Welcome back to Human Capital, where we unpack all-things diversity, inclusion and labor in tech. This week, we’re looking at Google’s internal message board problem, as well as some highlights from TechCrunch Disrupt, where I had the pleasure of chatting with actress, producer and tech investor Kerry Washington about her investment strategy and her thoughts on The Wing’s internal turmoil.

Later, we’ll also highlight some other gems from Disrupt speakers on imposter syndrome, representation syndrome, the hidden burden of being a Black founder, and the importance of encouraging other Black and brown folks to enter this industry and stay.

Also, Human Capital will soon be available as a weekly newsletter. You can sign up here.

Google’s internal message board problem

Google found itself asking employees to be more active in moderating some of the internal message boards, according to CNBC. The issue is that Google has reportedly seen more posts being flagged for racism or abuse on its message boards. Some of these posts reportedly reinforce negative racial stereotypes, use harmful gendered phrases of insult Google employees based on their nationality. Here’s a snippet from Google’s internal blog, via CNBC:

“Our world is going to get more complicated as the year continues,” the team stated in the internal blog. “Tensions continue specifically for our Black+ community with Black Lives Matter, and our Asian Googlers with coronavirus and China/Hong Kong. All of this is compounded by the additional stress of working from home, social isolation, and caregiver responsibilities — to name a few. This new world creates urgency to keep work a welcoming place.”

Yes, tough conversations are the theme of the year. But we also know Google has had issues with employees before. You may remember James Damore, the now former Google employee who sent around an anti-diversity manifesto back in 2017. Google ultimately fired Damore that same month.

We reached out to Google for comment but have not heard back.

Kerry Washington on The Wing scandal

At TechCrunch Disrupt, I had the pleasure of virtually interviewing Kerry Washington, best known for her work in Hollywood as the lead actress on “Scandal” and “Little Fires Everywhere.” But she’s also invested in a handful of tech companies, including Community, Byte and The Wing. The Wing, however, went through some turmoil earlier this year. Employees alleged mistreatment of Black and brown workers, which ultimately led to The Wing CEO Audrey Gelman’s resignation.

“Well, you know, I’m not new to scandal, so there’s that,” Washington told me in response to a question about her reaction to the news. “I was and I am really deeply still inspired by the original vision of the company. And, I think like a lot of companies in this time, because of the several pandemics that we’re facing, whether it’s our awareness around racial injustice, or COVID, lots of people are in a moment of recalibration and self-reflection. So I think that there is incredible space to improve the dynamics. And as somebody who’s an investor, as a woman of color, it’s important to me that there is increased transparency and also accountability.”

Over the past few months, Washington said her role as an investor has been “really just supporting leadership in this transition,” as well as expressing to those leaders a “deep desire” for transparency and accountability.

On imposter syndrome and representation 

Also at Disrupt, my homegirl Kirsten Korosec led a wonderful conversation with Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins of PromisePay and Jessica Matthews of Uncharted Power, two Black female founders, about how they both successfully pivoted their companies while navigating the pressures that come with being an underrepresented founder in Silicon Valley.

Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, founder and CEO at PromisePay:

It feels like tech has failed so significantly in investing in people they don’t know and missed out in growing companies because of that. So I think our obligation is to help make sure that we are not the only ones.

Jessica Matthews, founder and CEO at Uncharted Power:

It’s not imposter syndrome, it’s representation syndrome because I feel the exact same way. When we raised our Series A, the immediate thing I thought was, ‘Oh, man. I can not lose these people’s money.’ This is huge and if we don’t work, it’s not even about us, it’s about every other person who looks like me.

Michael Seibel on the Black founder experience

In a panel on the Black founder experience at Disrupt, Y Combinator CEO Michael Seibel spoke about a “hidden burden” for underrepresented founders.

“I think that there’s so much deserved activism around access to this world for underrepresented founders, that I feel as though there’s like, more pressure to succeed, in a weird way,” he said. “And I think that can be helpful to a point, but I think that it can be challenging. I also think that there’s so much emphasis around the toxicity in the technology world that a lot of really talented people believe it’s horrible, like believe that our world looks like Jim Crow South. And so therefore they shouldn’t even step any foot into it where like, I would challenge anyone trying to be successful in any industry to be able to avoid the types of problems that exists in the technology industry, if they come from an underrepresented background. So I don’t think the environment’s significantly different in our world than other worlds. I think that the environment is hard. You know, there is bias if you’re underrepresented, across the board, no matter what industry you go to. So if you’re gonna be successful, you’re going to figure out a way to get around it.”

