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Twitter is bringing twttr’s experiments in threaded conversations to its main app

Published January 8, 2020

At last year’s CES, Twitter introduced its first public prototype app, twttr — dubbed “little T” internally at Twitter. The app allows Twitter to develop and experiment with new features in the public, to see what works and what does not. The app’s main focus, to date, has been on making threaded conversations easier to read. Now, the company is ready to graduate the best of twttr to the main Twitter app.

“We’re taking all the different branches — all the different parts of the conversation — and we’re making it so it’s all in one global view,” explained Suzanne Xie, Twitter’s head of Conversations, speaking to reporters at CES 2020. “This means you can easily understand, and get a pulse of what’s happening in the conversation,” she added.

When the changes roll out, you’ll be able to see when the original tweet’s author is replying within a conversation thread. Twitter will also highlight people you’re following and people who are verified.

This way, Xie continues, “you can understand who is talking to who in a conversation.”

In addition, Twitter will release other features that build on top of threaded conversations to the public, including how the user interface reacts when you tap on a reply.

On twttr, when you tap into a reply within a conversation, you get more information about the tweet in question. You can also reply in-line to the tweet. And the reply itself is shaded to differentiate it from the surrounding tweets, when selected.

Threaded conversations also hide some of the replies to keep the conversation more readable — but you can click a link to load more of the replies as you scroll down. Twitter says it personalizes which replies are shown and hidden based on things like who you follow, who you interact with and people you’ve interacted with in the past.

“These are pieces of making this global conversation easier to use — so you don’t have to tab to new screens and go back and forth,” Xie explained.

Despite the initial excitement around Twitter’s new app, twttr, some felt the company didn’t take full advantage of having a public experimental playground. Few other new features beyond threaded conversations were tried out on the testing platform.

To some extent, Twitter’s plans could have been impacted by changes in twttr’s leadership. Twitter in August acquired Xie’s startup Lightwell. Meanwhile, Sara Haider, who had been leading the charge on rethinking the design of conversations on Twitter, which included the release of twttr, announced that she would be moving on to a new project at the company after a short break.

With twttr’s threaded conversations feature making its way to Twitter.com, the plan now is to use twttr to experiment with other conversational features.

For example, twttr may be used to try out new features in the incentives space — meaning, how small tweaks to Twitter’s user interface can influence different types of user behavior.

“Going forward, we’re investing and making a concerted effort, as we try new features and as we change different mechanics, to [determine] what we’re incentivizing and what we’re disincentivizing,” said Xie.

For instance, changing the prompts that Twitter displays when a user goes to compose a tweet or a reply could influence how they choose to respond. This is only one example of the sorts of things Twitter aims to test with Little T, as it’s called.

Twitter says the new threaded conversations features will begin to roll out on Twitter for iOS first, followed by web then Android, sometime in Q1.

Twitter’s new reply blockers could let Trump hide critics

Published January 8, 2020

What if politicians could only display Twitter replies from their supporters while stopping everyone else from adding their analysis to the conversation? That’s the risk of Twitter’s upcoming Conversation Participants tool it’s about to start testing that lets you choose if you want replies from everyone, only those your follow or mention or no one.

For most, the reply limiter could help repel trolls and harassment. Unfortunately, it still puts the burden of safety on the victims rather than the villains. Instead of routing out abusers, Twitter wants us to retreat and wall off our tweets from everyone we don’t know. That could reduce the spontaneous yet civil reply chains between strangers that are part of what makes Twitter so powerful.

But in the hands of politicians hoping to avoid scrutiny, the tools could make it appear that their tweets and policies are uniformly supported. By only allowing their sycophants to add replies below their posts, anyone reading along will be exposed to a uniformity of opinion that clashes with Twitter’s position as a marketplace of ideas.

We’ve reached out to Twitter for comment on this issue and whether anyone such as politicians would be prevented from using the new reply-limiting tools. Twitter plans to test the reply-selection tool in Q1, monitor usage, and make modifications if necessary before rolling it out. The company provided this statement:

“We want to help people feel safe participating in the conversation on Twitter by giving them more control over the conversations they start. We’ll be experimenting with different options for who can reply to Tweets in early 2020.”

