Ideaforge

As Americans are ramping up to start traveling, amid a loosening of COVID-19 restrictions, United has announce the addition of 219 touchless check-in kiosks across the U.S. The new check-in option was one of a number of initiatives announced as part of the carrier’s CleanPlus strategy of addressing travel during the pandemic.

When travelers scan their phone or a printed pass, the device will automatically print out luggage tags and boarding passes. The first systems rolled out in Orlando, Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth and Chicago on May 10, before adding an additional 20 kiosks.

This latest move brings the system to every U.S. airport where United operates kiosks. Additional systems will be added to domestic and international airports through next month, according to the airline.

Other COVID-19-related United initiatives included limiting the numbers of passengers in line, making disinfecting products available through out the trip, a move toward only pre-packaged food, removal of bar area seating and mandatory employee temperature checks. Last month, the TSA implemented similar safeguards for travelers looking to get away during the Memorial Day weekend. 

Source: Tech Crunch

After a very high-profile departure and a year away from the company, Facebook’s former chief product officer Chris Cox will return to his long-held position with the company.

Cox shared the news Thursday in a Facebook post with a photo of his company badge. Elaborating on his return to Facebook, Cox explained that the unique national and global climate of 2020 influenced his decision, particularly the coronavirus pandemic, its subsequent economic devastation and the nation’s current focus on “a reckoning of racial injustice.”

“Like many of you, I’ve been thinking hard about what I can do for our families and communities today, and for the world our children will live in tomorrow,” Cox wrote.

“Facebook and our products have never been more relevant to our future. It’s the place I know best, it’s a place I’ve helped to build, and it’s the best place for me to roll up my sleeves and dig in to help.”

Cox has played an important role in shaping Facebook for years, both in terms of the products he broadly oversaw and in terms of company culture. One of Facebook’s earliest engineers, Cox came on board 15 years ago and in 2008 began working on Facebook’s product team. He moved into the chief product officer role in 2014, staying close to Mark Zuckerberg throughout his tenure.

Notably, Cox criticized Facebook’s hands-off approach to political advertising late last year, a decision the company made after his departure. Cox, who also expressed his displeasure with Trump at the time, suggested that fact-checking was necessary for political ads, though it needed to be nonpartisan in its execution. In his time away from Facebook, Cox worked as an advisor for Acronym, a nonprofit working on digital campaign tools for Democrats.

Facebook’s choice to not fact-check its political ads was one of a recent string of decisions that appeared designed to align the company more favorably with its conservative critics. In recent comments, Facebook’s former chief technology officer observed that the company is “afraid of angering Republicans” in crafting platform policies like those governing political ads.

The same day as Cox’s return announcement, Facebook responded to criticism from Joe Biden’s campaign that the company placates President Trump by citing Trump’s own executive order attacking moderation decisions by social media companies in defense.

Cox’s decision to leave last year was seen as a heavy blow for the company, which has been plagued by a stream of high-profile departures in recent years. Cox’s return is good news for Facebook, which is currently in the midst of a rare period of open dissent over a post from the president that threatened protesters after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed Black man.

Cox notes that in following the company over the last year in his absence he was “encouraged by progress on so many of the big issues,” though it’s not immediately clear what issues he was referring to, particularly in light of the company’s fresh internal controversy.

“In the past month the world has grown more chaotic and unstable, which has only given me more resolve to help out,” Cox said. “Our most important decisions and products are ahead of us.”

With the 2020 U.S. election looming and Facebook’s role in public and political discourse more central than ever, he’s likely right about that.

Source: Tech Crunch

Boston’s tech boom has led to a huge need for tech-related talent. But while the last decade has brought nearly 72,000 new tech jobs to Massachusetts, the growth brought with it slim progress regarding the makeup of who actually fills those roles. (Spoiler: It’s largely white men.)

According to MassTLC, it will take until 2085 for Black workers to reach the same hiring rate of white men in the industry today. For Latinos, it will take until 2045. And for women, it will take until 2070.

In this month’s Boston column, we decided to check in on the region’s diversity efforts. Boston is a city that has been defined both by a historically racist reputation and its university-driven liberal bonafides. As companies across the country have reacted to systemic racism with promises to do better when it comes to hiring, we wondered: Is Boston stepping up to the plate when it comes to hiring underrepresented candidates?

Using a list generated by a simple, time-bounded Crunchbase search for most recent Boston-area fundraising events. we turned to 15 companies that have recently raised within Boston and asked about their diversity efforts:

• Ginkgo Bioworks
• Wasabi Technologies
• Orbita AI
• Atea Pharmaceuticals
• Amwell
• Hemista
• LifePod Solutions
• Jellyfish
• AllHere Education
• Canvas GFX
• PIC Therapeutics
• Tyme Wear

Only a handful of companies responded, which wasn’t a good sign. Boston has a stunted record of releasing diversity data, so the silence was somewhat expected, if a little disappointing. Let’s review the responses we received to see what we can learn from both the answers (and the nonanswers).

