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Daily Crunch: Amazon unveils its own game-streaming platform

Published September 24, 2020

Amazon announces a new game service and plenty of hardware upgrades, tech companies team up against app stores and United Airlines tests a program for rapid COVID-19 testing. This is your Daily Crunch for September 24, 2020.

The big story: Amazon unveils its own game-streaming platform

Amazon’s competitor to Google Stadia and Microsoft xCloud is called Luna, and it’s available starting today at an early access price of $5.99 per month. Subscribers will be able to play games across PC, Mac and iOS, with more than 50 games in the library.

The company made the announcement at a virtual press event, where it also revealed a redesigned Echo line (with spherical speakers and swiveling screens), the latest Ring security camera and a new, lower-cost Fire TV Stick Lite.

You can also check out our full roundup of Amazon’s announcements.

The tech giants

App makers band together to fight for App Store changes with new ‘Coalition for App Fairness’ — Thirteen app publishers, including Epic Games, Deezer, Basecamp, Tile, Spotify and others, launched a coalition formalizing their efforts to force app store providers to change their policies or face regulation.

LinkedIn launches Stories, plus Zoom, BlueJeans and Teams video integrations as part of wider redesign — LinkedIn has built its business around recruitment, so this redesign pushes engagement in other ways as it waits for the job economy to pick up.

Facebook gives more details about its efforts against hate speech before Myanmar’s general election — This includes adding Burmese language warning screens to flag information rated false by third-party fact-checkers.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Why isn’t Robinhood a verb yet? — The latest episode of Equity discusses a giant funding round for Robinhood.

Twitter-backed Indian social network ShareChat raises $40 million — Following TikTok’s ban in India, scores of startups have launched short-video apps, but ShareChat has clearly established dominance.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek pledges $1Bn of his wealth to back deeptech startups from Europe — Ek pointed to machine learning, biotechnology, materials sciences and energy as the sectors he’d like to invest in.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

3 founders on why they pursued alternative startup ownership structures — At Disrupt, we heard about alternative approaches to ensuring that VCs and early founders aren’t the only ones who benefit from startup success.

Coinbase UX teardown: 5 fails and how to fix them — Many of these lessons, including the need to avoid the “Get Started” trap, can be applied to other digital products.

As tech stocks dip, is insurtech startup Root targeting an IPO? — Alex Wilhelm writes that Root’s debut could clarify Lemonade’s IPO and valuation.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

United Airlines is making COVID-19 tests available to passengers, powered in part by Color — United is embarking on a new pilot project to see if easy access to COVID-19 testing immediately prior to a flight can help ease freedom of mobility.

Announcing the final agenda for TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 — TechCrunch reporters and editors will interview some of the top leaders in transportation.

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 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

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Why isn’t Robinhood a verb yet?

Published September 24, 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s VC-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and your humble servant gathered to chat through a host of rounds and venture capital news for your enjoyment. As a programming note, I am off next week effectively, so look for Natasha to lead on Equity Monday and then both her and Danny to rock the Thursday show. I will miss everyone.

But onto the show itself, here’s what we got into:

Bon voyage for a week, please stay safe and don’t forget to register to vote.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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Announcing the final agenda for TC Sessions: Mobility 2020

Published September 24, 2020

TC Sessions: Mobility is back and we’re excited to give the final look of what and who is coming to the main stage.

Before we get into who is coming, let’s tackle one important change from our 2019 inaugural event: this year, TC Sessions: Mobility will be virtual. Never fear, the virtual version of TC Sessions: Mobility will bring all of what you’d expect from our in-person events, from the informative panels and provocative one-on-one interviews to the networking and this year, even a pitch-off session.

While virtual isn’t the same as our events in the past, it has provided one massive benefit: democratizing access. If you’re a startup or investor based in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America or another region in the U.S., you can listen in, network and connect with other participants here in Silicon Valley. Plus, you’ll be able to meet all of the attendees through our matchmaking platform, CrunchMatch.

This year, we’re also holding a pitch-off competition for early-stage mobility companies, but you’ll need to make sure you have your ticket to join us at the event online. Prices start at just $25 for an Expo Ticket and only $195 for a General Admission Ticket to experience the whole event. We also offer a $50 tickets for students.

