Monday, September 30, 2019
Twitter Lets Users Sideline Unwanted Direct Messages
How to use your Apple Card without Apple Pay
How to use your Apple Card without Apple Pay
Dave, which offers money management tools to let its 4M users avoid overdraft fees, raises $50M, says it now has a valuation of $1B+ (Jonathan Shieber/TechCrunch)
Dave, which offers money management tools to let its 4M users avoid overdraft fees, raises $50M, says it now has a valuation of $1B+ — Two years after the Los Angeles-based fintech startup Dave launched with a suite of money management tools to save consumers from overdraft fees …
In the dual-class shares debate, the big exchanges should get off the sidelines
Adam Neumann’s fall from grace was astonishingly swift once his company, WeWork, filed to go public in August. Even while his spending was fairly well-documented across time (as were his apparent conflicts of interest), he was humiliated for enriching himself, then ultimately kicked out of the corner office before the company, in the least surprising turn of events in recent weeks, today yanked its S-1 registration.
Neumann never exactly hid who he is or how he operates, so what suddenly sparked the ire of reporters — and investors — around the world? What, exactly, in an ultimately unsurprising IPO filing had people coughing up their morning coffee? Boiled down to the worst offense (including selling his own company the trademark “We” for $5.9 million in stock) was very likely the lock on control that Neumann had set up through a multi-class voting structure that aimed to cement his control. And by ‘cement,’ we mean he would enjoy overwhelming control for not just for 5 or 10 years after the company went public but, unless Neumann sold a bunch of of his shares, until his death or “permanent incapacity”
Given that Neumann is just 40 years old and mostly abstains from meat, that could have been an awfully long time. Yet this wasn’t some madcap idea of his made from whole cloth. There are plenty of founders who have or who plan to go public with dual or multi-class shares designed to keep them in control until they kick the bucket. In some cases, it’s even more extreme that that.
Consider at Lyft, for example, Logan Green and John Zimmer hold high-voting shares entitling them to twenty votes per share not until each is dead but both of them. If one of them dies or becomes incapacitated, Lyft’s so-called sunset clause enables the remaining cofounder to control the votes of the deceased cofounder. Even more, after the lone survivor kicks the bucket, those votes still aren’t up for grabs. Instead, a trustee will retain that person’s full voting powers for a transition period of 9 to 18 months.
The same is true over at Snap, where cofounders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy have designated the other as their respective proxies. Accordingly, when one dies, the other could individually control nearly all of the voting power of Snap’s outstanding capital stock.
That’s not the worst of it, either. Many dual class shares are written in such a way that founders can pass along control to their heirs. As SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson, a longtime legal scholar and law professor, told an audience last year, it’s no academic exercise.
You see, nearly half of the companies who went public with dual-class over the last 15 years gave corporate insiders outsized voting rights in perpetuity. Those companies are asking shareholders to trust management’s business judgment—not just for five years, or 10 years, or even 50 years. Forever.
So perpetual dual-class ownership—forever shares—don’t just ask investors to trust a visionary founder. It asks them to trust that founder’s kids. And their kids’ kids. And their grandkid’s kids. (Some of whom may, or may not, be visionaries.) It raises the prospect that control over our public companies, and ultimately of Main Street’s retirement savings, will be forever held by a small, elite group of corporate insiders—who will pass that power down to their heirs.
Why public market investors haven’t pushed back on such extremes isn’t clear, though they’re far from an homogenous group, of course. Surely, some aren’t aware of what they’re agreeing to when they’re buying shares, given that dual-class structures are far more prevalent than they once were. Other investors may plan to churn out of the shares so quickly that they’re uninterested in a company’s potential governance issues later in time.
A third possibility, suggests Jay Ritter, who is a professor of finance at the University of Florida and an I.P.O. expert, is that even with dual-class structures, shareholders have legal rights that limit that ability of an executive who has voting control to do anything he or she wants, and the board of directors, including the CEO, has a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value.
