Technology

It would be a foolish U.S. business that tried to sell chlorine-washed chicken in Europe — a region where very different food standards apply. But in the high-tech world of algorithmically assisted hiring, ita different story.

A number of startups are selling data-driven tech tools designed to comply with U.S. equality laws into the European Union, where their specific flavor of anti-discrimination compliance may be as legally meaningless as the marketing glitter they&re sprinkling — with eye-catching (but unquantifiable) claims of &fairness metrics& and &bias beating& AIs.

First up, if your business is trying to crystal-ball-gaze something as difficult to quantify (let alone predict) as &job fit& and workplace performance, where each individual hire will almost certainly be folded into (and have their performance shaped by) a dynamic mix of other individuals commonly referred to as &a team& — and you&re going about this job matchmaking &astrology& by working off of data sets that are absolutely not representative of our colorful, complex, messy human reality — then the most pressing question is probably, &what are you actually selling?&

Snake oil in software form? Automation of something math won&t ever be able to &fix?& An impossibly reductionist dream of friction-free recruitment?

Deep down in the small print, does your USP sum to claiming to do the least possible damage? And doesn&t that sound, well, kind of awkward?

The big climax arrives in Act Three. Therean uprising, as the robots take over the factory that created them. By the Epilogue, humankind is all but extinct. Fed up with their treatment, the robots have laid waste to the hands that created them, sparing only a single human — a fellow worker.

The decision may have ultimately doomed themselves, however, as they failed to save the one person capable of proliferating their kind. It is, however, the last living man who finds humanity in a pair of robots and likens them to the first two humans, in the biblical tradition. Ita hopeful note following an extinction that mostly occurred between acts. Two robots exit the stage, leaving the last man to utter the final words, &Adam—Eve.&

To borrow a phrase from another science fiction cautionary tale released seven decades later, &Life finds a way.&

Itthe final lesson of a play loaded to the artificial gills with allegory. Published 100 years ago (and premiering 99 years ago last month) R.U.R. (RossumUniversal Robots), by Czech writer Karel Čapek, is best remembered for bringing the word &robot& to sci-fi — and English, generally. Ita key piece of the seven-time Nobel Prize-nominated writerlegacy, who infused deeply held political beliefs into his early science fiction writings.

Čapekuse of &robot& is rooted in the Old Church Slavonic word, &robot,& which translates to forced labor& or &worker& in some derivations. &The word also has cognates in German, Russian, Polish and Czech,& history professor Howard Markel explained in a 2011 interview with NPR. &And itreally a product of the Central European system of serfdom, where a tenants& rent was paid for in forced labor or service.&

The concept of robots as forced labor dates back at least as far as the word robot itself — so, too, does the notion of a robotic uprising. That is to say that &kill all humans& wasn&t uttered first by Bender in Futurama or in the comments section of Boston Dynamics& Big Dog YouTube video. No, the first commonly understood robots to bear that name were wholly invested in returning power to the hands of the exploited workers — by any means necessary.

The roots of robotics in human society is commonly acknowledged to date back centuries prior, to classical cultures like Greek mythology and the golems of Jewish tradition. But Čapek is the one who gave us the word we still use today.

Of course, the writerrobots were more human than we presently associate with the word. In fact, perhaps, more in common with the older term, &android,& which stems from a Greek term that translates to &having the form of a man/human.& The robots of R.U.R. are living beings, built of artificial flesh, who eventually inherit the Earth.

&When the play opens, a few decades beyond the present day, the factory had turned out already, following a secret formula, hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of manufactured workmen, living automats, without souls, desires or feelings,& the official &Story of the Play& explains. &They are high-powered laborers, good for nothing but work. There are two grades, the unskilled and the skilled, and especially trained workmen are furnished on request.&

Set largely in the year 2000, the play grapples with questions of humanity decades before either Blade Runner or its source material, with the robots ultimately achieving a sort of humanity somewhere between Pinocchio and OzTin Man, albeit out from the ashes of the human creators they murdered en masse. A happy ending, perhaps, by 1920 standards.

For more robotics, check out our upcoming event March 3 at UC Berkeley.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,200 points today to close at 25,766.64, marking the worst intraday point decline in the history of the Dow. The Nasdaq stock market fell over 400 points.

Behind the collapse was a growing realization that COVID-19, the coronavirus strain sweeping across the globe, has indeed landed on U.S. shores and will likely have a much stronger effect on the economy than analysts and investors initially predicted.

Morning trading showed that economists and investors were not assuaged by the reassurances from President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who repeatedly indicated that the U.S. was well-prepared to meet the threat posed by the spreading virus.

It was only minutes after the press conference concluded that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a statement that the U.S. had identified its first case of community infection — when a person who was not known to have traveled outside of the U.S. or had been in contact with anyone who had been infected with the virus was diagnosed with the disease.

Most technology companies weren&t able to avoid the crumbling faith investors displayed toward the short-term prospects of the U.S. economy if itforced to endure a prolonged slowdown thanks to the illness. (Though there were a few exceptions.)

