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| |  Image Credits: aurielaki / Getty Images | | Extra Crunch investor surveys uncover trends in the venture community; when we spoke to 17 VCs earlier this month to find out how COVID-19 will reshape consumer startups, several said gaming was a vertical to watch. To follow up, we reached out to five investors who are active in the sector to find out where they’re seeing new opportunities: - Kevin Zhang, Upfront Ventures
- Ryann Lai, Makers Fund
- Shanti Bergel, Transcend Fund
- Bertrand Vernizeau, Game Seer Venture Partners
- Siamac Kamalie, Skycatcher
If you’re reading this email soon after it arrived, you’re just in time to join us for a live chat with Kapor Capital's Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor. They’ll discuss several issues that are top-of-mind for startup founders, including executive pay cuts, how to manage layoffs, H-1B visas and other topics. Anyone in the audience can pose a question, but only Extra Crunch members can join the conversation — please subscribe if you haven’t already. Have a great week! Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: 10'000 Hours / Getty Images (Image has been modified) | | The global pandemic is reshaping consumer habits, but what does the future hold for social media influencers who use their star power to push products? The influencer trend was fading before the novel coronavirus, but now that companies are slashing marketing budgets, will more brands turn to streaming platforms to target new customers? Read more | | | |
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| |  Image Credits: Two Meows / Getty Images | | For today’s column, Alex Wilhelm spoke to Mary D'Onofrio, a growth-stage investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, about revisiting the performance metrics used to measure SaaS success. The benchmarks developed for Bessemer’s 2020 State of the Cloud report were created pre-COVID-19, which means expectations regarding growth, burn metric and retention have shifted considerably. Read more | | | |
| |  | | “Are you excited and prepared to run this company for the next two years?” As founder and general partner of Precursor Ventures, Charles Hudson has been checking in with portfolio companies to ask if they’re prepared for uncertainty and austerity. If the answer is no, "there's never been a better time to maybe fold," says the pre-seed and seed-stage investor. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Aleutie / Getty Images (Image has been modified) | | Dr. Robert Mittendorff spends his week as a healthcare investor for Norwest Venture Partners, but he works weekends in a San Francisco hospital as an ER physician. In an interview with TechCrunch, he discusses how his dual role shapes his investments and offers some predictions about the future of healthcare. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Malte Mueller / Getty Images | | Congress has replenished the Paycheck Protection Program with new funds, but many startups are still trying to figure out how to navigate the process. One CEO shared her experience with TechCrunch and said her excitement about the CARES Act faded once “it became clear that this legislation — while well-intentioned — may not be enough to help many SMBs and startups.” Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: RunPhoto / Getty Images | | For investors, an economic downturn is always a time to shop for bargains, which means startup valuations are crashing down to earth, and in some cases, making craters. "If you look at 2000 and 2008, venture always views [downturns] as the time to get good deals," says Mike Janke, co-founder of early-stage cybersecurity investment firm Datatribe. "We're looking at a 15% to 25% discount to do deals." Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Richard Drury / Getty Images | | Founders and investors are laser-focused on profitability these days, but “it's not rocket science,” says Indie.vc founder Bryce Roberts. "It's literally more achievable than a Series A round. It's way more achievable than a Series B round. If you look at the kind of fall-off between those rounds, most entrepreneurs would be better off finding their path to profitability and scale." Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Carmen Jimenez/EyeEm / Getty Images | | Rounding up the latest in frontier technology, Devin Coldewey reports on a wearable that uses perspiration for biofuel, a new effort to use lidar to track ocean plastic and an ongoing social experiment where researchers have given drivers car-seat costumes to test pedestrians’ reactions to self-driving vehicles. Read more | | | |
| |  Image Credits: Treedeo / Getty Images | | In Zack Whittaker’s new security column, you’ll find news about the third major breach this year at a payments processor, a major iOS security flaw that dates back eight years, and Zoom’s latest efforts to address “its security screw-ups and privacy flubs.” Read more | | | |
| |  | | The COVID-19 pandemic continues to dictate coverage for our weekly recap of the app industry: this week, Google and Apple are set to release a cross-platform contract tracing API to developers. Also, the high death toll has led Instagram to rush out a new feature to memorialize accounts belonging to people who have passed, video game spending has reached an all-time high and established instant-messaging apps are taking aim at newcomer Houseparty. Read more | | | |
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