TechCrunch |
- Why the founder-friendly era needs a ‘VP of Nothing’
- This Week in Apps: Apple and Google’s best apps of the year, Amazon Appstore fails, Twitter’s new CEO
- The Polestar Precept is a cypher for the EV automaker’s future
- Fear, loathing and corporate gifting
- Use radical objectivity to create and retain an inclusive workforce
- Is tech hurting American soft power?
- Founders need to uncouple their own idea from its creator
- Is the UK government’s new IoT cybersecurity bill fit for purpose?
| Why the founder-friendly era needs a ‘VP of Nothing’ Posted: 04 Dec 2021 11:00 AM PST Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week's startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. While we have certainly talked through what Jack Dorsey's resignation means for Twitter (and now how it impacts Block), I'm still thinking about a few lines from his resignation tweet. "There's a lot of talk about the importance of a company being 'founder-led,’" Dorsey wrote. "Ultimately I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure. I've worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders." Dorsey added that he believes "it's critical that a company can stand on its own, free of its founder's influence or direction." This is a bold statement: Success as a founder can look like hiring smart enough people so that you are no longer relevant to making the company work day in, day out. If you go on vacation, and your team can't function without Slacking you every few minutes, that is more representative of the strength of the company than the strength of the team. Last month, I wrote about the importance of establishing the difference — both in ownership and incentive — between a founder, a founding team member, an adviser, an investor, an angel investor and an early employee. This week, I want to switch gears and talk about when it's time to unlearn those titles, or at the very least, evolve from them. As Floodgates partner Iris Choi mentioned in our recent podcast about founder friendliness, founders eventually become the "VP of nothing." No one will disagree with the notion that a startup needs to be successful beyond its founder, but the process of shifting that individual from essential to non-essential can be uncomfortable (especially in our current environment that's hyper-friendly toward founders). My take, as I argued earlier, is that we'll start to see due diligence change to address more than how a founder views their sector in a decade. Entrepreneurs could be pushed on their ability to hire, change their minds and understand when it is time to walk away. Removing the idea from the identity so that the company doesn't feel innately tied to a founder is healthy for the longevity of the company but will require some real conversations on attribution. I interviewed founders and investors to get a temperature check on how comfortable they are with the idea of recommending, and executing, on the promise of decentralized authority in this market. For my full take on this topic, check out my TechCrunch+ column, Founders need to uncouple their own idea from its creator. Alex and Amanda also chimed in on the topic, arguing precedent, and that founders aren't rockstars so we should stop treating them as such. In the rest of this newsletter, we'll talk about rebranding season, accidental churn and freshly venture-backed layoffs. As always, you can follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ or on Instagram @natashathereporter. Tis the season to rebrand Image Credits: PixelChoice (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Jack Dorsey is taking up a lot of space. Days after the Twitter co-founder resigned from the social media platform, his other company, Square, rebranded to Block. The name change has allegedly been in the works for over a year, but it feels timely given that Facebook changed its corporate branding to Meta just over a month ago. Here's what to know: Block is supposed to encompass Square's growing suite of products, which includes music streaming service Tidal, Cash App, TBD, and of course, Square. It's also a nod to the company's interest in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. I don't hate the name, but if you're in the mood for a chuckle, just take a look at its executive leadership page. All crypto, all the time:
And the startup of the week is… Image Credits: vincepenman / Getty Images Butter! The startup wants to help every subscription company deal with customers who accidentally churn — pun intended — due to payment failures. The product isn't sales tech, but rather a fintech service that detects problems with renewals or sign-up issues where charges are declined due to being attempted in another country. Here's what to know, per CEO and co-founder Vijay Menon: The international payments failure market is underserved by some of the largest payment providers, such as Stripe, which focus on domestic services. Butter wants to serve growing markets like Brazil, India and Mexico. Before he even launched his startup, the entrepreneur helped Microsoft recover over 10 million Xbox live subscriptions, chalking up to more than $100 million in recovered revenue. Now, Butter has $7 million to tackle even more. Honorable mentions:
A raise and a layoff Image Credits: Andrii Yalanskyi (opens in a new window) / Getty Images It's more common than you think. This week, digital mortgage lender Better.com announced that it is getting a $750 million cash infusion ahead of an impending public market debut. Then, one day later, it announced layoffs, confirming that it cut 9% of its overall staff. Here's what to know: As Mary Ann Azevedo reports, it's possible that the layoffs were a condition to getting that deal approved — but it still feels harsh to add millions to your balance sheet and cut staff within the same breath. The layoffs are mainly taking place in the United States and India. While we're nowhere near 2020's slew of unicorn layoffs, rising concerns about the omicron variant and a toughening market for some sectors could mean more instability to come. Onto the next one:
TechCrunch Gift Guide 2021
Across the weekSeen on TechCrunch Cannabis and banking vets launch credit card for dispensaries Apple announces the 2021 App Store Award winners and most downloaded apps of the year Spotify's Wrapped 2021 arrives with artist video messages, Blend and even a game Seen on TechCrunch+ With $3B expected in 2021, Singapore is becoming a fintech capital IoT data collector Samsara's IPO will be fun to watch Black Friday data adds to evidence e-commerce growth is slowing Super app Grab starts trading on supersized SPAC combination Product-led growth and signal substitution syndrome: Bringing it all together Hope you all have a weekend as good as Bret Taylor's week, |