But that’s not to say you’ll have to figure it out on your own, Seibel said. He pointed to how there are people who are willing and able to help. That includes him and the many other Black founders present in Silicon Valley.

“But if we somehow scare talented people away from this world, we won’t ever fix this world,” he said. “And we won’t ever, even more importantly than fixing this world, there’ll be huge swaths of the world that don’t have products and services that they deserve and that they need. And so I think we have to be careful to make sure we communicate that opportunities exist here. And that if you’re trying to be a high powered lawyer, or if you’re trying to be, you know, a top banker, you’re gonna go through the same bullshit. Like, different industries, same bullshit. So if you’re trying to make an impact in the world, strap in. If you’re an underrepresented founder, you’re gonna have to deal with these issues, no matter where you do it.”

Don’t miss

• Black Tech Pipeline proves the ‘pipeline problem’ isn’t real
• IBM plans $100M investment in HBCU computing program
• Amazon Looks to Use More Contractors for Grocery Delivery

Source: Tech Crunch

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

Top Stories

How iOS 14 and Apple’s other new plans impact apps

At Apple’s hardware event this week, the company announced a new Apple Watch Series 6, an Apple Watch SE, an eighth-generation iPad and a new iPad Air, among other things.

But the bigger news for app makers was the surprise release of iOS 14. Typically, developers are given a much longer heads-up and at least have the updated version of their developer tools well before the actual iOS launch day. This year, however, Apple shocked app developers with an announcement during its live event that its new software platforms, iOS 14, iPadOS 14, watchOS 7 and tvOS 14, would arrive in less than 24 hours.

The move was a low blow from Apple at a time when its developer community was already feeling disrespected by Apple’s tougher stance on the use of in-app purchases and increase in capricious app rejections, not to mention the language Apple used to describe their contributions to iPhone’s success in Apple’s lawsuit with Epic Games.

But now iOS 14 is here, and with it comes a radical change to how apps are presented and used on iPhone.

App Clips will allow users to launch “mini app” experiences when a full app download isn’t needed, like in the case of needing to pay at a parking meter using a native app. Widgets will allow developers to increase their presence on the home screen, potentially increasing their importance to their most loyal users. But on the flip side, infrequently used apps may now be abandoned in the new App Library.

Any app that doesn’t get a home screen spot in the new version of iOS either as an app icon or widget may soon find that its MAUs and DAUs decline after users upgrade to iOS 14.

Being relegated to the App Library is the equivalent of being stuck inside a folder on the back screen — out of sight and forgotten. App developers who suspect they haven’t made the cut in the big iOS redesign will need to make clever use of push notifications to rekindle their relationship with users. But this, too, is a fine line. Too many notifications or pushing low-value notifications will see users turning to other iOS tools — like the option to easily silence or switch off notifications entirely for the app in question. And then, without any visibility or a way to connect, the app will be truly forgotten.

Apple also challenged the entire fitness app industry with its launch of a Fitness+ subscription service. Wall Street investors weren’t too worried about the long-term potential impact to top brands, like Peloton and Fitbit. But these companies are not necessarily representative of the smaller fitness app maker. For $10 per month or just $80 per year, Apple is offering a home gym membership of sorts, with deep integrations with Apple Watch. Fitness+ offers workouts and instructions set to music that can be used across Apple devices. Because it’s from Apple, the workouts will also correctly sync to the Apple Watch for accurate recording of various workout metrics, like calories burned, pace or distance, for example.

The service is also being bundled in Apple’s new Apple One subscription in the upper tier, which may appeal to Apple’s current subscribers looking to save money by paying for an all-in-one service instead of individual apps. And what could a fitness app maker do to compete with this? Or a music app, for that matter? Third-parties don’t typically have the option to get bundled into a high-value package alongside other top apps from unrelated industries, unless the company goes out and forges those deals itself — like Spotify once did with Hulu.

Given that Apple is still being investigated over antitrust issues, it’s rather bold to launch a bundle deal like this while continuing to commission its competitors — rivals who have no other means of reaching iPhone’s audience outside the App Store.

