Month: July 2021

Twitter’s recent acquisition spree continues today as the company announces it has acqui-hired the team from news aggregator and summary app Brief. The startup from former Google engineers launched last year to offer a subscription-based news summary app that aimed to tackle many of the problems with today’s news cycle, including information overload, burnout, media bias, and algorithms that promoted engagement over news accuracy.

Twitter declined to share deal terms.

Before starting Brief, co-founder and CEO Nick Hobbs was a Google product manager who had worked on AR, Google Assistant, Google’s mobile app, and self-driving cars, among other things. Co-founder and CTO Andrea Huey, meanwhile, was a Google senior software engineer, who worked on the Google iOS app and had a prior stint at Microsoft.

Image Credits: Brief

While Brief’s ambitious project to fix news consumption showed a lot of promise, its growth may have been hampered by the subscription model it had adopted. The app required a $4.99 per month commitment, despite not having the brand-name draw of a more traditional news outlet. For comparison, The New York Times’ basic digital subscription is currently just $4 per week for the first year of service, thanks to a promotion.

Twitter says the startup’s team, which also includes two other Brief employees, will join Twitter’s Experience.org group where they’ll work on areas that support the public conversation on Twitter, including Twitter Spaces and Explore.

While Twitter wouldn’t get into specifics as to what those tasks may involve, the company did tell TechCrunch it hopes to leverage the founders’ expertise with Brief to build out and accelerate projects in both those areas.

Explore, of course, is Twitter’s “news” section, where top stories across categories are aggregated alongside trending topics. But what it currently lacks is a comprehensive approach to distilling the news down to the basic facts and presenting balance, as Brief’s app had offered. Instead, Twitter’s news items include a headline and a short description of the story, followed by notable tweets. There’s certainly room for improvement there.

It’s also possible to imagine some sort of news-focused product built into Twitter’s own subscription service, Twitter Blue — but that’s just speculation at this point.

Twitter says it proactively reached out to Brief with its offer. As part of its current M&A strategy, the company is on the hunt for acquiring talent that will complement its existing teams and help to accelerate its product developments.

Over the past year, Twitter has made similar acqui-hires, including those for distraction-free reading service Scroll, social podcasting app Breaker, social screen-sharing app Squad, and API integration platform Reshuffle. It also bought products, like newsletter platform Revue, which it directly integrated. The company even held acquisition talks with Clubhouse and India’s ShareChat, which would have been much larger M&A deals.

“We’re really glad we ended up at Twitter,” Hobbs told TechCrunch.

“Andrea and I founded Brief to build news that fostered a healthy discourse, and Twitter’s genuine commitment to improve the public conversation is deeply inspiring,” he said. “While we can’t discuss specifics on future plans, we’re confident our experience at Brief will help accelerate the many exciting things happening at Twitter today,” he added.

Hobbs said the team remains optimistic about the future of paid journalism, too, as Brief demonstrated that some customers would pay for a new and improved news experience.

“Brief pioneered a fresh vision for journalism, focused on getting you just the news you need rather than as much as you could withstand,” remarked Ilya Kirnos, founding partner and CTO at SignalFire, who backed Brief at the seed stage. “That respect for its readers made SignalFire proud to support founders Nick Hobbs and Andrea Huey, who are now bringing that philosophy to the top source of breaking news — Twitter.”

To date, Brief had raised a million in seed funding from SignalFire and handful of angel investors, including Sequoia Scouts like David Lieb, Maia Bittner, and Matt Macinnis.

As a result of today’s deal, Brief will wind down its subscription app on July 31. The company says it will alert its current user base today via a notification about its forthcoming shutdown but the app will remain on the App Store offering new features that allow users to explore its archives.

Source: Tech Crunch

Yes Virginia, there are advantages to exhibiting in (the sold-out) Startup Alley at TC Disrupt 2021. Out of all the early-stage startups ready to exhibit on September 21-23, Team TechCrunch hand-picked 50 to form the Startup Alley+ cohort.

Startup Alley+ is a VIP experience designed to help founders grow their business and increase their opportunities right now in the run-up to Disrupt.

