Extra Crunch Friday: The bullish case for Palantir’s direct listing

Welcome to Extra Crunch Friday

Summer is not usually a peak IPO season, but 2020 has been full of surprises.

These days, a pack of restless unicorns are pawing the ground inside their corral: Unity, JFrog, Asana, Snowflake and Sumo Logic all filed for IPOs within days of each other.

Home-rental giant Airbnb is getting in on the action as well, filing papers with the SEC that could see its shares trading hands before the new year.

So when news broke that Palantir confidentially submitted an S-1 early last month, Alex Wilhelm was on the case.

Unpacking the numbers behind the story (and dropping several “Lord of the Rings” references), he pored over the data-mining company’s S-1 in search of “bullish bits” that support Palantir’s decision to IPO.

Despite a $579 million loss in 2019, “things have gotten better in Palantir-land (Mordor?) in recent quarters,” he concluded.

Thank you for reading, and have a great weekend!

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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To reach scale, Juni Learning is building a full-stack edtech experience

Several months ago, early-stage reporter Natasha Mascarenhas began tracking the surge of interest in edtech startups as schools closed to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus.

She’s written several articles examining the challenges facing companies in this sector, such as pricing and product-market fit.

Yesterday, she covered Juni Learning, a live-tutoring startup that offers a “full-stack experience” via its platform with curriculum and instructor information.

“In 2020, live tutoring looks like a consumer brand with Peloton-like ideology,” she says.

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Extra Crunch Partner Perk: members save 20% on Canva Pro

Sponsored by TechCrunch

Annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch can receive 20% off an annual plan for Canva Pro

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Synthetic biology startups are giving investors an appetite

You don’t need to be a vegan to notice that plant-based meat is having a moment.

My independently-owned corner store now sells a a wide range of bioengineered burgers and sausages. On social media, friends show off boxes of animal-free soy nuggets that taste like the real thing.

In his latest for Extra Crunch, Jon Shieber looks at the latest biomanufactured products coming to market and discusses the opportunities ahead for investors with:

• Arvind Gupta, co-leader, Mayfield Fund’s Engineering Biology practice
• Seth Bannon, early-stage investor with frontier tech fund Fifty Years
• Zach Serber, co-founder of biotech platform company Zymergen

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How to establish a startup and draw up your first contract

If you’re launching a startup, you should definitely talk to a wide range of people to gather time-tested advice. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of legal details, feel free to ignore anyone who didn’t pass the bar exam.

Lawyers James Alonso from Magnolia Law and Adam Zagaris from Moonshot Legal joined us at TechCrunch Early Stage to hold a “Corporate law 101” clinic for startup founders that covers key steps, including:

• setting up your corporate structure
• issuing shares
• drawing up your first contract
• managing control of a company

Getting these initial steps right is a core part of an entrepreneur’s journey. If you’re a pre-seed founder, click through to read highlights or watch a video with both presentations.

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Our 12 favorite companies from Y Combinator’s S20 Demo Day: Part 2

In the conclusion of our all-hands coverage of Y Combinator’s Demo Day for its Summer 2020 cohort, Natasha Mascarenhas, Devin Coldewey, Lucas Matney, Jonathan Shieber, Greg Kumparak and Alex Wilhelm selected a dozen standouts.

“We saw companies in the future of work, sustainability, no-code, consumer, edtech and delivery solutions. Several entrepreneurs aimed big at e-mail, small at socks and straight at Shopify’s recent success.”

And if you missed it, here’s their reporting from the first Demo Day.

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Dear Sophie: Latest immigration and H-1B updates

Dear Sophie:

I work in people ops in tech. Restrictions and conditions placed on visas and green cards seem to be continuously changing.

What’s the latest for tech, such as H-1Bs and other nonimmigrant visas?

—Strong in San Francisco

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5 steps for building a thriving developer community

The lead of Slack’s developer relations team and a senior marketing manager shared a guest post that lays out their best practices for developing (and supporting) developer ecosystems.

“If your platform doesn’t have a developer community yet, creating one takes a few purposeful steps,” they write.

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What can growth hackers learn from lean product development?

The best advice is simple and easy to remember, like, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Extending the metaphor: if the eggs are your marketing budget, the same rules apply. Instead of going all-out with a moon shot, launch a Minimum Viable Campaign that tests your idea and gathers data.

Big Bang campaigns are inherently risky and often ego-driven, in my opinion. Go slow and be smart.

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Alexa von Tobel: Eliminating risk is the key to building a startup during an economic downturn

In an interview with Managing Editor Jordan Crook, Alexa von Tobel recounts the decisions that led her to found and launch a startup during the Great Recession.

Working from a 75-page business plan that became “her own personal space to develop a product and business,” the document “was a brain dump of everything von Tobel could possibly think of as it relates to her idea.”

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