Another new Apple service puts family tracking apps on notice. Though apps like Life360 have become must-have tools in the helicopter parent era, Apple’s new Family Setup aims to transform the kid-tracking industry by taking a different tactic: it’s for families who aren’t buying kids an iPhone just yet. Instead, Apple will lure new customers by making its Apple Watch — and specifically, the more affordable Apple Watch SE — kids’ first Apple device.

Kids get to use Apple Watch’s key features, like Emergency SOS, Maps, Siri, Alarms, Memoji, Apple Pay, and more, while parents get to restrict who the child can call or text. By the time the child upgrades to iPhone and the wider world of apps that comes with it, families may see no need for a third-party alternative for family safety. That means kid trackers will need to upgrade their offerings to include features that Apple doesn’t, like Life360 does with its driving features, like crash detection or weekly driver reports, for instance.

Continuing chaos around the TikTok ban

There is nothing straightforward about the TikTok ban. Like much of the Executive Order activity coming from the current administration, a broad order is issued but the details are left to be worked out on the fly, leading to chaos.

In the case of the TikTok deal and the app’s potential ban in the U.S., at the beginning of this week we learned China would rather see TikTok banned than forced into a sale, and that neither Oracle nor Microsoft would get to acquire TikTok’s U.S. business. Microsoft was said to have apparently pissed off TikTok owner ByteDance by calling the app a security risk and was cut out of the deal. Later in the week, Oracle put out a press release saying it would be the technology partner for TikTok, and Walmart separately claimed to still be involved.

Oh, and it seems Instagram founder and former CEO Kevin Systrom was approached for the TikTok CEO job at one point. Lord.

So what’s happening now? The U.S. government and ByteDance continue to negotiate on specific terms. As of late, the U.S. wants Oracle to agree to review TikTok source code for backdoors, ByteDance to create a new organization for its U.S. operations with a board approved by the U.S. government and for there to be a license agreement for TikTok’s algorithms. As TechCrunch reported, these terms beg the question as to how TikTok could possibly continue to refine its algorithms in real time without access to U.S. TikTok user data, or when it has to rebuild its infrastructure on Oracle, separated from a core product being developed elsewhere. But nevertheless, reports claim ByteDance has agreed to the government’s terms and also plans to IPO TikTok’s global business.

On Friday, the Commerce Dept. announced the details of how it plans to enforce a shutdown, saying that both TikTok and WeChat, the other Chinese app impacted by the ban, would no longer be distributed on U.S. app stores as of September 20. But TikTok gets an extension that allows it to still operate until November 12 as the parties attempt to hammer out the complicated deal. That deadline means the app will continue to work through the U.S. elections, based on how the terms are spelled out now. But those could change at any time, given the chaotic nature of how this potential ban has progressed so far.

Despite being one of TikTok’s chief rivals, Instagram — which recently copied TikTok with its own feature, Reels — has come out against the ban. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said a U.S. ban of the app would be bad for the internet more broadly, including companies like Facebook and Instagram. TikTok interim CEO  Vanessa Pappas then publicly asked him for help with its litigation.

By the time you read this, several more updates about the TikTok deal may have been released. Stay tuned.

