Ideaforge

While some gig economy companies have already taken steps to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among its workers, Sen. Mark Warner (VA) is encouraging them to go further and consider ensuring workers don’t face financial consequences as a result of the virus.

“I strongly urge that you attempt to address the potential financial hardship for your workers if they are sick or have to self-quarantine during this time,” he wrote. “In order to limit the spread of COVID-19, it is critical that platform companies lead by example by committing that economic uncertainty will not be deterrents to their workers following public health guidance during the response.”

In separate letters to Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Postmates, GrubHub and DoorDash, Sen. Warner laid out a couple of ideas. The first entails creating a special coronavirus health fund that would be available to gig workers if they need to take time off to get tested or self-quarantine. The other idea is to pay workers their regular average pay, even if they can’t work their normal average hours.

“A health emergency for which they bear no responsibility should not place an undue financial burden on workers and their families,” he wrote.

Companies like Microsoft and Facebook have been proactive in this regard. Microsoft, for example, has committed to paying hourly workers their regular wages even if they are unable to work as a result of COVID-19 concerns. Facebook, shortly after Microsoft’s announcement, committed to paying its contingent workers who cannot work during this time of concern.

TechCrunch has reached out to DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, Postmates, GrubHub and Instacart. We’ll update this story if we hear back.

Source: Tech Crunch

Last night, in a move that all companies should look to emulate, Microsoft announced that it would continue to pay hourly workers impacted by office closures as the company responds to the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.

Now, Facebook appears to be following suit, according to a statement from the company:

“We are working closely with our vendors to ensure we prioritize our team’s health and safety. Facebook will pay contingent workers that cannot work due to reduced staffing requirements during voluntary work from home, when we close an office, when we choose to send an employee home, or when they are sick,” Chloe Meyere, a Facebook company spokesperson wrote in an email.

In a blog post announcing Microsoft’s decision, company President Brad Smith wrote:

“While the work to protect public health needs to speed up, the economy can’t afford to slow down. We’re committed as a company to making pubic health our first priority and doing what we can to address the economic and social impact of COVID-19. We appreciate that what’s affordable for a large employer may not be affordable for a small business, but we believe that large employers who can afford to take this type of step should consider doing so.”

Several tech companies have asked employees in places where COVID-19 cases have been identified to work from home, like Washington state and California, including Google, Lyft and Square. Concerns about the COVID-19 have also led to the cancellations of major events, like Mobile World Congress and Google’s I/O developer conference.

Tech companies have created a dual-class worker system in recent years, keeping their more technical and product-oriented staff as full-time workers for the main company, while exporting elements of labor to third-party companies. This nigh-class-based system has raised both eyebrow and ire, especially when tech’s famous buses were under public attack. Moving to comp more, or all workers is not only good PR, though it is also that, it’s simply good ethics.

Perhaps the current situation will help more tech companies bring more of their workforce in-house. Whether its Alphabet’s dependence on temps, Facebook’s outsourcing of moderating work, or just hiring other companies to staff their operations, there’s probably too much internal outsourcing going on. But at least hourly folks aren’t going to take a paycut during a pandemic. A low bar, and not one that all tech companies have cleared so far, but a better step than nothing at all.

Source: Tech Crunch

Twitter’s CEO defends himself from activist investors, Google takes additional coronavirus precautions and a fizzy drink maker raises $30 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 6, 2020.

1. Twitter CEO’s weak argument why investors shouldn’t fire him

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke yesterday at a Morgan Stanley conference, where he delivered remarks (also shared via Twitter’s investor relations account) that responded obliquely to activist investor Elliott Management’s efforts to pressure Twitter into a slew of reforms, potentially including replacing Dorsey with a new CEO.

Among other things, Dorsey said he might not spend six months a year in Africa after all, claimed the company’s real product development is happening under the hood and offered an excuse for deleting Vine before it could become TikTok.

2. Google recommends Washington State employees work from home, citing coronavirus risk

The software giant has not closed its Washington offices outright, nor is it planning to make an official statement regarding the recommendation, but the news certainly points to a broader trend of serious precautions around the novel coronavirus outbreak. The move follows a similar decision by Lyft, which sent home employees in its San Francisco office.

3. Spindrift, maker of fizzy drinks, has raised $29.8M

Spindrift, founded in 2010, is up against big players, like the beloved and decades-old LaCroix, another sparkling water brand. The company differentiates itself by emphasizing “real fruit” in its drinks — think cucumbers from Michigan, strawberries from California and Alfonso mangoes from India.

