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Autonomous vehicle company Cruise raises a $2 billion new round, Netflix keeps growing and WhatsApp faces more privacy concerns. This is your Daily Crunch for January 19, 2021.
The big story: Microsoft backs Cruise
Cruise announced today that it has raised $2 billion in new funding at a $30 billion valuation, with Microsoft joining as a new investor. (Previous backers GM and Honda also participated.)
This includes a long-term strategic partnership between the two companies, with Cruise using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform for its yet-to-launch autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service. Microsoft is also becoming the preferred cloud provider for GM as part of the deal.
“As Cruise and GM’s preferred cloud, we will apply the power of Azure to help them scale and make autonomous transportation mainstream,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a statement.
The tech giants
Netflix shares soar as it passes 200M paying subscribers — Netflix capped off a year of impressive streaming growth by adding 8.5 million net new paying subscribers during the fourth quarter.
India asks WhatsApp to withdraw new privacy policy over ‘grave concerns’ — India’s IT ministry said the upcoming update to the app’s data-sharing policy has raised “grave concerns regarding the implications for the choice and autonomy of Indian citizens.”
Apple’s new editorial franchise, Apple Podcasts Spotlight, to highlight interesting creators — The editorial team at Apple will select new podcast creators to feature every month.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Rivian raises $2.65B as it pushes toward production of its electric pickup — Rivian is now valued at $27.6 billion.
PPRO nabs $180M at a $1B+ valuation to bring together the fragmented world of payments — The London startup has built a platform to make it easier for marketplaces, payment providers and other e-commerce players to enable localized payments.
Google backs India’s Dunzo in $40M funding round — Last year, Google unveiled a $10 billion fund to invest in the world’s second-largest internet market.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
In 2020, VCs invested $428M into US-based startups every day —
That’s according to data shared by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association.
Six investors on 2021’s mobile gaming trends and opportunities — “We are definitely fearful of Apple’s ability to completely disrupt/affect the growth of a game,” said Bessemer’s Ethan Kurzweil and Sakib Dadi.
Bustle CEO Bryan Goldberg explains his plans for taking the company public — Bustle could eventually join the ranks of startups going public via SPAC.
(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)
Everything else
Europe is working on a common framework for ‘vaccine passports’ — A common approach for mutual recognition of vaccination documentation is of the “utmost importance,” the European Commission said today.
Paramount+, the successor to CBS All Access, launches March 4 in the US, Canada and Latin America — The company had been touting its plans for the rebranded service since earlier last year.
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/2021/01/19/daily-crunch-microsoft-backs-cruise/
Podchaser, a startup building what it calls “IMDB for podcasts,” recently announced that it has raised $4 million in a funding round led by Greycroft.
In other words, it’s a site where — similar to the Amazon-owned Internet Movie Database — users can look up who’s appeared in which podcasts, rate and review those podcasts and add them to lists. In fact, CEO Bradley Davis told me that the startup’s “vibrant, exciting community of podcast nerds” have already created 8.5 million podcast credits in the database.
Davis said this is something he simply wanted to exist and was, in fact, convinced that it had to exist already. When he realized that it didn’t, he posted on Reddit asking whether anyone was willing to build the company with him — which is how he connected with his eventual co-founder and CTO Ben Slinger in Australia. (Podchaser is a fully distributed company, with Davis currently based in Oklahoma City.)
To be clear, Davis doesn’t think podcast nerds are the only ones taking advantage of the listings. Instead, he suggested that it’s useful for anyone looking to learn more about podcasts and discover new ones, with Podchaser’s monthly active users quintupling over the past year.
For example, he said that one of the most popular pages is politician Pete Buttigieg’s profile, where visitors don’t just learn about Buttigieg’s own podcast but see others on which he’s appeared. (You can also use Podchaser to learn more about TechCrunch’s Equity, Mixtape and Original Content podcasts, though those profiles could stand to be filled out a bit more.)
