<span>Monthly Archives</span><h1>May 2020</h1>
    Tech News

    Daily Crunch: iPhone sales decline in Q1

    May 1, 2020

    Apple’s earnings show the impact of COVID-19, NVIDIA’s top scientist shares an open source ventilator design and Amazon anticipates big spending in the coming months.

    Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 1, 2020.

    1. iPhone sales are down, ahead of uncertain times for the industry

    Apple device sales have taken a hit, but the company’s services are doing swell, according to its latest earnings report. The iPhone, the longtime cornerstone of the company’s hardware portfolio, hit $28.96 billion in revenue for Q2, down from $31.1 billion from this time last year. The iPad and Mac lines saw drops for the quarter, as well.

    In fact, a new Canalys report suggests that smartphone sales are down 13% globally.

    2. NVIDIA’s top scientist develops open-source ventilator that can be built with $400 in readily-available parts

    The mechanical ventilator design developed by NVIDIA’s Bill Daily can be assembled quickly, using off-the-shelf parts with a total cost of around $400 – making it an accessible and affordable alternative to traditional, dedicated ventilators which can cost $20,000 or more.

    3. Amazon Q1 beats on net sales of $75.5B but posts net income of $2.5B, down $1B on a year ago

    The company’s net sales were up 26% year-year-over. Of those sales, $41 billion was attributable to product sales and $33 billion to services (which includes AWS, but also streaming and other non-physical goods). CEO Jeff Bezos acknowledged the challenges the company is facing, but he also reiterated that it plans to double down on spending in Q2.

    4. Walmart is piloting a pricier 2-hour ‘Express’ grocery delivery service

    Walmart now hopes to capitalize on the increased demand for speedier delivery with the introduction of a new service that allows consumers to pay to get to the front of the line. The retailer confirmed today it’s launching a new Walmart Grocery service called “Express,” which promises orders in two hours or less for an upcharge of $10 on top of the usual delivery fee.

    5. 5 tips for starting a business with a stranger

    Co-founder and CEO Sam Pillar argues that his startup Jobber is proof that starting a company with a stranger isn’t just doable, it can even be an advantage. That’s because it allowed them to arrive at big decisions and have productive debate without the baggage and bias of a pre-existing relationship, establishing Jobber’s feedback-oriented culture. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

    6. Cliqz pulls the plug on a European anti-tracking alternative to Google search

    Cliqz, a Munich-based anti-tracking browser with private search baked in that has sought to offer a local alternative to Google powered by its own search index, is shutting down — claiming this arm of its business has been blindsided by the coronavirus crisis. However, the company is not closing down entirely, and a spokesman confirmed that Ghostery will continue.

    7. JetBrains Academy for learning code launches for free during COVID-19 pandemic

    Most online coding courses, either free or paid, essentially suggest you download a project or copy-paste code from their snippets going through their courses. Unlike JetBrains, they tend not to include Integrated Development Environments, which are more helpful in the learning process.

    The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

    Source: Tech Crunch Mobiles | Daily Crunch: iPhone sales decline in Q1

    Startups

    Mark Cuban: ‘Raising money isn’t an accomplishment, it’s an obligation’

    May 1, 2020

    Mark Cuban isn’t impressed that you’ve raised money.

    “If you think the accomplishment is raising money first, we’re probably not gonna get along,” said Cuban in an Extra Crunch Live interview. “If your orientation is ‘I got to raise the money first,’ you don’t really have a company yet, and you really haven’t accomplished anything yet. […] Sweat equity is the best equity.”

    We also got his take on today’s economy, the nation’s direction and his notes on what startups should do to survive in the new world. Happily, as we had an hour to chat, we managed to cover a lot of ground. The full conversation (YouTube) is after the jump, and we’ve excerpted a number of quotes for your perusal.

    But up top we wanted to share Cuban’s notes regarding which companies should accept Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds from the Small Business Administration. The matter became a hot-button issue in and around Silicon Valley, where initial debate centered around which startups could access the money. After it became clear the first installment of PPP funds wasn’t going to last, whether startups should access to the capital at all became a question. Some venture-backed companies even decided to return their PPP check.

    According to Cuban, when PPP was first put together, the market’s “perspective was that there’d be plenty of money for everybody. You know, people didn’t really want to do the math.” Cuban said that if there was $350 billion in the pot and one million small businesses, the fund would have worked out to $350,000 apiece. “Well guess what,” he said, “there are 30 million companies, [and] like 20 of them are independent contractors.”

    Once you did the calculations again with that many companies eligible for PPP funds, you could tell that the money wasn’t going to last. So Cuban told firms that he’s invested in where he has sway to “either not apply or just pay it back immediately.” Why? “For the betterment of the country and the economy,” he said, adding that “if you do have access to capital” or “your business isn’t dramatically impacted [then] let’s leave [the PPP money] for the people who need it the most.”

    As noted, the full video is below (you can join Extra Crunch here!), along with Cuban’s notes on startup advice during the pandemic, American 2.0 (and Marc Andreessen’s essay), AI, pre-seed companies, his future in politics and how to pitch him.

    Mark Cuban on the record

    How he’s advising portfolio companies during the pandemic:

    So first and foremost, communicate. Second is be honest. Third is be transparent. And fourth is be authentic. Because everybody is nervous. Everybody is terrified at a certain level. So you just have to recognize that. People are going to need that honesty from you and people are going to want communications from you. That’s been the primary thing around what these companies should do.

    Regarding cutting costs: Every business is different. On the smallest ones, they’re already grinding, and it’s typically dependent on the founder. I’ve really tried to encourage people to keep all their employees on if at all possible. That there’s gonna be a lot of change and that’s going to create a lot of opportunity. So, if you can hold on to your employees and push forward in any way, shape, or form, you may have an opportunity.


    Source: Tech Crunch Startups | Mark Cuban: ‘Raising money isn’t an accomplishment, it’s an obligation’

    Startups

    IPOs, crypto funds and other things I missed this week

    May 1, 2020

    Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

    What a week it’s been. I’m exhausted. Not only are we another cycle deeper into the COVID-19 quarantine, but there seems to be more news than ever to sift through. I’ve fallen behind. So, today, this little column is taking look back at things that it missed but wanted to cover. (There may come a day when we run out of stuff to talk about, but it’s not coming any time soon.)

    So let’s talk about a16z’s new crypto fund, recent economic data, the Ebang F-1, Lime’s layoffs, Procore’s IPO delay and fresh valuation, stocks, Luckin, and, if we have time, Twitter’s changing jobs data. Let’s get this all out of our heads and into the world.

    Odds, ends

    To annoy my editors, we’re using bullet points this morning. Bullet points are great way to convey a bloc of information in a neat format. Let the haters hate, we have a lot of ground to cover: