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Dropbox challenger pCloud just became profitable
Between Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and iCloud Drive, consumer cloud storage is a crowded space. And yet, a small company called pCloud has managed to attract more than 9 million users over the past five years. The company recently reached profitability with a team of 32 people.
If you’re familiar with Dropbox, pCloud won’t surprise you. The service lets you back up and sync files across your devices. You get 10GB for free and you can pay for more storage and features.
Unlike Dropbox or OneDrive, pCloud acts more like an external hard drive. When you install the app on your computer, everything stays in the cloud by default. On macOS, the company uses Fuse to create a new virtual hard drive in the Finder.
If you right-click on a folder, you can choose to download it on your computer for offline access. It creates a new folder on your local hard drive that remains in sync with your pCloud account. Similarly, you can add existing folders to pCloud from the settings panel. These folders will remain permanently in sync as long as you keep the app running on your computer.
In addition, pCloud supports LAN syncing, which means that if you have multiple devices on the same Wi-Fi network, they’ll transfer files using your local network instead of the internet. Dropbox also has this feature.
On mobile, you can access your files using the mobile app. Like many competitors, pCloud also lets you automatically back up your camera roll to your pCloud account.
Now let’s talk about security. Just like other cloud storage services, pCloud doesn’t encrypt your files by default — pCloud uses encryption on files while they’re in transit though. When you sync a file using pCloud, the company can theoretically retrieve that file. If you’re serious about privacy, you shouldn’t use cloud storage services at all.
But pCloud also offers an optional add-on called pCloud Crypto. This feature lets you create a secret folder that you can unlock with a password. When you add a file to this folder, it is encrypted on your device and then sent to pCloud’s server. If you don’t have that password, you can’t unlock the file. It means that pCloud and authorities can’t retrieve those files without you.
When it comes to pricing, pCloud costs $3.99 per month for 500GB of storage and $7.99 per month for 2TB of storage; pCloud Crypto costs an additional $4.99 per month. You also can buy lifetime subscriptions for $175 for 500GB, $350 for 2TB and $125 for Crypto. This is expensive, but it could convince some users who are not into subscriptions.
Even though it seems incredibly complicated to compete with Microsoft, Google, Apple and Dropbox, I’m glad to see that it’s still possible to build an alternative product with some differentiating features. Although pCloud will probably never be as big as Dropbox, it is an interesting company to follow.
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7 steps to building an engineering competency matrix
Justin Cowperthwaite is an Engineering Manager at CircleCI passionate about helping remote teams build collaborative delivery paradigms.
Every engineer deserves a clear growth path so they can understand, plan, and execute on meaningful career growth. Providing a framework for this growth (we call ours a competency matrix; it’s also known as a career ladder, or professional development ladder) is important work, and the responsibility of any organization that wants to nurture and grow its employees.
Back at the beginning of 2018, we had 32 developers and a plan to double throughout the year, we already had a competency matrix, but it was woefully outdated. It focused on our more junior levels, maxing out at a level which some developers had already reached. It was also misaligned with the skills our organization had grown to value, which meant in practice, we often ignored it. It was time for a re-design.
Building a new competency matrix was a learning process, and a lengthy one, taking about eight months to complete. Along the way we discovered things we valued, as well as what the keys steps to building a career ladder are (and which ones are wasteful). While every matrix is different, and will reflect the values of the organization that wrote it, the process of producing a succinct career ladder to guide your team is consistent.
When we published our new Engineering competency matrix in December, we received many emails from teams saying they were working on similar systems. Because of this feedback, I want to share the steps we went through, and the lessons we learned, to help teams reach a productive conclusion with much less waste, and in much shorter time, than trying to figure it out from scratch.
If you want to provide your employees and reports with a clear, agreed-upon and well-defined path for growth within your organization, then this is for you.
Image via CircleCI
Step 1: Make this someone’s top priority
In retrospect, this was the biggest factor in our lengthy redesign process. I had initially taken on this project as one of my many side projects. The only time I had to dedicate to the matrix were early mornings, late nights, and weekends. This was a passion project for me, and I loved working on it, but I was not able to give it the care it needed.
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Airbnb officially owns HotelTonight
Airbnb has completed its acquisition of the last-minute hotel booking application, HotelTonight, the company announced on Monday. The deal is Airbnb’s largest M&A transaction yet, and will accelerate the home-sharing giant’s growth as it gears up for an initial public offering.
