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The top four UK mobile operators have issued a joint statement asking for help to stop people burning 5G towers. Multiple cell towers were targeted in the UK last week in apparent arson attacks, after online conspiracy theories have been falsely linking the spread of the coronavirus pandemic to the roll out of 5G. There’s no scientific evidence to suggest a link, but the theories have been spreading widely on social networks like Facebook and Nextdoor.

“Not only are these claims baseless, they are harmful for the people and businesses that rely on the continuity of our services,” says a joint statement from EE, o2, Three, and Vodafone. “They have also led to the abuse of our engineers and, in some cases, prevented essential network...

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• Layoffs at some high-profile startups — including Bird, Wonderschool, and ZipRecruiter — were announced via mass video calls.
• Experts say that's hardly best management practice.
• Even during an extended period of remote work, you can conduct layoffs with respect and compassion. One strategy is to arrange one-on-one meetings with managers and employees.
• Mishandling layoffs could hurt a brand's reputation in the long term.
• Click here for more BI Prime content.

On March 27, employees at the buzzy scooter startup Bird were invited to a 30-minute Zoom meeting titled simply, "COVID-19 Bird Update."

Within a few minutes of the meeting start time, Dot.LA reported, an unidentified member of Bird's staff came on the line (there was no video) to announce that management had been forced to make difficult decisions in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic recession. One of those decisions was eliminating some roles.

Immediately after the message was delivered, employees said, their company-issued laptops restarted and they no longer had access to their computers. Some of those people told Dot.LA that they weren't certain what had happened until they saw a TechCrunch article about the layoffs.

Ultimately, 30% of Bird's staff was laid off. The company had raised $275 million in funding several months ago.

Bird is just one example of startups — including the childcare startup Wonderschool and the employer marketplace ZipRecruiter — that have conducted layoffs via mass videoconference in the last few weeks.

These videoconference layoffs have elicited strong emotions from former employees.

"I find a lot of the actions that took place on Friday horrendous," former Bird employee Jenny Li Alva wrote in a Medium blog post. 

Bird's CEO, Travis VanderZanden, subsequently tweeted that managers had been asked to connect with laid-off employees individually after the Zoom meeting. A Bird spokesperson confirmed that managers, executives, and HR representatives followed up with the employees who'd lost their jobs. The spokesperson also said that, during the Zoom meeting, a slide was projected indicating that laid-off employees would receive four weeks of pay, three months of medical coverage, and extra time to exercise their stock options.

The fallout from this sort of employer-employee drama can come in many forms.

"This is the moment where brands are built or brands are dented," said Yair Riemer, president of career transition services at the HR technology company CareerArc. If the company mishandles layoffs, Riemer added, "it absolutely will impact recruitment and talent because the world is small."

Many high-flying startups have been hit hard by the recession 

Startups are often risky bets to begin with, ideas that could either become the next Amazon or the latest flop.

The New York Times' Erin Griffith reported on April 1 that in the few weeks prior, more than 50 startups had cut or furloughed a total of roughly 6,000 employees. Those startups include fitness platform ClassPass, clothing retailer Everlane, clothing rental service Rent the Runway, flexible-space company Knotel, corporate travel company TripActions, and women's coworking space The Wing.

Just a few months ago, these companies were flying high, backed by millions of dollars in funding from prominent venture capitalists including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.

But that's changed.

At ZipRecruiter, all employees were invited to a webinar with CEO Ian Siegel, Business Insider's Meghan Morris reported. According to two employees that spoke to Morris on condition of anonymity, Siegel spoke for less than 10 minutes and said that the company was laying off some employees. A total of 443 employees were laid off and 49 were furloughed, according to Dot.LA, which first reported the news that ZipRecruiter was conducting layoffs. ZipRecruiter raised $156 million in a Series B round in October 2018, when it was valued at $1.5 billion.

Wonderschool delivered the news about layoffs during an all-hands meeting on Zoom, Business Insider's Melia Russell reported. According to a former employee, staff were told that the only way for Wonderschool to survive the financial crisis was to let some people go. About 50 employees, or 75% of the staff, were let go.

It's important for leaders to conduct layoffs with compassion and respect for the employees

Announcing layoffs via a mass virtual meeting is hardly best management practice.

Elaine Varelas, managing partner at the career-management firm Keystone Partners, previously told me that leaders should have one-on-one meetings with every employee who's being let go. (In this case, those meetings can be virtual.) No one should be "treated like suddenly they're a criminal," she said.

Layoffs are an example of a situation where the standard startup playbook — "move fast and break things" — doesn't quite apply, said Riemer, of CareerArc. Efficiency and nimbleness typically work to startups' benefit, Riemer added, but in this extended crisis situation, "that attitude needs to be modified." A one-and-done videoconference just isn't the right move. It's especially important to support employees getting laid off from a high-growth startup because this may be the first job they've ever held, Riemer said.

A recent blog post from David Ulevitch, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, outlines strategies for conducting layoffs at a startup while everyone's working remotely during the pandemic. For example: Don't send a "subtle" calendar invitation for a meeting with the employee, their manager, and an HR representative. Have your camera turned on when you announce layoffs virtually. Essentially, Ulevitch is reminding startup executives that there's a human being on the other side of the call, someone who's smart but also has feelings.

"Remember that with every decision you make in this process you need to err on the side of doing whatever you can to help the impacted employee," Ulevitch wrote. That probably means, he added, that you allow employees to continue to use their company-issued laptop, especially since it may be the only computer they have right now. (Ulevitch said management should be clear that the computer is still company property and will need to be returned later.)

Beyond logistics, management should make the motivating factors for staff cuts clear. That helps leaders avoid subjectivity and bias. Once the announcement is made, some employees may request an explanation for why they were let go, but their colleague wasn't — and you'll want to have an answer ready. Buffer CEO Joel Gascoigne, for example, wrote a blog post in 2016 about how the company ended up laying off 10 employees, including a flow chart illustrating management's methodology for deciding which positions to eliminate.

Mishandling layoffs can hurt a brand's long-term prospects

It's possible for a company to recover from a management misstep. Specifically, Riemer said, they can rebuild trust among the employees that are left behind and worried about their own job security.

Execs might use some variation of Riemer's script: "We made an error here. We believe in this business. We believe in this company. We're acknowledging the pain that we've put on others, and you guys are still here with us. We're going to make the best possible plans to ensure that it doesn't happen again."

In the Medium blog post, Alva, the former Bird employee wrote that "I still believe in the product" and in the dream of getting people on scooters and bikes, instead of "isolated in cars." But after the way the company handled layoffs, Alva said, "I'm unsure if I believe in the brand anymore."

SEE ALSO: The startup founder's guide to letting people go efficiently and compassionately, if you have no other choice in a time of crisis

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• Amazon Web Services currently has the biggest market share in the cloud industry, but analysts say it could look for more ways to grow through an acquisition in markets like cybersecurity or artificial intelligence.
• AWS has become even more important to Amazon's overall business, as fears of a recession swirl, analysts say: The future of the online retail industry is unclear, but cloud demand is only increasing.
• Plus, the current turbulence on the stock market is pushing down public company valuations, potentially making it more appealing for AWS to make cloud acquisitions. 
• Business Insider compiled a list below of 10 potential AWS acquisition targets, according to analysts — including names like Twilio, Zoom, and even Oracle.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to fears of a recession, in turn causing Silicon Valley VCs pull back on making big deals, even as tech startups begin to lay off employees as revenue dries up.

Still, some in tech — like Amazon Web Services, the online retailer's massively profitable cloud business — are poised to make it through just fine. Even as the coronavirus pandemic leads to uncertainty in Amazon's retail business as demand surges and Amazon prioritizes the shipment of essential goods, analysts have praised AWS as "recession-proof" because companies like Netflix and Zoom rely on the platform to power their own apps and services. 

That relatively stable position, combined with turbulence on the stock market that's driving down public-company valuations, might mean that AWS takes the opportunity to make some big cloud acquisitions, says Jeb Su, principal analyst and vice president at Atherton Technology Research. If AWS can't develop a certain type of technology in-house, it will look to partner with, or even acquire, other companies, he says.

"They're very opportunistic," Su told Business Insider. "This time it's not going to be different...Amazon can move very quickly, especially when the price is not even right, when it's slow."

AWS isn't typically as acquisitive as Microsoft or Google. Microsoft spent more than $9 billion during its last fiscal year on acquisitions. Google Cloud, meanwhile, is explicitly looking to acquisitions to catch up to AWS and Microsoft in the cloud space.

Still, in general, AWS takes a "practical and opportunistic" approach to its M&A strategy, Su says. Most likely, AWS will look at technologies and services to help both its cloud and its core retail business become more efficient, such as in robotics, AI, logistics, and cybersecurity, he says. 

Su also says that AWS could acquire cloud apps since it hasn't yet made a dent in the space the way its rivals Microsoft and Google Cloud has. He says AWS could look into collaboration apps like Zoom and Slack, but it's unlikely to actually acquire those giant companies. Likewise, Maribel Lopez, founder and principal analyst of Lopez Research, says AWS tends to buy more "small obscure tech."

Indeed, if AWS "decides to get on the M&A bandwagon," it could adopt the same approach as Apple, Microsoft or Cisco, which is to make "a flurry or really interesting small acquisitions," says Futurum Research analyst Daniel Newman.

Even though right now company valuations are dropping amid the coronavirus pandemic, Su says AWS would still acquire a company only if it's worth it. 

"I don't believe AWSwill acquire a company because it's in trouble," Su said. "They will acquire a company because it makes sense in their strategy and makes sense in the technology stack." 

Here are the 10 companies AWS could consider buying to boosts its cloud business, according to analysts:

SEE ALSO: A contractor at one of Amazon's massive cloud data centers says that the company is putting workers at risk without offering hazard pay

FireEye

AWS and the cybersecurity company FireEye already have a partnership to provide security capabilities for the cloud. Under this partnership, FireEye provides security services hosted from AWS and technology to detect cloud threats. Its current market cap is $2 billion.

Since it already has an existing partnership with AWS, it's more likely to be in the radar of Amazon's top management, says Jeb Su, principal analyst and vice president at Atherton Technology Research.

Su says that FireEye is "amongst the leaders in cybersecurity and will complement Amazon's offering which has little to no offering in that fast-growing market while bringing significant IP to help protect AWS."

Zendesk

Zendesk builds customer relationship management software to help companies with support, sales, and customer engagement. This software giant's current market cap is $6.5 billion.