There has been endless discussion about how to fix podcast discovery, and while Davis isn’t claiming that Podchaser will solve it wholesale, he thinks it can be part of the solution — not just through its own database, but through the broader Podcast Taxonomy project that it’s organizing.
“I think if we are successful at standardizing a lot fo the terminology, and if we do an analysis of all podcasts, of how popular they are, that [will help many listeners] to cull and find the good stuff,” he said.
Podchaser plans to add new features that will further encourage user contributions, like a gamification system and a discussion system.
While the consumer site is free, the startup recently launched a paid product called Podchaser Pro, which provides reach and demographic data across 1.8 million podcasts. It also monetizes by providing podcast players with access to its credits through an API.
Davis said the startup was “lucky” that it decided to build a database that’s “agnostic” from any specific podcast player.
“So we had a lot of latitude to work with those platforms, we integrate with many of those platforms and you’re going to see a lot of our credits showing up [in podcast players],” he said.
In addition to Greycroft, Advancit Capital, LightShed Ventures, Powerhouse Capital, High Alpha, Hyde Park Venture Partners and Poplar Ventures also participated in the round, as did TrendKite founder A.J. Bruno, Ad Results Media CEO Marshall Williams and Shamrock Capital Partner Mike LaSalle.
“Even in the face of a pandemic, the podcast market continues to grow at a breakneck pace,” said Greycroft co-founder and chairman Alan Patricof in a statement. “The demand from consumers and brands is insatiable. Podchaser’s data and discovery tools are crucial to taking podcasting to new heights.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/podchaser-raises-4m-to-build-a-comprehensive-podcast-database/
Earlier today, Qualtrics dropped a new S-1 filing, this time detailing its proposed IPO pricing. That means we can now get a good look at how much the company may be worth when it goes public later this month.
The debut has been one TechCrunch has been looking forward to since the company announced that it would be spun out from its erstwhile corporate parent, SAP. In 2019, the Germany-based enterprise giant SAP snatched up Qualtrics for $8 billion just before it was to go public.
Qualtrics is either worth less than we would have guessed, or its first IPO range feels light.
That figure provides a good marker for how well SAP has done with the deal and how much value Qualtrics has generated in the intervening years. Keep in mind, however, that the value of software companies has risen greatly in the last few years, so the numbers we’ll see below benefit from a market-wide repricing of recurring revenue.
Qualtrics estimates that it may be worth $22 to $26 per share when it goes public. Is that a lot? Let’s find out.
Qualtrics’ first IPO range
First, scale. Qualtrics is selling just under 50 million shares in its public offering. As you can math out, at more than $20 per share, the company is looking to raise north of $1 billion.
After going public, Qualtrics anticipates having 510,170,610 shares outstanding, inclusive of its 7.4 million underwriter option. Using that simple share count, Qualtrics would be worth $11.2 billion to $13.3 billion.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/a-first-look-at-qualtrics-ipo-pricing/
Netflix capped off a year of impressive streaming growth by adding 8.5 million net new paying subscribers during the fourth quarter.
That means the streaming giant now has a total of 204 million paying subscribers worldwide — net growth of 37 million new subscribers for the full year, up from 28 million net additions in 2019.
The company also reported that it brought in $6.64 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $1.19 during Q4, compared to analyst predictions of $6.63 billon in revenue and EPS of $1.39.
In response to the earnings report, Netflix shares were up 12.4% in after-hours trading (as of 4:43pm Eastern).
Looking ahead, Netflix projected that it will add 6.0 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2021 — the same as its old forecast for Q4, and less than half the 15.8 million subscribers that Netflix added in Q1 2020 (right as lockdowns were beginning in the United States).
The company’s investor letter also highlights a number of hit titles from the quarter, projecting that 72 million households will “choose to watch” (watch at least two minutes of) “The Midnight Sky” in its first 28 days of release, while 68 million households chose to watch “Holidate.” It also said the most recent season of “The Crown” was its most popular yet, with more than 100 million households choosing to watch the show “since its initial launch.”