4. Airbnb and three other P2P rental platforms agree to share limited pan-EU data

The European Commission announced that it has reached a data-sharing agreement with vacation rental platforms Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor — trumpeting the arrangement as a “landmark agreement” which will allow the EU’s statistical office to publish data on short-stay accommodations across the EU.

5. SaaS companies flirt with correction territory as another wild week comes to a close

Stocks are set to fall further today, likely forcing shares in SaaS and cloud companies down yet again. After two wild trading weeks, the high-flying tech category is off over 9% from recent highs before the bell this morning, putting it close to correction territory. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

6. Mark Cuban backs ChatableApps, developer of a hearing assist app that removes background noise

The company has built a smartphone app that provides hearing assistance by removing background noise in near real time. Alongside auditory neural signal processing researcher Dr. Andy Simpson, the company’s co-founders are Brendan O’Driscoll, Aidan Sliney and George Boyle — the original team behind the music discovery app Soundwave.

7. Pex buys Dubset to build YouTube ContentID for TikTok & more

Pex is a royalty attribution startup that scans social networks and other user-generated content sites for rightsholders’ content, then lets them negotiate licensing with the platforms, request a take-down, demand attribution and/or track the consumption statistics. Dubset, meanwhile, has spent 10 years tackling the problem of getting remixes and multi-song DJ sets legalized for streaming.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

Source: Tech Crunch

Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced today that it has moved its demo day online, citing a “growing concern over COVID-19,” or coronavirus. The demo day has historically drawn crowds of Silicon Valley elite, journalists and both national and international venture capitalists to watch more than 100 startups come out to the world. 

“While we won’t be able to recreate every aspect of Demo Day, we’ll try our best to create an amazing experience for our founders and investors,” Y Combinator said in a blog post. Y Combinator’s 30th annual demo day will be pre-recorded and released to investors on Monday March 23, per the post.

Thanks to a mix of history and glamour, demo day is the culminating day of a YC startup’s accelerator experience. It’s a big audience full of check writers and fast typers, and at the least, they’ll get a tweet or a couple of sign-ups. The move to remote, in some way, dims that excitement. 

Brianne Kimmel, the founder of Work Life Ventures, noted that as investor demand for YC companies has grown, “the dozen or so breakout companies get funded weeks before demo day.” Kimmel was in YC’s 2016 Winter batch, and attended the past four demo days as an investor.

“While the entire early stage ecosystem comes together at YC demo day — many investors are there to network and support the companies they’ve backed well before the founder presents on stage,” Kimmel said.

Kimmel invested in Tandem before demo day last year, and has already invested in Accord, a project management platform, ahead of this year’s demo day.

Beyond digital presentations, YC has said it will “provide additional written background information on each company and access to their decks.” It also will provide software to help investors and founders arrange one-on-one meetings. 

Seth Bannon, a founding investor at Fifty Years and previous YC graduate (S12), said “the face to face human element is incredibly important, as founders try to gauge if they want to partner with an investor for the next tens years and vice versa.”

“At Demo Day you can have hundreds of those quick face to face interactions in hours. That said, I think this is the right decision for YC,” Bannon told TechCrunch. “The safety of founders and the broader community is most important. Good on them for making a really tough decision.”

Chris Woodward, the CEO of Handle (YC W19), said that “while not being able to meet investors in person at demo day could be seen as a blow to the current batches by some people, I see it as a potential opportunity for them to set longer meetings with investors post demo day.”

Other tech conferences have cancelled or moved operations online in an effort to protect against the new coronavirus. Earlier today, Jason Lemkin’s SaaStr postponed its annual conference to September 2020. Another accelerator, 500 Startups, will be live-streaming its separate demo day. YC’s decision to post pre-recorded videos is an attempt to bring deal access to investors, without shutting down all operations.

“For 15 years, startup investors have supported every new batch of YC companies, and we know the same will be true for this batch,” the post said. 

Source: Tech Crunch

If you’re an early-stage startup founder with a big vision and even bigger dreams, join us and more than 10,000 other like-minded startuppers at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2020 on September 14-16. Silicon Valley’s premier early-stage startup extravaganza focuses on founders, investors and startup experts determined to disrupt and reshape technology.

Attending is awesome, but attending and exhibiting at Disrupt — for free — is even better. What magic is this? No hocus-pocus required. Simply apply to our TC Top Picks program. Applying is also free, and it’s easy to do. However, earning that coveted Top Pick designation — not so easy.

