Daily Crunch - Apple hits $2 trillion market cap

Wednesday, August 19, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

Apple stock reaches a big milestone, Facebook Portal gets more work-friendly and Twitter reports progress against hate speech. This is your Daily Crunch for August 19, 2020.

The big story: Apple hits $2 trillion market cap

Apple’s share price is up around 59% since the beginning of the year, despite seeing relatively modest, 11% year-over-year revenue growth in its most recent earnings report.

Alex Wilhelm argues that Apple’s strong market performance, and similar strength from other tech giants, is a good thing for startups:

Public rallies can help advance IPOs, and acquisitions. So today’s news that Apple is now sufficiently rich enough to shame Croesus means that your friendly, local startup might be able to close that next round at a price that it likes.

It pays to hire the right way

Facebook Portal gets serious about remote work with BlueJeans, GoToMeeting, Webex and Zoom apps — All of the apps will be arriving at some point in September for the Portal Mini, standard Portal and Portal+.

Twitter claims increased enforcement of hate speech and abuse policies in last half of 2019 — The company claims that its ability to “proactively” surface content violations for human review has helped it increase enforcement.

Top Facebook executive in India files criminal complaint against a journalist for sharing news report — A review of the journalist Awesh Tiwari’s post, written in Hindi, finds that it was merely summarizing a recent Wall Street Journal report.

Image Credits: Facebook

Startups, funding and venture capital

JD.com’s 1-year-old health unicorn to get $830M from Hillhouse — When Alibaba’s rival JD.com saw an opportunity in the prescription drug market, it spun out its healthcare unit into a subsidiary called JD Health.

Hangar raises $15 million for its venture studio for government technology startups — Founded by former Bloomberg advisor Josh Mendelsohn, Hangar has already created four businesses.

India’s first Earth-imaging satellite startup raises $5 million; first launch planned for later this year — Once all of the company’s small satellites are on orbit, the Pixxel network will be able to provide globe-spanning imaging capabilities on a daily basis.

Startups, funding and venture capital image

Image Credits: Pixxel

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Max Levchin is looking ahead to fintech’s next big opportunities — We sat down with Levchin for a recent session of Extra Crunch Live, where he spoke at length about what he sees as some of the big opportunities in fintech.

Dear Sophie: How can I transfer my H-1B to my startup? — An H-1B status employee at a tech company asks about the implications of founding (and working for) their own startup.

Join Twilio’s Jeff Lawson for a live Q&A August 25 at 2:30 pm EDT/11:30 am PDT — Twilio has become a giant, worth more than $37 billion today after going public in 2016.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch image

Image Credits: Affirm

Everything else

Fearing coronavirus, a Michigan college tracks its students with a flawed app — The Aura app had at least two security vulnerabilities only discovered after it was rolled out.

Scotland spaceport gets full approval, will be able to host up to 12 launches per year — This will be the future launch site for Orbex, a startup looking to develop the U.K.’s first reusable orbital launch vehicle.

At the first-ever virtual DNC, Democrats play it safe — The first all-virtual Democratic National Convention is in full swing, but don’t expect fireworks.