Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. This week felt oddly comforting from a tech news perspective: Facebook is copying something, early-stage startup data is flawed enough to talk about and sweet DoorDash is buying robots for undisclosed sums.
So, here’s a rundown of the tech news we got into (as always, jokes aren’t previewed so you’ll have to listen to the actual show to get our critique and Award Winning Analysis*):
In good news, long-time Equity producer Chris Gates is back starting next week, which means we’ll have our biggest crew ever helping get the show put together. And, in other good news, there’s going to be more Equity than ever for you to hear. Coming soon.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
*OK, so not award-winning yet. But soon enough, because manifestation works.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/11/does-softbank-have-20-more-doordashes/
The world has spent most of 2020 adapting to ever-changing guidelines and restrictions (with no end in sight, even as the vaccines start to roll out). Board meetings are quickly increasing in their significance to foster consistent and vital interactions as an organization. It’s essential for companies to capitalize on the essential time together during these uncertain times.
While we might look like the Brady Bunch while sharing a Zoom window, are you actually communicating more like the family from “Succession?”
Are your meetings organized? Do people talk over one another? Do you usually run over time? Are you giving people time to digest information?
As we move into 2021 and Q1 meetings are being put onto calendars, take some time to modernize how you conduct your board meetings.
Board meetings are quickly increasing in their significance to foster consistent and vital interactions as an organization.
Having served on public company boards, growth-stage businesses and Series A startups, an observation I have made in boards that are later stage are more about financial analysis and governance. Whereas earlier-stage board discussions hinge more on product strategy, key partnerships, sharing best practices to help develop founders as executives and important hiring decisions.
Since the nature of the discussions is more, let’s call it … creative in earlier-stage businesses, where the focus is on where they’ve been particularly impacted by reduced bandwidth for collaboration while meeting remotely.
As said best by Mike Maples and paraphrased by Jeff Bonforte — there are only four things a board really needs to consider:
Collecting data around those points is the job. In the meeting, the team can add color.
Remember the board works for you, so be sure to put them to work. Sharing materials with participants about three days ahead of time tends to be the best. Any later and they may not get enough time to digest, send earlier and the information might be out of date by the time you meet. It’s most common to format as a deck, but lately I’m seeing more written format and even magazine-style.
The number one request I get from early-stage companies is “help find me more customers.”
Other common requests are “help me find or land this type of talent, help me with industry benchmarks for this type of business deal or compensation structure, connect me to people that have experience with X so I can learn ways we could structure our process.” It’s helpful to put these asks in the materials you send ahead because sometimes board members might not be able to react quickly and now “homework” comes up spontaneously in the discussions.
Another purpose of these meetings is to build working relationships so when strategic decisions need to be made, board members are used to working together. Sometimes it is a forum for executives to gain exposure to board members and for board members to have the opportunity to evaluate and provide input on executives. For that reason execs are often invited to participate in certain discussions.
Like the product person who presents a roadmap or a market analysis, the head of sales should give color on pipeline and competitive deals, the marketing person may lead a discussion on ABM or channel marketing tactics, the engineering lead might ask for feedback on their metrics versus other companies, etc. Generally, CEOs also bring forth an interesting topic to have a discussion, such as channel strategy, market mapping/sizing, hiring plan and related issues.
As far as logistics, we reserve two hours in calendars but we try to hit 90 minutes. I suggest something like this for a 90-minute session:
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/11/best-practices-for-zoom-board-meetings-at-early-stage-startups/
Building off TechCrunch’s coverage of the recent 500 Startups demo day, we’re back today to talk about some favorites from three more accelerator classes. This time we’re digging into Techstars’ latest three accelerator classes.
What follows are four favorites from the Techstars’ Boston, Chicago and “workforce development” programs. As a team we tuned into the accelerator live pitches and dug into recordings when we needed to.
As always, these are just our favorites, but don’t just take our word for it. Dig into the pitches yourself, as there’s never a bad time to check out some super-early-stage startups.
We take an in-depth look at TikTok usage in Russia, Facebook’s Oversight Board looks beyond Facebook and Sesame Workshop backs an edtech fund. This is your Daily Crunch for February 11, 2021.
The big story: TikTok becomes a political battleground in Russia
Russia has a small but fast-growing and vocal group of TikTok users. And while activity has been largely apolitical in the past, a battle appears to be brewing between the government and young activists who support the anti-corruption, anti-Putin politician Alexei Navalny.
“Before Navalny’s return, Russian TikTok was all about dancing, pranks and post-Soviet trash aesthetics,” said food blogger Egor Khodasevich. “All of a sudden, political videos have started to appear across all categories — humor, beauty, sport.”
The tech giants
Facebook Oversight Board says other social networks ‘welcome to join’ if project succeeds — The Facebook Oversight Board has only been operational for a short time, but the nascent project is already looking ahead.
Apple launches a new AR experience tied to ‘For All Mankind’ — Even for those of you who aren’t fans of the Apple TV+ show, the app is still noteworthy as another sign of Apple’s interest in AR.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Robinhood’s pain is Public’s gain as VCs rush to give it more money — The San Francisco-based fintech aims to give people the ability to invest in companies using any amount of money, with a focus on community activity over active trading.
Goldman Sachs and Sesame Workshop pour money into this edtech firm’s newest fund — Reach Capital III is a $165 million investment vehicle.
Reduct.Video raises $4M to simplify video editing — The startup’s technology is already used by customers including Intuit, Autodesk, Facebook, Dell, Spotify, Indeed, Superhuman and IDEO.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
As more insurtech offerings loom, CEO Dan Preston discusses Metromile’s SPAC-led debut — Metromile began trading as a public company yesterday.
Commercializing deep tech startups: A practical guide for founders and investors — Deep tech startups go through a different evolution cycle than a typical B2B or B2C company.
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
Racial disparity in Chicago cops’ use of force laid bare in new data — This rare apples-to-apples comparison supports the idea that improving diversity in law enforcement may also improve the quality of policing.
A webcam app left thousands of user accounts exposed online — The database in question belonged to Adorcam, an app for viewing and controlling several webcam models.
Top 100 subscription apps grew 34% to $13B in 2020, share of total spend remained the same — A growing part of app spend took the form of subscription payments last year, according to a new report from Sensor Tower.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/11/daily-crunch-tiktok-becomes-a-political-battleground-in-russia/