| Posted: 04 Dec 2021 10:45 AM PST Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices. Apps aren't just a way to pass idle hours — they're also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that's up 27% year-over-year. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too. Do you want This Week in Apps in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here: techcrunch.com/newsletters Top StoriesApple announced its top apps and games of 2021 Image Credits: Apple Apple this week released its anticipated annual list of the best apps and games of the year across iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch. This year, children's app maker Toca Boca won iPhone App of the Year for "Toca Life World," and Riot Games' "League of Legends: Wild Rift" was the iPhone Game of the Year. Other winners included iPad App of the Year "LumaFusion" from LumaTouch; iPad Game of the Year "MARVEL Future Revolution" from Netmarble; Mac App of the Year "Craft," from Luki Labs Limited; Mac Game of the Year "Myst," from Cyan; Apple TV App of the Year "DAZN," from DAZN Group; Apple TV Game of the Year "Space Marshals 3," from Pixelbite; Apple Watch App of the Year "Carrot Weather," from Grailr; and the Apple Arcade Game of the Year: "Fantasian," from Mistwalker. What’s interesting about this year’s group of winners is the subtle statement Apple is making with its editorial picks. For instance, Toca Boca — which has produced more than 40 kids’ apps to date and celebrated its 10-year anniversary this year — is a reminder that developers are building long-term businesses on the App Store and Apple helped play a role in supporting that success. Other winners are those that compete with Apple’s own first-party apps, including Carrot Weather (which also uses weather data from Apple-owned Dark Sky), Pages rival Craft and iMovie competitor LumaFusion. These are not necessarily coincidences. 2021 was a year that’s seen much backlash and upheaval for the App Store, which has faced increased regulatory scrutiny, new legislation in global markets and various lawsuits over the App Store's commission-based business model — including the ongoing one with Epic Games, now under appeal. As a result, Apple has adjusted and clarified its policies and even reduced its commissions in some cases, as dictated by the market demands and settlement agreements. But despite all these changes, the winning lineup reminds us that the quality of the apps on the App Store remains high. Apple also released its year-end list of the most-downloaded apps, led by TikTok (iPhone’s top free app), Procreate Pocket (iPhone and iPad’s top paid app), Among Us! (iPhone and iPad’s top free game), Minecraft (iPhone and iPad’s top paid game), YouTube (iPad’s top free app) and The Oregon Trail (top Apple Arcade app.) The full lineup is here. Google Play introduced its “Best of 2021” app awards, too Image Credits: Google Google Play also this week announced its own year-end list of the best apps and games on Google Play. This year, Google expanded its awards lineup to include apps and games on tablets, Wear OS and Google TV. Its U.S. winners included meditation app Balance as its app of the year and top game Pokémon UNITE. Meanwhile, Paramount+ and Garena Free Fire MAX won the user's choice awards. In 2020, Google’s award winners had reflected a world undergoing a pandemic, where stressed users had turned to apps and soothing games to relax — like top sleep app Loóna, which was last year's "Best App," or escapist games like winner Genshin Impact. But with the early days of the pandemic now behind us, some of this year's award winners were apps that focus on personal growth and creativity, instead of just relaxing or escaping. In addition to Best of 2021 app Balance, which offers personalized meditation, other personal development-styled winners include Moonly, an app for "harmonizing your life" with the lunar calendar; a "comedic relaxation" app, Laughscape; a hypnotherapy app for women, Clementine; better sleep app Sleep Cycle; mentorship community Mentor Spaces; habit tracker and planner Rabit; and an app for navigating grief from loss, Empathy. Other winners showcased how we adapted to pandemic life, as with audio chatroom Clubhouse, tools for reducing screen time, like Speechify, or those for reconnecting with nature, like Blossom. The full list of award winners is here. The Amazon Appstore stopped working on Android 12 and almost no one caredIn a telling piece of news that may reflect how little traction the Amazon Appstore has with the general public, the Amazon-run Android marketplace stopped working on Android 12 devices over a month ago, and there’s been almost no media coverage until this week. On Monday, however, tech news site Liliputing finally called attention to the matter, which followed the October release of Android 12. It said that not only did the Amazon Appstore not run on Android 12 devices, apps and games also couldn’t be launched because of how the Appstore handles DRM. The site noted some 90-plus users had posted complaints in a thread on Amazon’s forums about the problem, to which Amazon’s moderators had only replied that the company was “investigating the issue.” Amazon wouldn’t provide TechCrunch with any details as to what the underlying issues were either, only acknowledging the problem was impacting the “small number of Amazon Appstore users that upgraded to Android 12.” (Oof! Burn!) While, sure, Android users aren’t as quick to jump to new versions as iOS users are, that the entire Amazon Appstore would fail on the latest Android release makes us wonder if anyone at Amazon had even run the thing on a beta build ahead of Android 12’s launch at all? Or maybe they were too busy with that Microsoft deal to bother? Weekly NewsPlatforms: Apple
Platforms: Google Image Credits: Google
E-commerce and Food Delivery
Fintech & Crypto Image Credits: Meta
 Image Credits: Sensor Tower
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Dating Image Credits: App Annie screenshot
Streaming & Entertainment Image Credits: Spotify
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DownloadsIndie App Santa Image Credits: Indie App Santa The new Indie App Santa app is an advent calendar of sorts for those who love to download and try out iOS apps. The idea began last year as a Twitter account, which drove around 40,000 downloads to the apps the day they were featured. This year, the team at App Craft Studio decided to expand the project to the web, a native iOS app (with Home Widgets and Push notifications), in addition to social accounts on Twitter, Gumroad and Patreon. According to creator and indie developer François Boulis, the team wasn’t sure if Apple’s App Store Review would approve their new app because it could be considered a “mini App Store” — which is against Apple’s rules. But the app passed through App Review on its first try, he says. The new iOS app presents an advent calendar-like interface where each day you can tap to open a door and reveal a new deal on an indie developer’s app. The app will work from December 1 through December 24, and is a free download (with the option to pay to support its development). So far, the app has revealed deals including a free version of MrClockface, a clock widget app; a free version of visual calendar Structured Pro; and puzzle game Blackbox. Most of the apps featured throughout the month will also be free, except for YarnBuddy (December 8), which will offer its $39.99 IAP for just $9.99 on the day of its featuring. Other coming app deals include those for Jinks!, Twidget, Vinyls, Crouton, Bluebird, PastePal, Wynk, Guessing Game, Inventory List, Skaffer, Sticker Doodle, Calory, Sync Flashlight, HabitMinder, un:safe, FitnessView, Times Up! Timer, Luxilux, Pile and Wordsmyth. But India App Santa’s deals don’t last forever — you have to grab them as they arrive, or you’ll miss out. Alms Image Credits: Alms A new startup called Alms is building a social network that focuses on users' well-being through participation in creator-led challenges in areas like personal growth, sustainability and others focused on positive impacts. Instead of driving the collection of "likes," as on other social apps, Alms aims to encourage real-world engagement through its challenges and the specific steps and actions that must be taken. The idea, explains Alms founder Alexander Nevedovsky, is to design an app that guides users to a happier and more meaningful life when they use it. At launch Alms has 30 creators on board, and more in the pipeline, and has attracted a couple of thousand users in its first few days on the App Store. (Read a full review here on TechCrunch.)