Facebook shares were down nearly 4%, or $7.35, to close at $189.75, while Amazon dropped $95.29 — or 4.81% — to close at $1,884.30. Apple and Microsoft were the hardest hit, with their shares off 6.5% and 7%, respectively. Microsoft closed down $11.99 at $158.13 and Apple closed at $273.52.

SaaS stocks wound up down 2.7%, while the Nasdaq itself closed off 4.6%.

To better illustrate what is going on, here is a set of figures. Just a few days ago, in mid-February, the Nasdaq was testing the 10,000 point threshold, a result that would have been not only an all-time record, but a key psychological barrier as well. Instead, after reaching fresh highs on the 19th, the Nasdaq is worth just a bit over 8,500 on the 27th. Thata big rejection of optimism.

More in the morning when the markets open again, and react to the nightnews.

Pinterest is bringing on a new board member. The company announced today it has appointed Gokul Rajaram, Caviar lead at soon-to-go-public DoorDash, to its board of directors and as a member of its Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. The addition signals Pinterestdesire to bring more digital advertising expertise to its board, given Rajaramexperience as product director of Ads at Facebook and product management director at Google AdSense.

&Gokul brings great experience and innovation to our Board and we look forward to his many contributions,& said Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann, in a statement. &His proven track record in shopping, digital advertising and content will be incredibly beneficial as we continue to bring inspirational experiences to users and advertisers on Pinterest,& he added.

Currently, Rajaram serves on DoorDashexecutive team where he leads the premium food ordering service, Caviar, which DoorDash acquired from Square last year for $410 million. The Caviar deal included Rajaram and team, in addition to the servicerestaurant partnerships. At Square, Rajaram spent five years heading Caviar and before that, had led several product development teams.

Rajarambackground also includes time at Facebook and Google, where he focused on digital ads. At Facebook, he helped the company transform its ads business to become mobile-first. And at Google, he helped launch the Google AdSense product and grow it into a substantial portion of Googlebusiness, Pinterest notes.

Other relevant experience includes time on RetailMeNotboard, as well as an investor and advisor to numerous startups, including those that intersected retail/e-commerce, analytics and social — like Pinterest-focused Piquora, mobile ad company Vungle, retail advertising startup PromoteIQ and many others.

Today, Rajaram additionally serves on the boards of The Trade Desk and Course Hero.

Rajaram has a bachelordegree in Computer Science Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur where he was class valedictorian. He received an MBA from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received the MCD University Fellowship.

His addition to Pinterestboard comes at a time when the companyad business is growing.

Earlier this month, Pinterest reported revenues for 2019 had topped $1 billion, up 51% over 2018. In the fourth quarter alone, Pinterest saw $400 million in revenue, up 46% year-over-year, and beating analyst forecasts of $371.2 million. Feed-based Shopping Ads contributed heavily to this growth, with the ads more than doubling in the second half of 2019 compared with the first. Pinterest also said its investment in measurement tools had been paying off. In Q4, conversion campaigns — which let advertisers track from pin clicks to actions, like adding items to a cart — grew by 150%.

The company said during earnings that scaling its ads business would continue to be a strategic priority in 2020, as it looks to capture more mid-size and international advertisers and make the service more shoppable.

&Pinterest is a beloved brand that inspires people to create a life they love,& said Gokul Rajaram, about his board appointment. &I&ve always been excited about Pinterestmission and impact on peopleeveryday lives, and am thrilled to help Ben, Evan, and the team continue building amazing products that empower people and advertisers around the world,& he said.

Rajaram joins other Pinterest board members Jeffrey Jordan, GP at Andreessen Horowitz; Leslie Kilgore, previously Netflix CMO; BVP partner Jeremy Levine; Fredric Reynolds, previously CFO at CBS; Michelle Wilson, previously from Amazon legal; and Pinterest co-founders Evan Sharp and Ben Silbermann.

A quick hit as we have a podcast to record, but a few public companies in the broader SaaS market reported earnings in the past week. Their results are worth unpacking as they paint a good picture of what the markets are hunting for in modern software companies.

Of course, we&re covering the firms& share-price movements in the context of an epic selloff stemming from global conditions that are already impacting earnings.

But, hey, not all the news out there is bad. In fact, for our three companies, public investors are waving green flags. So lettake a peek regarding why Dropbox, Boxand Sprout Social — one recent IPO and two slightly-out-of-favor SaaS shops — each shot higher after reporting their Q4-era results.

Earnings, results

Letproceed in alphabetical order, putting Box at the top of our list. We&ll then work through Dropbox and Sprout Social.

Boxcalendar Q4-era earnings report (the companyFiscal 2020 Q4) beat investor expectations three times. It reported more revenue than anticipated, $183.6 million over expectations of $181.6 million; a slimmer loss than predicted, $0.07 per-share in adjusted profit against a projected $0.04; and the storage-grounded, corporate productivity companyquarterly forecast of $183.0 million to $184.0 million was a few million ahead of expectations ($181.8 million, per Yahoo Finance).