Weekly News

• U.S. government scrutinizes Epic and Riot Games’ deals with Tencent. First TikTok and WeChat, then the full slate of Chinese investment in tech? The TikTok-Oracle partnership isn’t even a done deal yet, but the U.S. government is moving on to its next targets. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has now sent letters to Epic, Riot and other gaming companies to inquire about how they’re handling U.S. users’ personal data due to their ties with China’s Tencent. The Chinese giant has made over 300 investments, including those in many of the top gaming companies worldwide. (Jenny Leonard, Saleha Mohsin and David McLaughlin/Bloomberg)
• Google bans stalkerware from Play Store. Apps that allow a user to track someone’s location, movement, phone calls or messages, and record other apps’ activity — a category broadly known as “stalkerware” — are marketed toward people looking to track cheating spouses or spy on their kids. Google has hosted hundreds of these apps to date. This week, the company updated its Developer Program Policy to specify that any apps of this nature have to inform the end user or gain consent and show a persistent notification that their actions are being tracked. The updated policy also added other new restrictions, including on misrepresentation and gambling. (Catalin Cimpanu/ZDNet)
• Tinder relaunches Swipe Night, its in-app interactive video series, in the U.S. on September 12. Tinder claims the pandemic has not heavily impacted its business. But the company is working to add video dating and is readying another run of a video series in its app — indications that the primary focus for Tinder these days is not on helping users make real-life connections. (Tinder)
• Google banned India’s Paytm from Play Store for gambling violations. Paytm is India’s most valuable startup and claims over 50M MAUs. Its app, a rival to Google Play, was removed from the Play Store in India this week. Paytm is accused of repeatedly violating Play Store’s policies around gambling. The app had recently launched “Paytm Cricket League,” which Google believed to be in violation of its newly updated policies around gambling apps. The app returned to the store in a few hours. (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
• YouTube launches a TikTok rival, Shorts. YouTube this week launched a new short-form video experience called YouTube Shorts. The feature will allow users, initially in India, to upload 15-second or less short-form videos using a new set of creator tools, including a multi-segment camera, similar to TikTok, speed controls and a timer and a countdown feature. The videos can also be set to music, thanks to YouTube’s access to a large library of songs that it says will continue to grow over time. (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
• Apple calls Epic Games a bully in latest court filing. Apple attacked the game maker, saying Epic follows a “strategy of coercing platforms for its own gain.” Pot, meet kettle. (Stephen Warwick/iMore)
• Facebook Messenger adds “Watch Together.” Facebook joins the co-viewing trend with the launch of a new feature that lets up to eight friends in a Messenger video call or up to 50 in Messenger Room watch video content together via Facebook Watch integrations. (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
• Summer sent travel apps consumer spend up 30%. Despite the pandemic, consumer global spend in travel apps indicate there was 30% growth in travel apps during summer months, compared with the three months prior. Still, those prior months were at the height of the lockdown, when almost no one was going anywhere. So this may not be as rosy a picture of a recovery as you’d think. (Lexi Sydow/App Annie)
• Triller capitalizes on TikTok drama to onboard influencers. At TechCrunch Disrupt, Triller CEO Mike Lu talked about recent high-profile additions, including influencers and public figures like TikTok star Charli D’Amelio and family, Addison Rae, and even Trump. (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
• iOS 14 bug resets Mail and Safari as the default apps. A bug you say? Okay, I believe you. (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)

Suggested Reading

• Addicted to losing: How casino-like apps have drained people of millions, by Cyrus Farivar, NBC News. The story delves into the casino app industry, which is almost entirely unregulated. The story features interviews with 21 people who got hooked on these apps and lost significant sums of money.
• In-App Purchase Rules, by Marco Arment, Marco.org. In a blog post, Arment highlights how convoluted Apple’s IAP rules have become by listing out all the exceptions Apple has carved out for itself over the years as it attempts to justify its right to collect from all IAPs.

Funding and M&A

• User-generated e-learning site Kahoot and maker of a range of learning apps for iOS and Android acquired Actimo for up to $33 million to focus on the corporate sector.
• Indoor training app Zwift landed a massive $450 million in funding led by KKR, which took a minority stake in its business, now valued at $1 billion+.
• Social gaming startup Bunch closed on $20 million in Series A funding for its Discord-like video chat app for multiplayer mobile games. MAUs are up 50x since March, topping 1 million. Funding was led by General Catalyst and included major gaming companies, like Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive and Krafton, the maker of PUBG.
• Mobile bank Chime raises $485 million at a $14.5B valuation in a Series F round.

Downloads

Aviary

Image Credits: Aviary (widget shown in top right)

Aviary’s recently launched Twitter app ($4.99) is ready for iOS 14, with home screen widgets and support for multiple columns on iPad.

Color Widgets

Image Credits: Color Widgets

A simple app is No. 1 on the (non-game) App Store because, clearly, iOS users were ready for widgets. The Color Widgets app lets you pick a color, font and theme for a basic widget that displays the date, day of the week, time and battery level. Isn’t that pretty?

Source: Tech Crunch

Whoever said you can’t make money playing video games clearly hasn’t taken a look at Unity Software’s stock price.

On its first official day of trading, the company rose more than 31%, opening at $75 per share before closing the day at $68.35. Unity’s share price gains came after last night’s pricing of the company’s stock at $52 per share, well above the range of $44 to $48 which was itself an upward revision of the company’s initial target.

