Last chance to become a volunteer at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

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TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 Volunteer Call

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We are officially less than a month away from TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. We’re currently seeking dedicated and highly motivated volunteers to support our events team and help bring this amazing experience to life.

If you’re dreaming of becoming a startup founder, marketer, or event coordinator, this experience gives you a priceless look into the operations of a premier tech startup conference.

Volunteer tasks

Volunteers will assist in plenty of fun tasks that include, but are not limited to:

Registration check-in.Line or traffic control.Directional/customer support.Expo setup support.General event setup.

Volunteer Perks 

Free TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 pass

Finish your volunteer shift and enjoy a complimentary General Admission ticket for all three days — October 28-30 — valued at up to $1,500.

Powerful networking opportunities

Connect with 10,000 startup VC leaders. Enhance your network by participating in focused 1:1 or small group Braindate meetings.

Gain powerful insights

Surround yourself with inspiring insights from top leaders in tech, startups, and venture capital. Explore their stories and acquire valuable best practices, how-tos, and tips through over 250 speaker sessions and more than 200 Roundtable and Breakout sessions.

Witness the intense startup battle

Watch as a hand-picked group of 200 startups competes in the Startup Battlefield 200 for the opportunity to win the Disrupt Cup and a $100,000 equity-free prize. Gain insights from the elite VC judge panel as they evaluate what it takes to succeed as a startup.

Attend startup events

Join the Side Events organized by startups outside the venue and taking place after hours, including workshops, cocktail parties, happy hours, meetups, and many more event types.

Volunteer requirements

Commit to up to 10 hours of volunteer time during Disrupt 2024.Attend a mandatory orientation in person on Sunday, October 27, in the afternoon.Be 18 years or older to apply.San Francisco or Bay Area residents are preferred but not required.

Start volunteering

We’re accepting applications until October 11, or as soon as all positions are filled. Discover more about volunteering at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 and begin your application process here.

Students and Recent Grads: Last day to save on Disrupt 2024 Student Pass

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TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 Student Pass discount

Today’s your final chance to secure your TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 Student Pass with a $200 discount! Maximize your savings by opting for the Student 4+ Bundle and bring four or more of your friends along for the experience. Prices go up after midnight, so don’t miss your opportunity to save.

Now that the semester is in full swing and the job market remains competitive for recent graduates, we recognize the financial pressure many are under. This discount is here to lend a hand when it’s needed most.

Accelerate your career by networking with over 10,000 tech, startup, and VC leaders at Disrupt 2024, taking place from October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco. It’s the perfect opportunity to boost your chances of landing your first job after college.

Lock in your Student Pass discount before the price goes up.

What to expect at Disrupt 2024

Learn from the industry giants

Gain exclusive insights from top leaders and visionaries in AI, SaaS, fintech, startups, VC, space, and beyond. Our speaker lineup and agenda are updated daily, so keep checking back for the latest additions.

Alex Pall and Drew Taggart from The Chainsmokers, Partners and Co-Founders, Mantis Venture CapitalArian Simone, CEO and Founding Partner, Fearless FundBridgit Mendler, CEO, Northwood SpaceCasey Aylward, Partner, AccelColin Kaepernick, Founder and CEO, LumiDenise Dresser, CEO, Slack from SalesforceJesse Pollak, Creator of Base, Base Mary Barra, Chair and CEO, General MotorsWassym Bensaid, Chief Software Officer, Rivian

Meet the rest of our speakers.

Countless hands-on learning sessions

Participate in more than 200 expert-led Roundtable and Breakout Sessions aimed at fostering impactful conversations. This is your opportunity to learn directly from leaders and entrepreneurs about addressing current issues and discovering paths to success.

Unparalleled networking opportunities

Building meaningful connections with industry leaders is the fastest path to success and landing your first major job. “Disrupt Week” — taking place from October 26 to November 1 — offers a wealth of networking opportunities to help you reach your goals.

With options ranging from customized 1:1 and small group Braindates to navigating the lively Expo Hall and joining company-organized Side Events, you’ll have countless chances to connect with key industry players and propel your career forward.

Advance your goals more affordably

Kickstart your path to success! Grab your discounted Student Pass for Disrupt 2024 before midnight to save $200. Secure your discounted rate here.

