š Essential City + Tech Stories: 2.8.21
Uber doubles down on food delivery, Andrew Yangās UBI Proposal, Divvy secures the bag to help more people buy homes
Hello! I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl last night.
Last week given the natural connections, I spent a while looking for some great Super Bowl-cities about the intersection of cities, sports, and technology. Honestly, I didnāt feel like I had developed thoughts interesting enough to share ā yet.
So just know, those three areas are a topic we will be exploring together down the road. If you have thoughts, please hit me up viaĀ email,Ā Twitter DM, Instagram DM,Ā Calendly link, whatever comms channel, so we can start bouncing ideas off the wall. (Sports pun very intended.)
I promise even if you donāt like sports, UT will make any coverage an interesting, informative piece that arms you with better context for looking at the intersection of cities and tech.
Last Mondayās most popular stories:
š„ TechCrunch: Fetchās latest warehouse robot is designed to replace forklifts
š„Bloomberg: SoftBank to Invest $100 Million in Miami Area Companies
š„ The New York Times: How Many Americans Are Homeless? No One Knows
Urban Tech appearances in other media places:
š Sidewalk Labs Weekly Newsletter
Essential City + Tech Stories: 2.8.21
š£ San Francisco Chronicle: Let's have real talk about race and inequality in the Bay Area
š° Axios: Uber buying booze delivery company Drizly for $1.1 billion
āļø Politico: Mayor Pete becomes Secretary Pete, with a fan club and unusual celebrity status
šø TechCrunch: Divvy Homes secures $110M Series C to help renters become homeowners
š CityLab: What's in Andrew Yang's UBI Proposal for NYC
š The Wall Street Journal: Electric-Car Buzz Pushes Up Shares in Company With Nothing but Cash
San Francisco Chronicle: Let's have real talk about race and inequality in the Bay Area
Justin PhillipsĀ penned an honest and thoughtful opinion piece last week exploring the extremely-complicated racial and socioeconomic landscape in the Bay Area:
San Francisco thinks of itself as a place of reform and second chances, but many are getting nervous as the district attorney applies that philosophy to crime. Residents want homelessness in the Bay Area addressed, but only if the needed affordable housing isnāt built near them. Demands for racial equity were loud across California in 2020, yet voters were not compelled to lift the stateās ban on affirmative action.
The Bay Area, itās clear to me, is in a critical and challenging moment, where our longstanding progressive ideals are increasingly colliding with behavior that contradicts them. Itās at this moment that Iām beginning this new column for The Chronicle exploring a region struggling to understand its identity. As I report it, I will be listening to our marginalized communities, chronicling the regionās unbalanced power dynamics and pushing to the forefront issues of exclusion and discrimination.
Axios: Uber buying booze delivery company Drizly for $1.1 billion
From Pro Rata Author Dan Primack:
Uber on Tuesday announced an agreement to buy Drizly, a Boston-based alcohol delivery startup, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.
Why it matters: This could represent a strategic departure for Uber, in that Drizly doesn't hire delivery drivers itself. Instead, it provides the backend infrastructure for local liquor stores to provide their own delivery services.
This news is just the latest example of delivery players looking to parlay their investments on the expanding food delivery market.Ā
Want to learn more about that? Check outĀ my conversationĀ from December with Investor and AdvisorĀ Russ RosenbandĀ where we talked about the many reasons food continues to move to the internet.
Outstanding UT question:Ā Given the stillĀ incrediblyĀ undefined rules around how to classify gig workers across the local, state, federal, and even global policy levels, how long will a strategic shift help Uber avoid blowback from regulators?
Politico: Mayor Pete becomes Secretary Pete, with a fan club and unusual celebrity status
In conversation with friends and family, who spend a lot less time worrying about politics and on Twitter, when they ask for thoughts on Mayor Peteās ascension to Secretary of Transportation, here is my one overarching not super great, or unique point:
Heās genuinely unlike any person EVER who has served as Sec of Transportation.
From The Politico Transportation team:
Pete Buttigieg will be the next Transportation secretary, bringing his political celebrity and legion of super fans to a mammoth agency that's not used to headlines ā unless they're jokes about "Infrastructure Week."
After four years of leadership under former President Donald Trump's Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, a Washington, D.C., insider who was notoriously unavailable to reporters, DOT has a new leader who made near-daily appearances on cable TV even before the Senate confirmed him in an 86-13 vote Tuesday.
Limeās Global Head of PolicyĀ Katie StevensĀ shared with Urban Tech last month why her team, and the micromobility sector more broadly, is excited for a reenergized (and badly needed) transportation and infrastructure policy discussion in Washington.
