Since moving to the United States, I’ve come to appreciate and admire the United States Postal Service as a symbol of American ingenuity and resilience.

Like electricity, telephones and the freeway system, it’s part of our greater story and what binds the United States together. But it’s also something that’s easy to take for granted. USPS delivers 181.9 million pieces of First Class mail each day without charging an arm and a leg to do so. If you have an address, you are being served by the USPS — and no one’s asking you for cash up front.

As CEO of Shippo, an e-commerce technology platform that helps businesses optimize their shipping, I have a unique vantage point into the USPS and its impact on e-commerce. The USPS has been a key partner since the early days of Shippo in making shipping more accessible for growing businesses. As a result of our work with the USPS, along with several other emerging technologies (like site builders, e-commerce platforms and payment processing), e-commerce is more accessible than ever for small businesses.

And while my opinion on the importance of the USPS is not based on my company’s business relationship with the Postal Service, I want to be upfront about the fact that Shippo generates part of its revenue from the purchase of shipping labels through our platform from the USPS along with several other carriers. If the USPS were to stop operations, it would have an impact on Shippo’s revenue. That said, the negative impact would be far greater for many thousands of small businesses.

I know this because at Shippo, we see firsthand how over 35,000 online businesses operate and how they reach their customers. We see and support everything from what options merchants show their customers at checkout through how they handle returns — and everything in between. And while each and every business is unique with different products, customers operations and strategies, they all need to ship.

In the United States, the majority of this shipping is facilitated by the USPS, especially for small and medium businesses. For context, the USPS handles almost half of the world’s total mail and delivers more than the top private carriers do in aggregate, annually, in just 16 days. And, it does all of this without tax dollars, while offering healthcare and pension benefits to its employees.

As has been the case for many organizations, COVID-19 has significantly impacted the USPS. While e-commerce package shipments continue to rise (+30% since early March based on Shippo data), it has not been enough to overcome the drastic drop in letter mail. With this, I’ve heard opinions of supposed “inefficiency,” calls for privatization, pushes for significant pricing and structural changes, and even indifference to the possibility of the USPS shutting down.

Amid this crisis, we all need the USPS and its vital services now more than ever. In a world with a diminished or dismantled USPS, it won’t be Amazon, other major enterprises, or even Shippo that suffer. If we let the USPS die, we’ll be killing small businesses along with it.

Quite often, opinions on the efficiency (or lack thereof) of the USPS are very narrow in scope. Yes, the USPS could pivot to improve its balance sheet and turn operating losses into profits by axing cumbersome routes, increasing prices and being more selective in who they serve.

However, this omits the bigger picture and the true value of the USPS. What some have dubbed inefficient operations are actually key catalysts to small business growth in the United States. The USPS gives businesses across the country, regardless of size, location or financial resources, the ability to reach their customers.

We shouldn’t evaluate the USPS strictly on balance sheet efficiency, or even as a “public good” in the abstract. We should look at how many thousands of small businesses have been able to get started thanks to the USPS, how hundreds of billions of dollars of commerce is made possible by the USPS annually and how many millions of customers, who otherwise may not have access to goods, have been served by the USPS.

In the U.S., e-commerce accounts for over half a trillion dollars in sales annually, and is growing at double-digit rates each year. When I hear people talk about the growth of e-commerce, Amazon is often the first thing that comes up. What doesn’t shine through as often is the massive growth of small business — which is essential to the health of commerce in general (no one needs a monopoly!). In fact, the SMB segment has been growing steadily alongside Amazon. And with the challenges that traditional businesses face with COVID-19, more small businesses than ever are moving online.

USPS Priority Mail gets packages almost anywhere in the U.S. in two to three days (average transit time is 2.5 days based on Shippo data) and starts at around $7 per shipment, with full service: tracking, insurance, free pickups and even free packaging that they will bring to you.

In a time when we as consumers have become accustomed to free and fast shipping on all of our online purchases, the USPS is essential for small businesses to keep up. As consumers we rarely see behind the curtain, so to speak, when we interact with e-commerce businesses. We don’t see the small business owner fulfilling orders out of their home or out of a small storefront, we just see an e-commerce website. Without the USPS’ support, it would be even harder, in some cases near impossible, for small business owners to live up to these sky-high expectations. For context, 89% of U.S.-based SMBs (under $10,000 in monthly volume) on the Shippo platform rely on the USPS.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about the USPS’s partnership with Amazon, how it is to blame for the current situation, and how under a private model, things would improve. While we have our own strong opinions on Amazon and its impact on the e-commerce market, Amazon is not the driver of USPS’s challenges. In fact, Amazon is a major contributor in the continued growth of the USPS’s most profitable revenue stream: package delivery.