"With Zendesk it helps them move into one of the more critical application software categories around customer support," Alex Zukin, software equity research analyst at RBC Capital Markets, told Business Insider.

Aurora Labs

Aurora Labs builds what it calls "self-healing software" for vehicle manufacturers. In other words, when automotive companies build software for cars, Aurora Labs' products help them with detecting issues, fixing them, and updating them. It's raised about $11 million so far, according to Pitchbook.

Maribel Lopez, founder and principal analyst of Lopez Research, says that AWS could acquire companies in AI security, as well as companies that fix bugs in AI software. Aurora Labs is one such example, she says.

"As part of the AWS portfolio, this would be a set of tools that really helps developers," Lopez told Business Insider. "Also the company isn't overfunded, so it's still affordable."

Although Aurora Labs is targeted at vehicle manufacturers, she says that if AWS were to acquire it, its technology would not just be used for cars. Instead, she says it could be "expanded as a platform play," meaning that AWS could use its AI technology for other parts of its business — its own growing logistics robot fleet, for example.

HackerOne

HackerOne builds a platform that helps companies set up a bug bounty program. In other words, this platform allows hackers to legally hack into a company to find bugs and get rewarded for spotting problems in cash.

Just September, HackerOne announced it closed a $36.4 million round. Currently, it's valued at $331.4 million.

AWS is already a HackerOne customer, which means Amazon's top management is likely already aware about the company, Su says. 

Su says that HackerOne is "amongst the leaders in cybersecurity and will complement Amazon's offering which has little to no offering in that fast-growing market while bringing significant IP to help protect AWS."

Twilio

Twilio builds tools that help developers with building communications apps that can call, email, or send texts to others. For example, Lyft, Uber, and Instacart all use Twilio to power the calling feature in their apps. Currently, Twilio's market cap is $11.3 billion.

"With Twilio it expands them into the communication software landscape," RBC's Zukin said. 

Nomagic

Nomagic builds robots, as well as cloud and AI software used to control them. Its products are used to automate warehouses. For example, its AI software can analyze the position, shape, and characteristics of each item. In February, it announced it closed a seed round of $8.6 million.

Just last year, Amazon bought the warehouse robotics startup Canvas Technology. Still, Lopez says AWS may be interested in more companies with similar technology. Acquiring Nomagic  could be a win for Amazon's retail business, while simultaneously boosting AWS's appeal to developers building their own AI software.

"While Amazon already bought a warehouse automation company last year, it may be interested in Nomagic for its talent and possibly the actual robot arm," Lopez said.

CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike and AWS have partnered to provide endpoint protection for AWS. In other words, it can protect devices on the cloud from cybersecurity threats. It also allows users to monitor these threats. CrowdStrike just went public last July, and its current market cap is $12.3 billion.

Since they already have a partnership, Su says this could make CrowdStrike a potential target as Amazon's top management already know about it.

Su says that CrowdStrike is "amongst the leaders in cybersecurity and will complement Amazon's offering which has little to no offering in that fast-growing market while bringing significant IP to help protect AWS."

Zoom

Amazon could buy Zoom to get in on the flood of customers flocking to videoconferencing and chat apps amid the coronavirus crisis, Futurum Research analyst Daniel Newman said. Zoom is valued on the public markets at some $35 billion at the time of writing.

Amazon has its own online meeting, video conferencing, and chat app called Chime.

While Chime's market share is unclear, it certainly doesn't have as much name recognition as Zoom or Slack and doesn't seem to be used as often, at least anecdotally. 

"I cannot recall attending a Chime meeting that wasn't related to or hosted by Amazon," Futurum Research analyst Daniel Newman said.

Acquiring a company like Zoom would help Amazon add millions of users – specifically, the 200 million daily active users that Zoom recently disclosed. 

Slack

Likewise, Slack could be a potential acquisition target for Amazon to expand its collaboration tools, Newman said. Slack is currently valued at some $13 billion.

While Amazon is generally considered a leader in cloud infrastructure, software also matters in the cloud wars.

Su, the Atherton Technology Research analyst, believes that one reason Microsoft won the $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract, JEDI, was because of its strength in its office applications, in addition to its cloud. (Amazon is challenging the decision, alleging political intervention — and the Pentagon recently said it "wishes to reconsider" the decision in response to Amazon's lawsuit).

Su said Amazon Web Services is likely considering acquisitions that would allow it to offer collaboration applications like Zoom or Slack – but it's unlikely to buy the companies outright.

Oracle

Amazon Web Services was first to the cloud market, but Trefis analysts say the benefits of its lead are waning as it fights off challengers including Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Amazon, according to the firm, should buy Oracle. While Amazon has had some success in competing with Oracle in the database market, acquiring the company would give it a larger customer base and a far more mature set of products. 

Oracle's partnership with Microsoft also presents a risk to Amazon, and an acquisition could sort that out.

The acquisition seems unlikely because the price Amazon would have to pay a lot for Oracle. Trefis last last year estimated the deal would set Amazon back $300 billion; about double the database giant's current market cap. Another potential hurdle to the deal, according to Trefis, is that AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison have publicly traded barbs and may not be crazy about working together.

• NASA has created the X-57 Maxwell, a fully-electric experimental aircraft with 14 motors on its wing.
• The aircraft is powered by two 400-pound lithium-ion battery packs in the cabin that contain 23 kilowatt hours of power.
• NASA has published its research, procedures, designs, and technology from the X-57 development project online for different industry developers — such as urban air mobility designers — to use.
• The aircraft is being used for technology research and won't be available for commercial use.
• The X-57's first test flight will occur later this year on an unannounced date.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

NASA has created the X-57 Maxwell, a fully-electric experimental aircraft with 14 motors, all on its wing. 

The Maxwell falls under NASA's X-plane "experimental planes" category and is the first piloted X-plane in 20 years. NASA's principal investigator Sean Clarke told Business Insider that this two-decade gap is because several X-plane aircraft that NASA has developed over the last 10 to 20 years have been autonomous.

The decision to put a pilot in the Maxwell came because NASA's test pilots are "high performance and [NASA gets] so much benefit from having them in the seat," Clarke said. Having pilots on the aircraft simplifies its design because the pilot can spot and diagnose issues while operating the aircraft.

However, NASA didn't build the X-57 body: an Italian Tecnam P2006T served as the starting point for the Maxwell. NASA then tested and outfitted — through multiple modification series — the P2006T with new batteries, instruments, smaller wings, and electric motors instead of the traditional double-piston engines.

The inspiration for the X-57's "Maxwell" nickname came from a 19th-century physicist who specialized in electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell.

SEE ALSO: The world's largest aircraft Airlander 10 just got bigger — check out the 'The Flying Bum'

NASA decided to embark on this X-57 Maxwell project as it started seeing an increase in accessibility to light yet "reliable" motors and motor controllers, according to Clarke.

"We [started] to think of using [these technologies] in an interesting way to redesign how an aircraft could behave," Clarke said.

Furthermore, NASA wanted to figure out how to move an aircraft's propulsion system to a different location while also altering its wing to give the aircraft a fast but efficient cruise speed.

The electric propulsion capabilities were crucial because the X-57 has multiple motors on its wingtips. A fuel-powered engine would have been too heavy, intricate, and unreliable to place on the wings, according to Clarke.

Because the X-57's wings are optimized for "high-performance cruising", it needs help for take-off and landings. This was done by spreading 12 small "high-lift" motors along the wing, giving the X-57 a total of 14 motors: 12 small motors and two larger cruise motors, all on the wingtips.

NASA's theory is that the 12 wingtip motors will also work with the airfoil to give the aircraft lift while reducing its drag. This is done by recovering energy that would otherwise be lost in the vortices that naturally form around the wingtip.

The propellers on the X-57 spin in the opposite direction of the vortices, therefore increasing the aircraft's propeller performance, according to Clarke. In total, the X-57 has a 500% increase in "high-speed cruise efficiency."

The electric propulsion system — free of any greenhouse gases — will also save an average of $165 annually compared to a combustion engine, according to NASA. It will also decrease the hourly operating cost of energy from 45% to just 9%.

This is all powered with two 400-pound lithium-ion battery packs in the cabin that contain 23-kilowatt hours of power.

Besides testing new technology, the X-57 allows NASA to test an aircraft with decreased noise and fuel emissions. However, the X-57 will likely only serve as NASA's "technology research platform" because there aren't many commercial uses for a plane that only has one seat while the rest of the cabin is occupied by the instruments and batteries, according to Clarke.

Source: NASA

However, the technology and research that has gone into developing and creating the X-57 can be used by the public, especially in the urban air mobility development industry.

In fact, it's even encouraged: NASA has published its research, procedures, designs, and technology from the X-57 development project online for different industry developers to use.

NASA is also using the X-57 as a platform to participate in ASTM International "certification activities" so that the work done on the X-57 can be used to create standards for electric aircraft, according to Clarke.

The X-57 is currently at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California and will be taking its first test flight sometime in the future. Clarke also said that NASA is now planning one or two more electric aircraft.

• As the coronavirus crisis forces people to work remotely, tools that help them stay connected and productive are booming in popularity.
• We asked a select group of VCs to name enterprise startups that could take off this year as a result of the changing work environment.
• Each investor named two "future of work" startups: one in their portfolio, and one company they admire but have no financial interest in.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus outbreak has changed not only where people work from, but how they work and what tools they use.

Already, apps like Zoom and Slack have seen huge increases in usage in the past few weeks, as users grab onto ways to stay connected in their work and personal lives while social distancing.

The urgent need for better work tools could catapult some enterprise startups into the pantheon of unicorn startups, as their users multiply and venture capital investors jump to fund them.

We wanted to find the startups that are already transforming the future of work, defining the new ways in which people are doing their everyday jobs. We reached out to a select group of venture capitalists with enterprise bets in their portfolios and asked them to name the startups that are positioned to have very good years.

When we spoke to each investor, we set some ground rules for participation: 

1. The VC had to tell us about one startup in their portfolio. After all, they had enough conviction in the company to write it a check.
2. We also asked them to name one "future of work" startup where they have no financial interest. Those are the companies they're closely watching, maybe with a bit of envy.

Their nominations cover all aspects of work, from processes like recruiting and onboarding to products such as video conferencing, chatbots, and email.

Here are the 30 startups they named, listed in alphabetical order:

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley's startups are facing the biggest crisis in a generation. Here's what venture capital investors say businesses should do to stay healthy and survive.

