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Bill Gates, newly free from his role on the Microsoft board, has taken to Reddit to answer the communityquestions about the pandemic, the government response, and what the world can do to be better prepared. Always candid but never cynical, Gates gives some heartening but realistic advice.

Worth noting at the outset is that Gates and the Foundation have been warning about and preparing for an epidemic of this type for years. His 2015 TED talk in particular is extremely prescient, and he wrote a detailed article (PDF) around then for the New England Journal of Medicine detailing the lessons we should learn from the Ebola outbreak. The Foundation also participated in the creation of the Center for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations in 2017. (A recent simulation with Johns Hopkins that has been getting attention for its eerie parallels to the present situation is not in fact a prediction or good comparison.)

You can read all his responses (and the thousands of questions and comments) at the AMA, of course, but the most interesting ones have been lightly edited and condensed below.

Q: What do you think about the current state of testing nationwide?

&The testing in the US is not organized yet…Things are a bit confused on this right now.&

Gates: The testing in the US is not organized yet. In the next few weeks I hope the government fixes this by having a website you can go to to find out about home testing and kiosks. Things are a bit confused on this right now. In Seattle the U of W is providing thousands of tests per day but no one is connected to a national tracking system.

Whenever there is a positive test it should be seen to understand where the disease is and whether we need to strengthen the social distancing. South Korea did a great job on this including digital contact tracing.

We need to democratize and scale the testing system by having a CDC website that people go to and enter their situation. Priority situations should get tested within 24 hours. This is very possible since many countries have done it. Health care workers for example should have priority. Elderly people should have priority. We will be able to catch up on the testing demand within a few weeks of getting the system in place. Without the system we don&t know what is missing & swabs, reagents etc.

Q: What about this Imperial College study suggesting 1-4 million Americans will die with current approaches, but total shutdown would limit deaths to a few thousand?

Fortunately it appears the parameters used in that model were too negative. The experience in China is the most critical data we have. They did their &shut down& and were able to reduce the number of cases. They are testing widely so they see rebounds immediately and so far there have not been a lot. They avoided widespread infection. The Imperial model does not match this experience. Models are only as good as the assumptions put into them. People are working on models that match what we are seeing more closely and they will become a key tool. A group called Institute for Disease Modeling that I fund is one of the groups working with others on this.

One tool that is helping us is looking at the genetics of the virus to understand the tree of infection.

Q: Can the 18 month estimate for a vaccine be shortened?

&My retiring from public boards was not related to the epidemic.&

Gates: This is a great question. There are over 6 different efforts going on to make a vaccine. Some use a new approach called RNA which is unproven. We will have to build lots of manufacturing for the different approaches knowing that some of them will not work. We will need literally billions of vaccines to protect the world. Vaccines require testing to make sure they are safe and effective. Some vaccines like the flu don&t for the elderly.

The first vaccines we get will go to health care workers and critical workers. This could happen before 18 months if everything goes well but we and Fauci and others are being careful not to promise this when we are not sure. The work is going at full speed.

Q: (Deleted, but regarding Gates stepping down from the Microsoft board)

Gates: My retiring from public boards was not related to the epidemic but it does reinforce my decision to focus on the work of the Foundation including itwork to help with the epidemic.

Bill Gates leaves Microsoftboard

Q: (In response to a deleted comment)

Gates: We should not call this the Chinese virus.

&We should not call this the Chinese virus.&
Q: What about a timeline for effective treatment?

Gates: A therapeutic could be available well before a vaccine. Ideally this would reduce the number of people who need intensive care including respirators. The Foundation has organized a Therapeutics Accelerator to look at all the most promising ideas and bring all the capabilities of industry into play. So I am hopeful something will come out of this. It could be an anti-viral or antibodies or something else.

One idea that is being explored is using the blood (plasma) from people who are recovered. This may have antibodies to protect people. If it works it would be the fastest way to protect health care workers and patients who have severe disease.