While I don’t know the exact economics of the deal between the USPS and Amazon, significant discounting for volume and efficiency is common in e-commerce shipping. Part of Amazon’s pricing is a result of it actually being cheaper and easier for the USPS to fulfill Amazon orders, compared to the average shipper. For this process, Amazon delivers shipments to USPS distribution centers in bulk, which significantly cuts costs and logistical challenges for the USPS.

Without the USPS, Amazon would be able to negotiate similar processes and efficiencies with private carriers — small businesses would not. Given the drastic differences in daily operations and infrastructure between the USPS and private carriers, small businesses would see shipping costs increase significantly, in some cases by more than double. On top of this, small businesses would see a new operational burden when it comes to getting their packages into the carriers’ systems in the absence of daily routes by the USPS.

Overall, I would expect to see the level of entrepreneurship in e-commerce slow in the United States without the USPS or with a private version of the USPS that operates with a profit-first mindset. The barriers to entry would be higher, with greater costs and larger infrastructure investments required up-front for new businesses. For Shippo, I’d expect to see a much greater diversity of carriers used by our customers. Our technology that allows businesses to optimize across several carriers would become even more critical for businesses. Though, even with optimization, small businesses would still be the group that suffers the most.

Today, most SMB e-commerce brands, based on Shippo data, spend between 10-15% of their revenue on shipping, which is already a large expense. This could rise well north of 20%, especially when you take into account surcharges and pick-up fees, creating an additional burden for businesses in an already challenging space.

I urge our lawmakers and leaders to see the full picture: that the USPS is a critical service that enables small businesses to survive and thrive in tough times, and gives citizens access to essential services, no matter where they reside.

This also means providing government support — both financially and in spirit — as we all navigate the COVID-19 crisis. This will allow the USPS to continue to serve both small businesses and citizens while protecting and keeping their employees safe — which includes ensuring that they are equipped to handle their front-line duties with proper safety and protective gear.

In the end, if we continue to view the USPS as simply a balance sheet and optimize for profitability in a vacuum, we ultimately stand to lose far more than we gain.

For pre-seed startups, precarious times are baseline until they secure their first customer, first hire and first check. But no matter how built-in turbulence might be for a pre-seed founder, we’re entering a period where stresses are amplified and outlooks are unpredictable.

In light of the new market conditions, a harder fundraising market and slower expected growth, Charles Hudson (founder and general partner of Precursor Ventures) is urging his portfolio companies to reassess their futures with a refreshingly human question: “Are you excited and prepared to run this company for the next two years?

If not, you might want to do something else. Why? Because if a super early-stage company manages to survive the COVID-19 era, making it out the other end, it’s not clear that they’ll be venture-ready when markets recover. As Hudson put it, “there’s never been a better time to maybe fold.” That’s because, he explained, startups that merely survive won’t be judged merely against their peers that also survived; they will also compete with brand-new startups for capital and companies that didn’t need to hunker down during lean times.

It’s possible to make it through, but it won’t be an easy path.

TechCrunch spoke with Hudson earlier this week as part of our ongoing Extra Crunch Live series that brings leading founders and investors to our (virtual) stage. Between our editors and journalists and the best questions from the audience, we’re working with guests to understand the new world that we find ourselves in. That we’re hosting these events virtually instead of in-person is testament to our changed reality.

But the chat was far from all gloom; Hudson is bullish on a number of things. Niche publications with subscription economics? Yes. Social services targeting particular audiences? Yep! Precursor is still cutting checks into net-new deals, and while it’s wrapping up its second main fund and first opportunity fund, the firm is also raising a new, larger capital pool.

The conversation ran the full hour we had set aside for it, meaning we had to condense some later discussions about fintech and the new trade-off between growth and profit, but we did get to diversity in venture and startups in the future, and what impact a recession might have on both (it’s a bigger possible impact than you’re considering).

Hit the jump for the best Hudson takeaways and the full audio recording from the session. Head here if you need Extra Crunch access; there are some trials for just a few bucks, so everyone can access the chat. Let’s go!

Raising a fund in the COVID-19 era

Matt Ocko, co-founder of venture firm Data Collective (DCVC), was among a small group of VCs viewed as alarmists when they began tweeting about the coronavirus’s imminent appearance in the U.S. back in January.

In retrospect, those individuals were prescient, so we spoke with Ocko last week about why he was so certain the U.S. was about to get walloped by COVID-19, and asked how some of the startups in DCVC’s portfolio — which has long had a strong biotech focus — are trying to get us back to a state of normalcy.

This conversation has been edited for length.

TechCrunch: You were tweeting about COVID-19 back in January; I almost canceled a flight out of San Francisco because of your [expressed concern about a flight bound for SFO from Wuhan, China]. What did you see that the rest of us missed?