NOW READ: The three kinds of software you need to manage and run a remote company, according to a tech CEO who's been doing it since 2011

Airtable: A smart spreadsheet app with a cult following in tech

Startup: Airtable

VC: Benjamin Ling, Bling Capital

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $170 million

What it does: Airtable is a cloud-based spreadsheet tool. It lets users build their own custom apps without any coding.

Why it will boom in 2020: Airtable, which was last valued at $1.1 billion, has found a fanbase that uses it for everything from project management to spreadsheets. Ling said Airtable is "redefining the way users interact with spreadsheets, databases, calendars, etc. in a more flexible and extensible way."

In 2020, Airtable is expanding into new engineering and sales and marketing centers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, respectively, as the company looks ahead to its next phase of growth. 

BeyondHQ: Full-stack support for opening satellite offices

Startup: BeyondHQ

VC: Hunter Walk, Homebrew

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $1.9 million

What it does: BeyondHQ helps startups build and staff up satellite offices in new locations, outside of big tech hubs.

Why it will boom in 2020: As the cost of living in Silicon Valley only increases, companies are already thinking about hiring elsewhere. Walk said his firm is seeing more and more of its portfolio companies think about setting up multiple headquarters at earlier stages to attract the best hires.

"Companies like BeyondHQ will make this a snap," Walk said. 

Charthop: An automated org chart

Startup: Charthop

VC: Dasha Maggio, Felicis Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $5 million

What it does: A management app that aims to modernize and automate a company's organizational chart, making the whole process more transparent.

Why it will boom in 2020: The company is trying to bring transparency to an aspect of running a company that is typically opaque and difficult to analyze. Maggio said that "people-data, especially organizational structure and design, is one of the final frontiers of company-data."

Allowing companies to analyze that organizational data and use it for company planning is a "game-changer," she said. It raised its seed round of funding last September and has been steadily gaining more traction since.

Cleo: A support system for working parents and their families

Startup: Cleo

VC: Kristin Baker Spohn, CRV

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $40.3 million

What it does: A parental benefits app that partners with companies to offer services and advice for working parents.

Why it will boom in 2020: Cleo bills itself as filling a gap between what healthcare plans offer employees and what everyday working parents need to be successful at work and at home.

Now, as many parents and caregivers are having to work from home while also caring for their children, Spohn thinks the need for this kind of support will only grow. She also has faith in the company's newly installed chief executive, Sarahjane Sacchetti, "leading the company into its next phase."

 

Daily.co: 1-click video calls

Startup: Daily.co

VC: Katie Jacobs Stanton, Moxxie Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $2.6 million

What it does: Daily.co makes it easy for websites to add video-chat integration. 

Why it will boom in 2020: As much of the global workforce starts working from home, it's not surprising that video chat is booming. Stanton said Daily.co will explode because "they could be to video what Stripe is for payments."

Daily.co was also nominated for this list by another Daily.co investor, Jenny Lefcourt, a partner at Freestyle Capital.

"I thought 2020 was their year before COVID-19 but now, as you can imagine, every company needs video chat capabilities as soon as possible — and doesn't want to take their communities and traffic off-platform to do Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc.," Lefcourt said.

Deel: Payroll for remote teams

Startup: Deel

VC: Ryan Hoover, Weekend Fund

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: Undisclosed

What it does: Deel is a payroll service for businesses working with remote contractors around the world. It handles contracts, payments, and taxes in one interface, and takes the hassle out of complying with local labor laws.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Many startups are likely breaking local laws when they hire contractors in other countries, and understandably so," Hoover said. "Compliance with local laws is difficult to understand and follow. Deel simplifies all of this."

Since Hoover's firm invested, Deel has seen double-digit growth month-over-month, and now has hundreds of customers in more than 150 countries.

"As distributed working continues to rise, they're in an excellent position to capitalize on this macro trend," he said.

Doctor on Demand: An app for virtual healthcare visits

Startup: Doctor on Demand

VC: Karan Mehandru, Trinity Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $165 million

What it does: Doctor on Demand is an app that connects patients and doctors for virtual medical and mental health visits.

Why it will boom in 2020: With the coronavirus crisis already stretching the healthcare system, telemedicine has become an essential tech to alleviate some of the pressure, Mehandru said.

He added that already in the last few years, new legislation has allowed more people to access care through an app. Now, a sense of urgency around the coronavirus outbreak will establish telemedicine as part of a "new normal."

"Doctor on Demand is sitting squarely as a company that is positioned to benefit immensely from these trends and events," Mehandru said.

Drift: A smarter, more personal chatbot for businesses

Startup: Drift

VC: Shruti Gandhi, Array Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $107 million

What it does: Drift is a conversational marketing and sales app that helps convert web traffic into sales meetings. Its chatbot uses artificial intelligence to make interactions feel more personal.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Drift can help you manage your customers with less people 24/7," Gandhi said. "The employees can all be remote and global and can answer customer requests from anywhere."

 

Fellow: A meeting agenda software

Startup: Fellow

VC: Dasha Maggio, Felicis Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $6.5 million

What it does: Fellow is an employee-management software that makes meetings more effective by organizing notes, action items, and feedback.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Everyone says people are a company's most important asset," Maggio said, "but until now, managers haven't had actionable tools. We loved that Fellow created a beautiful product built for managers and believed they were onto something big based on how quickly they were expanding within organizations."

"As more and more companies rapidly shift to working remotely, it's critical to have great tools to stay productive, connected and in sync. Fellow enables teams to do just that," Maggio added.

Figma: A shared workspace for web design teams

Startup: Figma

VC: Jeff Morris, Jr., Chapter One Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $82.9 million

What it does: Figma helps web design teams create, test, and ship designs from its cloud-based software, which allows them to work on designs in tandem much as they would in something like Google Docs.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Figma continues to innovate and set the pace for product design tools," said Morris, Jr. "Their software makes design and prototyping a truly collaborative process, and I am now seeing 'Figma for X' startups being pitched all the time. This is a strong signal for how respected Figma has become in Silicon Valley."

Front: A shared email inbox app

Startup: Front

VC: Arjun Sethi, Tribe Capital

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $138.4 million

What it does: Front takes a team-based approach to email. It combines a company's social media, email, texts, and other messages into a shared inbox to which the entire team has access.

Why it will boom in 2020: Front is trying to disrupt the most used tool in the modern workplace: email.

"We believe that sharing an inbox and collaborating is the way all knowledge workers should be communicating on subjects and topics," said Sethi, an early investor in Front. "It's a slight nuance and collaboration never seen before in email."

Guru: A better knowledge database

Startup: Guru

VC: Jake Saper, Emergence Capital

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $38 million

What it does: Guru uses browser extensions and Slack plugins to make sure the information that workers need to do their jobs "finds them wherever they need it," according to Saper.

Why it will boom in 2020: Saper thinks they are "poised for continued acceleration in 2020 because they are critical to helping distributed teams get work done." The investor added, "as more companies shift to distributed work, Guru will become increasingly critical to effective collaboration."

Hone: Online classes for leadership development

Startup: Hone

VC: Jomayra Herrera, Cowboy Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $3.6 million

What it does: Hone lets companies offer their employees live, online training on topics like diversity, conflict management, and team-building, that they can stream from anywhere.

Why it will boom in 2020: Given the rise of distributed teams, Herrera said companies are eager to make available more remote learning tools for their employees. "The pace of moving to a more flexible workforce is only accelerating," Herrera said, "and Hone is in a great position to support teams as they need accessible and scalable learning solutions."

Hone was also nominated for this list by Jake Saper of Emergence Capital, who is not an investor.

"Hone has developed a robust platform on top of Zoom that allows world-class trainers to access and interact with organization managers world-wide," said Saper, whose firm backed Zoom before its initial public offering. Hone has "great early customer champions and are poised to scale quickly in 2020."

Incredible Health: A recruiting service for hospitals

Startup: Incredible Health

VC: Jomayra Herrera, Cowboy Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $17.4 million

What it does: Incredible Health is an online recruitment tool for hospitals to hire nurses through automation.

Why it will boom in 2020: Herrera said that customers who use the tool have been able to reduce the time it takes to hire from 90 days to 30 days on average.

"With the projected shortage in nurses in the US, Incredible Health plays an important role in ensuring hospitals are well positioned to fill job vacancies with high-quality candidates quickly," Herrera said. 

Invisible: A way to automate the most boring and mundane parts of work

Startup: Invisible

VC: Masha Drokova, Day One Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $9 million

What it does: Invisible lets businesses offload some of their most repetitive tasks, like posting job descriptions across the internet or following up on sales leads, to free up their employees.

Why it will boom in 2020: Drokova said currently, workers spend at least 69 work-days a year completing mundane tasks. Invisible wants to reduce the time people spend on administrative work. 

"More than ever, knowledge workers' time is best spent on strategy, identifying new markets, building and maintaining customer relationships," Drokova said. "Time-consuming reporting and administrative work is less valuable, and Invisible enables companies to easily outsource these tasks and give back time to teams for high-value work."

Level: A dental care insurance plan that works simply for employees

Startup: Level

VC: Hunter Walk, Homebrew

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $3.8 million

What it does: Level aims to cut through bureaucracy with a dental plan that makes finding a provider easy and offers price transparency. The employer only pays for the care its employees use.

Why it will boom in 2020: "What happens when a team of ex-Oscar, Square, and Uber folks reimagine what corporate benefits should be? You get Level," Walk said. "Starting with dental benefits, Level is improving employee healthcare by offering a new way to find, manage, and pay for care."

Linear: A better bug-tracker

Startup: Linear

VC: Semil Shah, Haystack and Lightspeed Venture Partners

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $4.2 million

What it does: Linear's workflow software helps developers streamline their projects, tasks, and bug-tracking, to help them work faster and more efficiently.

Why it will boom in 2020: Linear has a "beautiful, opinionated design that's trying to own a very important demographic and information flow inside companies: how software is actually planned and developed and deployed," Shah said.

Loom: An alternative to long emails

Startup: Loom

VC: Ryan Hoover, Weekend Fund

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $45 million

What it does: A video messaging app that lets users record short videos, rather than type long emails or spend time in meetings, to get their ideas across.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Communicating nuance and complex ideas online is especially challenging for distributed teams," Hoover said. "Text takes too much time to write and lacks fidelity. Synchronous video communication requires calendar coordinate, which is especially difficult for those working across time zones.

He added: "Loom strikes the perfect balance and has become one of my favorite tools for communicating design feedback, reporting bugs, and explaining product ideas with our distributed team at Product Hunt," the company Hoover cofounded.