TechCrunch reporters and editors will interview some of the top leaders in transportation to tackle topics such as scaling up an electric vehicle company, the future of automated vehicle technology, micromobility, building an AV startup and investing in the industry. Our guests include Argo AI co-founder and CEO Bryan Salesky, Waymo COO Tekedra Mawakana, Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson, Ike Robotics co-founder and chief engineer Nancy Sun, Formula E race car driver Lucas di Grassi, Cruise’s director of global government affairs Prashanthi Raman, Hemi Ventures managing partner Amy Gu, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath as well as TuSimple co-founder and CTO Xiaodi Hou and Boris Sofman, former Anki Robotics founder and CEO who now leads Waymo’s trucking unit.

Don’t forget that General Admission tickets (including $50 savings) are currently available for a limited time; grab your tickets here before prices increase.

AGENDA

Tuesday, October 6

Taking AVs to the Next Level Tekedra Mawakana (Waymo)

Waymo Chief Operating Officer Tekedra Mawakana is at the center of Waymo’s future, from scaling the autonomous vehicle company’s commercial deployment and directing fleet operations to developing the company’s business path. Tekedra will speak about what lies ahead as Waymo drives forward with its plan to become a grownup business.

The Changing Face of Delivery with Matthew Johnson-Roberson (Refraction AI), Ali Kashani (Postmates), and speaker to be confirmed.

Small startups and logistics giants alike are working on how to use automated vehicle technology and robotics for delivery. Matthew Johnson-Roberson, co-founder of Refraction AI and Ali Kashani, the VP of special projects at Postmates will talk about the challenges and opportunities of using robots for delivery.

Investing in Mobility with Reilly Brennan (Trucks VC), Amy Gu (Hemi Ventures), and Olaf Sakkers (Maniv Mobility)

Reilly Brennan, Amy Gu and Olaf Sakkers will come together to debate the uncertain future of mobility tech and whether VC dollars are enough to push the industry forward.

Networking Break

With our virtual platform, attendees can network via video chat, giving folks the chance to make meaningful connections. CrunchMatch, our algorithmic matching product, will be available to ensure you’re meeting the right people at the show, as well as random matching for attendees who are feeling more adventurous.

Setting the Record Straight with Bryan Salesky (Argo AI)

Argo AI has gone from unknown startup to a company providing the autonomous vehicle technology to Ford and VW — not to mention billions in investment from the two global automakers. Co-founder and CEO Bryan Salesky will talk about the company’s journey, what’s next and what it really takes to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology.

The Next Opportunities in Micromobility with Danielle Harris (Elemental Excelerator), Dmitry Shevelenko (Tortoise), Avra van der Zee (Superpedestrian)

Worldwide, numerous companies are operating shared micromobility services — so many that the industry is well into a consolidation phase. Despite the over-saturation of the market, there are still opportunities for new players. Danielle Harris, director of mobility innovation at Elemental Excelerator, Dmitry Shevelenko, founder at Tortoise will discuss, and VP of Strategy and Policy at Superpedestrian.

Building an AV Startup with Nancy Sun (Ike)

Ike co-founder and chief engineer Nancy Sun will share her experiences in the world of automation and robotics, a ride that has taken her from Apple to Otto and Uber before she set off to start a self-driving truck company. Sun will discuss what the future holds for trucking and the challenges and the secrets behind building a successful mobility startup.

Uber’s City Footprint with Shin-pei Tsay (Uber)

Uber’s operations touch upon many aspects of the transportation ecosystem. Whether its autonomous vehicles, food delivery, trucking or traditional ride-hailing, these products and services all require Uber to interact with cities and ensure the company is on the good side of cities. That’s where Shin-pei Tsay comes in. Hear from Tsay about how she thinks through Uber’s place in cities and how she navigates various regulatory frameworks.

The Road to the All-Electric Air with Peter Rawlinson (Lucid Motors)

Just weeks after Lucid Motors unveils its long-anticipated all-electric luxury Air sedan, we’ll sit down with Peter Rawlinson to discuss the challenges of building a car company and assembling that first production vehicle as well as plans for the future.

Wednesday, October 7

The Future of Racing with Lucas Di Grassi (Audi Sport)

Formula E driver Lucas Di Grassi is part of a new racing series, in which riders on high-speed electric scooters compete against each other on temporary circuits in cities. Think Formula E, but with electric scooters. The former CEO of Roborace and sustainability ambassador of the EsC, Electric Scooter Championship, will join us to talk about electrification, micromobility and a new kind of motorsport.