Matt Ocko: My family has been working with the Chinese government at a reasonably high level since the late 1970s, starting with my dad, and I kind of grew up in that environment. And at a relatively young age, as a professional [in the 1990s], I started pro bono helping my dad, who’s a Chinese legal expert, on things like constructing the laws around China’s Nasdaq equivalent, its stock markets, the joint dollar-renminbi investment legislation, advice on technology development and venture capital development.

I’m not an anti-China hawk by any means. But I do have an understanding of some of the idiosyncrasies of Chinese culture reflected in its government, the same way every country has its idiosyncrasies.

[In China’s case], it’s a focus on face and reputation and extreme sensitivity to negative perception or shame or humiliation at every level of government and culture. And so there’s [an] unfortunate trend — and not a universal one — for people to manage upwards, especially in the government, and tell their higher-ups what they want to hear to avoid shame, to avoid the loss of reputation and to kick the can down the road or hope that circumstances on the ground change favorably in the face of denial or equivocation.

Divergent, the Los Angeles-based startup aiming to revolutionize vehicle manufacturing, has cut about one-third of its staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has upended startups and major corporations alike.

The company, which employed about 160 people, laid off 57 workers, according to documents filed with the California Employment Development Department. Founder and CEO Kevin Czinger didn’t provide specific numbers. However, he did confirm to TechCrunch that he had to reduce staff due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A core team remains, he said.

“Whenever you’re doing something that’s affecting people’s jobs  — and especially in a company where I basically recruited everyone and knew everyone by face and name — it’s obviously super painful to do that under any circumstance,” Czinger said in an interview this week.

The company’s No. 1 priority was to ensure long-term financial stability and secure the core team, technology development and customer programs no matter what the scenario, Czinger said, adding that there is still enormous uncertainty surrounding the real impact and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This was about making the company as totally weatherproof as possible,” Czinger said.

Divergent 3D is essentially a Tier 1 supplier for the automotive and aerospace industry. But it can hardly be considered a traditional supplier. After resigning as CEO of the now-defunct EV startup Coda Automotive in 2010, Czinger began to focus on how the vehicle manufacturing process could become more efficient and less wasteful.

Divergent 3D was born out of that initial exploration. The company developed an additive manufacturing platform designed to make it easier and faster to design and build new cars at a fraction of the cost — all while reducing the environmental impact that traditional factories have.

The platform is an end-to-end digital production system that uses high-speed 3D printers to make complex parts out of metal alloys. This system produces the structures of vehicles, such as the full frame, subframes and suspension structures that are part of the crash-performance structure of the vehicle.

In its early years as a company, Divergent 3D was perhaps best known for Blade, the first automobile to use 3D printing to form the body and chassis. Divergent 3D made Blade — which was on the auto show circuit in 2016 — to demonstrate the technology platform.

It was enough to get the attention of investors and at least two global OEMs as customers. Divergent can’t name the customers because of non-disclosure agreements.

The company has raised about $150 million from investors that include venture capital fund Horizons Ventures, automotive and aerospace engineering services company Altran Technologies and Chinese backers O Luxe Holdings, an investment conglomerate backed by the Hong Kong-based real estate investment magnate Li Ka-shing and Shanghai Alliance Investment Limited, an investment arm of the Shanghai Municipal Government.

The latest example of Divergent’s technology is the 21C, a hypercar unveiled in March that was built using the additive manufacturing platform. The high-performance 3D-printed vehicle was produced by Czinger Vehicles. Divergent 3D and Czinger Vehicles are wholly owned subsidiaries under Divergent Technologies.

Czinger said the company is poised to navigate the pandemic and ultimately survive. Divergent 3D has two global OEMs as customers. Structures such as chassis components and subframes, for which Divergent has supply contracts, are going through various testing and validation stages, depending on the program. Those programs, which are for serial production vehicles, are moving forward, Czinger said.

There will be delays as automakers have slowed or stopped operations. Czinger is hopeful that by 2021 the company will be able to announce that its 3D-printed structures will be production vehicles.

As a small business owner, I was excited to learn about the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act that offers low-interest loans to firms impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as I read through the details and began to apply, it became clear that this legislation — while well-intentioned — may not be enough to help many SMBs and startups.

Here’s a quick recap of my experience.

Emergency Economic Injury Grants and Economic Injury Disaster Loans

First and foremost: You need to act swiftly. Emergency Economic Injury Grant and Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs included in the CARES Act function on a first-come, first-served basis, and are funded from a limited pool of resources.

I began my company’s application process by submitting our EIDL and EEIG applications through the SBA website. This was easy, if tedious. It took about two hours to complete the necessary online forms and about two seconds to click the EEIG checkbox. Submission was seamless, but I haven’t received any further communication from the SBA since completing my application, which is a bit confusing — EEIG funds are supposed to be dispersed within 3-5 days of the submission date.