Loom has been around since 2016, but Hoover said the company could see greater demand as more people work from home because of the coronavirus.

Miro: A virtual whiteboard for distributed teams

Startup: Miro

VC: Sonali de Rycker, Accel

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $26.3 million

What it does: Teams can build and develop ideas from anywhere using Miro's virtual whiteboarding software.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Miro is a collaborative whiteboard platform for distributed teams," de Rycker said. "It helps companies work in real-time or asynchronously on an infinite canvas for product development, user experience and design, strategy, projects, and mind mapping."

"As teams are increasingly distributed across small and large organizations, companies lack the tools to collaborate in a remote context which made us really excited about Miro's proposition," de Rycker added." "It's impressive to see such high organic adoption rates with 3.5M million users already and more to come!"

Miro was also nominated for this list by another venture capitalist, Talia Goldberg of Bessemer Venture Partners. She is not an investor.

Notion: An "OS for startups"

Startup: Notion

VC: Arun Mathew and Sonali de Rycker, Accel

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $70.9 million

What it does: Notion aims to be an "all-in-one workplace," where teams can write notes, track projects, build spreadsheets and databases, and get organized.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Notion is one of the fastest-growing tools for managing notes, tasks, and internal memos within teams. It works just as well as a personal note-taking app, as well as a central repository of information for teams," de Rycker said.

"It's no surprise that they hit 1 million users in less than three years — a beautiful example of product-led growth, as the company was bootstrapped until recently," de Rycker said. "They seem to make their way into companies before they realize, as employees just sign up with corporate credit cards, and before they know it, everyone is hooked."

Notion just raised $50 million in new funding in a round led by Index Ventures that valued it at $2 billion.

Outreach: Sales engagement software

Startup: Outreach

VC: Karan Mehandru, Trinity Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $238 million

What it does: Outreach's software for sales reps uses artificial intelligence to provide analytics and automate repetitive tasks that are part of closing a deal.

Why it will boom in 2020: Mehandru said he was convinced to invest based on three factors. First, he said that most midsize and large companies are seeing "massive tailwinds" for outbound and targeted efforts to make new sales.

"Second, Outreach is the first system of action and engagement that allows end users, like sales reps and customer success reps, to scale themselves and do better work, as opposed to competing products that report activities to management. It truly is the operating system for sales, which in turn, is the growth driver of the economy," he said.

Mehandru said he's also excited by the team at Outreach, which has scaled revenue from single digit millions to more than $100 million in the last four years.

"In 2020, as enterprises brace for a new normal where travel is curbed and sales reps can't get on airplanes, Outreach is a shoe-in for a product that allows salespeople to continue their activities, automate their daily activities, and continue delivering value to prospects and customers worldwide," he said.

Overview: A smart camera that detects defects in machinery

Startup: Overview

VC: Shruti Gandhi, Array Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: Undisclosed

What it does: Overview's first product is an intelligent camera that learns how wire and cable manufacturing machines are supposed to work, so it can identify any bugs or errors in production in real time.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Overview uses computer vision to enable factories to operate equipment remotely and autonomously," Gandhi said. "Intelligent cameras enable remote monitoring and the ability to run parts of the factory remotely — highly relevant in today's environment.

She added: "Overview is trying to push future of work principles to an older more established industry, which couldn't be done even a few years ago, before powerful AI-driven computer vision became more ubiquitous."

Parabol: An app for giving feedback on meetings

Startup: Parabol

VC: Semil Shah, Haystack and Lightspeed Venture Partners

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $4.9 million

What it does: After a virtual meeting ends, the attendees can give anonymous feedback on how effective the meeting was, as well as discuss next steps.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Parabol had been growing organically across a range of small and huge companies, as teams became more distributed," Shah said. "In 2020, organizations obviously are now forced to adapt to a new mode and medium of work, so Parabol will be a great choice for agile teams."

Skilljar: A better way to onboard customers

Startup: Skilljar

VC: Rajeev Batra, Mayfield

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $20.1 million

What it does: Skilljar's software helps businesses show new customers how to use their products, and could help them drive product adoption and customer retention higher.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Skilljar enables companies to do customer training at scale and delivers huge return on investment," Batra said.

He added: "Customer training will move online rapidly and become incredibly important to keep customers and make them successful. This will be even more important as customers are distributed and won't be traveling much. Given our people first approach we were drawn to Sandi's vision for the market. She prides herself as a lifelong learner and started Skilljar with the vision that everyone deserves to reach their highest potential through proper training of products and services they use in their work life."

Superhuman: A faster and smarter email experience

Startup: Superhuman

VC: Jeff Morris, Jr., Chapter One Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $56 million

What it does: Superhuman promises the "fastest email experience ever made," and equips users with keyboard shortcuts, additional features, and reminders to help them reach inbox zero in less time.

Why it will boom in 2020: Morris, Jr., said he felt compelled to invest because email productivity is a massive market.

"One billion people spend hours in their email inbox every day," said Morris, Jr. "There is no productivity product in the marketplace that achieves the speed, design, and user delight of Superhuman."

The super angel investor added that customers are willing to pay a subscription fee, which was "a very contrarian bet in the early days."

"Individual users have organically adopted the software and are now bringing the product to their workplaces for "team accounts" that are paid for by their companies," said Morris, Jr. "As Superhuman expands into the enterprise, their software will become a must-have SaaS product that companies purchase for their employees. 2020 is the moment they will hit escape velocity within workplaces for nearly every job function."

Tandem: A virtual office for remote teams

Startup: Tandem

VC: Jenny Lefcourt, Freestyle Capital

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $8.7 million

What it does: Tandem brings the ease of sitting huddled around the same computer to employees working from anywhere. Its software lets remote teams see what apps their coworkers are working in and quickly jump on a video call, with screen-sharing, to collaborate.

Why it will boom in 2020: "I think Tandem is beautifully positioned for the future of work," Lefcourt said. "They are a virtual office for remote teams," as opposed to software that's designed for employees in the same office but enables remote workers to participate.

She said like Daily.co, a video chat startup that is in her firm's portfolio, Tandem was "in great shape for 2020 in my opinion before, but even more so now."

Tandem was also nominated for this list by three other venture capitalists, Sonali de Rycker of Accel, Katie Jacobs Stanton of Moxxie Ventures, and Masha Drokova of Day One Ventures. None are investors.

Textio: An intelligent text editor

Startup: Textio

VC: Mallun Yen, Operator Collective

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $36.5 million

What it does: Textio edits a company's job postings to help it attract more diverse candidates, highlighting jargon and language that could be alienating.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Words have power, and today's savvy businesses know they've got to optimize their words in order to reach your intended audience and attract more customers," Yen said.

However, the company is perhaps more exposed to market forces than some of its peers, because its business relies on helping organizations hire new employees. The coronavirus crisis has caused unprecedented mass layoffs and furloughs — causing turbulence that has also hit Textio itself. In March, Textio also laid off 20% of its staff, or 30 employees, GeekWire reported.

Wheel: A staffing agency for telemedicine companies

Startup: Wheel

VC: Kristin Baker Spohn, CRV

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $16.1 million

What it does: Wheel fills a need for telemedicine companies that need to scale their clinical workforce, while also providing opportunities to clinicians who want to continue working but crave the freedom and balance of remote work.

Why it will boom in 2020: "At the heart of all healthcare delivery, it's human professionals who provide the care. These clinicians, nurses and doctors, are 'on the front lines' of patient care — and also absorbing the most risk in these emerging digital care ventures," Baker Spohn said.

"2020 is the year for Wheel because the current public health crisis is not only showing the power and importance of virtual care and triage, but also rapidly accelerating its adoption by patients and healthcare providers," she added.

Zapier: A way to synchronize information across apps

Startup: Zapier

VC: Mallun Yen, Operator Collective

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding raised: $2.7 million

What it does: Zapier's cofounders conceived of an app that would get other apps to talk to each other. Now, Zapier helps move data from one app to another, even if they don't have an official integration — no code required.

Why it will boom in 2020: "Zapier connects all of your business systems, letting teams build custom workflows with no coding at all," said Yen, noting its more than 2,000 app integrations.

"By connecting all of your systems, Zapier lets your team focus on the most important work — not on manual processes, dedupe, and data entry."

1Password: A master password keeper

Startup: 1Password

VC: Arun Mathew, Accel

Relationship: Investor

Total funding raised: $200 million

What it does: A password manager that can store and remember passwords so users can store all their passwords securely and prevent breaches. 

Why it will boom in 2020: 1Password was self-funded for 14 years before it got its first investment, in the form of $200 million in Series A funding from Accel last November. It's also notable for being a mostly all remote workforce since it started. Those are two things that made the company stand out to Mathew, and why he thinks it will boom this year.

"As we're increasingly seeing the world's workforce shift to distributed teams, 1Password gives companies the peace of mind to know their data is secure no matter where their employees are located," he said.

 

 

 

Last week, we made the case that tech manufacturing was uniquely vulnerable to pandemic problems, from a combination of just-in-time manufacturing practices and a far-flung network of suppliers. But just a week later, the news is even worse.

On Friday morning, analysts at S&P’s Panjiva Research laid out a grim picture, with US sea imports from China (which includes most of the electronics you buy) down more than 50 percent in the first three weeks of March, a result of the countrywide lockdown in China. At the same time, the subcontracting companies that actually build the hardware (the most famous is Foxconn, but of course there are a lot of them) are thinking about getting out of China entirely, at least as much as they can. Wistron...

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Zoom is making some drastic changes to prevent rampant abuse as trolls attack publicly shared video calls. Starting April 5th, it will require passwords to enter calls via Meeting ID, as these may be guessed or reused. Meanwhile, it will change virtual waiting rooms to be on by default so hosts have to manually admit attendees.

The changes could prevent “Zoombombing,” a term I coined two weeks ago to describe malicious actors entering Zoom calls and disrupting them by screensharing offensive imagery. New Zoombombing tactics have since emerged, like spamming the chat thread with terrible GIFs, using virtual backgrounds to spread hateful messages or just screaming profanities and slurs. Anonymous forums have now become breeding grounds for organized trolling efforts to raid calls.

The FBI has issued a warning about the Zoombombing problem after children’s online classes, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and private business calls were invaded by trolls. Security researchers have revealed many ways that attackers can infiltrate a call.