Says Ritter, “I don’t think it’s accidental that with the We Company, the board of directors let [Neumann] get away with various things, and as it was transitioning to a public company, a lot of [outside participants] pushed and said, ‘This is a company where we’re worried about corporate governance and we’re willing to apply a big discount to people with inferior voting rights.'”
Of course, some investors believe visionary founders should be left to control their companies as long as they wish because, in the case of Alphabet and Facebook specifically, their founders have produced asymmetric returns for many years. But we’re still fairly early into this experiment. Do we really want more situations like we saw with Sumner Redstone of Viacom, with trials over founders’ mental capacity playing out in the media?
For his part, Alan Patricof — the renowned venture capitalist who founded the private equity firm Apax Partners before cofounding the venture firm Greycroft — say he isn’t looking forward to that future. Instead, he think it’s time the exchanges that list these companies’ shares do something about it. “I”m not holier than thou in this industry,” says Patricof, “but if you want to be a publicly traded company, you should act like a public company.” To Patricof, that means one vote for one share — period.
There’s a precedent for intervention. Patricof notes that dual-class stock first emerged in 1895 and by that 1926, there were 183 companies with such stock. It became so widespread, that the New York Stock Exchange banned the use of non-voting stock until 1956, when it made changed its rules for the Ford Motor Company, which granted only partial voting rights to new shareholders. In the ensuing years, few companies took advantage of dual-class listings until Google bounded onto the scene and now, 15 years after its IPO, it’s like 1926 all again.
Indeed, while Patricof is sympathetic to the argument that founders might need protection for a few years after an IPO, things have gone way too far, in his estimation, and he thinks the best solution would be for the NYSE and Nasdaq to meet for lunch and decide to ban multi-class shares again.
There aren’t a lot of other options. VCs aren’t going to force the issue by turning away founders with whom they want to work. Neither are bankers or large institutional investors like mutual funds; they’ve also shown they’re more than happy to look the other way if it means money in their pockets. “I could be wrong,” says Patricof, “but I don’t think it would that tough for [the big exchanges] to impose a ban that keeps founders from wielding so much power at the expense of the company’s other shareholders.”
Given how fiercely competitive the exchanges are, it’s certainly hard to imagine, this meeting of the minds. But the only other plausible path back to a saner system would seemingly be the Securities & Exchange Commission, and it seems disinclined to do anything about the issue.
Indeed, while Commissioner Jackson has advocated for change, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton would clearly prefer to leave well enough alone. After the S&P Dow Jones Indices and another major index company, FTSE Russell, decided to ban all companies with multiple classes of stock a couple of years ago — they’re uncomfortable with forcing popular index funds to buy stakes in companies that give investors little say in corporate decisions — Clayton reportedly called the moves “governance by indexation” at a conference.
It’s easy to see his argument that the indexes are being heavy handed. On the other hand, a lot of market participants might rather see companies forced to do away with dual-class structures — or at least forced to dismantle their multi-class structures after a fixed period or specific event — to watching those with with unchecked power be broken into pieces afterward.
The reality is that neither WeWork, nor Neumann, are not the zany outliers they’ve been made to seem. They’re very much a product of their time, and if shareholders don’t want to see more of the same, something has to be done. It might be incumbent on the exchanges to do it.
WeWork throws in the towel on its ill-fated IPO
ETtech Top 5: Cognizant's new sales strategy, games are new engagement levers & more
Internet companies team up to tackle e-frauds
Unlocking iPhones crucial in Unnao, Chinmayanand cases
What to expect from Microsoft's event on October 2: Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, an ARM-based Surface, and at least a teaser of a dual-screen device (Tom Warren/The Verge)
What to expect from Microsoft's event on October 2: Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, an ARM-based Surface, and at least a teaser of a dual-screen device — Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3, and some mysterious new hardware — Microsoft is holding a big Surface hardware event in New York City on Wednesday, October 2nd.
Twitter is rolling out a filter that moves unwanted DMs containing questionable language or spam to an "additional messages" folder on Android, iOS, and the web (Jon Fingas/Engadget)
Twitter is rolling out a filter that moves unwanted DMs containing questionable language or spam to an “additional messages” folder on Android, iOS, and the web — Twitter is quickly acting on plans to filter potentially offensive direct messages. It's rolling out the filter to all users on Android, iOS and the web.
