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What your company can learn from the Bank of England’s resilience proposal

Published July 23, 2020

Kolton Andrus
Contributor

Kolton is co-founder and CEO of Gremlin, the chaos engineering company helping the world build a more reliable internet.

Identify critical business services

The operational resilience framework recommends focusing on the services that serve external customers. While internal applications are important for productivity, this customer-first mentality is sound advice for determining a starting place for reliability efforts. While it’s ultimately up to the business to weigh the criticality of the different services they offer, the ones necessary to make payments, retrieve payments, investing or insuring against risks are all recommended priorities.

When choosing a tech stack, look before you leap

Published July 23, 2020

When it comes to choosing a tech stack, the decisions you make today could have a cascading impact for years. On one hand you want to be cool and modern, but on the other, you want to build with technology you know — and sometimes getting to market is more important than riding the latest technology wave.

The problem is that your decisions can have consequences that result in technical debt, the concept that as you make one decision, you have to pay a debt of sorts to fix underlying structural problems in the code as the result of those decisions you made early on.

Before you start freaking out, it’s something that happens to every company and is really impossible to avoid — so you make your choices and get your product out the door.

At this week’s TechCrunch Early Stage conference, HappyFunCorp CEO and co-founder Ben Schippers and CTO Jon Evans spoke about choosing the optimal tech stack. The pair have built custom software for companies like Amazon, Samsung, WeWork and AMC, so they know a thing or two about the subject.

What to consider before choosing

Image Credits: HappyFunCorp

Evans says startups must weigh several key factors when choosing a tech stack, but development speed tops the list. “The single most key thing about your tech stack is speed,” he said. “The right stack will give you the most speed, compared to the alternatives.”

But early choices have other implications. “In the medium- to long-run, you have to be conscious about running up what we call technical debt, which is really the side effects of a spaghetti nest of bad code that is tightly coupled and leads to negative side effects all over the place,” he said.

Ann Miura-Ko’s framework for building a startup

Published July 23, 2020

As an early-stage investor, Floodgate’s Ann Miura-Ko looks for two breakthroughs in order to invest in a startup: The first happens in the value-seeking stage of a startup’s journey and the second occurs in its growth-seeking phase.

“There are really two stages to building a company,” Miura-Ko said at the TechCrunch Early Stage virtual event earlier this week. “One is what we call value-seeking mode, and this is where you’re really trying to figure out what the company actually looks like, including what’s the product? Who are you selling to? How do you price it? All of these things are still being discovered in the value-seeking mode.”

After founders have answered those questions, they can move into growth-seeking mode, she said. That’s the point when startups are trying to attract as many customers as possible.

Throughout these two distinct stages, Miura-Ko says she looks for the two breakthroughs: the inflection insight and product-market fit.

Inflection insights

The idea of an inflection insight, Miura-Ko said, is a relatively new framework Floodgate is exploring. Often times, she said founders need to ride some massive, exponential curves that allow their businesses to grow sustainably and scale.

These inflections have two parts to it: cause and impact. The causes are generally either technological (cloud, 5G), regulatory (GDPR, AV regulation) or societal (belief or behavior shifts). On the impact side, products and distribution may become cheaper or faster, while also presenting new use cases or customers, she said.

“Or even more interesting, you have something that was impossible that now is possible,” she said. “And that is an exponential impact that you could ride on.”

But simply finding that inflection insight doesn’t mean you should create a business. What founders must do next is determine if the insight is right and nonconsensus.

Edtech startups flirt with unicorn-style growth

Published July 21, 2020

When Quizlet became a unicorn earlier this year, CEO Matthew Glotzbach said he’d prefer to distance the company from the common nomenclature for a startup valued at or above $1 billion.

“The way Quizlet has gotten to this point is by building and growing a very responsible business,” he said. “It’s the result of the hard work of the team for a decade. We’re much more like a camel.”

It’s clear, though, that the tides might be changing. In edtech, the rich are getting richer. Last week, Mountain View-based Coursera announced it had raised a $130 million Series F round a day after The Information broke a story about Udemy reportedly raising new financing at a $3 billion valuation.

For anyone who has been following my edtech coverage in recent few months, this momentum is hardly surprising. Earlier in the pandemic, MasterClass raised $100 million, Quizlet became a unicorn and Byju’s became India’s second-most-valuable startup.

While edtech’s boom is predictable, the industry is known — to the chagrin of founders and to the benefit of long-time investors — for being conservative. Today we’ll look to understand how a boost in late-stage funding may impact the market on a broader scale.

High-flying camels

Ian Chiu, an investor at Owl Ventures, tells TechCrunch that the rise of big rounds brings a “watershed moment” to the $6 trillion education market. Owl Ventures was founded in 2014 and is one of the biggest edtech-focused firms out there, but Chiu says the recent strong capital flow shows that the sector is finally emerging as a sector other investors are noticing.