Here’s how the new Conversation Participants feature works, according to the preview shared by Twitter’s Suzanne Xie at CES today, though it could change during testing. When users go to tweet, they’ll have the option of selecting who can reply, unlike now when everyone can leave replies but authors can hide certain ones that viewers can opt to reveal. Conversation Participants offers four options:

–Global: Replies from anyone

–Group: Replies from those you follow or mention in this tweet

–Panel: Replies from only those you mention in this tweet

–Statement: No replies allowed

Now imagine President Trump opts to make all of his tweets Group-only. Only those who support him and he therefore follows — like his sons, Fox News’ Sean Hannity and his campaign team — could reply. Gone would be the reels of critics fact-checking his statements or arguing against his policies. His tweets would be safeguarded from reproach, establishing an echo chamber filter bubble for his acolytes.

It’s true that some of these responses from the public might constitute abuse or harassment. But those should be dealt with specifically through strong policy and consistent enforcement of adequate punishments when rules are broken. By instead focusing on stopping replies from huge swaths of the community, the secondary effects have the potential to prop up politicians that consistently lie and undam the flow of misinformation.

There’s also the practical matter that this won’t stop abuse, it will merely move it. Civil discussion will be harder to find for the rest of the public, but harassers will still reach their targets. Users blocked from replying to specific tweets can just tweet directly at the author. They can also continue to mention the author separately or screenshot their tweets and then discuss them.

It’s possible that U.S. law prevents politicians discriminating against citizens with different viewpoints by restricting their access to the politician’s comments on a public forum. Judges ruled this makes it illegal for Trump to block people on social media. But with this new tool, because anyone could still see the tweets, reply to the author separately and not be followed by the author likely doesn’t count as discrimination like blocking does, use of the Conversation Participants tool could be permissible. Someone could sue to push the issue to the courts, though, and judges might be wise to deem this unconstitutional.

Silenced by ‘free speech’

Again, this is why Twitter needs to refocus on cleaning up its community rather than only letting people build tiny, temporary shelters from the abuse. It could consider blocking replies and mentions from brand new accounts without sufficient engagement or a linked phone number, as I suggested in 2017. It could also create a new mid-point punishment of a “time-out” from sending replies for harassment that it (sometimes questionably) deems below the threshold of an account suspension.

The combination of Twitter’s decade of weakness in the face of trolls with a new political landscape of normalized misinformation threaten to overwhelm its attempts to get a handle on safety.

India’s Reliance Jio rolls out Wi-Fi calling feature

Published January 8, 2020

Two of the top three telecom operators in India are beginning to address one of the biggest challenges hundreds of millions of their subscribers face in the country each day: poor call quality and abrupt voice drops.

Reliance Jio, India’s second largest telecom operator, announced today that it now supports voice and video calling functionality over Wi-Fi networks. The 4G-only network said it has started to roll out the feature to all of its subscribers in India and expects to reach all of its 360 million consumers by next week.

The rollout of calls over Wi-Fi functionality on Jio comes weeks after Airtel, India’s third largest telecom operator with more than 260 million subscribers, began to support this feature in select places in the country. Neither of the operators are levying any additional fee for this feature and say that their subscribers can place phone calls over Wi-Fi across the networks.

Wi-Fi calling is a popular feature that enables users to latch onto their wireless internet connection to make phone calls. These calls tend to be of much better quality than those that rely on traditional telecom infrastructure. In the U.S., T-Mobile, Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) and AT&T began to offer this feature in late 2015 and early 2016.

In many markets such as India, calls over internet began to gain traction four to five years ago after services such as WhatsApp enabled such functionality. In the years since, telecom operators have also rolled out support for calls over LTE networks.

Airtel currently supports Wi-Fi calling in select circles — such as Mumbai, Kolkata, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu — and requires its users to be a subscriber of Airtel broadband service. It also works only on a handful of smartphone models.

Reliance Jio, on the other hand, supports more than 150 smartphone models, including several recent iPhone generations and a wide range of mid-tier and high-end Android smartphones. A Reliance Jio spokesperson told TechCrunch that Jio’s Wi-Fi calling functionality works on any Wi-Fi network.

Akash Ambani, director of Jio, said Reliance Jio consumers already use more than 900 minutes of voice calling every month. “The launch of Jio Wi-Fi Calling will further enhance every Jio consumer’s voice-calling experience, which is already a benchmark for the industry with India’s-first all VoLTE network,” he said in a statement.

Vodafone, which at the last count (PDF) was ahead of Reliance Jio by a few million subscribers, is yet to offer this functionality. The announcement follows price hikes by all the top three telecom networks in India.

What to expect in digital media in 2020

Published January 8, 2020

As we start 2020, the media and entertainment sectors are in flux. New technologies are enabling new types of content, streaming platforms in multiple content categories are spending billions in their fight for market share and the interplay between social platforms and media is a central topic of global political debate (to put it lightly).

As TechCrunch’s media columnist, I spoke to hundreds of entrepreneurs and executives in North America and Europe last year about the shifts underway across everything from vertically-oriented video series to physics engines in games to music royalty payments. Looking toward the year ahead, here are some of the high-level changes I expect we will see in media in 2020, broken into seven categories: film & TV, gaming, visual & audio effects, social media, music, podcasts and publishing.

Film and TV

In film and television, the battle to compete with Netflix continues with more robust competition than last year. In the U.S., Disney is off to a momentous start with 10 million Disney+ subscribers upon its launch in November and some predicting it will hit 25 million by March (including those on free trials or receiving it for free via Disney’s partnership with Verizon). Bundled with its two other streaming properties, Hulu and ESPN+, Disney+ puts Disney alongside Amazon and Netflix as the Big Three.

Consumers will only pay for so many subscriptions, often one, two, or all of the Big Three (since Amazon Prime Video is included with the broader Prime membership) then a smaller service that best aligns with their personal taste and favorite show of the moment.

AT&T’s HBOMax launches in May with a $14.99/month price tag and is unlikely to break into the echelon of the Big Three, but could be a formidable second tier competitor. Alongside it will be Apple TV+. With a $4.99/month subscription, Apple’s service only includes a small number of original productions, an HBO strategy as HBO gets bundled into a larger library. CBS All Access, Showtime, and NBCUniversal’s upcoming (in April) Peacock fall in this camp as well.

Across Europe, regional media conglomerates will find success in expanding local SVOD and AVOD competitors to Netflix that launched last year — or are set to launch in the next few weeks — like BritBox in the UK, Joyn in Germany and Salto in France. Netflix’s growth is coming from outside the U.S. now so its priority is buying more international shows that will compel new demographics to subscribe.

The most interesting new development in 2020 though will be the April launch of Quibi, the $4.99/month service offering premium shows shot for mobile-first viewing that has already secured $1 billion in funding commitments and $150 million in advertising revenue. Quibi shows will be bite-size in length (less than 15 minutes) and vertically-oriented. The company has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into commissioning established names to create dozens of them. Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro each have Quibi programs and NBC and CBS are creating news shows. The terms it is offering are enticing.

Quibi, which plans to release 125 pieces of content (i.e. episodes) per week and spend $470 million on marketing this year, is an all-or-nothing bet with little room to iterate if it doesn’t get it right the first time; it needs hit shows that break into mainstream pop culture to survive. Billionaire founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman have set expectations sky-high for the launch; expect the press to slam it in April for failing to meet those expectations and for the platform to redeem itself as a few of its shows gain traction in the months that follow.

Meanwhile, live sports remains the last hope of broadcast TV networks as all other shows go to streaming. Consumers still value watching sports in real-time. Streaming services are coming for live sports too, however, and will make progress toward that goal in 2020. Three weeks ago, DAZN secured the rights to the 2021/22 season of Germany’s Champions League, beating out broadcaster Sky which has shown the matches for the last 20 years. Amazon and YouTube continue to explore bids for sports rights while Facebook and Twitter are stepping back from their efforts. YouTube’s “YouTube TV” and Disney’s “Hulu with Live TV” will cause more consumers to cancel cable TV subscriptions in 2020 and go streaming-only.

