Davemichels

John Legere has formally cut ties with T-Mobile US, the company he led as CEO for over seven years. After steering T-Mobile through a dramatic turnaround that culminated in its successful merger with former rival Sprint, Legere stepped down and Mike Sievert was appointed T-Mobile’s new chief executive earlier this month. At that time, Legere had said he would remain on T-Mobile’s board of directors until June 4th.

But that’s not the case anymore. In an 8K filing with the SEC today, T-Mobile revealed that Legere is leaving the board “effective immediately to pursue other options.”

“Mr. Legere noted that he was not resigning because of any disagreement with management or the board on any matter,” T-Mobile said in its note, which also...

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• Soon after saying he would not permit a $10 billion loan to the US Postal Service unless it hikes its rates on Amazon, President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that he will "never let our Post Office fail."
• The USPS is estimated to shutter in the summer unless there is significant monetary intervention, according to a March report from Democratic lawmakers.
• The March report suggested $25 billion in emergency funding for the USPS. The CARES Act, which came later, provided for the $10 billion loan.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

President Donald Trump said in an April 24 press briefing that he would not sign additional bailout funds to the US Postal Service unless it increased rates on Amazon, a major customer of the USPS.

Hours after those statements, Trump tweeted that he would "never" let the USPS fail.

"I will never let our Post Office fail," Trump wrote on Twitter. "It has been mismanaged for years, especially since the advent of the internet and modern-day technology. The people that work there are great, and we're going to keep them happy, healthy, and well!"

Per the CARES Act, the USPS is eligible for a $10 billion loan from the Treasury Department. Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin told reporters on Friday that he is outlining criteria that the USPS must meet to receive the loan, including a postal reform program and recruiting a new postmaster general. 

Trump added one more requirement to the USPS during the briefing: Hike its Amazon rates, or receive no cash.

He said on Friday, emphasis ours:

If they don't raise the price of the service they give, which is a tremendous service, and they do a great job and the postal workers are fantastic — but this thing's losing billions of dollars. 

It has been for years, because they don't want to insult for whatever reason, you can imagine, they don't want to insult Amazon and these other groups.

If they don't raise the price I'm not signing anything, so they'll raise the price so that they become maybe even profitable, but so they lose much less money, OK? And if they don't do it, I'm not signing anything and I'm not authorizing you to do anything, Steve.

Before Trump made that statement, he advised the USPS to quadruple its rates. 

"If they raise the price of the package by approximately four times, it'd be a whole new ballgame," Trump told reporters. "But they don't want to raise because they don't want to insult Amazon, and they don't want to insult other companies perhaps that they like."

USPS is estimated to shutter in the summer unless there is significant monetary intervention, according to a March report from Democratic lawmakers. Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Gerry Connolly said that the coronavirus outbreak was leading to plummeting mail volumes and that the USPS "is in need of urgent help" from Congress and the White House. 

A closed-down USPS would endanger deliveries to rural Americans, voting by mail, and prescription delivery. To protect that, lawmakers proposed $25 billion in emergency funding. Ultimately, Trump signed into law a $10 billion loan through the CARES Act.

But Trump's comments about the USPS' finances leave out an important fact: that much of it financial woes don't stem from delivery losses, but instead from a 2006 law. The law required the USPS to determine how much it would spend on pensions over the next 75 years and build up a fund to cover that cost, and it's had a huge toll: According to the USPS' inspector general, the pre-funding requirement accounted for $54.8 billion of the agency's $62.4 billion in losses from 2007 to 2016.

An ongoing feud

Trump has long targeted Amazon and its founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, whom he's referred to as "Jeff Bozo." 

For much of 2018, Trump took to Twitter and the press to wage a war on Amazon — as well as its relationship with the USPS. He said the rates USPS charges Amazon are far below market value, cutting key transportation costs for the $1 trillion online retailer.

"Why is the United States Post Office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year, while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer?" Trump tweeted on December 29, 2017. "Should be charging MUCH MORE!"

More recently, the feud has leaked outside of the delivery realm and into Amazon Web Services, the Seattle-based company's cloud computing arm. Amazon said Trump's vendetta against the company cost it a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon, and is pushing for Trump to testify on his dislike of Bezos.

Trump may not be completely off base with Amazon, even if his comments on the USPS' finances leave out important context. Logistics analysts have concluded that Amazon is able to build a transportation network, in which Amazon can save money delivering its own packages, with significant help from the USPS.

SEE ALSO: 'The supervisor coughed in a coworker's direction as a joke': As coronavirus cases at the US Postal Service surpass 1,200, employees say a lack of supplies and care is putting them at risk

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NOW WATCH: Why thoroughbred horse semen is the world's most expensive liquid

• Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson cofounded his company in early 2008, amid the Great Recession. It's now valued about $15 billion on the public markets.
• Fundraising was difficult for Twilio at first, which meant that the company had to buckle down, be frugal, and focus solely on delivering something that worked for its customers. Lawson even sold his wedding gifts to finance the company's operations in its early days.
• "That notion of frugality and investing wisely has been a core part of Twilio's DNA because of our founding in the recession," Lawson said. 
• As the global economy faces another recession, Lawson says that this should be a lesson to entrepreneurs: Focus less on raising wads of cash, and more on your customers.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When Twilio first launched in the beginning of 2008, it was right in the middle of the Great Recession, and the company struggled to raise any money from venture capitalists. It took about a year after its founding to raise so much as a seed round — belts were tightening at VC firms, and investors were skeptical about a company focused on developers.

"Founding a company during a recession and not having a lot of investor money available to you definitely changes how you think about the core values," Twilio CEO and cofounder Jeff Lawson told Business Insider. "One of ours has always been, be frugal."

Because Twilio didn't have much by way of venture capital, Lawson says, it had to instead focus on solving problems for its customers while also watching how it spent every single dollar it had in the bank.

Twilio describes itself as a cloud communications company, helping customers like Lyft, Hulu, and Airbnb build software that can send text messages and make and receive phone and video calls.

Lawson says that its business is booming, amid the coronavirus crisis: Lawson says that healthcare and telemedicine providers have been using Twilio to power their outreach to patients, while call centers are using the company's tech to move operations into remote workers' homes. The company is now valued at some $15 billion on the public markets.

Even as it rose to success, though, Lawson says that the company never lost sight of what it was like not to have any money coming in, and how it only got through it by building products that its customers wanted. It's a lesson, he says, that will stick with him and his team through the recession that many experts fear the economy has now entered. 

"That notion of frugality and investing wisely has been a core part of Twilio's DNA because of our founding in the recession," Lawson said. 

That's in stark contrast to some of the other companies he's seen come and go over the years. He says he's seen too many tech startups that were "founded for the wrong reasons" and raised massive rounds when they didn't even have a product on the market yet. 

