Category: Tech news

With the Coinbase direct listing behind us and the Robinhood IPO ahead, it’s a heady time for consumer-focused trading apps.

Mix in the impending SPAC-led debut of eToro, general bullishness in the cryptocurrency space, record highs for some equities markets and recent rounds from Public.com, M1 Finance and U.K.-based Freetrade, and you could be excused for expecting the boom in consumer asset trading to keep going up and to the right.

But will it? There are data in both directions. While recent information could indicate that some of the most lucrative trading activity at companies like Robinhood could be slowing, there’s also encouraging app download information that paints a more bullish picture regarding the durability of the boom in consumer interest regarding savings and investing, which The Exchange has had an eye on for some time.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Our question today is this: How bullish are companies in the space about continued consumer interest in equities and other asset trading? And why? We’ll also put similar questions to their backers.

We’ve compiled notes from Accel’s Sameer Gandhi about views concerning Public as one of its backers and Index’s Jan Hammer about Robinhood and its market, as well as comments from Public.com and M1 Finance about what they see regarding consumer trading interest in the future. Thoughts from Robert Le, PitchBook’s senior emerging technology analyst, cap things off.

We’ll start with a short look at some data to help ground ourselves regarding where consumer trading demand appears to be today, then consider what the companies in the ring and their backers are thinking. We’ll close with a synthesis of all the perspectives to come up with hype-adjusted expectations for the rest of 2021.

Bullish data, bearish data

Coinbase executed its direct listing on the back of one of the most impressive quarters we’ve ever seen in the realm of business results, meaning it began to trade when it looked just about as good as a company can. Will the same hold true for Robinhood and company?

Platforms like Shopify, Stripe and WordPress have done a lot to make essential business-building tools — like running storefronts, accepting payments and building websites — accessible to businesses with even the most modest budgets. But some very key aspects of setting up a company remain expensive, time-consuming affairs that can be cost-prohibitive for small businesses — but that, if ignored, can result in the failure of a business before it even really gets started.

Trademark registration is one such concern, and Toronto-based startup Heirlume just raised $1.7 million CAD (~$1.38 million) to address the problem with a machine-powered trademark registration platform that turns the process into a self-serve affair that won’t break the budget. Its AI-based trademark search will flag if terms might run afoul of existing trademarks in the U.S. and Canada, even when official government trademark search tools, and even top-tier legal firms, might not.

Heirlume’s core focus is on leveling the playing field for small business owners, who have typically been significantly out-matched when it comes to any trademark conflicts.

“I’m a senior-level IP lawyer focused in trademarks, and had practiced in a traditional model, boutique firm of my own for over a decade serving big clients, and small clients,” explained Heirlume co-founder Julie MacDonell in an interview. “So providing big multinationals with a lot of brand strategy, and in-house legal, and then mainly serving small business clients when they were dealing with a cease-and-desist, or an infringement issue. It’s really those clients that have my heart: It’s incredibly difficult to have a small business owner literally crying tears on the phone with you, because they just lost their brand or their business overnight. And there was nothing I could do to help because the law just simply wasn’t on their side, because they had neglected to register their trademarks to own them.”

In part, there’s a lack of awareness around what it takes to actually register and own a trademark, MacDonell says. Many entrepreneurs just starting out seek out a domain name as a first step, for instance, and some will fork over significant sums to register these domains. What they don’t realize, however, is that this is essentially a rental, and if you don’t have the trademark to protect that domain, the actual trademark owner can potentially take it away down the road. But even if business owners do realize that a trademark should be their first stop, the barriers to actually securing one are steep.

“There was an an enormous, insurmountable barrier, when it came to brand protection for those business owners,” she said. “And it just isn’t fair. Every other business service, generally a small business owner can access. Incorporating a company or even insurance, for example, owning and buying insurance for your business is somewhat affordable and accessible. But brand ownership is not.”

Heirlume brings the cost of trademark registration down from many thousands of dollars to just under $600 for the first, and only $200 for each additional after that. The startup is also offering a very small business-friendly “buy now, pay later” option supported by Clearbanc, which means that even businesses starting on a shoestring can take the step of protecting their brand at the outset.

In its early days, Heirlume is also offering its core trademark search feature for free. That provides a trademark search engine that works across both U.S. and Canadian government databases, which can not only tell you if your desired trademark is available or already held, but also reveal whether it’s likely to be able to be successfully obtained, given other conflicts that might arise that are totally ignored by native trademark database search portals.

Image Credits: Heirlume

Heirlume uses machine learning to identify these potential conflicts, which not only helps users searching for their trademarks, but also greatly decreases the workload behind the scenes, helping them lower costs and pass on the benefits of those improved margins to its clients. That’s how it can achieve better results than even hand-tailored applications from traditional firms, while doing so at scale and at reduced costs.

Another advantage of using machine-powered data processing and filing is that on the government trademark office side, the systems are looking for highly organized, curated data sets that are difficult for even trained people to get consistently right. Human error in just data entry can cause massive backlogs, MacDonell notes, even resulting in entire applications having to be tossed and started over from scratch.

“There are all sorts of data sets for those [trademark requirement] parameters,” she said. “Essentially, we synthesize all of that, and the goal through machine learning is to make sure that applications are utterly compliant with government rules. We actually have a senior-level trademark examiner that came to work for us, very excited that we were solving the problems causing backlogs within the government. She said that if Heirlume can get to a point where the applications submitted are perfect, there will be no backlog with the government.”

Improving efficiency within the trademark registration bodies means one less point of friction for small business owners when they set out to establish their company, which means more economic activity and upside overall. MacDonell ultimately hopes that Heirlume can help reduce friction to the point where trademark ownership is at the forefront of the business process, even before domain registration. Heirlume has a partnership with Google Domains to that end, which will eventually see indication of whether a domain name is likely to be trademarkable included in Google Domain search results.

This initial seed funding includes participation from Backbone Angels, as well as the Future Capital collective, Angels of Many and MaRS IAF, along with angel investors including Daniel Debow, Sid Lee’s Bertrand Cesvet and more. MacDonell notes that just as their goal was to bring more access and equity to small business owners when it comes to trademark protection, the startup was also very intentional in building its team and its cap table. MacDonell, along with co-founders CTO Sarah Ruest and Dave McDonell, aim to build the largest tech company with a majority female-identifying technology team. Its investor make-up includes 65% female-identifying or underrepresented investors, and MacDonnell says that was a very intentional choice that extended the time of the raise, and even led to turning down interest from some leading Silicon Valley firms.

“We want underrepresented founders to be to be funded, and the best way to ensure that change is to empower underrepresented investors,” she said. “I think that we all have a responsibility to actually do something. We’re all using hashtags right now, and hashtags are not enough […] Our CTO is female, and she’s often been the only female person in the room. We’ve committed to ensuring that women in tech are no longer the only woman in the room.”