Samsung Galaxy Fold to Launch in India Today: What You Need to Know
Khatabook raises $25M to help businesses in India record financial transactions digitally and accept online payments
Even as tens of millions of Indians have come online for the first time in recent years, most businesses in the nation remain offline. They continue to rely on long notebooks to keep a log of their financial transactions. A nine-month old startup that is digitizing the bookkeeping and allowing merchants to accept online payments just raised a significant amount of capital.
Khatabook, a Bangalore-based startup, said on Tuesday it has raised $25 million in a new financing round. The Series A round for the startup was funded by GGV Capital, Partners of DST Global, RTP Ventures, Sequoia India, Tencent, and Y Combinator. A clutch of high-profile angel investors including Amrish Rau, Anand Chandrasekharan, Deep Nishar, Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, Kunal Bahl, and Kunal Shah also participated in the round. The startup has raised $29 million to date.
Khatabook operates an eponymous Android app that allows small and medium businesses to keep a log of their financial transactions and accept payments online. The app, which was launched on Google Play Store in December last year, has amassed 5 million merchants from more than 3,000 cities, towns, and villages in India, Ravish Naresh, cofounder and CEO of Khatabook, told TechCrunch in an interview this week.
The app, which does not charge merchants, was used to process transactions worth more than $3 billion in August, said Naresh. Most merchants in developing markets are currently not online. They continue to rely on logging their financial transactions — credit, for instance — on notebooks and pieces of paper. As you can imagine, this methodology is not structured.
Even as Reliance Jio, a telecom operator launched by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, upended the Indian market and brought tens of millions of Indians online for the first time in last three years, most businesses in the country are still carrying out their operations without the use of any technology, said Naresh. “Could we build an app that makes it very easy for merchants to digitize their bookkeeping?” he said.
“As soon as we launched the app, we instantly started to go viral,” he said. For several months now, the startup is seeing 20% growth each month, he said. In six months, the app has helped businesses recover $5 billion in previously unpaid credits, Naresh claimed. Without any marketing, the app has also gained a significant number of users in Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, said Naresh.
“At Khatabook, we have taken early but significant steps towards leveraging this trend to digitize India’s shopkeepers. For most of our merchants, we are the first business software they’ve used in their entire life. And we will continue to build more India-first innovations to further enable the growth of what is still a largely untapped sector,” he said.
In a statement, Hans Tung, Managing Partner of GGV Capital, said, “as a global investor, we seek out founders who understand the local market and respond to growth opportunities with speed and agility – we certainly see this with the Khatabook team.”
Naresh, a cofounder of property startup Housing, said the startup will use the capital to build new features such as billing and invoicing to serve merchants. In next 12 months, Khatabook will aim to add 25 million businesses, he said.
A growing number of startups in India are attempting to help businesses. OkCredit, which raised $67 million last month, serves 5 million merchants. IndiaMART, a 23-year-old B2B firm that went public this year, led a round in a startup called Vyapar last month that is addressing similar problems.
Leaked images reveal the upcoming Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3 (13-inch and 15-inch), and an ARM-powered Surface 2-in-1 device (Nick Statt/The Verge)
Leaked images reveal the upcoming Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop 3 (13-inch and 15-inch), and an ARM-powered Surface 2-in-1 device — Well dang, there they are — Microsoft's new Surface lineup appears to have leaked almost in its entirety, thanks to product images obtained by journalist and leaker Evan Blass.
