Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
SaaS stocks had a good run in late 2019. TechCrunch covered their ascent, a recovery from early-year doldrums and a summer slowdown. In 2020 so far, SaaS and cloud stocks have surged to all-time highs. The latest records are only a hair higher than what the same companies saw in July of last year, but they represent a return to form all the same.
Given that public SaaS companies have now managed to crest their prior highs and have been rewarded for doing so with several days of flat trading, you might think that there isn’t much room left for them to rise. Not so, at least according to Atlassian . The well-known software company reported earnings after-hours yesterday and the market quickly pushed its shares up by more than 10%.
Why? It’s worth understanding, because if we know why Atlassian is suddenly worth lots more, we’ll better grok what investors — public and private — are hunting for in SaaS companies and how much more room they may have to rise.
Layoffs in the technology and venture-backed worlds continued today, as 23andMe confirmed to CNBC that it laid off around 100 people, or about 14% of its formerly 700-person staff. The cuts would be notable by themselves, but given how many other reductions have recently been announced, they indicate that a rolling round of belt-tightening amongst well-funded private companies continues. (TechCrunch confirmed the numbers with the company.)
Mozilla, for example, cut 70 staffers earlier this year. As TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois reported earlier in January, the company’s revenue-generating products were taking longer to reach market than expected. And with less revenue coming in than expected, its human footprint had to be reduced.
Scooter unicorns Lime and Bird have also reduced staff this year. The for-profit drive is firing on all cylinders in the wake of the failed WeWork IPO attempt. WeWork was an outlier in terms of how bad its financial results were, but the fear it introduced to the market appears pretty damn mainstream by this point. (Forsake hope, alle ye whoe require a Series H.)
The money at risk, let alone the human cost, is high. Zume has raised more than $400 million. 23andMe has raised an even sharper $786.1 million. Rappi? How about $1.4 billion. And Oyo? $3.2 billion so far. Every company that loses money eventually dies. And every company that always makes money lives forever. It seems that lots of companies want to jump over the fence, make some money and rebuild investor confidence in their shares.
It’s just too bad that the rank-and-file are taking the brunt of the correction.
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re digging into One Medical’supdated IPO filing released this week. The document contains directional pricing information that will help us understand where the tech-enabled medical care startup expects the market to value itself and also details its Q4 2019 Preliminary Estimated Unaudited Financial Results, which gives us a fuller picture of its financial health.
As we’ll see, One Medical’s expected valuation matches secondary-market transactions in the firm’s equity, and, at the upper-end of its proposed IPO range, represents a solid boost to its final private valuation. Afterwards, we’ll dig back through the company’s numbers, figure out its implied revenue multiple and make a bullish and bearish argument for the company’s hoped-for IPO valuation.
It’s going to be fun! (For a general dive into the company’s IPO filing, head here.)
Tesla werde nicht an jedem Tag so viel Wasser verbrauchen, schrieb Musk. „Das ist möglicherweise ein seltener Fall einer Spitzennutzung, aber nichts, was jeden Tag vorkommt“, betonte er. Zudem sei der Wald auf dem 300 Hektar großen Gelände kein natürlicher Wald. Anwohner hatten immer wieder kritisiert, dass zugunsten des Werkes die Bäume gefällt werden. Er sei zur Kartonherstellung angepflanzt worden und nur ein kleiner Teil werde für die Fabrik verwendet, sagte er.
We all need change in our lives from time to time to shake things up and approach our work and careers with a refreshed enthusiasm. But some people aren’t looking to just improve themselves–some need completely new beginnings and instead seek to reinvent themselves entirely.
The good news is that you can always attain a future that is different from your present. Here are 17 motivating quotes that will help you seek out and attain major changes for yourself and your life.
1. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Elliot
2. “You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.” — Marianne Williamson
3. “Just as established products and brands need updating to stay alive and vibrant, you periodically need to refresh or reinvent yourself.” — Mireille Guiliano
4. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” — Lao Tzu
5. “The reinvention of daily life means marching off the edge of our maps.” — Bob Black
6. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” — Simone de Beauvoir
7. “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.” — Jon Krakauer
8. “People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.” — Warren Bennis
9. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
10. “I thought, I need to reinvent myself. I want every day of life to be wonderful, fascinating, interesting, creative. And what am I gonna do to make that happen?” — Karen Allen
11. “If you are not where you want to be, do not quit, instead reinvent yourself and change your habits.” — Eric Thomas
12. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — R. Buckminster Fuller
13. “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise. The way to activate the seeds of your creation is by making choices about the results you want to create.” — Robert Fritz
14. “There’s nothing more addictive or incredible in life than reinventing yourself and allow yourself to be different every day.” — Thalia
15. “Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.” — Guy Finley
16. “Wherever you are is the entry point.” — Kabir
17. “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” — Michael Altshuler
Published on: Jan 25, 2020
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
“Relational organizing is just organizing,” said Betsy Hoover, one of Higher Ground’s cofounders. “But this allows campaigns to say, ‘Now is the time for you to prioritize your network’ and, two, to say, ‘This is how that outreach impacted my outcome.’ And that’s a really important piece that gets us to another level of voter contact. That, we’re seeing, is just way more effective than the cold outreach.”
