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Remote-first startups were still controversial in Silicon Valley when we launched Extra Crunch two years ago today. Back then, if you can recall, the rest of the world was not even sure how all those unicorns were going to do on the public markets.
Today, Silicon Valley resides on the cloud and is publicly traded. We’ve covered the stunning changes, and as we help founders navigate the path from idea to first check to IPO, we also tripled the number of Extra Crunch members.
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Now, as the world glimpses a brighter, post-pandemic future, we are doubling down on the news and analysis that’s helped many early-stage companies make better decisions.
As Extra Crunch enters its third year, we’re putting our foot on the gas so we can bring you more:
- Fresh analysis about today’s most dynamic tech industries.
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We’re tying all of these efforts back in with the editorial coverage and event plans at TechCrunch. And to make this holistic approach truly successful, we’re ramping up efforts to engage and expand the Extra Crunch community.
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A new BuzzFeed quiz is the first in what Director of Product for Quizzes Chris Johanesen said he’s hoping will be a series of “stunt-y experiments” that the publisher launches this year.
The quiz, timed for Valentine’s Day weekend, promises to “create your perfect boyfriend (or girlfriend) using AI technology.” Johanesen said it’s designed to “poke fun at the situation we’re all in” (quarantine, obviously), as well as the “weird world of online dating.”
To take the quiz, you answer a series of multiple-choices questions about what you’re looking for in your ideal romantic partner.
The questions will probably feel familiar to anyone who’s taken a quiz on BuzzFeed or elsewhere online, but the answer should be a lot more unique: Johanesen noted that in a normal online quiz, there might be “12 or 20 different results that are written, and that’s pretty much it.” With this one, “you could retake it dozens of times and never get the same results.”
Johanesen explained that the BuzzFeed team generated an enormous variety of different profile images using StyleGAN technology. For the text, BuzzFeed staff contributed personality traits, text messages quotes, hobbies and “weird, dark stuff” that the quiz combines algorithmically.
“I think we’re mostly trying to embrace the absurdity of it,” he added. (I saw this myself when I tried out a demo earlier this week and was assigned a girlfriend who wanted to show off her “collection of scabs.”) “We try to match it a little bit to some of your inputs so that it’s not totally random. … An early version was more realistic, but it wasn’t as fun.”
Looking ahead, Johanesen said he’s hoping to create more quizzes that are “more generative,” where a writer might come up with a concept but they don’t have to “handwrite every single option.” Still, it sounds like this approach requires significant editorial work, which Johanesen doesn’t expect to change.
“We could definitely use machine learning models to write a quiz, but it probably wouldn’t be very good,” he said. Instead, the team is interested in “that intersection of what technology can do that humans can’t, and what humans can do that technology can’t.”
More broadly, he noted that BuzzFeed is experimenting to find new ways to refresh the quiz format, for example with the Quiz Party feature and Quiz Streaks.
Minneapolis voted Friday to ban the use of facial recognition software for its police department, growing the list of major cities that have implemented local restrictions on the controversial technology. After an ordinance on the ban was approved earlier this week, 13 members of the city council voted in favor of the ban with no opposition.
The new ban will block the Minneapolis Police Department from using any facial recognition technology, including software by Clearview AI. That company sells access to a large database of facial images, many scraped from major social networks, to federal law enforcement agencies, private companies and a number of U.S. police departments. The Minneapolis Police Department is known to have a relationship with Clearview AI, as is the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, which will not be restricted by the new ban.
The vote is a landmark decision in the city that set off racial justice protests around the country after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd last year. The city has been in the throes of police reform ever since, leading the nation by pledging to defund the city’s police department in June before backing away from that commitment into more incremental reforms later that year.
Banning the use of facial recognition is one targeted measure that can rein in emerging concerns about aggressive policing. Many privacy advocates are concerned that the AI-powered face recognition systems would not only disproportionately target communities of color, but that the tech has been demonstrated to have technical shortcomings in discerning non-white faces.
Cities around the country are increasingly looking to ban the controversial technology and have implemented restrictions in many different ways. In Portland, Oregon, new laws passed last year block city bureaus from using facial recognition but also forbid private companies from deploying the technology in public spaces. Previous legislation in San Francisco, Oakland and Boston restricted city governments from using facial recognition systems though didn’t include a similar provision for private companies.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/minneapolis-facial-recognition-ban/
The All-22 tape is perhaps one of the most valued tools for professional football coaches because it allows the viewer to see all 22 players on the field at the same time. It improves a coach’s line of sight and, most importantly, helps avoid missing a critical motion or player.
The upshot: It removes the blind spot. The concept of this tool can — and should — be applied in the startup world as well. Successful founders and investors understand the playbook on both sides of the ball. For founders, that means being able to zoom out and see each of their employees’ points of view and being inclusive. Without an All-22 tape, founders can mistakenly spend too much on engineering while ignoring the product rollout strategy, or forget to communicate with employees outside of their bubble of interest. A company can become fragmented as more blind spots emerge, which can ultimately lead to oversights that damage its reputation, operations or even its ability to raise money from investors.
It’s a skillset that is developed through practice. Luckily, Eghosa Omoigui, the founder and managing general partner of EchoVC Partners, a seed and early-stage technology venture capital firm serving underrepresented founders and underserved markets, is coming to Early Stage 2021 to give early-stage founders the tools they need to develop their own All-22 tape.
TC Early Stage – Operations & Fundraising is a virtual event focused on early-stage founders happening on April 1 & 2. The event will include breakout sessions led by investors and experts that break down the most difficult parts of building a business.
Here’s a look of Omoigui’s talk:
The All-22 View
Improving line of sight and dynamic field of play aperture is rarely discussed but hugely important. Great founders, operators and investors have an understanding of playbooks on both sides of the ball. We’ll talk through learnings and some ideas on how to build muscle memory and skillsets.
Omoigui, who was previously director of consumer internet and semantic technologies at Intel Capital, will share his experiences and tips to help founders see every aspect of their company. Register for TC Early Stage 2021 today and catch his All-22 Tape talk.
Earlier today, South Korean e-commerce and delivery giant Coupang filed to go public in the United States. As a private company, Coupang has raised billions, including capital from American venture capital firm Sequoia and Japanese telecom giant SoftBank and its Vision Fund.
Coupang’s offering, coming amidst the public debut of a number of well-known technology brands, will be a massive affair. Its first S-1 filing indicates that its IPO will raise capital in the range of $1 billion, far larger than the $100 million placeholder that is more common.
But the company’s scale makes its lofty IPO fundraising goals reasonable. Coupang is huge, with revenues north of $10 billion in 2020, and in improving financial health as it scales. And its revenue growth has accelerated.
Perhaps that explains why the company is reportedly targeting a valuation of $50 billion.
This afternoon, let’s dig into the company’s historical growth, its improving cash flow and its narrowing losses. Coupang’s debut will create a splash when it lands, so we owe it to ourselves to grok its numbers.
And as there are other e-commerce brands with a delivery function waiting in the wings to go public — Instacart comes to mind — how Coupang fares in its IPO matters for a good number of domestic startups and unicorns.
Coupang’s surging scale
The company’s growth across the last half-decade is impressive. Observe its yearly revenue totals from 2016 through 2020:
- 2016: $1.67 billion
- 2017: $2.40 billion (+43.7%)
- 2018: $4.05 billion (+68.8%)
- 2019: $6.27 billion (+54.8%)
- 2020: $11.97 billion (+90.9%)
Sure, some of that 2020 growth is COVID-19 related, but even taking that into account, Coupang’s revenue growth is nothing short of fantastic. And what’s better is that the company has cut its losses in recent years:
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/12/coupang-files-for-mega-us-ipo/