How (Re)vive grew 10x last year by helping retailers recycle and sell returned items

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Image Credits: (Re)vive

The fashion industry has a huge problem: Despite many returned items being unworn or undamaged, a lot, if not the majority, end up in the trash. An estimated 9.5 billion pounds of returns ended up in landfills in 2022 alone, according to data from return logistics software company Optoro. New York-based (Re)vive wants to help companies find a better ending for their returned items.

(Re)vive takes in products that retailers have deemed too damaged to sell and fixes them up — whether that means washing them, reattaching a button, or lint-rolling off some dog hair. The items are then sold through various channels, and (Re)vive’s data platform helps retailers monitor and manage their waste.

The underlying tech is quite interesting. The startup’s founder and CEO, Allison Lee, said the company’s software lets its employees sort, label and determine the outcome of a box of returned items in about three minutes. The software will also show retailers how much of a certain SKU — a product’s identifying number — was returned and how much money they can potentially make from saving and selling the returned items.

Refreshed items that are still in season head back to stores, while (Re)vive sells out-of-season goods on third-party channels like eBay and Poshmark on behalf of retailers and takes a cut from each sale.

Lee said the company is seeing strong demand now and expects it to grow as pressure continues to mount on retailers to clean up and minimize their impact on the environment. She added that companies are now under more scrutiny about damages from investors and shareholders — they can’t write those losses off as part of doing business as they used to.

There is a lot to like about this approach. For one, I love tech that helps companies be more sustainable and reduce their environmental impact, even if that isn’t their goal. Some companies may work with (Re)vive because of its sustainability angle, but many more will probably sign up due to shareholder pressure or to improve their bottom lines. It’s nice that they can mitigate their environmental impact at the same time.

It’s also a relatively light lift for companies to use such a service. Retailers already send out their “damaged” items from stores, and Lee joked that working with (Re)vive is as easy as just switching the shipping label on the box to a (Re)vive warehouse instead of a company’s own.

A meandering journey

(Re)vive has been seeing good demand, and Lee told TechCrunch that the company’s revenue grew nearly 15x last year. But it took a while for the team to land on its current strategy.

The company today is very different from what it started up as: Founded in 2017 as an in-store tailoring service known as Hemster, the company raised a seed round and was used in more than 300 stores before the pandemic brought the business to a halt.

“I thought I found product-market fit and raised all these millions of dollars, and then events happen and it’s like what do you do now?” Lee recalled.

Next, she launched an online repair portal aimed at consumers. But when the team realized the platform was largely being used instead by retailers trying to repair inventory in their warehouses, they decided to pivot. Since the switch, (Re)vive says it has helped companies save $23 million in GMV and has saved 150,000 garments from landfills.

“When we were doing Hemster, we were a nice-to-have,” Lee said. “If you are a nice-to-have, you don’t have priority in [a retailer’s] roadmap. Once we pivoted, we became a must-have.”

(Re)vive has now raised $3.5 million in seed funding, led by Equal Ventures and Hustle Fund, with participation from Banter Capital, Coalition Operators, Mute VC and others. Lee said the company wasn’t planning on raising venture capital after their latest pivot but decided to after it was approached by Equal Ventures, which had done in-depth research on the category for months.

I was interested in this one because I dealt with returns and damages for years as a sales associate at Anthropologie. I would process many returns that ended up as damages due to the tiniest thread pull or imperfection. What’s worse, employees weren’t allowed to take these items home either — doing that would get you automatically fired — meaning I would stare at a growing mountain of nearly perfect items headed to a landfill every single day.

And my perspective is that of one employee, at one store, on one shift, at one retailer. It’s hard to fathom how much all that wasted material adds up to. Hopefully (Re)vive can make a meaningful dent.

cheap car discounted at a sale

Private equity could be the last resort for startups struggling to exit

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cheap car discounted at a sale

Image Credits: red_moon_rise (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

After watching Lucy pull the football from Charlie Brown’s foot at the last possible moment time and time again, we have learned our lesson and are therefore hesitant to believe that 2024 will be the year of the IPO market’s return. It may or may not happen, but we’re not betting on it.

Alternative sources of liquidity are therefore top of mind — there’s a towering pile of private companies in need of an exit, or a bailout. Recent research from Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee underscores how quickly illiquid wealth was accumulated in the private markets in the last decade, and how rare exits have become for unicorns and other richly valued startups.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Lee found that the number of unicorns in the U.S. had increased 14 times over the past year, reaching 532 in 2013 from just 39 in 2013. However, the rate at which unicorns went public moved in the opposite direction — only 7% of unicorns today have found an exit, down from 66% of the initial cohort. Note that TechCrunch, like many publications, focuses only on private unicorns while Cowboy Ventures is also counting those that have gone public.

