Month: August 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is the fourth episode of the week, pushing our production calendar to the test. Happily we’ve managed to hold it together amidst the news deluge that the last few days have brought. It was a good week for our scheduling change, with the main episode of the show coming to you on Thursday afternoon versus Friday morning.

Change is good.

But unchanging this time around was our hosting lineup, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself yammering with Chris Gates on the mix. Here’s what we got into:

• The CEO of TikTok is out, bids are swirling, and whom will wind up owning a piece of all of TikTok’s global operations is not clear. Walmart is in the mix, apparently, which feels very 2020.
• The New York Stock Exchange has gotten approval from the SEC for a new type of direct listing, one in which the company going public can sell a bloc of shares during the normal price discovery process. This means that all the banker-faff of setting a price and roadshowing to various investor groups could be going the way of the buffalo.
• About time, maybe? That was our take after reading this Bill Gurley note and the latest SEC news.
• But while the direct listing world is getting more interesting, the SPAC world is taking flight. Desktop Metal is going public via a SPAC which is all sorts of fascinating. A younger, Boston-based unicorn going public in this manner is eye catching!
• And then two funding rounds, the first from Finix, which can’t stop adding to its Series B. And Mural, which raised the largest Series B we can recall.

And with that, we’re all going to bed. We’re tired. No more news, thanks!

Source: Tech Crunch

 Juni Learning connects kids with math and science tutors, but co-founder Vivian Shen would prefer not to be lumped in with other edtech startups, despite the sector’s pandemic-born boom.

“We’re not just in the middle to take a few percentage points off of each side and pretend like we’re delivering value,” said Shen. “That’s not scalable.”

Semantics aside, Shen’s words underscore a truth about live tutoring businesses: Anyone can start one. All it takes is smart friends, eager students and a platform to bring them together.

The low barrier of entry has given rise to a slew of new startups. Some view edtech as a marketplace play, others go the gig economy route, and some are trying to make tutoring as simple as calling an Uber — on-demand and only when you need it.

Juni Learning, co-founded by Shen and Ruby Lee, is entering a fragmented and fatigued market full of better-funded and well-known startups. The startup views itself as a consumer play instead of an edtech startup and raised a $10.5 million Series A back in February to prove it can take a slice of the market.

With only 4,000 active subscribers, Juni Learning is bringing in $10 million in annual run revenue (ARR), compared to $2 million of ARR in March, according to my calculations.

So how is it faring?

A word of warning

In 2005, Andrew Geant was thinking about two-sided gig economy marketplaces. He applied the model to tutoring, thinking he could grow a business from connecting students and tutors online to meet offline. So, Geant and Mike Weishuhn, both recent Princeton graduates, founded Wyzant.

Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook announced today it’s suing multiple developers in the U.S. and, for the first time, in the U.K., for violations of its policies. In the U.K., both Facebook Inc. and Facebook Ireland are suing MobiBurn, parent company OakSmart Technologies, and its founder Faith Haltas, in the High Court of Justice for failing to comply with Facebook’s audit request, after security researchers flagged the company’s technology had been collecting data from Facebook users through its malicious software. Separately, Facebook Inc. and Instagram Inc. sued Nikolay Holper in federal court in San Francisco for operating a fake engagement service.

Facebook has been cracking down on malicious developers following the Cambridge Analytica scandal which saw the personal data of 87 million Facebook users compromised. Since then, Facebook introduced more protections over how app developers could access data and punitive actions. Earlier this year, Facebook also introduced new Platform Terms and Developer Policies that gave it permission to audit third-party apps by requesting either remote or physical access to developers’ systems, if need be, to ensure compliance.

According to Facebook’s announcement, MobiBurn failed to “fully comply” with Facebook’s audit request, where it was attempting to investigate the company’s use of a malicious Software Development Kit (SDK) to harvest user data.

News of MobiBurn’s activities first circulated in security research circles in late 2019. In November, both Facebook and Twitter announced that the personal data of hundreds of users may have been improperly accessed after they used their social accounts to log in to certain third-party apps that had malicious SDKs installed by MobiBurn and another company, One Audience. Facebook said it had issued cease and desist letters to those companies.

In MobiBurn’s case, it also took enforcement action, disabled its apps, and requested its participation in an audit, as its policies now allow for. MobiBurn “failed to fully cooperate,” Facebook says.

MobiBurn, in November, had responded that it didn’t collect, share or monetize data from Facebook. The company hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment today.