'You get a lack of focus'

"Those companies, I struggle to think of a single company that raised a lot of money before they had a product before they succeeded," Lawson said. "There's no discipline and frugality. They're spending a lot on offices and product development. You get a lack of focus. It's more for optics."

He says that this is an important lesson for other startups, as they face a similarly tough fundraising environment through the rest of 2020. Don't focus on venture capital, especially as it gets harder to find, he says. Instead, focus on customers. 

"Your job as an entrepreneur was to find customers," Lawson said. "When you're tapped into a customer to understand what they need at this time, find out how to serve customers...If you follow customers, more than ever you'll find opportunities."

'Your job as an entrepreneur was to find customers'

Twilio wasn't Lawson's first time as a founder. Besides a career at Amazon helping build what would later become the Amazon Web Services cloud computing unit, Lawson also cofounded three companies, including StubHub. 

Right before Lawson launched Twilio, he was the CTO of Nine Star, and he thought that developers and companies needed a way to easily send messages to and call their customers. He and cofounders Evan Cooke and John Wolthuis decided they wanted to bring communications from hardware, like phones and routers, to software.

With that experience, the team decided to get together and have Twilio start fundraising in summer 2008. At the time, Lawson says, he thought that "we'll raise money and it will be fantastic." 

It wasn't that easy. The Great Recession had made investors more cautious about making investments in the first place, and venture capitalists were wary of investing in the then-unproven market for developer tools. 

"We finished the summer and hadn't raised a dime," Lawson said. "We thought, maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe this developer thing is a horrible idea. Maybe this is a bad time."

Still, Twilio didn't give up: Lawson said that the team decided to trust that its product was something customers wanted and needed. With that faith in its own abilities to anchor it, Lawson took steps like selling all the gits from his recent wedding to help finance the company. Eventually, it worked, with the company getting traction, leading to revenue, and finally allowing the company to raise a venture capital round. 

"Sometimes you have to get creative," Lawson said. "Fundamentally, a lot of entrepreneurs have a vision of how it's supposed to be done. That's the makings of a great company."

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SEE ALSO: Twilio realized that hiring coding bootcamp grads without giving them the right support was a 'recipe for failure.' Two years later, a six-month training program is helping them 'flourish and succeed'

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NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

• Communication tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams have seen downloads spike as people are encouraged to stay in their homes due to the coronavirus. 
• Some mobile games have also seen a boost from the coronavirus.
• Apps from several years ago, like Houseparty and Words with Friends, are also seeing a resurgence.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

With people forced to work, learn, and socialize from home, apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Houseparty have seen spikes in downloads as they become essential to daily life.

According to SensorTower's analytics, some of these apps have had downloads increase by more than 1,000% between February and March when most US shelter in place orders were first issued.

Based on SensorTower's findings, people seem to be downloading tools for remote work and school, social apps for keeping in touch with friends, and simple mobile games. Instacart's inclusion also makes sense as fears of COVID-19 stop people from venturing out to the grocery store. 

Here are the 12 apps with the biggest increases in downloads in the US.

SEE ALSO: How to use Houseparty, the app surging in popularity as the world social distances due to the coronavirus

Phone game Slap Kings increased 140%.

This simple single-player game was released in February and became the overall top mobile game in the world in March.

News app News Break has increased 275%.

Coronavirus coverage has given a bump to news ratings across the country.

Grocery delivery app Instacart downloads grew by 296.5%.

In February, Instacart was downloaded 455,000 times, compared to 1.8 million downloads in March. Since the coronavirus put many under stay at home orders, Instacart has been hiring thousands of shoppers, and workers striked for hazard pay and safety gear.

Another news aggregation app, Smart News, grew downloads by 571%.

Words with Friends 2 saw downloads increase by 614%.

A 2017 sequel to the original Words with Friends, shelter in place orders have led to people redownloading the app to connect with friends in other ways.

Microsoft's workplace chat app, Teams, grew by 639%.

Like other remote work apps, COVID-19 has been a boon to Microsoft Teams. In just one week in March, it added 12 million daily active users.

Online learning platform Google Classroom also saw a jump of 661%.

Downloads increased as schools closed and turned to remote learning, despite some students' attempts to get it removed from the app store with one-star reviews.

Video chat app Houseparty saw renewed interest, with a 1072% increase in downloads.

The app originally launched in 2016. It's now regaining popularity as experts warn about the importance of social distancing in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. 

Video chat app Zoom saw downloads grow 1330%.

In February, Zoom was downloaded 783,000, compared to 11.2 million downloads in March, despite security concerns.

Zoom also had the most overall downloads of any app on this list in March, with 11.2 million, nearly twice as many as any other app. 

Google Meet, Google's video chat app, grew by 2,746%.

Some extensions and tools make Google Meet more like the video chat app of choice, Zoom.

Spiral Roll downloads increased 3,629%.

The mobile game, which went from just 118,000 downloads in February to 4.4 million in March, was the top downloaded game in the App Store in March.

Finally, Perfect Cream, a mobile game where users decorate cakes, had a whopping 11,844% increase in downloads.

The game, which had the second most downloads in the App Store in March, went from only 36,000 downloads in February to 4.3 million in March.

• The coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent rise of remote work has led to dramatically increased demand for apps that enable collaboration and communication.
• Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams are three apps that have seen a big boost.
• Here are four graphs that help illustrate just how much of a boom each company has seen.
• Update, 5/1/20: An earlier version of this story had a chart showing daily active user figures for Zoom that the company later clarified referred instead to the number of meeting participants. The story has been updated accordingly. 

The rise in remote work due to the coronavirus pandemic has led to huge gains for cloud software apps that help people collaborate and stay connected. 

Zoom, Slack and Microsoft Teams have all seen massive spikes in users in a very short span of time.

Video conference tool Zoom has received the most unprecedented publicity. It's evolved from being a platform aimed at businesses to a household name, as consumers use it for happy hours, online classes, Passover celebrations, yoga instruction, and so much more. 

Microsoft Teams and Slack have also seen increased usage, as businesses seek out moe ways for their employees to continue working without being in the office. 

"With the rise of COVID-19, the at-home economy, and social distancing, people are trying to find ways to continue to engage on multiple platforms," Futurum Research analyst Dan Newman told Business Insider. 

Here are four graphs that help illustrate just how big of a boost each company has seen: 

SEE ALSO: Atlassian's president says switching to the cloud made it a stronger company. Here's the inside story of the massive technological and cultural shift that took over a decade

Zoom saw its usage skyrocket, reaching 300 million daily meeting participants in April.

Zoom said it had 300 million free and paid meeting participants on its app every day as of April 21. 