Q: &Thoughts on chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine?&

Gates: There are a lot of therapeutic drugs being examined. This is one of many but it is not proven. If it works we will need to make sure the finite supplies are held for the patients who need it most. We have a study going on to figure this out. We also have a screening effort to look at all the ideas for Therapeutics because the number being proposed is very large and only the most promising should be tried in patients. China was testing some things but now they have so few cases that that testing needs to move to other locations.

Q: Can you help with ventilator production?

Gates: There are a lot of efforts to do this. If we do social distancing (&shut down&) properly then the surge of cases won&t be as overwhelming. Our Foundationexpertise is in diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines so we are not involved in the ventilator efforts but it could make a contribution to have more especially as the disease gets into developing countries including Africa.

Q: What do you think of efforts to slow the spread?

&I worry about all the economic damage, but even worse will be how this will affect the developing countries who cannot do the social distancing the same way as rich countries, and whose hospital capacity is much lower.&

Gates: The only model that is known to work is a serious social distancing effort (&shut down&). If you don&t do this then the disease will spread to a high percentage of the population and your hospitals will be overloaded with cases. So this should be avoided despite the problems caused by the &shut down&. If a country doesn&t control its cases then other countries will prevent anyone going into or coming out of that country.

We are going into lockdown but as usual in retrospect we should have done it sooner. The sooner it is done the easier it is to get the cases down to small numbers.

The current phase has a lot of the cases in rich countries. With the right actions including the testing and social distancing within 2-3 months the rich countries should have avoided high levels of infection. I worry about all the economic damage, but even worse will be how this will affect the developing countries who cannot do the social distancing the same way as rich countries, and whose hospital capacity is much lower.

Some people like health care workers will be doing heroic work and we need to support them. We do need to stay calm even though this is an unprecedented situation.

&People like health care workers will be doing heroic work and we need to support them.&
Q: What about a national &shelter in place& policy?

Gates: Most people can shelter in their home but for people who that doesn&t work for there should be a place for them to go. We are working on seeing if we can send test kits to people at home so they don&t have to go out and so the tests get to the people who are the priority. The US still is not organized on testing.

I think people in the US will be able to largely isolate for 2-3 months. If they can access testing including a home test kit then they will understand who is infected. I keep saying how important the testing piece is.

Q: What can educators and parents do for students, especially kids from low income families?

Gates: It is a huge problem that schools will likely be shut down for the next few months. There are a lot of online resources from people like Khan Academy and Scholastic. Comcast and other internet connectivity providers are doing special programs to help with access. Microsoft and others are working on getting machines out but the supply chain is quite constrained. Unfortunately low-income students will be hurt more by the situation than others so we need to help any way we can.

Lawmakers look to bridge ‘homework gap& with subsidized Wi-Fi hotspots for students

Q: How should we determine which businesses should stay open?

Gates: The question of which businesses should keep going is tricky. Certainly food supply and the health system. We still need water, electricity and the internet. Supply chains for critical things need to be maintained. Countries are still figuring out what to keep running.

Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently, or when we have a vaccine, who has received it.

Q: Will there be multiple waves or &rebounds& after the first?

Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently, or when we have a vaccine, who has received it.

Gates: It depends on how you deal with people coming in from other countries and how strong the testing effort was. So far in China the amount of rebound being seen is very low. They are controlling people coming into the country very tightly. Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have all done a good job on this. If we do it right the rebounds should be fairly small in numbers.

There are many models to look at what will happen. That article is based on a set of assumptions derived from Influenza and it doesn&t match what has happened in China or even South Korea. So we need to be humble about what we know but it does appear that social distancing with testing can get the cases down to low levels.

In China less than .01% of the population was infected because of the measures they took. Most rich countries should be able to achieve a low level of infections. Some developing countries will not be able to do that.

Q: How is the Foundation helping, and how can we help?

Our foundation is working with all the groups who make diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines to make sure the right efforts are prioritized. We want to make sure all countries get access to these tools. We donated $100M in February for a variety of things and we will be doing more. One priority is to make sure that there is enough manufacturing capacity for therapeutics and vaccines. We have other efforts like our education group working to make sure the online resources for students are as helpful as they can be.