However, I know there’s been a huge volume of submissions recently and this must be exceptionally difficult to handle. I look forward to any email correspondence or updates from the SBA that might give me — and other applicants — an updated estimate of the expected dispersal timeline.

Sramana Mitra: In terms of the monetization strategy, it sounds like you needed advertisers through the ad networks who were going after the student demographics. Neal Taparia: That’s correct....

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In a small suburb of Melbourne, two entrepreneurs are developing a technology that could mean big changes for the packaging industry.

Stuart Gordon and Mark Appleford are the co-founders of Varden, a company that has developed a process to take the waste material from sugarcane and convert it into a paper-like packaging product with the functional attributes of plastic. 

Their technology managed to grab the attention of — and $2.2 million in funding from — Horizons Ventures, the venture capital fund managing the money of Li Ka-shing, one of the world’s wealthiest men.

It’s an opportune time to launch a novel packaging technology, as the European Union has already instituted a ban on single-use plastic items, which will go into effect in 2021. Taking their lead, companies like Nestlé  and Walmart have pledged to use only sustainable packaging for products beginning in 2025.

The environmental toll that packaging takes on the earth’s habitats is already a concern for many, and the urgency to find a solution is only mounting with consumers and businesses actually producing more waste in the rush to change consumer behavior and socially distance as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic.

“I like technologies that focus on carbon reductions,” said Chris Liu, Horizons Ventures’ representative in Australia.

A longtime tech and product executive who had stints at Intel and Fjord, a digital design studio, Liu relocated to Australia recently and has actually taken himself off the grid.

Living in Western Australia, the climate emergency was brought directly to the top of Liu’s mind when the wildfires, which raged through the country, came within two kilometers of his new home. 

For Mark Appleford, it wasn’t so much the fires as it was the garbage that kept washing up on the shores of his beloved beaches.

Over beers at a barbecue he began talking to his eventual co-founder, Stuart Gordon, about the environmental problem they’d solve if they had the ability to change things. They settled on plastics.  

Working in Appleford’s laundry room they started developing the technology that would become Varden. That early laundry room-work in 2015 led to a small seed round and the company’s long slog to get an initial product in the hands of test customers.

Finagling some time with the New Zealand manufacturer Fisher and Paykel, the two co-founders put together an early prototype of their coffee pods made from sugarcane bagasse, a waste byproduct of the sugar feedstock.

“We worked backwards through customers to supply chain, which led us to material selection, which was something that would allow us to create a product that people understood,” said Gordon.

The production process has evolved to fit inside a 40-foot container that holds the firm’s machine, which takes agricultural waste and converts that waste into packaging.

Instead of using rollers like a paper mill, Varden’s technology uses a thermoform to mold the plant waste into a product that has the same properties as plastic.

It removes a complicated step that’s been essential to the current crop of bioplastics, which use bacteria to convert plant waste into plastic substitutes that are then sold to the industry.

“It looks like paper… you can tear it in half and it sounds like paper when you rip it, and you can throw it in the bin,” said Appleford. 

Gordon said that the company’s containers are outperforming commodity based plastics. And the first target for replacement, the founders said, is coffee capsules.

“We went for coffee because it’s the hardest,” said Appleford.

It’s also a huge market, according to the company. Varden estimates there are more than 20 billion coffee pods consumed every year.

With the new money, Varden will begin manufacturing at scale to meet initial demand from pilot customers and is hoping to expand its product line to include medical blister packs in addition to the coffee pods.

“A pilot plant on the products we’re looking at is a pilot plant that can generate 20 million units a year,” said Gordon.

Both men are hoping that their product — and others like it — can usher in a generation of new sustainable packaging materials that are better for the environment at every stage of their life cycle.

“The next generation of packaging will be better… there are plant-based flexibles for your salads, for your potato chips… [But] the next generation of molded packaging is us… bioplastic will ultimately go.”

 

In case you missed it, you can listen to the recording here: Rendezvous Online with Sramana Mitra 3.10.20

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Entrepreneurs are invited to the 483rd FREE online 1Mby1M mentoring roundtable on Thursday, April 30, 2020, at 8 a.m. PDT/11 a.m. EDT/5 p.m. CEST/8:30 p.m. India IST. If you are a serious...

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During this week’s roundtable, we had as our guest Garrett Goldberg, Partner at Bee Partners. Garrett discussed his firm’s enterprise focused investment thesis, including some unique insights on...

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

The crew at Bessemer released their new, yearly cloud report this week. It’s a useful lens into how venture capitalists are thinking about cloud and SaaS startup performance metrics. Bessemer’s cloud and SaaS exits include Twilio, Shopify, PagerDuty, Box, and a few others, so they’re worth listening to at least a little on the topic.