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| The Polestar Precept is a cypher for the EV automaker’s future Posted: 04 Dec 2021 10:38 AM PST Polestar will spend the next three years executing a lofty electric vehicle launch schedule that will culminate with the Precept concept, a “Rosetta Stone” of sorts that provides a physical representation of the company’s future. Polestar, the former Volvo company that spun out to become its own brand, refers to the concept as its “manifesto.” In other words, the Precept, which will go into production as the Polestar 5, tells consumers and eventual shareholders what the EV automaker intends to become. The next several years will be spent moving further away from its Volvo roots and closer to its own brand, Greg Hembrough, head of Polestar USA, told TechCrunch in an interview at a company presentation in New York. During the presentation, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, along with other members of the automaker’s leadership team, laid out a plan to expand to new markets, increase sales volume ten-fold and launch three new cars in the process. This ambitious plan is predicated on the company’s core values of design, sustainability and innovation. The road so farIn 1996, Polestar was introduced to the world as a racing company that sold and developed performance software for Volvo Cars. Intertwined from the start, the union became official in 2011 when Polestar became a Performance partner, imbuing Volvo vehicles with enhanced sport characteristics. It was fully acquired by Volvo Car Group in 2015. It spun off shortly thereafter as its own brand, birthing its first car, the first-and-only hybrid Polestar 1 in 2017 and full EV Polestar 2 in 2019. Between the two models, Polestar has sold roughly 29,000 vehicles, with the four-door EV Polestar 2 dominating the bulk of those sales. It’s currently the only Polestar in full swing, as the Polestar 1’s limited production recently concluded and the upcoming Polestar 3 SUV is expected to get underway sometime in 2022. Future designFrom the jump, the Precept is meant to convey as much of the Polestar tenets as can be visually conveyed, the most prominent of which is luxury and performance. It’s also key to Polestar’s brand identity, distinguishing itself from its sibling brand and becoming something unique. “I believe that if people take a look at the Polestar 1 and Polestar 2, they continue to see a little bit of the DNA from one of our sibling companies,” Hembrough told TechCrunch. “The Precept’s intent was to not only give you an indication of our future design language is going to be, but also a clear indicator of elements you’ll see from a design perspective and sustainability perspective. These things are far greater now than just a wish list, these are things that will actually be brought into production.” With this in mind, the business end of the Precept starts to tell a story. The Volvo family resemblance begins to fade, in favor of a more distinct, signature look. For instance, the distinct “Thor’s Hammer” headlights from the sibling brand are now “dual blades,” and appear to split the original design in half physically, if not also symbolically.  Image Credits: Alex Kalogianni The “shark nose” facia has further intricacies, such as the absence of a vestigial grille for engine cooling, replaced by the “SmartZone” sensor suite. This houses a collection of radar emitters and cameras intended for enhanced advanced driver assistance system features, effectively switching to a “seeing” face rather than a “breathing” one. There’s also a front aero foil, a wing incorporated into the front that improves airflow. “Of course, it looks awesome as well,” Ingenlath added enthusiastically at the event.  Image Credits: Alex Kalogianni InnovationWhen it comes to tech, Polestar has a full plate. There’s the fun stuff like its ambitions for its vehicles to have a certain level of automated highway piloting, but it’s moot if the cars fail to outperform the competition. Underneath the surface of the Precept is an aluminum architecture indicative of the sporty underpinnings the Polestar 5 will have. The grand tourer will have an electrical system based off of the one that will be incorporated into the Polestar 3 and will have Nvidia-powered computing integrated. Its motor will be the “P10,” a 450 kilowatt unit in development that the company is targeting to be one of the most powerful ones out there, producing roughly 603 horsepower. This is married to a 800 volt battery pack that can switch to 400 to match the charging infrastructure, and will also support bi-directional charging.  Image Credits: Alex Kalogianni With so much to focus on, Hembrough says concentrating on the user experience keeps Polestar on the right course. “It’s one of the things we began building very early with the Polestar 2, being the first company with an Android Automotive operating system that includes embedded Google services. Over-the-air software updates are rolled out to customer vehicles monthly, and there’s a surprise and delight with everything from having a web browser to games to a video player. “We begin to take it very quickly to the next level with the Polestar 3 and as indicated in the Precept, things like ocular tracking is a convenience but also a safety opportunity as well. UX will continue to be part of that innovation, but we will never stray away from safety,” he added. SustainabilityA great deal of emphasis was placed on the issue of sustainability, with a focus on reducing carbon impact, if not neutralizing it from production entirely. Polestar has declared its intention to produce a fully carbon neutral vehicle by 2030. It’s not a self pat on the back, either, it’s a conversation customers are actively engaged in, too. “If you look back, five or ten years ago, I think that’s one of the last things consumers would be talking about, but the world has changed so dramatically, those are all things consumers are very conscious about and asking about,” Hembrough said.  Image Credits: Alex Kalogianni The declaration of its “Polestar 0” project has galvanized a sense of urgency in the company, and the methods planned vary in scope. To start, there are new and innovative materials at play in the interior of the Precept, such as carbon-fiber-like bio-composite components derived from flax. The seats are a weave of recycled PES plastics. It’s a fabric that’s already in use in the fashion and footwear world, and one of the ways Polestar looks to differentiate itself with the old ways of automaking. “Those things aren’t just taglines, they’re at our core,” Hembrough said. Outside of innovative materials, Polestar will employ carbon capture tech to achieve its goals, as well as increasing transparency within its supply chain level and insisting on improved supplier practices. Beyond 2025Even with these bold endeavors laid out, it just scratches the surface of Polestar’s intentions. The automaker is shooting to produce a fully carbon neutral car by 2030, but what happens after that? Plotting a course that far into the future is truly sailing into the unknown, and even Polestar admits that time will tell if these efforts will be enough to make a difference. It does have one other goal — to become a fully climate neutral company by 2040 — that will dictate many, if not all, of its choices over the next 18 years. |