That is tremendous growth from when it first released coronavirus-related users metrics in March, and to put that into context: Zoom only had 10 million daily meeting participants at the end of December.

However, there has been some confusion over Zoom's metrics.

In a recent blog post, Zoom said that it had 300 million daily active users (DAUs)— but then later edited the post to say that the number referred to the number of Zoom meeting participants. The distinction: While the DAU metric measures discrete, individual users, a single person joining five Zoom meetings in a day would count as five meeting participants. 

"In a blog post on April 22, we unintentionally referred to these participants as 'users' and 'people.' When we realized this error, we adjusted the wording to 'participants.' This was a genuine oversight on our part," a Zoom spokesperson said.

The confusion goes back further, though. When Zoom released metrics in March, it used the "daily meeting participant" language as well. The figure was widely reported in outlets including Business Insider as Zoom claiming to have 200 million daily active users, rather than meeting participants. It remains unclear why Zoom never corrected the record. 

Regardless, what is clear is that the numbers do show that usage of Zoom has grown tremendously during the pandemic. For comparison, rival Microsoft Teams said it reached 200 million meeting participants in a single day in April — closing in behind Zoom.

Early on in the crisis, Zoom lifted the 40 minute time limit on its free product for users in China, and made the tool free for K-12 schools in over 20 countries, as many had to rapidly shift to online learning. Its new user base also includes many consumers using it for social activities. 

In order to keep up with the rapid growth, Zoom had to quickly grow its infrastructure by investing in more data centers and cloud computing power.

While that makes it more expensive to run the business, CEO Eric Yuan told Business Insider that both Amazon Web Services and Oracle proactively gave Zoom a discount on more server capacity — so it could scale without breaking the bank.

Oracle was actually a customer before Zoom turned to it for the added capacity it needed to sustain its business. 

As Zoom's popularity has swelled, so too has its stock price.

Zoom's stock price has soared almost 150% since the beginning of the year.

While the stock briefly fell at the beginning of April due to questions about Zoom's privacy and security, it rebounded and reached an all-time high of $169 on April 23, one day after the company announced 300 million daily meeting participants.

It's now well above its IPO price of $36, though experts wonder whether the new valuation is sustainable for Zoom.

Microsoft Teams now has 75 million daily active users, adding 31 million in a little over a month.

Microsoft Teams, which combines chat, video, and document collaboration into one tool, has also seen a big spike in usage amid the increase in remote work. Teams now has 75 million daily active users, CEO Satya Nadella said on its last earnings call at the end of April.

Microsoft Office 365 already dominates the workplace, and Teams comes bundled in with that suite. Its recent surge in popularity shows that businesses are turning to Teams, which may have already laid dormant in their Office 365 accounts, when faced with the necessity.

"I think that the moment that companies were put in a position where they had to make a decision, they decided, 'This is going to be our collaboration platform, this going to be how we meet when we no longer go to meetings,'" Newman said. "IT leaders and business leaders trust Microsoft."

Microsoft plans to release a consumer version of its productivity suite, including Teams, so it will be seen whether the product catches on with non-business users like Zoom has. 

In the meantime, 183,000 school districts in 175 countries were using Teams for Education, as of a Microsoft blog post on April 9, and the company said it tracked 2.7 billion meeting minutes in Teams in a single day on March 31. That was up from 900 million minutes a day earlier in March. 

Slack added 9,000 paid customers halfway through its first quarter, almost as many as it added in its two previous quarters combined.

Slack has also seen a massive usage growth around the world.

When Slack reported earnings in mid-March it said it had seen a "significant spike" in usage, as the pandemic forced people to work remotely. A few weeks later, Slack gave some metrics to show what it meant: Between the beginning of February and the end of March, it added 9,000 new paid customers, almost as many as it added in its previous two quarters combined. 

CEO Stewart Butterfield said its hard to tell now much of this growth is sustainable, given how uncertain the economy right now.

"Some of our customers will inevitably go bankrupt, there will be layoffs, and some customers will shrink," he said during an analyst call in March. "I don't think we've got the super computers that can tell us how the world will look three months from now and that's where the uncertainty comes from."

However, he's confident that this recent boost will help Slack's business in the long term. 

One looming question: how much more intense will the competition between all three productivity software vendors become?

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• Facebook is adding 50-person video chatrooms called Messenger Rooms.
• The new feature reflects how people have turned to video-calling to stay in contact amid the pandemic.
• And it's an attempt to counter the rise of Zoom, the once-business-focused video-conferencing app that has exploded during lockdown.
• Dozens of people can join the Rooms, even if they don't have a Facebook account, and use virtual backgrounds and augmented reality filters.

Facebook is adding 50-person video chatrooms to its social network in a significant update that seeks to counter the surprise rise of video-chat service Zoom and offer people more ways to communicate with their friends while separated by the pandemic.

On Friday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is introducing "Messenger Rooms" — a new feature that allows members to create public or private video chatrooms to interact with friends and strangers. 

As coronavirus has erupted around the world in recent months, it has radically transformed how billions of people interact with one another. Separated by fear and lockdowns around the globe, people have turned to social networks and online communication services to stay in touch and work.

There has been an explosion in video conference-calling, and the big winner thus far has been Zoom — once a firmly corporate-focused video-chat service, it has skyrocketed from 10 million daily users to 300 million in a matter of months. 

Facebook's announcement of Rooms, and the prominence the new feature is being given, is a clear indicator that the company views group video communication as a strategic priority right now. 

The chatrooms are being displayed at the top of users' Facebook news feeds — some of the most prime real-estate in the Facebook universe — as well as group pages, screenshots shared by the company show. They even sit above Stories, the auto-deleting photos and videos that have been a focus for the company recently.

Similarly, if a room's privacy settings allow it, people will be able to join them via a link even if they don't have a Facebook account. It's an unusual move for Facebook, but one that may help broaden the feature's appeal to people unwilling to sign up for services with the company.

Rooms comes alongside a bunch of other video-related announcements from Facebook. The company is adding eight-person video calls to messaging app WhatsApp, as well as video-call functionality to Facebook Dating, the company's dating service that faces the challenge of most prospective daters being unable to meet face-to-face right now. 

It's also beefing up its livestreaming functionalities — letting users watch Instagram Live broadcasts from desktop for the first time, letting users livestream from their Portal video-chat devices, and reintroducing the "Live With" feature that allows users to co-livestream with others and which it previously discontinued.

Facebook is determined not to be left behind

Messenger Rooms is launching in some unspecified countries this week, Facebook wrote in a blog post announcing the news, and will roll out to the rest of the world "in the coming weeks."

Initially, users will be able to create them through the core Facebook app — but in time they'll spread throughout all of Facebook's services, to Instagram direct messages, WhatsApp, and its Portal device.