I bring all this up as I finally got the chance to read the 2020 report (here, if you want to dig through it yourself, and here’s the 2019 version for reference). I’m going to chat with Bessemer’s Mary D’Onofrio about some numbers from the presentation next week, but this morning I wanted to discuss the report’s SaaS and cloud startup scorecard.

Bessemer likes to invent metrics, something that I approve of. In 2019, the firm debuted a G.R.I.T (“ARR growth, retention, years of runway, and efficiency”) score that was a bit complicated. This year the report included a six metric rundown of “good, better, and best” startup cloud and SaaS startup performance.

Let’s chew over the set of SaaS metrics that investors, before COVID-19, were looking for. Next week we’ll find out if Bessemer has changed any of them in light of the new economic collapse cum malaise.

Grow this fast, lose this much

TechCrunch has a general rule against screenshots of text, but today there’s no way around it. Here’s the pertinent summary slide from the Bessemer report:

Billionaire. Entrepreneur. Investor. Shark.

Mark Cuban is one of tech’s best-known entrepreneurs, so we are amped to have him join us for an upcoming Extra Crunch Live, our virtual speaker series that connects the brightest minds in tech directly with our Extra Crunch audience.

Starting out as a salesman for one of Dallas’s earliest PC software resellers, Cuban was fired after he ignored his boss’ orders and asked another employee to cover for him while he picked up a check for a $10,000 sale. He went on to create his own software reseller/system integrator called MicroSolutions, which he sold in 1990 for $6 million to CompuServe, then an H&R Block subsidiary. That marked the beginning of a storied (and, at times, tumultuous) career as an entrepreneur and investor.

Cuban went on to co-found Audionet (later renamed Broadcast.com), which he eventually sold to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in 1999; that same year, he made history when he purchased a Gulfstream V for $40 million in the largest single e-commerce transaction ever conducted.

The man’s brain is always 20 years in the future.

The Dallas Mavericks majority owner and “Shark Tank” judge has invested in startups for two decades. His portfolio includes Apptopia, The Zebra, Node, UBeam and many other startups; according to Crunchbase, Cuban has made more than 100 investments since 2004.

We’ll ask how he’s advising his portfolio companies in the midst of a crisis and will get his predictions on the economic outlook over the next 12 to 24 months. We’re also interested to hear how Cuban thinks technology may or may not solve for the current situation around live sports, which have effectively been halted by the pandemic.

And if we have time, we’ll ask a bit about workers, equitable capitalism and his thoughts regarding the gig economy in these turbulent times. Given Cuban’s straightforward speaking style, we’re expecting a candid conversation, and as we’re snagging him in unprecedented times, our chat may help you understand how at least one leading capitalist views the new world.

Hit the jump to add the call details to your calendar via the AddEvent link and access the Zoom information directly. We’ll take audience questions toward the end, so weigh in. If you aren’t an Extra Crunch member yet, join here for just a few bucks to start.

Cuban joins a schedule packed with all-stars, including Charles Hudson, Mitch and Freada Kapor, Hunter Walk, Roelof Botha and Kirsten Green. And if you missed it, check out our Extra Crunch Live episode with Aileen Lee and Ted Wang.

Details

Here’s the information you’ll need:

Michelle Munson was CEO and Co-founder of Aspera, a company she began after being laid off. Aspera was her realization that she could not only control her own career path but also create jobs for...

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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we had a choice of all sorts of news, but as we cut the show together as a group Danny pushed all the funding rounds up. So, when Alex and Natasha jumped into the show we had a bunch of good news to cover. We’re avoiding COVID-19 news, but the pandemic is just a part of the broader stories we want to tell. For the foreseeable future, coronavirus will be always be part of our interviews. But the conversation can’t start and stop there.

So what was on the docket? Three things: Accelerator news for the early-stage founders, funding rounds, of course, and some layoff news that was worth mentioning as it might trickle down beyond the unfortunate hosts. 

Here’s the rundown:

Y Combinator moves its new accelerator class to a virtual setting. We want to know what the move will mean for global startups and Silicon Valley as the effective nexus of nerddom.Speaking of accelerators, Boston-area VC firm just launched one for the first time ever. It’s opting for a different approach from YC and 500 Startups: no demo day, smaller cohort, and no promises to lead future rounds.Miro raises a $50 million Series B. The apparently profitable Miro had us curious once again about remote work, which startups are going to do the best in the coming recession, and the company competes with. Is it more contra-Notion? Contra-Mural? Neither?Confluent put together a $250 million round at a $4.5 billion valuation. This funding event proved that megarounds are not dead. Alex thinks the company is nearly IPO ready, but with the public offering window seemingly closed, we’re not holding our breath for an S-1.Pepper raised money to make a bra that fits small-chested women better. For those of you reading this that can relate to the woes of ill-fitting bras, Jaclyn Fu wants to have a word for you.Human Capital raised $15 million for its engineer-focused talent agency. This one was a bit controversial, especially in the changing economic climate.In the media startup world, The Dipp launched to provide us (well, those of us that subscribe) TV and entertainment news. We’ll always nerd out about new news companies, and the fact that this was founded by former Bustle colleagues caught our eye.And then there were the layoffs. Magic Leap cut 1,000 jobs, while coding school Lambda School and 2020 IPO Casper each made smaller cuts. It’s a bummer of a topic, but expect cuts to remain on the agenda for a while yet.