TechCrunch: Divvy Homes secures $110M Series C to help renters become homeowners
Mary Ann Azevedo recently rejoined the TechCrunch team and is already turning out killer stories at the intersection of cities and tech. One from last week:
Despite all the headaches that come with it, homeownership is still the American dream for many.
Divvy Homes ā a startup that is out to help more people realize that dream by buying a house and renting it back to them while they build equity ā has just closed on $110 million in Series C funding. Tiger Global Management led the round, which also saw participation from a slew of other investors, including GGV Capital, Moore Specialty Credit, JAWS Ventures and existing backers such asĀ a16z. The latest financing brings Divvyās total debt and equity raised since its 2017 inception to over $500 million, with about one-third of that raised in equity and two-thirds in debt.
The startup last raised $43 millionĀ in Series B fundingĀ from the likes of Affirm CEO Max Levchin and homebuilder Lennar (via its venture arm), among others. In fact, Divvy ā which was co-founded by Adena Hefets, Nick Clark and Alex Klarfeld ā was incubated in Levchinās startup studio HVF.
CityLab: What's in Andrew Yang's UBI Proposal for NYC
If youāre new to Urban Tech, donāt follow NY politics, or have had a busy last couple of months, former Presidential candidateĀ Andrew YangĀ is running for Mayor of NYC.
Urban Tech spoke with one of Yangās top advisors,Ā Bradley Tusk, last month. We covered a wide range of topics like why companies are moving out of New York and San Francisco ā and even Bitcoin ā Bradley also shared with me why he thinks Yangās campaign will be special for New York.
From Sarah Holder andĀ Olivia RockemanĀ at CityLab for more details on Yangās UBI plans:
By traditional metrics, Andrew Yangās 2020 presidential bid ended in defeat. But the political newcomerās legacy endures, as his campaign centerpiece,Ā universal basic income, slowly becomes more mainstream in cities across the country.Ā
Now, as Yang embarks on a new campaign for mayor of New York City,heās again made cash relief a pillar of his platform. Itās unclear yet how Yang will fare against an earlyĀ slate of nearly three dozen candidates ā thus far, heāsĀ garnered criticismĀ for wrongly identifying a bodega, and for comments viewed asĀ out of touchĀ with regular New Yorkers.But as during his national run, heās bringing serious policy attention to the concept of giving residents recurring cash payments, no strings attached.Ā
This time, heās talking less aboutĀ the threat of automation to Americaās jobs, and more aboutĀ the economic devastation wrought locally by the coronavirus. Yangās New York City proposal is not nearlyas expansive as theāFreedom Dividendā of $1,000 a month for all American adults he pitched as a presidential hopeful. And it would not be āuniversal,ā instead targeting half a million of New York Cityās lowest-income residents. Recipients would receive an average of $2,000 annually, depending on income,Ā costing the city $1 billion a year, with the potential for expansion through private funding.
The Wall Street Journal: Electric-Car Buzz Pushes Up Shares in Company With Nothing but Cash
Always keep in mind that the global stock marketĀ =!Ā a true picture of the global economy.
I think that distinction is apparent when you look at the EV auto market right now.Ā Editor note:Ā This is not investment advice ā and I am not qualified to give anyone advice on stocks bets or any investments to take.
FromĀ Eliot BrownĀ atĀ The Wall Street Journal:
When news emerged in December thatĀ Churchill CapitalĀ CorpĀ a blank-check company with no assets beyond its $2 billion in cash, had made an offer to acquire DirecTV, its stock barely moved.
After a report in January that Churchill was in talks to merge with the buzzy electric-vehicle startup Lucid Motors Inc., it was a different story.
Speculation about the possible combination spread on Reddit and other social-media platforms, fueled byĀ TeslaĀ Inc.āsĀ TSLAĀ +2.09%surge and a bet on a post-gasoline future. Traders sought additional information online and pointed to myriad bits of information to infer a deal was imminent. One online discussion prompted a trader to drive to an airport to photograph a jet that other traders conjectured was connected to the deal.
The stock has surged more than 220% since the report last month, the biggest-ever stock increase of a special-purpose acquisition company before announcing a merger, according to SPACinsider.com. Talks between the two companies are continuing, though a deal isnāt imminent, according to people familiar with the matter.
Several Interesting Social PostsĀ
Than for reading todayās edition!
As always, talk to you on Urban Tech Thursday ā our day for deep dives on companies, policies, themes, and players at the intersection of cities and tech.
āļøJT