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| | | Since launching Extra Crunch last year, we’ve surveyed many of the world’s top investors to learn more about the opportunities they perceive. In our latest survey, we reached out to several VCs to get a sense of what they’re looking for in direct-to-consumer startups and how their sentiment might have shifted in recent weeks: - Nicole Quinn, Lightspeed Venture Partners
- Ben Lerer, Lerer Hippeau
- Caitlin Strandberg, Lerer Hippeau
- Gareth Jefferies, Northzone
- Matthew Hartman, Betaworks Ventures
- Alexis Ohanian, Initialized Capital
- Luca Bocchio, Accel
Since the beginning of 2019, D2C startups raised between $8 and $10 billion across more than 600 deals. At the same time, investors pivoted from growth to profitability, which means the fundamentals of these startups are more important than ever. Our panel identified key D2C themes for 2020, shared advice for founders looking to raise and included some real talk about the disastrous Casper IPO (don’t read too much into it). In another VC survey coming out this week, more investors will discuss how COVID-19 is impacting their real estate and proptech plans. This is the content you’re here for. Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: svetikd / Getty Images | | Seven respondents offered actionable advice for founders looking to raise and discussed which customer acquisition channels are most sustainable. Click through to find out which channel one investor described as an "all-but-closed door for most D2C companies." We’ve published their answers in full, but if you’re looking for a quick read, we’ve distilled their responses into three key themes for 2020. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: dowell / Getty Images | | TechCrunch Hardware Editor Brian Heater isn’t an expert in crisis management, but he can recognize bad taste when he sees it. Like the rest of our staff, his inbox is peppered several times a day with story suggestions related to the novel coronavirus pandemic. “Pitching against tragedy is not an uncommon practice in public relations,” he writes, but there’s a right and a wrong way to go about it. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: DNY59 / Getty Images (Image has been modified) | | Corporate venture capital firms raised $41 billion from their corporate parents in 2019. Bill Taranto, president of Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, shared four key strategies with Extra Crunch that he “used to ensure our scale and staying power.” Read more | | | |
| |  | | Devin Coldewey interviewed AI researcher and professor Stuart Russell to discuss the threat he perceives from AI and his new book, "Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control.” "Why is it that better AI produces worse outcomes?” asks Russell. “The answer seems to be that we've actually thought about AI the wrong way from the beginning." Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch | | Media columnist Eric Peckham unpacked the Infinite Dial 2020 survey, which compiles data on consumers’ use of smart speakers, podcasts, music streaming and social media. Read more | | | |
| |  | | The COVID-19 pandemic continues to reshape the app market as locked-down consumers spend more time using their devices to work remotely, seek health information and look for distractions. Ride-hailing apps are down, but restaurant and grocery delivery are spiking, along with downloads for meditation apps. In other news, Apple’s new iPad Pro models are the first to include lidar scanners, a sign many interpreted as Apple’s desire to support the struggling AR market. Read more | | | |
| |  | | E-commerce site Collage has been always had a distributed workforce: co-founders and co-CEOs Joe Golden and Kevin Borders lived on opposite sides of the country when they started up. Golden spoke to reporter Megan Rose Dickey about how he manages remote hiring and onboarding, reading body language on Slack and making sure employees have the tools they need to be successful. Read more | | | |
| |  | | If you have questions about how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting U.S. immigration law, join us this afternoon for a conference call with attorney Sophie Alcorn. The call is open to all, but she’ll take questions first from Extra Crunch subscribers. Click through to get the Zoom link so you can take part. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Bryce Durbin | | In yesterday’s column, Alex Wilhelm studied $100 million funding events “to get a reasonable handle on what's going on in the very late-stages of private equity financings.” Despite weaknesses on the global venture scene, these “mega-rounds” suggest that the late-stage venture world simply isn’t as bad as we expected, he found. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Eggy Sayoga / Getty Images | | As part of our ongoing series of interviews with cybersecurity professionals, we spoke with Mitch Parker, chief information security officer for one of the largest health systems in the U.S. Getting more than 30,000 employees on the same page regarding security is an enormous challenge, which is why Parker says “communication is everything.” Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Chris Clor / Getty Images | | Companies that offer enterprise customers the ability to hop from one cloud to another have a tremendous opportunity, writes Ron Miller. It may be convenient to have a single entity to blame when things go sideways, but “many IT pros are looking for more flexibility than they had in the past.” Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Adeolu Eletu / | | Companies often identify performance issues with artificial intelligence and machine learning only after the damage has been done. To achieve risk-free, reliable outcomes, organizations must address several key operational challenges in their AI and ML models, including bias, data integrity and other factors. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Jason Costanza / Flickr under a CC BY 2.0 license. (Image has been modified) | | For today’s column, Alex Wilhelm interviewed Phil Haslett, chief revenue officer at EquityZen, to find out how the stock market’s recent declines are impacting the value of private startups. Because EquityZen helps owners of stock in private startups sell their shares, Haslett addressed the selloff’s impact on pricing and demand. Initially, their conversation was going to focus on which companies were poised for IPOs in 2020, but that window has slammed shut. Read more | | | |
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