We didn’t get to talk through some Silicon Valley or European venture capital data, not to mention what we’re seeing in Boston because we ran out of time! More soon.

Earlier this week, SAP (NYSE:SAP) announced its first quarter results for the year that failed to impress the market. But there is a silver lining to its results – its cloud business growth. SAP’s...

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Prompted by Jeff Bezos’s plans to test all Amazon employees for the virus that causes COVID-19, we wondered whether employers can mandate employee testing, regardless of symptoms. The issue pits public safety against personal privacy, but limited testing availability has rendered the question somewhat moot.

But as the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have noted, asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers can spread the virus without realizing they’re infected. To learn more about workers’ rights in this arena, we spoke to Tricia Bozyk Sherno, counsel at Debevoise & Plimpton, who focuses on employment and general commercial litigation.

The answer, for now, is not entirely straightforward, though updates from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission could make the situation clearer going forward as more tests are made available and state governments begin pushing to reopen businesses.

Sherno offered a fair amount of insight into the EEOC’s updated guidance and made some predictions about how things may look for both employers and workers going forward.

TechCrunch: Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, what sorts of laws governed an employer’s ability to test employees for infectious diseases?

Tricia Bozyk Sherno: Covered employers (employers with 15 or more employees) must comply with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which limits an employer’s ability to make disability-related inquiries or require medical examinations. (Note that certain states may also have similar statutes in place.) Generally, disability-related inquiries and medical examinations are prohibited by the ADA except in limited circumstances. A “medical examination” is a procedure or test that seeks information about an individual’s physical or mental impairments or health — so infectious disease testing would fall into this category.

U.S. companies rely on Mexican manufacturers for goods ranging from automotive and aerospace parts, to avocados and other produce, to electronics and furniture. But the trucking system that transports these things across the border relies on an inefficient mix of paper, phone calls, faxes and too many stakeholders who drive up costs.

These snarls congesting border traffic are precisely why Nuvocargo founder and CEO Deepak Chhugani has raised a $5.3 million seed round for a managed marketplace for door to door freight transportation, serving trade routes between the United States and Mexico. 

Investment came from both sides of the border. The round was co-led by Silicon Valley-based NFX and Mexico City-based ALLVP. And Nuvocargo marks the first deal for Antonia Rojas-Eing, the youngest female VC in Latin America, under ALLVP, which she joined earlier this year as a partner. 

The seed round also saw participation from One Way Ventures, Maya Capital, Magma Partners, the co-founders of Rappi, the former CMO of Cabify and other angels. The total includes earlier backing from Y Combinator, when Nuvocargo existed under a different name.

Chhugani joined Y Combinator’s W18 class with a startup called The Lobby, which sought to connect job seekers to personalized coaches. He raised $1.2 million for the startup, but decided to pivot into logistics and work on Nuvocargo. The change in direction was fairly natural for the Ecuador-raised entrepreneur, who cited his family’s previous work in the Latin American logistics industry.

When the time came to pivot, Chhugani offered investors their money back. Some chose to leave, but Y Combinator elected to stay under the new promise of digitizing trucking between Mexico and the U.S. Nuvocargo says that the $5.3 million seed is its first round, and what they’ve raised to date. Investors who stayed in from The Lobby are part of this round for Nuvocargo.

Mexico is already one of the United States’ largest trade partners, and Chhugani predicts that relationship will only strengthen in the next decade. The U.S.-China trade war shows no signs of easing and tariffs have increased buying friction. With the 2018 United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that aims to renegotiate NAFTA and uncertainty around coronavirus, Chhugani believes Mexico will become an even more attractive trade opportunity to capitalize on with Nuvocargo. 

To the company’s knowledge, U.S.-Mexico trucking is within the top five biggest trade lanes in the world, with 6.5 million trucking shipments going between Mexico and the U.S. every year. Notably, 80% of all the goods transported between the U.S. and Mexico move by truck.

VCs have jumped on the freight and logistics opportunity as startups like NEXT Trucking, Convoy and Flexport secure hundreds of millions dollars from investors like Sequoia and SoftBank. 

Now, smaller startups like Nuvocargo that specialize on specific routes and countries are focusing in regionally to bring online these systems that rely on paper, phone calls, faxes and spreadsheets to do business. 