The problems stem from Zoom being designed for trusted enterprise use cases rather than cocktail hours, yoga classes, roundtable discussions and classes. But with Zoom struggling to scale its infrastructure as its daily user count has shot up from 10 million to 200 million over the past month due to coronavirus shelter-in-place orders, it’s found itself caught off guard.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan apologized for the security failures this week and vowed changes. But at the time, the company merely said it would default to making screensharing host-only and keeping waiting rooms on for its K-12 education users. Clearly it determined that wasn’t sufficient, so now waiting rooms are on by default for everyone.

Zoom communicated the changes to users via an email sent this afternoon that explains “we’ve chosen to enable passwords on your meetings and turn on Waiting Rooms by default as additional security enhancements to protect your privacy.”

The company also explained that “For meetings scheduled moving forward, the meeting password can be found in the invitation. For instant meetings, the password will be displayed in the Zoom client. The password can also be found in the meeting join URL.” Some other precautions users can take include disabling file transfer, screensharing or rejoining by removed attendees.

The shift could cause some hassle for users. Hosts will be distracted by having to approve attendees out of the waiting room while they’re trying to lead calls. Zoom recommends users resend invites with passwords attached for Meeting ID-based calls scheduled for after April 5th. Scrambling to find passwords could make people late to calls.

But that’s a reasonable price to pay to keep people from being scarred by Zoombombing attacks. The rash of trolling threatened to sour many people’s early experiences with the video chat platform just as it’s been having its breakout moment. A single call marred by disturbing pornography can leave a stronger impression than 100 peaceful ones with friends and colleagues. The old settings made sense when it was merely an enterprise product, but it needed to embrace its own change of identity as it becomes a fundamental utility for everyone.

Technologists will need to grow better at anticipating worst-case scenarios as their products go mainstream and are adapted to new use cases. Assuming everyone will have the best intentions ignores the reality of human nature. There’s always someone looking to generate a profit, score power or cause chaos from even the smallest opportunity. Building development teams that include skeptics and realists, rather than just visionary idealists, could keep ensure products get safeguarded from abuse before rather than after a scandal occurs.

• Communication-software companies including Zoom and Slack have been on a major advertising blitz as people transition to working from home to stop the spread of COVID-19, according to data from the ad-sales-intelligence platform MediaRadar.
• Altogether, these companies spent $45 million in the first quarter of 2020, nearly three times more than any quarter in 2019.
• The increased spending is reaping rewards, MediaRadar CEO and cofounder Todd Krizelman said, with Microsoft Teams and Slack adding more users and Zoom's stock soaring.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Communication-software companies including Zoom and Slack have been on a major advertising blitz as people transition to working from home to stop the spread of COVID-19, according to data from the ad-sales-intelligence platform MediaRadar.

These companies shelled out $45 million collectively in the first quarter of 2020, nearly three times more than any quarter in 2019, MediaRadar said.

Their ad spend steadily increased in the quarter month over month as the pandemic intensified, from $10 million in January to over $24 million in March — with the last week of March seeing the same level of spending ($12 million) as the first three weeks of the month combined. 

MediaRadar CEO and cofounder Todd Krizelman said the impact of the pandemic and increased ad spending was visible with Microsoft Teams and Slack reporting gains in users and Zoom's stock soaring.

Microsoft Teams, the largest communications-software advertiser year to date, has added 12 million daily active users over the past two weeks, while Slack said that it has added 9,000 new paid customers since the beginning of February.

MediaRadar doesn't break down ad spending by company, but Microsoft Teams, Fuze, GoToMeeting, Grammarly, Slack, and Zoom were among the top spenders year to date.

Slack, for instance, just released its first national advertising campaign as a public company in the form of a public service announcement supporting people on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak, and Slack is spending more on advertising to promote the company, Julie Liegl, its chief marketing officer, told Business Insider.

Similarly, Microsoft launched a new ad campaign to promote Microsoft Teams in January.

SEE ALSO: Slack's chief marketing officer explains why its first national ad campaign as a public company centers on its response to the coronavirus pandemic

Join the conversation about this story »

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I would like to share some of my thoughts on COVID-19 and the challenges organizations are facing as they strive for business continuity and digital engagement with customers and buyers. As the global and US numbers get worse by the day, the pandemic is impacting life as we knew it and also leaves people (many in new forms of isolation) yearning for a bit of normalcy during these strange times.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Sometimes it takes years of criticism to get a company to do the right thing. Every once in a while, it can happen overnight.

Wednesday night was such a night.

After a series of investigative reports, blog posts, and Twitter threads examining Zoom’s design practices and security features, CEO Eric S. Yuan said the company would pause the development of new features and devote all of its engineering resources to fixing privacy and security issues. He also dropped an eye-popping statistic: in three months, Zoom has gone from an average of 10 million daily users to 200 million daily users. Yuan writes:

For the past several weeks, supporting this influx of users has been a tremendous undertaking and our sole focus. We have strived to...

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• Google has released aggregated location data from 131 countries that shows how people are moving around during the coronavirus pandemic.
• The data compares footfall from up to a few days ago to a baseline taken from the beginning of this year.
• In many Western countries, visits to recreational and retail locations, grocery shops, transit stations, and workplaces have plummeted.
• In some East Asian countries, such as South Korea and Taiwan, visits to grocery shops and parks have actually increased.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Location data released by Google paints a fascinating picture of how the world moves around during a pandemic.

Google on Thursday released aggregated location data from 131 countries showing how people are moving around amid widespread, restrictive lockdowns.

Google's data notes changes in attendance to retail and recreation locations (e.g. cinemas, restaurants, museums); groceries and pharmacies; parks; transit stations; workplaces; and residential areas.

As its "baseline" average, Google used location data from the beginning of the year (January 3 to February 6), and compared that to data up until just a few days ago.

China, which was at the epicenter of the outbreak, was not included in the data.

In the US, where lockdown measures vary from state to state, the data broke down like this:

• 47% decrease in retail and recreation.
• 22% decrease in grocery and pharmacy visits.
• 19% decrease in visits to parks.
• 51% decrease in footfall to transit stations.
• 38% decrease in going to workplaces.
• 12% increase to residential locations.

These seem like big drops, but other Western countries experienced even bigger drops, suggesting the US isn't yet enforcing lockdowns as strictly as Europe.

In Italy, the first European country to encounter the outbreak, visits to retail and recreation plummeted by 94%, 85% for groceries and pharmacies, and 90% for parks.

Spain, which has been particularly hard-hit by the virus, also experienced a drop of 94% to retail and recreation, along with 76% for groceries and 89% for parks.

In the UK retail and recreation footfall fell by 85%, while grocery and pharmacy shopping dropped by 46% and visits to parks by 52%.

India has also seen a big drop of 77% to retail and recreation sites, along with 65% to grocery shops and 57% to parks.

Asia is actually recording an increase in shopping and park visits and 

In some Asian countries, the effects of the virus on people's movements in recent days appear to have been less pronounced.

In Taiwan, which has used location data to keep quarantined citizens in "electronic fences" which alert the police if they leave their house, visits to retail and recreation sites only fell 9%, while visits to groceries and parks went up by 3% and 17% respectively.

South Korea has seen a 51% increase in visits to parks and an 11% increase for groceries. South Korea experienced its peak in coronavirus cases on February 29, and has steadily been flattening the curve since then without imposing a total lockdown. It also had dips of up to 40% attendance to parks up until early March, per Google's report.

Google says that the location data is anonymized and that it uses the same kind of data to show people on Google Maps when they're likely to run into traffic.

But Professor Mark Skilton, a digital communications expert from Warwick Business School, said the use of such data poses some difficult problems around the issue of consent.

"Anonymous data is commonly used in medical trials to test new and existing drugs, but that is consensual because participants are asked at the outset for permission to use their medical data. Using data from Google is an altogether more complex issue. While we do have legal precedent for law enforcement accessing mobile phones and private data in the case of terrorism and cybersecurity breaches, this use of large-scale data is ethically more difficult," said Skilton.

SEE ALSO: The US is tracking people's movements with phone data, and it's part of a massive increase in global surveillance

Join the conversation about this story »

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Photo by Win McNamee / Getty Images - Illustration by Alex Castro

How a 79-year-old scientist became a beloved meme

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By Zeus Kerravala
RingCentral now has control over the video stack, and that’s a fundamental key for the evolution of its platform.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Zoom’s recent growth has put it in the spotlight over a series of privacy and security issues, and the company is now promising to address them over the coming 90 days. In a detailed blog post, Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan explains how the company has been responding to a massive increase in users. Zoom has never shared user numbers before, but Yuan reveals that back in December the company had a maximum of 10 million daily users. “In March this year, we reached more than 200 million daily meeting participants, both free and paid,” says Yuan.

That’s a huge increase that has seen people use Zoom for reasons nobody expected before the coronavirus pandemic. “Our platform was built primarily for enterprise customers,” explains Yuan. “We did not...

Continue reading…

• Video conferencing Zoom has been criticized for privacy and security issues on its platform.
• CEO Eric Yuan apologized for the problems in a blog post, saying Zoom wasn't built to handle the number of consumers now using its platform.
• Yuan said the firm now has 200 million daily paid and free users, up from 10 million at the end of December.
• He announced a series of new measures to help make Zoom more secure, including that he will host a weekly conference to update people on the company's progress.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has apologized for the videoconferencing service's many privacy and security issues, saying it was originally built to service businesses with dedicated IT departments, not millions of consumers. 

Zoom offers a video-calling service and has seen usage explode since January, as the coronavirus pandemic forces white-collar employees to work from home.

In a blog post published Wednesday, Yuan said usage had exploded 1900%, with daily free and paying users up from 10 million at the end of December to 200 million in March.

But the increased usage has meant increased targeting by hackers, trolls, and growing scrutiny from the press.

Trolls have taken to "Zoom bombing" meetings, dropping in graphic content and even taunting members of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Reports also emerged just this week that Zoom was not end-to-end encrypted as it claimed in its marketing materials, and that the company had inadvertently leaked thousands of users' personal emails and photos. The firm was also hit with a class-action lawsuit for allegedly handing data to Facebook.

Yuan apologized for the security issues, noting that most have now been fixed.

"We did not design the product with the foresight that, in a matter of weeks, every person in the world would suddenly be working, studying, and socializing from home," he wrote.

"We now have a much broader set of users who are utilizing our product in a myriad of unexpected ways, presenting us with challenges we did not anticipate when the platform was conceived."

He added: "We recognize that we have fallen short of the community's – and our own – privacy and security expectations. For that, I am deeply sorry, and I want to share what we are doing about it."