Creating a robust churn-reversal system

Published July 21, 2020

Julian Shapiro
Contributor

Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing team that trains startups in advanced growth, helps hire senior growth marketers and finds vetted growth agencies. He also writes at Julian.com.

Creating a robust churn-reversal system

Insights from Matthew Morley of Savvy

Generally, it’s far more efficient to keep a current client than it is to close a new one. You’ll want a system to help you identify which users are at risk of churning. This way, you can proactively reach out to them before they leave.

Start by identifying your high-value customers at risk of churning:

Who is:

Spending within the top 10% of time using your app?
Has a substantial number of seats of your product?
Or, say, has a company size of at least 50 people — reflecting their upselling potential?

But also:

Is using the product 30% less in a given month
Has submitted at least one non-trivial support ticket in the last month
And has their subscription renew in less than 90 days

And so on.

You can stitch this information together from multiple sources like Stripe, Mixpanel, Crunchbase and Intercom. Then, set up an alert to notify your team once someone falls into these buckets.

Then reach out with something personal to win back their enthusiasm. It can be high leverage to get them on the phone to uncover what’s keeping them around.

Tracking the growth of low-code, no-code startups

Published July 21, 2020

Startup buzz comes in waves, with a particular thesis or focus coming into vogue at certain times. Remember the short-lived boom in chat bots? That was good fun. And there was the ICO craze, which lead every startup you’ve heard of to consider the financing option for at least a weekend.

We’ve also endured the early-AI bubble, the blockchain rush and a cannabis-driven wave as well. Even subtheses can see spikes, such as the neobanking industry, say, or roboadvising. Hell, we saw minicrazes in insurtech marketplaces and OKR software this year alone.

Fads in startups are not new. Today, as venture investment tilts toward enterprise software, we’re in something of a SaaS craze. Inside of today’s SaaS surge, however, is a smaller trend that I want to explore more: no-code and low-code startups.

Largely, low-code and no-code refer to tools that allow nondevelopers to either employ little (low-code) to no code while either building logic inside of software, or full applications. Low/no-code development often features drag-and-drop interfaces (Techopedia, TechTarget), but not all low-code and no-code tools are used to build apps.

Defining the sector and its focus is difficult. PitchBook says low/no-code development platforms “expedite the creation of new applications with minimal coding requirements and offer tools for nonprogrammers.” A recent TechCrunch article by a couple of venture capitalists argued that low/no-code work is “not a category itself, but rather a shift in how users interface with software tools.”

A bit like how AI and fintech are squishy categories, low-code and no-code have a wide remit.

After talking to a number of entrepreneurs lately who built these capabilities into their startups’ applications, it appears that today founders expect the capabilities to more helpful for nondevelopers reordering logic inside apps for their own needs, instead of building whole-cloth applications.

All B2B startups are in the payments business

Published July 21, 2020

Jeff Coppolo
Contributor

Jeff Coppolo has over 25 years of experience in the fintech industry and is currently Head of Global Business Development and Partnerships for payments processing company BlueSnap.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to rethink how they accept and make payments. Paper invoices, checks and point-of-sale payments have given way to “corona-free payments” through mobile apps, electronic invoicing and ACH. Although significant, this is the sideshow to a more significant reshuffling of the payments industry.

Nearly $150 trillion in worldwide B2B and B2C transactions take place every year, but only a tiny portion are digital. A lot of technology companies want their piece of that massive pie. Until recently, though, only payment facilitators (aka, “payfacs”), gateways, banks and credit card companies had access to it.

That’s changing. Whether they know it yet or not, B2B tech platforms are becoming payments companies. Payfacs are competing to integrate their technology into these platforms, which drive an ever-growing number of transactions. Revenue-sharing deals are on the table, and payfacs are pushing the competitive advantages they can offer to the clients of these B2B platforms. Capabilities like cross-border payments, seamless customer onboarding, fraud protection, marketplace payments and B2B invoicing influence, which payfacs win in “integrated payments” (the jargon for this space) and which don’t.

B2B companies that use to leave the choice of gateway to their clients need to become savvy in payment technology, both to control the user experience and to tap this new business. There’s a massive amount of revenue on the table, and it’s just too easy to blow this opportunity and alienate clients in the process.

How we arrived here

A decade ago, the revolution in cloud computing led to a wave of B2B tech platforms promising to “disrupt” every industry. Gyms got gym management platforms. Hospitals got clinic management platforms. Retailers got commerce management platforms. Media companies got subscription management platforms. Many of these fill-in-the-blank management platforms — all independent software vendors (ISVs) — helped clients manage their operations and interactions with consumers or other businesses.

But ISVs didn’t get involved in payments, which was odd, given how complementary payments were to their platforms and how much money was at stake. Mastercard says there is about $120 trillion annually in B2B payments worldwide, and paper checks still dominate about half of the U.S.’s $25 trillion payment volume. Meanwhile, retail e-commerce sales account for $4.2 trillion out of $26 trillion in total retail, or about 16.1%, according to eMarketer. Less than 8% of global commerce is thought to occur online.