There will be lots of opportunity to give to social service organizations including food banks and I am sure people will be generous about this. Once we know who tests positive we can figure out how to support them so they can stay isolated and still get the food and medicine they need.

Q: How can we be better prepared for the next pandemic?

We need to have the ability to scale up diagnostics, drugs and vaccines very rapidly. The technologies exist to do this well if the right investments are made.

Gates: The TED talk I did in 2015 talked about this. We need to have the ability to scale up diagnostics, drugs and vaccines very rapidly. The technologies exist to do this well if the right investments are made. Countries can work together on this. We did create CEPI = Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation which did some work on vaccines but that needs to be funded at higher level to have the standby manufacturing capacity for the world.

I think that after this is under control that Governments and others will invest heavily in being ready for the next one. This will take global cooperation particularly to help the developing countries who will be hurt the most. A good example is the need to test therapeutics wherever the disease is to help the whole world. The Virus doesn&t respect national boundaries.

Q(?): I can&t believe Bill Gates just answered my question! (And general thanks.)

Gates: Its nice to hear something positive in this time of great uncertainty. I hope the Reddit community can spread the word about social distancing. Digital tools like this can help us stay in touch even though we are physically isolated.

Bill Gates addresses coronavirus fears and hopes in AMA

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Focused on health in the home, Novi lands $1.5M to help CPG companies source clean, safe ingredients

Kimberly Shenk has been focused for a while now on &clean& products that are made without harmful chemicals. In 2017, Shenk and friend Jaleh Bisharat launched NakedPoppy, a site that curates and sells cosmetics that have been vetted by chemists (including some of its own products).

Interestingly, as the young startup was announcing $4 million in seed funding last summer from Cowboy Ventures, among others, Shenk — who remains on the board of Naked Poppy — was splitting off to launch a second company. Called Novi, it hopes to address the same need that Shenk and Bisharat discovered, but it plans to go much broader.

Specifically, Novi is developing a platform that it hopes will eventually become a go-to service for beauty brands, as well as a lot of other businesses that sell to the growing number of consumers concerned about what, exactly, is in their homes. Think carpet sellers, medical device makers, developers of house cleaning products like detergents. If it needs to be formulated, Novi wants to assess it and give it its stamp of approval.

Itnot an easy thing to pull together, concedes Shenk, a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and MIT who spent several years as the head of Eventbritedata science operation. Just one of the many steps involved is building connections to far-flung and disparate raw suppliers, like makers of the surfactants used for cleansing, foaming, thickening and other special effects in cosmetics. The reason: Novi will need to learn about and certify as safe their manufacturing processes.

Ita major piece of the overall puzzle, and itharder than it might sound to nail down, as many manufacturers are hesitant to share information that they view as proprietary.

Still, Novi thinks it can persuade them to be more forthcoming by touting an AI-driven platform that it says can ingest and manage manufacturers& proprietary data at scale — and make it easier, in turn, for consumer companies that are focused on using vetted ingredients and chemicals to find them. Indeed, where Novi will really shine, suggests Shenk, is in data management.

Investors who know her seem to think she has what it takes. Brian Rothenberg, a partner at Defy Partners who helped scale Eventbrite across six years before he joined the world of venture capital, just led a $1.5 million seed round for Novi. (&We see a groundswell of consumer consciousness in this area,& Rothenberg said in an emailed statement to us.)

The startup further has the backing of Eventbrite co-founders Kevin and Julia Hartz.

Also working in its favor: Novi says italready working with a large beauty retailer that likes the results it has seen as a customer of Novisoftware-as-a-service. (Shenk declines to name the outfit, but she says another reason she had to split off from NakedPoppy was the high likelihood that Novi would be working with competitors to the company.)

Itcertainly progress, considering that Novi is still fairly nascent, with a team of just four people as it ramps up.

In addition to Shenk, itrun by Bisharat, who remains CEO of NakedPoppy but is also a co-founder of Novi and a board member; an engineer; and a chemist who previously worked for another &clean& beauty company, called Beautycounter.

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Amid post-YC Demo Day discussions and online &coffee& catchups, there is a lingering sense of dread among VCs — particularly junior VCs — about their own job security.

