Author: Megan Rose Dickey

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Stitch Fix CEO doesn’t seem worried about Amazon

Stitch Fix CEO Katarina Lake did not express much concern over Amazon and its entrance into fashion with Prime Wardrobe at the Code Conference today. Lake says that while she does think about Amazon, that Amazon offers a “fundamentally different” value proposition.

With Amazon, Lake said, the value proposition is about having a “sea of choice.” With Stitch Fix,”in a lot of ways ours is almost the opposite,” she said.

Stitch Fix is an e-commerce company that aims to figure out your personal style, and then send you a handful of items the company thinks you’ll like. As a side note, this product has worked horribly for me but quite well for some other people.

Stitch Fix went public last year and part of being public, Lake said, is having fiduciary duty to do what is best for the company and its shareholders. With that in mind, Lake said, “I can’t say never” on selling to Amazon, “but I think this is a company that has a lot of value in and of itself.”

To date, Stitch Fix has not “had any serious discussions around combining companies” with Amazon.

“Right not, we feel really confident on the path that we’re on,” Lake said.

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Airbnb CEO said company will ‘be ready to IPO next year’ but might not

Airbnb brings in billions of dollars of revenue annually and is profitable on an EBITDA basis, so many wonder if and when the home-sharing company will go public. At the Code Conference today, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company will “be ready to IPO next year, but I don’t know if we will.”

He added that he wants to make sure it’s a major benefit to the company when Airbnb does go public. Following some more probing, Chesky said he has “no issues with [going public] at all. It could happen.”

Meanwhile, Airbnb has been struggling from a regulatory standpoint since at least 2010. Specifically, San Francisco and New York are two of the most difficult cities from a regulatory standpoint, Chesky said.

In New York, for example, there has been a standstill since 2010. At this point, Chesky said he expects it to take a few more years to overcome the challenge in New York.

“It doesn’t seem like the end is in sight with that challenge,” Chesky said. That challenge, Chesky said, involves the hotel industry and unions that “have galvanized people in these perpetual battles.”

Another general critique of Airbnb is its effect on rising rent costs and displacement. Chesky added that if it was simply a business decision, “it probably wouldn’t be worth it to stay there” in New York. But Chesky said there are hosts who have come to rely on Airbnb to earn income.

At Code, Chesky also touted Airbnb’s experiences product and how it’s growing 10x faster than its homes product. Airbnb Experiences sees 1.5 million bookings a year, Chesky said. Experiences, which Airbnb started testing in 2014 and officially launched in 2016, is Airbnb’s product that helps travelers find things to do in cities throughout the world.

When it first launched, Airbnb didn’t verify the experiences, but after some bad experiences, Airbnb has started verifying them.

“They’re doing incredibly well,” Chesky said. He added that the “experience economy” is growing and “there will probably be a massive economy around experiences.”

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Here’s where it’s cheaper to take an Uber than to own a car

Ride-sharing companies have long touted the cost benefits of their platforms. Well, depending on the city, it can be cheaper on a weekly basis to take an UberX or UberPOOL than it is to own a personal car, according to Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers partner Mary Meeker’s 2018 annual internet trends report.

In four of the five largest cities in the U.S., it is indeed cheaper to rely on Uber than it is to own a car. Meeker’s analysis took into account cost of gas, car insurance, maintenance and parking.

So, if you live in New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles, it’s cheaper to take an Uber. But that’s not the case in Dallas, where the average weekly cost of car ownership is $65 compared to the average weekly Uber cost of $181.

Meeker’s report also looked at the rise of on-demand workers in the U.S. Last year, there were 5.4 million on-demand workers in the country. This year, there are an estimated 6.8 million people working in the on-demand economy.

“These are big numbers,” Meeker said onstage, noting how these types of jobs are helping to supplement income for people, provide greater flexibility and improve work-life balance.

You can check out the full deck below.

Here’s Mary Meeker’s essential 2018 Internet Trends report

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Scoot launches mopeds and bike-share in Barcelona

Scoot, the electric moped company that first launched in San Francisco, is deploying two new modes of transportation in Barcelona. The first is an upgrade of its original scooter that the company deploys in San Francisco. Instead of maxing out at 30 mph, this new moped can go up to 60 mph. The second mode of transportation is a good old-fashioned pedal assist bicycle. To support Scoot’s ambitions in Barcelona, the company has a team of 20 people based in the European city.