Like Zoom, users will be able to set virtual backgrounds, and they can also use Facebook's augmented reality tech to add face filters. They can be made public, or restricted to a users' friends, or select group of people only.

With most of the world unable to venture outside, Zoom and other large-scale video chat services have suddenly become host to everything from trivia nights to fitness classes to funerals. 

Friday's announcements illustrate Facebook's historic determination not to be left behind as people's behaviour shifts online — even if it sometimes means shamelessly copying competitors. When Snapchat first appeared as a potential threat to Facebook, it cloned its features numerous times, to varying degrees of success — most significantly by co-opting the Stories features that became a smash hit for Instagram.  

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SEE ALSO: Facebook just beefed up its work app Workplace as COVID-19 lockdowns continue, and its chief says it can help companies retain their culture

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NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has announced that he’ll be stepping down from his position, with current AT&T president and COO John Stankey set to replace him as the new CEO on July 1st, via CNBC. Stephenson will continue to serve as the executive chairman of AT&T’s board until January 2021.

Stephenson has served as AT&T’s CEO since May 2007, a time period that saw the company massive expand in both existing and new markets, with an attempted (but failed purchase of T-Mobile) in 2011, an acquisition of Leap Wireless in 2013, a purchase of DirecTV in 2014, and the landmark $85 billion Time Warner deal that closed back in 2018 after years of regulatory fighting and objections from the Justice Department.

Stankey became the heir apparent in...

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Though businesses prepare to shrink their IT spend, an economic contraction can provide an opportunity to assess where software can boost productivity.

• Slack will not reopen its offices until at least September 1 of this year, and is committed to continue paying its employees who can't do their work from home, including contractors and hourly workers. 
• While other tech companies have also committed to paying their hourly and contract workers during this time, Slack's potential reopening date of September 1 would likely make it the longest period any tech company has committed to yet. 
• Slack made the decision to make the delay because it means "less exposure for our employees, fewer invasive distancing measures in offices, less disruption for customers, and greater flexibility in weathering a potential second wave of the virus," SVP of people Robby Kwok said in a blog post.
• Slack's announcement also comes as the company has seen record usage due to the spike in remote work — adding 9,000 new customers in the first half of the quarter.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Slack says it will not reopen its offices until at least September 1 of this year — a significant delay to the date of June 1 that it had originally targeted. 

In blog post announcing the decision, Slack Senior VP of People Robby Kwok wrote that embracing remote work for a longer period means "less exposure for our employees, fewer invasive distancing measures in offices, less disruption for customers, and greater flexibility in weathering a potential second wave of the virus."

Kwok also wrote that Slack was committed to continuing to pay any employees who can't do their work from home, including contractors and hourly workers.

Slack first closed its offices on March 18, in a decision that came right before its home city of San Francisco enacted a shelter-in-place order. That order has since been extended until May 3 for most counties in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Slack is one of the very few companies to provide its employees with a target date for a return to the office. Of note is that while many other tech companies have also committed to paying their hourly and contract workers during this period of mandatory remote work, this news means that Slack is promising to keep that commitment alive through at least September 1st — likely the longest period publicly announced by any major tech company. 

Kwok added that the new date also can pave the way for "other workers to return to work first—those who cannot work remotely to sustain their livelihood," and gives employees more flexibility throughout the summer months when schools and childcare facilities will like be disrupted. California schools are closed for the remainder of the school year.

In China, where the pandemic started, social distancing mandates are being lifted. Microsoft is gradually reopening its China offices and manufacturers like Foxconn, Apple's largest manufacturing partner, have reopened factories.

In order to fully reopen all offices, experts say testing and contact tracing will likely have to become widely available.

Slack's announcement comes as the company has fully adapted to "remote operations, while helping millions of new and existing users meet the challenge of a new way of working," Kwok wrote. Slack has seen record usage of its workplace chat app due to the spike in remote work — adding 9,000 new customers in the first half of the quarter, almost as much as in the previous two quarters combined. 

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Zoom has hit the headlines recently for a growing number of security and privacy concerns, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped people from flocking to the video conferencing app. Zoom has now revealed that it has surpassed 300 million daily Zoom meeting participants. That’s up 50 percent from the 200 million the company reported earlier this month, and a huge jump from the 10 million back in December.

Zoom does say the figures are daily meeting participants, which could mean if you have five Zoom meetings in a day then you’re counted five times. However, Zoom also states in the same blog post that it has “more than 300 million daily users” and that “more than 300 million people around the world are using Zoom during this challenging...

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Miro is a company in the right place at the right time. The makers of a digital whiteboard are seeing usage surge right now as businesses move from the workplace and physical whiteboards. Today, the company announced a hefty $50 million Series B.

Iconiq Capital led the round with help from Accel and a slew of individual investors. Today’s investment brings the total raised to around $75 million, according to the company. Among the company’s angel investors was basketball star Steph Curry, and Dutch investor Bas Godska, one of the most prolific Western investors in Eastern Europe.

What’s attracting this level of investment is that this is a product made for a moment when workers are forced to stay home. One of the primary complaints about working at home is the inability to sit in the same room with colleagues and brainstorm around a whiteboard. This reproduces that to an extent.

What’s more, Miro isn’t simply light-weight add-in like you might find built into a collaboration tool like Zoom or Microsoft Teams; it’s more of a platform play designed to integrate with many different enterprise tools, much like Slack does for communications.

Miro co-founder and CEO Andrey Khusid said the company planned the platform idea from its earliest days. “The concept from day one was building something for real-time collaboration and the platform thing is very important because we expect that people will build on top of our product,” Khusid told TechCrunch.

Image Credit: Miro

That means that people can build integrations to other common tools and customize the base tool to meet the needs of an individual team or organization. It’s an approach that seems to be working as the company reports it’s profitable with more than 21,000 customers including 80% of the Fortune 100. Customers include Netflix, Salesforce, PwC, Spotify, Expedia and Deloitte.

Khusid says usage has been skyrocketing among both business and educational customers as the pandemic has forced millions of people to work at home. He says that has been a challenge for his engineering team to keep up with the demand, but one that the company has been able to meet to this point.

The startup just passed the 300 employee mark this week, and it will continue to hire with this new influx of money. Khusid expects to have another 150 employees before the end of the year to keep up with increasing demand for the product.

“We understand that we need to come out strong from this situation. The company is growing much faster than we expected, so we need to have a very strong team to maintain the growth at the same pace after the crisis ends.”

At a time when more transactions than ever are happening online, payments behemoth Stripe is announcing three new features to continue expanding its reach.