Brands rely on influencers for visibility but fail to measure it
Video-first, variety and vernacular will drive the online content consumption: Report
Google confirms it is testing Duplex-powered Assistant for Chrome, initially with movie ticket booking websites like AMC and Fandango (Jules Wang/Android Police)
Google confirms it is testing Duplex-powered Assistant for Chrome, initially with movie ticket booking websites like AMC and Fandango — Back at I/O, Google announced a major expansion to its Assistant-based concierge automation engine, Duplex. Up until then, it would help people book restaurant tables …
Twitter to leave up a tweet about a "full-blown "hot" civil war" by a far-right militia with almost 24,000 followers; the militia was quote-tweeting Trump (Ryan Broderick/BuzzFeed News)
Twitter to leave up a tweet about a “full-blown “hot” civil war” by a far-right militia with almost 24,000 followers; the militia was quote-tweeting Trump — When is promoting violent extremism not promoting violent extremism? When Twitter says so.
Microsoft now lets OneDrive users expand 1TB storage in 200GB increments and launches OneDrive Personal Vault, to protect folders using 2FA, available globally (Mehedi Hassan/Thurrott)
Microsoft now lets OneDrive users expand 1TB storage in 200GB increments and launches OneDrive Personal Vault, to protect folders using 2FA, available globally — Microsoft announced two major features for OneDrive back in June: Personal Vault and expandable storage. Both of the features are launching worldwide today.
E-commerce cos add games to increase customer engagement
HDFC Bank and Paytm Payments Bank tops in the number of digital transactions
Videos of owners trying Tesla's new Smart Summon feature, which show Teslas autonomously driving to owners with varying degrees of success, go viral (Jason Torchinsky/Jalopnik)
Videos of owners trying Tesla's new Smart Summon feature, which show Teslas autonomously driving to owners with varying degrees of success, go viral — Just a few days ago, Tesla announced their new Version 10 software update, which included such things as the ability to play Cuphead …
WhatsApp will end support partially for iOS 8 from February 2020
While popular messaging platform WhatsApp last updated its blog post regarding WhatsApp app support on mobile devices in May, it later added new information to its FAQ page, which now talks about a partial end of support for iOS 8. In other words, WhatsApp won’t allow account verification on iOS 8 devices after February 1, 2020. This will affect WhatsApp users who have not updated their iPhones to iOS 9 since its release in September 2015.
While WhatsApp’s blog post update from May this year reads, “You won't be able to use WhatsApp on the following platforms for: iPhone iOS 7 and older after February 1, 2020”, its FAQ page now says that on iOS 8 and older versions, “you can no longer create new accounts, nor reverify existing accounts.” It also adds, “You'll no longer be able to use all Windows Phone operating systems after December 31, 2019, and WhatsApp might not be available in the Microsoft Store after July 1, 2019.”
What this means is that if you’re using WhatsApp on iOS 8, you won’t be able to delete your account and re-register on the same device on or after February 1, 2020. You also won’t be able to perform new registrations on the device after that specified date. To get full support for WhatsApp, consider upgrading to iOS 9 or later. The current version of Apple’s mobile operating system is iOS 13.1, which the Cupertino-based company rolled out to its supported list of iOS devices a few days ago. You can read more about iOS 13 here.
If you’re still on iOS 8 on your iPhone, it’s likely you own one of the following models: iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPhone 6, or iPhone 6 Plus. All of these models can be upgraded to a newer version of iOS, which you can begin to do by heading to Settings > General > Software Update on your iPhone. To update your iPhone, you’ll want to plug it into a wall outlet and connect to a steady Wi-Fi network. You’ll also need up to 4GB of free space on your iPhone to perform an update to the latest version of iOS.
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Sunday, September 29, 2019
TikTok Owner ByteDance's H1 Revenue Said to Be Better Than Expected
Russia Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Huawei Over 5G
Netflix Tests Limited Free Access in India With Bard of Blood
Redmi 8A to go on sale again in India today: Specs, price and offers
The Redmi 8A was launched in India just a few days ago and it went on sale for the first time in India on Monday midnight. The device is all set to go on sale for the second time in India today, September 30 at 2 PM. The Redmi 7A successor goes up against the likes of the Realme C2, Nokia 2.2, Samsung Galaxy M10, and other phones that are placed in the same price range. The phone also offers 18W fast charging.