At the end, we’ll look at some recent Boston venture data. We also have a new Boston investor survey coming later this month, so stay tuned.

The responses

Source: Tech Crunch

As schools stay closed and summer camp seems more like a germscape than an escape, students are staying at home for the foreseeable future and have shifted learning to their living rooms. Now, Norwegian educational gaming company Kahoot — the popular platform with 1.3 billion active users and over 100 million games (most created by users themselves) — has raised a new round of funding of $28 million to keep up with demand.

The Oslo-based startup, which started to list some of its shares on Oslo’s Merkur Market in October 2019, raised the $28 million in a private placement, and said it also raised a further $62 million in secondary shares. The new equity investment included participation from Northzone, an existing backer of the startup, and CEO Eilert Hanoa. While it’s not a traditional privately held startup in the traditional sense, at the market close today, the company’s valuation was $1.39 billion (or 13.389 billion Norwegian krone).

Existing investors in the company include Disney and Microsoft, and the company has raised $110 million to date.

Kahoot launched in 2013 and got its start and picked up most of its traction in the world of education through its use in schools, where teachers have leaned on it as a way to provide more engaging content to students to complement more traditional (and often drier) curriculum-based lessons. Alongside that, the company has developed a lucrative line of online training for enterprise users as well.

The global health pandemic has changed all of that for Kahoot, as it has for many other companies that built models based on classroom use. In the last few months, the company has boosted its content for home learning, finding an audience of users who are parents and employers looking for ways to keep students and employees more engaged.

The company says that in the last 12 months it had active users in 200 countries, with more than 50% of K-12 students using Kahoot in a school year in that footprint. On top of that, it is also used in some 87% of “top 500” universities around the world, and that 97% of Fortune 500 companies are also using it, although it doesn’t discuss what kind of penetration it has in that segment.

It seems that the coronavirus outbreak has not impacted business as much as it has in some sectors. According to the midyear report it released earlier this week, Q2 revenue is expected to be $9 million, 290% growth compared to last year and 40% growth compared to the previous quarter, and for the full year 2020, it expects revenue between $32 million and $38 million, with a full IPO expected for 2021.

As it has been doing even prior to the coronavirus outbreak, Kahoot has also continued to invest in inorganic growth to fuel its expansion. In March, it acquired math app maker DragonBox for $18 million in cash and shares. The company also runs an accelerator, Kahoot Ignite, to spur more development on its platform.

However, Hanoa said that Kahoot is shifting its focus to now also work with more mature edtech businesses.

“When we started out, we were primarily receiving requests on early stage products,” he said. “Now we have the opportunity to consider mature services for either integration or corporation. It’s a different focus.”

Source: Tech Crunch

Amid a heavier focus on race, diversity and inclusion in light of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, Facebook is making its chief diversity officer, Maxine Williams, report directly to COO Sheryl Sandberg, Sandberg wrote in a memo to Facebook employees today. Before, Williams reported to VP of Human Resources Janelle Gale.

“We are expanding Maxine’s role and putting Diversity & Inclusion at the heart of our ongoing management team discussions and processes – at the heart of all we do,” Sandberg wrote in the memo.

This is certainly a step up for Williams on the chain of command, but it falls short of having her report directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Diversity advocates for years have been calling for heads of diversity to report directly to the CEO. Many companies, however, have yet to do that. More often, tech companies have their heads of diversity report into the head of HR.

As we’ve noted before, heads of diversity and inclusion are oftentimes not in a position where they are set up to effect real change. As Project Include co-founder and CEO Ellen Pao told me last June, “they’re not empowered and they don’t have the team or the authority and there’s no metric that they can push people toward and hold people accountable to. They’re in this weird role where a lot of it is external facing.”

Beyond putting Williams in a position where she will hopefully have a better seat at the table, Facebook says it will encourage employees to engage in a day of learning on Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. More specifically, it acknowledges the day in which slaves in Galveston, Texas became aware of their freedom on June 19, 1865.

“This Juneteenth, Facebook will commemorate the ending of slavery in America with a day of learning,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We are canceling all meetings and engaging in conversation about the history, experiences and issues that Black Americans still face. We all have a responsibility to help give voice to underrepresented communities around the world. Our goal is to learn more so that we can do more.”

This comes days after Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey declared Juneteenth a company-wide holiday. Unlike Twitter and Square, Facebook employees will not have Juneteenth as an official holiday but will instead be encouraged to use it as a day of learning and attend educational sessions.