Hold up: Don’t miss the opportunity to meet and network with all the innovative startups you’ll find in Startup Alley — including the Startup Alley+ cohort. Attend Disrupt for less than $100 — if you buy your early bird pass before prices go up on July 30 at 11:59 pm (PT).

The VIP experience includes three masterclass sessions on crucial topics that all startup founders need to, well, master. Case in point: product-market fit. It’s an elusive and yet essential first step to unlocking growth. You can’t build success without a product that quenches the demand of a thirsty market.

On August 24, Dan Olsen will conduct a masterclass on the art and science of product-market fit. Olsen, a product management trainer and consultant, works with CEOs and product leaders to build strong product teams. His clients include Google, Facebook, Amazon, Uber, Box and Walmart.

A best-selling author of The Lean Product Playbook, Olsen has literally written the book on product-market fit. In his masterclass, How to Create Product-Market Fit, Dan will draw on material in the book and share his simple but effective framework. He will explain his Product-Market Fit Pyramid and The Lean Product Process, a six-step methodology that guides you through how to:

1. Determine your target customer
2. Identify underserved customer needs
3. Define your value proposition
4. Specify your MVP feature set
5. Create your MVP prototype
6. Test your MVP with customers

Dan will illustrate these concepts with real-world examples and a comprehensive case study.

We’re especially excited to have Dan present his masterclass because he’s firmly rooted in TechCrunch lore. Way back in 2009, a company called YourVersion — founded by Olsen — won the peoples’ choice at TechCrunch50, the precursor to Disrupt.

Olsen’s product-market fit expertise — and his personal connection to the early-stage founder experience — will help the Startup Alley+ cohort learn how to turn product management into more of a science than an art and improve their odds of success.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 takes place September 21-23. Don’t miss your opportunity to attend for less than $100. Buy your early bird pass here before the deal expires on July 30 at 11:59 pm (PT).

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2021? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

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Source: Tech Crunch

We have entered a whole new era of e-commerce centered on speed and convenience. Business leaders are being forced to prioritize delivery capabilities and push for more accelerated delivery services.

“Fast/reliable delivery” was the most important online shopping attribute among the more than 8,500 consumers queried for PwC’s June 2021 Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey, making it clear that delivery services will only become more crucial across the e-commerce landscape.

Now that consumers have grown accustomed to same-day (and same-hour) delivery service models, customer expectations for delivery options will only increase.

In fact, according to a recent report from the mobile app intelligence platform SensorTower, the top food delivery apps saw continued growth in January and February 2021, with installs up 14% year over year. And yet, despite climbing user growth, DoorDash, Uber Eats and GrubHub remain unprofitable. So how can business leaders design rapid delivery models that meet consumer expectations — and still make money?

The challenge: Delivery apps need more than speed to drive profitability

To remain competitive, delivery apps are rethinking their services and broadening their offerings.

“Amazon powers next-day delivery,” Raj Beri, Uber’s global head of grocery and new verticals, said in May. “We’re going to power next-hour commerce.”

But speeding up the delivery process won’t necessarily drive revenue. More importantly, if your delivery service results in a poor customer experience, you’ll be less likely to win customer loyalty just because you offer faster delivery.

The primary challenge faced by delivery apps, or any e-commerce company looking to add delivery services as part of its offerings, is building a foundation that enables not only speed and convenience for the customer, but one that takes into account all aspects of the customer experience. For example, when delivering food, the business responsible for the delivery must make sure the food is handled safely and remain free of any contaminants. The temperature — whether hot or cold — must be maintained throughout the delivery process and the order itself must be correct.

The solution: Same-day delivery relies on sophisticated technology platforms

The “Uberization” of everything, combined with dramatically elevated consumer expectations, will take much more than a delivery app and fleet of drivers for businesses to be profitable. To follow through on the promise of same-day delivery services, a number of things need to happen without any missteps between when an order is placed and when it shows up at the customer’s door. The more complex the product being delivered, the more difficult the delivery process becomes.

To enable same-day delivery services while also reaching profitability, a delivery app must take into account the technology needed to meet customer expectations. It involves much more than simply designing an app and growing user numbers. A truly successful same-day delivery model that provides an exceptional customer experience relies on a sophisticated software platform that can simultaneously manage various aspects of the customer journey, all while making it appear seamless from the customer’s point of view.