Redmi 8A specificationsThe Redmi 8A features a 6.22-inch HD display and comes with a waterdrop notch display design. The budget smartphone is powered by ṭhe Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 chipset. It comes in 2GB and 3GB RAM options with 32GB of internal storage. It is also equipped with a dedicated microSD card slot that supports memory expansion of up to 512GB.
On the optics front, the Redmi 8A sports a single 12MP Sony IMX363 sensor at the back. It has an f/1.8 aperture lens. The camera supports dual PD autofocus, AI scene detection. On the front lies an 8MP selfie shooter.
The Redmi 8A has fine ridges on the rear panel that the company is calling an “aura wave grip design.” It doesn’t have a fingerprint sensor. The phone packs a 5000mAh battery that comes with 18W fast charging support.
Redmi 8A price and offersThe Redmi 8A is priced at Rs 6,499 for the 2GB + 32GB storage variant. In contrast, the 3GB RAM + 32GB storage model costs Rs 6,999. It is being offered in Midnight Black, Ocean Blue, and Sunset Red colour options. It will be sold through Mi.com and Flipkart at 2 PM today, September 30.
Flipkart is offering a 5 percent instant discount or cashback on Flipkart Axis Bank credit cards, Buzz credit cards, and HDFC Bank debit cards.
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Indian Army Recruitment 2019 – Apply Online for 152 Religious Teacher Posts
APEPDCL 2019 – Energy Asst (Jr Linemen Gr II) Result & Marks Released
APSPDCL 2019 – Energy Asst (Jr Linemen Gr II) Selected Candidates List Released
Asus ROG Phone 2 Next Sale in India Scheduled for October 8
WaPo's Arc CMS, run by ~250 staff, is now used across ~600 sites, up from ~100 last year, including Tribune Publishing, now adds BP as first non-media customer (Gerry Smith/Bloomberg)
WaPo's Arc CMS, run by ~250 staff, is now used across ~600 sites, up from ~100 last year, including Tribune Publishing, now adds BP as first non-media customer — - Post says Arc revenue will rival subscriptions and advertising — Jeff Bezos has helped the Post recruit and retain engineers
OnePlus TV to be manufactured in India by year-end, says OnePlus CEO
Last week, OnePlus launched the much-awaited OnePlus TV in India. While the Chinese company was teasing just one TV, it jumped straight into the smart TV segment by announcing two TVs in its 55 Q1 Series. The TVs are made China, however, in an interview, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau has said that the newly announced TVs will be manufactured in India by year-end. In a recent interview, Lau said that the two TVs are currently being imported, but OnePlus will be producing them in India by 2019-end or early 2020.
The two OnePlus TVs feature a 55-inch 4K QLED panel with a 95.7 percent screen-to-body ratio. There is a non-pro variant that misses out on the integrated sliding soundbar present in OnePlus TV Q1 Pro. According to the company, the TVs cover 96 percent of the DCIP-3 and 120 percent of the NTSC colour gamut.
Both OnePlus TVs are equipped with the Gamma Color Magic chip that enables a host of features like Super Resolution, Contrast Enhancement, Noise Reduction, MEMC, De-Contour, Dolby Vision, Colour Brightening and Colour Enhancement to deliver a more ‘vivid and smooth’ experience.
The OnePlus TV Q1 Pro sports eight speakers that have a total power output of 50W. Six of the eight speakers are forward-facing while two 20W speakers face backwards. In contrast, the Q1 has a total of four speakers that have a 50W total power output.
The two OnePlus TVs feature a carbon fibre finish and a magnetic cover that snaps over the I/O ports. Both support Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD and Dolby Digital Plus audio. Moreover, the company is offering OxygenPlay UI based on Android TV OS. Another feature, OnePlus Connect, lets users connect their smartphones and control the TV through an app.
The OnePlus TV 55 Q1 Pro costs Rs 99,900. On the other hand, the standard Q1 is priced at Rs 69,990. You can read more about the OnePlus TVs and offers available on purchase, here.