Airbnb reportedly began talks to acquire HotelTonight months ago, and finally confirmed its intent to acquire the business in early March. Reports indicated a price tag of more than $400 million; Airbnb declined to comment on the size of the deal.
As part of the deal, HotelTonight co-founder and chief executive officer Sam Shank will lead the boutique hotel category at Airbnb, one of the company’s newer units meant to help it scale beyond treehouses and quirky homes.
“When we founded HotelTonight, we sought to reimagine the hotel booking experience to be more simple, fast and fun, and to better connect travelers with the world’s best boutique and independent hotels,” Shank said in a statement. “We are delighted to take this vision to new heights as part of Airbnb.”
Shank launched the San Francisco-based company in 2010. Most recently, it was valued at $463 million with a $37 million Series E funding in 2017, according to PitchBook. HotelTonight raised a total of $131 million in equity funding from venture capital firms including Accel, Battery Ventures, Forerunner Ventures and First Round Capital.
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YC alum Keeper raises $1.6M to help gig workers pay taxes
Every year around this time, Uber drivers, Wag dog walkers, Bird scooter chargers, social media influencers and other gig economy workers face the unsightly challenge of paying their taxes.
Companies like Uber and Lyft classify their drivers as independent contractors, which means you aren’t given any benefits and the company doesn’t withhold any of your taxes. This puts gig workers in a tough position come tax day, especially if they aren’t prepared to shell out big sums to the IRS.
Keeper, a startup that’s just graduated from the Y Combinator startup accelerator, is here to make taxes a lot easier for that demographic and to save them as much money as possible.
Founded by childhood buddies and former debate partners Paul Koullick and David Kang, the San Francisco-based company has raised $1.65 million on a $10 million valuation in a round led by Jake Jolis of Matrix Partners.
Keeper co-founders Paul Koullick (left) and David Kang
The pair entered YC this winter with a big idea and little to show for it. Come March, they had developed a full-fledged product and accumulated 200 paying customers. With their first round of funding, they plan to add to their small but growing team and acquire 10,000 customers in the next 18 months.
“There are some companies that are trying to go very broad and trying to cover the whole spectrum of benefits; we’re just trying to go really deep on taxes,” Kang told TechCrunch. “This is a pain point. This is where people are definitely leaving the most money on the table.”
Keeper guesses the average gig worker in the U.S. is overpaying their taxes by more than 20 percent, or about $1,550 for those making more than $25,000 per year. Why? Because these independent contractors aren’t claiming the tax write-offs available to them, like phone bills, car maintenance fees and even a Spotify subscription for drivers.
“If you’re a dog walker, there are so many things you need to be writing off, like your poop bags, your extra leashes, your parking,” Koullick told TechCrunch. “This population needs the guidance of an accountant, but they can’t afford one and we’re trying to create this third option.”
Like a personal accountant, Keeper monitors gig workers’ expenses all year in search of possible tax deductions, saving each user $173 per month on average, it estimates. The startup uses Plaid to follow its customers’ transaction history, and once per day sends a text message asking if there are any tax write-offs to note. Over time, it gets smarter and smarter, keeping the SMS questions to a minimum.
Keeper doesn’t fully file taxes for 1099 workers yet, but will begin offering a quarterly tax filing service in June. Next year, it plans to offer a full-year tax-filing service.
Koullick, Keeper’s chief executive officer, worked in product at Square before joining another startup, called Stride, where he built and scaled Stride Tax, a mileage and expense-tracking app. Kang, for his part, has spent most of his post-graduate career at a trading firm in Chicago, focused on quantitative modeling. The two toyed with a few startup ideas before landing on Keeper’s tax business.
“We wanted to build something that actually mattered to real people,” Koullick explained. “And we wanted to do it in the financial space where we were happy to wade through ugly details and systems on their behalf.”
Keeper isn’t the only recent YC alum focused on the growing gig economy. Another, Catch, sells health insurance, retirement savings plans and tax-withholding services directly to freelancers, contractors or anyone uncovered. Given the rapid rise of Uber and other gig platforms, it’s no wonder YC startups are tapping into the various business opportunities available there.
“We’re willing to tackle some of these topics that are kind of boring and mundane and really intensive,” Kang added. “Like the average person doesn’t want to think about taxes or filling out forms. We saw that as an opportunity for us to step in and be like, hey, we’ll take it.”