Nuvocargo’s free software digitizes the different steps with timestamps, geo tracking and document housing in a centralized cloud-based dashboard, providing a snapshot understanding of every step of a cross border shipment. Customers can request new shipments using Nuvocargo using a WhatsApp integration, email or SMS. 

The 15-person startup wants to house the entire shipping process within its tracking software, simplifying the customer experience. The customer, Chhugani says, is any company that needs to move goods between Mexico and the U.S., and he notes that Nuvocargo is working with dozens of customers ranging from beverage companies to multi-billion-dollar corporations — though he declined to specify who. 

Chhugani says that in a typical U.S.-Mexico cross-border trucking transaction, up to 12 stakeholders are involved in a single shipment, and that is too many. Multiple people on the U.S. side are procuring the trucks and managing customs, FDA inspection and warehouse storage. On the Mexico side there are even more entities handling scheduling and pick up for the trucking companies and drivers. 

With the new seed funding, Nuvocargo will prioritize early hires in product, operations, finance and engineering in its New York and Mexico offices on its fully bilingual team. 

Chhugani says he’s especially appreciative of the truck drivers that put themselves in harms way to ensure critical items are getting to the right destination, ensuring shelves are stocked. He says that in this uncertain time, Nuvocargo is working to give drivers predictable business near their homes, and pay them faster. “All of us as a society should be more appreciative of truck drivers and the trucking industry, because this is something that really fuels the economy in both the United States and in Mexico.” 

In the current age of the coronavirus pandemic, Nuvocargo says it is focusing significant efforts on working with companies that are transporting essential goods to aid in the supply crisis.

Digits, a fintech startup hailing from the same team that built and sold Crashlytics to Twitter, is officially launching today after two years of development. It’s also announcing a $22 million Series B round of funding led by GV, as it makes its public debut.

While the company had been fairly quiet about product details while in stealth mode, it’s today unveiling its first product: a visual, machine learning-powered expense monitoring dashboard aimed at startups and small businesses.

The dashboard, called Digits for Expenses, helps business owners track how their company is spending money, by showing things like spend by category, by identifying vendors and recurring expenses and by offering real-time alerts, among other features.

Instead of requiring business owners to make a switch from their existing financial solutions, Digits connects with the accounting software, banks, payroll providers, financial packages, sources of revenue and credit cards the business already uses — like Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite, Citi, Bank of America or Chase, for example.

At launch, the list includes more than 9,000 banks, with support for Xero and NetSuite coming soon.

After setup, Digits will then automatically analyze the company’s spend and visualize it, in real time.

While visualizations of data may be reminiscent of personal finance startup Mint, Digits’ web-based solution is more technical in nature and offers an expanded analysis of the data on hand. Plus, as a business solution, it has to offer features like security, permissioning and collaborative workflows, which results in a more sophisticated product.

Digits also uses machine learning technology to predictively categorize transactions as they happen and the software can alert users to anomalies — like suspicious activity or unexpectedly large transactions — in real time. Business owners can use the dashboard to find out things like how quickly expenses are growing, what the cash flow looks like, where costs can be trimmed, what services are being paid for on a recurring basis and more, and can search for transactions.

The software also supports the ability to comment on transactions, loop in a colleague to ask for clarification about a charge and upload missing receipts. Everything uses HTTPS along with TLS and certificates so data is encrypted between Digit’s services and at rest.

The original idea for Digits came from a problem that co-founders Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert faced themselves when building Crashlytics. As they explained previously, their focus as entrepreneurs was on solving technical challenges, not on the operational side of running a business.

Many entrepreneurs also find themselves in this same space. They’re trying to solve a problem or crack a tough engineering puzzle, but instead have to redirect their time and resources to spreadsheets, financial reports, transaction records and other paperwork required to actually run the business.

“Startups and small businesses today simply don’t have the resources to manage their finances internally. Most of them still settle for spreadsheets, and the lucky ones work on an hourly basis with external accountants,” explains Seibert. “As a result, their accounting itself is seen as a cost-center, and they pay for little beyond the basic monthly financial statements — Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, etc. By the time those statements are delivered — weeks after the end of each month — they’re already out of date,” he said.

That means things businesses need — like updates, one-off reports and new budgets — can require additional costs and longer wait times, so they get skipped.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put even more pressure on small businesses, many of which are now struggling to even survive. As a result, Digits has decided to launch the product for free to those who sign up — not a free trial, but actually free. It plans to later charge for additional products and paid upgrades to support its own business.

Digits is able to make this offer because of its now-expanded venture funding.

Already, the company had raised $10.5 million in Series A funding in a round led by Benchmark. That round had included a sizable 72 angel investors as well, including founders and CEOs from companies like Box, GitHub, Tinder, Twitch, StitchFix, SoFi and several others — entrepreneurs with an understanding of the problems Digits is aiming to solve.