“In addition to titles with big viewership, we also aspire to have hits that become part of the cultural zeitgeist,” Netflix said. “In 2020 alone, we had ’Tiger King,’ ‘Bridgerton’ and ’The Queen’s Gambit.’ … In fact, Netflix series accounted for nine out of the 10 most searched shows globally in 2020, while our films represented two of the top 10.”
The company acknowledged growing competition from new(-ish) streaming services like Disney+, Peacock and HBO Max, but its user numbers still put it far ahead of any streaming competition — Disney+, for example, had 86.8 million subscribers as of early December (Disney’s service launched a little over a year ago and is still rolling out globally).
“Our strategy is simple: if we can continue to improve Netflix every day to better delight our members, we can be their first choice for streaming entertainment,” Netflix said. “This past year is a testament to this approach. Disney+ had a massive first year (87 million paid subscribers!) and we recorded the biggest year of paid membership growth in our history.”
eMarketer analyst Eric Haggstrom made a similar point in a statement:
Netflix ended 2020 on a high note, adding over 36 million subscribers and passing 200 million subscribers. Despite increasing competition from Disney and others, Netflix had its strongest year yet and will look to grow further in 2021, with a strong content release slate already planned. So far, Netflix has been a clear winner of the streaming wars.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/netflix-q4-earnings-4/
Netflix is always in search of a better way to instantly connect users to something to watch, instead of having them waste time unsuccessfully scrolling through all the available programming options. Now, the company says a recent test focused on solving this problem, Shuffle Play, has proven popular enough to roll out to all users worldwide.
In the streamer’s Q4 2020 earnings, announced today, Netflix noted the product development only briefly. It referred broadly to a test of a new feature that “gives members the ability to choose to instantly watch a title chosen just for them versus browse.” It also noted the feature would reach all users worldwide sometime in the first half of 2021.
Netflix confirmed to TechCrunch the test in question is Shuffle Play, which we first covered back in August 2020. However, the company tells us the actual name of the feature is something that’s still being tested.
Shuffle Play puts a big button right on the Netflix home screen, beneath your profile icon. When clicked, Netflix randomly plays content its personalization algorithms think you’ll like. This could include a movie you’re currently watching, something you’ve saved to your watch list, or a title that’s similar to something you’ve already watched, for example.
A variation has also been spotted in the TV app’s sidebar navigation. More recently, we’ve found this sidebar option relabeled as “Shuffle Play,” instead of “Play Something” as before.
In addition, as you start scrolling down through the Netflix home screen on the TV, you’ll eventually come across a screen that explains what the option is for and points to the new button with a red arrow.
“Not sure what to watch?,” this page asks, before explaining how Shuffle Play works.
Image Credits: TechCrunch
The button has already appeared on some users’ Netflix app for TV devices, due to the ongoing tests.
In its letter to shareholders, Netflix said the user response to Shuffle Play has been positive — which is funny because the original responses to the feature on social media were decidedly mixed. However, the company doesn’t make its decisions based on what a handful of tweets once said, but rather in how Netflix members actually used the product, of course.
Netflix also tells us the feature is still being tested only on TV devices, not other platforms like web or mobile. It declined to say how many users or what percentage had been opted into the test to date.
Shuffle Play is the latest in a long series of tests where Netflix has tried to make it easier to find something to watch right away.
In 2019, for example, Netflix tried out a shuffle mode that let you click on a popular show to start playing a random episode. This may have worked well when users wanted to play a random episode of their default pick, like the “The Office” or “Friends,” but Netflix has lost both.
It has also promoted its shows on the login screen and as screensavers, and notoriously autoplayed previews until last year, when it finally caved in to user demand for a way to turn this off.
Overall, the goal is to make the Netflix experience closer to that of traditional TV, where you could switch the set on and content just started playing.
Netflix says Shuffle Play will roll out globally in the first half of 2021, but didn’t share more specifics.