Earlier this month, Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout in protest of the company’s inaction around President Donald Trump’s post that incited violence.

Amid protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of Floyd, Trump posted on both Twitter and Facebook that, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Twitter’s response was to apply a notice to his tweet, stating that it violated Twitter’s rules about glorifying violence. Facebook, however, took a different approach. Its response was to do nothing.

Zuckerberg explained that the company’s policy “allows discussion around state use of force, although I think today’s situation raises important questions about what potential limits of that discussion should be.” Additionally, Zuckerberg said, “we think people need to know if the government is planning to deploy force.”

Facebook’s track record on race has not been great over the years. But that’s not to say no progress has been made. Last June, Williams pointed to how Facebook has increased the number of Black women by 25x and Black men by 10x over the last five years.

“There has been a lot of change,” Williams told me at the time. “Has there been as much as we want? No. And I certainly think we have the issue of when we started focusing on D&I in a very deliberate way. The company was already nine years old with thousands of people working here. The biggest takeaway is that the later you start, the harder it is.”

Currently, Facebook is just 3.8% Black, 5.2 Latinx in the U.S., and 3.1% two or more races, according to its most recent diversity report.

This story has been updated with a slightly revised comment from Facebook.

Source: Tech Crunch

Editor’s note: Andreessen Horowitz’s Crypto Startup School brought together 45 participants from around the U.S. and overseas in a seven-week course to learn how to build crypto companies. Andreessen Horowitz is partnering with TechCrunch to release the online version of the course over the next few weeks. 

In week four of a16z’s Crypto Startup School, the spotlight shifts to building companies by growing communities of users, developers and employees in a decentralized context.

In a virtual fireside chat, 16z General Partner Chris Dixon and GitHub and Chatterbug Co-founder Tom Preston-Werner discuss “Building Companies and Developer Communities.”

Preston-Werner explains how the open-source ethos is a great way to build social virality among developers, and how the clean, developer-focused interface of GitHub led to its wide adoption and caused developers to demand it within their own organizations.

He also offers marketing lessons from the early days of GitHub, when the company used informal methods of building community in a bid to create “superfans.”

He urges founders to view a company’s brand as an expression of its core beliefs, with a focus on how it helps its users succeed. The reason people would put a sticker on their laptop or wear a company tee-shirt is because of “what they believe they are communicating to others with that sticker or shirt … it’s a shortcut for communicating values.”

In the second video, Jesse Walden, a former a16z investment partner and Mediachain co-founder, and Robert Leshner, founder and CEO of Compound, do a “Deep Dive on Decentralization.”

Walden starts with a playbook for progressive decentralization — the process by which crypto project creators build a useful product, create a community around that product, and then gradually hand over control of the maturing network to the community. This process is in keeping with the cooperative model of crypto networks, which drives rapid, compounding innovation through better alignment of incentives and open participation.

Leshner follows with a case study of his experiences at Compound, an automated money market for crypto assets in which lenders and borrowers can come together to transact without the involvement of third parties. Compound, one of the first crypto projects to move through the full progressive decentralization model, built a thriving community of third-party application developers, who have set up shop on top of Compound’s smart-contract protocol.

The Compound team has gradually brought this community further into the protocol’s inner workings; in the final stages before handoff to the community, the founding team made changes transparently, with greater reliance on the community’s input, and created a sandbox for experimentation to test governance mechanisms. Decentralizing “allows the protocol to live forever,” Leshner says, which fosters innovation because developers can trust the protocol with their businesses and livelihood.

In the final video of week four, Tina Ferguson of a16z’s Tech Talent and People Practices team offers guidance on “Managing a Distributed Workforce.” Because of the decentralized mindset and evolving business models at the heart of crypto, founders and managers face unique challenges. In such a fast-moving space, for example, it’s important to hire someone who has the right skills now and will also adapt to what’s required in 12-18 months.

Compensation, which could include the allocation of tokens rather than more-traditional shares, also requires close attention. When hiring in other countries, teams must consider employment laws, as well as whether to use Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) to move quickly via local contacts on important hires. Finally, real-time feedback is especially crucial in a distributed workforce, as is clear and timely dissemination of information.

Source: Tech Crunch

Spin has launched its scooter sharing business to Germany, the first step in the U.S. company’s plans to expand to Europe.

The company, which was acquired by Ford in 2018 for about $100 million, has launched in Cologne and plans to open up in German cities Dortmund and Essen in the coming weeks. Spin said it’s also expanding its footprint in the U.S., starting with Atlanta. Other U.S. cities will follow, Spin said without providing more details. 