The winners in the film & TV sector right now are top production companies. The war for streaming video dominance is driving several of the world’s wealthiest companies (and individuals) to pour tens of billions of dollars into content. Large corporations own the distribution platforms here; the only “startups” to enter with strength — DAZN and Quibi — have been launched by billionaires and started with billion-dollar spending commitments. The entrepreneurial opportunity is on the content creation side — with producers creating shows not with software developers creating platforms.

Gaming

The gaming market is predicted to grow nearly 9% year-over-year from $152 billion globally in 2019 to $165 billion in 2020, according to research firm Newzoo, with roughly 2.5 billion people playing games each year. Gaming is now widespread across all demographic groups. Casual mobile games are responsible for the largest portion of this (and 45% of industry revenue) but PC gaming continues to grow (+4% last year) and console gaming was the fastest growing category last year (+13%).

The big things to watch in gaming this year: cross-platform play, greater focus on social interaction in virtual worlds and the expansion of cloud gaming subscriptions.

Fortnite enticed consumers with the benefits of a cross-platform game that allows players to move between PC, mobile and console and it is setting expectations that other games do the same. Last October we saw the Call of Duty franchise come to mobile and reach a record 100 million downloads in its first week. This trend will continue and it will spread the free-to-play business model that is the norm in mobile games to many PC and console franchises in the process.

Gaming is moving to the social forefront. Many people are turning to massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) like Fortnite and PUBG to socialize, with gameplay as a secondary interest. Games are virtual worlds where players socialize, build things, and own assets much like in the real world. That results in an increasingly fluid interplay between socializing in games and in physical life, much as socializing in the virtual realms of social apps like Instagram or Twitter is now viewed as part of “real world” life.

Expect VCs to bet big on the thesis that “games are the new social networks” in 2020. Large investment firms that a year ago wrote off the category of gaming as “content bets” not fit for VC are now actively hunting for deals.

On this point, there are several startups (like Klang Games, Darewise Entertainment, Singularity 6 and Clockwork Labs) that raised millions in VC funding to create open world games that will launch (in beta at least) in 2020. These are virtual worlds where all players exist in the same instance of the world rather than being capped at 100 or so players per instance. Their vision of the future: digital realms where people will contribute to in-game economies, create friendships and ultimately earn income just like their “real-world” lives. Think next-gen Second Life. Expect them to take time to seed their worlds with early adopters in 2020 before any of them gain mainstream traction in 2021.

Few are as excited about social interaction in games as Facebook, it seems. Eager to own critical turf in the next paradigm shift of social media, Facebook will accelerate its gaming push this year. In late 2019, it acquired Madrid-based PlayGiga — which was working on cloud gaming and 5G technology — and the studio behind the hit VR game Beat Saber. It also secured exclusive rights to the VR versions of popular games like Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed” and “Splinter Cell” for Oculus. Horizon, its virtual world for social interaction within VR, is expected to launch this year as well.

Facebook is betting on AR/VR as the paradigm shift in consumer computing that will replace mobile; it is pouring billions into its efforts to own the hardware and infrastructure pieces which are several years of R&D away from primetime. In the meantime, the consumer shift to social interaction in virtual worlds is occurring in established formats — mobile, PC, and console — so it will work to build the bridge for consumers from that to the future.

Lastly, cloud gaming was one of last year’s biggest headlines with the launch of Google Stadia and you should expect it to be again this year. By moving games to cloud hosting, consumers can play the highest quality games from lower quality devices, greatly expanding the market of potential players. By bundling many such games into a subscription offering, Google and others hope to entice consumers to try many more games.

As TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney argued, however, cloud gaming is likely a feature for existing subscription gaming platforms — namely Playstation Now and Xbox Game Pass — more so than the basis for a new platform to differentiate. The minor latency inherent in playing a cloud-hosted game makes it unattractive to hardcore gamers (who would rather download the game). Next to Sony and Microsoft’s offerings, Stadia’s limited game selection fails to stand out. The competition will only heat up this year with the expected entry of Amazon. Google needs to launch the Stadia integration with YouTube and the Share State feature that it promoted in its Stadia announcement to really drive consumer interest.

