Tech Dojo

April Underwood, who until early last year was Slack’s chief product officer, has joined Obvious Ventures as a venture partner, she announced on Twitter today. Underwood said that as part of the firm’s team, she will “invest in great companies seeking to solve the big problems facing humanity: our climate, human health and wellness, and how we work.” Of Obvious’s focus on “backing company with world positive impact,” she said its mission “couldn’t possibly feel more needed than it does in this particular moment.” For Underwood, the role is one of several that she is currently juggling. She founded a startup advisory outfit called Wise Owl last year. She is also a cofounder of #Angels, an organization that focuses on investing in female founders and to which Underwood remains very committed, she said today, tweeting that her focus on “getting more women on the cap tables of successful startups will continue unabated.” Underwood is now among a growing number of  #Angels cofounde...

Compass, the real estate brokerage startup backed by roughly $1.6 billion in venture funding , has laid off 15% of its staff as a result of the shifting economic fortunes created by the global response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to an internal email seen by TechCrunch. Citing economic fallout that has seen stock markets plummet 30 percent in just 22 days Compass chief executive Robert Reffkin wrote that the company has seen an over 60 percent decline in real estate showings and is modeling a 6-month decline in revenue of 50 percent. “We aren’t just facing an economic recession, we are facing an economic standstill,” Reffkin wrote. As the country’s unemployment rate soars to a projected 10 percent, Reffkin wrote that the company had no choice but to cut its workforce. The 15 percent reduction in staffing is being accompanied by an 80% reduction in its concierge business and a shift to entirely virtual delivery. As part of the reductions in corporate spending, Reffk...

Google Cloud today announced the beta launch of Game Servers , a managed service that provides game developers with the usual backend services for running their games, including multi-player games, in the company’s cloud. It’s worth stressing that these are not game streaming servers but solely meant to make it easier for game developers to build, scale and manage the backend services for their games. The service sits on top of the Agones open-source game server, a project Google and Ubisoft first announced in 2018, and the Kubernetes container orchestration platform. As Google Cloud product manager Scott Van Woudenberg also told me, the team is also reusing some parts of Anthos , Google’s service for managing multi-cloud Kubernetes clusters. And while Game Servers can currently only run on the Google Kubernetes Engine, the plan is to allow for hybrid and multi-cloud support later this year. Quite a few gaming companies have already built their own on-premises server fleets, so j...

Zillow said Monday it will temporarily stop buying homes in all 24 markets where it operates in response to public health orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest real estate startup to shift how it operates as the disease caused by coronavirus continues to spread. Zillow said it decided to pause making offers to sellers after several counties and states, including California, Illinois, Louisiana, Ohio, New York and Nevada, implemented emergency orders requiring people to stay home and all non-essential business activities, including some real-estate related activities, to stop. Zillow follows action from other real estate startups such as Opendoor and Redfin to temporarily pause making offers on homes. “We plan to restore Zillow Offers full operations once health concerns pass and local health orders are lifted,” Zillow Group CEO and co-founder Rich Barton said in a statement. “ In the meantime, we are working to support our customers and partners in these uncertain t...

Planet 13 is located blocks off the Las Vegas Strip and holds the title as the world’s largest cannabis dispensary. But it’s much more than just a storefront. There’s a lot to the 115,000-square-foot facility, including entertainment, restaurants and cannabis processing equipment where the company makes edibles and drinks. This is a destination, Vegas-style. In this video we take a backstage tour into this cannabis superstore. How the world’s largest cannabis dispensary avoids social media restrictions from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2wuoyLK

Over the weekend, Apple introduced the first two episodes of its new Apple TV+ show, “Oprah Talks COVID-19,” for free viewing. In the first episode, Oprah Winfrey interviews actor Idris Elba, who recently tested positive for coronavirus, as well as his wife, Sabrina Dhowre, who is also positive. In the second episode, Oprah talks to longtime friend and supporter, Reverand Wintly Phipps about the pandemic. The interviews are conducted over FaceTime video calls with guests and are meant to offer hope and thought leadership, Oprah explained on Twitter. “Like millions of people all over the world, I’ve been staying safer at home for over a week now. I know a lot of people are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, & uncertain,” Oprah wrote in a tweet. “[Because] of that, I want to offer some hope & gather thought leaders & people going through it to add some perspective,” she said. Like millions of people all over the world, I've been staying safer at home for over a week no...

There are a lot of global efforts underway to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, including repurposing of existing drugs approved for use in treating other forms of coronavirus and respiratory diseases. Many of these efforts are just entering into the formal clinical study phase, which will be required before any treatment is certified for widespread use in patients diagnosed with the illness. Vaccines are still likely at least a year out from approvals, though some have already entered into clinical human trials at unprecedented speed owing to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic. It’s definitely a challenge to keep up with all the existing efforts to pursue effective treatments and develop vaccines, but public health non-profit the Milken Institute has a new resource that aims to keep track of at least the efforts from leading research institutions and drug makers. Their COVID-19 treatment and vaccine tracker currently offers a list of nearly 60 treatments, as well a...