The company today announced that it will now offer card issuing services directly to businesses to let them in turn make credit cards for customers tailored to specific purposes. Alongside that, it’s going to expand the number of accepted local, large card networks to cut down some of the steps it takes to make transactions in international markets. And finally, it’s launching a “revenue optimization” feature that essentially will use Stripe’s AI algorithms to reassess and approve more flagged transactions that might have otherwise been rejected in the past.

Together the three features underscore how Stripe is continuing to scale up with more services around its core payment processing APIs, a significant step in the wake of last week announcing its biggest fundraise to date: $600 million at a $36 billion valuation.

The rollouts of the new products are specifically coming at a time when Stripe has seen a big boost in usage among some (but not all) of its customers, said John Collison, Stripe’s co-founder and president, in an interview. Instacart, which is providing grocery delivery at a time when many are living under stay-at-home orders, has seen transactions up by 300% in recent weeks. Another newer customer, Zoom, is also seeing business boom. Amazon, Stripe’s behemoth customer that Collison would not discuss in any specific terms except to confirm it’s a close partner, is also seeing extremely heavy usage.

But other Stripe users — for example, many of its sea of small business users — are seeing huge pressures, while still others, faced with no physical business, are just starting to approach e-commerce in earnest for the first time. Stripe’s idea is that the launches today can help it address all of these scenarios.

“What we’re seeing in the COVID-19 world is that the impact is not minor,” said Collison. “Online has always been steadily taking a share from offline, but now many [projected] years of that migration are happening in the space of a few weeks.”

Stripe is among those companies that have been very mum about when they might go public — a state of affairs that only become more set in recent times, given how the IPO market has all but dried up in the midst of a health pandemic and economic slump. That has meant very little transparency about how Stripe is run, whether it’s profitable and how much revenues it makes.

But Stripe did note last week that it had some $2 billion in cash and cash reserves, which at least speaks to a level of financial stability. And another hint of efficiency might be gleaned from today’s product news.

While these three new services don’t necessarily sound like they are connected to each other, what they have underpinning them is that they are all building on top of tech and services that Stripe has previously rolled out. This speaks to how, even as the company now handles some 250 million API requests daily, it’s keeping some lean practices in place in terms of how it invests and maximises engineering and business development resources.

The card issuing service, for example, is built on a card service that Stripe launched last year. Originally aimed at businesses to provide their employees with credit cards — for example to better manage their own work-related expenses, or to make transactions on behalf of the business — now businesses can use the card issuing platform to build out aspects of its customer-facing services.

For example, Stripe noted that the first customer, Zipcar, will now be placing credit cards in each of its vehicles, which drivers can use to fuel up the vehicles (that is, the cards can only be used to buy gas). Another example Collison gave for how these could be implemented would be in a food delivery service, for example for a Postmates delivery person to use the card to pay for the meal that a customer has already paid Postmates to pick up and deliver to them.

Collison noted that while other startups like Marqeta have built big businesses around innovative card issuing services, “this is the first time it’s being issued on a self-serving basis,” meaning companies that want to use these cards can now set this up more quickly as a “programmatic card” experience, akin to self-serve, programmatic ads online.

It seems also to be good news for investors. “Stripe Issuing is a big step forward,” said Alex Rampell, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, in a statement. “Not just for the millions of businesses running on Stripe, but for credit cards as a fundamental technology. Businesses can now use an API to create and issue cards exactly when and where they need them, and they can do it in a few clicks, not a few months. As investors, we’re excited by all the potential new companies and business models that will emerge as a result.”

Meanwhile, the revenue “optimization” engine that Stripe is rolling out is built on the same machine learning algorithms that it originally built for Radar, its fraud prevention tool that originally launched in 2016 and was extended to larger enterprises in 2018. This makes a lot of sense, since oftentimes the reason transactions get rejected is because of the suspicion of fraud. Why it’s taken four years to extend that to improve how transactions are approved or rejected is not entirely clear, but Stripe estimates that it could enable a further $2.5 billion in transactions annually.

One reason why the revenue optimization may have taken some time to roll out was because while Stripe offers a very seamless, simple API for users, it’s doing a lot of complex work behind the scenes knitting together a lot of very fragmented payment flows between card issuers, banks, businesses, customers and more in order to make transactions possible.

The third product announcement speaks to how Stripe is simplifying a bit more of that. Now, it’s able to provide direct links into six big card networks — Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB and China Union Pay, which effectively covers the major card networks in North and Latin America, Southeast Asia and Europe. Previously, Stripe would have had to work with third parties to integrate acceptance of all of these networks in different regions, which would have cut into Stripe’s own margins and also given it less flexibility in terms of how it could handle the transaction data.

Launching the revenue optimization by being able to apply machine learning to the transaction data is one example of where and how it might be able to apply more innovative processes from now on.

While Stripe is mainly focused today on how to serve its wider customer base and to just help business continue to keep running, Collison noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a measurable impact on Stripe beyond just boosts in business for some of its customers.

The whole company has been working remotely for weeks, including its development team, making for challenging times in building and rolling out services.

And Stripe, along with others, is also in the early stages of piloting how it will play a role in issuing small business loans as part of the CARES Act, he said.

In addition to that, he noted that there has been an emergence of more medical and telehealth services using Stripe for payments.

Before now, many of those use cases had been blocked by the banks, he said, for reasons of the industries themselves being strictly regulated in terms of what kind of data could get passed across networks and the sensitive nature of the businesses themselves. He said that a lot of that has started to get unblocked in the current climate, and “the growth of telemedicine has been off the charts.”

I started becoming obsessed with EarthCam’s Times Square live stream a few weeks ago. Instead of habitually opening Instagram or Facebook when I was bored, I’d check in on some low-res strangers from the safety of my apartment. It was oddly comforting to see that the blazing walls of billboards and larger-than-life store names were still there, even if the streets around them were unusually empty. The barrage of LED advertisements felt a little less searing on a small laptop screen than they do in real life.

Someone had arranged the chairs to spell “I <3 NY,” which actually made me love New York a little bit more.

I even saw the Naked Cowboy! And a tourist taking a photo while simultaneously running away from him. I feel so safe just by...

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• More than 300 million people joined Zoom meetings on April 21, up 50% from the beginning of the month, CEO Eric Yuan said in a webinar Wednesday.
• Zoom's surging popularity comes despite numerous privacy scandals that have plagued the company in recent weeks, from "Zoom bombing" to surreptitiously sharing data with Facebook.
• Zoom is rolling out several new features this week aimed at fixing those issues, like allowing users to report trolls and offering them more control over their security settings, it announced Wednesday in a blog post.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

More than 300 million people used Zoom's video conferencing software on April 21, a 50% jump from 200 million daily users at the beginning of the month, CEO Eric Yuan said during a webinar Wednesday.