Visual and audio effects

Going fast: Buy a demo table at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI 2020

Published January 7, 2020

Startup founders, set your sites on TC Sessions: Robotics+AI, which takes place on March 3, 2020. This annual day-long event draws the brightest minds and makers from these two industries — 1,500 attendees last year alone. And if you really want to make 2020 a game-changing year, grab yourself a demo table and showcase your early-stage robotics or AI startup in front of those big names and serious influencers.

Simply purchase an Early-Stage Startup Exhibitor Package — the price includes four tickets to the event, so bring your crew, flex your networking mojo and take in some of the many discussions throughout the day. Get yours before they’re gone — only eight left.

The day’s programming covers a wide range of crucial issues focused on robotics and AI. TC editors conduct in-depth interviews and moderate panel discussions and Q&As with the industries’ leading minds, makers, technologists, researchers and investors. You’ll enjoy workshops, demos and plenty of networking opportunities.

We’re talking topics that appeal to every hungry startup founder. Like a panel discussion on investing featuring Eric Migicovsky, Kelly Chen and Dror Berman — all top VCs in robotics and AI.

These folks have their fingers on the pulse of robotics, AI and automation. They’ll be on hand to share insights on future industry trends, talk about the most compelling startups and what they look for when it comes to funding.

We’ll be sharing details and the names of plenty more speakers in the coming weeks, so keep checking back. You can always check out last year’s program to get a sense of what to expect.

Did you know we have a new twist to this year’s Session? It’s a pitch competition — Pitch Night. It takes place the night before, it doesn’t cost a thing and it’s open to founders of early-stage startups focused on robotics and AI. There’s only one small hoop to jump through: apply here by February 1.

TC Sessions: Robotics+AI takes place on March 3, 2020 at UC Berkeley. Buy your Early-Stage Startup Exhibitor Package today, and come impress the top technologists, makers, thinkers, researchers and investors. Make 2020 your game-changing year.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Investors and utilities are seeding carbon markets with new startups

Published January 7, 2020

While most of the world agrees that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are creating a climate crisis, there’s little consensus regarding how to address it.

One of the solutions that’s both the most obvious and, seemingly, the most difficult for the international community to agree on is establishing a market that would put a price on carbon emissions. Making the cost of emissions palpable for industries would encourage companies to curb their polluting activities or pay to offset them.

The holy grail of a global carbon market — or a collection of regional ones — has been on the agenda for climate activists and regulators since the Kyoto Protocols were ratified in 1997, but enacting the policy has proven elusive.

Now, as the results of climate inaction become more apparent, there appears to be some movement on the regulatory front and concurrent activity from early-stage technology investors to make carbon offsets more of a reality.

It’s still early days, but startups like Project Wren, Pachama and Cloverly prove that investors and utilities are willing to take a flyer on companies that are trying to enable carbon offsets for consumers and corporations alike.

These small bets for investors are complemented by the potential for outsized returns given the size and scope that’s possible should these markets actually develop.

After years of languishing in relative obscurity, global carbon markets rebounded with vigor in 2017 and into 2018, according to data from the World Bank.

Countries raised about $44 billion in revenues from carbon pricing in 2018, an increase of $11 billion, with more than half coming from carbon taxes. In 2017, the $33 billion raised by governments from carbon pricing was an increase of 50% over 2016 numbers.

However large that number may seem, it’s dwarfed by the figure required to make any real changes in industry emissions, according to the World Bank. The current pricing schemes that exist cover a small percentage of global emissions at a cost that’s consistent with achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, the latest international treaty around climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Prices need to rise to between $40 per ton of carbon dioxide and $80 per ton by 2020 and between $50 per ton and $100 per ton by 2030.

Samsung’s Lite devices bring the headphone jack to flagship design (sort of)

Published January 7, 2020

Some devices need no explanation. The Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite are no such devices. They’re more nebulous, walking an interesting line, between premium and mid-range. They’re a clear attempt by Samsung to change with a smartphone-buying public that has balked at the idea of $1,000+ devices.