Welcome back to the Unicorn Club, 10 years later

This puts startups in a difficult spot. But the good news is that some untraveled and overgrown exit paths have a chance of opening up this year. The bad news is that those avenues may offer prices far less than what many startups are willing to accept. Call it painful price discovery.

Let’s talk private equity, startups, and their possible marriage this year.

Why do bad tidings make for good news sometimes?

In theory, stumbling unicorns do not make for good exit candidates. Why would a company with low chances of getting more VC investment become an M&A target? Well, it’s because many private companies had to prioritize profitability and runway over growth when the wider market decided tech companies weren’t actually worth as much as they used to be.

Subscribe to TechCrunch+After 2021’s venture boom imploded like an initial coin offering from 2017, startups were told that they needed to pull back spending and get close to cash flow breakeven to survive, and many made great strides on this front. However, a slow-growing, cash-generating business is not what venture capitalists like to invest in. They prefer fast-growing and efficient companies, which means there are many startups out there that are not ready to do an IPO but are also not going to die.

For such companies, some of which could be unicorns, private equity may be the only viable path to an exit. What do you do if you can’t raise capital and your IPO dreams don’t pass the smell test? Sell to the vultures, perhaps.

Old playbooks

Startups’ return to the profitability path may help them look to a new horizon: private equity. These so-called vulture funds aren’t typically interested in businesses that don’t have significant cash flow, since their playbook of attaching debt to the companies they buy wouldn’t work. Neither would private equity firms be willing to pay double-digit multiples solely based on the rate of revenue growth. This dissonance meant that most startups were out of the private equity circle of interest during the hype days of 2021 and earlier. But things have changed since.

Indeed, we learned from PitchBook’s sources that private equity funds are looking to snatch up startups in need of capital, and there seem to be quite a few of those lying around today: Many startups that raised at the apex of the bubble are now struggling to get more money from their existing investors, let alone new ones.

However, this feels very much like bargain-hunting. “PE buyers chasing startups now are very price sensitive, demanding relatively low multiples,” PitchBook noted. Forget double-digit multiples; we could be talking multiples as low as 1x or 2x.

Even so, not all takers will be in poor shape; they might just be more capital-intensive than the average startup. For instance, climate tech startups could be good candidates for PE, Sifted reported.

Selling to a PE firm is probably not what venture capitalists were hoping for when they placed their bets. But unlike more aggressive PE takeovers, such an exit strategy could end up saving companies and jobs. Consolidation is still on the cards, of course, but buyers will likely be more growth-oriented than looking to cut costs.

It should be enough to keep us curious, if not entertained.

Businessman touching the brain working of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Automation, Predictive analytics, Customer service AI-powered chatbot, analyze customer data, business and technology

EU's AI Act passes last big hurdle on the way to adoption

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Businessman touching the brain working of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Automation, Predictive analytics, Customer service AI-powered chatbot, analyze customer data, business and technology

Image Credits: Shutthiphong Chandaeng / Getty Images

The European Union’s AI Act, a risk-based plan for regulating applications of artificial intelligence, has passed what looks to be the final big hurdle standing in the way of adoption after Member State representatives today voted to confirm the final text of the draft law.

The development follows the political agreement reached in December — clinched after marathon ‘final’ three-way talks between EU co-legislators which stretched over several days. After that, the work to turn agreed positions on scrappy negotiation sheets into a final compromise text for lawmakers approval kicked off — culminating in today’s Coreper vote affirming the draft rules.

The planned regulation sets out a list of prohibited uses of AI (aka unacceptable risk), such as using AI for social scoring; brings in some governance rules for high risk uses (where AI apps might harm health, safety, fundamental rights, environment, democracy and the rule of law) and for the most powerful general purpose/foundational models deemed to pose “systemic risk”; and applies transparency requirements on apps like AI chatbots. But ‘low risk’ applications of AI will not be in scope of the law.

The vote affirming the final text will lead to a huge sign of relief across much of Brussels. Ongoing opposition to the risk-based AI regulation, led by France — fuelled by a desire to avoid legal limits standing in the way of blitzscaling homegrown generative AI startups like Mistral AI into national champions that might challenge the rise of US AI giants — had threatened the possibility of the regulation being derailed, even at this late stage.