Specifically, Scoot will deploy 1,000 bicycles that can lock to bike locks and other city infrastructure. Scoot will also deploy 500 electric scooters, designed by Silence. These mopeds are designed to not only drive faster, but also be more durable and carry up to two people. But Scoot won’t be the only shared electric moped and bicycle service in Barcelona. Instead, it will join the likes of moped startups Yugo and eCooltra, and bike-share startup Bicing.

Scoot is hoping to also launch its stationless bikes in San Francisco, but can’t for a little while due to the fact the city has an exclusive permit with bike-share service JUMP (now owned by Uber) until next June. However, Scoot founder and CEO Michael Keating told me he’s hopeful the city will change it’s mind, saying, “we would like to think we’d be able to convince the city to let us do it before the JUMP pilot ends.”

Scoot CEO Michael Keating at the company’s SF HQ

That’s because Scoot has been working with the city since 2012, and has, in Keating’s mind, proven its ability to work well with cities. Scoot was quite early to the concept of shared mobility that you can leave and pickup anywhere. Fast forward a few years and now we see Lime, Bird, Spin and JUMP hitting the streets with electric scooters and bikes. Despite the entrance of several new mobility players in San Francisco, Keating said Scoot hasn’t seen any dips in ridership.

Whether Scoot gets into stand-on scooters remains to be seen. Keating said he recognizes they’re a “cool product” but he has an issue with how often people ride them on sidewalks. You may also remember when Scoot launched ten of those mini electric cars that could hold up to two people. Scoot has since pulled them from the streets, but Keating said the company is currently looking for the right electric car for San Francisco.

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Facebook didn’t see Cambridge Analytica breach coming because it was focused ‘on the old threat’

In light of the massive data scandal involving Cambridge Analytica around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a lot of people wondered how something like that could’ve happened. Well, Facebook didn’t see it coming, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said at the Code conference this evening.

“If you go back to 2016 and you think about what people were worried about in terms of nations, states or election security, it was largely spam and phishing hacking,” Sandberg said. “That’s what people were worried about.”

She referenced the Sony email hack and how Facebook didn’t have a lot of the problems other companies were having at the time. Unfortunately, while Facebook was focused on not screwing up in that area, “we didn’t see coming a different kind of more insidious threat,” Sandberg said.

Sandberg added, “We realized we didn’t see the new threat coming. We were focused on the old threat and now we understand that this is the kind of threat we have.”

Moving forward, Sandberg said, Facebook now understands the threat and that it’s better able to meet those threats leading in to future elections. On stage, Sandberg also said Facebook was not only late to discovering Cambridge Analytica’s unauthorized access to its data, but that Facebook still doesn’t know exactly what data Cambridge Analytica accessed. Facebook was in the midst of conducting its own audit when the U.K. government decided to conduct one of their own, therefore putting Facebook’s on hold.

“They didn’t have any data that we could’ve identified as ours,” Sandberg said. “To this day, we still don’t know what data Cambridge Analytica had.”

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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel says letter about ‘toxic’ culture was a wake-up call

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel spoke a bit about some of the cultural issues at the company, going public and competition with Facebook at Recode’s annual Code Conference this evening in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

Earlier today, Cheddar reported how a former Snap engineer criticized the company for a “toxic” and “sexist” culture that is not welcoming to women and people of color. In an email former Snap engineer Shannon Lubetich wrote in November, she described how Snap is not adequately promoting diversity at the company.

“The letter was a really good wake-up call for us,” Spiegel said.

Spiegel described how, in light of the letter, Snap hired external consultants to help the company figure out areas in which to improve. Snap also ran a company-wide survey and changed its promotion structure, Spiegel said. He later added that he’s “proud” of the progress Snap has made over the last few months.

In the letter, Lubetich also described a scenario in which scantily clad women, hired by Snap, dressed up in deer costumes.

“People are going to make mistakes and I was frustrated, to say the least, to see people dressed up as deer at a holiday party,” Spiegel said.

In addition to cultural issues, Snap has also struggled on the public market. Snap’s Q1 2018 earnings, for example, showed lackluster user growth numbers amid a rocky redesign and increased competition from Facebook. Still, Spiegel said the redesign was the right way to go, as was going public.