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Talk all things robotics and AI with TechCrunch writers
This Thursday, we’ll be hosting our third annual Robotics + AI TechCrunch Sessions event at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. The day is packed start-to-finish with intimate discussions on the state of robotics and deep learning with key founders, investors, researchers and technologists.
The event will dig into recent developments in robotics and AI, which startups and companies are driving the market’s growth and how the evolution of these technologies may ultimately play out. In preparation for our event, TechCrunch’s Brian Heater spent time over the last several months visiting some of the top robotics companies in the country. Brian will be on the ground at the event, alongside Lucas Matney, who will also be on the scene. Friday at 11:00 am PT, Brian and Lucas will be sharing with Extra Crunch members (on a conference call) what they saw and what excited them most.
Tune in to find out about what you might have missed and to ask Brian and Lucas anything else robotics, AI or hardware. And want to attend the event in Berkeley this week? It’s not too late to get tickets.
To listen to this and all future conference calls, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free.
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Verified Expert Brand Designer: Mark Forscher
After leading design teams at Code and Theory, ABC News and Newsweek Digital, Mark Forscher retired his managerial hat and decided to start his own creative studio called Under After in 2008. His natural interest in technology coupled with his background in branding and product design makes him an obvious collaborator for founders looking to launch their company. We talked to him about his creative process, some of his favorite branding projects and more.
Mark’s branding philosophy:
“I understand that it can be a challenge for founders to make definitive decisions around picking a logo or picking a color palette. It feels very concrete when a lot of product is about finding the right product/market fit, iterating, testing and using data to inform the process. So wherever possible, I try to bring that kind of iterative philosophy into the branding approach as well, which tends to work pretty well with founders, especially technology founders.”
On remaining independent:
“The reason why I haven’t scaled up my design business, why I’m not trying to be like a 10-person shop, or even a five-person shop, is because I want to be a collaborator, not a vendor that somebody outsources work to. I think it sets the expectation right upfront that we’re both in this together to figure this out. I’m just a person deeply committed to working with the founder.”
On common startup branding mistakes:
“I think one of the biggest things that impacts the success of a branding project is not investing time into it. Sometimes founders think that if they just throw money at a problem, it’ll get solved, and I think they underestimate the amount of time that’s required. It’s not that it takes an extensive amount of time, but their thoughtful feedback at every point in the process is important, and small decisions build up to big ones. It’s hard to do that if the founder’s super busy, and oftentimes founders are busy. Prioritizing that work is important.”
“Incredible brand identity and brand systems design. Thoughtful product strategy and UX design. Truly magical at taking hard concepts and making them easy to understand. A CEO & founder in NYC
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup brand designers and agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.
The Interview
Yvonne Leow: Can you tell me a little bit about how you got started in design and what particularly drew you to branding?
Mark Forscher: I’ve been working in design professionally since 2004. I was at R/GA while I was in grad school, worked on the Nike basketball account, and after finishing an MFA degree at Parsons, I joined Code and Theory. I was one of Code and Theory’s early hires, I think I was the 6th or 7th employee, and was quickly promoted to be their first official creative director. So I learned a lot about how to run large-scale digital projects, from definition, UX, design, to project management. I really liked working directly with clients to understand their needs, and to create impactful work.
After Code and Theory, I wanted to work in-house at a media company because I wanted to build digital projects and create longer-term value instead of a single engagement on a contract basis. I was really interested in doing work in the service of good editorial content.
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Medbelle raises $7M to build out its ‘digital hospital’
Medbelle, the London and Berlin-based startup offering what it calls an “end-to-end platform” for medical procedures, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Signals Venture Capital — the VC fund of major German health insurer Signal Iduna — with participation from Talis Capital, Mutschler Ventures, IBB and Cavalry Ventures.
Founded in 2016 by Leander de Laporte and Daniel Kolb after the pair turned down jobs at Rocket Internet, Medbelle has set out to digitise the patient journey and provide medical treatments in a more modern, convenient and consumer-centric way. Likened to a “digital hospital,” the company lets patients book a number of medical procedures through its web and app-based platform.
These currently span cosmetics, bariatrics and ophthalmology, with plans underway to expand into orthopaedics and fertility treatment. At the moment, Medbelle only services private patients, but says it wants to work with the U.K.’s National Health Service and private and public health insurance providers to broaden its reach.
“Our vision is to create a world in which all patients can navigate their treatment journey digitally and receive personal care at the click of a button,” Medbelle co-founder Leander de Laporte tells me. “There is a massive lack of digitisation and patient care for medical procedures and little sight of someone changing this entirely. This results in a lack of quality and price transparency, bad communication and patients feeling left alone and neglected in their treatment journey.”