TechCrunch editors have a keen eye for the qualities that translate into serious startup success. They’ll thoroughly review every application and then choose up to five stellar startups for each of the following categories: AI, Biotech + Healthtech, Enterprise/SaaS, Fintech, Mobility, Retail + E-commerce, Robotics + Hardware IOT, Security/Privacy, Social Impact + Education, Space.

Pro tip: Keep the phrase “up to five” in mind. If the editors feel only three startups fit the bill for any given category, they’ll stop at three.

Now that you know how to apply, let’s talk about why you should apply. Every Top Pick startup receives a free Startup Alley Exhibitor Package. As a Top Pick VIP, you’ll strut your impressive stuff for a full day in a prime location in Startup Alley, our exhibition floor. The package also includes three complimentary Founder passes to Disrupt SF 2020 — bring your crew and make the most of your time at the show.

Thousands of people, including investors and tech media, pour through Startup Alley, and everyone wants to know who made the Top Pick cut. You’ll reap invaluable exposure to potential customers, partners, mentors and again…investors. Who doesn’t love investors?

Here’s what Francisco Serra-Martins, founder of Australia-based Sonder Designs, says about his Top Pick experience:

“Being a TC Top Pick at Disrupt San Francisco not only helped us close out an additional $1 million investment for our seed round, it was an incredible opportunity to introduce our technology to an international community and to engage with the San Francisco startup ecosystem.”

One of the most exciting parts of earning a Top Pick designation is the media exposure. Hundreds of top media outlets attend Disrupt, and they’re all looking for great stories. And, drum roll please, your media experience also includes being interviewed by a TechCrunch editor live on the Showcase Stage.

We record the interview, edit the video and blast it across our social media networks. It’s a valuable marketing tool that you can use long after Disrupt ends.

Intrigued? Want to know more? Check out who we chose as TC Top Picks at Disrupt SF 2019.

TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2020 takes place on September 14-16 at Moscone West. Take a chance and apply to be a TC Top Pick. If you’re not quite there yet, that’s OK. Come to Disrupt and learn from the best minds in the startup ecosystem. Buy an early-bird ticket here and save up to $1,800.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Source: Tech Crunch

Last year, Twitter expanded its rules around hate speech to include dehumanizing speech against religious groups. Today, Twitter says it’s expanding its rule to also include language that dehumanizes people on the basis of their age, disability, or disease. The latter, of course, is a timely addition given that the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 has led to people making hateful and sometimes racist remarks on Twitter related to this topic.

Twitter says that tweets that broke this rule before today will need to be deleted, but those won’t result in any account suspensions because the rules were not in place at that time. However, any tweets published from now on will now have to abide by Twitter’s updated hateful conduct policy. This overarching policy includes rules about hateful conduct — meaning promoting violence or making threats — as well as the use of hateful imagery and display names.

The policy already includes a ban on dehumanizing speech across a range of categories, including also race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity. The policy has expanded over time as Twitter has tried to better encompass the many areas where it wants to ban hateful speech and conduct on its platform.

One issue with Twitter’s hateful conduct policy is that it’s not able to keep up with enforcement due to the volume of tweets that are posted. In addition, its reliance on having users flag tweets for review means hate speech removal is handled reactively, rather than proactively. Twitter has also been heavily criticized for not properly enforcing its policies and allowing the online abuse to continue.

In today’s announcement, Twitter freely admits to these and other problems. It also notes it has since done more in-depth training and extended its testing period to ensure reviewers better understand how and when to take action, as well as how to protect conversations within marginalized groups. And it created a Trust and Safety Council to help it better understand the nuances and context around complex categories, like race, ethnicity and national origin.

Unfortunately, Twitter’s larger problem is that it has operated for years as a public town square where users have felt relatively free to express themselves without using a real identity where they’re held accountable for their words and actions. There are valid cases for online anonymity — including how it allows people to more freely communicate under oppressive regimes, for example. But the flip side is that it emboldens some people to make statements that they otherwise wouldn’t — and without any social repercussions. That’s not how it works in the real world.

Plus, any time Twitter tries to clamp down on hateful speech and conduct, it’s accused of clamping down on free speech — as if its social media platform is a place that’s protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. According to the U.S. courts, that’s not how it works. In fact, a U.S. court recently ruled that YouTube wasn’t a public forum, meaning it didn’t have to guarantee users’ rights to free speech. That sets a precedent for other social platforms as well, Twitter included.

Twitter for years has struggled to get more people to sign up and participate. But it has simultaneously worked against its own goal by not getting a handle on the abuse on its network. Instead, it’s testing new products — disappearing Stories — that it hopes will encourage more engagement. In reality, better-enforced policies would do the trick. The addition of educational prompts in the Compose screen — similar those on Instagram that alerts users to content that will likely get reported or removed — are also well overdue.