In the event, all 27 ambassadors of EU Member States gave the text their unanimous backing.

Had the vote failed there was a risk of the whole regulation foundering, with limited time for any re-negotiations — given looming European elections and the end of the current Commission’s mandate later this year.

In terms of adopting the draft law, the baton now passes back to the European Parliament where lawmakers, in committee and plenary, will also get a final vote on the compromise text. But given the biggest backlash was coming from a handful of Member States (Germany and Italy were also linked to doubts about the AI Act putting obligations on so-called foundation models), these upcoming votes look academic. And the EU’s flagship AI Act should be adopted as law in the coming months.

Once adopted, the Act will enter into force 20 days after publication in the EU’s Official Journal. There will then be a tiered implementation period before the new rules apply to in-scope apps and AI models — with six months’ grace before a list of banned uses of AI set out in the regulation start applying (likely around fall).

The phased entry into force also allows a year before applying rules on foundational models (aka general purpose AIs) — so not until 2025. The bulk of the rest of the rules won’t apply until two years after the law’s publication.

The Commission has already moved to begin setting up an AI Office that will oversee the compliance of a subset of more powerful foundational models deemed to pose systemic risk. It also recently announced a package of measures intended to boost the prospects of homegrown AI developers, including retooling the bloc’s network of supercomputers to support generative AI model training.

 

EU lawmakers bag late night deal on ‘global first’ AI rules

EU ‘final’ talks to fix AI rules to run into second day — but deal on foundational models is on the table

Byju Raveendran

Byju's founder makes last-ditch attempt to placate disgruntled investors

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Byju Raveendran

Image Credits: Paul Yeung / Bloomberg / Getty Images

Byju Raveendran, the founder of embattled edtech group Byju’s, has made a last-ditch attempt to placate the company’s disgruntled investors, who include Prosus Ventures. The company’s board is weighing an offer of renounced shares — shares that a group of investors chose not to buy recently in protest — to prevent the dilution of the investors’ holdings ahead of validating a recent rights issue that cuts the Indian startup’s valuation by 99%.

At stake is the future of Byju’s, once the most valuable startup in India and the face of the local ecosystem. The dispute between the Bengaluru-based startup and its investors stems from a rights issue that the startup initiated in late January, following a year-long struggle to raise funds.

Rights issues allow companies to raise capital by giving shareholders the opportunity to purchase additional shares at a discount, in proportion to their current stake. By not participating in the rights issue, the investors are risking getting their holdings in Byju’s diluted down to almost nothing.

Investors Prosus, Peak XV, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative didn’t participate in the rights issue, and are currently in a legal battle to remove Raveendran from the firm and invalidate the $200 million it raised through the rights issue. The investors reached an Indian company court earlier this year that ordered Byju’s to move the $200 million to an escrow account until the matters are resolved.

In an email to shareholders on Friday morning, a copy of which TechCrunch has reviewed, Raveendran said the startup’s board is contemplating making the offer to disgruntled investors despite the “animosity” they have displayed and their “uncalled for legal actions.”

Raveendran also informed the shareholders that the startup has already received over 50% of the votes required to increase the authorized share capital in the startup to bring into effect the fully-subscribed $200 million rights issue. Byju’s held an extraordinary general meeting on Friday, where it attempted to pass the resolution over the rights issue. The result of the rights issue won’t emerge until April 6, and the two parties are set to appear before the Indian company court again on April 4.

Byju’s is running against time even though it has slashed costs in recent quarters. Byju’s needs the capital raised from the rights issue to sustain its business operations. Resolving the ongoing dispute with its investors is also crucial for the company to initiate future fundraising efforts and maintain its financial stability.

“I have always built Byju’s with a spirit of equality and equity, and it has never been my intention to leave any investor behind, regardless of their shareholding size,” Raveendran wrote in the Friday email. “From the very inception of this company, my vision has been to take everyone along, from one milestone to another. And it has always been my conviction that we will overcome our challenges together.”

Prosus, Peak XV and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative abruptly resigned from Byju’s board last year over its governance practices, and Deloitte dropped the startup’s account. Prosus said last year that Byju’s did not “evolve sufficiently for a company of that scale,” and the Indian firm “disregarded advice and recommendations” from its backers.