At the same time, de Laporte says that healthcare providers and specialists lack the tools to operate efficiently, resulting in lots of “frustration, operational hiccups and unnecessary healthcare costs.”
To try to solve this, Medbelle’s digital offering — which consists of the Medbelle Platform, Medbelle Care and Medbelle Operating System — attempts to give patients more control over their provision while giving healthcare professionals access to tools covering the entire treatment journey: from the first consultation to billing, post-operative care and follow-up.
“Patients book their procedure with us, which provides them with prices and a selection of leading, pre-vetted specialists and state-of-the-art operating facilities – with all organisation taken care of by the platform,” explains de Laporte. “Once a patient is registered, every aspect of their treatment is accessible via a single, simple web portal and app, or through their own personal Medbelle Care Adviser.”
Citing competitors as offline clinic groups with brick and mortar clinics across the U.K, the Medbelle co-founder says that the market is ready for a digital-first and more integrated offering.
“We see that the future is obviously moving towards a more digital, consumer-centric experience in each and every industry, [and] healthcare is no different in this respect,” he says. “This is also where we see our main benefit as a digital hospital. As an integrated treatment provider, patients and doctors get everything they need from a single source. We build technology and services for every step of the treatment journey – and quickly focus on where it is needed most to deliver the best possible experience without causing complexity for healthcare providers.”
In comparison to the traditional clinic groups, de Laporte argues that Medbelle patients receive a better value and more transparent service. “[Patients] can choose between transparently displayed options of very rigorously vetted specialists and operating facilities, compare options and prices and save money right away as we offer consultations with the specialists for free — even from the comfort from their own home via video consultations,” he says. “Apart from that, our technology standardises processes and cuts operational costs which make our economics more competitive.”
Adds Clemens Koós, investment manager at Signals Venture Capital: “Major digital platforms improve customer experience in almost all industries, however, in healthcare, the digitisation of patient journeys has been heavily lagging behind until now. Medbelle’s technology and personalised care enable much simpler and more affordable medical treatments – while allowing healthcare providers to efficiently focus on treating patients. We look forward to working with the Medbelle team and co-investors in expanding the platform to include more treatment specialities and increasing its reach.”
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Mutiny at HQ Trivia fails to oust CEO
This week’s banishment of host Scott Rogowsky was merely a symptom of the ongoing struggle to decide who will lead HQ Trivia. According to multiple sources, over half of the startup’s staff signed an internal petition to depose CEO Rus Yusupov who they saw as mismanaging the company. But Yusupov then fired three core supporters of the mutiny, leading to a downward spiral of morale that mirrors HQ’s plummeting App Store rank.
TechCrunch spoke to multiple sources familiar with HQ Trivia’s internal troubles to piece together how the live video mobile game went from blockbuster to nearly bust. Two sources said HQ recently only had around $6 million in the bank but was burning over $1 million per month, meaning its runway could be dwindling. But its early investors are reluctant to hand Yusupov any more cash. “
Employees petitioned to remove HQ Trivia’s CEO Rus Yusupov
HQ reimagined gaming and mobile entertainment with the launch of its 12-question trivia game in August 2017 where players all competed live in twice-daily shows with anyone who got all the answers right split a cash jackpot. The games felt urgent since you could only participate at designated times, fun to play against friends or strangers, and winning carried a significance no single-player or non-stop online game could match.
When TechCrunch wrote the first coverage of HQ Trivia in October 2017, it had just 3500 concurrent players. But by January it had climbed to the #3 game and #6 overall app in the App Store, and grown to 2.38 million players by March. Quickly, copycats from China and Facebook entered the market. But they all lacked HQ’s secret weapon — its plucky host comedian Scott Rogowsky. Affectionately awarded nicknames like Quiz Daddy, Quiz Khalifa, Host Malone, and Trap Trebek from the “HQties” who played daily, he was the de facto face of the startup.
Yet HQ had some shaky foundations. Co-founder Colin Kroll, who’d also started Vine with Yusupov and sold it to Twitter, had been fired from Twitter after 18 months for being a bad manager, Recode reported. He’d also picked up a reputation of being creepy around female employees, as well as Vine stars, TechCrunch has learned. Rapid growth and an investigation by early HQ investor Jeremy Liew that found no egregious misconduct by Kroll paved the way for a $15 million investment. The round was led by Founders Fund’s Cyan Bannister, and it valued HQ at over $100 million.