The Future of Trucking with Xiaodi Hou (TuSimple) and Boris Sofman (Waymo)

TuSimple co-founder and CTO Xiaodi Hou and Boris Sofman, former Anki Robotics founder and CEO who now leads Waymo’s trucking unit, will discuss the business and the technical challenges of autonomous trucking.

The Electrification of Porsche with Detlev von Platen (Porsche AG)

Porsche has undergone a major transformation in the past several years, investing billions into an electric vehicle program and launching the Taycan, its first all-electric vehicle. Now, Porsche is ramping up for more. Porsche AG’s Detlev von Platen, who is a member of the company’s executive board, will talk about Porsche’s path, competition and where it’s headed next.

Navigating Self-Driving Car Regulations with David Estrada (Nuro), Melissa Froelich (Aurora) and Jody Kelman (Lyft), Prashanthi Raman (Cruise)

Autonomous vehicle developers face a patchwork of local, state and federal regulations. Government policy experts, from Nuro, Aurora, Lyft and Cruise, discuss the progress that’s been made, the challenges that remain and how startups can navigate the jumble of regulations and deploy their autonomous vehicle technology at scale.

Future of Cities: Delivery Takes Flight with Margaret Nagle (Wing)

Margaret Nagle, head of policy and public affairs at Wing, will talk about how drones used for delivery could reshape cities and improve accessibility.

Delivering and Building EVs with Thomas Ingenlath (Polestar)

Polestar is less than four years old and already has two vehicles on the market and more on the way. In this fireside chat with CEO Thomas Ingenlath, we’ll discuss the company’s focus, strategy and sleek design.

Scooting Through the World’s Regulatory Frameworks with Tony Adesina (Gura Ride), Fredrik Hjelm (VOI Technology), and Euwyn Poon (Spin)

Although dockless scooters first hit the streets of the U.S., there’s plenty of scooter activity going on abroad. And thanks to different regulatory landscapes and players, the state of scooters looks different depending on where you are. Scooters have taken off in Europe, with a number of players operating across the continent, as well as in South America. Now, shared scooters and ebikes are popping up in Africa. Hear from Spin CEO Euwyn Poon about bringing his U.S.-centric company abroad, VOI co-founder Fredrik Hjelm about the state of scooters in Europe and Tony Adesina, the founder and CEO of micromobility startup Gura Ride about opportunities and challenges in Africa.

Startup Pitch-Off

Select, early-stage companies, hand-picked by TechCrunch editors, will take the stage and have five minutes to present their companies.

Life After Tesla with JB Straubel (Redwood Materials)

JB Straubel might be best known as Tesla’s co-founder and former CTO who was responsible for some of the company’s most important technology, notably around batteries. But Straubel is hardly finished. He launched his own recycling startup called Redwood Materials that is focused on creating a circular supply chain and recently named Amazon and Panasonic as customers. We’ll sit down with Straubel to talk about his latest venture, time at Tesla and of course, battery technology and the state of the electric vehicles.

Building Better Battery Tech with Celina Mikolajczak (Panasonic) and JB Straubel (Redwood Materials)

Celina Mikolajczak, vice president of battery technology for Panasonic Energy of North America, and JB Straubel, co-founder and CEO of Redwood Materials, will dig into the state of battery tech, what it will take to meet growing demand while minimizing the environmental impact, and how their respective companies are working together.

 

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3 founders on why they pursued alternative startup ownership structures

Published September 24, 2020

There is no one-size-fits all model for building a startup.

At TechCrunch Disrupt, we heard from a handful of founders about alternative approaches to creating a sustainable company that ensures more than just VCs and early founders benefit from its success. 

One way is building a cooperative, which Driver’s Seat CEO Hays Witt described as “a kind of corporate entity that both allows and requires that we return the majority of our profits to our members, and that our members have a majority of governance.”

Driver’s Seat helps ride-hail drivers use data to maximize their earnings. It works by requiring drivers to install an app that educates them about how the co-op collects and uses their data. In exchange, the app gives them insights about their real hourly wages after expenses and how those wages relate to different driving strategies.

“At a community level, what we do is sort of align everybody’s interest so that as gig workers come into our co-op, as they generate data, the value of that data in the aggregate gets higher and higher,” Witt said. “The dividends that we’re able to return back to drivers gets higher and also the kind of insights we’re able to give communities about work gets higher at the same time. So we kind of align all of our impact and mission goals. And our business model is through our co-op structure.”