Twitter says its new rules are in place as of today.

Source: Tech Crunch

Walmart is looking to hook more consumers on its online grocery shopping experience by adding Walmart Grocery to its main Walmart mobile application. For years, the retailer has operated two separate apps: its flagship Walmart app (the blue one) and its separate Walmart Grocery app (the orange one). This meant shoppers would have to download and switch between two separate apps depending on what they were buying. This setup may have also limited Walmart Grocery’s reach, as some users of the larger and more popular app Walmart app may not have even realized online grocery was available.

According to data from Sensor Tower, Walmart’s main app has been downloaded 103+ million times since January 2014 across both iOS and Android. Today, it’s the No. 2 app in the iOS App Store’s Shopping section. Walmart Grocery, meanwhile, has seen over 16 million downloads across iOS and Android during that same time period. It’s also ranked further down as No. 30 in the Shopping section on the App Store.

For Walmart customers, the change means a more seamless shopping experience where they won’t have to think so much about what app to use, but can instead just shop for anything Walmart offers from a single place including its 120,000+ grocery items, local store inventory for pickup, and its online assortment of both first-party and third-party marketplace goods.

Over the course of the year, Walmart will transition its Grocery app user base to the main app and then sunset the standalone app when that’s been accomplished.

The company says these changes make sense because they better represent the way people shop, which isn’t a binary experience.

“It really depends on what you’ve got going on in your life at any point in time and what you’ve got going on during the day,” explained Walmart Chief Customer Officer Janey Whiteside. “Do you want to go into a store and browse? Or do you want to order from the palm of your hand and pick it up on the way home? Do you want to order and have it delivered to your door? Do you want it delivered to the fridge?… Do you want to have it next-day or have it today?,” she continued. “Bringing all of our assets and all of our capabilities together in one place is really the natural next step,” Whiteside said.

In addition, she says running two separate apps meant it was under-leveraging the relationship Walmart had with its regular Grocery app shoppers by limiting them to a standalone app where they couldn’t explore more of Walmart’s assortment.

The changes will also in time help simplify Walmart’s marketing budget, which currently has to send customers to two different places.

“As a marketer, that enables me to be more efficient with the dollars I spend and allows me to create much more compelling stories,” Whiteside noted.

The change may also give Walmart a competitive advantage versus Amazon, which today still offers grocery shopping (via two services, Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods) from both its main app and its separate Prime Now app, for faster delivery. This approach leads to customer confusion as there’s not just one simple way to order groceries from Amazon.

Walmart wouldn’t be the first to merge its separate apps. Target also recently integrated its Shipt grocery app with both its main Target app and website. However, Target is not sunsetting Shipt’s app as the business still serves other retailers.

Walmart says it will add Walmart Grocery to its desktop and mobile web experiences on Walmart.com, as well, instead of sending users to a separate domain. The Grocery section will also get a new look across platforms to better blend in with the Walmart.com design.

The updated Walmart app which includes Grocery is rolling out in phases, so you may not see it immediately.

Source: Tech Crunch

Ridesharing company Lyft has advised its San Francisco employees to go home after learning one staff member was in contact with someone exposed to coronavirus, or COVID-19. The team member has not exhibited any symptoms and is in touch with medical professionals, Lyft spokesperson Alexandra LaManna told TechCrunch.

“We are basing every step of our response process on CDC guidance, and out of an abundance of caution are encouraging our San Francisco headquarters employees to work from home for the remainder of this week,” Lyft shared in a statement. 

LaManna also said that Lyft HQ will be having an “enhanced cleaning process overnight.” 

The response is another in a slew of tech companies sending employees home to limit the chance of coronavirus spreading among staff. Earlier this week, Twitter encouraged all staff members to work from home. Amazon, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Google also advised some staff to work remotely based on fears of exposure. 

The ripple effect of COVID-19 on tech doesn’t stop at employees. A number of high-profile conferences have been canceled, including Facebook’s F8 conference and Google’s physical part of Cloud Next. SXSW and Y Combinator Demo Day have not yet disclosed whether or not their independent conferences, which garner thousands of people, will stay on.

Coronavirus has also started to impact the market, with Microsoft citing the outbreak as the reason for having supply-chain issues and impacting earnings.

Source: Tech Crunch

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey might not spend six months a year in Africa, claims the real product development is under the hood, and gives an excuse for deleting Vine before it could become TikTok. Today he tweeted, via Twitter’s investor relations account, a multi-pronged defense of his leadership and the company’s progress.

