, and the environment leading up to it was — and is — not okay. Every moment where Jeff Dean and Megan Kacholia do not take responsibility for their actions is another moment where the company as a whole stands by silently as if to intentionally send the horrifying message that Dr. Gebru deserves to be treated this way. Treated as if she were inferior to her peers. Caricatured as irrational (and worse). Her research writing publicly defined as below the bar. Her scholarship publicly declared to be insufficient. For the record: Dr. Gebru has been treated completely inappropriately, with intense disrespect, and she deserves an apology.
The letter went on to discuss the ethical artificial intelligence approach to developing technology, how Mitchell came to lead and then co-lead the ethical AI team with Gebru and what ultimately happened. Within the next year, Mitchell said she wanted “those of us in positions of privilege and power” to come to terms with “the discomfort of being part of an unjust system that devalued one of the world’s leading scientists, and keep something like this from ever happening again.”
Mitchell’s firing comes shortly after Google announced the appointment of Dr. Marian Croak to lead its responsible artificial intelligence division. When we reached out to Google yesterday the company did not have a comment on Mitchell’s fate.
Earlier today, Google internally announced the results of its investigation of Gebru’s exit, according to Axios. The company did not reveal what it found, but said it would implement some new policies to enhance diversity and inclusion at Google.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/19/google-fires-top-ai-ethics-researcher-margaret-mitchell/
In 2017, Ironclad founder and CEO Jason Boehmig was looking to raise a Series A. As a former lawyer, Boehmig had a specific process for fundraising and an ultimate goal of finding the right investors for his company.
Part of Boehmig’s process was to ask people in the San Francisco Bay Area about their favorite place to work. Many praised RelateIQ, a company founded by Steve Loughlin who had sold it to Salesforce for $390 million and was brand new to venture at the time.
“I wanted to meet Steve and had kind of put two and two together,” said Boehmig. “I was like, ‘There’s this founder I’ve been meaning to connect with anyways, just to pick his brain, about how to build a great company, and he also just became an investor.'”
On this week’s Extra Crunch Live, the duo discussed how the Ironclad pitch excited Loughlin about leading the round. (So excited, in fact, he signed paperwork in the hospital on the same day his child was born.) They also discussed how they’ve managed to build trust by working through disagreements and the challenges of pricing and packaging enterprise products.
As with every episode of Extra Crunch Live, they also gave feedback on pitch decks submitted by the audience. (If you’d like to see your deck featured on a future episode, send it to us using this form.)
We record Extra Crunch Live every Wednesday at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST/8 p.m. GMT. You can see our past episodes here and check out the March slate right here.
Episode breakdown:
- The pitch — 2:30
- How they operate — 23:00
- The problem of pricing — 29:00
- Pitch deck teardown — 35:00
The pitch
When Boehmig came in to pitch Accel, Loughlin remembers feeling ambivalent. He had heard about the company and knew a former lawyer was coming in to pitch a legal tech company. He also trusted the reference who had introduced him to Boehmig, and thought, “I’ll take the meeting.”
Then, Boehmig dove into the pitch. The company had about a dozen customers that were excited about the product, and a few who were expanding use of the product across the organization, but it wasn’t until the ultimate vision of Ironclad was teased that Loughlin perked up.
Loughlin realized that the contract can be seen as a core object that could be used to collaborate horizontally across the enterprise.
“That was when the lightbulb went off and I realized this is actually much bigger,” said Loughlin. “This is not a legal tech company. This is core horizontal enterprise collaboration in one of the areas that has not been solved yet, where there is no great software yet for legal departments to collaborate with their counterparts.”
He listed all the software that those same counterparts had to let them collaborate: Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk. Any investor would be excited to hear that a potential portfolio company could match the likes of those behemoths. Loughlin was hooked.
“There was a slide that I’m guessing Jason didn’t think much of, as it was just the data around the business, but I got pretty excited about it,” said Loughlin. “It said, for every legal user Ironclad added, they added nine other users from departments like sales, marketing, customer service, etc. It was evidence that this theory of collaboration could be true at scale.”