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Watch the Trailer for Upstarts, Netflix's Next Indian Movie
Realme C2 Update Brings September Security Patch, Other New Features
Elon Musk Unveils New Mars Rocket Prototype, Expects Missions in Months
Flipkart Big Billion Days Sale: Best Offers on Mobiles and Electronics
ETtech Top 5: Revised draft consumer protection rules, Growing ecomm festive sales & more
Shopping momentum brings relief to retailers
Grofers eyes $1B revenue by year-end
PhonePe in talks with ICICI Bank for UPI play
AION Capital puts $40 million in SME lender Clix Capital
Etail rules may include booking and streaming
A look at how tech firms and government keep failing to curb the sharing of child sexual abuse images, long after the PROTECT our Children Act was passed in '08 (New York Times)
A look at how tech firms and government keep failing to curb the sharing of child sexual abuse images, long after the PROTECT our Children Act was passed in '08 — Online predators create and share the illegal material, which is increasingly cloaked by technology.
A cracker of a start to e-commerce festival sales
[Thread] New UK-US treaty grants UK courts options similar to those of the US for obtaining message content, but won't change the status quo on E2E encryption (Alex Stamos/@alexstamos)
[Thread] New UK-US treaty grants UK courts options similar to those of the US for obtaining message content, but won't change the status quo on E2E encryption — It's really early on a Sunday, so while I sip my coffee I'm also going to try to clear up a lot of confusion about the CLOUD Act created by poor reporting by The Times (of London) and Bloomberg. Here is the original, incorrect story: https://ift.tt/2oET5AE...
WeWork proves that (venture) capitalism works
What’s the lesson of WeWork?
Here’s a startup that has been a darling of Silicon Valley investors for years, whose offices and CEO have been stunningly painted across the covers of major trade magazines and strategically deployed across major tech conference stages, including our very own. At its peak, the company commanded a valuation of tens of billions of dollars and was supposed to be on course for the stratosphere, joining companies like Google and Facebook.
And then it all came crashing down, in literally a handful of days.
It’s easy to point to WeWork’s potentially 75%+ valuation drop, its looming layoffs, the firing of its CEO, and the seeming compression of a whole heck of a lot of investors and employee equity as a sordid disaster tale of capitalism, and venture capitalism in particular. VCs — none more so than Masayoshi Son at SoftBank — constantly overbought, oversold, and overcommitted to a company that had pretty much no business fundamentals whatsoever.
So what’s the lesson of WeWork for venture capital? In a word, nothing.
Venture capitalism is about investing in bold bets with huge, outsized returns. It’s meant to be risk-adjusted, both at the valuation scale but also at a portfolio scale. VCs should be buying equity at the right price to take into account every individual startup’s risk profile while also constructing a portfolio that selects each of those risks for the best overall return.
For WeWork, much of those dollars were driven by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which seemed to double down again and again on the company, even at loggerheads with its own limited partners. The Vision Fund made a bet, seemingly with reasonable access to internal information, and that bet turned out to be wrong.
But a bet it was.
Many bets in venture turn out to be duds. Sometimes you lose some of your money. Sometimes you lose all of it.
And then sometimes you make it in spades. SoftBank’s Son once invested $20 million into a fledging Chinese ecommerce company called Alibaba. That stake is worth around $100 billion today, excluding an $11 billion stock sale a few years ago that was recognized on SoftBank’s financials earlier this year.
This is the math that Son sees in venture: 111,000,000,000 / 20,000,000 = 5,550x. There is no other asset class on the planet that will turn a dollar into thousands of dollars like venture capital.
WeWork’s woes don’t change this base formula. Nor does the continual drop of Wag, which received $300 million from the Vision Fund and looks to be going through tough challenges.
In any portfolio, there are going to be losses. The infamous J-curve in venture, where losses materialize far faster than gains in the early years of a fund, is alive and well — even at the growth stage.
And WeWork isn’t even dead yet — it still has cash, and it will rebuild. Will it be the largest startup turnaround in history? Possibly. Could it go straight to bankruptcy? Sure. Will the Vision Fund make money? Well, it really depends on that preference stack and a thousand other variables to be determined in the coming weeks, months, and years.