Games like “Pokémon GO” and “Iron Man VR” rely on the company’s software, as do untold numbers of other mobile gaming applications that use the company’s toolkit for support. The company’s customers range from small gaming publishers to large gaming giants like Electronic Arts, Niantic, Ubisoft and Tencent.

Unity’s IPO comes on the heels of other well-received debuts, including Sumo Logic, Snowflake and JFrog .

TechCrunch caught up with Unity’s CFO, Kim Jabal, after-hours today to dig in a bit on the transaction.

According to Jabal, hosting her company’s roadshow over Zoom had some advantages, as her team didn’t have to focus on tackling a single geography per day, allowing Unity to “optimize” its time based on who the company wanted to meet, instead, of say, whomever was free in Boston or Chicago on a particular Tuesday morning.

Jabal’s comments aren’t the first that TechCrunch has heard regarding roadshows going well in a digital format instead of as an in-person presentation. If the old-school roadshow survives, we’ll be surprised, though private jet companies will miss the business.

Talking about the transaction itself, Jabal stressed the connection between her company’s employees, value  and their access to that same value. Unity’s IPO was unique in that existing and former employees were able to trade 15% of their vested holdings in the company on day one, excluding “current executive officers and directors,” per SEC filings.

That act does not seemed to have dampened enthusiasm for the company’s shares, and could have helped boost early float, allowing for the two sides of the supply and demand curves to more quickly meet close to the company’s real value, instead of a scarcity-driven, more artificial figure.

Regarding Unity’s IPO pricing, Jabal discussed what she called a “very data-driven process.” The result of that process was an IPO price that came in above its raised range, and still rose during its first day’s trading, but less than 50%. That’s about as good an outcome as you can hope for in an IPO.

One final thing for the SaaS nerds out there. Unity’s “dollar-based net expansion rate” went from very good to outstanding in 2020, or in the words of the S-1/A:

Our dollar-based net expansion rate, which measures expansion in existing customers’ revenue over a trailing 12-month period, grew from 124% as of December 31, 2018 to 133% as of December 31, 2019, and from 129% as of June 30, 2019 to 142% as of June 30, 2020, demonstrating the power of this strategy.

We had to ask. And the answer, per Jabal, was a combination of the company’s platform strength and how customers tend to use more of Unity’s services over time, which she described as growing with their customers. And the second key element was 2020’s unique dynamics that gave Unity a “tailwind” thanks to “increased usage, particularly in gaming.”

Looking at our own gaming levels in 2020 compared to 2019, that checks out.

This post closes the book on this week’s IPO class. Tired yet? Don’t be. Palantir is up next, and then Asana .

Source: Tech Crunch

We started this competition with 20 impressive startups. After five days of fierce pitching in a wholly new virtual Startup Battlefield arena, we have a winner.

The startups taking part in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. It was an unprecedented year as we moved all of the nail-biting excitement of our physical contest to a virtual stage. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $100,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup.

After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ notes and narrowed the list down to five finalists: Canix, Firehawk Aerospace, HacWare, Jefa and Matidor.

These startups made their way to the finale to demo in front of our final panel of judges, which included: Caryn Marooney (Coatue Management), Ilya Fushman (Kleiner Perkins), Michael Seibel (Y Combinator), Sonali De Rycker (Sequoia), Troy Carter (Q&A) and Matthew Panzarino (TechCrunch).

We’re now ready to announce that the winner of TechCrunch Battlefield 2020 is….

Source: Tech Crunch

Ever since Apple opened up subscription monetization to more apps in 2016 — and enticed developers with an 85/15 split on revenue from customers that remain subscribed for more than a year — subscription monetization and retention has felt like the Holy Grail for app developers. So much so that Google quickly followed suit in what appeared to be an example of healthy competition for developers in the mobile OS duopoly.

But how does that split actually work out for most apps? Turns out, the 85/15 split — which Apple is keen to mention anytime developers complain about the App Store rev share — doesn’t have a meaningful impact for most developers. Because churn.