That’s not to say Driver’s Seat does not create returns for its investors — investors are just one group of many that benefit from the company’s success. Witt said a desire for accountability made him decide to form a co-op.

“If we are always accountable to our co-op members, and our co-op members are gig workers, then we’re going to know that we’re accountable to the right things,” Witt said. “Now, we have investor members, too. We’re accountable to them, too. But our structure means that the gig workers always have at least that 51%. [ … ] it’s certainly not the only way to build a business. But, you know, for us, it was the way that we would build a business that would align with our mission of really changing the gig economy.”

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The first rule of BookClub? No boring book clubs.

Published September 24, 2020

Book clubs can be magical. Bring together a group of friends, tear apart a book and all of a sudden the words have a second, paperless, life.

But what if the author could join in the banter? Imagine riffing with Roxane Gay, debating with Ta-Nehisi Coates and eavesdropping on Jhumpa Lahiri. The experience would resemble that of an epilogue, but one reserved exclusively for your friend group.

For those intrigued, a new Salt Lake City startup wants to talk. BookClub launched today to bring author-led book clubs to readers. The platform will allow authors to join personal book groups, share exclusive video-based interviews and engage in questions you might have (including cliffhanger complaints).

The startup is founded by some familiar names: Degreed co-founders David Blake and Eric Sharp, as well as early product leader at Degreed, Emily Campbell.

“When you think of Instagram Stories and TikTok, the mainstream social media movement is mostly video-based,” Blake said. “But the book world has not yet caught up. If you think of Goodreads, it’s kind of like the internet, circa 2010.” BookClub, he hopes, will lead to more modern experiences with authors that are, at the same time, easily scalable.

To better picture the experience, see how BookClub produced a video based on the novel “The Suspect,” by Kent Alexander and Kevin Salwen.

Image Credits: David Blake

Readers can also request an author to join their club.

Image Credits: BookClub

BookClub is taking a MasterClass approach to education and entertainment. MasterClass, which raised $100 million in May, sells celebrity-taught classes with a big focus on production. For a subscription fee, MasterClass users can learn how to cook from Gordon Ramsay or how to play tennis from Serena Williams.

Blake wants to offer a similar experience, but with authors.

“MasterClass has authors already on their platform, but they are all 100% teaching the skill of how to be a good writer,” Blake said. “Our platform is being built from the ground up, exclusively for this use case — and will be feature rich with things that can help tag, explore, discuss by characters, themes, questions.”

He did not share any big author names that BookClub has secured just yet, although those partnerships will be vital to BookClub’s success.

Blake declined to share specific details on pricing, but said that it will be a consumer subscription business with shared economic benefits for authors and moderators.

Although the product is pre-launch, Blake is clear about what BookClub is not.

“Rather than doing what’s easiest or most accessible, we’re trying to step back and say ‘what will it take to unlock the power of a great book?’ ” he said. “We’re giving [the book] the justice it deserves, rather than being Zoom for authors.”

One benefit of going with Zoom is that it is already a household name and millions of people have downloaded the client. BookClub will live as a media platform, not a downloaded client, and is going mobile-first. The decision to go mobile before desktop was driven by the fact that most people don’t want to hold a laptop during their book clubs. Instead, BookClub wants to recreate a FaceTime-like experience with an author.

It has been a busy pandemic for the co-founders of Degreed, which raised over $32 million in June. In April, the duo founded Learn In, a venture that plugs into company HR software to help decisionmakers manage sabbaticals for their employees. The startup raised $3.5 million from Album, GSV and Firework Ventures. BookClub will be their third company in the edtech space, and second startup launched within five months.

When asked how he’s handling juggling all of the startups, Blake simply said that he was “travelling 200 days a year, and got all that time back.” He added that he is now only at Degreed at an operational capacity, so will be evenly splitting his time between Learn In and BookClub. Still, leading two startups at the same time is a challenge, since most people can’t even handle one.

BookClub tells TechCrunch that it successfully secured funding. The startup has raised $6 million in a seed round led by Maveron . Other investors include Signal Peak Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Mike Levinthal and GSV (a firm that has invested in all three of Blake’s ventures).

The money will be used for video production costs.

“Unless the author has been on Oprah’s book club, this will be the highest video treatment that an author will have ever received,” he said. “We’re trying to do Hollywood cinematic levels.”

Join the waitlist here.

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Learning how to ask questions is an essential skill for startup founders

Published September 24, 2020
Mercedes Bent
Contributor

Mercedes Bent is a partner at Lightspeed where she invests in consumer, edtech and fintech companies.