Profitable delivery services are built on automated systems powered by artificial intelligence systems and robotics. The technology must come first, before the app and before user growth. Any other delivery business model is putting the cart before the horse.

Domino’s Pizza is a brand that has perfected the delivery process and vastly improved the overall customer experience by making technology core to their business model. The key moment came when the brand defined itself as an e-commerce company that sells pizza. It committed to data applications and implemented a robotics technology platform that enabled electronic delivery systems that added speed and efficiency to the delivery process. In April, Domino’s began rolling out a robot car delivery service to select customers in Houston via Nuro.

GrubHub is also taking steps to integrate robotic capabilities into its delivery process. According to recent reports, the company announced it would be adding self-driving units that deploy drone-like robots to deliver food to college students. The program, which will roll out on a limited number of U.S. college campuses this fall, aims to reduce delivery times and, hopefully, costs.

This focus on technology is crucial in the world of delivery apps, or for any businesses forced to compete in the newly emerging category of next-hour commerce. The key to building a successful, profitable business model is to invest in technology platforms that can connect all components of the customer journey, from opening an app and clicking on a product to purchasing the product and scheduling the delivery, and beyond.

Same-day delivery: Where to go from here

In a world where everyone wants to open an app on their phone and have whatever it is they need to be delivered within an hour, it’s tempting for business leaders to focus on the delivery app itself, whether they are building their own or partnering with another company. But focusing on the app is a shortsighted view of same-day delivery models.

Instead, business leaders must use a wide-angle lens and consider every single aspect of their customer journey: How do customers engage with their business? How do customers search for and find the products they offer? What does it take to complete an order and what conditions must be met before the order can be delivered? Also, what happens after the order to ensure it went smoothly and to the customer’s satisfaction?

Some businesses are finding success partnering with delivery apps, but this comes with the risk of putting your brand’s reputation in the hands of another company that acts as a frontline employee with customers. Other companies are adding delivery service options to their current e-commerce model, relying on third-party software that can be plugged into an existing technology stack. Unfortunately, this comes with limitations and is not viable for regulated businesses that include multiple components.

The only way to ensure a seamless customer experience on top of same-day delivery services is to build a proprietary software platform that puts the technology at the heart of your business, which allows you to automate key processes, adding speed and convenience to your delivery model. It also makes it possible to integrate robotic systems that can expedite orders, include artificial intelligence protocols that can accelerate business growth, and scale your delivery model as your business expands.

Thriving in the new era of e-commerce

“Next-hour delivery” is a catchy tagline that is sure to gain traction among consumers, but whether it will help drive profitability remains to be seen. As the CEO of a firm that has built a profitable business model centered on same-day delivery services, I’m skeptical that the promise of next-hour delivery will drive more revenue if the technology powering the delivery systems lacks automation, artificial intelligence and robotics.

It’s true that businesses will be forced to compete on same-day delivery. But another truth that has emerged since the pandemic is that this new era of e-commerce comes with heightened customer expectations that won’t be met on speed alone. Consumer satisfaction hinges on more than the amount of time it takes to move an order from an app to the customer’s door.

To succeed in the delivery service market, business leaders must ask themselves a number of questions: Which parts of their business are needed to complete a same-day delivery order? Is the ordering process intuitive? Can the order and delivery be monitored by the customer? Is the order correct when it arrives? Does it meet the customer’s expectations?

And, most importantly, is their business built on a technology platform that can support the entire customer journey and delivery model, from product discovery and purchase to same-day delivery and beyond? The businesses that answer yes to these questions are the ones I expect to thrive in the post-pandemic world.

Source: Tech Crunch

In May, the neighborhood crime watch app Citizen offered its user base $30,000 to track down a suspected arsonist on live video, only to discover that they’d sent a mob of civilians after the wrong guy. Now, Citizen is covertly hiring journalists to livestream on the app at crime scenes for $25 per hour through third party websites. I’m tired.