| Fear, loathing and corporate gifting Posted: 04 Dec 2021 10:02 AM PST Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It's inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Three themes this weekend, my dear friends. The first is fear, namely market concern. The second is loathing, or my gut reaction to a particular bit of corporate news. And, finally, corporate gifting, a dive into a fascinating startup war. Let's go! FearDocuSign took a gut punch this week, with the e-signature company's stock price dropping by more than 40% on Friday as I write to you. That's among the worst post-earnings share-price movements I have ever seen, aside from cases of fraud or other corporate shenanigans. What happened? DocuSign beat revenue expectations in its most recent quarter (Q3 fiscal 2022). But the company's billings — a proxy for future revenue — came in sharply under expectations. And the company's CEO, Dan Springer, said this in its investor letter:
Springer thinks the market is overreacting and intends to buy DocuSign shares next week. Are the markets making too much of what appears to be a return to more regular growth at DocuSign? Maybe not? I've been talking to folks about this since it happened — including my dear friend Ron Miller, who keeps me sane at work — trying to work out if we're seeing Wall Street impatience or something else. I'm leaning toward the latter. Per Yahoo Finance data, DocuSign is worth around $27 billion after its huge declines. Or about 12.4x its current run rate. For an already-public tech company showing strong hints at future revenue deceleration, who among us will stand up and say that that is too low? A lot of folks, but that's because the general climate for SaaS multiples has been so hot for so long. Not too long ago, DocuSign at 12.4x its present-day run rate after posting billings growth of 28% would have been fine, if not good. So, a return to prior norms could be in the air? Fear. That's what I expect to taste if we are seeing multiple compressions among software companies. So very many private-market bets have been placed on the expectation that public valuations for comps would stay high. But after a few awful days for tech stocks more generally this week, the climate in tech could finally be shifting away from a 100% risk weighting toward something more balanced. LoathingBetter.com pulled three-quarters of a billion dollars from its SPAC debut forward, giving it access to ample funding for its operations. Then it fired a chunk of its staff. The CEO said 15% during a call with the laid-off staffers. Better insists that the number is actually 9%. The discrepancy is wild, given that the CEO was reading from notes and claimed that he had made the call to execute the layoffs. If he made the decision, how did he get the number wrong? Regardless, here's a master class in how not to fire a huge stack of your workers: (We've preserved a copy of the video, of course, in case that version gets yanked.) Don't forget: You are not family at your place of employment. You are an asset that it wants to leverage and derive profit from! Corporate giftingTurn the clock back to early 2020. In February of that year, right before the turn of the pandemic, I covered Sendoso's $40 million Series B. The company is in the corporate gifting space and has since gone on to raise a $100 million Series C. Separately, an investor I know connected me to another player in Sendoso's market, Postal.io, or just Postal. The two compete for market share in the send stuff to current and potential customers market, which is, it turns out, huge. Regular Exchange readers will already be wondering if we didn't touch on this recently. We did! Back in September, taking a look at Postal and its progress right before Disrupt. But I've since extracted some growth metrics from Postal and Sendoso that I wanted to append to our continuing coverage of the space. Why do we care? Because akin to the OKR software space, or the instant grocery delivery market, there's an interesting startup cluster to track. Sendoso and Postal compete with Alyce and Reachdesk, for example, among others. That's a lot of startup activity for the online-to-offline market channel. And the market is big enough — Sendoso told The Exchange that the "U.S. corporate gifting market is projected to reach $242 billion by the end of this year," citing Coresight — for several players to grow at once. Postal was the most free with metrics, sharing that it has seen 70% subscription revenue growth for the last five consecutive quarters. The startup has also seen GMV scale 3,765% from Q3 2020 to Q3 2021, as customers rose from 35 to 286. That's why it managed to raise capital in September, we figure. Sendoso was more coy with numbers regarding its recent performance. The startup grew 330% in 2019, recall, but regarding its recent results did not deign to share an updated figure. Instead, Sendoso said that it has 900 customers (north of 20,000 seats at those companies, for detail), and that its warehouses "in North America, Europe and Asia [have] handled upward of 3 million sends in over 165 countries." We didn't get new numbers from Alyce or Reachdesk in time for publication, but if they do share results, we'll bring them to you next week. Also like the OKR startup market, there's variation within the larger theme. In the case of corporate gifting, Postal is building a more digital offering, connecting goods companies to buyers, while Sendoso has a larger IRL footprint including its own physical item aggregation points. We do love to have business cases battle it out in real time. Don't forget, however, that intense competition doesn't leave all parties unscathed. In the OKR market Koan failed to make it to its next fundraising milestone, and Microsoft scooped up one of the startup cohort. In the instant grocery space, 1520 just went kaput. Not that Sendoso or Postal are in danger of running out of cash, but if and when their market does find a point of consolidation will be interesting to see. —Alex |
| Use radical objectivity to create and retain an inclusive workforce Posted: 04 Dec 2021 07:58 AM PST Today, the age of corporate social justice is dawning. With the business case for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) now more vital than ever, we’re beginning to see organizations truly embrace social activism. And while social justice was, rightly, the initial impetus, companies are finally waking up to the business case for diversity initiatives. Recent research by McKinsey shows that organizations with the most ethnically diverse teams are 36% more likely to financially outperform those with the least. This is because diversity increases revenue, boosts innovation, sparks creativity and leads to better decision-making. But the truth is, the more diversity you have, the more challenging it can be. The problem is that business leaders and diversity advocates have failed to consider an approach to diversity that goes beyond “add diversity and stir.” Diversity is not a numbers game wherein the solution is to merely increase the numbers of traditionally underrepresented groups in your workforce. Now, as the world adjusts following the pandemic, it’s time to stop pretending