Here are all the measures Yuan says Zoom is taking to make its platform safer:

1. Yuan will host a weekly webinar with security updates

Starting next week the webinars will take place at 10 a.m. PT on Wednesdays.

2. A total feature freeze

Yuan said effective immediately the company won't release any new features, instead focusing on shoring up its existing technology, and "focusing on shifting all our engineering resources to focus on our biggest trust, safety, and privacy issues."

3. Zoom is bringing in outside experts to review its security

Yuan said Zoom will be conducting a comprehensive of its security using third-party experts and "representative users."

4. It will prepare and release a transparency report

Yuan gave no indication of when the transparency report will be out, and the only detail he gave was that it would contain "information related to requests for data, records, or content."

One worry about Zoom's current setup is that it technically could access people's call footage, and could potentially hand that over to law enforcement because the footage is not end-to-end encrypted. Zoom has said it doesn't access people's call data.

5. Zoom is beefing up its bug bounty program

Many big tech companies offer bug bounty programs, which encourage ethical hackers to find chinks in the company's security in return for cash.

Yuan did not say how much money Zoom is going to funnel into its bug bounty program.

Last year Zoom's approach to bug bounties came under scrutiny after a researcher found a serious bug which meant malicious websites could remotely switch on the webcams on Mac computers. The researcher turned down Zoom's offer of a bug bounty payout because the company demanded he sign a non-disclosure agreement, which would have stopped him disclosing the bug more widely.

6. The firm will set up a council for chief information security officers

A chief information security officer (CISO) oversees cybersecurity within a company. Yuan said he will set up a council with "leading CISOs from across the industry" to discuss security and privacy best practices.

 

7. Internal penetration tests

White-box penetration testing means looking for security flaws from within an organization, with an intimate knowledge of its infrastructure, as opposed to black-box penetration where you start looking for weaknesses with no or little prior knowledge.

In light of recent interest in our encryption practices, we want to start by apologizing for the confusion we have caused by incorrectly suggesting that Zoom meetings were capable of using end-to-end encryption. Zoom has always strived to use encryption to protect content in as many scenarios as possible, and in that spirit, we used the term end-to-end encryption. While we never intended to deceive any of our customers, we recognize that there is a discrepancy between the commonly accepted definition of end-to-end encryption and how we were using it. This blog is intended to rectify that discrepancy and clarify exactly how we encrypt the content that moves across our network.

The goal of our encryption design is to provide the maximum amount of privacy possible while supporting the diverse needs of our client base.

To be clear, in a meeting where all of the participants are using Zoom clients, and the meeting is not being recorded, we encrypt all video, audio, screen sharing, and chat content at the sending client, and do not decrypt it at any point before it reaches the receiving clients.

Zoom clients include:

• A laptop or computer running the Zoom app
• A smartphone using our Zoom app
• A Zoom Room

In this scenario, where all participants are using the Zoom app, no user content is available to Zoom’s servers or employees at any point during the transmission process.

Zoom supports a diverse ecosystem of communication channels in order to offer our users as many ways to connect as possible. When users join Zoom meetings using devices that do not inherently use Zoom’s communication protocol, such as a phone (connected via traditional telephone line, rather than the app) or SIP/H.323 room-based systems,  Zoom’s encryption cannot be applied directly by that phone or device. That said, our goal is to keep data encrypted throughout as much of the transmission process as possible. To achieve this, we have created specialized clients to translate between our encrypted meetings and legacy systems. We call these Zoom Connectors, and they include:

• Zoom Telephony Connector
• Zoom Conference Room Connector
• Skype for Business Connector
• Cloud Recording Connector
• Live Streaming Connector

These connectors are effectively Zoom clients that operate in Zoom’s cloud. Content remains encrypted to each connector, and when possible we will encrypt data between each connector and the eventual destination (such as a non-Zoom room system).  

Connectors may also be invited to the meeting upon the request of the meeting host to help perform services for the meeting. Examples of this include the Live Streaming Connector, which serves as a Zoom client that can translate the meeting’s content into a live streaming format, such as for use with other webcasting services. 

We believe that there is still value in encrypting content between clients even in the scenario where connectors are necessary, as this reduces the number of systems at Zoom with access to customer content and serves as a defense-in-depth.

To ensure this entire process meets the needs of our customers around the clock and around the world, Zoom currently maintains the key management system for these systems in the cloud. Importantly, Zoom has implemented robust and validated internal controls to prevent unauthorized access to any content that users share during meetings, including – but not limited to – the video, audio, and chat content of those meetings.

Zoom has never built a mechanism to decrypt live meetings for lawful intercept purposes, nor do we have means to insert our employees or others into meetings without being reflected in the participant list.

For those who want additional control of their keys, an on-premise solution exists today for the entire meeting infrastructure, and a solution will be available later this year to allow organizations to leverage Zoom’s cloud infrastructure but host the key management system within their environment. Additionally, enterprise customers have the option to run certain versions of our connectors within their own data centers if they would like to manage the decryption and translation process themselves. 

We are committed to doing the right thing by users when it comes to both security and privacy, and understand the enormity of this moment. With hospitals, universities, schools, and other organizations across the world relying on Zoom to stay connected and operational, we are proud of the work we have done to protect the data of those critical institutions with encryption – and we look forward to sharing more information on our security practices in the near future.

The post The Facts Around Zoom and Encryption for Meetings/Webinars appeared first on Zoom Blog.

Photo by Justin Heiman / Getty Images

Marriott says a security breach may have exposed the personal information of 5.2 million guests. This marks Marriott’s second data breach in recent years, following a breach in 2018.

Personal information such as names, birthdates, and phone numbers may have been taken in the breach, along with language preferences and loyalty account numbers, Marriott says. Although an investigation is still in progress, Marriott said there is “no reason” to believe that payment information was leaked.

Marriott says it discovered in late February that an unspecified hotel chain’s system had been compromised, and guest information may have been examined by hackers that acquired the login...

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• Slack announced that it is officially launching an integration with Microsoft Teams video calling feature, allowing users to launch video calls in Microsoft Teams directly from Slack. 
• CEO Stewart Butterfield told Business Insider last month, before the integration was officially announced, that Slack already has integrations with many other video calling apps, like Zoom and Cisco WebEx, so this integration with Microsoft Teams is meant to give users more choice.
• While Slack and Microsoft Teams often compete, Butterfield said that 70 percent of Slack's customers are also Microsoft customers and sometimes use Teams for video calling. 
• Slack said in the past month it's seen a 350 percent increase in calls made or received in Slack, including using Slack's own limited calling feature and via integrations with apps like Zoom and Cisco WebEx.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Slack announced that it is officially launching an integration with Microsoft Teams video calling feature, a little less than a week after CEO Stewart Butterfield said the company was working on it.

Butterfield told Business Insider last month, before the integration was officially announced, that Slack already has integrations with many other video calling apps, like Zoom and Cisco WebEx, so this integration with Microsoft Teams is meant to give users more choice on what they want to use for video conferencing.

"So just like we already integrate with Zoom, we already integrate with Cisco WebEx, we want to make an integration with those Teams calling functionalities so people can answer calls," he told Business Insider at the time. "It's basically bringing Teams to parity with the other voice and video calling services."

This might be confusing because Slack and Microsoft Teams often compete for customers, but Butterfield thinks people actually misunderstand how they compete. In his mind Slack and Teams are very different products, used for different purposes. 

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He said 70 percent of Slack's customers are also Microsoft customers and use its suite of productivity tools. The main use case they've seen for Microsoft Teams is video calling. Slack has limited video and voice calling features built into the product, but it caps at 15 people per call, so they're focused on building integrations with existing applications for video calling. 

The bottom line, Butterfield said, is while Microsoft Teams might consider Slack its rival, Slack doesn't see it the same way.

"I think we don't really compete as much with customers. That's not to say that we don't ever, because four of the five biggest enterprise deals we did last quarter were head to head Teams vs Slack. But I think much more of the time, it's Slack versus email," he said. 

In other words, corporate customers often think of Slack as an alternative to email for internal communications, according to Butterfield. That's the transition Slack is focused on helping people through, which is even more important with the rise in remote work around the world. 

Slack said in the past month it's seen a 350% increase in calls made or received in Slack, including using Slack's own limited calling feature and via integrations with apps like Zoom and Cisco WebEx. Now Microsoft Teams will be an option as well. 

Slack is also making it possible to call into any of the existing voice apps it integrates with using a phone number directly within Slack. 

"Whatever tools you use, wherever you are, and on whatever device, we want them to work seamlessly with Slack. Having all your software at your fingertips can help you stay connected and productive, and in the past month we've seen that our users have nearly tripled the rate at which they integrate their tools in Slack." said Brian Elliott, VP & general manager of the Slack Platform. 

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop. 

SEE ALSO: The CEO of Slack explains how a recession would make it much harder for it to hire the people it needs to sustain its growth and take on Microsoft

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NOW WATCH: A 45-year-long study discovered trends in successful hyper-intelligent children

Image: IndyCar / iRacing

NBC is joining Fox in televising online sim racing in the absence of real-world races during the novel coronavirus pandemic. The network and IndyCar announced on Wednesday that the second race of the open-wheel racing series’s virtual replacement season, which features star drivers competing on the iRacing platform, will be broadcast on NBC Sports network on Saturday, April 4th, at 2:30PM ET. IndyCar says it’s currently not sure if the race will also be streamed online.

Much like what Fox has been doing with NASCAR’s pop-up sim racing series, the virtual IndyCar race will feature the same broadcast crew that NBC Sports typically uses in its coverage of real-world competitions. NBC and IndyCar will likely be looking to re-create some of...

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• Lee Olesky, cofounder and CEO of electronic-marketplace operator Tradeweb, said having the vast majority of employees work remotely is a "fundamental game changer."
• "We are going to be in a new environment, and we now know we can function in many businesses — not all for sure — but in many businesses remotely," Olesky told Greenwich Associates' Kevin McPartland on a webinar on Friday.
• Tradeweb, which runs markets for over 40 products across the globe in rates, bonds, and exchange-traded funds, has 900 of its 940 employees currently working from home.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

The CEO of a company that oversees more than $1 trillion in trades on its platforms every day said successfully having nearly its entire staff work remotely could lead to significant changes in the way it operates for the long term. 

Lee Olesky, cofounder and CEO of Tradeweb, said 900 of its 940 employees are currently working remotely as a result of the novel coronavirus. This comes at a time when the company, which runs markets for over 40 products across the globe in rates, bonds, and exchange-traded funds, is managing some of the highest volume it's ever had in its history. 

