Month: March 2020

Managed by Q co-founder Dan Teran had a plan. After selling his office management company to WeWork last year for tidy $220 million — $100 million in cash and the rest in stock — he wanted to buy it back when WeWork decided to sell it off, along with some other properties that it viewed as extraneous, following a management shake-up last fall.

According to Bloomberg originally — and confirmed by our sources — Teran, who was employed by WeWork for five months after the sale as its head of corporate development and ventures — looked to put together a package to acquire the company beginning in December. To do so would require a substantial sum, however — enough to both buy the company, plus working capital to maintain its current staff and support its customers.

In the end, SoftBank-controlled WeWork apparently better liked the proposal of of an outside bidder, and that’s Eden, a five-year-old company competes directly with Managed by Q. At least, Eden is confirming today that it has successfully bid $25 million in cash for Managed by Q, whose technology and accounts and an untold number of employees will also be incorporated into its offerings.

The money comes from a new, $29 million round that JLL, the commercial real estate services giant, just led for Eden in a round that also includes participation from the Y Combinator Continuity Fund and individual investors.

The new round is separate from a $25 million round that Eden closed in November and that was led by Reshape, with participation from Fifth Wall Ventures, Mitsui Fudosan, RXR Realty, Thor Equities, and Bessemer Venture Partners, along with numerous other firms.

Said Eden CEO Joe Du Bey in an emailed statement to us: “Eden is proud to partner with Managed By Q to further our mission of creating a better place to work, for everyone. Managed By Q’s amazing customers, service vendors, team, and product makes it a huge win-win for all stakeholders. JLL leading the round and becoming a strategic partner to Eden is also exciting and will further accelerate our growth as we work to better serve the SMB category together.”

Teran did not respond to a separate press request yesterday, but if he’s frustrated by the outcome, he still has that sale last year to WeWork to celebrate.

In the meantime, Eden —  which launched in 2015 as as on-demand tech repair and support service but eventually found itself in the same office management business as Managed by Q (both connect offices with third-party providers) — has now consolidated its market share, and obviously for a dramatically better price than WeWork paid less than a year ago.

The company, which until today employed roughly 70 people, was already active in 25 markets as of late November, including Berlin and London, and it featured more than 2,000 service providers on its platform. Its acquisition of Managed by Q takes it that much further.

Source: Tech Crunch

FX content is coming to Hulu. The company announced today the launch of a new FX hub on the streaming service that includes over 40 FX Networks TV shows, new original linear series, and other FX originals that will now be exclusive to Hulu.

The addition is made possible thanks to Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox and its subsequent deal with NBCU that gave it full operational control of Hulu. Since then, Disney has made a number of changes to the streaming service, including a massive reorg that saw the departure of Hulu CEO Randy Freer as the service became more integrated with Disney’s own direct-to-consumer operations.

Last week, Hulu’s chief marketing officer Kelly Campbell has been promoted to president — a move that signals that Hulu’s internal leadership is about marketing the service and growing the subscriber base. Disney, meanwhile, is making the bigger strategic decisions.

The Fox deal gave Disney even more shows and movies to roll out to its direct-to-consumer services. Family-friendly content like “The Simpsons” and “The Avatar” went to Disney+, while the more adult fare goes to Hulu, including FX content.

The new FX hub on Hulu promises next-day access to current series along with the network’s library of legacy series, like “American Horror Story,” “Archer,” “Atlanta,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “What We Do in the Shadows,” “Sons of Anarchy,” “Justified,” “Fosse/Verdon,” “The Shield,” “Nip/Tuck,” “Damages,” “Rescue Me,”  “Thief,” and “Terriers.”

And on March 5, Alex Garland (“Ex Machina,” Annihilation”) will launch his first-ever TV series, “Devs.” The limited series, written and directed by Garland, stars Sonoya Mizuno, Nick Offerman, Jin Ha, and Allison Pill. The plot focuses on a young software engineer Lily Chan who investigates the division of her employer, a cutting-edge tech company based in Silicon Valley, which she believes was involved with her boyfriend’s murder.

Other FX originals will follow, including limited series “Mrs. America” starring Cate Blanchett on April 15, “A Teacher” starring Kate Mara this summer, and drama “The Old Man” starring Jeff Bridges this fall.

The FX hub on Hulu will also include streaming premieres of new comedies, “Dave” (FXX) and “Breeders” (FX), plus Season 4 of “Better Things” (FX) and a new season of “Cake” (FXX). The NYT’s documentary series “the Weekly” is also available.

FX and Hulu have worked together in the past, but this the first time that FX is bringing together both current and past seasons as well as originals to Hulu. Previously, FX had offered streaming of its shows through an FX Plus subscription service — but that was shut down last year, after the Disney-Fox deal closed.