Last call, founders. Today is your last chance to save $100 on a pass to TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising. Our last founder bootcamp event of the year takes place July 8-9, and it’s time to call on Saint Expeditus — the patron saint of procrastinators and programmers alike. He’ll help you kick procrastination to the curb, save some cash and gain access to a bevy of top-tier investors, famous founders, marketing magicians, financial wizards and other startup savants. And they all want to help you build a better startup. But you need to buy your pass by 11:59 p.m. (PT) today, April 30.

This TC Early Stage experience goes deep on fundraising and marketing fundamentals. On day one, you’ll choose from a range of presentations and breakout sessions — all interactive, with plenty of time for Q&As. Plus video on demand, available after the event ends, means you don’t have to worry about schedule conflicts.

Speakers at Early Stage bring a wealth of experience, coupled with authenticity. You’ll walk away with actionable advice for immediate use and an unvarnished look at what it takes to build a startup. No sugar-coating here.

Vlad Magdalin, founder of Webflow, was very candid about the challenges he faced on his journey to success. “You always hear about startups that raise millions of dollars, but you don’t necessarily hear about the ups and downs it takes to get to that point. It’s important for early founders to see that side, too.”

We recently added Lisa Wu, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, to our speaker roster, and we can’t wait to hear why she thinks founders should think like a VC. We’re adding more amazing speakers every week, and the full agenda is coming soon!

On day two, get ready for the Early Stage Pitch-off. Applications open next week! Throw your hat in the ring and maybe you’ll be one of the 10 early-stage startup founders chosen to pitch live in front of a panel of VC judges and all the Early Stage attendees around the world. Valuable exposure and pitch feedback for all competitors and special prizes for the winner. Stay tuned!

Read about Nalagenetics, the April TC Early Stage Pitch-off winner right here.

You procrastinated, dragged your feet and delayed taking action on this one simple, opportunity-filled task. For the love of Saint Expeditus, buy your pass to TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising before 11:59 pm (PT) tonight, save $100 and build a better startup.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Early Stage 2021 – Marketing & Fundraising? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

A U.S./Israeli startup, Sorbet — which is tackling what companies do with the financial risks as employees accrue paid time off (PTO) — has raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Viola Ventures, with participation by Global Founders Capital and Meron Capital.

The economics of paid time off is relatively hidden in the business world, but essentially, Sorbet takes on the burden of this PTO from employers and then allows employees to spend it. This gives the employers far more control over the whole process and the ability to forecast its impact on the business.

Sorbet says that in the U.S., employees use only 72% of PTO balances, even though it’s the most sought-after benefit. But this, effectively, comes out at 768 million unused days off a year, worth around $224 billion. This creates a difficult problem for CFOs and accountants because its creates balance sheet liabilities on the company’s books, says Sorbet. If the employee doesn’t use all of their PTO, the employer can end up owing them a lot of money, which creates a cash flow liability on the company’s books. So Sorbet buys out these PTO liabilities from employees, then loads the cash value of the PTO on prepaid credit cards for the employees.

Speaking to me on a call, CEO and co-founder Veetahl Eilat-Raichel, said: “We researched this whole idea of paid time off and found this huge, massive market failure and inefficiency around the way that PTO is constructed. It’s kind of one of those things where, on the face of it, there’s this boring bureaucratic payroll item that turns into a boring balance sheet item. But under it is a $224 billion problem for U.S. businesses… If you think about it, employers are borrowing money from their employees at the worst terms possible and employees aren’t benefitting either. So everyone’s hurting here.”

She said: “Sorbet assumes the liability on ourselves and so then we can allow the company to control their cash flow and decide when they want to pay us back. They gain a lot of financial value because we are able to be very, very attractive on our funding. So it saves costs, it provides them with complete control of their cash flow and it allows them to give out amazing financial benefits to employees at a time where we can all use some extra cash right now.”

The platform Sorbet has built will, it says, sync with calendars, HR and payroll systems, identify habits and then proactively suggest personalized, pre-approved 3-6 hour “Micro Breaks”, 1-4 day “Micro Vacations” and +1 week Vacations. This, says the startup, increases PTO used by as much as 15%.

Employers can constantly renegotiate the terms of the loan with Sorbet, thus matching future cash flow, insulating themselves against salary raises (wage inflation), and take advantage of other benefits.

The co-founders are Eilat-Raichel, who previously worked at L’Oréal, Lockheed Martin and a fintech entrepreneur; Eliaz Shapira, co-founder and CPO; and Rami Kasterstein, co-founder and board member.

Founders Circle Capital, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based investment firm that strikes agreements with private, venture-backed companies to buy some of the vested stock options of their founders and employees — so they can buy a house or just breathe a bit more easily — has closed its newest fund with $355 million in capital commitments, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to nearly $1 billion.

Not surprisingly, the outfit, which has more competition than ever — both by other secondary investment firms, aggressive outfits like Tiger Global that routinely acquire secondary stakes in companies, as well as special purpose acquisition companies that are taking companies public a lot faster and alleviating the need of early shareholders to cash out via private sales — is also introducing a new twist to its business.

Specifically, according to both co-founder and CEO Ken Loveless and the outfit’s chief people officer, Mark Dempster, Founders Circle is now offering startups so-called flexible capital, too. We talked with Loveless and Dempster via Zoom late last week about the new fund and generally what they are seeing out there. Excerpts from that chat, edited for length and clarity, follow.

TC: This is your third fund. How does it compare with your earlier funds?

KL: We’ve raised three main funds. This is our third, but we’ve raised something like 17 entities [altogether], including some co-investment vehicles and special purpose vehicles to invest in some of our companies.

TC: And you’re now changing your approach a bit. How so?

MD: [We’re now offering] a mix of primary and secondary [investment dollars] and we can [offer these] any time and in any combination. These [investments] don’t have to happen during a certain [distinct] round of financing; we might get involved in eight to 10 different investments [tied to the company].

TC: Do you have a debt partner so you have more capital at your disposal if you need it?

KL: We have a strategic partnership with Silicon Valley Bank, so they are typically the lender to these individuals as they solve their liquidity. In many cases, we provide an equity backstop to that.

TC: How has your world changed now that people perhaps see a light at the end of the tunnel, with companies becoming publicly traded entities in a variety of ways that we weren’t seeing in recent years? Are employees or founders any more or less reluctant to share their shares in secondary transactions?

KL: There hasn’t been any significant change. We had a portfolio company go public in UiPath that was 16 years old and if you think about how many things change in your life over that kind of time period, it would be quite a long list. We also had [stakes] in DoorDash and Poshmark, and if you look at the time between when they were founded and became publicly traded, it was close to a decade for both. So [while there is some market receptivity for companies] that really are two years old or three years old, the average [time from launch to publicly traded company] is still 10-plus years on average.

TC: A lot of outfits are competing for the same shares that you want to buy, including Tiger Global, which is paying very high prices in many cases. In addition to competing with these companies, I’m wondering if you ever sell your shares to them.

KL: We are typically a long-only investor. We have not sold any secondary shares. We typically hold through a public offering. We’re really trying to focus on those companies that can truly be in enduring, decades-old businesses. We obviously wouldn’t hold that long, but we’re holding into the public markets.

TC: How long do you hold your shares?