It’s all so early. My guess is that we still have about five years to go before we really start to get sufficient information to evaluate the Vision Fund’s ambitions.
Along this line thoughI don’t think I just need to defend venture capitalism though, but capitalism itself.
Matt Stoller, who has made it his mission to target big companies including Big Tech, summarizes the WeWork situation as emblematic of “counterfeit capitalism,” a system of founding story myths and fake growth charts underwritten by venture capitalists trying to build long-term, sustainable monopolistic companies using predatory pricing to kill off competitors.
Yet, that narrative totally misses the point of what capital does, and what investment means. Very, very few companies (venture-backed or not) are profitable from day one. Opening a restaurant requires buying equipment and signing a lease well before any customer walks in through the front door. Ditto for software startups, which need to actually build software before a user will pay for it. Capital investment is the bridge between plans to execution and launch.
The question is how long should a company be unprofitable to goad sales and drive revenues? A decade or two ago, it used to be that companies needed to be profitable to IPO. But why? Why precisely then should a company slow down its investment and clean up its cash flows? Why not earlier? Why not later?
In fact, something great has happened in the last few years in the credit markets: at least some investors are increasingly positioning their portfolios for growth rather than cash flows. They are willing to wait for profits, sometimes for years.
Or, in other words, more and more investors are thinking long-term about the ultimate potential worth of a business.
WeWork could be profitable today. It could shutter its most recently opened locations, condense down to a handful of locations in major cities, and roll around in its positive cash flow. Of course the Vision Fund understands this. But why lock in small gains today when there is so much more potential lurking out there?
We should be cheering this behavior, and not castigating it, even if WeWork itself might turn out to be a dud. The lesson of this whole saga isn’t that capitalism isn’t performing. In fact, it’s precisely the opposite: (venture) capitalism is performing better than ever to invest in future, long-range growth.
Badass millennial women are supercharging startup investments
Across the political, social and economic stage, women’s issues are finally receiving heightened attention and priority.
There are more women than ever seeking political office; funding for female-founded startups is reaching record levels (even if they still have a long way to go to reach gender parity); a sizable cohort of female-founded and led companies have achieved billion-dollar unicorn valuations; and several women-led companies, including PagerDuty, The RealReal, and Eventbrite, have entered the public markets with successful IPOs.
What’s driving so much positive change?
Clearly, broadened awareness of gender and power issues, largely due to #MeToo, as well as an increase in the number of female investors, thanks to groups like All Raise, are all contributing catalysts. In addition, women now outnumber men in college, a majority of American moms are in the workforce, and in 40 percent of households those women are the breadwinners. But it’s more than that; I believe that there’s a profound generational shift afloat, and that this first wave of female-led unicorns is just the tip of the NASDAQ iceberg.
Unlike previous generations who may have either looked at self-investment as self-indulgence or who simply didn’t have the resources or technology available to make supplementary investments in themselves, today’s badass millennial women are unapologetic about their desire to invest in their own success and well-being. Determined to succeed without compromising their values or physical and mental wellness, these uber-empowered millennial women are making viable a new generation of startups to help them realize their dreams and feel comfortable in their skin. I refer to this economic wave as She-conomy 2.0.
For decades now there have been tech companies, which I refer to as She-conomy 1.0, catering to traditional and homogeneous identities of women primarily as shoppers and caregivers. In contrast, these new modern She-conomy 2.0 brands address latent, historically unmet, often un-discussed and under-served needs that speak to the multitude of other facets of our identities.
These companies have less to do with what women buy and more to do with their willingness to invest in themselves — in their careers and in their physical and emotional health and well-being. They are seeking and are willing to pay for products and services that help them advance their careers, feel comfortable about their bodies, and provide the physical and emotional support they’re seeking.
The founding members of Allraise (Image courtesy of Allraise)
Women are taking control of their careers and supporting each other.