The new FX hub on Hulu is available across platforms and via a dedicated URL, hulu.com/fx-on-hulu. 

Source: Tech Crunch

Tech’s darling is out. On Sunday, the 38-year-old Democratic presidential contender stepped out of the race, clearing a path for moderates to coalesce around another candidate on the eve of Super Tuesday’s broad contest for delegates.

Buttigieg, a previous political unknown, ran a surprisingly successful long-shot presidential campaign, making history as the first gay candidate to make a real run at the presidency and vaulting his political profile well above his mayorship of South Bend, Ind. Buttigieg’s appeal as a young, articulate politician was bolstered early on by his friendliness to Silicon Valley in a race in which tech’s biggest names were cast as villains by the race’s leftmost wing.

As the race began, elite segments of Silicon Valley, including tech leadership and venture capital, sought an alternative to Bernie Sanders. Sanders and his ideological next-door neighbor Elizabeth Warren have made criticisms of consolidated power and wealth a cornerstone of their platforms, with Warren in particular taking direct aim at tech’s biggest success stories or its ruling elite, depending on your perspective. That message was always more likely to resonate with tech’s rank and file workers, while the sector’s better-compensated upper echelons turned to Buttigieg and other Democratic candidates who reflected their traditionally liberal values while promising less upheaval for the industry.

Buttigieg was able to appeal to that dual desire, and his young age and proximity to tech power brokers like Mark Zuckerberg, a member of his cohort at Harvard, helped boost his cause among tech-savvy supporters. According to reporting from The Guardian, more than 75 VCs threw their weight behind the Buttigieg campaign as early as July 2019, lauding Buttigieg’s “intellectual vigor” and data-driven thinking — qualities Silicon Valley prides in itself. One of Facebook’s first 300 users, Buttigieg’s tech fluency offered a striking contrast to the stereotype of tech-inept members of Congress, a frequent complaint within tech in recent regulatory hearings.

“I don’t know if people saw him as a technology culture person,” one member of the VC community told TechCrunch. “It was more like as a smart person who could potentially execute. As a winner.” They characterized him as “persuasive and competent” but “not competent in some technocratic, bloodless way.”

“We want to build a campaign that’s a little disruptive, kind of entrepreneurial. Right now, it feels like a startup,” Buttigieg campaign manager Mike Schmuhl told AP News in April.

For some in Silicon Valley, which tends to think in terms of Silicon Valley, the analogy stuck all the way to the end.

With Buttigieg out of the race, the big question is where his support goes next. Given his moderate policies and new momentum, former Vice President Joe Biden appears likely to receive a boost from Buttigieg’s exit. Still, venture capitalists who spoke with TechCrunch suggested that support is likely to lack the enthusiasm tech had for Buttigieg. “People could have gone with Biden early on,” one Buttigieg supporter noted.

That redirected support may prove tepid compared to Silicon Valley’s initial bet on Buttigieg, but it could be a shot in the arm for Biden if the former vice president comes out of Tuesday’s big contest looking like a winner.

Source: Tech Crunch

Welcome to Equity on Extra Crunch, a semi-regular series of interviews between the Equity team, venture capitalists, and operating executives at the neatest startups. The goal of this irregular medium is to dig into topics that don’t fit inside of the standard Equity format, but are still critical to understanding what’s happening in the private markets.

To kick things off, we invited two of our favorite early-stage investors over to TechCrunch’s offices in San Francisco for a video chat. But for those of you who prefer to read things, we’ve also summarized the questions and answers.

Equity was happy to have Floodgate’s Iris Choi back in the studio, and we’re also excited to have Cowboy Ventures’ Jomayra Herrera around for the first time. Choi is an Equity regular, and Herrera recently took part in a piece we published digging into the split between enterprise and consumer seed deals. That’s what we call foreshadowing. Let’s begin.

We wanted to get advice from our two investors as to what founders seeking seed deals might want to do to avoid unnecessary agony.

Source: Tech Crunch

Nvidia has canceled the in-person portion of its GPU Technology Conference, which would have brought more than 10,000 people to San Jose three weeks from now. The company cited “growing concern over the coronavirus” for its decision, and said it will attempt to host as much of the content online as possible.

In an update to the GTC page, Nvidia explained:

“Jensen will still give a keynote. We will still share our announcements. And we’ll work to ensure our speakers can share their talks. But we’ll do this all online.”

The five-day event was scheduled to take place at the San Jose convention center starting on March 22. Some 250 companies would be exhibiting or attending in some form or another, presenting and hearing talks on the latest applications of GPUs and high performance computing.

Unfortunately, GTC has gone the way of the Game Developers Conference, Mobile World Congress, F8, and numerous other major events that rightly worried that such a high concentration of international travelers might prove to be a breeding ground for the coronavirus currently spreading worldwide.