Over the past few days, I have heard rumors — and they are just rumors, for now — about three recognizable venture firms and how they are beginning to rethink staffing in the year ahead amidst the novel coronavirus pandemic. Two of those firms are in active discussion about potential exits with specific individuals, while another is nearing a decision to eliminate seven investors at the associate, principal and venture partner levels due to massive declines in their own predicted returns.

We are actively reporting this; feel free to reach out to me or other staffers at TechCrunch if you have tips here.

Nonetheless, it seems almost inevitable that an industry that has massively expanded its partnerships and junior staffs in the bull market of the past few years would suddenly need to rethink the exorbitant costs of all that salary overhead.

There are a couple of considerations here based on what I have been told by VCs. The first is that the pace of investing will slow down, allowing investors more time to do due diligence, plan and use their staffs more effectively, thus requiring fewer folks to do sourcing, analysis and customer calls.

Let me give three examples of the kind of speed we saw before and how that is changing today.

Take the news that Sequoia let go of its investment in Finix a little while back. We had heard that one of the causes for why the firm seemed to accidentally invest in a direct competitor to one of its most valuable portfolio companies, Stripe, is that the deal got done so quickly (I heard 48-72 hours from someone in a position to know, but letsay a week or two) that there was limited time for diligence or even I guess competitive mapping in the process.

Or take the news that Kleiner Perkins raised a new fund two weeks ago, just a year after raising its last early-stage fund, having spent the entire investible capital in all of 12 months. Investing an entire fund like this in one year requires a huge and energetic staff to pull off.

Or finally, take a seed-stage company I was talking to a few weeks ago that closed its seed round and then met a top investor just a few days later — and that investor actually wrote another, richer-valued seed check almost immediately after the meeting. Why? So that the second seed investor didn&t have to compete for the inevitable Series A bake-off.

That speed required VCs to have the staff to be able to process deals and diligence in real time since another firm could lock in a round in a matter of hours. But with what looks like an almost certain slowdown in investing in the coming months, how many staffers will VC firms need, particularly if they have weeks to make investment decisions instead of mere hours?

Another consideration on staffing from what I have gathered — and one that almost no VC is willing to talk about on or even off the record — is that GPs have to immediately start husbanding their management fees for what might be a tricky few years of cash flow.

That might sound surprising, given that VC firms would seem to be among the most stable employers; after all, management fees built into fund docs are guaranteed by a formula for typically 10 years. However, there are a couple of nuances that make these funds more complicated than they might appear.

First, itgenerally reported that management fees are 2% of assets per year. That means that a $100 million fund has access to $2 million to pay overhead expenses every year. That general rule is both true and not true. Those fees are generally front-weighted to the early side of a fundlife cycle. A fund may pay out 2% fees in years one-five, but then decline to less than 1% by year 10.

Thatwhy maintaining a firmlevel of management fees generally requires them to consistently raise VC dollars in order to maintain their cash flow. That could be challenging with a looming economic depression and a tougher LP fundraising environment. If the time between funds lengthens from one year to two or even three years, plus if fund sizes get smaller to boot, the amount of management fees will decline accordingly.

Third, and this is rarer, some funds have made loans or real estate investments using their management fee income as a way to boost the salary returns of the general partners. Those financial arrangements drastically limit the flexibility around management fees in an economic downturn, and that can cause more acute pain than might otherwise be publicly visible.

The thinking goes then that carefully managing expenses today can protect those fee streams further in the coming years, providing more stability for the firm at the cost of some early unhappy news today.

There are a couple of other reasons beyond those two, and from what I can tell from my talks with VC sources, most VCs seem to be in a wait-and-see mode. But the discussions are starting to happen at least, even if no decisions have seemingly been made, at least to my knowledge. Which means that it is important to have open lines of conversation and start to understand a firmfinancial context and what the next few months might look like as everyone processes the new economic reality.