For many of us, learning to ask questions was a matter of the five W’s: who, what, where, when, why (and how).

As I interviewed founders about the most valuable learning resources that allowed them to grow into the leaders they are today, I realized that many of them leaned heavily on carefully crafted approaches to asking questions. In all the interviews, inquiry was by far the most cited learning process. I found these founders to be incredibly methodical, brave, curious, disciplined and efficient in their pursuit of learning.  

Founders showed incredible discipline by approaching information gathering as a structured process. Some founders have a highly systematic approach in how they target their outreach:

I learned by being systematic about talking to people smarter than myself. I needed to know hundreds of people and know what they know. I made a table matrix of who I talk to and for what topic. For example, Eric Schmidt is one of six experts I turn to on establishing management OKRs.

— Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn

And in how they catalog/store information about who is an expert …

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Entrepreneurship and investing as social good

Published September 24, 2020
Sree Kolli
Contributor

Sree Kolli is co-founder of Conduit, a premium investment platform that connects founders with successful operators, family offices and select VCs worldwide.

2020 has been a year of social upheaval. Around the world, society is identifying different problems in our culture and pushing for widespread change. While there are notable steps we can all take, from altering exclusionary company policies to signing action-oriented petitions, the VC and investment world has another, often overlooked option: Investing in change-the-world startups.

Increasingly, angel investors and institutional funds have begun allocating a portion of their funds to startups focused on diversity and social good, whether focused on democratized access to healthcare and education, or larger scale issues like climate change.

Initially, shifting funds to empower social good may seem like a hefty feat, however investors can embrace this mindshift in three simple steps: (1) redistributing stagnant investments; (2) leveraging democratized access to change-making startups; and (3) identifying founders tracking toward success.

Allocating more investments to foster change

Most of the world’s money is tied up in stagnant places. Whether invested in real estate, bonds or other traditional vehicles, this capital typically often shows conservative returns to investors — and has negligible impact on society. The intent isn’t malicious.

Most family offices and private wealth managers strive to minimize losses and these sorts of uniformed portfolios are safe. Even the most seasoned investors should incorporate more variety into their portfolios, determining where they can make profitable investments that yield higher returns while advancing societal good. Investors can take small steps to get more confident in expanding their strategies.

To start, reframe your thinking into seeing the potential opportunity rather than the risk. A good way to do this: Look at how high-risk public equities performed over the last five years and compare it to ventures within tech. Investors will see a significant disparity and the opportunity to make different returns.

The idea is not to put an entire profile in a single venture. Rather, an investor should take a portion of their portfolio in a high-risk investment sector, like public equities or fund structures, and put it in a similar risk profile with a better return. Gradually increasing these increments, starting at 15% and slowly scaling up, can help investors to see outsized returns while making a difference in the process.

A world of passion at your fingertips

For startups of all sizes, democratized access to investors will accelerate the use of capital for social good. Until recently, only the world’s wealthiest people had exposure to premium capital, but crowdfunding and accelerator programs have ushered in new opportunities, forging connections that might not have otherwise been possible.

These avenues have opened new doors for investors and startups. Access to developed networks or innovation hubs like Silicon Valley are no longer make-or-breaks for those looking to raise capital. Extended global opportunity for startups also means investors have more options to find promising ventures that align with their values, regardless of their location.

But while crowdfunding and accelerators have made the world more accessible, they come with sizable challenges. Despite making early-stage investment more obtainable, crowdfunding often does not bring the most valuable investors to the table.

Crowdfunding also inundates platforms with poor-quality deal flow, making it more strenuous for investors to connect with fruitful opportunities. Meanwhile, various accelerators and incubation platforms have emerged, which have advanced global connection, but tend to be quite noisy.

To succeed, entrepreneurs need more than capital. Rather, they need strategic support from experienced investors who can help them make decisions and scale in an impactful way. With a world of ideas at their fingertips, investors should take time to sift through their options and find the ideas that move them the most, prioritizing quality deals and looking toward platforms that curate promising connections.

Empowering entrepreneurs poised for success

Now is the right time to invest in startups. People who innovate during the pandemic have triple the hustle of those who build in safer economies. But while the timing is right, it’s equally important that the fit is right. I’m a big believer in investing in potential: Ambition, unwavering tenacity and empathy are desirable qualities that can help bring game-changing ideas to fruition.