Every day, thereanother event-related cancellation owing to concern around coronavirus. Just today Microsoft announced it will not have a presence at the Game Developers Conference in mid-March &out of an abundance of caution.& Facebook also said today that it is canceling its annual F8 conference scheduled for May over coronavirus-outbreak concerns.

The last is a particularly big deal. F8 is by far the largest event that Facebook hosts every year, so itlittle wonder that it plans to host part of the event online.

Likely, Facebook will use its own tech toward this end. But there is a new option for other companies that are right now second-guessing their event plans, and thatRun The World, a year-old, 18-person company thatbased in Mountain View, Calif., and has small teams both in China and Taiwan.

What itdoing: smooshing together every functionality that a conference organizer might need in a time of a pandemic. Think video conferencing, ticketing, interactivity and networking.

Whobacking it: Andreessen Horowitz largely, though the company — which has raised $4.3 million in seed funding — also counts as investors GSR Ventures, Pear Ventures, 122 West Ventures, Unanimous Capital, and angel investors like Kevin Weil, the VP of product at the Facebook subsidiary Calibra; Patreon co-founder Sam Yam; and Jetblue Airways Chairman Joel Peterson.

Who started it: Xiaoyin Qu, who is the CEO of the company and previously led products for both Facebook and Instagram (&basically anything to do with entertainment influencers and creators,& she says of part of her time at Facebook).

She dropped out StanfordMBA program after a year to start the company last year with Xuan Jiang, a former colleague who was a technical lead for Facebook events, ads and stories. (Jiang does have a masterdegree — one in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.)

We talked with Qu yesterday after learning about the company from Connie Chan, the general partner who led the deal for a16z.

Qu says the impetus for the startup ties to her mother, a doctor in China who focuses on meningitis and traveled to a conference in Chicago in late 2018 where she made a connection with a Dubai-based physician who was able to share with her some rare, valuable insight into his own work around meningitis.

That might not seem so exceptional to those who travel regularly, but it was enough of an ordeal for Qumother — who had to secure a visa; take off two weeks around the event, including for travel days; and spent a fortune on airfare and accommodations — that it was the first major trip she&d taken in 35 years.

As Qu half-joked, &It isn&t like at Stanford, where there are events held regularly that [local] doctors can even walk over to.&

Indeed, like a lot of founders who solve a pain point for themselves or someone they love, Qu wanted to create a platform where her mother could meet and have meaningful work connections with people regularly, and this would mean remotely, through digitized events.

Turns out, her timing is pretty good. Though numerous startups have launched live online events businesses in the past (many of them since shuttered), you can bet many more organizers are thinking about exactly the type of platform that Run The World is fine-tuning right now.

Though publicly launched just four months ago, it has already hosted dozens of events and has hundreds in the pipeline, says Qu. One of its customers is Wuhan2020, a large open-source community with more than 3,000 developers who will be using the platform as part of a long-distance hackathon that hopes to produce tech solutions to those affected by coronavirus in Wuhan.

Qu also points to an elephant conservation reserve in Laos that was recently able to raise $30,000 from donors from 15 countries in two weeks through a conference it organized on the platform. The reserve had a constrained budget, but being able to bring together a distributed audience (beyond just wealthy donors) for nearly zero overhead (no venue, no catering), turned it into a major success for the organization.

Smaller events are finding the platform, too. In just one instance, a dating coach who specializes in working with engineers recently held a workshop. Just 40 people showed up, says Qu, but she was able to make $1,300 from the event.

Run The World keeps the cost structure simple, taking 25% of ticket sales in exchange for what it provides organizers, from the templates they can choose for their events, to the ability to sell tickets, to processing those payments (via Stripe), streaming the event, enabling social interactions throughout the event, and helping organizers follow up with attendees afterward.

Indeed, beyond enabling organizers to reach a wider audience at perhaps a more accessible price point, a big advantage conferred by online events is the potential for more effective networking, insists Qu. For example, rather than walk into a physical space where itsometimes hard to know who to talk with about what, Run The World asks every event attendee to create a quick video profile akin to an Instagram story that can help inform other attendees about who is with them online.

It also organizes related &cocktail parties& where it can match attendees for several minutes at a time.

Naturally, there are also downsides to streamed live events as the world was reminded last year, when a gunman filmed the mass murder of 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand on Facebook Live.

One could also imagine that those video profiles could attract unwanted attention to some attendees who might rather just watch an event.

These are certainly facets of the business about which Qu and Jiang are well aware. While the plan is to keep adding new features (including, potentially, to use LinkedIn to validate attendees& identities), Qu notes that another way to ensure the quality of the events on the platform remains high — and that attendees feel safe — is to steer clear of most free events.

&When organizers are recruiting their own people and curating a community& of paid attendees who they know or can ostensibly learn more about, it keeps things above the level, she suggests, noting that paid attendees also show up in far greater numbers.

As Run The World scales, she concedes, &we&ll need to figure out new ways.&

Certainly, the lessons learned at Facebook and Instagram should help as the business picks up momentum and creates more structure around its offerings, she says. Besides, Qu adds, &The ideal event to me isn&t one with 2 million people. I&d rather we hosted 2 million events with 50 people.&