No matter how great an app is, subscribers are going to churn. Sometimes it’s because of a credit card expiring or some other billing issue. And sometimes it’s more of a pause, and the user comes back after a few months. But the majority of churn comes from subscribers who, for whatever reason, decide that the app just isn’t worth paying for anymore. If a subscriber churns before the one-year mark, the developer never sees that 85% split. And even if the user resubscribes, Apple and Google reset the clock if a subscription has lapsed for more than 60 days. Rather convenient… for Apple and Google.

Top mobile apps like Netflix and Spotify report churn rates in the low single digits, but they are the outliers. According to our data, the median churn rate for subscription apps is around 13% for monthly subscriptions and around 50% for annual. Monthly subscription churn is generally a bit higher in the first few months, then it tapers off. But an average churn of 13% leaves just 20% of subscribers crossing that magical 85/15 threshold.

In practice, what this means is that, for all the hype around the 85/15 split, very few developers are going to see a meaningful increase in revenue:

Image Credits: RevenueCat (opens in a new window)

Source: Tech Crunch

Engineers at MIT, in partnership with the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, have devised a way to build a camera lens that avoids the typical spherical curve of ultra-wide-angle glass, while still providing true optical fisheye distortion. The fisheye lens is relatively specialist, producing images that can cover as wide an area as 180 degrees or more, but they can be very costly to produce, and are typically heavy, large lenses that aren’t ideal for use on small cameras like those found on smartphones.

This is the first time that a flat lens has been able to product clear, 180-degree images that cover a true panoramic spread. The engineers were able to make it work by patterning a thin wafer of glass on one side with microscopic, three-dimensional structures that are positioned very precisely in order to scatter any inbound light in precisely the same way that a curved piece of glass would.

The version created by the researchers in this case is actually designed to work specifically with the infrared portion of the light spectrum, but they could also adapt the design to work with visible light, they say. Whether IR or visible light, there are a range of potential uses of this technology, since capturing a 180-degree panorama is useful not only in some types of photography, but also for practical applications like medical imaging, and in computer vision applications where range is important to interpreting imaging data.

This design is just one example of what’s called a ‘Metalens’ – lenses that make use of microscopic features to change their optical characteristics in ways that would traditionally have been accomplished through macro design changes – like building a lens with an outward curve, for instance, or stacking multiple pieces of glass with different curvatures to achieve a desired field of view.

What’s unusual here is that the ability to accomplish a clear, detailed and accurate 180-degree panoramic image with a perfectly flat metalens design came as a surprise even to the engineers who worked on the project. It’s definitely an advancement of the science that goes beyond what may assumed was the state of the art.

Source: Tech Crunch

It was a trickle at first that has evolved into a slow and steady stream. Now, a wave of new electric vehicles is building, promising to deliver an unprecedented number of models to North America, Europe and China over the next two to three years.

There might not be a better time to dig into EVs and we have two superstars coming to TC Sessions: Mobility 2020. JB Straubel, co-founder and CEO of Redwood Materials who pioneered the battery powertrain design for Tesla as its longtime CTO, and Celina Mikolajczak, the vice president of battery technology for Panasonic Energy of North America, will join us on our virtual stage to talk about all things electric vehicles.

This virtual event takes place October 6-7, and we’re excited to hear from these two technology leaders working at the forefront of the industry.

Straubel’s role at Tesla cannot be understated. The co-founder and executive was responsible for some of the company’s most important technology during his 15 years there, including leading the cell design, supply chain and the first Gigafactory concept through the production ramp of the Model 3.

But Straubel’s story isn’t just tied to Tesla. The former Tesla executive went on to found another startup in 2017 called Redwood Materials . The battery recycling startup is focused on circular supply chains, essentially turning waste into profit and solving the environmental impacts of new products before they happen. Its first named customer is Panasonic; and just this week announced Amazon has joined that list.

Mikolajczak has a long history researching and developing better lithium-ion batteries. Her technical consulting practice at Exponent focused on lithium-ion cell and battery safety and quality. She then took a senior management position at Tesla that was focused on cell quality and materials engineering. During her time at Tesla, Mikolajczak developed the battery cells and packs for Tesla’s Model S, Model X, Model 3 and Roadster Refresh.

After leaving Tesla, Mikolajczak went on to serve as director of engineering focused on battery development for rideshare vehicles at Uber Technologies. Last year, she joined Panasonic Energy of North America, where she is vice president of battery technology. Mikolajczak leads a team of more than 200 engineers and other technical staff to improve lithium-ion cell manufacturing and to bring the latest cell technologies to mass production for Tesla at the Gigafactory facility in Sparks, Nevada.

