Zoom has decided to cease development of new product features so it can focus on fixing various privacy and security issues.

The company has seen a surge in the use of its platform in recent weeks, as self isolation in response to the Covid-19 pandemic ramps up the demand for video software. As its popularity has boomed — both for business and personal use — and the companystock price rocketed, underlying vulnerabilities in the platform have become apparent.

&Zoom-bombing,& where intruders have been able to access video meetings that were not password protected, has led to serious privacy concerns, with uninvited attendees harassing online A.A. meetings and church meetings, for example. The FBIthis week warned of unauthorized access to virtual classrooms and recommended that users change security settings to protect meetings.

To read this article in full, please click here

This sysadmin pilot fish doesn&t put much credence in the stories he hears about the IT manager at his new job — too far-fetched.

&He was known for putting the staff in impossible situations,& says fish. &He would attend planning meetings and agree to criteria that simply couldn&t be met, then tell everyone to just make it happen. Of course, the consequences were our fault as well.&

Then one day fish and his team go to the IT manager to explain the need for more file server capacity. They have the data showing current capacity, growth over time and the expected date when they&ll hit the wall.

IT manager's only response: &No.&

So the team goes looking for other options, and identifies files on users& home drives that can be removed to increase capacity without impacting the business. They bring the new proposal to the IT manager.

To read this article in full, please click here

Business communication apps saw record levels of growth in March, according to statistics from mobile market data provider App Annie.

With a growing portion of the global population now living under some kind of government lockdown, many organizations have had to shift business processes & and their employees are having to embrace a work-from-home culture on a scale never before attempted.

Not surprisingly, the demand for video conferencing apps has surged in recent weeks, with enterprise-focused mobile app downloads reaching 62 million during the week March 14-21 & the highest number ever seen.

According to a report by App Annie, that figure was up 45% from the week before and up 90% from the pre-Covid-19 weekly download average. Business application downloads represent the highest growth in any category in both the iOS and Google Play stores.

To read this article in full, please click here

&The Platform& is not a subtle movie.

Thattrue of its approach to horror, with intense, bloody scenes that prompted plenty of screaming and pausing from your hosts at the Original Content podcast. Italso true of its thematic material — right around the time one of the characters accuses another of being communist, you&ll slap yourself on the forehead and say, &Oh, itabout capitalism.&

The new Netflix film takes place in a mysterious prison, with two prisoners on each level (they&re randomly rotated each month). Once each day, a platform laden with delicious food is lowered through the prison. If you&re on one of the top levels, you feast. If you&re further down, things are considerably more grim, and can become downright gruesome as the month wears on.

&The Platform& is a hard movie to sit through, and it has other faults, like an irritatingly mystical ending. But itcertainly memorable, and even admirable in its dedication to fully exploring both the logistical and moral dimensions of its premise.

You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcastsor find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you&d like to skip ahead, herehow the episode breaks down: 0:00 Intro 0:27 &The Platform& review 17:29 &The Platform& spoilers

I didn&t see this as an enterprise-focused story at first. But a recent compromise between Amazon and Apple shows how communication can help even opposing businesses solve problems and grow value.

Amazon and Apple make a deal

Amazon this week suddenly began permitting Prime subscribers to access and purchase content from Prime using the iOS app.

To the vexation of many users, this wasn&t possible before. You had to visit Amazonsite on a computer, purchase the item you wanted, and only then could this be accessed using an iOS device, including Apple TV.

The process was annoying, and was purely driven by the two bigwig multinationals arguing over who would get to keep a share of the purchase price. And customers suffered to protect the all-important bottom line.

To read this article in full, please click here

[Editornote: Want to get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that startups can use by email? Subscribe here.]

There are a few online productivity stocks booming, and a few popular remote-first product companies still announcing funding rounds amid a huge new wave of unicorn layoffs. But what about the previously white-hot software-as-a-service category overall?

Pullbacks in spending are expected in general, obviously, which means higher churn and slower growth for major SaaS companies. An informal peer survey put together by Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta indicates that many leading execs in the space expect churn to head to double digits in the near future, Alex Wilhelm learned while researching the topic this week for Extra Crunch.

But, the effects of so much of the world going remote could end up still being a bigger lift for many companies large and small. George Kurtz, CEO of publicly traded cybersecurity company Crowdstrike, expects global growth as mainstream businesses everywhere get serious about remote for the first time.

Meanwhile, fresh index data from Profitwell seems to already show a bit of a rebound in subscriptions following weeks of drops, which Alex digs into separately. Itprobably too soon to be hopeful, but anecdotally Extra Crunchown growth has gotten back to its previously strong footing in the last few weeks (thanks for the support, everyone).

He also caught up with Mary D&Onofrio, an investor with Bessemer Venture Partners about how to value a startup during a downturn. She also pointed out that many of the losses you&re seeing are relative. &We&re just reverting back to historical cloud software multiples. Historically if you look at the emerging cloud index basket, ittraded at seven times forward [revenue]. Right now we&re trading at eight times forward [revenue].& At least for many companies in the space, things are still not so bad.