"Clearly, the Zoom platform is providing an incredibly valuable service to our beloved users during this challenging time," Yuan said. "We are thrilled and honored to continue to earn the trust of so many enterprises, hospitals, teachers and customers throughout the world."

As coronavirus lockdowns have encouraged more people to turn to video conferencing tools to keep working as well as stay in touch with friends and family, Zoom has emerged as the dominant platform, topping charts in both Apple and Google's app stores at the end of March.

But Zoom's popularity has skyrocketed in recent weeks even as the company scrambles to address various privacy scandals, like a practice called "Zoom bombing" where trolls have been hijacking users' meetings and harrassing them. The company was also for a time sending analytics data to Facebook without alerting users, and while it has since reversed course, it was recently hit with a class-action lawsuit related to the data sharing.

In a blog post earlier Wednesday, Zoom announced that the new version of its software, set to roll out to users within the week, would have a number of features aimed at fixing some of those issues. Users will soon be able to report trolls who intrude on meetings uninvited, and they'll also be able to take advantage of stronger AES 256-bit GCM encryption. Other changes to default settings around meeting passwords and "waiting rooms" — which help keep uninvited guests out of meetings — are already available to users, the post said.

SEE ALSO: Afraid of the person in the middle of your Zoom call? You're not alone. Researchers say large faces in video meetings can trigger a 'fight or flight' response.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

Courts are moving online due to COVID-19. No one is sure if that’s a good thing.

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But their default touch controls are a chore

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Polar has announced its latest fitness watch, called the Grit X, and it’s made for the outdoors. The company claims that this is the ultimate outdoor watch, taking every feature (along with a few design cues) from its 2018 Vantage lineup of watches and adding even more utility to help athletes get more out of their workouts.

One of those new features, called Hill Splitter, will appeal to those who like to hike. It tracks stats on how many ascents and descents you’ve taken during your run, walk, or hike — anything with an incline. This could be a fun way to track your performance if basing your workout on distance metrics alone doesn’t motivate you.

Most people know...

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Zoom promised a 90-day feature freeze to fix privacy and security issues, and the company is delivering on some of those promises. A new Zoom 5.0 update is rolling out today that’s designed to address some of the many complaints that Zoom has faced in recent weeks. With this new update, there’s now a security icon that groups together a number of Zoom’s security features. You can use it to quickly lock meetings, remove participants, and restrict screen sharing and chatting in meetings.

Zoom is also now enabling passwords by default for most customers, and IT admins can define the password complexity for Zoom business users. Zoom’s waiting room feature is also now on by default for basic, single-license Pro, and education accounts. This...

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If you’re finding that background noise is disrupting voice or video calls made from your computer, then a new piece of software from Nvidia might help (provided you have the necessary hardware to run it). Released in April 2020, RTX Voice uses the hardware found in Nvidia’s RTX (and more recently, GTX) GPUs to process your incoming and outgoing audio and eliminate almost all background noise.

Below, you’ll find a quick demonstration I recorded to show how it works. This was recorded from a Blue Snowball microphone using the built-in call recording functionality in Zoom. When I don’t have the software enabled, you can hear the loud clacking of my mechanical keyboard in the background of the call. But when I turn on RTX Voice, the sound...

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Ice T loves the app Marco Polo. So does P!nk, who shouted out the app on Instagram, and Amy Poehler, who mentioned it during a Late Night appearance. All three celebrities have highlighted the four-year-old video messaging app in recent weeks, saying they’re using it to stay in touch with friends and family while social distancing. It’s seen a 12 times increase in new signups over the last month, with a 745 percent increase in signups during just the week of March 30th. Marco Polo wouldn’t provide concrete user numbers, but it said that “millions” of people are now using the app.

Still, for a four-year-old app with explosive growth and celebrity fanfare, no one seems to know exactly why people are flocking to Marco Polo.

“I think the...

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A few weeks ago, a new talking point popped up among telecom policy pundits opposed to net neutrality. They began claiming that the only reason the internet hasn't buckled during the pandemic was thanks to the FCC's controversial and unpopular net neutrality repeal. That repeal, you'll recall, not only killed net neutrality, but much of the FCC's ability to hold ISPs accountable for pretty much anything, including outright billing fraud.

But to hear various net neutrality opponents tell it, the repeal is the primary reason the US internet hasn't fallen apart during COVID-19 quarantine:

"We should thank our lucky stars that Title II net neutrality regulations were repealed by the FCC in 2017. In doing so, the US avoided the fate of much of Europe today, where broadband networks are strained and suffering from a lack of investment and innovation."

Except none of this is true. This entire narrative is fantasy -- built almost entirely off of the EU simply asking various streaming companies to throttle certain services in an abundance of caution. There remains no evidence that this was due to any serious problems, and, at the same time, there's been no evidence that US networks have measurably outperformed their EU counterparts (indeed, many of the companies that throttled services in the EU did so in the US as well). Investment at many US ISPs actually dropped post net neutrality repeal. And there's literally no indication that US networks are somehow "more robust" than the EU because the FCC decided to ignore the public and obliterate its own authority at the behest of the telecom lobby. It's just not a supportable claim.

In fact, networks in China and Italy, like here in the States, have (with a few exceptions) held up reasonably well under the massive load of telecommuting and home learning. Not because of net neutrality policy, but because network engineers are generally good at their jobs. While there have been some network problems, they're usually of the "last mile" variety in both the EU and US. As in, because of limited competition, your ISP never upgraded that "last mile" to your house, leaving you stuck on a DSL line from around 2007 that struggles to handle Zoom teleconferencing particularly well.

The claim that the EU was suffering some kind of exceptional congestion problems appears to have originated among some EU regulators who simply urged Netflix to reduce bandwidth consumption by 25% to pre-emptively help lighten the load. There was no supporting public evidence provided of actual harm. The move was precautionary, and may not have even been necessary. Somehow this flimsy base was used as the foundation of the claim that because the EU passed some fairly basic and inconsistent net neutrality rules, it suffered more network headaches than the US.

But if you look at Ookla's data of how networks have held up around the globe, you see that the US appears to have performed at about the same level as other places. Here's the US:

There's a small dip in mid-March as a lot of the country began to shut down, but no massive problems. On that, everyone seems to agree. But to hear the various anti-net neutrality folks tell it, the EU was struggling to keep its network up and running. But... uh, the data doesn't show that at all:

In Germany, France, and Spain you see that download speeds actually jumped up before eventually doing a small dip as those countries locked down. There isn't enough evidence to make a definitive claim, but if we were to argue using the same points raised by critics of net neutrality, Looking at all that, you might even be able to make the argument that EU broadband providers handled this situation better and more quickly than the US.