KL: We’re not bound [by anything] but what we tell our [investors] is that we typically hold for an average of one year post public offering [then distribute the shares to them].

TC: How, if at all, are you playing this SPAC phenomenon? Are you seeing opportunities to jump into these blank check companies before they merge with brands you’ve maybe been tracking?

KL: We have not directly participated in a SPAC, but we have had some of our portfolio companies merged with some SPACs to become what we hope will be enduring public businesses. So we’ve taken advantage of [those exits] as a financing tool.

TC: You’ve been at this for roughly a decade. How many companies have you backed and how many of these have exited?

MD: We’ve invested in 73 companies and 31 have exited.

TC: I know you tend to invest at a later stage — have there been any shutdowns owing to unforeseen circumstances?

MD: We’ve had zero company shutdowns.

TC: And what about what you’re having to pay? How has that changed over the last year or so?

KL: We just did an analysis of this and if you adjust for growth, we have not seen a substantial raise in valuations that we have paid compared to where prices were pre-pandemic. We’re paying the same dollar for a point of growth as we were before [COVID-19 struck the U.S.].

TC: Why do you think that is?

KL: Companies that have solid unit economics have become better at both benchmarking their internal metrics, and investors have become better at understanding those and metrics. The consistency and underwriting by investors is becoming better and better.

Porsche has always gone its own way when it comes to creating new vehicles. It is, after all, the company that continues to stick to the wacky idea that putting the weight of an engine in the rear of a sports car is a great idea. (It is!)

So, bucking the crossover trend to create an all-electric, soft-roading wagon with just 20 more millimeters of clearance than their popular electric Taycan sedan isn’t out of character for the brand. Instead, it’s another example of how Porsche approaches electrification.”You don’t make an electric car. You make a Porsche with an electric powertrain,” Calvin Kim, product spokesperson for the Taycan line, said in a recent interview.

The 2021 Taycan Cross Turismo fits that bill. Powerful, quick, comfortable, luxurious and tech-laden, the Porsche Taycan 4 Cross Turismo (one of four variants of the wagon) offers a blend of practicality with a whole lot of power and speed for under $100,000.

Why build an electric Porsche wagon?

Porsche upended the sports car enthusiast club when it launched the Cayenne nearly 20 years ago and is doing the same with the Taycan and the Taycan Cross Turismo. While the SUV and crossover business is still a tremendous cash cow for the company, nearly 4,500 Taycans were sold in 2020, according to a recent release from Porsche. That’s more than either the 718 or the Panamera line. Porsche also says that from cradle to manufacturing, the new Cross Turismo is carbon neutral — the first vehicle they’ve made that has achieved that status.

“Porsche wanted to create the most sporty capability we can make,” Kim said, “and a wagon version of the Taycan embodies that ethos.”

The 2021 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo is on sale today. Porsche says that it expects deliveries to start this summer.

Image Credits: Abigail Bassett

Taycan versus Taycan Cross Turismo

Beyond the obvious form factor, prospective buyers or EV enthusiasts might wonder why someone might opt for a Cross Turismo over the original Taycan?

There are a few important differences between the two vehicles that might push some customers over to the wagon. First up, the Cross Turismo offers more passenger and cargo space. Passengers get an additional 0.35 inches of headroom up front and 3.69 inches in the back. The wagon is also equipped with more cargo space — 15.7 cubic feet behind the rear seats or 42.8 cubic feet with them folded forward. Like the Taycan, the Cross Turismo has an additional 2.9 cubic feet of area in the frunk.

The Cross Turismo also has a skosh 20 millimeters (just short of 1 inch) more ground clearance than the Taycan sedan and an additional driving mode called Gravel. Gravel mode is activated by a soft key on the center console rather than by the mode wheel on the steering wheel. It raises the car’s height and makes changes to the stability control and torque management system for better grip on gravel, snow or ice. Unfortunately, on our short test drive, we didn’t get a chance to put Gravel mode to the test.

Image Credits: Porsche

On top of these features, the Taycan Cross Turismo comes with all-wheel drive and standard air suspension (called Porsche Active Suspension Management or PASM), which, on the Taycan, is a $2,200 option. The Taycan Cross Turismo comes standard with the larger 93.4 kWh battery pack, which is a $5,780 option on the base Taycan sedan. The Cross Turismo is built on the same platform as the Taycan sedan, known as J1, internally.

There are four different variants of the Taycan Cross Turismo, including the one I drove. You can choose from the entry-level Taycan 4 Cross Turismo, the Taycan 4S Cross Turismo, the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo and the Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo. At the highest trims, base prices start at $188,000. Pricing for the Taycan 4 Cross Turismo that I drove starts at $92,250 (including delivery).

Each flavor of Cross Turismo comes with an optional off-road package that adds lower body cladding to prevent rock chips on gravel roads and raises the vehicle by 10 millimeters. Porsche doesn’t state the ground clearance for the Taycan or the Taycan Cross Turismo, but approach and departure angles increase from 12.1 and 15.2 degrees to 12.2 and 16.2 degrees in the electric wagon.  In true Porsche fashion, the company says that there are more than 21,000 option combinations based solely on which Cross Turismo you choose, wheel choice, exterior color and interior selection, not to mention details like badge deletion, stitching, technology options and seat types.

Charging speeds are the same between the Cross Turismo and the Taycan. Porsche says that on DC fast chargers, the Taycan Cross Turismo can recharge from 5% to 80% in just 22.5-minutes.

First drive

The Taycan Cross Turismo 4, which I drove, represents the entry point to the new all-electric wagon. While neither Porsche nor the EPA has released range estimates, the European-spec, ruby red machine had just over 250 miles of range at 99% charge when I hopped into it for a Monday afternoon jaunt from Glendale, California to Big Bear and back. That nearly 200-mile trip left me with 68 miles of range in the proverbial tank. While it may seem like that math is off, it’s not, thanks to regenerative braking that helps generate electricity and push some of it back into the battery.

The drive consisted of about 140 miles along the highway and some 60 miles on mountain roads. Thanks to the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup that comes standard on all Cross Turismos, the electric wagon felt planted and secure on misty and slightly icy mountain roads and took corners without a modicum of body roll. With a 375 horsepower (469 with launch control) and maximum available 368 lb-ft of torque, passing a sluggish motorist (or three at once) was handled with ease.

The Cross Turismo gets five different driving modes: Range, Normal, Sport, Sport Plus and Individual. On the highway, I started in Normal mode and noticed how easy it was to push the vehicle beyond the stated speed limit. Using the toggle on the wheel, I switched to Range mode, which helps conserve battery by limiting speed to just 80 miles per hour. All of the modes except Range allow the driver to take the Cross Turismo to its full 136-mile-per-hour potential.

Image Credits: Porsche

My test vehicle was a European model. This meant that certain tech features that come with the Cross Turismo, including Porsche’s advanced driving assistance system InnoDrive and the navigation features, couldn’t be activated since my test drive was in the United States. However, the regular adaptive cruise control did work and I used it extensively on the highway run from Glendale to the base of the mountain.