Facebook’s lawsuit alleges that MobiBurn paid third-party app developers to install its SDK into their apps. Once installed, MobiBurn collected information from the devices and requested data from Facebook, including the person’s name, time zone, email address and gender, explains Facebook, in its announcement of the lawsuit.

The suit is looking for an injunction against MobiBurn; the ability to audit the company’s systems; an account of the data it accessed, payments made to developers, and payments received; damages and other relief.

Facebook vs MobiBurn by TechCrunch on Scribd

Meanwhile, in the U.S. lawsuit, Facebook is taking on developer Nikolay Holper, who operated a fake engagement service. Facebook alleges Holoper used a network of bots and automation software to “distribute fake likes, comments, views and followers on Instagram.” Several different websites were used to sell the fake engagement service to Instagram users, the suit says.

Complaint and Exhibits-conformed by TechCrunch on Scribd

This is not the first time Facebook has cracked down on fake engagement services. Last year, it filed a U.S. lawsuit to shut down a follower-buying service in New Zealand. Instagram in 2019 also shut down the accounts of 17 fake engagement services that promises more followers to Instagram users.

Facebook had previously shut down the engagement service and formally warned the developer he was in violation, and sent a cease and desist letter.

While Facebook’s attempts to crack down developers violating its terms of service, users have found other ways to inauthentically grow their follower base. Many Instagram users, for example, participate in “pods” where they systematically coordinate liking and commenting on each others’ posts as a way to game Instagram algorithms.

“Today’s actions are the latest in our efforts to protect people who use our services, hold those who abuse our platform accountable, and advance the state of the law around data misuse and privacy,” said Facebook, in a statement.

Source: Tech Crunch

Ford, Bosch, and Bedrock Technologies today announced an automated valet parking demonstration in downtown Detroit. This system is designed to allow drivers to exit a vehicle and the vehicle would park itself in the parking structure.

Systems in a Ford Escape test vehicle communicate with Bosch sensors to locate an empty parking location and move the vehicle into the spot. This system includes safe gaurds that allows the vehicle to react and respond to objects and pedestrians in the drive path. The vehicle-to-infrastructure communication platform can be deployed via original construction or retrofitted solutions.

Bosch has been building similar systems for several years. The technology company partnered with Daimler in 2017 to build an automated valet system for the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2019 the two companies received approval from German regulators to run the automated driverless parking function without a human safety driver behind the wheel. This made the system the world’s first fully automated driverless SAE Level 4 parking function to be officially approved for everyday use.

The demonstration announced today is located in Assembly Garage, a parking structure in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood near the Ford-owned Michigan Central Station. The highly controlled demonstration will be on display through the end of September and available for viewing through scheduled tours.

According to the partnership, an automated valet system can accommodate up to 20 percent more vehicles, along with eventually offering additional services such as charging, refueling, or through a car wash.

This partnership is located in a 40-mile corridor between downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan that will is dedicated to developing systems for autonomous vehicles. To be built by Cavnue and a list of automotive partners, the company envisions numerous corridors designed for autonomous shuttles and buses, as well as trucks and personal vehicles.

Cavnue is joined by partners Ford, GM, Argo AI, Arrival, BMW, Honda, Toyota, TuSimple and Waymo on standards to develop the physical and digital infrastructure needed to move connected and autonomous cars out of pilot projects and onto America’s highways, freeways, interstates, and city streets.

Today’s automated valet announcement was praised by the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan with Detroit’s Mayor and the state’s Lt. Governor joining representatives from Ford, Bosch, and Bedrock in announcing the development.

After building a similar system with Daimler, Bosch’s partnership with Ford speaks to the lowering cost of entry to the technology. Ford’s demonstration today used a compact SUV with an average price of around $25,000. Daimler’s early systems relied on Mercedes-Benz vehicles costing over $100,000.

Ford CTO Ken Washington says the company is not ready to announce when the valet technology will hit production vehicles. He said today automated valet parking is on the company’s roadmap and the company has heard “loud and clear” that parking is a real pain point.

Source: Tech Crunch

SpaceX has secured a contract to act as the launch partner for Masten Space Systems, one of the companies awarded a NASA launch contract under that agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Masten’s first lunar mission is set to take pace 2022 if all goes to plan, and will take the company’s XL-1 lunar lander to the south pole of the Moon with NASA payloads including scientific experimentation instruments on board, as well as cargo from commercial passengers.

NASA’s CLPS program is part of its broader efforts to expand partnerships with commercial space companies in order to ultimately lower its costs by sharing providers with other customers from private industry and commercial ventures. It’s also a key staging component for NASA’s Artemis program, which ultimately aims to put the first American woman and the next American man on the surface of the Moon by 2024.