In short: these two know a lot about battery technology from how it has developed in the past decade to where it’s headed and the implications it will have on automakers, consumers and the economy.

Mikolajczak and Straubel are just two in a long list of all-star speakers, including Bryan Salesky, co-founder and CEO of Argo AI, Tekedra Mawakana, chief operating officer at Waymo, Ike co-founder and chief engineer Nancy Sun as well as folks from Nuro, Aurora, Cruise, Lyft and Uber. There are startups as well including Refraction AI, which came out of stealth on our stage at last year’s mobility event.

We hope you can join in October 6-7, 2020 at the event. As you might have heard, TC Sessions: Mobility is a virtual event. Don’t worry, we know many of you want to network. We’ve built out features into our platform to give attendees unparalleled access to speakers, investors and fellow founders. Get your tickets before prices increase in a few short weeks! There are discounts for groups and students and exclusive opportunities for exhibiting for early-stage founders.

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Source: Tech Crunch

Zoox, the automated vehicle technology startup that was acquired by Amazon this year, has been issued a permit from California regulators that will allow it to test driverless vehicles on public roads.

The permit is not for all public roads in the state, but it’s still notable, considering the company will be able to test its vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that regulates automated vehicle testing in the state, has issued a permit for a designated part of Foster City in San Mateo County.

Mark Rosekind, the former director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who is now chief safety officer at Zoox, called it another important milestone in the company’s “efforts to deliver safe, fully electric, and affordable autonomous mobility to riders in California.”

Zoox has taken the “all of the above” approach to autonomous vehicles. The company is aiming to build a purpose-built electric vehicle, develop, test and validate the automated vehicle technology and operate a robotaxi fleet. That mission seems to be intact. Amazon has said that Zoox will remain a standalone company.

Zoox has had a permit to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers since 2016. This new permit allows the company to test two autonomous vehicles without a driver behind the wheel on specified streets near its Foster City headquarters. The vehicles are approved to operate in fair weather conditions, including light rain or fog, on streets with a speed limit of no more than 45 mph, the agency said Friday.

While dozens of companies — 60 in all — have active permits to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver, it’s far less common to receive permission for driverless vehicles. Only AutoX, Nuro and Waymo hold this driverless permit. Companies that receive these driverless permits have to provide evidence of insurance or a bond equal to $5 million and follow several other rules, such as training remote operators on the technology.

Zoox also has a permit, which it received in late 2018, to transport people in its automated vehicles on public roads. These ride-hailing permits fall under the jurisdiction of the California Public Utilities Commission and have a variety of other requirements and rules. This permit, which allows Zoox to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot, doesn’t allow companies to charge for rides.

Zoox has also been testing its technology in Las Vegas, which is considered another target market. Zoox received permission from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles in early 2019 to drive autonomously on state roads. The startup was mapping and test-driving new routes in the greater Las Vegas region last year.

Source: Tech Crunch

When Alchemist Accelerator shifted its Demo Day to virtual earlier this year, Alchemist director and founder Ravi Belani told me it was a move he expected the team to stick with for some time. Nearly half a year later it’s time for another Demo Day — and sure enough, with the pandemic still ongoing, it’s another virtual one.

As an enterprise accelerator, Alchemist focuses primarily on seed stage companies that make their money from other companies rather than those that sell to consumers. This latest cohort (the accelerator’s 25th) saw nearly 20 companies go through the program, with focuses ranging from physical therapy devices, to an AI “coach” for sales reps, to productivity tools for software developers.

Care to see the companies make their debut to the world? Alchemist will be streaming its Demo Day on YouTube, with programming set to begin at 2pm pacific.

Don’t have time to watch the whole thing? Here’s an alphabetized list of all the companies scheduled to present, along with some notes about what each is working on:

Image Credits: Anda Technologies

Anda Technologies: A simplified smartwatch with built-in GPS, calling, and a quick symbol-based messaging system, meant to help parents and caretakers stay in touch in situations where a full smartphone might be too much. They initially focused on Latin America, and are now expanding support to US and Europe.