The Taycan Cross Turismo’s adaptive cruise adapted quickly to the numerous drivers who cut into my lane. The feature handled these tricky moments the same way I would have, only with a bit more finesse. When a car swerved unexpectedly into my lane, the Cross Turismo slowed without slamming the brakes or stuttering and simply drew the 5,029-pound vehicle down to a slower speed and a comfortable following distance that was neither too short nor too long. As traffic sped up, the system would maintain the following distance without jostling or awkward pauses.

When I reached the base of the mountain, I had around 200 miles of range left. I toggled the Cross Turismo into Sport Plus mode and began the climb. In Sport and Sport Plus, the “engine noise” (for lack of a better term) inside the cabin becomes more audible. Porsche says that to create the sound, they recorded the motors’ audio, adjusted it and then piped the sound into the cabin. Outside the cabin in both modes, the vehicle becomes a bit louder but not nearly as raucous as a combustion Porsche.

The roads leading to Big Bear are more winter-worn than those in the Los Angeles Basin and have plenty of cracks and potholes after a wet season. On the day I drove the route, it was misty and around 40 degrees, with frost licking the tips of the pines at higher elevations giving them a silver hue. The road was wet and wound through dense patches of cloud and fog, causing a few small icy spots on the roadway. The Cross Turismo took all of those challenges in stride.

If you’ve ever hustled a heavy and relatively large vehicle up a technical and twisting road, you know the body roll battle all too well. It’s a non-issue in the Cross Turismo. Because the body weight (battery and motors) are set low into the floor, the Cross Turismo feels as planted, comfortable and capable as a 911. The steering is direct and communicative without being twitchy. On the climb, I managed to trim off roughly 10 minutes on my estimated arrival without breaking a sweat or really pushing the car anywhere near the limit. At the predetermined coffee stop, I’d worn the battery down to 118 miles — plenty to get me back to Glendale with room to spare.

I ran the mountain road in Sport and cruised back to the valley. At the bottom of the mountain road, I noted that the vehicle had gained a few miles back thanks to regenerative braking and had 124 miles remaining. Throwing range anxiety to the wind and vowing to keep my eyes up for potential speed traps, I kept the Taycan Cross Turismo in Sport mode and zipped my way through 3 p.m. traffic, arriving back at the studio with plenty of power to spare.

Spotify launches paid podcast support, Amazon announces new tablets and we unveil the agenda for TC Sessions: Mobility. This is your Daily Crunch for April 27, 2021.

The big story: Spotify adds support for paid podcasts

As first announced in February, Spotify is now allowing podcasters to offer subscriber-only content, published through its Anchor podcasting software. Creators choose from three subscription tiers — $2.99, $4.99 or $7.99 per month.

This comes one week after Apple announced support for paid podcast subscriptions. But where Apple said it would take 30% of first-year subscriptions and 15% after that, Spotify says it will pass 100% of revenue on to podcasters for the first two years, only charging a 5% fee starting in 2023.

The tech giants

Amazon announces new Fire tablets and kids editions — The Fire HD 10 is thinner and lighter than its predecessor, with pricing starting at $150.

Tesla wants to make every home a distributed power plant — CEO Elon Musk said he wants to turn every home into a distributed power plant that would generate, store and even deliver energy back into the electricity grid, all using the company’s products.

Red Hat CEO looks to maintain double-digit growth in second year at helm — Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier runs the centerpiece of IBM’s transformation hopes.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Kids-focused fintech Greenlight raises $260M in a16z-led Series D, nearly doubles valuation to $2.3B — Since it launched its debit cards for kids in 2017, the company has set up accounts for more than 3 million parents and children.

Kry closes $312M Series D after use of its telehealth tools grows 100% yoy — During the pandemic, Kry quickly stepped in to offer a free service for doctors to conduct web-based consultations.

Banana Capital’s debut fund is for internet-first founders — You might know him for his viral tweets, but Turner Novak wasn’t always a master meme-maker.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Internal rates of return in emerging US tech hubs are starting to overtake Silicon Valley — AngelList analyzed IRR for almost 2,500 deals dating back to 2013.

Fifth Wall’s Brendan Wallace and Hippo’s Assaf Wand discuss proptech’s biggest opportunities — The pair joined us to discuss questions like: How should proptech founders think about competition, strategic investment versus top-tier VC firms and how to build their board?

SaaS subscriptions may be short-serving your customers — Adam Riggs argues that software as a service may have become a bit too interchangeable with subscription models.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

Announcing the Agenda for TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 — Our guests will include Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson, Amy Jones Satrom of Nuro and famed investor Reid Hoffman.

Taking stock of the VC industry’s progress on diversity, equity and inclusion — A look at the VC Human Capital Survey from the National Venture Capital Association, Venture Forward and Deloitte.

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.

Rather than a CEO-slamming sound bite free-for-all, Tuesday’s big tech hearing on algorithms aimed for more of a listening session vibe — and in that sense it mostly succeeded.

The hearing centered on testimony from the policy leads at Facebook, YouTube and Twitter rather than the chief executives of those companies for a change. The resulting few hours didn’t offer any massive revelations but was still probably more productive than squeezing some of the world’s most powerful men for their commitments to “get back to you on that.”

In the hearing, lawmakers bemoaned social media echo chambers and the ways that the algorithms pumping content through platforms are capable of completely reshaping human behavior.

“… This advanced technology is harnessed into algorithms designed to attract our time and attention on social media, and the results can be harmful to our kids’ attention spans, to the quality of our public discourse, to our public health, and even to our democracy itself,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), chair of the Senate Judiciary’s subcommittee on privacy and tech, which held the hearing.

Coons struck a cooperative note, observing that algorithms drive innovation but that their dark side comes with considerable costs

None of this is new, of course. But Congress is crawling closer to solutions, one repetitive tech hearing at a time. The Tuesday hearing highlighted some zones of bipartisan agreement that could determine the chances of a tech reform bill passing the Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Democrats. Coons expressed optimism that a “broadly bipartisan solution” could be reached.

What would that look like? Probably changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which we’ve written about extensively over the years. That law protects social media companies from liability for user-created content and it’s been a major nexus of tech regulation talk, both in the newly Democratic Senate under Biden and the previous Republican-led Senate that took its cues from Trump.

Lauren Culbertson, head of U.S. public policy at Twitter Inc., speaks remotely during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, April 27, 2021. Image Credits: Al Drago/Bloomberg / Getty Images

A broken business model

In the hearing, lawmakers pointed to flaws inherent to how major social media companies make money as the heart of the problem. Rather than criticizing companies for specific failings, they mostly focused on the core business model from which social media’s many ills spring forth.

“I think it’s very important for us to push back on the idea that really complicated, qualitative problems have easy quantitative solutions,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) said. He argued that because social media companies make money by keeping users hooked to their products, any real solution would have to upend that business model altogether.

“The business model of these companies is addiction,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) echoed, calling social media an “attention treadmill” by design.

Ex-Googler and frequent tech critic Tristan Harris didn’t mince words about how tech companies talk around that central design tenet in his own testimony. “It’s almost like listening to a hostage in a hostage video,” Harris said, likening the engagement-seeking business model to a gun just offstage.