The science equipment on Masten’s lander will help the agency study the lunar south pole by gathering key data about the area. NASA’s Artemis III mission will aim to land in the same part of the Moon’s surface, and CLPS landers will help it to be informed about the conditions and prepared with resources left in place by some of the uncrewed landers.

So far, there are four planned lunar lander missions scheduled under CLPS, including Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander launch in June 2021, Intuitive Machines’ following shortly after in October 2021, Masten’s now set for December 2022, and Astrobotic’s VIPER launch of its larger Griffin lander in 2023. SpaceX has been contracted for the Intuitive Machines and Masten launches, while ULA’s Vulcan is set to take Astrobotic’s Peregrine vehicle to the Moon.

Source: Tech Crunch

The Palantir S-1 finally dropped yesterday after TechCrunch spilled a bunch of its guts last Friday. You can read the filing here, if you are so inclined.

Today, however, instead of our usual overview, I have a different goal: We’re going to be a bit more specific.

It’s fun and easy to clown on Palantir’s ridiculous ownership structure, in which a few dudes have decided that, in perpetuity, they must remain co-Lords of the Ring. And, sure, the company is smaller in terms of revenue-scale than many expected (a bit more Hobbiton than Bree, really). And, yes, its net losses are somewhat staggering (post-Helm’s Deep Saruman?), reaching nearly 100% of revenue in 2018.

But things have gotten better in Palantir-land (Mordor?) in recent quarters, which we should note.

So, in light of the generally negative reviews of Palantir’s finances (similar to what is left of Moria?) that I’ve seen in the media and from investors both publicly and privately, here are the bullish bits about the impending direct listing.

The good stuff

In brief, falling net losses in absolute and percent-of-revenue terms paint the picture of a company that is past a high-burn period, allowing profitability to continue to improve; improving gross margins point to a company that is less service-focused and more software-driven over time; the company’s falling operating cash burn is encouraging, and new customer revenue appears sharply higher in 2020 than 2019.

Let’s examine each in order:

• Falling net losses in absolute terms: Palantir lost fractionally less money in 2019 than 2018, but it was a decline all the same. More recently, the first two quarters of 2020 have seen Palantir cut its net loss from $280.5 million in 2019 to $164.7 million. Even better, the company grew during the same period, which means that in percent-of-revenue terms, Palantir did even better.
  

  
  Source: Tech Crunch

Robinhood founder Vlad Tenev recently sparked controversy when he told the New York Times that lower participation in equity markets by younger Americans “ultimately contributed to the sort of the massive inequalities that we’re seeing in society.”

In his 2015 book “The Economics of Inequality,” Thomas Piketty argues that when the growth rate of invested capital outpaces the growth of GDP (and the average per-capita earnings), income inequality will increase. Where Vlad Tenev missed the mark is neglecting to note that while participation in equity markets is key to building wealth, a prerequisite to investment is having capital to invest in the first place.

Structural changes (including access to affordable health care, job training, higher wages, expanding infrastructure, and other public policy initiatives) are necessary to combat systemic inequality. But innovations in fintech can supplement these policies by providing tools that can give people access to wealth-building investment opportunities at the individual level. While these advancements aren’t a substitute for the macro forces necessary to bring societal change, they can help provide one opportunity to remove barriers individuals have faced.

The age of fintech and the millennial investor

Despite recent controversy around the zero-commission stock trading revenue model, fintech investment apps have given retail investors unprecedented access to the stock market. This is especially true for younger investors, who lag behind other generations in terms of expected wealth.

Popular fintech apps like Acorns, Public and Robinhood have created a niche for millennials and Gen Z retail investors looking to begin investing in the stock market. Since the pandemic hit, Robinhood alone has acquired more than six million first-time investors, with an average age of 31.

Similar trends are emerging in other asset classes that have traditionally not been accessible to retail investors. For example, according to EY, real estate crowdfunding investments have doubled to more than $8 billion since 2016. Commercial real estate in the U.S. was valued at around $16 trillion in 2018. That’s about half the size of the U.S. stock market during the same time period.

Real estate is a critical asset class for wealth building: Approximately 90% of millionaires have made their money from investments in real estate. This can partly be explained by the fact that the asset class is so siloed: Historically, only wealthy investors could access these opportunities.

A few fintech companies have emerged in the real estate space in attempts to widen access to the asset class, but to-date none have truly opened up the market to the everyday investor.

Lowering the cost of participation

So what does this mean? If everyone can access real estate investment opportunities, can they all become millionaires? Probably not. But if circumstances allow anyone to access the tools and educational resources to achieve financial stability, then acquiring wealth becomes much more plausible.