If an investor funds a passionate leader with a strong vision and ability to attract talent, then the groundwork is laid to build something meaningful. When considering the change-makers to invest in, ask: Is this the right person to be building this company? Do they have the ability to attract and lead talent? Is the market big enough, and is there a significant enough problem to build a company around?

If the answer isn’t yes to all of these questions, it’s important to gauge if you can see a theoretical exit, or if the company is pre-seed or Series A, if they have the ability to scale to a decent size.

Despite this, investing in startups, no matter how good their intentions, can scare investors. One way to overcome trepidation is to invest in larger-stage startups that seem less risky and then wade into earlier-stage startups at your own pace. Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) are also becoming an interesting investment option.

SPACs are corporations formed for the sole purpose of raising investment capital through an IPO. The proceeds are then used to buy one or more existing companies, an option that could decrease anxiety for risk-averse investors looking to expand their comfort zone.

Any strategy an investor chooses to embrace social good is a step in the right direction. Capital is a tangible way to fuel innovation and bring about impactful change.

Democratized access to startups yields more opportunity for investors to find ventures that align with their values while diversifying their profiles can provide tremendous results. And when that return means disrupting the status quo and empowering societal change? Everyone wins.

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As tech stocks dip, is insurtech startup Root targeting an IPO?

Published September 24, 2020

During the week’s news cycle one particular bit of reporting slipped under our radar: Root Insurance is tipped by Reuters to be prepping an IPO that could value the neo-insurance provider at around $6 billion.

Coming after two 2020 insurtech IPOs, Root’s steps toward the public markets are not surprising. But they are good news all the same for a number of insurance startups that have raised lots of capital and will eventually need to prepare their own debuts if they don’t find a larger corporate home.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Programming note: The Exchange column is off starting tomorrow through next week. The newsletter will go out as always on Saturdays. I’m taking a week to sit and do nothing.

The Root IPO will also help clarify Lemonade’s own public offering and ensuing valuation. Lemonade’s debut brought a strong price to the rental-focused insurance provider, leading to a more buoyant attitude toward the valuation of its class of startups. More precisely, the public price assigned to Lemonade when it floated was, no bullshit, very bullish.

If Root can repeat the feat it would cast a warm light on the yet-private players in its niche that will have their eyes pinned to the flotation. Names like MetroMile and Hippo could be next if Root’s IPO goes well.

But, first, does Root make sense at a $6 billion valuation? We can do a little digging on that this morning, using Lemonade’s present-day valuation to get a handle on the figure. Let’s go!

Root’s valuation in a Lemonade world

Before we get into the numbers, bear in mind that we’re going to compare apples and oranges today, and that we’ll have to use some dated numbers as well. That said, we can still get somewhere about what Root could be worth. So, roll with me but don’t take every number as engraved onto an obelisk.

Back in July of this year, in the wake of the Lemonade IPO and Hippo’s latest funding round, a $150 million investment at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation, we started to do some math. Lemonade’s valuation was much richer than Hippos’ when you look at their multiples, which got us thinking about private and public neo-insurance provider valuations: Why was Lemonade worth so much more than its peers per dollar of written premium?

To better understand the situation, we dug up some 2019 data on the dollar value of gross written premium Hippo and Lemonade wrote and found new valuation multiples for them based on those numbers. Lemonade was worth 28.4x its Q1 annualized gross written premium, while Hippo was worth just 5.6x its own.

Then we also found Root and MetroMile gross written premium numbers for 2019, which allowed us to calculate their own effective valuations (albeit using dated numbers).

As before when we found that Hippo’s private valuation looked light compared to Lemonade’s public valuation when we contrasted their valuation/gross written premium multiple, we discovered that MetroMile and Root also looked cheap. Very cheap.

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Rephrase.ai raises $1.5M to use synthetic media for personalized sales pitches

Published September 24, 2020

Bangalore-based Rephrase.ai has an ambitious vision for reshaping how movies and videos are made.

CEO Ashray Malhotra laid it out for me yesterday, saying that his co-founder Nisheeth Lahoti “came up with this concept — he wants to build an engine that can take any script as input and create a professional movie,” no filming required.

But Rephrase.ai is starting with what Malhotra said is a more “short-term, monetizable” goal: Offering technology that makes it easy to create personalized sales videos.

The startup was part of the Techstars Bangalore program in 2019 and is announcing today that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and AV8 Ventures.