No doubt a good number of exhibitors and attendees were already canceling or questioning their attendance; Many companies have already restricted international travel for any reason at all.

Anyone who paid for a pass to GTC will receive a full refund, but Nvidia is hoping to salvage at least some of its programming.

“We will be working with our conference speakers to begin publishing their talks online beginning in the weeks ahead,” wrote the company in a blog post announcing the decision. “Additionally, for those in NVIDIA’s developer program, we plan to schedule availability with our researchers, engineers and solution architects to answer technical questions.”

All updates, including content, should appear on the GTC page going forward.

Source: Tech Crunch

One of the benefits of owning a Pixel smartphone is that it improves over time, as Pixels are first to receive updates that deliver the latest fixes and improvements. The first round of new features arrived in December, including a filter for robocalls, more photo controls, improved Duo calls and more. Today Google says Pixel owners are getting a second set of additions, this time including new music controls, new emoji, still more photo and video features, expanded emergency help features, Google Pay improvements and several others.

Last year, Google introduced a new sort of gesture control, called Motion Sense, with the introduction of the Pixel 4. The idea is that you can now control your phone without having to touch it. Instead, the smartphone detects the wave of your hands and translates that into software controls.

Already, Motion Sense allowed Pixel 4 owners to skip forward or go back to a previous song. With today’s update, they’ll also be able to pause and resume music by making a tapping gesture above the phone.

Google suggests this will be an easy way to pause your music when you need to have a conversation. But in reality, it will only be useful if it works consistently — and so far, reviews have said the Motion Sense system was finicky and underdeveloped. That could change in time, of course.

Another improvement today is an update to Pixel 4’s Personal Safety app, which first arrived in October. The app uses the phone’s sensors to detect if you’ve been in a severe car crash and checks with you to see if you need help. It also lets U.S. users call 911 with a tap or voice command. If you’re unresponsive, the phone shares your location and details with emergency responders. Now the feature is coming to users in Australia (000) and the U.K. (999).

The new set of updates also includes added AR effects for Google’s video calling app Duo, which can change with your expression and move around the screen. These aren’t Duo’s first set of effects, but keeping the roster of effects updated is critical for social communication apps.

Meanwhile, the Pixel 4’s selfie camera can now create images with depth, which improves Portrait Blur and color pop, and lets you create 3D photos for Facebook.

Pixel phones will also now receive the emoji version 12.1 update, which hit iPhone with the iOS 3.2 update in October 2019, and which arrived on Twitter in January 2020. The set includes 169 new and more inclusive emoji, offering a wider array of gender and skin tones as well as more couple combinations.

A change to Google Pay will now let you press and hold the power button to swipe through your debit and credit cards, event tickets, boarding passes and other stored items. This is coming first to the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Taiwan and Singapore.

You can also now take a screenshot of a boarding pass’s barcode, then tap a notification to add it to Google Pay to then receive real-time flight updates as notifications. This is rolling out to all countries with Google Play on Pixel 3, 3a and 4 during March.

For power users, another useful addition lets you now configure rules based on Wi-Fi or physical location. For example, you can set your phone to automatically silence your ringtone when you arrive at work, or go to Do Not Disturb mode when you get home, among other things.

Other new features include the rollout of Live Caption (automatic captions) to Pixel 2 phones, the ability to schedule when Pixel’s Dark Theme turns off and on, an easier means of accessing emergency contacts and medical info, improved long-press options for getting faster help from your apps and an update to Adaptive brightness to make reading in direct sunlight easier.

Google says the new feature set is rolling out starting today. You may not see it immediately, but should fairly soon.

Source: Tech Crunch

The world is bracing for the seemingly inevitable proliferation of SARS-COV-12, also known as COVID-19 and coronavirus, which has already paralyzed cities and isolated millions. In the U.S., especially the nonstop work culture in startups, we tend to think we’re immune to such things and carry on business as usual. We are not only deluding ourselves but putting others in danger — so here are a few ground rules to make sure you don’t make this difficult period any harder for yourself or the people you work with.

We decided to publish something on this because we saw a lot of people unsure about what is appropriate to do and not do, as a CEO, an aspiring founder, or an employee in the tech world. If you are looking for the latest news on the health crisis or want to learn more about the virus, visit the CDC or WHO’s dedicated sites.

1. Take reasonable precautions and be transparent

The CDC says that good self hygiene and frequent hand-washing are the best ways to prevent the spread of the virus. Masks are actually not recommended, but won’t make anything worse — they’re more for someone infected than someone healthy.

You’re also only at risk of being affected by people you come into contact with — this isn’t a nerve agent that’s going to creep in through the cracks of your windows. To minimize risk, stay home if you can. This may mean canceling meetings, working remotely, or skipping a conference (if it hasn’t been canceled already).

