Airbnb is committing $250 million to put toward hosts who have been impacted by COVID-19. That means if a guest cancels a reservation for check-in between March 14 and May 31 due to a COVID-19-related reason, Airbnb will pay the host 25% of what they would normally receive through their cancellation policy. Airbnb says this policy will apply retroactively to all cancellations during that period.

This is Airbnbway of making amends to its hosts — who may have felt blindsided by Airbnbpolicy that would enable guests to cancel reservations and receive a full refund. That policy, which is still active, lets guests who booked reservations on or before March 14 that begin anytime on or before May 31 to cancel and receive a standard refund or travel credit.

&We determined that we had to allow your guests to cancel and receive a full refund—including all our fees,& Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote in a letter to hosts today. &Please know this decision was not a business decision, but based on protecting public health. However, while I believe we did the right thing in prioritizing health and safety, I&m sorry that we communicated this decision to guests without consulting you—like partners should. We have heard from you and we know we could have been better partners.&

Beyond that, Airbnb is creating a $10 million fund for its superhosts and experience hosts. Employees contributed the first $1 million and Airbnb co-founders Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky and Nate Blecharczyk are personally providing the other $9 million. Beginning in April, hosts can apply for grants up to $5,000. And for guests who want to show hosts their support during this time, they will soon be able to make payments directly to hosts.

Chesky is doing a video Q-A with hosts right now, which you can tune into here.

Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta announced in a blog post today that the company has laid off 250 employees.

Much has been written about the impact that COVID-19 and the resulting social distancing/shelter in place measures are having on small businesses (and the steps that internet platforms like Facebook and Yelp — which, after all, make money from small businesses advertising — are taking to help).

Similarly, Zappacosta said the local services that Thumbtack showcases in its marketplace are also seeing anything from a &dramatic decline& to an &outright collapse.& Apparently the companybusiness has fallen 61% in San Francisco, 55% in Detroit and 50% in New York City.

Thumbtack raised a $150 million round of funding last year, but Zappacosta said, &No business operates with enough of a buffer to sustain prolonged revenue declines of 40%+ without making radical changes.&

Those changes include reduced marketing, a hiring freeze and 25% salary reductions for executives. (Zappacosta said he will not take any salary at all, starting today.) And it also includes big layoffs.

Laid off workers will receive a severance package with both &cash and equity components,& Zappacosta said. He also said Thumbtack is doing what it can to help its service providers, such as &building features that support more remote work with customers — like video consults for a sink replacement that would typically be done onsite.&

Healthcare and biomedical engineering company Medtronic was in the news recently because Tesla CEO Elon Musk had discussions with the company about the automakerpotential plans to build ventilator hardware in order to address the COVID-19 crisis. Today itdoing something potentially far more impactful. Medtronic is making available to anyone the full design specifications, produce manuals, design documents and, in the future, software code for its Puritan Bennett (PB) 560 portable ventilator hardware.

The PB 560 ventilator has a number of advantages, one being that ita relatively compact and lightweight piece of equipment that can be easily moved around and installed for use in a range of different healthcare environments and settings. And ita design that was originally introduced in 2010, so it has a decade of qualified, safe medical use in treating patients.

There are plenty of efforts underway to produce ventilators and design new ventilators that manufacturers of other devices, like Dyson, can put into production. And others are trying to modify existing hardware to serve more patients. But this move by Medtronic makes freely available everything needed to spin up new production lines at existing manufacturers around the world — without any costs or fees owed to Medtronic.

Itstill obviously true that retooling a production line to build a different product is going to be an undertaking, no matter what kind of design specifications you&re starting with. But this initiative by Medtronic is also intended to provide the resources necessary for anyone looking at what they can build today — a blueprint to spawn new and innovative ideas. Manufacturers might be able to look at Medtronicproven design and engineer something they can build at scale relatively quickly that offers the same or similar performance characteristics.

Medtronic says the design is particularly well-suited for &inventors, startups, and academic institutions& looking to spin up production in short order and create their own adapted designs.

&We are sharing the design specifications for the [PB 560] to enable participants across industries to evaluate options for rapid ventilator manufacturing to help doctors and patients dealing with COVID-19,& said John Jordan, External Communications Director at the Minimally Invasive Therapies Group at Medtronic.

He pointed out that while Medtronic produces other, more complex ventilator hardware, including the PB 980 and PB 840, these require &more than 1,500 components& that Medtronic sources from a variety of specialized producers, and rely on &a skilled and specialized workforce& and &an interconnected global supply chain.& While those things remain true even for the PB 560 to some extent, its smaller, simplified design makes it the best candidate for companies newer to the field looking to pivot to ventilator manufacturing with limited or no prior experience.