Spotlight on Section 230

One big way lawmakers propose to disrupt those deeply entrenched incentives? Adding algorithm-focused exceptions to the Section 230 protections that social media companies enjoy. A few bills floating around take that approach.

One bill introduced in 2020 from Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) and Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) would require platforms with 10 million or more users to obtain consent before serving users content based on their behavior or demographic data if they want to keep Section 230 protections. The idea is to revoke 230 immunity from platforms that boost engagement by “funneling information to users that polarizes their views” unless a user specifically opts in.

In another bill, the Protecting Americans from Dangerous Algorithms Act, Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) propose suspending Section 230 protections and making companies liable “if their algorithms amplify misinformation that leads to offline violence.” That bill would amend Section 230 to reference existing civil rights laws.

Section 230’s defenders argue that any insufficiently targeted changes to the law could disrupt the modern internet as we know it, resulting in cascading negative impacts well beyond the intended scope of reform efforts. An outright repeal of the law is almost certainly off the table, but even small tweaks could completely realign internet businesses, for better or worse.

During the hearing, Hawley made a broader suggestion for companies that use algorithms to chase profits. “Why shouldn’t we just remove Section 230 protection from any platform that engages in behavioral advertising or algorithmic amplification?” he asked, adding that he wasn’t opposed to an outright repeal of the law.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who leads the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, connected the algorithmic concerns to anti-competitive behavior in the tech industry. “If you have a company that buys out everyone from under them … we’re never going to know if they could have developed the bells and whistles to help us with misinformation because there is no competition,” Klobuchar said.

Subcommittee members Klobuchar and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) have their own major Section 230 reform bill, the Safe Tech Act, but that legislation is less concerned with algorithms than ads and paid content.

At least one more major bill looking at Section 230 through the lens of algorithms is still on the way. Prominent Big Tech critic House Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) is due to propose a Section 230 bill soon that could suspend liability protections for companies that rely on algorithms to boost engagement and line their pockets.

“That’s a very complicated algorithm that is designed to maximize engagement to drive up advertising prices to produce greater profits for the company,” Cicilline told Axios last month. ” … That’s a set of business decisions for which, it might be quite easy to argue, that a company should be liable for.”

This afternoon Alphabet, Microsoft and Pinterest reported their quarterly earnings results for the first three months of 2021. Microsoft and Pinterest have rapidly lost value after reporting their results, while Alphabet appreciated after its own earnings download.

Sparing you a deluge of numbers, here’s what TechCrunch is pondering from each report in as few words as possible:

• Alphabet’s earnings were strong across a number of fronts; investors cheered. YouTube revenue grew nearly 50% to $6 billion, search ads performed well, and even the infamously unprofitable “Other Bets” ground managed to post nearly $200 million in revenue. But the most notable result from the technology conglomerate was its cloud results. Google Cloud grew from $2.777 billion in revenue and an operating loss of $1.73 billion in the year-ago quarter to revenues of $4.047 billion and an operating loss of just $974 million. The Mountain View-based agglomeration of tech services is building not only a material revenue stream out of a non-ad-based product, but one that could generate material operating income in time. If trends hold.
• Microsoft’s earnings report was pretty good despite Wall Street disinterest. Microsoft grew 17% from its year-ago quarter while pushing its operating income up 31% to $17 billion; faster growing income compared to revenue is indicative of operating leverage. The company’s net income actually grew even more rapidly than its operating income, which is sharper than expected. Azure, the company’s Google Cloud and AWS competitor, grew 50% in the quarter, which met expectations per CNBC. Microsoft remains incredibly rich, and its most future-looking products put up some pretty big numbers. Not bad!
• Pinterest posted a monster quarter. Wall Street was not impressed. Pinterest’s Q1 2021 revenue of $485.230 million was up 78% compared to the year-ago quarter, the company cut its net loss from $141.196 million to $21.674 million at the same time, and its non-GAAP net income rose from -$59.916 million to $78.527 million during the first three months of the year. The result of this wildly impressive quarter? Its shares are off more than 8%. One reason Pinterest may have dropped is that the company missed on monthly active users (478 million reported, 480.5 million expected), and warned that it would see “sequential operating expense growth [ … ] accelerate in Q2.” But with the company anticipating 105% revenue growth in the current quarter and midteens MAU growth in the same period, it’s hard to be that mad at the company. Unless we’re missing something major here, Pinterest is being punished by investors who simply expected even more?

And there you have it, a very quick catch up. I am not supposed to cover earnings much anymore, but while you can take the pig from the shit, it’s hard to get the pig to not blog about earnings!

Exyn Technologies announced Tuesday that it has achieved what it considers the highest level of aerial autonomy reached within the industry. The key to the achievement is that Exyn drones are immune to GPS signal loss, meaning all spatial and mapping computations are done onboard, the company said.

Under Exyn’s definitions of autonomy, which are based on a similar standard applied to automotive, the company’s drones have achieved Level 4A autonomy. This means the drones are able to explore a designated 3D area without a remote operator in the backseat, according to Exyn.

Exyn’s achievement is a major step up from the previous level 3 of autonomy, in which a human is required to be present to potentially take over, something that has prevented drones from entering spaces without ranging signals.

The Level 3 aerial autonomy landscape is also defined by point-to-point navigation, in which an operator lays out a sequence of locations for a robot to visit, and the robot does its best to get there. Autonomous aviation startup Xwing’s self-flying utility aircraft will operate on this level by following specific flight paths. However, in real-life use cases, an operator might not have intimate knowledge of the operating environment, and the robot might not be able to access existing maps to learn from and inform its movements.

“We developed an autonomous system that can take you into dark, dirty, dangerous environments,” Exyn’s CTO Jason Derenick told TechCrunch. “Place it at the edge of danger and send it off to collect the information that you need. Oftentimes the information you need is beyond the line of sight, both in terms of communications as well as visual.”

Exyn’s drones are given a capability the company calls “scoutaunomy,” which involves defining a “bounding box volume” around which the drone can fly. Using lidar sensors, the drone can identify volume between explored and unexplored spaces in order to self-navigate and create an accurate, high-resolution map of the space. The drones, which are hardware-agnostic, can also carry additional sensors that collect further information to be integrated onto the maps. 

“Think of building a three-dimensional map and then draping on top of it RGB information from the camera, so now you’ve got a photorealistic 3D representation of the space,” Nader Elm, CEO of Exyn Technologies, told TechCrunch. “If we’re carrying heat and humidity sensors, getting radiological reading, getting gas readings, checking the ventilation, et cetera. That’s going to be a very rich dataset that currently underground mining doesn’t have.”

Most of Exyn Technologies’ use cases are in the mining industry, with clients like Rupert Resources and Dundee Precious Metals, where the ability to chart the unknown can keep miners safe and inform better business decisions. The company recently announced a partnership with Swedish mining and construction giant Sandvik that will involve integrating Exyn’s mapping software with Sandvik’s mapping analytics capabilities. 

Exyn is also working with government customers for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, as well as in nuclear energy, construction and logistics, according to the company. 

Let’s be clear: The venture capital industry has lacked diversity. The good news is the industry is working to improve itself.

To begin with, as an industry, venture capital can only improve what we measure. In 2016, we set out to develop a rigorous methodology for tracking progress on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in venture capital, and to measure and benchmark those data through our biennial VC Human Capital Survey.

The goals of the survey — powered by the National Venture Capital Association, Venture Forward and Deloitte — are to collect demographic data on the VC workforce across all firm types, sizes, stages, sectors and geographies, as well as trends on firm talent management and recruitment practices. We’ve learned that progress can be slow and seem discouraging, but we’ve also captured evidence that diversity (and firm practices to advance diversity) is increasing in some areas, even as other areas have unfortunately not seen the same pace of change.

We fielded the survey in 2016, 2018 and 2020, and released the outcomes of the third edition last month, featuring data (as of June 30, 2020) collected from 378 firms, a marked increase from 203 participating firms in 2018. Furthermore, more than 145 firms signed the #VCHumanCapital pledge to publicly commit to submitting their DEI data.

At a high level, the data showed that improvements in diversity among investment partners have largely been driven by the hiring and advancement of female investors, while there has been little progress in the equitable representation of Black or Hispanic investment partners.

However, the demographic composition of junior investment professionals reflects greater diversity and wider adoption of diversity-focused talent management and recruitment practices suggest some cause for optimism. The industry still has a long way to go, but here are some of the key insights and changes we identified from the latest survey.

Intentionality associated with improved diversity

More firms are explicitly assigning responsibility for promoting diversity and inclusion internally — 50% of firms have a staff person or team tasked with this responsibility (compared with 34% in 2018 and 16% in 2016). Simultaneously, diversity and inclusion strategies have become more widespread; 43% of firms have implemented a diversity strategy (against 32% in 2018 and 24% in 2016), while 41% have an inclusion strategy (versus 31% in 2018 and 17% in 2016).

This intentionality translates to improved diversity outcomes. Firms with dedicated DEI staff, strategies and programs achieve greater gender and racial diversity on investment teams and among investment partners. The increased emphasis on DEI is also a broader ecosystem trend. More firms report that limited partners and portfolio companies have requested their DEI details over the past 12 months.

Encouraging signs in talent recruitment and development

Venture firms are relatively small and turnover is generally low, but 21% of firms in 2020 reported their number of senior-level investment positions had increased, while 43% said their number of junior-level positions had expanded. Meanwhile, the demographic composition of junior investment professionals reflects higher gender and racial diversity, a positive leading indicator for the diversity of future investment partners.

As overall DEI strategies have become increasingly widespread, more firms have also developed DEI-focused recruitment and hiring programs — 33% of firms have formal programs, while 74% have informal programs, both reflecting steady increases from 2016. Firms were also more likely to report that they typically seek external candidates for open positions than they did in 2018.

However, firms continue to largely rely on internal networks for recruitment, which often encourages homogeneous hiring outcomes. Between the 2018 and 2020 surveys, there was little change shown in the use of narrow recruitment methods to find external candidates; notifying peers in the VC industry (78%) and notifying the firm internally (59%) were the strategies cited most often. The exception was posting on third-party websites like LinkedIn or in newsletters, a strategy reported by 54% of firms in 2020 (a substantial increase from 37% in 2018), which presents one avenue to reach a broader audience of candidates outside of existing networks.

Assessing inclusion remains a challenge

Once talent has come on board, inclusive culture and retention become key metrics of DEI progress. More firms are implementing programs dedicated to leadership development, mentorship and retention, with about two-thirds reporting informal versions of such programs (20 percentage points higher than in 2016) and 20% of firms reporting formal programs.

Assessing inclusion through the VC Human Capital Survey is challenging because we survey one representative per firm, and one person cannot speak to the degree of inclusion felt by others. However, we added a new question to the 2020 survey to gauge how firms themselves are assessing inclusion. While 41% of firms reported having an inclusion strategy, only 26% said they conduct surveys of their employees to assess inclusion.

Subjective factors remain a key consideration in promotions

Well-structured, consistently applied policies for career advancement are critical to ensuring that diverse talent reaches the most senior decision-making levels of the industry. About 20% of firms reported having formal DEI programs focused on promotion (up from 5% in 2016), while 65% of firms have informal programs (compared with 39% in 2016).

Although DEI programs focused on the promotion of employees are more widespread, subjective factors remain a key consideration for promotion decisions, which can lead to unequal and biased outcomes.

Almost all firms reported that “contributions to the performance of the fund” (90%) and “deal origination” (82%) were very important or important factors in considering promotions. However, the factor most often rated highly was “soft skills,” with 94% of firms saying it was very important or important. These types of subjective factors present significant opportunity for unconscious bias to creep in and can detract from the weight given to objective measures more demonstrably relevant to performance.

Maintaining momentum

The results of the third edition of our survey are timely, coming on the heels of a year in which social justice and racial equity have been the subjects of sharp national focus, policymakers have sought to increase access to capital for underserved communities, and the VC industry has shown a renewed focus on DEI. The survey shows where the VC industry’s efforts should be focused and also serves as an important reminder of the intersectional needs of DEI-focused initiatives.

The data show that progress within one demographic element can be more nuanced when considering people who represent multiple marginalized communities (e.g., the percentage of investment partners who are women has steadily increased, but the percentage of investment partners who are women of color has not).

The pace of DEI progress has been slow and uneven in some areas, but there are reasons for optimism. On April 6, NVCA, Venture Forward and Deloitte hosted a discussion with industry leaders to further examine the latest survey results and to address DEI challenges, opportunities and strategies for the industry. More firms are prioritizing these constructive conversations, both within their firms and publicly with industry peers. More firms are acting in a collaborative spirit, adopting thoughtful and concrete DEI strategies and acting with intentionality and urgency.

If the industry can continue to build upon this momentum and commitment around DEI efforts, we can reach a tipping point that will translate to meaningful progress reflected in future editions of the survey.

Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier runs the centerpiece of IBM’s transformation hopes. When Big Blue paid $34 billion for his company in 2018, it was because it believed it could be the linchpin of the organization’s shift to a focus on hybrid computing.

In its most recent earnings report, IBM posted positive revenue growth for only the second time in eight quarters, and it was Red Hat’s 15% growth that led the way. Cormier recognizes the role his company plays for IBM, and he doesn’t shy away from it.

As he told me in an interview this week ahead of the company’s Red Hat Summit, a lot of cloud technology is based on Linux, and as the company that originally made its name selling Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), he says that is a technology his organization is very comfortable working with. He sees the two companies working well together, with Red Hat benefitting from having IBM sell his company’s software, while remaining neutral technologically, something that benefits customers and pushes the overall IBM vision.

Quite a first year

Even though Cormier has been with Red Hat for 20 years, he took over as its CEO after Arvind Krishna replaced Ginni Rometty as IBM’s chief executive and long-time Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst moved over to a role at IBM last April. Cormier stepped in as leader just as the pandemic hit the U.S. with its full force.