When Citizen first hit the App Store in 2016, it was called Vigilante — it marketed itself as a platform to fight injustice with transparency, which might sound good in theory, but in practice, it deliberately encouraged users to seek out crime scenes to report them. Vigilante was removed from the App Store for violating a clause in Apple’s App Developer Review Guidelines that an app shouldn’t be “likely to cause physical harm from its use.”

Surely, this would be the end for the nascent platform. But like a cockroach after an apocalypse, the app chugged on. It rebranded itself as Citizen, added disclaimers that no one should interfere with a crime scene, re-entered the App Store, and continued to raise VC funding. Now, the app is like a crowd-sourced crime blotter — as its App Store page says, “Citizen may notify you of a crime in progress before the police have responded.” But this level of hyper-vigilance can fuel panic, rather than make people feel safe — not to mention that user-reported crime incidents might be incorrect at best, and racist at worst. The app pulls data from 911 calls, but not all information in those dispatches are verified, which can be cause for false concern.

But Citizen can only function if it has enough of a user base, and its attempts to corral civilians to use the app have gotten more and more desperate. According to SensorTower, the app hit a monthly download high in June 2020, in the wake of widespread Black Lives Matter protests. (So, as the country protested police brutality, 677,000 people responded by downloading a policing app). But the following month, just 207,000 people downloaded the app. Since then, growth has been pretty stagnant — 292,000 people downloaded Citizen in March 2020, and 283,000 people downloaded it in March 2021.

In June, the Daily Dot reported that one specific user named “Landon” was live streaming from multiple crime scenes in one day, attempting to interview witnesses and first responders — given how often he seemed to stumble upon these crime scenes, it seemed unlikely that he was just an enthusiastic app user. Yesterday, the New York Post reported on another user named “Chris” who live streamed on Citizen from six emergencies in one day. Citizen confirmed that both Landon and Chris were working for the app as members of its Street Team.

“Citizen has teams in place in some of the cities where the app is available to demonstrate how the platform works, and to model responsible broadcasting practices in situations when events are unfolding in real time. We believe these teams will ultimately help guide our users on how to broadcast in an effective, helpful and safe way,” a Citizen spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Citizen has had Street Teams since the app’s launch; a spokesperson said that they’ve never tried to hide this. But these jobs are not listed on the Citizen website. Instead, they’re listed by a third party recruiter called Flyover Entertainment on the JournalismJobs board without mention of Citizen. An NYU Journalism website shared a similar listing, which did include the Citizen name. Citizen confirmed to TechCrunch that both of these listings are for the app’s Street Team. Citizen pays $250 per day for a 10-hour shift in LA, and $200 per day for an 8 hour shift in NYC, which comes out to $25 per hour.

“Broadcast journalists have experience in broadcasting safely and responsibly. This is a requisite for our Street Team members,” said the Citizen spokesperson. When asked why these jobs were posted on third-party job boards, but not Citizen’s own website, the spokesperson reiterated that it was because Citizen specifically wanted to find journalists. However, it could presumably also find journalists on its own website.

Surveillance state vigilantism concerns aside, local news is dying, and Citizen is not built to be a substitute for neighborhood journalism. Sure, local newspapers report on crime too, and it’s not as though Citizen is doing something unprecedented by sending reporters to scope out crime scenes. But there’s a difference between reporting news and live streaming from a crime scene on a surveillance app that only discloses who is a paid worker and who is an average civilian when directly asked. For an app that is modeled on “increasing transparency,” these covert job postings don’t feel so transparent. Plus, for an infrequent freelance gig with no benefits or paid time off that requires established broadcasting skills, $25 per hour is a pretty bad rate.

Now, Citizen’s latest attempt at growth is a paid service for $19.99 per month called Protect, which lets users send their location and a livestream from their camera to a Protect Agent. Citizen says its Protect Agents include former law enforcement officers and 911 operators, who can send an “instant emergency response” in case of emergency. This sort of seems like paying to get a personal 911 operator, which, again, feels like a poor alternative to policing, an already poor system.

Maybe Silicon Valley-bred tech companies aren’t the answer to the United States’ centuries-long crises of police brutality, racial profiling, and surveillance. Maybe a better way to reduce crime is to ensure that all people have access to health care, jobs, and affordable housing. Who knows!

Source: Tech Crunch

U.S. edtech company Duolingo released a revised IPO price range this morning, boosting its potential per-share value to $100 after initially targeting a range that topped out at $95 per share.

Per the unicorn’s SEC filings, Duolingo is now targeting a $95 to $100 per share IPO price range, up from $85 to $95 per share, or a gain of around 12% at the bottom and 5% at the top.

TechCrunch previously called the Duolingo debut a bellwether of sorts for the larger U.S. edtech ecosystem; if Duolingo can price and trade well, investors in private companies may be more willing to invest, given a more proven and attractive exit market. On the other hand, if Duolingo prices weakly or trades poorly, the company could place a wet blanket atop the startup edtech world.

The fact that Duolingo is raising its IPO price range indicates that we are more likely on the path for a strong offering than a weak one.

For edtech companies that have hit unicorn status — like Masterclass, Course Hero, Quizlet and Outschool — it’s good news. For reference, those companies have raised $461.4 million, $97.4 million, $62 million and $130 million, respectively, per Crunchbase data.

What’s Duolingo worth?

The terms of the company’s IPO have not changed, aside from its proposed price. So, Duolingo is still selling 3.7 million shares in its debut, and some 1.41 million shares will be sold by existing equity holders. The company’s underwriters also reserved their right to buy 765,916 shares of the company’s stock at IPO price in the 30 days following its debut.

At the upper and lower bands of the company’s IPO price, its simple valuation excluding underwriter shares now lands between $3.41 billion and $3.59 billion. Inclusive of its greenshoe offering, those numbers rise to $3.48 billion and $3.67 billion.

Recall that when private, Duolingo’s November 2020 Series H valued the company at just over $2.4 billion. So long as Duolingo prices in its range, it will provide investors with a nice bump in the value of their investment. Duolingo was valued at just $1.6 billion in mid-2020, indicating that it has more than doubled in value since that investment.

Source: Tech Crunch

Despite the plentiful headlines about mega billion-dollar M&A transactions, record IPOs and the rapid growth of SPACs, small deals will continue to be the most likely exit for the vast majority of tech startups. In the over 30 years I’ve worked on M&A at White & Case, Barclays and my current firm Ascento Capital, I have seen too many startups that are not prepared for an exit via a merger or sale. This article will provide specific recommendations on how to prepare your startup for M&A.

Global M&A hit record highs in the second quarter with a total deal value of $1.5 trillion, but smaller transactions vastly outnumber mega billion-dollar deals. The U.S. saw a total of 16,672 deals in the year ended June 31, but only 583, or 3% of that number, were valued at more than a billion dollars (FactSet). The IPO market is healthy again, but M&A still represents 88% of exits: So far this year, there were 503 IPOs and 5,203 deals, according to the CB Insights Q2 2021 State of Venture Report. After the SEC announced in early April that it was considering new guidance on SPAC IPOs, the rate of new SPAC issuances fell by around 90%.

While it is good to strive for a billion-dollar-plus sale, a successful IPO or a SPAC deal, it is practical to prepare your startup for a smaller transaction.

Here are a few recommendations that will prepare your startup for an M&A exit:

Track M&A in your subsector

Set up an alert on Google News for M&A activity in your subsector. For example, if your startup is in the IoT subsector, search for “IoT acqui” and this will pick up news stories on acquisitions in the IoT space. Save the search so you can go to Google News on a regular basis. Also track your closest competitors on Google News, particularly to see who is selling their company.

Prepare a list of likely acquirers

Prepare a list of the companies or firms most likely to buy your startup. This list should include domestic and international companies, businesses in non-tech industries, private equity firms and their portfolio companies, as well as VC-backed companies. Track these likely acquirers on Google News as well.

Consider executing a parallel track

Consider approaching the top 10 likely acquirers when you are raising the next round of capital. If your startup gets M&A offers and VC term sheets at the same time, this will provide your board of directors choices on the path ahead. Knowing the M&A activity in your startup’s subsector and the 10 most likely acquirers will impress VCs and increase the chances of being funded.

Source: Tech Crunch