None of this has stopped the telecom sector and its allies from embracing this whole flimsy argument anyway. In a speech at the Inter American Development Bank last week, FCC boss Ajit Pai made, albeit more subtly, similar claims:

"In the end, I believe trusting the markets rather than solely relying on mandates resulted in more consumer-friendly policies than we would have achieved with a more heavy-handed government intervention, and I know that we were able to make these changes more quickly. I’d also argue that the general regulatory approach that we have in the United States have applied to the broadband marketplace gave us much stronger infrastructure in the first place, as it gave companies the incentives to invest in resilient, robust networks that could withstand unprecedented consumer demands."

Again though, Pai's not telling the truth. US broadband investment didn't magically improve due to the net neutrality repeal, no matter how many times he makes the claim. In fact, AT&T and Comcast dropped overall CAPEX despite massive deregulation and billions in tax cuts. There's zero evidence any of this industry ass-kissing made US networks more resilient to a pandemic. In fact, respected former FCC advisors like Gigi Sohn have argued that gutting FCC authority over ISPs has made it harder than ever to hold them accountable for bad behavior, pandemic or otherwise.

Using a pandemic to justify regulatory capture is grotesque, especially given there's just no evidence to support the claims being made here. That didn't stop FCC General Counsel Tom Johnson, who also tweeted out his support for a new Wall Street Journal opinion column (not coincidentally) making most of the same claims:

Notice how the telecom industry doesn't even have to publicly make these false claims, because they've got think tankers and government employees now doing it for them. These arguments are rife with cherry picking and selective reasoning (for example you'll see none of these folks highlighting how EU consumers pay far less for broadband than those in the US, in part because regulators are generally more active when it comes to protecting competition and consumer welfare). The Wall Street Journal story also suggests that US networks are more resilient to COVID-19 thanks to killing net neutrality, broadband privacy rules, and other "heavy handed" US telecom consumer protections:

"In Europe, networks have struggled to meet bandwidth demand, leading officials to ask popular services such as Netflix and YouTube to degrade the quality of their streaming video from high definition to standard definition. U.S. networks have faced fewer problems adjusting to the increase in demand. Public policy explains the different outcomes. The European Union has embraced a heavy-handed regulatory scheme designed to allocate access to the existing network, while the U.S. has emphasized private investment to expand network capacity."

But again, there's no evidence that European networks have fallen apart during the COVID-19 crisis. Or that any differences in performance have anything to do with deregulation or net neutrality. Netflix's decision to throttle back its bandwidth usage by 25% was done entirely pro-actively. There was no underlying network data provided by regulators to justify the move. It was just EU regulators being cautious (perhaps overly so).

Indeed, similar steps have been taken here in the States. YouTube for example has downgraded video quality to conserve bandwidth. So has game platform Steam, which is slowing some game downloads. You can't selectively highlight the EU's efforts on this front then ignore the US ones because it supports your flimsy narrative. Well I guess you can, but you should be laughed at.

It takes a particular type of person to look at a brutal pandemic and think that it provides a wonderful opportunity to justify one of the most controversial, scandal prone, and fact-averse regulatory policy decisions in modern history. Using COVID-19 to justify mindless telecom sector coddling sets a new, even lower bar for a sector whose argumentative integrity was already at ankle height.

So why do it? It's a distraction from several things the sector would prefer you not pay attention to. One being that an estimated 42 million Americans still can't access broadband during a pandemic, and millions more can't afford service because of a lack of competition among regionally power monopolies. They'd also really like it if you forgot how the FCC ignored the public, made up a bunch of data, and ignored a whole bunch of fraud to gut oversight of one of the most problematic business sectors in America--leaving consumers and regulators alike on precarious footing in the wake of an historic global crisis.

• Mary Meeker, best known for her insights on tech trends, just published a new report on how coronavirus will reshape the technology industry.
• The research, published in full by Axios, talks about how coronavirus will add fuel to remote work and benefit companies that can adapt to an environment with more digital interactions.
• It also dives into healthcare. Meeker, who founded Bond Capital, says the pandemic will accelerate five health-tech trends, like telemedicine and interoperability, that are already underway. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Mary Meeker, best known for her reports on tech trends, just published a new report on how coronavirus will reshape the technology industry.

The report, published in full by Axios, discusses how coronavirus will add fuel to remote work and benefit companies that can adapt to an environment where there are a lot fewer in-person interactions. The report was authored by Meeker and colleagues at the investment firm Bond Capital.

The report also includes a section focused on healthcare. The coronavirus pandemic has put a massive strain on the US healthcare system, sickening about 2.5 million people and killing more than 170,000.

Meeker says the outbreak has revealed two big problems with US healthcare: healthcare delivery still mainly happens in person, and healthcare data sources aren't connected or able to talk to each other.

"The front line of the battle with COVID-19 has been the institutions and individuals that make up America's healthcare delivery system," Meeker and colleagues wrote in the report. "Unfortunately, the pandemic also exposed a number of structural flaws in our healthcare system."

The pandemic will accelerate five health-tech trends that are already underway, Meeker writes. She said that medicine will keep moving away from hospitals, and that patients will act more and more as consumers.

Read on to see those trends.

More healthcare will be delivered online.

From the report: "Telemedicine is faster, often delivers better quality, and is almost always cheaper than traditional delivery systems."

Why now? Delivering care at home reduces the burden on hospitals and clinics and can prevent patients with the coronavirus form infecting others.

Read more: Meet the 12 telemedicine startups being put to the test as they gear up to confront the coronavirus pandemic

Home health monitoring devices will gain ground.

From the report: "Internet connected monitoring devices, when deployed alongside telemedicine can enhance its efficacy and can help to produce better outcomes."

Why now? These devices can help doctors who are delivering care virtually.

Read more: Best Buy just gave a 109-slide presentation on the future of the company. Here are the 7 crucial slides that spell out why the company is going all-in on healthcare.

Rapid lab testing will become more widely available.

From the report: "It's time to expect the iPhone equivalent of diagnostics, and there are a number of technology companies making great progress on that vision."

Why now? Coronavirus has revealed big shortcomings in the US's ability to test patients for the disease, and getting testing devices into more homes and clinics could help improve the situation.

Read more: A buzzy startup's struggle to make the first at-home test that can tell if you've had the coronavirus reveals a crucial roadblock to reopening the US

Healthcare data will become more connected.

From the report: "In the COVID-19 environment, the pressure to connect systems is greater than ever and we expect innovative companies, together with government support, to accelerate connectivity without the intensive integration requirements of past attempts."

Why now? The coronavirus outbreak has underscored that hospitals and clinics in the US don't have good ways of sharing data with each other.

