Startups Weekly - The next Zoom wants to be nothing like Zoom

Saturday, January 09, 2021 • By Natasha Mascarenhas

In the past few months, there hasn’t been one conversation I’ve had about remote work that doesn’t include a mention of Hopin, a virtual events platform last valued at $2.1 billion.

For a company only a little older than a year, Hopin has a wild growth story. It grew its ARR from $0 to $20 million in nine months. It scooped up two businesses to differentiate its business, including StreamYard for $250 million just this week. And its last financing round left the company’s valuation at $2.1 billion.

Hopin’s growth amid Zoom’s fatigue is giving validation to a whole crop of remote-work-focused startups. I see startups in the category sitting in two camps: Either you’re betting that users want a more passive way to interact with video or you’re betting that users want a more active way to interact with video.

This week, for example, I wrote about Rewatch, which creates internal private channels for startups to archive all their videoconferencing meetings. The company is essentially turning live meetings into transcribed documents that employees can sift through on their own time, shifting from synchronous to asynchronous.

In contrast, I also covered Teamflow, a platform that wants to give a virtual space to companies to recreate the serendipity and productivity of an office. Unlike Rewatch, Teamflow thinks that employees want there to be more live moments in a distributed world.

Both previously in-stealth companies cited Hopin as an example of the need for innovation around how we interact virtually. Rewatch and Teamflow, respectively, see Zoom as a plug-in or competitor – not inspiration.

As I mentioned in this week’s podcast, it’s a dynamic I expect to play out even more over the next few months, as we evolve from a Zoom world to a Zoom alternative world. I want to hear from you, even if you disagree, about what companies in the remote work space should be on my radar. E-mail me at natasha.mascarenhas@techcrunch.com or tweet me @nmasc_ with companies you think should be on my remote-work radar.

Image Credits: TechCrunch

The power of platform

This week, the US Capitol was stormed by Pro-Trump insurrectionists in a fatal riot. Many in the tech community blamed Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg for not limiting hate speech on their respective platforms, thus stoking flames of domestic terrorism.

Here’s what to know:

Facebook banned Trump for 2 weeks
Twitter permanently suspended President Trump
Reddit promised to take action
Shopify pulled Trump’s stores off its website.

Even as many see the response as too little too late, the events mark a crucial change in the way that regulation between government and tech works.

Etc: Reggie James, CEO and founder of Eternal, framed the issue in a tweet:

“You all have to make up your mind on if you want government to regulate technology or technology to regulate government And recognize when you call for platforms to remove the current president, you are effectively breaking a silent power tension in one direction.”

FTC versus DTC

Sticking to our government and tech theme, P&G has officially terminated its plan to acquire razor startup, Billie, after the FTC sued over antitrust concerns.

Here’s what to know: Billie was founded in 2017 with the goal of fighting the “pink tax” on goods marketed to women, including razors and body wash. It was going to be acquired by P&G after raising just $35 million in venture capital.

Here’s our seed coverage of the startup.

Etc: Direct-to-consumer brands are not happy. The failed deal is not-so-subtly signaling to DTC brands that there is a cap to their scale, at least in the FTC’s eyes. Government regulation and limited scale also could hurt VC interest in the category.

The optimistic news is that VC funding might be falling out of favor with top D2C brands.

Many product-based brands, as it turns out, are no longer interested in chasing venture capital, playing the “grow-at-all-costs” game and relinquishing partial control to investors, despite the pandemic and the uncertain circumstances many founders find themselves facing.

IPOs, a direct listing, and sky-high valuations

My colleague Alex puts together a brilliant newsletter each week after his column, The Exchange. Subscribe to it for his in-depth analysis on the IPO market and late-stage startups. In the meantime, though…

Here’s what to know:

Etc: The Roblox Gambit

Around TechCrunch

Remembering TechCrunch Japan’s Hirohide Yoshida (1971-2020)

Extra Crunch Live is back in 2021, connecting founders with tech giants and each other

A directory of the most active and engaged investors in VC: The TechCrunch List

The Mixtape Podcast: Behind the curtain of diversity theater

Across the week

Seen on TC

Elon Musk has a new title: world’s richest person

Waymo is dropping the term ‘self-driving,’ but not everyone in the industry is on board

VCs dispense political niceties during capitol riots: ‘Never talk to me again’

California vegan egg startup Eat Just yokes itself to China’s fast food chain

Detroit’s Ludlow Ventures goes for fund four

Seen on EC

Revenue-based financing: The next step for private equity and early-stage investment

5 questions about 2021’s startup market

What’s going on with fintech venture capital investment?

VCs discuss gaming’s biggest infrastructure investment opportunities in 2021

The tech-powered wave of smart, not slow, tutoring sessions

@EquityPod

If you’re new here, welcome! Equity is TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast. I chat with Alex and Danny about the most important tech news each week, from early-stage startups to IPOs, and crack a few jokes in the meantime. Produced by Chris, Equity is a perfect appetizer to this newsletter.

Despite your wishes for a slower and perhaps more uneventful year, tech clearly isn’t slowing down in 2021. The Equity team had a mountain of news to get through, from Twitter’s very active checkbook to a $185 million Series A round.

If you tune into our debut full-team episode for the year, you’ll learn about how, and why, a Utah-based expense management company founded in 2018 is already a unicorn. You’ll also get intel on how a slew of acquisitions from Twitter and Facebook impacts the exit environment. Plus, a tip just for you, a ton of VC firms squeezed in SEC filings on NYE, bringing in hundreds of millions of capital to potential startups.

Convinced? Good, because that’s all I’m giving away. Listen here, and make sure to check out our bonus episode with Roblox and gaming news that comes out on Saturday.