While speaking on a webinar with Greenwich Associates Kevin McPartland, Olesky said Tradeweb maintaining its resiliency despite have nearly its entire staff work remotely means the company will likely adjust how it operates going forward.

"We are not going to go back. We are going to be in a new environment, and we now know we can function in many businesses — not all for sure — but in many businesses remotely," Olesky said. "I think that is a fundamental game-changer when it comes to, you know, the business impact here and the personal impact."

Tradeweb has 13 offices spread across 7 countries. Olesky said its transition to a work-from-home environment has been a progression, starting initially with those in Asia before shifting to Europe and eventually the US in recent weeks. The roughly 40 employees still reporting to work are either located in smaller satellite offices, heading to back-up sites, or are technology maintenance staff.

Olesky said that early on, the focus was to ensure Tradeweb's platforms remained resilient in the face of a massive surge of volume and data. As a result, he tasked the company's entire tech team to focus on keeping the lights on.

"We took our 300-plus technologists and essentially said, 'Ok, we're not going to do any development,'" Olesky said. "Right this second we're all going to focus on monitoring systems, building tools, backing up the data centers, giving us more capacity, more throughput, and making sure that we're functioning."

That largely remains the focus today, Olesky said, as Tradeweb looks to weather what has been unprecedented market conditions. 

That being said, the company is starting to consider what will come next.

"As time goes on, and as we've been able to adapt to the work-from-home environment, we're now starting to think about what's next. How we can improve things," he said.

Companies across Wall Street are beginning to question what changes made as a result of the spread of coronavirus will stay in place after the dust settles. While firms have been adamant their main focus is making sure they can continue to service their clients, some have already hinted at changes they will maintain in the future.

One thing Olesky was sure of was that market volatility will not subside until COVID-19 is under control.

"This is a health crisis," Olesky said. "Until we resolve the health crisis, there will be no normality in markets or anywhere else."

SEE ALSO: Tradeweb's CEO explains how the rise of passive investing is creating big knock-on trading opportunities for the electronic marketplace

SEE ALSO: Wall Street's disaster playbook never included work-from-home trading. Insiders explain how banks rapidly adjusted during one of the most chaotic markets in history.

SEE ALSO: A UBS exec lays out the benefits and pain points of all-electronic trading after coronavirus concerns cleared the floor at NYSE

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NOW WATCH: WeWork went from a $47 billion valuation to a failed IPO. Here's how the company makes money.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

T-Mobile officially owns Sprint. The merger was formally completed today after clearing a number of legal hurdles over the last year, including a Department of Justice review and lawsuits from a number of states. The combination turns the United States’ third and fourth largest wireless carriers into a far more substantial third place competitor to Verizon and AT&T.

With the companies combined, John Legere is also stepping down as CEO of T-Mobile. T-Mobile is now being led by Mike Sievert, who was previously the company’s COO. Legere led a dramatic turnaround of T-Mobile after coming on board in 2012, turning it from a distant fourth place into a company capable of buying Sprint and pushing around larger competitors.

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• Microsoft is planning to turn many of its events scheduled to happen in 2020 online-only.
• This means the 2020 iteration of 'Ignite,' its flagship conference for software developers and IT professionals, will not let people meet in-person.
• Microsoft events scheduled to happen between July 2020 and June 2021 include "Ignite The Tour," the 2021 version of "MVP Summit," and the 2021 version of "Build." 
• Microsoft did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The coronavirus outbreak has already led to the cancellation of flagship tech conferences. Now Microsoft will shift all its events to a digital-only format for the foreseeable future.

According to ZDNet, Microsoft is planning to turn many of its internal and public events scheduled to happen between July 2020 to June 2021 into online-only affairs. 

This means the 2020 iteration of 'Ignite,' Microsoft's flagship developer conference for developers, will only take place online.

Microsoft confirmed the news via Ignite's website. "The safety of our community is top priority," the firm wrote. "In light of global health concerns due to COVID-19, we will deliver our annual Microsoft Ignite conference as a digital experience, in lieu of an in-person event."

The company posted similar messages across other websites for its events, including for its other big developer conference Build, and the 2021 version of MVP Summit. 

The 2020 version of MVP Summit had been set to take place from March 15 until March 2020, but was canceled over COVID-19 fears, while the 2020 version of Build suffered the same fate. 

Microsoft did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

SEE ALSO: How Microsoft won the 'respect' of its employees as the coronavirus crisis forced most of the company to work from home, according to insiders

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• 5.2 million Marriott guests' information wasn't secured properly for more than a month in 2020, the hotel chain said Tuesday, and was possibly accessed by unauthorized persons.
• The data that was possibly accessed an outside party includes contact info and loyalty account numbers, but not sensitive details like passport information or credit card numbers. 
• Marriott and other large hotel chains have been left reeling by the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced mass layoffs and executive pay cuts throughout the industry. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Marriott International said Tuesday that the personal information for at least 5.2 million guests could have been accessed by unauthorized people at two of its hotels for more than a month earlier this year.

The accessible information included full names, email and postal addresses, phone numbers, account numbers and points balance, birthday, gender, and any linked loyalty affiliations, like with airlines. ID and passport numbers, credit card information, and account passwords were not affected, the company said.

In an email to potentially affected customers, Stephanie Linnartz, Marriott's president of its consumer group, said the company was setting up a portal in which they can see if their information was involved and offered one year of a free personal monitoring service from Experian.

It's the second time in as many years that the company has disclosed a data security lapse. The company in 2018 said 500 million customers' data from its Starwood subsidiary had been improperly accessed in an event that also included some guests' credit card details. The breach remains one of the largest in history.

While small data breaches, especially of non-critical information, tend to be small blips on the radar, the bad news Tuesday could not come at a worse time for Marriott and the hotel industry at large.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced hotel chains around the world to shutter properties and lay off droves of staff. In March, Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson's salary was suspended for the rest of the year, while other senior executives are receiving a 50% pay cut.

"The impact to our industry is already more severe than anything we've seen before, including September 11th and the great recession of 2008 combined," American Hotel & Lodging Association President and CEO Chip Rogers said this month.

Shares of Marriott were little changed in trading Tuesday. The stock has declined almost 50% since the beginning of the year, easily outpacing a broader market selloff triggered by the coronavirus.

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NOW WATCH: We talked to Kevin Plank right before he stepped down as CEO of Under Armour, and he hinted at why the company may be ready for the change

• The workplace chat app Slack is releasing its first national advertising campaign as a public company — a public service announcement to support people on the frontlines of the coronavirus.
• Its 30-second spot thanks doctors, researchers and other responders and highlights how companies are already using Slack to coordinate their efforts. 
• Slack has increased its sales and marketing spending as it faces competition to acquire new users, spending over 57% of its fourth-quarter 2019 revenue of $181.9 million on advertising.
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The workplace chat app Slack is releasing its first national advertising campaign as a public company — a public service announcement supporting people on the frontlines of the coronavirus.

It's releasing a 30-second spot thanking doctors, researchers and other responders and highlights how companies like the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and ID.me are using Slack to coordinate their efforts. At the end, it directs viewers to a landing page about how Slack can help.

"We noticed that there were organizations that were trying to respond to this crisis using Slack, and thought, 'What a moment for us to be able to get the word out that Slack was available to help,'" Slack's chief marketing officer Julie Liegl told Business Insider.

The ad was developed in a week by the company's marketing team and is set to run across linear TV channels including news programs on NBC, CNBC and CNN, connected TV and video-on-demand platforms like Hulu, and publisher sites including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg on April 1, Liegl said.

Slack is among other remote working companies that have seen a boost due to the coronavirus 

Along with Zoom, Microsoft and Cisco, Slack has spiked in popularity in the past few weeks as people transition to working from home to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Many organizations working to combat the pandemic already use Slack for remote work, which is why the company is rolling out features aimed at them like free access to Slack's paid plan for three months, removing its regular caps, Liegl said.

It is also offering one-on-one consultations to answer questions and share best practices for working remotely on its platform. The paid plan allows for app integrations with the likes of Google Docs or Zoom, she said.

Although Slack first saw usage increase mainly for its free version, it's had a big increase in paid customers as well, adding 9,000 new paid customers since the beginning of February.

Slack is spending more on marketing as competition heats up

Slack has increased its sales and marketing spending as it faces heated competition to acquire new users. The company spent more than $103 million toward its marketing expenses for the fourth quarter of 2019, versus $78 million in the third quarter — over 57% of its revenue of $181.9 million.

The uptick in ad spend comes as Microsoft launched its own messaging product Teams for free to customers of Office 365 and a new ad campaign to promote it in January, CNBC reported.

Liegl said Slack's new campaign is not designed to drive any business metrics, although it is spending more on advertising to promote the company.

"It's really not trying to sell anything, just raise awareness of how [we can] specifically help your offering," she said. 

Watch the spot below:

 

SEE ALSO: The CEO of Slack explains how a recession would make it much harder for it to hire the people it needs to sustain its growth and take on Microsoft

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NOW WATCH: Most maps of Louisiana aren't entirely right. Here's what the state really looks like.

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Zoom states on its website and in its security white paper that it supports end-to-end encryption for its meetings. But new research from The Intercept reveals that’s not exactly true.

The Intercept asked a Zoom spokesperson whether video meetings that take place on the platform are end-to-end encrypted, and the spokesperson said that “Currently, it is not possible to enable E2E encryption for Zoom video meetings.”

Zoom does use TLS encryption, the same standard that web browsers use to secure HTTPS websites. In practice, that means that data is encrypted between you and Zoom’s servers, similar to Gmail or Facebook content. But the term end-to-end encryption typically refers to protecting content between the users entirely with no...

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• Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told Business Insider that the coronavirus pandemic and the new, work-from-home reality is forcing a lot of companies to accelerate their digital transformation plans.
• Slack has experienced a huge influx of new customers and that's creating novel hiring challenges for the company, Butterfield said.
• It's clear that engineering talent is needed to ensure the product can support all the new users. But, Butterfield said, the company is still thinking about how to hire in other areas like sales and recruiting given that everyone is now working from home.
• Slack is also working on an integration with its rival Microsoft Teams video calling feature, to support customers who need video conferencing tools right now. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Slack, the six-year old workplace chat app, has been thrust into the spotlight in the last few weeks. As most of the world has to work from home to stop the spread of COVID-19, the coronavirus disease, tools that enable remote work have spiked in popularity. 