that outdated diversity programs work. So let’s explore some of the measures leaders can take to root out bias and subjectivity from the outset, and instead adopt an approach of "radical objectivity" — combining data and human science to ensure that talent and merit win every time. Inclusion is about more than hitting diversity recruiting opticsDiversity in the workplace starts with an inclusive culture. Unfortunately, many companies get this wrong. This is because diversity is quantitative — it’s the extent of heterogeneity within your workforce. On the other hand, inclusion describes the experiences of different individuals in the workforce and the degree to which they’re invited to participate. Delivering on inclusion, therefore, is about more than hitting diversity recruiting optics. Done right, an inclusive culture should help to foster a sense of belonging and shared values. By arming themselves with data and insight instead of diversity quotas, forward-thinking organizations can create an environment in which individuals of all backgrounds can thrive. So how do they get there? It starts with languageDiversity initiatives often fail because they land too late in the employee journey to have a lasting impact. Change needs to be embedded in the talent acquisition process, which means evolving the way that you engage with your prospective employees — starting with language. The words you choose to bring your business to life will make the difference: Words are influential ambassadors of your workplace’s culture. Technology and data analysis can help you here, providing robust insights on the messages you’re sending. For example, are you using gender-coded or inclusive-coded language to attract inclusion-minded people? Are you taking the time to update your communications regularly to make sure they’re understanding of different cultural contexts — not just gender and ethnic but organizational and generational, too? And it’s not just the language that you use in your marketing that matters. Have you considered the words used by your hiring managers and recruiters? At Inbeta, we use technology that enables organizations to move beyond the basics when it comes to inclusion. For example, we bury specific questions in our recruitment interviews, the answers to which can be linguistically analyzed to understand the genuine values and behaviors of candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. This means you no longer need to rely on simplistic "bias checker" software, which tends to be based on outdated research with few controls on data integrity. Remember, the best candidates have options. So what will you say that makes them want to work for you? Moving past preconceptionsIt’s also essential to bear in mind that, when it comes to language, it works both ways. When deciding whether to hire someone, we need to move past conceptions of how the ideal candidate should talk. That, too, leads to homogeneity. Technology and training in tandem can help with that. At Inbeta, we recently partnered with a prominent high-street retailer to recruit a board director and encountered in our search a prominent candidate from a working-class background. However, the initial assumption from their tone and the way they articulated was that they had got to their accomplished position through "grit" and "graft" and lacked the strategic capability required for the new role. Our linguistic intelligence coupled with human expertise surfaced early on that this was not the case and allowed us to counteract the biases at play. We were able to advocate for the individual and design a bespoke coaching intervention that raised the profile within the process, showcasing objective potential and ensuring they were given an equitable chance. The individual is now in the final stage, despite the disadvantage their socioeconomic background would have otherwise caused them. Looking where others wouldn’t (or couldn’t)Traditional approaches are too static to uncover all the potential that’s out there. A standard executive search process will typically entail significant manual desk research reviewing historical databases that are only as up-to-date as the day each CV was written. Failing that, you’re at the mercy of the headhunter’s black book of acquaintances — or perhaps a combination of the two. Either way, the process is far from efficient, let alone equitable. We use a suite of technologies that allows us to identify "hidden" talent without relying on either approach. We’re currently working with a leading fashion brand to hire a customer and digital director, for example, and the use of our tools has meant that we’ve been able to rapidly deliver a long list of 74 high-priority real-time candidates within 48 hours. This is a potential talent pool that would take more traditional search processes weeks to develop — and that’s before validation. Not only are we able to map candidates quickly and efficiently, by leveraging technology, we can independently execute due diligence to quantify these leads: Are they exhibiting typical job-seeking behaviors? What are their cultural drivers? Do they have the desired leadership qualities? This isn’t just about speed and efficiency — although, of course, that’s a bonus — this is, crucially, about surfacing candidates that would usually be overlooked in the search process. Moving beyond cultural fitIn tackling unconscious bias, it’s also worth considering what a truly inclusive approach to talent acquisition looks like. Companies have long hired for "cultural fit," but there’s a tremendous amount of bias in these mindsets. By aiming to hire people whose attributes mesh with the company’s goals and values, your resulting workplace is one in which everyone looks, thinks and acts alike. Instead, organizations must move away from a practice that aims to mold people to fit their norms. There’s a recent story that always springs to mind. In the run-up to the pandemic, I was working with a significant multinational retail group to source a group chief digital officer as part of a very high-profile board restructure. The individual we surfaced had no fashion experience and limited retail experience. Furthermore, their mindset couldn’t have been further from that of the existing C-suite, meaning they would have been entirely overlooked by the majority of headhunters. But, on the other hand, this individual had outstanding digital expertise, a career spanning innovation across several FTSE100 companies. And on top of all this, they'd been operating as a digital nomad in remote central Africa. Their technical proficiency, coupled with their incredibly diverse mindset, meant that they were the perfect person to revolutionize a very traditional organization. But they simply wouldn’t have been identified had we been seeking out somebody who was a so-called "cultural fit." By getting past the cultural fit default, companies are far more likely to build teams with the diversity of mindset, experience, ethnicities and backgrounds that they claim to be seeking. Rewiring the systemUltimately, taking a holistic view of diversity means looking beyond numbers; a tick-the-box program doesn’t cut it. Cultural change is challenging, perhaps even more so when the objective is creating an inclusive culture. But without a concerted effort to change organizational culture and foster inclusion, diversity initiatives are likely to fail. The easiest way to address this is to re-examine your hiring process with a radically objective approach. Companies today need to leverage technology and data to mitigate implicit bias wherever they can and match that with human touch and cultural intelligence. The route to diversity success is to perpetually listen, adapt and develop. |