Yusupov failed to translate that cash into sustained growth and product innovation. His public behavior had already raised flags. He yelled at a Daily Beast reporter after the outlet’s Taylor Lorenz interviewed Rogowsky without Yusupov’s approval, threatening to fire the host. “You’re putting Scott’s job in jeopardy. Is that what you want? . . . Please read me your story word for word,” Yusupov said. When he learned Rogowsky had expressed his preference for salad restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Yusupov shouted “He cannot say that! We do not have a brand deal with Sweetgreen! Under no circumstances can he say that.” The next day, Yusupov falsely claimed he’d never threatened Rogowsky’s job.
With HQ’s bank account full, sources say Yusupov was extremely slow to make decisions, allowing HQ to stagnate. The novelty of playing trivia for money via phone has begun to wear off, and people increasingly ignored HQ’s push notifications to join its next game. But beyond bringing in some guest hosts and the option to buy a second chance after a wrong answer, HQ ceased to evolve. HQ fell to the #196 game on iOS and the #585 overall app as concurrent players waned.
That’s when things started to get a bit Game Of Thrones.
Pawns In A CEO War
Liew pushed for HQ to swap Kroll into the CEO spot in September 2018 while moving Yusupov to Chief Creative Officer, which was confirmed despite an HR complaint against Kroll for aggressive management. However, three sources tell TechCrunch that Yusupov pushed that HQ employee to file the complaint against Kroll. As the WSJ reported after Kroll’s death, that employee later left the startup because they felt that they’d been exploited. “There was definitely what felt like manipulation there, and that’s also why that employee resigned from the company.” one source said. Another source said that staffer “believed Rus used their unhappiness about work to use them as a pawn in his CEO war and not because Rus actually cared about resolving things.”
Cyan of Founders Fund stepped down from HQ’s board after the decision to swap out Yusupov due to her firm’s reputation of keeping founders in control, Recode’s Kurt Wagner reported. Sources say that despite Kroll’s reputation, the staff believed in him. “Colin loved HQ and was dedicated to all the employees more than Rus. Rus cares about Rus. Colin cared about the content” a source tells me.
Three sources say that in a desperate ploy to retain power and prevent Kroll’s rise, Yusupov suggested Rogowsky, a comedian with no tech or management experience, be made CEO of HQ Trivia. He even suggested the company film a reality show about Rogowsky taking over. That idea was quickly shot down as preposterous.
“It was a very personal desperation tactic not to have Colin be CEO. It was not a professionally thought-out idea” a source tells me, though another said it was always hard to tell if Yusupov’s crazy ideas were jokes. Both Yusupov and HQ Trivia declined to respond to multiple requests for comment, but we’ll update if we hear back.
HQ Trivia co-founder Colin Kroll passed away in December
Then tragedy struck in December. Kroll, then CEO, was found dead in his apartment from a drug overdose. Employees were distraught over what would happen next. “Colin’s plan was to ship fast, and get new things out there” a source says, noting that Kroll had pushed for the release of HQ’s first new game type HQ Words modeled after Wheel Of Fortune. “He wasn’t perfect but in the time he was in charge, the ship started to turn, but when Rus took over again it was like the 9 months where we did nothing.”
Coup d’éHQ
By February 2019, HQ’s staff was fed up. Two sources confirm that 20 of the roughly 35 employees signed a letter asking the board to remove Yusupov and establish a new CEO. With HQ’s download rate continuing to sink, they feared he’d run the startup into the ground. One source suggested Yusupov might rather have seen the whole startup come crashing down with the blame placed on the product than have it come to light that he played a large hand in the fall. The tone of the letter, which was never formally delivered but sources believe the board knew of, wasn’t accusatory but a plea for transparency about the company’s future and the staff’s job security.
At a hastily convened all-hands meeting in late February, HQ investor Liew told the company his fund Lightspeed would support a search for a new CEO to replace Yusupov, and provide that new CEO with funding for 18 more months of runway. Liew told the staff he would step down from the board once that CEO was found, but the search continues and so Liew remains on HQ’s board.
“Mostly everyone was on Jeremy’s side as no one wanted to work under Rus. Jeremy wasn’t trying to screw him over the way Rus would screw other people over. He just wanted to do what was right, getting behind what everyone wanted” a source said of Liew.
