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What to do when your VC writes your startup off

Published May 20, 2020

The novel coronavirus has been devastating for many people, families and communities — and the consequences are still being calculated. The tech world has seen wave after wave of layoffs, sometimes multiple waves at one company only weeks apart. Some startups have lost nearly all their revenue, and depending on their cash reserves, have little hope of recovering.

For VCs, the last two months have been an exercise in triage.

Partners have gone through their entire investment portfolios to identify the winners, what’s salvageable and what (at least in their minds) has no hope of resuscitation. If you are in the first two groups, it’s back to whatever normal looks like in the midst of a global pandemic and a deep economic recession.

But what if you suddenly get a call informing you that your investor — perhaps your biggest champion to date — is going to cut the rope and write you off entirely?

That’s what we are going to talk about today.

Before we go anywhere, be thankful if you even know how your investors are judging your startup. Most, unfortunately, will couch the terms they use (“we will be engaging less” or perhaps “we are unlikely to do our pro rata going forward”) rather than just saying directly, “we are writing you off; don’t call us — we’ll call you.” That’s polite and face-saving for all parties, but the lack of transparency can make decisions down the road much harder. It’s better to know where you stand, even if the news is hard.

Finding your bearings

The first step to approaching this situation is to get your bearings. Much like during a fundraise process, it’s not uncommon for different investors on your cap table to reach different conclusions about your startup’s potential. One investor may write you off, while another has you marked at a more neutral valuation or even positively. This can absolutely be frustrating, and given the emotion of this situation, it can be hard to rationally accept that an investor who once believed in you no longer does so.

Why micromobility may emerge from the pandemic stronger than before

Published May 20, 2020

Since its inception, shared micromobility services have been in a precarious position — one supported by millions of dollars in venture capital. But the COVID-19 pandemic has brought even more turmoil upon an industry that has long struggled with unit economics. It has led to mass layoffs, operation shutdowns across several markets and more consolidation.

Despite the struggles of individual operators, micromobility as technology will come out of this stronger than before, industry analyst Horace Dediu tells TechCrunch.

Dediu, an analyst who coined the term “micromobility” and founded Micromobility Industries, sees the silver lining in the pandemic for micromobility as it relates to the adoption of public transit alternatives. With ongoing concerns about the disease and social distancing, consumers may look to alternative modes of transportation — ones that require fewer interactions with strangers. But simply because a certain technology takes off doesn’t mean the current slate of operators will benefit.

“The companies involved may not survive a crisis,” Dediu says. “We don’t remember the fact there were 3,000 automobile companies in the United States prior to Henry Ford’s Model T. We don’t remember all the electrical suppliers out there and the consolidation that took place in the electrical field with Westinghouse. There’s a lot of historic references we can cite. But the fact of the matter is that up until the crisis there was an over-investment where probably too much capital was allocated to the industry chasing business models which are not sustainable…I think there will be a washout with a kind of consolidation and we’re seeing that already.”

Earlier this month, for example, Uber sold off JUMP to Lime, while simultaneously leading a $170 million investment in the micromobility startup. That funding round brought Lime’s valuation down 79%, to $510 million, according to The Information. Last April, Lime was valued at $2.4 billion.

Despite COVID-19, optimism reigns in the Midwest’s startup scene

Published May 20, 2020

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Startups in the Midwest are optimistic despite the fact that a fair number of companies in the region are suffering from economic impacts stemming from COVID-19, recently collected data shows.

The global pandemic has shaken the U.S. economy, but it hasn’t affected each area in the same way. States have seen differing levels of infection, paces of response, qualities of medical infrastructure and so on. What happens to Silicon Valley startups in the COVID-19 era, therefore, might not be exactly the same as what happens to Boston’s or Utah’s startup ecosystems (more on Boston here, Utah here).

A report out this month from Sandalphon Capital that digs into the reality, reaction and sentiment of the Midwest’s startup scene paints an interesting picture. While data collected from 197 startup CEOs from the region includes worrisome responses regarding fundraising and cash runways, it also reflects more optimism and green shoots than we anticipated.

This morning, let’s study a few key data points from the Chicago-based, early stage venture capital firm’s survey to better understand one of America’s most interesting, if least-covered, startup scenes.

Chin up

The full survey — you can find Sandalphon’s summation and the link here — contains a wealth of data, but today we’re focusing on three things:

COVID-19’s direct impacts
runway and fundraising situations
CEO optimism

Impact

Decrypted: No warrants for web data, UK grid cyberattack, CyberArk buys Idaptive

Published May 19, 2020

One vote.

That’s all it needed for a bipartisan Senate amendment to pass that would have stopped federal authorities from further accessing millions of Americans’ browsing records. But it didn’t. One Republican was in quarantine, another was AWOL. Two Democratic senators — including former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders — were nowhere to be seen and neither returned a request for comment.

It was one of several amendments offered up in the effort to reform and reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the basis of U.S. spying laws. The law, signed in 1978, put restrictions on who intelligence agencies could target with their vast listening and collection stations. But after the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013, lawmakers champed at the bit to change the system to better protect Americans, who are largely protected from the spies within its borders.