“I think this was the logical step forward in being an independent company,” Spiegel said about going public.

Meanwhile, Snap is constantly fending off competition from Facebook. Spiegel initially joked, “I think it bothers my wife more than it bothers me.”

But in all seriousness, Spiegel said Snap’s values of deepening relationships with the people closest to you is “really hard to copy.” Facebook, on the other hand, is more about having people compete online for attention, Spiegel said.

He also joked, in light of Cambridge Analytica scandal, that Snap would “appreciate it if [Facebook] copied our data protection practices as well.”

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Bird is reportedly raising $150 million at $1 billion valuation

Bird, the electric scooter company that first launched in Los Angeles, is reportedly raising $150 million in new financing led by Sequoia Capital, according to Bloomberg. The round would value the company at $1 billion. Bird declined to comment for this story.

This comes after Bird raised $100 million on a $300 million valuation back in March. That same month, Bird deployed its scooters in San Francisco, San Jose and Washington, D.C. Below are confirmed funding rounds from electric scooter companies. However, Lime is reportedly trying to raise up to $500 million.

In San Francisco, Bird, Lime and Spin must remove their scooters from the streets by June 4. If a company receives a permit to operate, which the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will notify them of sometime in June, they will be able to redeploy their scooters.

Lime, Bird and Spin have to temporarily remove scooters from SF

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SF subpoenas Uber and Lyft for driver pay, benefits and classification info

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has sent subpoenas to Uber and Lyft that asks them to provide information pertaining to how each company classifies its drivers (W-2 employees versus 1099 contractors), as well as pay and benefits.

The subpoenas also request a list of drivers who have either started or ended at least one ride in SF between 2015 to the present day and proof that any driver classified as an independent contractor meets the three criteria set forward by a recent California Supreme Court ruling. According to the April 30 ruling, companies must classify workers as employees unless they can prove the person is not under the control of the company, works outside the company’s general scope of business and has an independent business or job of the same nature of the work they do for the company.

It’s worth noting that both Uber and Lyft generally describe their drivers as people who do this type of work as a side hustle, rather than as people who operate their own transportation companies.

“The argument that these companies have tried to use in the past — that they’re just a technology platform — doesn’t pass the smell test,” Herrera said in a press release “People go to Microsoft or Salesforce for software. People go to Uber or Lyft for a ride.”

With the subpoenas, Herrera wants to ensure Uber and Lyft are legally classifying their drivers as independent contractors. If not, then Uber and Lyft must offer drivers minimum wage, sick leave, healthcare and paid parental leave.

“San Francisco’s laws help ensure that employers provide a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,” Herrera said. “Our laws also guarantee employees basic humane benefits like sick leave, health care, and paid parental leave. We are not going to turn a blind eye if companies in San Francisco deny workers their pay and benefits. We are not going to tolerate any company shirking its responsibility to pay for benefits and shifting that burden onto taxpayers when drivers without health insurance turn to the emergency room. If your company is valued at $62 billion, you can afford to give your workers health care.”

I’ve reached out to Uber and Lyft and will update this story if I hear back.

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Uber adds 911 assistance to rider app

Uber has officially launched its 911 in-app calling feature, after first announcing it in April. As you can see below, riders can tap the safety icon at the bottom right corner of the app to call 911. Once on the line with the 911 dispatcher, you can easily communicate your location, since Uber clearly shows it in the app. In seven test markets, Uber is integrating with Rapid SOS to enable automatic location sharing with 911 dispatchers. Clicking on the safety icon also brings up an option to share trip details with trusted contacts.

Uber is testing the automatic location sharing with 911 dispatchers in seven cities: Denver, Colo., Charleston, S.C., Nashville, Chattanooga and Tri-Cities, Tenn., Naples, Fla. and Louisville, Ky. In terms of determining which cities to deploy automatic location sharing, Uber Director of Product Management Sachin Kansal told TechCrunch said it came down to “readiness of cities” and “how fast some of them were able to move in terms of training agents and testing functionality.”

Already, Uber is in discussion with several other cities to launch the feature, Kansal said. He added that the goal is to make it available everywhere.

As Uber started developing the 911 assistance feature, Kansal said, the team was looking for helpful ways to contribute. From the company’s research, Uber “found out that accurate location fo the caller is one of the biggest problems. Whenever you call 911, the first question is often, ‘What is your location?'”