Work through your ramen supplies, rice, and frozen leftovers, and if you do decide to go out, wash your hands frequently or carry hand sanitizer. If you order in and would rather have the driver drop something off than hand it to you, that’s fine too.

When you do something that could affect others, it might be good to explain that you’re doing it because the threat of infection. Choose your words carefully, but be clear about it: “Can we do a video call instead? I’m trying to minimize my exposure right now” is fine. If people think you’re doing this because you think they’re infected or dirty, that’s a problem on their side, and they probably haven’t read this list.

To be clear, the world isn’t a death trap right now. But because the virus can be asymptomatic and still spread, it’s not obvious where it is and isn’t dangerous to be. So you should do what makes you feel comfortable and minimizes the risk of exposure in general.

2. Don’t question precautions taken by others

A lot of things are going to go wrong over the next few weeks. Major events have already been canceled and no doubt many face-to-face meetings are being skipped out on. That sucks — but limit your judgment of the people making those decisions.

If someone doesn’t want to shake hands or fist bump, that’s OK. If someone wants to meet by video instead of the coffee shop, that’s OK. If someone leaves work early because they get freaked out, that’s OK.

Even in ordinary circumstances we never really know what other people’s motivations and limitations are, and in this situation we know even less than usual. Individuals or companies may be under pressures you’re not aware of — family, financial, religious, personal — and their decisions, even if they cause serious inconvenience to you, have to be accepted without question right now.

That goes for employers, too: If someone wants extra sick time right now, let them have it. If they want to remote in to a crucial meeting, that should be fine. If later, as their employer, you feel they may have taken advantage of the situation to slack off or take a little extra paid leave, that’s something to talk about later. Not during a global health crisis.

Now, you’re likely to see a lot of absurd and racist precautions like not eating at Chinese restaurants or popping bubble wrap because it’s supposedly Chinese air. Rather than take individuals to task for their mistaken or bigoted views, though, try to reinforce the truth by sharing reliable information from sources like the CDC and WHO. No one takes a tweet from you seriously, but people may trust an international consortium of medical and epidemiology professionals. At least that’s the hope.

3. Take the loss

This is going to cost you money, time, and opportunity. Meetings will be delayed, which will eat up overhead. Promised dates for products and services will come and go and your company will not meet them. Information you need won’t be available until it’s too late. It’s going to hurt!

Just remember: You’re not the only person or company it’s happening to. Everyone is taking a hit on this one.

Have you seen the stock market? People are getting rinsed at historic levels.

Know anyone in South Korea or coastal China? Think about what they’re dealing with.

Mobile World Congress is canceled — it’s huge! What are the organizers going to do? No idea. What about Facebook? Will they have a small, weird F8 later or what? GDC will be a ghost town if it happens at all.

This changed from a “how do I avoid issues” to pure damage control for pretty much everyone sometime over the last week. So instead of thinking about how you’re being put out, start thinking about what happens afterwards. Pack your schedule with follow-up reminders, tell your crew to track changes to timelines, inform and apologize to clients. If they’re following rule number 2, they’ll understand.

4. Evolve and interrogate your process

If these events, or others like them, are seriously affecting your productivity or the ability of your company to function, maybe you should think about that a bit. What are you unable to do — specifically? What’s stopping you — specifically?

Do you rely too much on face-to-face communications and find yourself unable to explain concepts in writing? Has your team abandoned Slack for anything productive? Are your press releases and email pitches limp? When you’re forced to fall back from your strengths, you necessarily encounter your own weaknesses.

This is an opportunity to take a good look at what you and your company are and aren’t good at when it comes to communication and productivity. In fact, it’s more than an opportunity — you’re going to be slapped in the face with these shortcomings whether you like it or not. Whether you make something out of it or not is up to you.

And think of this time as an opportunity to simply catch up. What tasks have you been putting off that you can finally take the time to do? You could work on getting to inbox zero, read the documents you promised you would weeks ago, or practice your pitch.

So much of what the tech and tech-enabled industries (which is pretty much everything now) do, we can do with limited access to one another, or even limited connectivity. And even if you can’t do your job, you can always get better at it.

5. Remember that it’s not just you

What’s happening right now is a global issue of great complexity and with far-reaching effects. The things happening to you and your company are a very small part of it.

Don’t take this personally. COVID-19 didn’t emerge from nature’s petri dish to smite your B2B payments play. Like a tropical storm or political scandal, this is something that comes out of nowhere and causes indiscriminate damage. You’re not the only one being affected, and chances are if you’re reading this that you’ve got it better than most.

At the same time, if you’re feeling frustrated or scared or pent in, knowing that it’s not just you can be helpful — others are dealing with this too and will understand.

Source: Tech Crunch