Financial literacy and access are key components in the establishment of stable financial footing. Also important is eliminating many of the costs associated with being in the lower earning brackets — often referred to as the “poverty tax.”

An industry-wide push toward commission-free trading is a prime example of fintech removing these costs of participation. A $10 trade fee on a $100,000 trade is nominal, yet that $10 becomes significant for a share purchase of $100; you would need a 20% gain just to cover your transaction costs. Yet the zero-commission and fractional share models haven’t seen widespread adoption in real estate investment markets.

Of all traditional asset classes, real estate remains one of the costliest to participate. The adoption of zero-commission and low-cost share models have the greatest potential to echo what is happening in the stock market: Opening doors to everyday investors.

What’s next?

It’s only a matter of time before we see the junction of real estate and fintech take shape.

This is one area where technology can make a material difference. According to a study from the University of California, Berkeley, fintech solutions like algorithmic lending reduce some of the barriers that have made it difficult, historically, to purchase a home.

The study found that leading fintech products don’t completely solve the problem, given the deeper underlying systemic issues. However, they do reduce rate disparities by more than a third.

As these companies open up new investment opportunities and reduce the buy-in costs, we will hopefully see a greater share of wealth being accumulated by those who create the value that underlies equity investments: everyday Americans.

Based on the history of limited access and the current absence of investment opportunities, it’s a fair argument that exposure to new wealth-building tools and financial literacy — in a tech-powered, millennial-friendly way — can help solve the barrier-to-entry problem and open up access to more stable investments.

With over 24 million users across Stash, Acorns and Robinhood — many of them overlapping — there’s no shortage of interest in tech-enabled investing. The average Acorns investor, for instance, is 29 years old and makes $50,000 a year — a far cry from the accredited investor’s minimum salary of $200,000.

Don’t be surprised to see these new investors seek out holdings in alternative assets like real estate, energy and more. It’s all about access, quality of offerings, education and user experience.

Fintech founders often like to overstate the level of social good their products can bring. We, as two real estate fintech founders, believe that we can help individuals on a person-by-person micro level, but larger structural change outside of tech is also necessary if we want to see real, widespread improvement. It goes without saying that tech alone won’t change deeply embedded structures, but it sure can open a lot of doors.

Source: Tech Crunch

One of the areas of autonomous driving technology with the most potential to have a near-term and dramatic impact remains trucking: There’s a growing lack of drivers for long-haul routes, and highway trucking remains a relatively uncomplicated (though still very challenging) type of driving for AV systems to tackle.

Many companies are pursuing the challenge of autonomous trucking, but TuSimple and Waymo are leading the pack. TuSimple CTO Dr. Xiaodi You, who co-founded the company in 2015, and Waymo’s Boris Sofman, who leads the company’s autonomous trucking engineering efforts, will both join us at TC Sessions: Mobility on our virtual stage. The event takes place October 6-7, and we’re excited to hear from these two technology leaders working at the forefront of the industry.

TuSimple has accomplished a lot since its debut five years ago, including recently laying the groundwork for a U.S.-wide network of shipping routes in partnership with UPS, Xpress, food service supply company McLane and Penske Truck Leasing. The company is also seeking a sizable new funding round to help it scale, while actively testing with regular routes between Arizona and Texas.

Waymo, which originated at Google as that company’s self-driving car project before spinning out under parent entity Alphabet, adding self-driving trucks to the list of technologies it’s developing in 2017. Sofman joined in 2019, when Waymo hired on much of the engineering talent from his prior company, smart toy robotics maker Anki. Sofman’s resume also includes developing off-road autonomous vehicles, which likely comes in handy as Waymo seeks to roll out testing of its autonomous long-haul trucks across Texas and New Mexico.

In case you’re wondering, this won’t just be one long webinar. We have some technical tricks up our sleeves that will bring all of what you’d expect from our in-person events, from the informative panels and provocative one-on-one interviews to the networking and even a pitch-off session. While virtual isn’t the same as our events in the past, it has provided one massive benefit: democratizing access.

If you’re a startup or investor based in Europe, Africa, Australia, South America or another region in the U.S., you can listen in, network and connect with other participants here in Silicon Valley.

Get your tickets for TC Sessions: Mobility to hear from Bryan Salesky, along with several other fantastic speakers from Porsche, Waymo, Lyft and more. Tickets are just $145 for a limited time, with discounts for groups, students and exhibiting startups. We hope to see you there!

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Source: Tech Crunch