“Going into my first year of a pandemic, no one knew what the business was going to look like, and not that we’re completely out of the woods yet, but we have weathered that pretty well,” he said.

Part of the reason for that is because like many software companies, he has seen his customers shifting to the cloud much faster than anyone thought previously. While the pandemic acted as a forcing event for digital transformation, it has left many companies to manage a hybrid on-prem and cloud environment, a place where Red Hat can help.

“Having a hybrid architecture brings a lot of value […], but it’s complex. It just doesn’t happen by magic, and I think we helped a lot of customers, and it accelerated a lot of things by years of what was going to happen anyways,” Cormier told me.

In terms of the workforce moving to work from home, Red Hat had 25% of its workforce doing that even before the pandemic, so the transition wasn’t as hard as you might think for a company of its size. “Most every meeting at Red Hat had someone on remotely [before the pandemic]. And so we just sort of flipped into that mode overnight. I think we had an easier time than others for that reason,” he said.

Acting as IBM’s growth engine

Red Hat’s 15% growth was a big reason for IBM showing modest revenue growth last quarter, something that has been hard to come by for the last seven years. At IBM’s earnings call with analysts, CEO Krishna and CFO Jim Kavanaugh both saw Red Hat maintaining that double digit growth as key to driving the company toward more stable positive revenue in the coming years.

Cormier says that he anticipates the same things that IBM expects — and that Red Hat is up to the task ahead of it. “We see that growth continuing to happen as it’s a huge market, and this is the way it’s really playing out. We share the optimism,” he explained.

While he understands that Red Hat must remain neutral and work with multiple cloud partners, IBM is free to push Red Hat, and having that kind of sales clout behind it is also helping drive Red Hat revenue. “What IBM does for us is they open the door for us in many more places. They are in many more countries than we were [prior to the acquisition], and they have a lot of high-level relationships where they can open the door for us,” he said.

In fact, Cormier points out that IBM salespeople have quotas to push Red Hat in their biggest accounts. “IBM sales is very incentivized to bring Red Hat in to help solve customer problems with Red Hat products,” he said.

No pressure or anything

When you’re being billed as a savior of sorts for a company as storied as IBM, it wouldn’t be surprising for Cormier to feel the weight of those expectations. But if he is he doesn’t seem to show it. While he acknowledges that there is pressure, he argues that it’s no different from being a public company, only the stakeholders have changed.

“Sure it’s pressure, but prior to [being acquired] we were a public company. I look at Arvind as the chairman of the board and IBM as our shareholders. Our shareholders put a lot of pressure on us too [when we were public]. So I don’t feel any more pressure with IBM and with Arvind than we had with our shareholders,” he said.

Although they represent only 5% of IBM’s revenue at present, Cormier knows it isn’t really about that number, per se. It’s about what his team does and how that fits in with IBM’s transformation strategy overall.

Being under pressure to deliver quarter after quarter is the job of any CEO, especially one that’s in the position of running a company like Red Hat under a corporation like IBM, but Cormier as always appears to be comfortable in his own skin and confident in his company’s ability to continue chugging along as it has been with that double-digit growth. The market potential is definitely there. It’s up to Red and Hat and IBM to take advantage.

TechCrunch’s Early Stage 2021 is back for part two of our bootcamp-for-entrepreneurs event, with a focus on marketing and fundraising. Building on the first half of the event in April, this two-day virtual sprint will take place July 8 & 9, and we’re thrilled to welcome Rebecca Reeve Henderson as one of our all-star slate of experts. Rebecca will be joining us to share insight on how to build an effective earned media strategy for your startup, building on her deep expertise developing effective communications programs for some of the top business software companies in the world.

Earned media, aka the kind of exposure you get from a TechCrunch article, is a key element of any startup’s marketing strategy. It’s something that is best used as a complementary component to paid marketing and owned channel promotional efforts, but it’s also one of the trickiest things to get right, especially for first-time founders. Rebecca has worked with companies ranging from Slack, to Shopify, to Zapier, to Canva and many more, helping craft effective earned media strategies in one of the most difficult areas of all: B2B SaaS.

Image Credits: Rsquared Communications

Rebecca is also a founder herself, having built her communications company Rsquared from the ground up into an international business spanning the U.S. and Canada. Rsquared’s clients included startups at all stages of growth, from their very beginnings through to successful exits, including public market debuts, so she’s run effective communications campaigns at every point on the growth spectrum. Then in 2019, Rsquared had its own exit, with an acquisition by global communications firm Archetype.

We’ll hear tips from Rebecca on how earned media contributes to an effective overall communications strategy, and how you go about earning that media — including how to pitch media, and how to build successful long-term relationships with key reporters and publications in your industry.

Tickets for TC Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising are available until this Friday at the early bird rate which gives you an instant $100 savings! Secure your seat before this weekend!

Tech innovation is becoming more widely distributed across the United States.

Among the five startups launched in 2020 that raised the most financing, four were based outside the Bay Area. Prominent VCs like Keith Rabois of Founders Fund, David Blumberg of Blumberg Capital, and Joe Lonsdale of 8VC have moved out of the Bay Area to new emerging tech hubs, which AngelList defines as Austin, Texas; Seattle; Denver; Portland, Oregon; Brooklyn, New York; Nashville, Tennessee; Pittsburgh; and Miami.

The number of startups in these emerging markets is growing fast, according to AngelList data, and increasingly getting a bigger piece of the VC pie.

AngelList compared the performance of startups based in emerging tech hubs to startups in Silicon Valley by internal rate of return (IRR), which measures the rate of growth these investments have generated. AngelList defines “Silicon Valley” as San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Oakland, San Mateo, Berkeley, Redwood City, Menlo Park, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Burlingame and San Carlos.

According to AngelList’s data, startups in emerging tech hubs have an aggregate IRR of 19.4% per year on syndicated deals on AngelList. Syndicated deals on AngelList in Silicon Valley have an aggregate IRR of 17.5% per year.

Total value to paid-in (TVPI), which is the return multiple net of fees, is also slightly higher for AngelList deals in emerging tech hubs (1.67x) than Silicon Valley (1.60x). This means for every $1 invested into startups based in emerging tech hubs, the investor’s portfolio is now valued at $1.67, compared to $1.60 for Silicon Valley startups.

This data is based on a sample of nearly 2,500 syndicated deals on AngelList dating back to 2013, with returns current as of January 1, 2021.

Investors we spoke with offered a variety of reasons for the rise of these emerging tech hubs, including cheaper taxes outside the Bay Area, lower cost of living and a wider distribution of talent brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

TC Sessions: Mobility is back and we’re excited to give you the first look at who is coming to the main stage and what we plan to talk about. The event will be virtual, but never fear, we will bring you the same informative panels and provocative one-on-one interviews and networking you’re used to.

The new format has provided one massive benefit: democratizing access. If you’re a startup or investor, you can listen in, network and connect with other participants here in Silicon Valley. Plus, you’ll be able to meet all of the attendees through our matchmaking platform, CrunchMatch.