Across furtive videocons, junior VCs wait for the layoffs to begin

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Dish-owned TV streaming service Sling TV announced today itmaking a selection of its content available to stream for free, no credit card or account required. The free offering includes breaking news and live events from ABC News Live, movies and kids& content for families and other lifestyle and entertainment programming. The new service arrives at a time when a significant number of Americans are stuck at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak. But Sling TV isn&t just hoping for a little good press — italso marketing its paid service to the free users by promoting content thatlabeled as being only available to subscribers.

&Stay in - SLING,& as the free service is called, now includes thousands of shows and movies without the need to sign up.

This includes a selection of older shows like &HellKitchen,& &Forensic Files,& &Kitchen Nightmares,& &Black Sails,& &Third Rock from the Sun,& &Roseanne,& &Grounded for Life,& &Hunter,& &Grace Under Fire,& &Shameless,& &21 Jump Street& and others, plus a small selection of free live TV channels led by ABC News Live.

The movie section is organized by category, including Horror, Action, Drama and Popular. In the latter, you&ll find mostly older films and unknown titles.

The free kids& content section is a little more promising, with free episodes and seasons from shows like &Teen Titans Go!,& &Adventure Time,& &DC Super Hero Girls,& &Total Dramarama,& &Justice League Action,& &LEGO Ninjago,& &Bob the Builder& and others.

There are also rows featuring free comedy standup specials, free true crime shows, free popular shows (e.g. &Rick and Morty,& &Impractical Jokers,& &Samurai Jack& and more), plus a section with &get a free taste& shows. This latter row is a selection of single free episodes from better-known shows like &Power,& &Vida,& &American Gods,& &The White Queen,& &Party Down& and more hailing from Starz.

All this free content offered is sandwiched in between much more enticing paid fare — like rows featuring sports, news and entertainment programs, each with big, yellow &Subscribe& buttons overtop the image thumbnail. So if you want to watch shows like &Friends,& &SportsCenter,& &Anderson Cooper 360& or movies you&re more likely to have heard of, you&d have to pay. Therealso a giant ad for Sling TV at the top of the screen.

Sling TV rolls out free streaming to US consumers stuck at home

This setup is because Sling TVfree tier isn&t something it just came up with to capitalize on the health crisis. Sling TV has offered a free selection in the past, in order to draw in potential subscribers. However, its free tier last year had included access to more than 100 hours of free shows and movies. The newly rebranded and relaunched free tier is larger, with thousands of movies and shows included.

Sling TV, however, is positioning the free service primarily as a way to help U.S. consumers keep up with the news during the coronavirus outbreak.

&To stay informed in these uncertain times, Americans need access to news from reputable sources,& saidWarren Schlichting, Sling TVgroup president, in a statement. &With many Americans finding themselves staying at home, we have an opportunity to use our platform to help them deal with this rapidly evolving situation,& he said.

Sling TV had been in a rough situation before the COVID-19 crisis, with regard to subscribers, itworth noting.

The company reported its first-ever decline in Sling TV subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2019, with a drop of 94,000 customers to end the year with 2.59 million total subscribers. The decline is likely due to a number of factors, including price hikes, increased competition from rivals like Hulu with Live TV and YouTube TV, and new subscription services like Disney+ and Apple TV+ that are eating into consumers& limited entertainment budgets.

Still, Sling TV is far from the only streamer looking to win viewership by marketing to home-bound Americans during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Disney just released &Frozen 2& on its service, Disney+, a full three months ahead of schedule. Hulu released the first three episodes of &Little Fires Everywhere& early, as well. And NBCU is finally breaking the theatrical window to release &The Invisible Man& and other movies on-demand.

The Sling TV free experience is available through the Sling app for Roku, Amazon or Android devices or via the web using a Chrome, Safari or Microsoft Edge browser.

Sling TV rolls out free streaming to US consumers stuck at home

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Listen to the TechCrunch staffYC Demo Day wrap-up call here

Itbeen a bonkers week in the world, with markets gyrating, companies fretting, investors tweeting and founders re-cutting their 2020 forecasts. But for one collection of startups, the past few days weren&t about work crises or the latest Slack share price. Instead, for Y Combinator Winter batch, it was Demo Day week.