The proclamations come as notorious activist investor Elliott Management prepares to pressure Twitter into a slew of reforms, potentially including replacing Dorsey with a new CEO, Bloomberg reported last week. Sources confirmed to TechCrunch that Elliott has taken a 4% to 5% stake in Twitter. Elliott has previously bullied eBay, AT&T, and othe major corporations into making changes and triggered CEO departures.

Specifically, Elliott is seeking change because of Twitter’s weak market performance, which as of last month had fallen 6.2% since July 2015 while Facebook had grown 121%. The corporate raider reportedly takes issue with Dorsey also running fintech giant Square, and having planned to spend up to six months a year in Africa. Dorsey tweeted that “Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!)”, despite cryptocurrency having little to do with Twitter.

Rapid executive turnover is another sore spot. Finally, Twitter is seen as moving glacially slow on product development, with little about its core service changing in the past five years beyond a move from 140 to 280 characters per tweet. Competing social apps like Facebook and Snapchat have made landmark acquisitions and launched significant new products like Marketplace, Stories, and Discover.

Dorsey spoke today at the Morgan Stanley investor conference, though apparently didn’t field questions about Elliott’s incursion. The CEO did take to his platform to lay out an argument for why Twitter is doing better than it looks, though without mentioning the activist investor directly. That type of response without mentioning to whom it’s directed, is popularly known as a subtweet. Here’s what he outlined:

On democracy: Twitter has prioritized healthy conversation and now “the #1 initiative is the integrity of the conversation around the elections” around the world, which it’s learning from. It’s now using humans and machine learning to weed out misinformation, yet Twitter still hasn’t rolled out labels on false news despite Facebook launching them in late 2016.

On revenue: Twitter expects to complete a rebuild of its core ad server in the first half of 2020, and it’s improving the experience of mobile app install ads so it can court more performance ad dollars. This comes seven years late to Facebook’s big push around app install ads.

On shutting down products: Dorsey claims that “5 years ago we had to do a really hard reset and that takes time to build from… we had been a company that was trying to do too many things…” But was it? Other than Moments, which largely flopped, and the move to the algorithmic feed ranking, Twitter sure didn’t seem to be doing too much and was already being criticized for slow product evolution as it tried to avoid disturbing its most hardcore users.

On stagnanation: “Some people talk about the slow pace of development at Twitter. The expectation is to see surface level changes, but the most impactful changes are happening below the surface” Dorsey claims, citing using machine learning to improve feed  and notification relevance

Yet it seems telling that Twitter suddenly announced yesterday that it was testing Instagram Stories-esque feature Fleets in Brazil. No launch event. No US beta. No indication of when it might roll out elsewhere. It seems like hasty and suspiciously convenient timing for a reveal that might convince investors it is actually building new things.

On talent: Twitter is apparently hiring top engineers “that maybe we couldn’t get 3 years ago”. 2017 was also Twitter’s share price low point of $14 compared to $34 today, so it’s not much of an accomplishment that hiring is easier now. Dorsey claims that “Engineering is my main focus. Everything else follows from that.” Yet it’s been years since fail whales were prevalent, and the core concern now is that there’s not enough to do on Twitter, rather than what it does offer doesn’t function well.

On Jack himself: Dorsey says he should have added more context “about my intention to spend a few months in Africa this year”, including its growing population that’s still getting online. Yet the “Huge opportunity especially for young people to join Twitter” seemed far from his mind as he focused on how crypto trading was driving adoption of Square’s Cash App

“I need to reevaluate” the plan to work from Africa “in light of COVID-19 and everything else going on”. That makes coronavirus a nice scapegoat for the decision while the phrase “everything else” is doing some very heavy lifting in the face of Elliott’s activist investing.

On fighting harassment: Nothing. The fact that Twitter’s most severe ongoing problem doesn’t even get a mention should clue you in to how many troubles have stacked up in front of Dorsey

Running Twitter is a big job. So big it’s seen a slew of leaders ranging from founders like Ev Williams to hired guns like Dick Costolo peel off after mediocre performance. If Dorsey wants to stay CEO, that should be his full-time, work-from-headquarters gig.

This isn’t just another business. Twitter is a crucial communications utility for the world. Its absence of innovation, failure to defend vulnerable users, and an inability to deliver financially has massive repercussions for society. It means Twitter hasn’t had the products or kept the users to earn the profits to be able to invest in solving its problems. Making Twitter live up to its potential is no sidehustle.

Source: Tech Crunch