One privacy-focused amendment, brought by Sens. Mike Lee and Patrick Leahy, passed — permits for more independent oversight to the secretive and typically one-sided Washington, D.C. court that authorizes government surveillance programs, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That amendment all but guarantees the bill will bounce back to the House for further scrutiny.

Here’s more from the week.

THE BIG PICTURE

Three years after WannaCry, U.S. still on North Korea’s tail

A feature-length profile in Wired magazine looks at the life of Marcus Hutchins, one of the heroes who helped stop the world’s biggest cyberattack three years to the day.

The profile — a 14,000-word cover story — examines his part in halting the spread of the global WannaCry ransomware attack and how his early days led him into a criminal world that prompted him to plead guilty to felony hacking charges. Thanks in part to his efforts in saving the internet, he was sentenced to time served and walked free.

With stadiums closed, TV networks turn to live esports broadcasts

Published May 18, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out the spring seasons for professional sports and associated revenue for TV networks, but esports is filling part of that void.

Gaming companies behind titles licensed by each major league are the winners in this unexpected shift; Electronic Arts (EA) is first among them with FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA Live and NHL in its EA Sports portfolio and more than 100 esports events planned for 2020. The way EA, networks and sports leagues are responding to production challenges in this crisis will reshape the esports market going forward.

Millions of people sheltering in place has created a breakout opportunity for esports broadcasting:

A large portion of the internet-using population is at home 24/7, with screens as their main entertainment outlet;
Sports fans have few competitive live events to watch;
Broadcasters like ESPN, CBS, and Sky lost their most valuable content for attracting live viewers and need alternative content;
Star athletes and non-sports celebrities are stuck at home with wide-open schedules.

In late March, 900,000 viewers tuned into Fox Sports for Nascar’s iRacing series, with 1.1 million watching in early April; the network has also broadcast Madden NFL tournaments with NFL commentators and athletes. ESPN is televising NBA players facing off against each other in NBA 2K (by Take-Two Interactive) and pro drivers (and other pro athletes like Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero) are racing each other in Codemasters’ F1 2019 game. ESPN has broadcast competitive play of non-sports games with League of Legends (by Riot Games) and Apex Legends (by EA) tournaments.

To be clear, ratings for these events have varied widely, but networks and game companies are rethinking how esports is broadcast, which will advance its pop-culture appeal.

Games adapting pro sports are best bridge to non-gamers

Esports is a massively popular activity with its own large piece of turf in pop culture, but it hasn’t secured a central role. Research firm Newzoo pegs the global audience of “esports enthusiasts” at 223 million. But unlike soccer and basketball, esports is siloed because it caters to viewers who are generally avid gamers. The action is extremely fast, so commentary by a streamer rarely helps outsiders understand what is going on enough to become engaged.

SoftBank’s Q1 2020 earnings presentation mixes comedy and drama

Published May 18, 2020

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Today we’re digging into SoftBank’s latest earnings slides. Not only do they contain a wealth of updates and other useful information, but some of them are gosh-darn-freaking hilarious. We all deserve a bit of levity after the last few months.

The visual elements we quote below come from SoftBank’s reporting of its own results from its fiscal year ending March 31, 2020. Much of the deck is made up of financial reporting tables and other bits of stuff you don’t want to read. We’ve cut all that out and left the fun parts.

Before we dive in, please note that we are largely giggling at some slide design choices and only somewhat at the results themselves. We are certainly not making fun of people who’ve been impacted by layoffs and other such things that these slides’ results encompass.

But we are going to have some fun with how SoftBank describes how it views the world, because how can we not? Let’s begin.

Data, slides

TechCrunch has a number of folks parsing SoftBank’s deck this morning, looking to do serious work. That’s not our goal. Sure, this post will tell you things like the fact that there are 88 companies in the Vision Fund portfolio, and that when it comes to unrealized gains and losses, the portfolio has seen $13.4 billion in gains and $14.2 billion in losses. $4.9 billion of gains have been realized, mind you, while just $200 million of losses have had the same honor.

And this post will tell you that the “net blended [internal rate of return] for SoftBank Vision Fund investors is -1%.”

Hell, you probably also want to know that Uber was detailed as Vision Fund’s worst-performing public company, generating a $1.46 billion loss for the group. In contrast, Guardant Health is good for a $1.67 billion gain, while 2019 IPO Slack has been good for $605 million in profits. Those were the two best companies in the Vision Fund’s public portfolio.

But what you really want is the good stuff. So, shared by slide number, here you go:

Slide 11:

Is the e-commerce shift going to last?

Published May 17, 2020

Ashwin Ramasamy
Contributor

Ashwin Ramasamy is the co-founder of PipeCandy, an online merchant graph company that discovers and analyzes business and consumer perception metrics about D2C brands and e-commerce companies.

The Great Reset

Published May 17, 2020

Ann Miura-Ko
Contributor

Ann Miura-Ko is a co-founding partner at Floodgate, a seed-stage VC firm. A repeat member of the Forbes Midas List and the New York Times Top 20 Venture Capitalists Worldwide, she earned a PhD in math modeling of cybersecurity at Stanford University.