Samsung announces ‘Lite’ versions of the Galaxy S10 and Note 10

On that front, they make plenty of sense. Things are, however, not so cut and dry. This is probably no better exemplified by the headphone jack situation. One (the Note 10) has one. One (the S10) doesn’t. It’s a bit of a one foot in, one foot out approach to the technology that Samsung, admittedly, has always been more cautious about abandoning than most.

The pragmatic reason for the decision, I think, is that the Note 10 Lite is the thicker of the two devices. Both feel like solid, flagship devices. The build quality is terrific on both. The Note, however, is noticeably chunkier, owing to the inclusion of the S Pen and a different screen technology. So Samsung saw an opportunity to have it both ways, plopping a headphone jack on the bottom.

The timing is interesting, as well. The company snuck out an announcement just ahead of CES. That both firmly missed the holiday season, while arriving about a month and a half ahead of its latest big phone reveal (the invitations for Unpacked went out the following day). There was also no pricing — and there still isn’t here in the States. That leaves open the question of where they slot in.

Are we talking slightly below the flagship tier? Or is this Samsung’s new vision for mid-tier? European pricing gives us a hint. At €599, that’s pretty significantly below the lowest-tier version of its flagship counterparts. It’s also a pretty decent direction below the Galaxy S10e. It will be interesting to see if that model sticks around for the S11.

6 VCs explain why seed investors now favor enterprise startups

Published January 7, 2020

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

Today we’re digging into seed-stage companies, the vanguard of the venture market. In particular, we’re trying to understand why the ratio of seed deals now favor enterprise startups over their consumer-focused brethren. The fact that seed investors recently inverted their preferences, cutting more checks to enterprise (B2B) startups in 2019 than consumer-oriented companies (B2C) was news.

We wrote about the trend here, as regular readers will recall.

To better understand what’s going on, I spoke with a number of early-stage venture investors who recently dropped by Equity, came highly recommended by peers, and several I know personally. The goal was to get a handful of inputs from different firms to get under the skin of the trend.

What in the hell is going on in seed? Let’s find out.

Why are enterprise seed deals on top?

This morning we’ll hear from Jenny Lefcourt at Freestyle Capital, Jomayra Herrera of Cowboy Ventures, Hunter Walk from Homebrew, Iris Choi of Floodgate, Sarah Guo from Greylock and Ajay Agarwal of Bain Capital Ventures. As you can see, we picked a list of investors form firms of different sizes, theses and focus. However, each investing group either focuses on early-stage investments that include seed deals or dabbles in them.

Here’s what we want to know: why did the the majority of seed deals swap from consumer-focused startups to enterprise-focused deals?

Our investing group detailed a number of explanations, a handful of which echoed each other. To best convey their thinking, we’ll quote each investor at moderate length. If you are in a hurry, the most common point made against consumer-focused seed deals is go-to-market difficulty in the current market.

Other reasons include price, secular changes to the technology landscape, and the changing experience profile of the investing class themselves. (Minor edits made to select responses for clarity.)

Freestyle’s Jenny Lefcourt said via email that consumers are an increasingly difficult cohort to sell to, because they “became fickle with the proliferation of VC-backed, consumer-focused startups over the past few years.” As a result, consumers became “harder and more expensive to acquire and even harder to retain,” meaning higher customer acquisition costs (CAC) and lower lifetime value (LTV).

Don’t wait – First ticket release of 2020 for 3rd Annual Winter Party at Galvanize

Published January 7, 2020

If you haven’t scored a ticket yet to our 3rd Annual Winter Party at Galvanize, now’s your chance. We just released another batch of tickets to the best Silicon Valley soiree. Shake off your post-holiday doldrums and join the movers and shakers of the startup community at Galvanize in San Francisco on February 7.

Last year, nearly 1,000 of you joined us for luscious libations, fantastic food, world-class networking and some crazy karaoke . No one does karaoke like TechCrunch does karaoke.

Tickets are limited — and we’re rolling them out in batches. Grab yours now ($85 a pop, right here). If you miss out, keep checking back for the next ticket release.