The venture capital crunch continues

We&ve been writing a daily-ish series of articles about the state of startup investing in the face of COVID-19. First up, Danny Crichton breaks down &the denominator effect& on TechCrunch, where a limited partner is required through their own funding agreements to allocate a mix of equities beyond startups and rebalance based on the circumstances. When the other portions lose too much (such as, say, public stocks), LPs then have to pull back on the amount of money they can have in venture capital firms… thereby leaving those firms short of money for startups. Where is this going? &If the markets happen to rapidly recover, they might quickly reopen their investments in VC and other alternative assets,& Danny writes. &But if the markets stay sour for longer, then expect further downward gravitational pull on the VC asset class as portfolio managers reset their portfolios to where they need them. Itthe tyranny of fifth grade mathematics and a complex financial system.&

How can venture firms navigate this daunting terrain? Connie Loizos checks in for TechCrunch with Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures (&now is probably one of the toughest times& to get a firm launched), Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures (find some family offices who are going to be less orthodox in general and potentially less affected) and Eva Ho of Fika Ventures (don&t get discouraged, but use the additional challenge to really reflect about this career choice).

Check out additional coverage over on Extra Crunch, including a quick survey of other investors about their approaches, an interview with a venture debt lender, and a look at the trends in funding going back to last year.

The content library is king for TikTok

Why is TikTok able to dominate the charts in the face of giant competitors? As millions sit at home using the app, Josh Constine dives into why it is likely to continue beating incumbent consumer products from companies like Alphabet and Facebook (or consumer startups). Itwhat he calls the &content network effect,& as he detailed on TechCrunch:

Facilitating remixes offers a way to lower the bar for producing user generated content. You&d don&t have to be astoundingly creative or original to make something entertaining. Each individuallife experiences inform their perspective that could let them interpret an idea in a new way. What began with someone ripping audio of two people chanting &don&t be Suspicious, don&t be suspicious& while sneaking through a graveyard in TV show Parks and Recreation led to people lip syncing it while trying to escape their infantroom without waking them up, leaving the house wearing clothes they stole from their sistercloset, trying to keep a llama as a pet, and photoshopping themselves to look taller. Unless someonealready done the work to record an audio clip, therenothing to inspire and enable others to put their spin on it.

Healthtech in the time of COVID-19

While most people reading this newsletter have probably been experiencing the worldwide remote-first switch, an equally momentous set of changes are sweeping health care as medical systems try to get a grip on the pandemic. We had just published a big survey of leading digital health investors in December, but now is the time for an update. We checked in with:

• Annie Case,Kleiner Perkins
• Kristin Baker Spohn,CRV
• Deena Shakir,Lux Capital
• Jennifer Hartt,Ben Franklin Technology Partners
• John Prendergass,Ben Franklin Technology Partners
• Bill Liao,SOSV

HereCRVSpohn, summing the situation up nicely: &COVID-19 is driving opportunities, notably the rapid adoption of telehealth/virtual care by clinicians and patients, clinical trials in the cloud, as well as renewed focus on rapid point-of-care diagnostics. With virtual care, we&re seeing a decade of acceleration happening in a matter of weeks. Up until this point, there has been high-activation energy to conduct a first &eVisit& because the alternative (in-person care) was so well-established and largely available.&

Read the full thing on Extra Crunch.

Around TechCrunch

1. From Danny: On Monday, prolific enterprise seed investor Jonathan Lehr of Work-Bench will be joining us for a live conference call on TechCrunch. Work-Bench has been an investor in such notable investments as Tamr, Cockroach Labs, Backtrace, Socure, and x.ai. Danny and Alex will quiz Jon on all kinds of questions around what the seed stage looks like for enterprise startups these days, and of course, will take questions from Extra Crunch members.
2. Disrupt will have a remote version this year, which we&re now beginning to sell as a Digital Pass. Check it out!

Across the week

TechCrunch

Proposed amendments to the Volcker Rule could be a lifeline for venture firms hit by market downturn=

The space in between: The stratosphere

Test and trace with Apple and Google

Want to survive the downturn? Better build a platform

Using AI responsibly to fight the coronavirus pandemic

Extra Crunch

Lending startups are angling for new business from the COVID-19 bailout

What happens to edtech when kids go back to school?

Amid shift to remote work, application performance monitoring is ITbig moment

Rebecca Minkoff has some advice for e-commerce companies right now

#EquityPod

From Alex:

How are you holding up? Are you keeping up? And most importantly, are you hydrating yourself? Thereso much news lately that we&re all falling a bit behind, but, hey, thatwhat Equity is for. So,Natasha,Danny, andAlexgot together to go over a number of the biggest stories in the worlds of private companies.

A warning before we get into the list, however. We&re going to be covering layoffs for a while. Don&t read more into that beyond a note to this unfortunate situation. We try to talk about the most important news, not what brings delight or joy to our hearts (because if that was the case, we would be all over mega-rounds). That in mind, herethis weekrundown….

Which you can find here!