“In general, the effects are big,” said Donald P. Green, a political scientist at Columbia and one of the country’s leading experts on get-out-the-vote tactics. When it comes to raising turnout, Green explained, face-to-face canvassing is at the top of the effectiveness scale. At the bottom are spammy, impersonal techniques like mass emails, texts, and paid social media ads. But when those texts or Facebook posts are coming from someone you actually know, the early research suggests that the turnout effect can jump up to levels similar to in-person canvassing. Plus, unlike paying for an army of in-person canvassers, digital relational organizing is easy and cheap to scale.
Democrats have been quick to integrate these tools into their campaigns. In 2018, the Tuesday Company partnered with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to implement its Team app in 70 “red to blue” swing districts, most of which ended up flipping to the Democratic column. Was relational organizing part of the reason for the blue wave? As you’d expect, the people behind the technology argue that it was. Somewhat more surprisingly, some of their Republican Party opponents agree.
Among them is Eric Wilson, a Republican strategist who served as digital director for Ed Gillespie’s 2017 Virginia gubernatorial campaign. Polls on the eve of Election Day showed Gillespie trailing Democrat Ralph Northam by only a few points; he ended up losing by 8.9 percent. Wilson thinks his side was outgunned on relational organizing. “There was one county just outside of Richmond that we were the first [Republican] campaign to lose in 50 some-odd years statewide, and it’s because this group of women self-organized using these tools,” he said. “And that was the wakeup call for me.”
Heading into 2020, Democrats still are far ahead of Republicans in adopting relational organizing technology. So far, some campaigns are using it in primary contests, but the real test will come in the general election, when tech-enabled Democrats find out whether their spiffy apps offer a meaningful counterbalance against Trump’s advantages of incumbency and the social media juggernaut that is his reelection campaign.
When it comes to state and local races, Wilson predicts that, similar to 2018, Democrats may have the advantage again. “There are going to be a lot of Republicans who wake up after Election Day and say, ‘How did this happen—how did I get beat?’” he said. “And it’s going to be relational organizing.”
Democrats’ relational organizing edge is part of the typical pendulum swing of political innovation. Just as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, lacking a traditional ground game, developed novel approaches to social media, Democrats have been scrambling since then to find new tools to win back power. “They got there first because they were having to climb back out of the hole,” said Wilson.
To help his side catch up, Wilson founded Startup Caucus, a conservative response to Higher Ground Labs, in August 2019. The fund has given money to Swipe Red, an app still in beta which aims to do for Republicans what apps like Team have done for Democrats. (Sadly, “Swipe Right” was trademarked.) One candidate giving it a spin is Mark Koran, a Minnesota state senator using Swipe Red for his state’s February caucus.
Alles hat seinen Preis, besonders die Dinge, die nichts kosten.
Art van Rheyn
Sie haben einen Adblocker aktiviert. Deshalb ist unsere Seite für Sie aktuell nicht erreichbar.
Für Nachrichtenseiten wie WirtschaftsWoche Online sind Anzeigen eine wichtige Einnahmequelle. Mit den Werbeerlösen können wir die Arbeit unserer Redaktion bezahlen und Qualitätsartikel kostenfrei veröffentlichen.
Leider verweigern Sie uns diese Einnahmen. Wenn Sie unser Angebot schätzen, schalten Sie bitte den Adblocker ab.
For most people, the story of the Macintosh begins with the famous Super Bowl ad directed by Ridley Scott. In reality, the story started long before that (5 years before, to be exact), but it wasn’t until a few days later that the world would meet the first mass-market truly ‘personal’ computer. The Macintosh included a graphical user interface (GUI), a mouse for navigation, and a built-in display, all of which were revolutionary at the time.
Today marks 36 years from the day the original Mac was introduced by Steve Jobs. In the first of what would become Job’s signature product launch keynotes, Apple showed off its new computer. Oh, and Jobs wore a bow-tie while pulling off a canvas bag to reveal the first Macintosh.
That Mac featured an 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor, a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, a 9-inch black and white display, and 128K of RAM. It also carried a price tag of $2,495, which is roughly $6,000 in today’s dollars. It kind of makes the newest Mac Pro seem affordable in comparison.
It’s hard to imagine today how monumental the Macintosh was at the time, but in addition to the computer itself, Apple’s launch was something completely new. The company turned the tech product launch into a media event, borrowing a page from its CEO at the time, John Sculley’s, former company, Pepsi.