Depending on what the situation is, it may not make sense to use the Uber app to call 911. In another case, if you already have the Uber app open, then maybe that would be the fastest way to get emergency help.

“At the end of the day, when a user is in an emergency, we want them to use whatever will be the fastest mechanism for them in that moment in time,” Kansal said. “If they’re already in a phone dialer, call 911 from there.”

He added, Uber’s approach is that if someone happens to be in the Uber app, the company wants to make it “extremely easy for them to dial, as well as to receive information at their fingertips.”

Given that some situations may entail a problematic driver, Uber drivers do not get notified when a rider seeks 911 assistance. But it’s worth noting the driver would obviously hear the passenger on the phone.

“Most of the scenarios that we see happening in an Uber are generally related to road accidents,” Kansal said.

However, Uber will only know the nature of the call if a rider explicitly lets the company know. Uber will know you dialed 911 through the app, but it won’t know what you said on the call. Afterward, Kansal said, Uber will send the rider a message to see if everything is ok and if there’s anything the company can do to help.

The feature will be available to all riders in the U.S. This summer, Uber plans to launch similar functionality for drivers in the U.S. and riders in international markets. Specifically, Uber plans to add the safety center icon, as well as the ability to call a local emergency number in international markets. In terms of automatic location sharing, there’s “nothing to announce,” he said.

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Tesla brings on new VP of engineering from Snap

Tesla announced a number of new hires today, including Stuart Bowers, who is joining as VP of engineering. Bowers is joining Tesla from Snap, where he worked as VP of monetization engineering. Other new hires include Neeraj Manrao, who left Apple to become Tesla’s director of energy manufacturing, and Kevin Mukai, who is now director of product engineering at Tesla’s Gigafactory.

“We’re excited to welcome a group of such talented people as we continue to ramp Model 3 and accelerate towards a more sustainable future,” Tesla wrote on its blog. “We’ll be announcing more hires in the coming days, so stay tuned.”

These new hires come following a couple of departures. In April, Tesla VP of Autopilot Jim Keller left for Intel, with Pete Bannon serving as Keller’s replacement. Bannon is a former Apple chip engineer who helped design Apple’s A5-AP chips. Earlier this month, Sameer Qureshi left a senior manager Autopilot role at Tesla to lead Lyft’s autonomous driving efforts.

Here’s the full list of new hires, via Tesla’s blog:

  • Stuart Bowers is joining as VP of Engineering, responsible for a broad range of Tesla’s software and hardware engineering. Stuart has 12 years of software experience and a background in applied mathematics, and is joining Tesla from Snap. There, he was most recently VP of Monetization Engineering, leading the team with a focus on machine learning and ad infrastructure. Prior to Snap, Stuart was the eighth engineer hired at Facebook’s Seattle office where he worked on data infrastructure and machine learning for search.
  • Neeraj Manrao has joined Tesla as Director of Energy Manufacturing. Neeraj comes from Apple, where he led the technical operations team.
  • Kevin Mukai has started as Director of Production Engineering at Gigafactory. Kevin was most recently at ThinFilm Electronics, where he served as Senior Director of Process Engineering, and before that at SunPower as Director of Process & Equipment Engineering. Kevin has extensive experience in advanced factory design and development.
    James Zhou started last month as CFO, China. James previously served as CFO for Asia Pacific and India for Ingersoll Rand, and prior to that held a number of financial leadership positions at General Electric and General Motors.
  • Alexandra Veitch joined last month as Senior Director for North American Government Relations and Policy. Alexandra comes to Tesla from CSRA. Before that, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Legislative Affairs Liaison in the White House under the Obama Administration. Her government service also includes time at the Department of Homeland Security and as a staff member in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
  • Kate Pearson is our new Director of Field Delivery Operations. She previously worked as VP of Digital Acceleration at Walmart eCommerce, where she led online grocery and last-mile delivery.
  • Mark Mastandrea started earlier this month as Director, Vehicle Delivery Operations. He comes from Amazon, where he was their Director of Logistics Operations, leading last-mile delivery in North America and working on the design and development of AmazonFresh pickup.
  • Myriam Attou recently started as Regional Sales Director in EMEA. Coming from La Perla, and before that Burberry, she has a long track record of delivering strong results in sales, customer experience and service excellence.