Instead, HQ’s board moved forward with instituting a new executive decision-making committee composed of Yusupov, HQ’s head of production Nick Gallo, and VP of engineering Ben Sheats. Yusupov would remain interim CEO, and he continued to cling to power and there’s been little transparency about the CEO replacement process. Until a new CEO is found, HQ must subsist on its existing funds. The staff is “always worried about running out of runway” and are given vague answers when they ask leadership about how much money is left.
On March 1st, the committee emerged from a meeting and fired three employees who had spearheaded the petition and been vocal about Yusupov’s failings.
One who wasn’t fired was Rogowsky, despite sources saying at one point he’d tried to organize the staff to go on strike. Other employees had been cautious about standing up to Yusupov. “Everyone was terrified of retaliation. Their fears have totally been validated” a source explains. Engineers and other staffers with strong employment prospects began to drain out of the company. Those left were just trying to hold onto their jobs. Without inspiring leadership or a strategy to reverse user shrinkage, recruiting replacements would prove difficult.
Yusupov remains on the board, along with Tinder CEO Elie Seidman who Yusupov appointed to his additional common seat. Liew retains his seat until the new CEO is found and given that seat. And Kroll’s seat appears to have gone to Lightspeed partner Merci Victoria Grace. Lightspeed and Cyan of Founders Fund declined to respond to requests for comment.
Losing Face
Tensions at HQ and a desire to diversify his prospects led Rogowsky to pick up a side gig hosting baseball talk show ChangeUp on the DAZN network, TMZ reported this week. He’d hoped to continue hosting HQ during its big weekend contests. But tensions with Yusupov and the CEO’s desire for the host to remain exclusively at HQ led negotiations to sour causing Rogowsky to leave the startup entirely. TechCrunch was first to report that he’s been replaced by former HQ guest host Matt Richards, who Yusupov bluntly told me Friday had polled higher than Rogowsky in a SurveyMonkey survey of HQ’s top players.
In tweets, Rogowsky revealed that that “Sadly, it won’t be possible for me to continue hosting HQ concurrently as I had hoped” noting, “I wasn’t given the courtesy of a farewell show.” Finding a way to preserve Rogowsky’s ties to HQ likely would have been best for the startup. TechCrunch had raised the concern a year ago that unless Rogowsky was properly locked in with an adequate equity vesting schedule at HQ, he could leave. Or worse, he could be poached by Facebook, Snapchat, or YouTube to host an HQ competitor.
“Rus is a visionary but not a good leader. He is extremely manipulative in an unproductive way. He’s a dude who just cares a lot about his reputation” a source noted. “A lot of the negative sentiment amongst staff is the belief that he cares more about his reputation than the company itself.”
HQ’s next attempt to revive growth appears to be HQ Editor’s Picks, is described as “a new live show on your phone where our host shows funny viral videos and you decide on who gets paid.” Finally it seems willing to embrace the potential of interactive live video entertainment outside of trivia and puzzles. HQ Editor’s Picks will face an uphill battle, since HQ dropped out of the top 1500 iOS apps last month, according to App Annie. Sensor Tower estimates that HQ saw just 8 percent as many downloads in March 2019 as March 2018.
After the loss of its spirit animal Rogowsky, the employees’ chosen leader Kroll, the supervision of veteran investor Cyan, and its product momentum, tough questions are what remain for HQ Trivia. The company’s struggles have paralyzed its progress towards finding a new viral mechanic or game format that attracts users. While HQ Words is fun, it’s too similar to its trivia competition to change the startup’s trajectory. And all of the in-fighting could scare off any talent hoping to turn HQ around. Unfortunately, securing an extra life for the game will take a more than a $3.99 in-app purchase.
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Diving into Google Cloud Next and the future of the cloud ecosystem
Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois and Ron Miller offered up their analysis on the major announcements that came out of Google’s Cloud Next conference this past week, as well as their opinions on the outlook for the company going forward.
Google Cloud announced a series of products, packages and services that it believes will improve the company’s competitive position and differentiate itself from AWS and other peers. Frederic and Ron discuss all of Google’s most promising announcements, including its product for managing hybrid clouds, its new end-to-end AI platform, as well as the company’s heightened effort to improve customer service, communication, and ease-of-use.
“They have all of these AI and machine learning technologies, they have serverless technologies, they have containerization technologies — they have this whole range of technologies.
