Zoom has a new marketplace and new integrations, Spotify gets a new format and we review Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Go. This is your Daily Crunch for October 14, 2020.
The big story: Zoom launches its events marketplace
Zoom’s new OnZoom marketplace allows anyone to host and sell tickets for virtual events. It’s also integrating the ability for nonprofits to accept donations.
The company made a couple other announcements at its Zoomtopia user conference. For one thing, it’s also integrating with a starting lineup of 35 third-party “Zapps,” allowing products like Asana and Dropbox to integrate directly into the Zoom experience.
In addition, Zoom said it will begin rolling out end-to-end encryption (a feature it’s been promising since acquiring Keybase in May) to users next week.
The tech giants
Spotify introduces a new music-and-spoken word format, open to all creators — The new format is designed to reproduce the radio-like experience of listening to a DJ talk about the music, and it also enables the creation of music-filled podcasts.
Microsoft reverse engineers a budget computer with the Surface Laptop Go — Brian Heater writes that the Laptop Go is a strange and sometimes successful mix of Surface design and budget decisions.
Google launches a suite of tech-powered tools for reporters, Journalist Studio — The suite includes a host of existing tools as well as two new products aimed at helping reporters search across large documents and visualizing data.
Startups, funding and venture capital
Getaround raises a $140M Series E amid rebound in short-distance travel — The rebound is real: I took my first Getaround this weekend.
Augury taps $55M for tech that predicts machine faults from vibration, sound and temperature — The startup works with large enterprises like Colgate and Heineken to maintain machines in their production and distribution lines.
Plenty has raised over $500M to grow fruits and veggies indoors — The funding was led by existing investor SoftBank Vision Fund and included the berry farming giant Driscoll’s.
Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch
What the iPhone 12 tells us about the state of the smartphone industry in 2020 — While the iPhone 12 was no doubt in development long before the current pandemic, the pandemic’s global shutdown has only exacerbated many existing problems for smartphone makers.
Databricks crossed $350M run rate in Q3, up from $200M one year ago — The data analytics company scaled rapidly to put itself on an obvious IPO path.
Dear Sophie: I came on a B-1 visa, then COVID-19 happened. How can I stay? — The latest advice from immigration lawyer Sophie Alcorn.
(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. And we’re having a fall sale!)
Everything else
NASA loads 14 companies with $370M for ‘tipping point’ technologies — NASA has announced more than a third of a billion dollars’ worth of “Tipping Point” contracts awarded to over a dozen companies pursuing potentially transformative space technologies.
Harley-Davidson should keep making e-motorcycles — That’s Jake Bright’s takeaway after three weeks with the LiveWire e-motorcycle.
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