Today, Digits is announcing an additional $22 million led by Jessica Verrilli at GV,  who also now joins Digits’ board alongside Benchmark’s Peter Fenton. (Benchmark also participated in the new round).

“Jeff and Wayne are masterful at creating intuitive, high-utility products from complicated data,” said Verrilli about the GV investment. “I saw this up close with Crashlytics and Twitter, and I’m thrilled to partner with them on Digits as they reimagine financial software for startups,” she added.

The startup, now a team of 18 and hiring, was already offering its software solution to a group of customers ahead of today’s public launch, who effectively operated as beta testers allowing Digits to refine its product. Digits isn’t able to share its customer names, for the most part. However, it noted that Coda was one of early adopters and provided valuable feedback.

It also has over 10,000 companies who joined its waitlist over the past two years who are now being let in.

At the time of its Series A, Digits saw more than $1.5 billion in transaction value flowing across its production systems. That number has since grown to $8 billion.

The software is free starting today for U.S.-based small businesses. The company plans to add support for international markets later this year.

For the vast majority of startup founders who were planning their capital raise in Q1 2020, the COVID-19 blow was so dramatic and sweeping, we cannot see all its effects at once.

One big question on the minds of most founders: How should we plan our next raise in terms of timing, valuation and amounts?

Sarah Guo, partner at Greylock Partners, says the fundraising environment has slowed down significantly, but founders who have built ties with VCs via informal coffee updates and check-ins are at a clear advantage. “Early-stage bets require relationship-building,” says Guo, who has been investing in seed through Series B rounds.

Ram Shanmugam, founder and CEO of AutonomIQ*, a seed-stage code and process automation company, has been strengthening his relationships. For a company that has low operating expenses and a community of 600,000 developers, he says he is not fazed. “Our automation code brings efficiencies and in fact, we have nine inbound leads in Q2. Having said that, we are being realistic at the pace at which we can close these contracts.”

Similarly, Fred Blumer, who exited Hughes Telematics at an enviable $750 million, says he is taking a more pragmatic approach to the Series A raise for his new company, Mile Auto. “We expect to have a 5x growth in our business in 2020, even after adjusting for COVID,” he said. “Our pay-per-mile insurance is a great fit for people who are driving less.” Because so many drivers are sheltering in place, legacy insurance companies are refunding hundreds of millions of dollars to customers, which offers an advantage (and an opportunity) to a startup like his.

“But we need to be patient and mindful. While our families, health and safety are top priority, we are staying focused on our customers,” Blumer said. “Insurtech is a resilient arena, and in my past company we raised $100 million, so working with investors has never been a challenge. Keeping up with growth and perfecting the customer experience are what keep us up at night.” He said he plans to get out in the market after investor confidence returns.

Which may be a good idea, considering Jason Lemkin’s Twitter survey, where only 32% of respondents said they plan to deploy the same amount of capital as in the past. But another 30% are on the opposite end of the spectrum, deploying 40% to 60% less capital.

Founders have always faced big challenges, but they pale in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Moving your business forward will require new thinking, new tools and new opportunities along with tried-and-true essentials. We’ve got you covered on all fronts.

Case in point — catching investor attention in this climate will require a pitch par excellence. Pour yourself a cold one (or a tall glass of water because that’s great, too!) and join us on May 13 at 4pm ET / 1pm PT for Pitchers and Pitches, an interactive elevator pitch feedback session with TechCrunch editors. Get feedback that can help you take your pitch to a whole new level.

Our first Pitchers and Pitches session is free and open to the public — register now. You can let us know during registration if you want to participate and we’ll randomly select five startups to give us their best 60-second pitch. Even if you’re not selected to pitch, it’ll be a learning experience for all who attend and you can also give feedback via live polling. You’ll gain valuable insight into the art of telling your startup’s story in under a minute.

While we’ll continue with a series of content sessions, they will be exclusive to Startup Alley exhibitors — both those who exhibit onsite at Disrupt San Francisco 2020 (September 14-16) and founders who purchase a Digital Startup Alley Package.

Wait — you haven’t heard about the Digital Startup Alley? We tapped our resources and industry connections to replicate the Startup Alley experience as a truly world-class virtual event. It’s designed to help you keep momentum despite lockdowns, travel restrictions or budgetary concerns.

We don’t have a crystal ball to see how long this pandemic will remain in play. However, if it turns out you can attend Disrupt SF in person, you have the option to upgrade your exhibit package and still access the benefits of Digital Startup Alley. Value, meet add.

Startups in the age of COVID-19 will need every tool in the shed — and a few new ones — to adapt and keep moving forward. Start with exceptional coaching and sharpen your pitch to a keen edge.

Register now for our free Pitchers and Pitches session, which takes place on May 13 at 4:00pm ET / 1:00pm PT.

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