| Is tech hurting American soft power? Posted: 04 Dec 2021 07:45 AM PST The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics. About 30 years ago, the political scientist Joseph Nye overturned convention when he suggested that states exert not just "hard" power — i.e., military might — but "soft" power as well. Soft power, Nye wrote is “when one country gets other countries to want what it wants … in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to do what it wants.” In other words, soft power is rule by attraction, not by force. Countries with greater cultural, economic, scientific and moral influence, the theory goes, "punch above their weight," converting that influence into material gains. It encompasses everything that isn't guns, soldiers or materiel. Queen Elizabeth II is a soft power all-star, as is Rihanna. But so too are Hollywood, sushi, Louis Vuitton and Copacabana Beach. The likes of Broadway, Michael Jordan, Harvard and Starbucks have long made America, a superpower by conventional means, a soft power one as well. But much of American soft power in recent years can be attributed to our technological ingenuity. After all, the biggest names in technology — Amazon, Facebook, Google — are American. The world's rich almost universally use iPhones; the world's top firms run on Microsoft Windows. And world leaders from Narendra Modi to the Pope rely on Twitter and Instagram to reach their followers. The world's OS, in other words, is American. And that means the majority of the world lives on technology that is based, for the most part, on American values like free speech, privacy, respect for diversity and decentralization. Meanwhile Silicon Valley is perhaps the biggest overseas draw America has. As many as 40% of software workers are immigrants. Google, Tesla and Stripe all have immigrant founders. When I attended Stanford a decade ago, I witnessed firsthand the endless march of visiting delegations. Germans, Australians — even Russian President Dmitry Medvedev — all came with some version of the same question: How do we replicate Silicon Valley back home? American politicians have been right to point to our tech sector as one of America's best exports. But what happens when it stops being a force for good? Is it possible for soft power to actually go in reverse and detract from a nation's influence? After all, the harmful externalities of technology are amply documented — fake news in India, a gencoide ginned up in Myanmar, ISIS propaganda in Britain. Europe has gone after tech giants like Apple and Google for dodging taxes and violating privacy while Amazon has come under fire in Britain for worker abuses. And tech's unhealthy impact on children and teens is rightfully coming under increased scrutiny. As tech is tied more and more to hard power — and as American supremacy relies more and more on Big Tech firms — Washington is left with a conundrum: If, as Nye, posited in 2012, "credibility is the scarcest resource," is America able to separate the increasingly baleful actions (and reputations) of its tech firms from Brand USA? This whole situation reminds me of the COP26 climate change negotiations that wrapped up last month in Glasgow. Aren't rich countries, many argue, responsible for the actions of their energy companies? It's a controversial question, but one thing is certain: Exxon Mobil no longer burnishes America's image. In fact, as the economic costs of climate change are increasingly priced in, it is more likely a liability than an asset. Unlike its oil giants, America's tech industry is not precipitating a civilizational crisis. We generally find their products useful. They have generated massive economic activity. And they do have positive externalities. To take one not-so-hypothetical example, Apple iPhones are now used to record human rights abuses, which are posted on Alphabet's YouTube and shared on Meta's Facebook and WhatsApp. But when American tech firms spread hate or abet violence in other countries, they reflect poorly on the U.S. And if the U.S. is to bask in their glow, it should also take responsibility for their shortcomings, if for no other reason than its own reputation. Of course there is no shortage of Washington politicians seeking to bring Big Tech to heel. The Biden administration is working hard to coordinate with allies on a great number of regulatory actions. Congress and agencies like the FCC and FTC are poised to take meaningful antitrust action. These moves, as well as broader reforms like the recent global corporate tax deal at the G20, go some way toward ameliorating corporate abuses. But while regulatory efforts rightly focus on protecting American consumers, they should also take some responsibility for the very real lives harmed abroad. What would that look like? For one, antitrust investigations might examine tech firms' monopolies in foreign markets. U.S. standards for free speech may not be applicable in blanket fashion, but regulators might nudge American tech firms to apply the same care in serving poor foreign markets as they do at home, starting with more content moderation in foreign languages. They should also consider adopting more locally nuanced rules in foreign markets (while avoiding doing the bidding of whomever is in charge). Governments should also work more with the tech giants to share intelligence about how their products are used — both organically to ill effect and maliciously by foreign actors. American diplomats on the ground might regularly brief tech executives about the on-the-ground impact of their products and nudge them toward policies that are less harmful. They might require experimentation with more forms of external oversight, as Facebook has done with its Oversight Board. At a minimum, they might proactively work together to ensure American technologies don't fuel nascent or ongoing crises, as appears to be the case in Ethiopia right now. But the U.S. shouldn’t shy away from more aggressively using its Entity List to sanction companies involved in human rights abuses. There is much firms can do on their own proactively as well. LinkedIn, to its credit, stopped doing business in China when faced with increasing censorship on its platform. When pushed, the platform decided that its (liberal) values were too important to sacrifice. Fourteen years after handing over dissidents' user data to Chinese authorities, Yahoo stopped doing business in China as well. And tech workers should speak up too. Many have objected when their firms work with the Pentagon or other national security agencies; they ought to be as — if not more — critical of work with authoritarian governments. Tech firms have more power than they think. When they let undemocratic governments get away with outrageous requests like censoring content, spying on dissidents and denying technology to democracy activists, they risk diminishing the magic that makes American tech firms so attractive in the first place. We are all poorer for the self-censorship already practiced by American firms (when was the last time a movie depicted China in a negative light?). Exporting self-censored technology would be exponentially worse. Tech executives have grown fond in recent years of defending their companies (and their monopolies) on patriotic grounds. But when tech errs, it is far more harmful than producing an offensive movie. Policymakers must make clear that if American tech firms expect goodwill from Washington, they should make good on their words and consider how their actions directly harm American interests and values. They must recognize that tech's reputation is America's as well. |