But it’s very difficult for the average company to take these technologies and know what to do with them, or to have the staff and the expertise to be able to make good use of them. So, the more they do things like this where they package them into products and make them much more accessible to the enterprise at large, the more successful that’s likely going to be because people can see how they can use these.
…Google does have thousands of engineers, and they have very smart people, but not every company does, and that’s the whole idea of the cloud. The cloud is supposed to take this stuff, put it together in such a way that you don’t have to be Google, or you don’t have to be Facebook, you don’t have to be Amazon, and you can take the same technology and put it to use in your company”
Image via Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
Frederic and Ron dive deeper into how the new offerings may impact Google’s market share in the cloud ecosystem and which verticals represent the best opportunity for Google to win. The two also dig into the future of open source in cloud and how they see customer use cases for cloud infrastructure evolving.
For access to the full transcription and the call audio, and for the opportunity to participate in future conference calls, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free.
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How do startups actually get their content marketing to work?
[Editor’s note: this is a free example of a series of articles we’re publishing by top experts who have cutting-edge startup advice to offer, over on Extra Crunch. Get in touch at ec_columns@techcrunch.com if you have ideas to share.]
Even the best growth marketers fail to get content marketing to work. Many are unwittingly using tactics from 4 years ago that no longer work today.
This post cuts through the noise by sharing real-world data behind some of the biggest SEO successes this year.
It studies the content marketing performance of clients with Growth Machine and Bell Curve (my company) — two marketing agencies who have helped grow Perfect Keto, Tovala, Framer, Crowd Cow, Imperfect Produce, and over a hundred others.
What content do their clients write about, how do they optimize that content to rank well (SEO), and how do they convert their readers into customers?
You’re about to see how most startups manage their blogs the wrong way.
Reference CupAndLeaf.com as we go along. Their tactics for hitting 150,000 monthly visitors will be explored.
Write fewer, more in-depth articles
In the past, Google wasn’t skilled at identifying and promoting high quality articles. Their algorithms were tricked by low-value, “content farm” posts.
That is no longer the case.
Today, Google is getting close to delivering on its original mission statement: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” In other words, they now reliably identify high quality articles. How? By monitoring engagement signals: Google can detect when a visitor hits the Back button in their browser. This signals that the reader quickly bounced from the article after they clicked to read it.
If this occurs frequently for an article, Google ranks that article lower. It deems it low quality.
For example, below is a screenshot of the (old) Google Webmaster Tools interface. It visualizes this quality assessment process: It shows a blog post with the potential to rank for the keyword “design packaging ideas.” Google initially ranked it at position 25.
However, since readers weren’t engaging with the content as time went on, Google incrementally ranked the article lower — until it completely fell off the results page:
The lesson? Your objective is to write high quality articles that keep readers engaged. Almost everything else is noise.
In studying our clients, we’ve identified four rules for writing engaging posts.
1. Write articles for queries that actually prioritize articles.
Not all search queries are best served by articles.
Below, examine the results for “personalized skincare:”
Notice that Google is prioritizing quizzes. Not articles.
So if you don’t perform a check like this before writing an article on “personalized skincare,” there’s a good chance you’re wasting your time. Because, for some queries, Google has begun prioritizing local recommendations, videos, quizzes, or other types of results that aren’t articles.
Sanity check this before you sit down to write.
2. Write titles that accurately depict what readers get from the content.
Are incoming readers looking to buy a product? Then be sure to show them product links.
Or, were they looking for a recipe? Provide that.
Make your content deliver on what your titles imply a reader will see. Otherwise, readers bounce. Google will then notice the accumulating bounces, and you’ll be penalized.
3. Write articles that conclude the searcher’s experience.
Your objective is to be the last site a visitor visits in their search journey.
Meaning, if they read your post then don’t look at other Google result, Google infers that your post gave the searcher what they were looking for. And that’s Google’s prime directive: get searchers to their destination through the shortest path possible.
The two-part trick for concluding the searcher’s journey is to:
Go sufficiently in-depth to cover all the subtopics they could be looking for.
Link to related posts that may cover the tangential topics they seek.
This is what we use Clearscope for — it ensures we don’t miss critical subtopics that help our posts rank:
4. Write in-depth yet concise content.
In 2019, what do most of the top-ranked blogs have in common?
They skip filler introductions, keep their paragraphs short, and get to the point.
And, to make navigation seamless, they employ a “table of contents” experience:
Be like them, and get out of the reader’s way. All our best-performing blogs do this.