Botco.ai: A “conversational marketing platform” — in other words, marketing chatbots meant to increase sales and conversions. Potential customers can chat with these bots over SMS, messaging apps, and their AI will use its growing understanding of what it knows about your business to respond.

BreachRX: A platform meant to help streamline your company’s response when a security breach happens. They provide response playbooks, help assign tasks to the correct team members, and help capture records of how and when your company took action.

ClearQuote: Computer vision-based vehicle inspections. The company says it can scan an entire vehicle for damage using a smartphone camera in around 60 seconds, calculating cost of repair on the fly. Focusing on end-of-lease inspections, used car inspections, and rental car return inspections first.

CoPilot: An AI-powered “coach” for sales reps. As reps make phone/video calls, CoPilot analyzes the conversation and generates “cue cards” with relevant information.

Evolution Devices: A wearable electrical stimulation device meant to help in the rehabilitation process for those with lower limb weaknesses (including stroke survivors or individuals with multiple sclerosis.) The device adapts to each user’s own walking pattern, and helps with remote care by reporting data (such as step counts) back to the patient’s therapist.

Faucetworks: An “artificial neurologist”, meant to help more quickly identify neurological emergencies while a patient is in an ambulance en route to a hospital, or at hospitals where no neurologist is on site. Their hardware system asks patients a series of questions, then walks them through a physical exam.

HR Messenger: An HR/onboarding chatbot built to work over Whatsapp/Facebook Messenger, helping to automate things like pre-screening questions, interview scheduling, and referral requests. The company says it’s working with clients including KFC and H&M.

Hopthru: Data analysis platform for public transit agencies. Hooks into the data these agencies already collect, cleans it up, then pipes it into a dashboard to help these transit agencies find ways to improve their routes and ridership.

Image Credits: Hubly

Hubly Surgical: Building a smarter drill for neurosurgeons performing “skull puncture” operations. The company says that many surgeons still use basic, standard (hand-cranked!) drills, which can lead to high complication rates; Hubly’s drill helps to precisely angle the drill and is built to prevent the surgeon from drilling too deep. Expects to see FDA clearance in 2021, and launch in US hospitals in 2022.

HyPoint: Working on high-power, high-density hydrogen fuel cell systems for aviation, meant to dramatically reduce CO2 emissions from air transportation.

Mobiz: A platform for sending personalized marketing messages to your established customer base via SMS, building “personalized micro-sites” for each user based on the brand’s existing data. The company says it’s already working with companies like Burger King and Woolworths, and is currently seeing $6MM in ARR.

Nano Diamond Battery: NDB is aiming to build a self-charging, sustainable battery. This one is perhaps a bit too complex to capture in a sentence or two, so see our previous coverage of NDB here.

Node App: A marketplace for connecting brands with influencers. Node helps to verify each influencer’s audience, then connects brands with these influencers with pre-negotiated deal terms.

Rectify: A tool meant to automatically detect and redact sensitive information when sharing documents outside of an organization. Focusing on the insurance market at first. Founder Melissa Unsell-Smith says the Rectify founding team previously worked together for 15 years in AT&T’s corporate legal department.

RubiLabs Inc: A platform focusing on making on-demand deliveries of medical products (vaccines, medications, etc) to hospitals and pharmacies in Africa via drones, motorcycles, and other dedicated vehicles. The company estimates that it has already saved 7,000+ lives.

Seventh.ai: Pitching itself as “Carta for intellectual property”, Seventh.ai helps founders identify which parts of their business can/should be patented, to better understand what the competition has patented, and to work through the patenting process. The company says it’s currently seeing around $250k in ARR. Founder Alex Polyansky says he spent 10 years as a patent examiner at the USPTO.

Tocca: A platform meant to help B2B companies throw branded virtual sales events, providing things like virtual lobbies, stages, breakout rooms, and person-to-person networking tools. Integrates into tools like HubSpot and Salesforce to make post-event followups more efficient.

Image Credits: Veamly

Veamly: A “unified inbox” feed for developers that brings threads and messages from Slack, GitHub, Jira into one view, as well as a unified search that can dig in across these tools. Founder Emna Ghariani says the company’s “proprietary prioritization engine” helps to sort tasks and tickets by importance, and to analyze the time they’re spending in each tool throughout the week.

Source: Tech Crunch