Read more: A buzzy healthcare startup that raised $50 million from Andreessen Horowitz 3 months ago just cut staff amid the coronavirus pandemic

Automation and artificial intelligence will keep catching on in healthcare.

From the report: "Automation will continue to make inroads in healthcare to reduce workload and improve the quality of data capture. Applied/vertical artificial intelligence is just beginning to be paired with abundant EHR data to drive the right insights to the right providers at the right time."

Why now? Coronavirus showed that the healthcare labor force is "stretched thin," Meeker writes in the report.

Read more: Investors just poured more than $1 billion into startups using AI to tackle every part of healthcare. Here are the 5 healthcare AI startups raking in the most cash.

Theo Gove-Humphries and Bee Roper had their next two years planned out. They would fly — with their van, naturally — from the UK to Canada. They’d make their way across North America, dipping down into the Midwest US before cutting over to Alaska, and eventually ending up… well, somewhere that would let them ship off to Australia.

But shortly after getting their visas approved in early March, Canada banned most incoming international travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A day later, the UK began recommending that all nonessential international travel be canceled, too. Suddenly, they were stuck in the UK.

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Peloton today announced that it will resume live workout classes after finally closing its studios on April 3rd when an employee tested positive for COVID-19. Classes will now be streaming from the instructors’ homes — a format that many Peloton members had requested shortly after cities across the United States began shutting down non-essential businesses.

Classes will pick up again on the Peloton app, bike, and treadmill beginning April 22nd and will span cycling, running, strength training, and yoga. Users can expect between two to three new live classes daily; the schedule currently focuses on morning classes but the company promises to resume live evening “prime time” classes in the coming weeks.

In the days after US...

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• Jim Benton leads Chorus.ai, a San Francisco-based startup that analyzes sales meetings with artificial intelligence to find what approaches are working best to close deals. 
• Hired March 16, a week after his company sent staff home to work remotely, Benton has started a daily briefing webcast to interview customers about how they are adjusting to the COVID-19 crisis.
• Benton's firm and customers have unearthed trends during the past two months such as delayed payments, a decrease in cold calls, leadership involvement in sales meetings, and low open rates in COVID-themed emails.
• A major takeaway: Salespeople who demonstrated empathy for their customers amid the pandemic were generally more successful.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you're a newly-remote office worker who feels like you haven't seen your coworkers in forever, consider the situation of Jim Benton, the CEO of an AI startup who has never met his staff. Hired March 16, Benton has only met a handful of the employees of Chorus.ai, the 100-person San Francisco company he now leads. 

"I have not worked in the office yet," says Benton, a veteran of AT&T and Ticketmaster. "We started working from home the week before I started, and I had interviewed with a few folks. But I showed up Day 1 to face 100 tiles on a Zoom screen." 

Talk about the new normal of work life during COVID-19 staring you in the face. Looking into those 200 strange eyes, Benton knew he needed to do some informed communicating in order to lead his new staff. 

"I thought, 'What can we do with this situation to be our best? This is our moment, whether we would have chosen it or drawn it up this way or not. This is what we have. How can we make the most of it and help others to do the same?'"

Luckily, what his company does is study how firms communicate. Chorus.ai has raised $55 million in venture funding to date, from Canadian investment firm Georgian Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Emergence Capital, and its customers include Zoom, Mavenlink, Qualtrics, Adobe, and GitLab. 

Benton, the new CEO, has created a daily briefing video conference that breaks down how businesses are approaching sales calls during the COVID-19 crisis. Benton's daily briefing is broadcast live at 8:35 AM Pacific Time here, with past episodes available to stream. 

With a guest from a different company every day, Benton discusses the trends identified by Chorus.ai's natural language processing — the combination of computer science and linguistics that helps computers understand human language. Those AI programs swim through a vast data lake. Last year Chorus processed 5 million sales calls for its State of Conversation Intelligence report, and Benton says the data he cites in his daily briefings is culled from millions of calls from this year already. 

What the data show is a very different approach to sales over the past two months.  

"You might think the workforce just collapsed. It didn't. Teams are as productive or more productive working remotely, but it looks different. That's why we started the daily briefing, to show what we're seeing," Benton said.

One of the main things Chous.ai is seeing is that successful meetings over the past two months often "start with the heart." Participants connect, ask about each other's families and home life. If salespeople swoop in for a quick sale, it feels tone deaf, Chorus.ai customer Sean Andrews of MongoDB said in Benton's daily briefing last week.

"I think we're having more sincere discussions. Everyone is going through this so I think people are slowing down and building more rapport," said Andrews, whose firm provides a database for application developers. 

Lessons learned

What Chorus.ai calls its Conversation Intelligence Platform identifies and helps teams replicate the performance of top-performing reps by analyzing recordings of their sales meetings – who's at the meeting, when does it happen and on what platform, what's the outcome of the meeting, and what materials are presented? If the meeting led to a sale, what conversations led up to that? What patterns of speech show up regularly? These insights inform coaching strategies for sales and customer success teams. 

Other lessons learned so far include:

• Payment terms of longer than 30 days have doubled since the beginning of March, as companies rethink their budgets for the oncoming recession. 
• Mentions of COVID-19 more than doubled over the past month, but half of them occur in the first 10 minutes of a business conversation as participants inquire about each other's health and well-being, then move on to focus on business. 
• Cold calls have dropped 38% since January as salespeople have adjusted to remote work and a more personal approach with budgets tight.
• There's been a big jump – by 70% – in companies' leaders joining sales calls as budgets tighten. 
• Some of the markets hit hardest by the virus are rebounding in their productivity, with meetings increasing in New York and Chicago. 

'People are shying away from COVID messaging'

The effort to connect personally is also paying off within companies, Benton's guest on his daily briefing webcast said Friday. Grayson Cooper, head of sales at the transcription and captions company Rev.com, urged managers not to "miss out on what you're used to seeing in the office. It's a chance to have that coffee conversation that's crucial to having healthy relationships with your team."

All of this personal conversation doesn't just mean sympathizing about the virus' impact, said  Matt Amundson, the chief marketing officer of business data firm EverString on Benton's web conference show last week. "People are shying away from COVID messaging so much that if you use coronavirus in a subject line, the open rate decreases by 60%," Amundson said.

"We're focusing on humanity more than empathy. Something like 'I'm writing this email sitting in a bean bag chair in my living room rather than the office.'" That kind of messaging really clicks, he said.

What this all signals to Benton is that "We're all in my position. We're all trying to connect in this situation and make sense of this new environment."

Join the conversation about this story »

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A complete adoption of the Apple/Google coronavirus contact tracing API within the EU looks to be moving forward. Reporting for 9to5mac, tech writer Ben Lovejoy writes that the European Commission has endorsed the collective adoption of one app or common standard (e.g. the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) platform).