Spin’s Europe expansion is part of a trend that was emerging in the beginning of the year before COVID-19 upended the economy. In early 2020, it looked like Europe would become a summertime battleground for e-scooter companies. European and U.S.-based companies, including Lime, Bird, Circ, Swedish startup Voi and German startup Tier, were vying for market share. Voi was in about 40 cities in Europe and Tier had expanded to roughly 56. Amsterdam-based Dott was also in the mix. Spin announced in February plans to expand to Europe.

COVID-19 spread throughout Europe and then North America soon after, putting the brakes on micromobility. The pandemic prompted a number of scooter and bike share companies to pause operations or even pull out of cities altogether.

E-scooter startups are now coming back to Europe, where adoption rates and unit economics have been rosier than in some U.S cities.

Spin is starting with Germany in part because a recent survey conducted by the company and YouGov suggests e-scooters are poised to become a favored mode of transit in the country. Nearly 50% of those surveyed in Germany indicated they are already using or planning to use a solo transportation option for commuting to and from work and for taking trips within their immediate vicinity, Spin said.

“We are seeing heavier adoption of micromobility all around the world especially as the need for people to commute in less crowded conditions increases,” CEO and co-founder Derrick Ko said in a statement.

Spin said it plans to expand beyond Germany. The company has applied for permits in Lyon and Paris in France and submitted a proposal for rental e-scooter pilot in several U.K. cities, including Birmingham, Liverpool, London and Manchester.

Spin continued operating in some U.S. cities where it was allowed and provided free rides for healthcare workers during the pandemic. The company has resumed operations in 14 cities this month. It is now operating in 25 U.S. cities.

“Spin scooters are being used now more than ever as a utility rather than for leisurely activities,” president and co-founder Euwyn Poon said in a statement. “As public transit is cutting services, Spin is stepping in to help.”

Since April, new daily active users have increased an average 34% week over week, according to Poon. Trip duration has also increased 44%, reaching a peak of 24 minutes per trip, in May, Poon added.

Source: Tech Crunch

As North America slowly begins to reopen after nearly two months of sheltering in place and business lockdowns, startups that paused fundraising are starting to get back into the game. But these are shaky economic times, and most founders will be coming back to a different world altogether.

George Arison, founder and co-CEO of Shift, has a few ideas on how entrepreneurs should approach fundraising in “the new normal,” whatever that means.

A tech platform that buys used cars off of individuals and sells them to new buyers, Shift has raised over $225 million over five rounds. But Arison has experience fundraising under difficult circumstances: In 2017, the company’s $38 million Series C was a down round, where Shift had to raise money at a lower valuation than it did for its Series B.

In a fundraising world where many companies have been “massively” overvalued, Arison expects these conditions to shape the new normal.

“I think flat is going to be the new up round, to be honest,” he says. “Some companies will do up rounds — like Stripe. But most companies are going to have a much harder time with capital.” On an episode of How I Raised It, Arison shared his top fundraising tips for when times get tough — from how to pick VC partners strategically to successfully navigating a down round.

Lean in to “no” and go for investors who will reject you

When Arison was trying to raise Shift’s Series A, he cast a wide net in terms of the venture capitalists he spoke to and purposefully connected with VCs who might not invest in the company.

“I’m a big believer in talking to a broader range of people than founders normally would,” Arison says. “There are many benefits to getting to know really great investors, even if they don’t invest in you, because you’ll learn a lot from them. They’ll tell you things you otherwise might not pay attention to — and that information, over time, becomes really critical.”

Source: Tech Crunch

If you’re a teacher who has been relying on Apple’s iTunes U platform to digitally share your courses with the world, it’s time to shift to something new. After a few years of letting it mostly stagnate (the last update with anything but “stability improvements” was in 2017), Apple has quietly disclosed that iTunes U will be discontinued at the end of 2021.

The news comes via a support document on Apple’s site, as spotted by MacRumors.

Why? In short: it doesn’t really make sense to support it anymore. iTunes is no longer the all-encompassing, cram-it-on-in feature beast that it once was, so the name doesn’t really make sense today. Apple points out that they’ve been building out standalone apps like Classroom and Schoolwork to help teachers distribute material and grade students; meanwhile, plenty of third party apps now focus on digital education as their first and foremost feature.

Apple first launched iTunes U in 2007 as a section of the iTunes Store meant to host courses and content from “top US colleges.” By 2013, Apple said that those courses had been downloaded over one billion times. By the middle of 2019, however, it was shifting much of the content to other platforms (such as moving audio-only content to the Apple Podcasts app), seemingly in preparation for an eventual shutdown.

Apple says that all current content on iTunes U will stay up “through the 2020-2021 educational year”, but encourages instructors to back up their materials sooner than later. If you’re a student working through a course on iTunes U, meanwhile, you’ll need to reach out to the instructor to figure out if/where they plan on moving it.

Source: Tech Crunch