TechCrunch reporters and editors will interview some of the top leaders in transportation to tackle topics such as scaling up an electric vehicle company, the future of automated vehicle technology, building an AV startup and investing in the industry. Our guests include Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson, Amy Jones Satrom of Nuro, famed investor Reid Hoffman, Joby Aviation founder JoeBen Bevirt, GM’s vice president of innovation Pamela Fletcher, Karl Iagnemma of Motional and Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson, to name a few.

Don’t forget, Early Bird Passes (including $100 savings) are currently available for a limited time; grab your tickets here before prices increase.

AGENDA

Self-Driving Deliveries with Ahti Heinla (Starship), Amy Jones Satrom (Nuro) and Apeksha Kumavat (Gatik)

Autonomous vehicles and robotics were well on their way transforming deliveries before the pandemic struck. In the past year, these technologies have moved from novel applications to essential innovations. We’re joined by a trio of companies — each with individual approaches that span the critical middle and last mile of delivery.

Supercharging Self-Driving Super Vision with Alexandr Wang (Scale AI)

Few startups were as prescient as Scale AI when it came to anticipating the need for massive sets of tagged data for use in AI. Co-founder and CEO Alex Wang also made a great bet on addressing the needs of lidar sensing companies early on, which has made the company instrumental in deploying AV networks. We’ll hear about what it takes to make sense of sensor data in driverless cars and look at where the industry is headed.

Will Venture Capital Drive the Future of Mobility? with Clara Brenner (Urban Innovation Fund), Quin Garcia (Autotech Ventures) and Rachel Holt (Construct Capital)

Clara Brenner, Quin Garcia and Rachel Holt will discuss how the pandemic changed their investment strategies, the hottest sectors within the mobility industry, the rise of SPACs as a financial instrument and where they plan to put their capital in 2021 and beyond.

From Concept to Commuter Car — and Beyond with Jesse Levinson (Zoox)

Zoox unveiled the design of its fit-for-purpose autonomous vehicle for the first time, after years of development and much anticipation. Meanwhile, the company was also acquired by Amazon in a high-profile deal that looks to give the company ample runway, while keeping its operations independent. We’ll hear from co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson about what it’s like building an autonomous car company in the shadows of a commerce giant.

EV Founders in Focus with Ben Schippers (TezLab)

We sit down with the founders poised to take advantage of the rise in electric vehicle sales. We’ll chat with Ben Schippers, co-founder and CEO of TezLab, an app that operates like a Fitbit for Tesla vehicles (and soon other EVs) and allows drivers to go deep into their driving data. The app also breaks down the exact types and percentages of fossil fuels and renewable energy coming from charging locations.

The Future of Flight with JoeBen Bevirt (Joby Aviation) and Reid Hoffman (Reinvent Technology Partners)

Joby Aviation founder JoeBen Bevirt spent more than a decade quietly developing an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing passenger aircraft. Now he is preparing for a new phase of growth as Joby Aviation merges with the special purpose acquisition company formed by famed investor and Linked co-founder Reid Hoffman. Bevirt and Hoffman will come to our virtual stage to talk about the how build a startup (and keep it secret while raising funds), the future of flight and, of course, SPACs.

Equity, Accessibility and Cities with Tamika L. Butler (Tamika L. Butler Consulting), Tiffany Chu (Remix/Via) and Frank Reig (Revel)

Can mobility be accessible, equitable and remain profitable? We have brought together community organizer, transportation consultant and lawyer Tamika L. Butler; Remix/Via co-founder and CEO Tiffany Chu and Revel co-founder and CEO Frank Reig to discuss how (and if) shared mobility can provide equity in cities, while still remaining a viable and even profitable business. The trio will also dig into the challenges facing cities and how policy may affect startups.

The Rise of Robotaxis in China with Tony Han (WeRide), Jewel Li (AutoX) and Huan Sun (Momenta Europe)

Silicon Valley has long been viewed as a hub for autonomous vehicle development. But another country is also leading the charge. Executives from three leading Chinese robotaxi companies (that also have operations in Europe or the U.S.) will join us to provide insight into the unique challenges of developing and deploying the technology in China and how it compares to other countries.

Sponsored by Plus: Delivering Supervised Autonomous Trucks Globally with Shawn Kerrigan (Plus)

Plus is applying autonomous driving technology to launch supervised autonomous trucks today in order to dramatically improve safety, efficiency and driver comfort, while addressing critical challenges in long-haul trucking — driver shortage and high turnover, rising fuel costs, and reaching sustainability goals. Mass production of our supervised autonomous driving solution, PlusDrive, starts this summer. In the next few years, tens of thousands of heavy trucks powered by PlusDrive will be on the road. Plus’s COO and Co-Founder Shawn Kerrigan will introduce PlusDrive and our progress of deploying this driver-in solution globally. He will also share our learnings from working together with world-leading OEMs and fleet partners to develop and deploy autonomous trucks at scale.

Driving Innovation at General Motors with Pam Fletcher (GM)

GM is in the midst of sweeping changes that will eventually turn it into an EV-only producer of cars, trucks and SUVs. But the auto giant’s push to electrify passenger vehicles is just one of many efforts to be a leader in innovation and the future of transportation. We’ll talk with Pam Fletcher, vice president of innovation at GM, one of the key people behind the 113-year-old automaker’s push to become a nimble, tech-centric company.

AVs: Past, Present and Future with Karl Iagnemma (Motional) and Chris Urmson (Aurora)

TechCrunch Mobility will talk to two pioneers, and competitors, who are leading the charge to commercialize autonomous vehicles. Karl Iagnemma, president of the $4 billion Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture known as Motional, and Chris Urmson, the co-founder and CEO of Aurora, will discuss — and maybe even debate — the best approach to AV development and deployment, swap stories of the earliest days of the industry and provide a few forecasts of what’s to come.

EV Founders in Focus

We sit down with the founders poised to take advantage of the rise in electric vehicle sales. This time, we will chat with Kameale Terry, co-founder and CEO of ChargerHelp! a startup that enables on-demand repair of electric vehicle charging stations.

Sponsored by: Wejo: Making Mobility Data Accessible to Governmental Agencies to Meet New Transportation Demands with Bret Scott (Wejo)

Wejo provides accurate and unbiased unique journey data, curated from millions of connected cars, to help local, state, province and federal government agencies visualize traffic and congestion conditions. Unlock a deeper understanding of mobility trends, to make better decisions, support policy development and solve problems more effectively for your towns and cities.

Mobility’s Robotic Future with James Kuffner (Toyota Research Institute)

More than ever, automotive manufacturers are looking to robotics as the future of mobility, from manufacturing to autonomy and beyond. We’ll be speaking to the head of robotics initiatives at one of the world’s largest automakers  to find out how the technology is set to transform the industry.

TICKETS

As a special “Easter egg” thank you for making it to the end of the article, you can save an additional 15% on tickets with promo code “agenda2021“. Put it in the ticket widget below, and save! Early Bird pricing ends in a couple of days so be sure to book your passes today for maximum savings.