More than two decades ago, when I had my first child, I joined a mom’s group at Stanford Hospital. We were all working moms trying to juggle career and motherhood. It was a truly challenging time for each of us. The group provided such helpful support that we met every Monday evening for five years until our kids were in kindergarten. Why Mondays? Because Mondays are especially hard for working parents, marking yet another week in search of balance. We realized that meeting on Monday evenings provided us with the support we needed to make it through the work week. Perhaps even more critically, it gave us something about Mondays to look forward to.
There’s something incredibly empowering about experiencing a major transition like a new job or new parenthood as part of a cohort. Sheryl Sandberg famously sought to institutionalize this kind of support for working women with her non-profit Lean In. It has dramatically raised awareness around working women’s struggles. However, individual Lean In group leaders are usually volunteers running these sessions on the side while working and shouldering life’s endless list of other responsibilities.
Now a new generation of organizations is offering this support — for a fee. As for-profit organizations, they’re doing so in a scalable, consistent and reliable way. Women don’t have to worry about whether the organizer will be able to carve out time to orchestrate a meeting because doing so is the organizer’s job. Chief, Declare, The Assembly*, The Wing and The Riveter are all examples of companies that are growing and thriving because they’re offering valuable space, support and services that women are willing to pay for. Most of these organizations initially targeted millennials, but women of all generations are benefiting and participating.
A look inside one of The Riveter’s Seattle co-working spaces.
Women are changing the narrative around previously taboo topics and promoting inclusiveness and acceptance of oneself.
It wasn’t long ago that mannequins, much like cover models, only came in one size. Now mainstream brands not only sell broader offerings; they increasingly showcase them in magazines, catalogs, stores and the runway. For example, Nike’s flagship store in London featured both plus-sized mannequins and para-sport mannequins for people with physical and intellectual abilities, and Rhianna’s new inclusive lingerie line regularly presents both plus-size and pregnant models.
Millennials (like all of us) don’t want to feel shamed; they want to feel empowered and beautiful. Instead of settling for frumpy, ill-fitting clothing or outdated product design, millennials are using their social media megaphones to tell the market what they want. Traditional companies like Victoria’s Secret have moved at a molasses-like pace to evolve from treating women as objects of fantasy to celebrating their right to feel great about themselves. Their antiquated practices have created the opportunity for new startups to create brands centered on body positivity. Some companies are filling largely underserved market needs by catering exclusively to larger and specialty sizes, and others are addressing previously taboo topics like body hair, which also contribute strongly to feelings around body positivity. Eloquii offers extended clothing sizes, Ruby Ribbon* and Third Love provide a wide sizing range of under garments and bras, and Fur addresses body hair and grooming.
Women are dedicating more attention to their own health and relationships.
Self-help books have been around for ages, but tech is paving the way for a new generation of services to provide guidance and support that are more convenient and targeted. At the same time, women are increasingly willing to discuss health issues that were previously taboo, like menstruation, menopause and perimenopause, fertility, and depression. Advancements in technology are making health-related self-care more accessible from the convenience of our wristbands and phones. Meanwhile, people are spending a disproportionate amount of their wealth on health, making the entire healthcare industry ripe for disruption.
All of these factors are making femtech big business. Countless new companies are helping women take more active control of their sexual health, including birth control and STI testing (Pill Club and Nurx), period tracking (Flo Health), fertility and egg freezing (Kind Body and Carrot Fertility), menopause (Rory, Genneve), postpartum depression and miscarriage (Maven) and even our relationships (Relish* and Bumble). In addition, no shortage of femtech companies are addressing period care, such as Lola, Cora, The Flex Company, Thinx, and Sustain Natural.
These companies are only viable because so many women — beginning with millennials but expanding out to the rest of us — are now willing and able to invest in themselves. United across a shared mission of female empowerment and inclusivity, She-onomy 2.0 is making it more realistic than ever to empower us to advance our careers, feel good about ourselves and stay healthy. Hats off to the badass millennial women leading this charge; we’re all better off professionally, emotionally and even physically thanks to you!
*Denotes portfolio company for Trinity Ventures
An interview with Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors on criticism over mass layoffs and studio closures, splitting the company into three, rising debt, and more (James Batchelor/GamesIndustry.biz)
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