What’s on tap this year? Well, craft beer for one thing, and wine for another. Plus delicious apps (just eat them — no coding required), party games and activities, plenty of photo ops and giveaways. We even have a few surprises for you.

Between the food and the fun, be sure to check out a select few early-stage startups exhibiting their products. Interested in doing just that? You can buy demo tables here for $1,500 each — and the price includes four tickets to the party. Remember, we said a “select few,” so get yours before we sell out (only four tables left!).

Here’s the party 4-1-1.

When: Friday, February 7, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Where: Galvanize, 44 Tehama St., San Francisco, CA 94105
Ticket price: $85
Demo tables: $1,500 (buy tickets and tables here)

You never know who you’ll meet at a TechCrunch party — potential investors, the perfect co-founder or maybe a coding wizard. But they have a history of being a place where startup magic happens.

Here’s a classic “but wait, there’s more” moment. We’ll also give away some awesome door prizes, like TC swag and tickets to Disrupt SF, our flagship event coming in September 2020.

Don’t miss the food, the fun, the community and the opportunity. Join us for the TechCrunch 3rd Annual Winter Party at Galvanize in San Francisco on February 7. We can’t wait to see you!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at the 3rd Annual Winter Party at Galvanize? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Ben Horowitz will explain how to create and sustain culture at TC Early Stage SF

Published January 7, 2020

The hardest challenges to tackle are usually the most nebulous. Culture, for example, is hard to define, implement, cultivate and evolve… How do you structure culture within a business or organization? Are there steps to follow? Is there a manual?

Interestingly enough, there is. “What You Do Is Who You Are” is the latest book from legendary investor, entrepreneur and founding partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Ben Horowitz. We are absolutely thrilled to announce that he’ll be joining us on April 28th at our brand new TC Early Stage event in San Francisco to discuss his new book and the lessons within it.

From the sleeve:

To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions, and he explains how to make your culture purposeful by examining four intriguing models of leadership and culture-building well outside the usual business case studies: Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture, who was the leader of the only successful slave revolt in history; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, an American ex-con who created the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture.

Horowitz also authored The New York Times Bestseller “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” which is one of the past decade’s most practical guides to entrepreneurialism and the challenges that come with it. The 2014 book speaks to founders in a way that business schools can’t, offering empathy and solutions to real-world, human problems that founders face.

And let’s not forget the wealth of wisdom and experience that comes with helming Andreessen Horowitz since its inception in 2009. The firm has more than $10 billion under management, with portfolio companies that include Box, Facebook, Lyft, Slack, GitHub, Instagram and Skype. And those are just the exits.

Horowitz himself sits on the boards of 14 portfolio companies, including Okta, Lyft, Foursquare, Genius, Medium and Databricks.

Suffice it to say, there is plenty to learn from Horowitz at TC Early Stage come April 28 in San Francisco.

TC Early Stage is meant to give founders a place to learn directly from the experts who have come before. All day long, seasoned VCs and operators will be holding breakout sessions where they identify the biggest challenges in their fields, and tangible, actionable insights on how to take on those challenges. These experts will cover a wide range of core startup disciplines, including but not limited to growth, legal, product management, tech stack, recruiting, design and company culture.

Horowitz joins Cyan Banister (How to get your first yes), Asher Abramson (How to create great growth assets for paid channels), Lior Zorea (What VCs want in a term sheet and how you can get what you want), and Dalton Caldwell (How to get into Y Combinator). We’ll be announcing many, many more speakers over the coming weeks, totaling more than 50 breakouts for the entire day.

Here’s the fine print. Each of the breakout sessions is limited to around 100 attendees. We expect a lot more attendees, of course, so signups for each session are on a first-come, first-serve basis. Buy your ticket today and you can sign up for the breakouts we are announcing today. Pass holders will also receive 24-hour advance notice before we announce the next batch. (And yes, you can “drop” a breakout session in favor of a new one, in the event there is a schedule conflict.)

TC Early Stage SF 2020 goes down on April 28. You can pick up your ticket and start registering for breakout sessions right now.

Interested in sponsoring TC Early Stage SF? Contact us here and we’ll send you more information.