Itworth noting that Medtronic isn&t open-sourcing the PB 560design exactly: itissuing a special &permissive license& specifically for the purposes of addressing this global coronavirus pandemic, and its term ends either when the World Health Organizationofficial Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) is declared over, or on October 1, 2024, whichever comes first.

Still, ita sign of the extent and seriousness of the COVID-19 crisis that for-profit corporations like Medtronic would even consider doing something like making free for broad public use a code technology they&ve developed, even if only for a fixed time frame.

Any startup or hardware maker interested in checking out the plans for the PB 560 and potentially using them to build their own equipment can register here to agree to the license and get access to the files.

Ford and GE Healthcare have licensed a ventilator design from Airon Corp and plan to produce as many as 50,000 of them at a Michigan factory by July as part of a broader effort to providea critical medical device used to treat people with COVID-19.

Ford will initially send a team of engineers to help boost production at AironFlorida facility, where it produces just three of its Airon Model A ventilators per day. Ford will also begin to ready its own Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan for large-scale production of the Airon Model A-E ventilator that is expected to begin April 20. Ford said that it will pay 500 United Auto Workers, who have volunteered to work at the factory. Ford has suspended production of its vehicles during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ford said Monday that it expects to produce 1,500 Airon ventilators by the end of April, 12,000 by the end of May and 50,000 by July. The automaker also said it will eventually have the capacity to build 30,000 a month.

Ford and GE Healthcare are also working on scaling production of a simplified ventilator design from GE Healthcare.

Mondayannouncement highlights the latest effort by automakers and medical device manufacturers to help ease a shortage of ventilators, a medical device that is used in the treatment of COVID-19, a disease caused by coronavirus. COVID-19 attacks the lungs and can cause acute respiratory distress syndrome and pneumonia. And since there is no clinically proven treatment yet, ventilators are relied upon to help people breathe and fight the disease. There are about 160,000 ventilators in the United States and another 12,700 in the National Strategic Supply, theNYT has reported.

Last week, GM said it would start producing Ventec Life Systems ventilators at its engine plant in Kokomo, Ind., using about 1,000 workers. GM said production will begin in the next seven to 14 days with the first shipments of the FDA-cleared ventilators scheduled to begin in April. Ventec is also trying to ramp up production at its manufacturing facility in Bothell, Wash.

The Ford-GE Healthcare collaboration also brings attention to Airon, a small privately held company that specializes in high-tech pneumatic life support products. The companyAiron Model A-E ventilator, which GE Healthcare introduced to Ford, operates on air pressure without the need for electricity, according to the companies. Airon has been producing this ventilator since 2004.

The Airon design was chosen for its simplicity, which should allow the Ford to scale production quickly. The FDA-cleared design is expected to meet the needs of most COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure or difficulty breathing, according to Tom Westrick, vice president and chief quality officer at GE Healthcare. Westrick said they consultedclinicians to confirm that the Airon ventilator is well suited to address the urgent needs during the COVID-19 crisis.

Under the partnership, Ford will provide its manufacturing resources and GE Healthcare will license the ventilator design from Airon and lend its clinical expertise.

When Rebecca Minkoff first moved to New York City, the then-18-year-old was making $4.75 an hour.

&I just kept working for this designer and someone was telling me what to do every day. I just didn&t like that. And I thought if I&m going to work as hard, itgoing to be for myself and I want to call my own shots,& she said. &I didn&t want to be told what to do, frankly.&

Self-employment for Minkoff turned out just fine; in 2001, she redesigned the iconic &I Love New York& shirt and it appeared on The Tonight Show. After a shout-out from Jay Leno, Minkoff spent the next eight months making T-shirts on the floor of her apartment and quit her job to start designing full time.

We caught up with Minkoff to learn more about how she grew her brand into a global fashion company with the help of her brother, her problem with the unicorn mentality and why she thinks the &invisible barrier& is the future of retail tech.

This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.

TechCrunch: What gave you the energy and drive to become an entrepreneur?

Rebecca Minkoff: Long story. My mom would sell these cast covers, like decorative covers for people with broken arms at the flea market. And I was like, I am going to have a booth here. So I made all these tie-dye shirts and no one bought anything but it was just this idea of like, I can make something I can sell. My mom always taught that. When I wanted a dress, she taught me how to sew a dress instead of buying the dress. And so, I just got this bug for creating things out of nothing.

The constant thread was, &I&m not going to pay for this. You&re going to learn how to do it.&