| Founders need to uncouple their own idea from its creator Posted: 04 Dec 2021 05:00 AM PST All founders want their companies to thrive without them, but the readiness to act on that awareness continues to be one of the more uncomfortable conversations within today's market. After all, the glorification of founders (and our constant habit of treating them like rockstars) has some validity: Visionaries are intrinsically interesting humans, wild enough to bet that people would sleep in strangers’ homes or come to a bird-friendly app to share their unfiltered thoughts every single day. This tension — of society both positioning a founder as the figurehead of a startup's success and realizing that succession is key to the longevity of any business — is why a few lines within Jack Dorsey's recent Twitter resignation tweet stood out to me.
"There's a lot of talk about the importance of a company being 'founder-led,’" Dorsey wrote. "Ultimately I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure. I've worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders." Dorsey added that he believes "it's critical that a company can stand on its own, free of its founder's influence or direction." Dorsey started a conversation that I've now been having with founders and investors all week: Removing the idea from the founder's identity so that the company doesn't feel innately tied to its creator is healthy for the company. But will require some real conversations on attribution. Last month, I wrote about the importance of establishing the difference, both in ownership and incentive, between a founder, a founding team member, an adviser, an investor, an angel investor and an early employee. This week, we need to talk about why it's important to understand how governance can change over time, and why a founder’s job title one day might just be "the VP of Nothing." Unlearning the weeds"At some point, the founder becomes the VP of nothing," Iris Choi, partner at Floodgate, said during our latest Equity podcast. "In the beginning you are the head of product, head engineer — both an individual contributor, as well as the person picking up all the loose ends or filling in the gaps." The identity crisis begins when a company gets to the growth stage. Then, founders look less like the scrappy engineer pulling an all-nighter and more like the visionary who is responsible for hiring talent and making sure "the trains are running on time." "To a certain extent, you have to let the founder be elevated and not just be in the weeds anymore," Choi said. Fractional co-founder Stella Han recently went through Y Combinator and raised millions in a seed round. Her business is all about making ownership more accessible to strangers and friends, which means she's had to have conversations with her co-founder about how to practice that internally as well. "When you're a co-founder, you're very active in the execution of the product, versus being an executive leader, [when] it's about how well you can empower other people to take the reins and take things into action and have the company grow," she said. "When you need a conductor for the orchestra, it’s about communicating that vision and that magic and then having everyone be able to be a team and carry out that whole experience together and deliver it to the audience and the consumers." While it's not controversial to begin building a smart executive team around a brilliant founder as the company scales, it is contrarian to tell the person who thought of an idea that it's time for them to step down and make room for another acting CEO. In other words, what do you do if you're not ready to step down or at least away? Han thinks it comes down to incentive alignment. "Ego is a huge part of a person, and maybe that’s why they might be doing something that seems right to them but maybe it’s not for the company overall," she said, adding that the founder (and any other incoming or existing executives) need to figure out "what is the more holistic bigger-picture incentive that everyone should be aligned on." Then, she said, founders need to remove themselves from "being so in the weeds in the heated moment and doing what’s overall the best." Getting more comfortable with decentralizing power within companies will require a broader shift in how investors write checks. Today, having an idea and then getting credit for that idea is an entrepreneur's most lucrative currency when it comes to pitching a venture capitalist to bet on them. What can replace that incentive? Due diligence gets a tweak"All businesses want star founders who recruit star teams and turn those into an ecosystem that is the next PayPal Mafia," said Blair Silverberg, the CEO and co-founder of Hum Capital. "Very few businesses ever achieve this vision. The reason is lack of clarity between what teams do, how those actions produce results for the business, and how the individuals involved can take the ownership for the wins they create with them as they start new or join new businesses." Silverberg is describing some of the promises of Web3, which wants to formalize processes so it's easier to transparently see who owns, and executes, parts of businesses. But, the entrepreneur doesn't think we have to wait until the school of thought becomes mainstream to see a shift happen. "The concept of a hedge fund manager having a portable track record is incredible to think about in the context of an operating business," he said. "If we can create a world where a similar track record exists, we can match society's capital with talent at the level of people, not just businesses." And, as we talked about last month, in an ideas economy, proof of who came up with the winning business strategy matters (both legally and financially). Within the pitch Zoom, though. I think early-stage investors who want to bet on a successful company — versus a single person — will need to push co-founders on their ability to hire, change their minds and understand when it's time to walk away. Sonia Gokhale, a GP at early-stage fintech fund VentureSouq, said that even when she invests, she's usually looking for co-founders rather than a single founder, both because it de-risks a company in case of unplanned succession, and it's helpful to have someone to balance out the other. "A lot of our founding team spends part of due diligence focused on if the two founders work together well. Is there chemistry between them? Are there synergies? Do we have a gut feeling?" she said. "And if we sense any tension that shows up, that's a red flag." Dorsey's argument that it is critical for a company to stand on its own may not require forcing every single founder out of their company at some point. Instead, as Sounding Board's Christine Tao pointed out, it can just be an awareness held by "good leadership." "CEOs are just people too — and while a lot of our identity may get wrapped up in our companies — we’re not perfect," she said. "Companies evolve and change, and may need different leadership at different times." |