WhatsApp said earlier this week that it will allow users to review its planned privacy update at “their own pace” and will display a banner to better explain them the changes in its terms. But what happens to its users who do not accept the terms by the May 15 deadline?
In an email to one of its merchant partners, reviewed by TechCrunch, Facebook-owned WhatsApp said it will “slowly ask” such users to comply with the new terms “in order to have full functionality of WhatsApp” starting May 15.
If they still don’t accept the terms, “for a short time, these users will be able to receive calls and notifications, but will not be able to read or send messages from the app,” the company added in the note. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the note accurately characterizes its plan.
The “short time” will span a few weeks. In the note, WhatsApp linked to a newly created FAQ page that says its policy related to inactive users will apply after May 15.
WhatsApp’s policy for inactive users states that accounts are “generally deleted after 120 days of inactivity.”
The instant messaging service received backlash from some of its users — including those in India, its biggest market — last month after an in-app alert said they had until February 8 to agree to the planned privacy terms, which are being made to reflect its recent push into e-commerce, if they wished to continue using the service.
Following backlash, WhatsApp said its planned privacy update had created confusion among some of its users. “We’ve heard from so many people how much confusion there is around our recent update. There’s been a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help everyone understand our principles and the facts,” it wrote in a blog post last month.
Since 2016, WhatsApp’s privacy policies have granted the service permission to share certain metadata such as user phone numbers and device information with Facebook. The new terms will allow Facebook and WhatsApp to share payments and transactions data in order to help them better target ads as the social juggernaut broadens its e-commerce offerings and looks to merge its messaging platforms.
WhatsApp, used by over 2 billion users, last month delayed enforcing the new policy by three months and has been explaining its terms to users ever since — though its explanations hadn’t explicitly addressed what it planned to do with users who didn’t accept the terms.
Brex is the latest fintech to apply for a bank charter.
The fast-growing company, which sells a credit card tailored for startups with Emigrant Bank currently acting as the issuer, announced Friday that it has submitted an application with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions (UDFI) to establish Brex Bank.
The industrial bank will be located in Draper, Utah, and be a wholly owned subsidiary of Brex.
The company has tapped former Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) exec Bruce Wallace to serve as the subsidiary’s CEO. He served in several roles at SVB, including COO, chief digital officer and head of global services. It also has named Jean Perschon, the former CFO for UBS Bank USA, to be the Brex Bank CFO.
Last May, Brex announced that it had raised $150 million in a Series C extension from a group of existing investors, including DST Global and Lone Pine Capital.
With that raise, Brex, which was co-founded by Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, had amassed $465 million in venture capital funding to date.
The company said in a statement today that “Brex Bank will expand upon its existing suite of financial products and business software, offering credit solutions and FDIC insured deposit products to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).”
Offering credit products to small businesses has become a popular product offering and source of revenue for tech companies serving entrepreneurs, including Shopify and Square in the commerce arena. Likewise, offering business-focused bank accounts, like Shopify Balance, which is currently in development with a plan to launch sometime this year in the U.S.
These financial products can provide additional opportunities for revenue on interest and cost of borrowing for these companies, which might have better insight into the risk profiles of the types of businesses they serve than traditional lenders and FIs.
“Brex and Brex Bank will work in tandem to help SMBs grow to realize their full potential,” said Wallace.
Brex is based in San Francisco and counts Kleiner Perkins Growth, YC Continuity Fund, Greenoaks Capital, Ribbit Capital, IVP and DST Global, as well as Peter Thiel and Affirm CEO Max Levchin, among its investors. It currently has over 400 employees, and though it had significant layoffs mid-year in 2020, it cited restructuring rather than financial difficulty as the cause of that downsize.
Other fintechs that have made moves toward bank charters include Varo Bank, which this week raised another $63 million, and SoFi, which last October was granted preliminary approval for a national bank charter.