The Great Reset is not just another economic event

Our current situation is unique. It’s not merely a cyclical economic event, nor is it a standalone health crisis. What we are experiencing is not just an inflection point: it’s a societal phase-change unlike anything we have ever seen. We face an epic choice of how we move forward, and the decisions we make today will shape an entire generation.

Here’s why: COVID-19 is prompting us to reset many of our most fundamental behaviors. These changes are impacting our financial system, with effects visible throughout our homes, businesses and even the concept of “workplace” itself.

COVID-19 is pervasive

As a global pandemic, the virus itself has spread to nearly every country in the world.

Between February 20 and March 26, 100% of the world’s 20 largest economies implemented government-mandated social distancing. Globally, the number of scheduled airline flights is down 64%. In some countries, like Spain and Germany, flight numbers are down by more than 90%.

Since the timeline for lifting government restrictions is unclear — and even then, scientists are uncertain how the virus will spread — the question lingers: How long will this go on?

COVID-19’s impact is uncertain, long-term and potentially undulating, affecting every facet of our lives. You can’t simply wait it out with the expectation that industries will rebound. In 2001, September 11 felt pervasive, but its economic impact ultimately stemmed from just one single incident and the resulting fear… and that one single incident still cost more than three trillion dollars. How much larger will COVID-19 be?

This Week in Apps: Houseparty battles Messenger, Telegram drops crypto plans, Instagram Lite is gone

Published May 16, 2020

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch 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 3 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 Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week we’re continuing to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of mobile applications, including the latest news about COVID-19 apps, Facebook and Houseparty’s battle to dominate the online hangout, the game that everyone’s playing during quarantine, and more. We also look at the new allegations against TikTok, the demise of a popular “Lite” app, new apps offering parental controls, Telegram killing its crypto plans and many other stories, including a hefty load of funding and M&A.

Headlines

Contact tracing and COVID-19 apps in the news

Global: WHO readies its coronavirus app for symptom-checking and possibly contact tracing. A WHO official told Reuters on Friday the new app will ask people about their symptoms and offer guidance on whether they may have COVID-19. Information on testing will be personalized to the user’s country. The organization is considering adding a Bluetooth-based, contact-tracing feature, too. A version of the app will launch globally, but individual countries will be able to use the underlying technology and add features to release their own versions. Engineers from Google and Microsoft have volunteered their time over the past few weeks to develop the app, which is available open-source on GitHub.
U.S.: Apple’s COVID-19 app, developed in partnership with the CDC, FEMA and the White House, received its first major update since its March debut. The new version includes recommendations for healthcare workers to align with CDC guidelines, best practices for quarantining if you’ve been exposed to COVID-19 and new information for pregnancy and newborns.
India: New Delhi’s contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu, has reached 100 million users out of India’s total 450 million smartphone owners in 41 days after its release, despite privacy concerns. The app helps users self-assess if they caught COVID-19 by answering a series of questions and will alert them if they came into contact with someone who’s infected. The app has come under fire for how it stores user location data and logs the details for those reporting symptoms. The app is required to use Indian railways, which has boosted adoption.
Iceland: Iceland has one of the most-downloaded contact-tracing apps, with 38% of its population using it. But despite this, the country said it has not been a “game-changer” in terms of tracking the virus and only worked well when coupled with manual contact tracing — meaning phone calls that asked who someone had been in contact with. In addition, the low download rate indicates it may be difficult to get people to use these apps when they launch in larger markets.

Consumer advocacy groups say TikTok is still violating COPPA

Extra Crunch Live: Join Revolution’s Steve Case and Clara Sieg on May 21 at 3pm ET/12pm PT

Published May 14, 2020

On May 21 at 3pm ET/12pm PT, we’re hosting an Extra Crunch Live session with Steve Case and Clara Sieg of Revolution.

This chat is the latest in our growing series featuring notable investors, entrepreneurs and technologists. Previously, TechCrunch editorial staff sat down (virtually, of course) with Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee and Ted Wang, Sequoia’s Roelof Botha and Mark Cuban, to name a few.

There’s a lot to talk about with Case and Sieg, and Extra Crunch members are encouraged to come with their own set of questions to ask these renowned investors. Revolution is known for its wide range of investments, inside and out of the Valley, so we’re curious how the firm is addressing the COVID-19 crisis.

Steve Case was a co-founder of AOL and led the company as it became the internet giant of the ’90s — and did so outside of Silicon Valley. Because of this, he’s long been a champion of startups from other regions. Yet the firm still has a presence in Silicon Valley, and Clara Sieg has run that effort since 2012 after joining in 2010.

We’re curious how Case, Sieg and other partners are advising startups to weather this storm. With investments throughout the country, Revolution is in a unique position to have a holistic perspective on how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting startups.

Are they still funding startups right now? What metrics are they looking for? What regions of the country do they see less effected than others and which are hardest hit?

We have questions and we hope they have answers.

Extra Crunch members can ask their own questions directly in the Zoom Q&A. So come prepared! You can find the full information for the chat below. See you there!