Check out more articles by Julian Shapiro over on Extra Crunch, including “What’s the cost of buying users from Facebook and 13 other ad networks?” and “Which types of startups are most often profitable?”
Prioritize engagement over backlinks
In going through our data, the second major learning was about “backlinks”, which is marketing jargon for a link to your site from someone else’s.
Four years ago, the SEO community was focused on backlinks and Domain Ranking (DR) — an indication of how many quality sites link to yours (scored from 0 to 100). At the time, they were right to be concerned about backlinks.
Today, our data reveals that backlinks don’t matter as much as they used to. They certainly help, but you need great content behind them.
Most content marketers haven’t caught up to this.
Here’s a screenshot showing how small publishers can beat out large behemoths today — with very little Domain Ranking:
The implication is that, even without backlinks, Google is still happy to rank you highly. Consider this: They don’t need your site to be linked from TechCrunch for their algorithm to determine whether visitors are engaged on your site.
Remember: Google has Google Analytics, Google Search, Google Ads, and Google Chrome data to monitor how searchers engage with your site. Believe me, if they want to find out whether your content is engaging, they can find a way. They don’t need backlinks to tell them.
This is not to say that backlinks are useless.
Our data shows they still provide value, just much less. Notably, they get your pages “considered” by Google sooner: If you have backlinks from authoritative and relevant sites, Google will have the confidence to send test traffic to your pages in perhaps a few weeks instead of in a few months.
Here’s what I mean by “test traffic:” In the weeks after publishing your post, Google notices them then experimentally surfaces them at the top of related search terms. They then monitor whether searchers engage with the content (i.e. don’t quickly hit their Back button). If the engagement is engaging, they’ll increasingly surface your articles. And increase your rankings over time.
Having good backlinks can cut this process down from months to a few weeks.
Prioritize conversion over volume
Engagement isn’t your end goal. It’s the precursor to what ultimately matters: getting a signup, subscribe, or purchase. (Marketers call this your “conversion event.”) Visitors can take a few paths to your conversion event:
Short: They read the initial post then immediately convert.
Medium: They read the initial post plus a few more before eventually converting.
Long (most common): They subscribe to your newsletter and/or return later.
To increase the ratio at which readers take the short and medium paths, optimize your blog posts’ copy, design, and calls to action. We’ve identified two rules for doing this.
1. Naturally segue to your pitch
Our data shows you should not pitch your product until the back half of your post.
Why? Pitching yourself in the intro can taint the authenticity of your article.
Also, the further a reader gets into a good article, the more familiarity and trust they’ll accrue for your brand, which means they’re less likely to ignore your pitch once they encounter it.
2. Don’t make your pitch look like an ad
Most blogs make their product pitches look like big, show-stopping banner ads.
Our data shows this visual fanfare is reflexively ignored by readers.
Instead, plug your product using a normal text link — styled no differently than any other link in your post. Woodpath, a health blog with Amazon products to pitch, does this well.
Think in funnels, not in pageviews
Finally, our best-performing clients focus less on their Google Analytics data and more on their readers’ full journeys: They encourage readers to provide their email so they can follow up with a series of “drip” emails. Ideally, these build trust in the brand and get visitors to eventually convert.
They “retarget” readers with ads. This entails pitching them with ads for the products that are most relevant to the topics they read on the blog. (Facebook and Instagram provide the granular control necessary to segment traffic like this.) You can read my growth marketing handbook to learn more about running retargeting ads well.
Here’s why retargeting is high-leverage: In running Facebook and Instagram ads for over a hundred startups, we’ve found that the cost of a retargeting purchase is one third the cost of a purchase from ads shown to people who haven’t yet been to our site.
Our data shows that clients who earn nothing from their blog traffic can sometimes earn thousands by simply retargeting ads to their readers.
Recap
It’s possible for a blog with 50,000 monthly visitors to earn nothing.
So, prioritize visitor engagement over volume: Make your hero metrics your revenue per visitor and your total revenue. That’ll keep your eye on the intermediary goals that matter: Attracting visitors with an intent to convert
Keeping those visitors engaged on the site
Then compelling them to convert
In short, your goal is to help Google do its job: Get readers where they need to go with the least amount of friction in their way.
Be sure to check out more articles from Julian Shapiro over on Extra Crunch, and get in touch with the Extra Crunch editors if you have cutting-edge startup advice to share with our subscribers, at ec_columns@techcrunch.com.
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