TechCrunch has covered Y Combinator companies since time immemorial. And we&ve been present throughout a number of format changes over the years. We&ve been around for things like the old single-day events in the South Bay computer history museum, and we&ve been around for the SF era. Hell, we were there for the two-stage concept.

But this yearDemo Day brought with it something altogether new: No in-person pitches and demos. Yep, in response to COVID-19, Y Combinator made its demo day virtual, even scooting up its presentations by a full week. Obviously we tuned in en masse, writing a host of posts about the presenting companies (read them here, here, here and here). We also caught up with CEO of Y Combinator, Michael Seibel, to here his take on whatahead for the accelerator.

Given the scale of change, however, we weren&t content with just those entries. So, we gathered the TechCrunch crew, hopped on a Zoom, invited in our friends until our Zoom account maxed out (we didn&t know that that was a thing; more capacity coming) to chat over observations and the most interesting startups. We didn&t even miss the usual slew of Y Combinator live tweets — for the most part.

Hit the jump and we&ve got the recording for you. And see which companies the TechCrunch staff liked the most.

The Chat

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Back in 2017, a formerly hot, formerly profitable company called Blue Apron went public. It didn&t go well. Today as the global stock market continues to fall, shares in the former venture darling are soaring, up more than 140% in midday trading.

Before its IPO, the company had to reduce its price range from $15 to $17 per share to $10 to $11 per share. That pricing change limited the companyworth, and reduced the capital it raised in its debut. The meal kit delivery company finally priced at $10 per share. It opened up a hair, but closed the day a mere penny above its IPO price.

Then things got worse. In fact, Blue Apron share price decline got so bad that in mid-2019 Blue Apron had to execute a 1-for-15 reverse split. In most stock splits, a companyshare price gets too high for comfort. So, the firm decides to give its investors the same value of the company, but in new, smaller chunks. So a concern trading for $1,000 per share that wanted to split would normally give, say, its investors 10 new shares worth $100 apiece in exchange for their single $1,000 share.

As Uber and Lyft continue to melt, the 2019 unicorn class loses its shine

A reverse split is the other way. You get fewershares at a higher per-share value. Itwhat you do if you need to avoid slipping under $1 per share, or other, similar fates.

Time passed, and everyone forgot about Blue Apron in the same manner as they did Grubhub, companies that came, made an impact, went public and then slowly dissolved.

The latest

Until now. Suddenly Blue Apron is the hottest stock in the world, skyrocketing as other companies shed value. Today in regular trading, American indices fell so far that they triggered protective circuit breakers. At the same time, Blue Apron was doing this (via Google Finance):

Why is Blue Apronstock skyrocketing?

Bear in mind that we are looking at the companyafter its reverse split. So, no, the company is not worth 60% more than its IPO price of $10 per share. Itworth far less. Indeed, Blue Apron is worth just $211 million today including its daygains, according to Google Finance.

Blue Apron was worth about $1.9 billion when it went public, for reference.

Anyway, why is the company skyrocketing? TechCrunch thinks it figured it out. Walk with us:

  1. Everyone is looking for something to buy that will go up as everything else goes down
  2. Blue Apron makes meal kits that folks can make at home
  3. Over the weekend, many U.S. cities began shutting down
  4. That meant less dine-in service
  5. So people are now, putatively, cooking more
  6. That means Blue Apron might benefit!
  7. Enter a hilarious momentum trade in a low-cap stock
  8. Kaboom goes its share price

Don&t pop the champagne. Blue Apron is still worth about what it raised as a private company; its market cap is only about 40% of the money it raised while private in addition to its IPO haul. This company is still priced like iton life support.

And that makes some sense. Here are some facts from its Q4 and full-year 2019 report:

  • 1.62 million Q4 orders, down from both Q3 2019 (1.73 million) and Q4 2018 (2.42 million)
  • $94.3 million in Q4 revenue, down 33% compared to the year-ago period
  • A net loss of $21.9 million

Not great! Perhaps Blue Apron will explode, beating guidance and earning its newly resurrected share price. Maybe. But before you pile into the company, pause, and then probably don&t.

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