It worked. The Mac was the most popular personal computer in its first year, outselling Apple’s own Lisa, as well as the IBM PCjr. It sold almost 250,000 units that first year, but its long term success was hampered by the lack of applications that took advantage of its GUI. In fact, despite promising more than 70 software titles, there were generally fewer than a dozen widely-available applications.
The Mac has come a long way since 1984, and has taken on a variety of shapes and forms. From the original Macintosh 128K, to the iMac, to the PowerBook and MacBook Pro, Apple has consistently set the direction for the industry and every other manufacturer.
While Apple’s most recent financial success is largely attributed to the iPhone, it’s worth remembering that the introduction of the Mac was the moment that Apple first broke into the mind of the public. It generated a loyal fanbase that has grown over the last 36 years, reaching cult-like status in many ways.
And today, it remains a symbol of the ethos and design innovation that has become Apple’s signature.
That seems like a pretty big success after all.
Published on: Jan 24, 2020
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
One of the new proposed bills is a broad privacy law, which, like a California law that took effect this month, allows consumers to ask companies to delete some personal data, or refrain from selling it. Microsoft has said it already offers the core rights provided by California’s law to all US customers.
The proposed Washington privacy law also requires companies to inform consumers when facial recognition technology is in use in publicly accessible places. That could mean posting notices in stores, for example. Companies operating such systems could not add a person’s face to their database without consent, unless there’s reason to believe they were involved in a specific criminal incident, such as shoplifting.
The second bill, with Nguyen as the lead sponsor, is concerned with government use of facial recognition. It requires agencies to publish accountability reports in advance of procuring the technology with information including the system’s capabilities and limitations, and what data it will use. It specifies that law enforcement agencies need a warrant before using the technology for ongoing surveillance, unless there is imminent danger of serious physical injury.
Nguyen, the son of Vietnamese immigrants, says his work on the issue springs from a concern over potential misuse of facial recognition, not his day job at Microsoft. State legislators in Washington are part-time. “I’d love to not have to work at Microsoft, but because I have three kids and a mortgage that’s reality,” he says, pointing out that his bill will need many votes besides his own to become law. “I’m putting more regulation and oversight over the tech industry.” He says he’s met with representatives of large tech companies, including Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple—and Microsoft.
Nguyen describes his bill as designed to prevent harmful uses of facial recognition, like tracking protestors, while allowing beneficial uses, such as finding a kidnapper. The ACLU of Washington says he has struck the wrong balance.
Nguyen got into a testy exchange at last week’s hearing with Jennifer Lee, a project manager at the ACLU, after she said his bill ignored the interests of marginalized communities. Nguyen said he had met plenty of community representatives; Lee said truly respecting such groups would require pausing use of facial recognition until the public could say whether it wanted the technology to be used or not. “Washingtonians deserve good privacy regulations,” she says. “Just because Microsoft is here doesn’t mean we should have a corporate-friendly privacy bill.”
Nguyen’s facial recognition bill may become more corporate-friendly. Senator Reuven Carlyle, primary sponsor of the larger privacy bill, said he is talking with Delta Air Lines, which wants to make sure its rollout of facial recognition check-in will not be disrupted.
TechNet, the tech lobbying group whose members include big tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, asked that any rules governing private use of facial recognition exempt apps a person uses on their own device, for example to edit photos, or perhaps Face ID. Motorola said requiring a warrant for law enforcement use of the technology in public was too onerous, while Axon expressed concern that requiring allowing outsiders to test facial recognition technology could allow leakage of private data or trade secrets.
Nguyen’s bill and the privacy bill with commercial facial recognition rules must pass through committees and floor votes in both houses of Washington’s legislature to become law. They will also have to withstand criticism from within state government.
At last week’s hearing, a representative of the state attorney general supported allowing consumers to initiate lawsuits for violations. The Washington Association of Police Chiefs complained that since no one has an expectation of privacy in public, the requirement for a warrant before using facial recognition for public surveillance was unnecessary.
Updated, 1-22-20, 12:30pm ET: This article has been updated to include a statement from Microsoft.
Alles hat seinen Preis, besonders die Dinge, die nichts kosten.
Art van Rheyn
Sie haben einen Adblocker aktiviert. Deshalb ist unsere Seite für Sie aktuell nicht erreichbar.
Für Nachrichtenseiten wie WirtschaftsWoche Online sind Anzeigen eine wichtige Einnahmequelle. Mit den Werbeerlösen können wir die Arbeit unserer Redaktion bezahlen und Qualitätsartikel kostenfrei veröffentlichen.
Leider verweigern Sie uns diese Einnahmen. Wenn Sie unser Angebot schätzen, schalten Sie bitte den Adblocker ab.