You’d think B2B software companies would find a way to generate revenue on some of that $146 trillion in transactions, but most did not. Payment processing is its own, messy, complicated niche. Payfacs go through a grueling underwriting process to provision a merchant account, which includes know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks. If a merchant defaults, the payfac is next in line to make good on the transactions.

When you run a venture-backed B2B platform, you have enough to worry about already.

So, B2B platforms stayed clear. They formed integrations with a basket of payfacs (Stripe, PayPal, Square, my company BlueSnap, etc.) and then let their clients choose which one to use. That’s a lot of integrations to maintain.

‘Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ and the limits of today’s game economies

Published July 17, 2020

Kaiser Hwang
Contributor

Kaiser Hwang is a longtime member of the games community and a vice president at Forte, an organization building an open economic platform for games.

“Animal Crossing: New Horizons” is a bonafide wonder. The game has been setting new records for Nintendo, is adored by players and critics alike and provides millions of players a peaceful escape during these unprecedented times.

But there’s been something even more extraordinary happening on the fringe: Players are finding ways to augment the game experience through community-organized activities and tools. These include free weed-pulling services (tips welcome!) from virtual Samaritans, and custom-designed items for sale — for real-world money, via WeChat Pay and AliPay.

Well-known personalities and companies are also contributing, with “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” scribe Gary Whitta hosting an A-list celebrity talk show using the game, and luxury fashion brand Marc Jacobs providing some of its popular clothing designs to players. 100 Thieves, the white-hot esports and apparel company, even created and gave away digital versions of its entire collection of impossible-to-find clothes.

This community-based phenomenon gives us a pithy glimpse into not only where games are inevitably going, but what their true potential is as a form of creative, technical and economic expression. It also exemplifies what we at Forte call “community economics,” a system that lies at the heart of our aim in bringing new creative and economic opportunities to billions of people around the world.

What is community economics?

Formally, community economics is the synthesis of economic activity that takes place inside, and emerges outside, virtual game worlds. It is rooted in a cooperative economic relationship between all participants in a game’s network, and characterized by an economic pluralism that is unified by open technology owned by no single party. And notably, it results in increased autonomy for players, better business models for game creators, and new economic and creative opportunities for both.

The fundamental shift that underlies community economics is the evolution of games from centralized entertainment experiences to open economic platforms. We believe this is where things are heading.

TikTok is a marketer’s shiny new toy, but how do you optimize campaigns?

Published July 16, 2020

Tiffany Ou
Contributor

Tiffany Ou is the general manager, Americas at Nativex, where she leads go-to-market strategies for leading game and app developers.

TikTok is a rising star in the social media category. Since its launch three years ago, the company has secured 800 million active users worldwide. That makes TikTok ninth in terms of social network sites, ahead of LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat. As more people start using the platform and remain engaged, it goes without saying that TikTok is an increasingly desirable destination for marketers.

But outside the sheer numbers, is there any real sustenance to the platform from a marketing perspective, or is this just a temporary fad brands are flocking to? Here’s a look into what makes TikTok unique through a marketer’s lens, and a few things the platform can improve on to make it a permanent option for brands looking to explore mobile.

Better user experiences lead to more unique advertising

Digital advertising is only as effective as a platform’s user experience — that fact presents a unique differentiator for TikTok. Being in 2020, where content creators continue to blossom, TikTok provides an opportunity for literally anyone to reach millions of people with their content. It is a “platform for the people,” as the algorithm sends user content to groups of 5-10 people, and based on the engagement, it will continue sending it out to the masses. What’s interesting here is that it resembles an early era of Instagram, where all content was user-generated.

Additionally, unlike other leading social media channels, a user is focused on one piece of content at a time. TikTok videos take up the entire screen, which leads to more engagement and genuine interest from the viewer. That said, creative plays an incredibly important role in every campaign you run on the platform, especially when trying to grab the user amid a mass of alternative entertainment options. The TikTok audience is hyperfocused on viewing organic, visually stimulating content that could be the next big meme or viral sensation.

Creative is the key

FlexJobs CEO Sara Sutton on what newly remote companies tend to get right and wrong

Published July 13, 2020

Over the last few months, just about any tech company that can go remote has gone remote.

Are companies adopting remote for the long haul, or is it just a holdover until they can get people back in the office? What are newly remote companies getting wrong or right in the transition? If a company is going to be sticking with a remote workforce, what can they do to make their roles more enticing and to build a better culture?

FlexJobs CEO Sara Sutton has been thinking about remote work for longer than most. She founded FlexJobs in 2007 — at a time when she herself was looking for a more flexible job — as a platform tailored specifically for jobs that didn’t keep you in an office all day. In 2015 she also founded Remote.co, a knowledge base for remote companies and employees to share the lessons they’ve learned along the way.

I recently got a chance to chat with Sara about her views and insights on remote work. Here’s the transcript of our chat, lightly edited for brevity and clarity.