Malhotra demonstrated the technology for me, showing me how a salesperson can select a model, a background and a voice, and enter text that the model will recite. They can then export that video for use in a variety of sales tools.

This is valuable for, he said, because sending personalized video messages in sales emails can lead to “an insane increase” in clickthrough rates. But creating all those videos can be a huge chore, if not downright impossible.

And while there are plenty of other startups working on synthetic media, Malhotra said Rephrase.ai is set apart by the 18 months the team spent developing technology that can take 10 minutes of footage and “predict how the lip movements of the person would have been if you’d shot them [saying any phrase] in an actual studio.”

You can see the results for yourself in the video above. Personally, I was impressed by the lip movements but disconcerted by the fact that Rephrase.ai customers can pair any model with any voice, leading to some strange combinations that feel more like badly dubbed movie than an effective sales pitch.

When I brought this up, Malhotra replied that some clients will want to take the time “perfecting it out, finding the right voices, the right costumes, the right personality of the actors,” while other clients might be fine spending less time to create something a little less convincing.

It’s also worth noting that Rephrase.ai has several policies designed to prevent the creation of deceptive deepfakes: Presenters can control who has the authority to create videos using their faces, the platform is only open to authorized businesses and videos are created from scratch, rather than transferring someone’s face onto an existing person.

Malhotra said Rephrase.ai is currently talking to a number of potential customers, but those discussions are in early stages. He also suggested that the technology could expand fairly quickly into areas like chatbots and education.

“I think it’s going to open a whole new world of creativity,” he said. “When you and I want to express something, we’re most likely to write a text document, but as a viewer, we want to see a video. They’ve been disconnected because video creation is really difficult.”

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NUVIA raises $240M from Mithril to make climate-ready enterprise chips

Published September 24, 2020

Climate change is on everyone’s minds these days, what with the outer Bay Area on fire, orange skies above San Francisco, and a hurricane season that is bearing down on the East Coast with alacrity (and that’s just the United States in the past two weeks).

A major — and growing — source of those emissions is data centers, the cloud infrastructure that powers most of our devices and experiences. That’s led to some novel ideas, such as Microsoft’s underwater data center Project Natick, which just came back to the surface for testing a bit more than a week ago.

Yet, for all the fun experiments, there is a bit more of an obvious solution: just make the chips more energy efficient.

That’s the thesis of NUVIA, which was founded by three ex-Apple chip designers who led the design of the “A” series chip line for the company’s iPhones and iPads for years. Those chips are wicked fast within a very tight energy envelope, and NUVIA’s premise is essentially what happens when you take those sorts of energy constraints (and the experience of its chip design team) and apply them to the data center.

We did a deep profile of the company last year when it announced its $53 million Series A, so definitely read that to understand the founding story and the company’s mission. Now about one year later, it’s coming back to us with news of a whole bunch of more funding.

NUVIA announced today that it has closed on a $240 million Series B round led by Mithril Capital, with a bunch of others involved listed below.

Since we last chatted with the company, we now have a bit more detail of what it’s working on. It has two products under development, a system-on-chip (SoC) unit dubbed “Orion” and a CPU core dubbed “Phoenix.” The company previewed a bit of Phoenix’s performance last month, although as with most chip companies, it is almost certainly too early to make any long-term predictions about how the technology will settle in with existing and future chips coming to the market.

NUVIA’s view is that chips are limited to about 250-300 watts of power given the cooling and power constraints of most data centers. As more cores become common pre chip, each core is going to have to make do with less power availability while maintaining performance. NUVIA’s tech is trying to solve that problem, lowering total cost of ownership for data center operators while also improving overall energy efficiency.

There’s a lot more work to be done of course, so expect to see more product announcements and previews from the company as it gets its technology further finalized. With $240 million more dollars in the bank though, it certainly has the resources to make some progress.

Shortly after we chatted with the company last year, Apple sued company founder and CEO Gerald Williams III for breach of contract, with the company arguing that its former chip designer was trying to poach employees for his nascent startup. Williams counter-sued earlier this year, and the two parties are now in the discovery phase of their lawsuit, which remains ongoing.

In addition to lead Mithril, the round was done “in partnership with” the founders of semiconductor giant Marvell (Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai), funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, and Temasek, plus Atlantic Bridge and Redline Capital along with Series A investors Capricorn Investment Group, Dell Technologies Capital, Mayfield, Nepenthe LLC, and WRVI Capital.

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