Byju’s is still reeling from the consequences of its aggressive expansion strategy during the pandemic. The startup, which had amassed a valuation of $22 billion by early March 2022, spent more than $2.5 billion to acquire nearly a dozen startups around the world in a span of just two years. The company had grand ambitions of going public at a valuation exceeding $40 billion, but its plans were disrupted by the dramatic reversal in market sentiment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Raveendran, for his part, has admitted that he made “mistakes” and is seeking another chance from his backers to correct course. “Even my critics know that I have invested my everything, and even more, into this company,” he wrote Friday. “So, I hope that you will see the value in continuing with Byju’s in the same spirit with which you first joined our journey.”

The story was updated with additional details.

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Exclusive: Checkr, the background-screening platform last valued at $5 billion, cuts 32% of workforce

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Employee application form

Image Credits: Getty Images

Checkr, a 10-year-old startup that offers employee background checks and was last valued at $5 billion in April 2022, has laid off 382 employees as companies are not significantly hiring talent.

TechCrunch exclusively learned that Checkr conducted the layoffs across all departments and different levels on Tuesday. The San Francisco–based startup confirmed the layoffs in an email.

“In response to economic conditions that have impacted companies’ hiring, we made the difficult and painful decision to reduce the size of our team. This will allow us to operate more efficiently and ensure the long-term health of our business,” a Checkr spokesperson said in the statement.

The job cuts — which affected 32% of the company’s workforce — came nearly two years after Checkr announced the acquisition of Inflection, the startup behind GoodHire, a background-checking platform for small- and midsized businesses. At the time, The Wall Street Journal reported the deal was worth $400 million.

Backed by storied investors, including Durable Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research, Franklin Templeton, BOND and Coatue Management, Checkr lets companies do background checks by looking into driving and criminal records and basic identity confirmation of their potential employees. The startup offers an online form to let companies run those checks or use its API, which can be integrated within their hiring systems or onboarding software, including Workable and Zenefits.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/10/tech-layoffs-2023-list/

Founded in 2014, Checkr counts Uber, Instacart, Netflix, Adecco, Airbnb and Coinbase among its key customers. Its customer base grew to more than tens of thousands of companies ranging from small and medium businesses to Fortune 500 employers in 2022. Initially, the startup was limited to Silicon Valley, but it expanded its presence beyond the Valley in 2016.

Checkr has given the affected employees a minimum of 10 weeks of severance and health insurance, as well as career and mental health support, the spokesperson said.

The startup did not answer questions about its runway and fundraising plans. To date, it has raised $679 million, with the last round of $250 million announced in September 2021.

Exclusive: SeekOut, a recruiting startup last valued at $1.2 billion, lays off 30% of its workforce

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An illustration depicting a suited man cutting a paper chain of stick figures, meant to portray layoffs

Image Credits: Andry Djumantara / Getty Images

SeekOut, an eight-year-old recruiting startup that uses AI to find candidates, cut about 30% of its workforce this past Thursday, TechCrunch has learned.

“Lately, we have been spending roughly $2 to earn $1, and this last fiscal year, we incurred significant cash burn,” SeekOut’s CEO Anoop Gupta and CTO Aravind Bala wrote in a letter to employees. “Unfortunately, to put us on a sustainable trajectory, we must make significant employee reductions.”

This is the second time the Seattle-based startup has had layoffs. SeekOut laid off 16 employees in October, or about 7% of its workforce at that time, GeekWire reported. After its October staff cuts, the company had around 200 employees, according to the report.  

The letter said that the company made a decision to refocus and prioritize fewer initiatives that will have the biggest impact on customers and add value to the business.

“This reduction is a strategic measure aimed at strengthening our financial position and maintaining our competitive edge in the talent acquisition and management segments. Departing employees are receiving extensive support,” Sam Shaddox, SeekOut’s general counsel and chief privacy officer, told TechCrunch in an email. 

SeekOut was last valued at over $1.2 billion in January 2022, when it raised a $115 million in a Series C round led by Tiger Global. At that time, the company’s revenue was growing 300% a year and its annual recurring revenue (ARR) ranged between $25 million and $50 million.

But the recruiting environment has changed substantially since then. Finding talent in areas such as technology has become much easier amid the rising interest rate environment, which led both large companies and startups to pay more attention to their bottom line.

Tech giants, such as Alphabet and Meta, have laid off many thousands of workers throughout 2022 and 2023. The trend inevitably hurt SeekOut’s business: The company’s software helps large companies in industries such as technology, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, defense and banking identify “hard to find” and diverse candidates.

SeekOut’s other investors include Madrona Venture Group and Mayfield.