| Is the UK government’s new IoT cybersecurity bill fit for purpose? Posted: 04 Dec 2021 03:00 AM PST Internet of Things (IoT) devices — essentially, electronics like fitness trackers and smart lightbulbs that connect to the internet — are now part of everyday life for most. However, cybersecurity remains a problem, and according to Kaspersky, it's only getting worse: there were 1.5 billion breaches of IoT devices during the first six months of 2021 alone, according to the antivirus provider, almost double from 639 million for all of 2021. This is largely because security has long been an afterthought for the manufacturers of typically inexpensive devices that continue to ship with guessable or default passwords and insecure third-party components. In an effort to try to improve the security credentials of consumer IoT devices, the U.K. government this week introduced the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure bill (PST) in Parliament, legislation that requires IoT manufacturers, importers, and distributors to meet certain cybersecurity standards. The bill outlines three key areas of minimum security standards. The first is a ban on universal default passwords — such as “password” or “admin” — which are often preset in a device's factory settings and are easily guessable. The second will require manufacturers to provide a public point of contact to make it simpler for anyone to report a security vulnerability. And, the third is that IoT manufacturers will also have to keep customers updated about the minimum amount of time a product will receive vital security updates.
Read more on TechCrunchThis new cybersecurity regime will be overseen by an as-yet-undesignated regulator, that will have the power to levy GDPR-style penalties; companies that fail to comply with PSTI could be fined £10 million or 4% of their annual revenue, as well as up to £20,000 a day in the case of an ongoing contravention. On the face of it, the PSTI bill sounds like a step in the right direction, and the ban on default passwords especially has been widely commended by the cybersecurity industry as a "common sense" measure. "Basic cyber hygiene, such as changing default passwords, can go a long way to improving the security for these types of devices, Rodolphe Harand, managing director at YesWeHack, tells TechCrunch. "With a new unique password needing to be provided by manufacturers, this will essentially offer an additional layer of protection." But others say the measures — particularly the ban on easy-to-guess passwords — haven’t been thought through, and could potentially create new opportunities for threat actors to exploit. "Stopping default passwords is laudable, but if each device has a private password, then who is responsible for managing this?” said Matt Middleton-Leal, managing director at Qualys. “It's common for end-users to forget their own passwords, so if the device needed repair, how would the specialist gain access? This is dangerous territory where manufacturers may have to provide super-user accounts or backdoor access." Middleton-Leal, along with others in the industry, are also concerned about the PSTI bill's mandatory product vulnerability disclosure. While sensible in principle, since it ensures security researchers can contact the manufacturers privately to warn of flaws and bugs so they can be fixed — there's nothing in the bill that requires bugs to be fixed before they are disclosed. "If anything, this increases risk when the vulnerability becomes common knowledge, as bad actors then have a red flag to focus their efforts upon and find ways to exploit it," Middleton-Leal added. John Goodacre, director of UKRI's Digital Security by Design, agrees that this mandate is flawed, telling TechCrunch: "The policy accepts that vulnerabilities can still exist in even the best-protected consumer technologies with security researchers regularly identifying security flaws in products. In today’s world, we can only continue to patch these vulnerabilities once they are found, putting a plaster over the wound once damage may have already been done. Further initiatives are needed for the technology to block such wounds from happening at the foundational level." The third key area outlined in the bill, which details how long devices will receive security updates, is also under fire for fears that it could encourage manufacturers to discount prices once a device nears end-of-life, which could incentivize consumers to buy devices that will soon be without security support. Some believe the U.K. government isn't acting fast enough. The bill — which does not consider vehicles, smart meters, medical devices, and desktop or laptop computers that connect to the internet — has given IoT manufacturers 12 months to change their working practices, which means that for the next year, many will continue to churn out inexpensive devices that might not adhere to the most basic of security standards. "Manufacturers will likely continue to regard speed to market as a priority over device security, believing that this is the primary consideration for maintaining profits,” Kim Bromley, a senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at Digital Shadows, tells TechCrunch. Bromley also believes that the U.K. will struggle to enforce these regulations against manufacturers based in mainland China (PRC). "Some PRC-based manufacturers release products that are cheaper than other products on the market, and therefore users will continue to buy products that may contain security flaws, or at the very least, do not comply with UK legislation," said Bromley. "The new requirements will also place huge burdens on UK resellers that may use PRC manufactured products on their own; keeping pace with the requirements and changing working practices could prove difficult." The solution, however, remains unclear, though cybersecurity experts seem to universally agree that the U.K. government needs to be flexible in its approach to IoT security, and ensure it doesn’t fall into the common trap of looking only at the past and the present, instead of the future. “Both attackers and, sadly, unscrupulous manufacturers and vendors, are endlessly creative,” says Amanda Finch, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec). “There will inevitably be new avenues of attack that circumvent the demands of the bill, and new vulnerabilities created by lazy manufacturers. As such, this bill has to be seen as one step in an endless process of review and refinement, rather than an end in itself." |
Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey 
Pokémon GO maker Niantic 
Glorify, a Christian-focused subscription app offering meditation, bible passages and Christian music, 
Southeast Asian super app Grab 
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