Though Slack wasn't built specifically to be a tool for remote work, its chat and collaboration features make it perfect for this situation. And although initially Slack said it was mainly seeing usage for the free version of the product, it appears to be benefiting from a huge increase in paid customers as well — adding 9,000 new paid customers since the beginning of February.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told Business Insider the company is still grappling with how to deal with the influx of new business, while taking into account the current economic climate. 

The question Butterfield is considering is: "Do we want to be more conservative than we initially planned this year or do we want to be more aggressive because we're going to be in a good competitive position for recruiting?" 

It's a double edged sword. He, and other CEOs in his position, expect fewer people to leave their current jobs because people will be more conservative. That also means it might be harder to hire and recruit new talent because people are less willing to take a risk and leave their jobs at a time like this. Additionally, all job interviews for the foreseeable future are online, which changes the hiring process and how new employees are onboarded.

"So it's going to take us a while to figure out what that new reality is like and whether we're even able to hit the hiring targets that we wanted," Butterfield said in an interview with Business Insider. "It's just another area of uncertainty and you know, there's places where we know that we will hire absolutely as quickly as possible, that's in any area that's to support the ongoing growth because that's not optional," 

Handing a surge of new users

New teams of users are joining Slack at a record pace, Butterfield explained. Before, it might have taken a few months for a new organization to start using Slack and then eventually make the decision to pay for a more advanced version. That's now happening in days and existing teams are upgrading faster than before. 

So Slack needs to hire people who can support that growth. 

One of those areas is engineering, Butterfield said. In order to support the magnitude of new users using Slack, the back-end infrastructure that Slack runs on has to work even harder. In order to do that, the company needs more engineers.

"It's a big complicated system and we are continuing to scale, and both on the leadership side and regular old engineers. We really want to grow," Butterfield said. 

It's not quite as simple in other parts of the business, like sales, marketing, and recruiting. On the one hand not having to travel could make it simpler for salespeople to close deals, but on the other hand it could be harder to close deals when you're not face to face. The same goes with recruiting roles. Roles such as field marketing will have lower demand, because there aren't any upcoming field marketing events to attend. 

Those are areas Slack was planning to hire in where they might now hire less than planned, Butterfield said. 

But navigating the economic climate right now is difficult, even for those who were in the workforce during the 2008 Great Recession. "It's unlike anything that happened in my lifetime,and I worked through 2008. I worked through the dot com crash. This is just totally different," Butterfield said. 

It's got Butterfield a bit skeptical about if its surge in growth will last, which he acknowledged in a series of tweets last week.

Despite that, Slack is really focused on how valuable its product can be right now, during this situation, he added.

Competition with Microsoft

While Slack provides a chat and collaboration tool, the other tool that newly remote companies need now is video conferencing. While Slack has some basic video calling features, it's not building those out. Instead it's focusing on building integrations with the numerous existing video conferencing tools that already exist, like Zoom and Cisco's WebEx. 

And recently Butterfield also said that Slack is looking to build an integration with its largest rival Microsoft Teams, though he told Business Insider, all the details aren't quite ironed out yet. He said 70 percent of Slack's customers are also Microsoft customers and use its suite of productivity tools. The main use case they've seen for Microsoft Teams is video calling. 

"So just like we already integrate with Zoom, we already integrate with Cisco WebEx, we want to make an integration with those Teams calling functionalities so people can answer calls," he said. "It's basically bringing Teams to parity with the other voice and video calling services."

While this might be confusing to some because Slack and Microsoft Teams often compete for customers, Butterfield said people are misunderstanding how often they actually compete. 

"I think we don't really compete as much with customers. That's not to say that we don't ever, because four of the five biggest enterprise deals we did last quarter were head to head Teams vs Slack. But I think much more of the time, it's Slack versus email," he said. 

By that, Butterfield means, organizations choosing to use Slack for internal communication rather than email, despite the fact that they might also have access to Teams. And the longer we're all forced to work from home, the more companies will turn to chat and collaboration tools like Slack, Butterfield said.

So long term, software companies could see a positive impact, because so many companies are actually in the early stages of digital transformation. Right now, most companies just have emails and meetings as tools to get work done, but they're being pushed to find other ways to solve problems, he added. 

"Companies that were really resistant to technological change or, you know, were in the bottom 50 percentile in terms of digital transformation, they all just got a mandatory 'Use more software' command that they can't ignore," said Butterfield.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pzaveri@businessinsider.com or Signal at 925-364-4258. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: Meet the 10 enterprise tech rock stars quietly building some of the most innovative cloud services in 2020

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NOW WATCH: A podiatrist explains heel spurs, the medical condition Trump said earned him a medical deferment from Vietnam

• As the country practices social distancing in an effort to contain the coronavirus outbreak, charity rides and races are going virtual with the help of buzzy fitness companies like Peloton.  
• Axios business editor Dan Primack rallied over 600 people to race for charity using Peloton bikes (or the app) last Saturday, raising $120,000 for Food Bank For New York City.
• Racing in a remote world isn't the same as "running with a 1,000 people," Primack told Business Insider, but the ride still mimicked some of the camaraderie seen in a physical group race — especially with the help of his daughter, who made sure to high-five various racers on the leaderboard through the ride. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In an era of social distancing, charity rides and races are going remote.  

This past Saturday, 660 riders got on their Peloton fitness bikes, selected Alex Toussaint's 45-minute pop ride from February, and proceeded to race each other. In doing so, they helped Food Bank For New York City raise $120,000.

"It came together very quickly," Axios business editor Dan Primack, who posted a call for the ride in his newsletter Pro Rata, told Business Insider. He'd been mulling over the idea for more than a week, after Bullish managing partner Mike Duda challenged him and a few others to begin doing group Peloton rides.

And Primack had already tested out a group ride with his readers— about 35 people had showed up to his last ride so he was fairly sure that he could bring in about a 100 people to a Peloton ride fundraiser. 

Primack then fired off some emails to a few venture capital firms off the top of his mind, and included a note about it in his newsletter. He picked the charity — Food Bank For New York City — and Bullish's Mike Duda picked the ride, which was an older class to ensure that they didn't pick up any stray fitness junkies who hadn't signed intentionally signed onto their fundraiser. 

Primack said he was hoping to recruit around 100 riders and bring in perhaps $5,000 or even $10,000. But the response to the ride was beyond what he'd hoped for. Besides Primack and Duda's own contributions, a group of venture funds like Founders Fund and GGV Capital agreed to contribute $5 for each person who joined the ride. And individual investors like Hunter Walk and Bain Capital's Ian Loring also pitched in with their own donations. 

Peloton retweeted his initial call, and its CEO John Foley and three directors each pledged $10,000 to the fundraiser. 

And tech-turned-philanthropist couple Chris and Crystal Sacca agreed to donate a whopping $50,000 (in exchange for an embarrassing photo from Primack, of course). 

Although Primack is based in Boston and most of the dollars raised by the Peloton ride came from the West Coast, he said he chose a New York-based food bank, because he felt it was a cause that everybody had some sort of connection to. 

"New York's kind of the epicenter of the outbreak," Primack explained. "And the food bank is helping not just those affected by the virus but those hurt by layoffs, and school kids who used to get free meals at school...It was a cause everybody could get behind." 

Remote racing

Primack acknowledges that a group Peloton ride wasn't the same as "running with 1,000 people" but as experiences go, it came pretty close.

"You realize that all these people got up to do the ride for the exact same reason, that they put aside not just money but whatever was going on in their life for a period of time to do it," Primack said.  

 

Primack's nine-year-old daughter contributed to the effort to create a sense of camaraderie, tapping on their user profiles during the race to give them "high fives" through the ride.

Some riders, like the Peloton leaderboard "winner" Patrick Cairns leaned on his own personal "superfans" for a secret advantage. 

 

And although a Peloton leaderboard doesn't necessarily give the same competitive rush as racing to catch up — or pass — someone in a race, Primack jokes that the pressure to not embarrass himself was definitely there. 

"I changed my username to my name, so most people knew who I was," Primack said. "So I didn't want to suck while doing it."

 

SEE ALSO: Electric scooter startup Bird has laid off 30% of the company in a scramble to preserve a 'cash runway' to last until the end of 2021

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NOW WATCH: Jeff Bezos reportedly just spent $165 million on a Beverly Hills estate — here are all the ways the world's richest man makes and spends his money

On Monday a user of the popular video-conferencing software Zoom filed a class action lawsuit against the company for sending data to Facebook. The lawsuit argues that Zoom violated California's new data protection law by not obtaining proper consent from users about the transfer of the data.

"Defendant knew or should have known that the Zoom App security practices were inadequate to safeguard the Class members’ personal information and that the risk of unauthorized disclosure to at least Facebook was highly likely. Defendant failed to implement and maintain reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information to protect the personal information of Plaintiff and the Class members," the lawsuit, which was first reported by Bloomberg, reads.

By analyzing the network traffic of the Zoom iOS app, Motherboard found that when opened, the app sent information about the the user's device such as the model, the city and timezone they are connecting from, which phone carrier they are using, and a unique advertiser identifier created by the user's device.

Days after Motherboard informed Zoom of the data transfer, the company issued a statement confirming the analysis. Zoom also pushed an update to the app to remove the code which sent the data.

Do you know anything else about data selling or trading? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

"Zoom appears to have taken no action to block any of the prior versions of the Zoom App from operating. Thus, unless users affirmatively update their Zoom App, they likely will continue to unknowingly send unauthorized personal information to Facebook, and perhaps other third parties. Zoom could have forced all iOS users to update to the new Zoom App to continue using Zoom but appears to have chosen not to," the lawsuit reads. (iOS users can see when an update for an app is available when they open the App Store.)

The lawsuit argues that Zoom has not ensured that Facebook has deleted the data, either. The lawsuit also claims that Zoom participated in unlawful and unfair business practices, and violated the California Constitution.

Zoom did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Image: OpenTable

OpenTable wants to let you reserve shopping times at supermarkets to help decrease overcrowding and make stores safer for shoppers.

OpenTable’s new tool will allow you to choose a vacant time slot or join a waitlist at partnered supermarkets and other essential businesses, much like setting up a reservation at a restaurant. Currently, seven partners across Los Angeles and San Francisco — six restaurants turn pop-up markets plus one local grocery store are using the new feature, but OpenTable told The Verge it is in “active talks with other national grocers/retailers.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a significant strain on grocery stores. As an essential shop, they can receive a high volume of customers, which can be dangerous for many...

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