Technology

SaaStr, the venture firm that puts on the largest conference for SaaS companies, postponed its SaaStr Annual 2020 conference today amid concerns from local and national officials around large gatherings in light of the COVID-19 virus. The event was scheduled to take place next week.

On March 5th, Santa Clara County issued updated guidelines that included, &[Minimizing] the number of employees working within armlength of one another, including minimizing or canceling large in-person meetings and conferences.&

Company founder Jason Lemkin said his team was prepared to go forward and had put stringent safeguards in place. &We put in place health and safety measures no one else in the industry equaled, but once the County made its statement, we needed to reschedule,& he told TechCrunch.

They outlined the health guidelines for the event in an article on the company website earlier this week, including not allowing anyone from a hot zone to attend, passport checks to enforce that, temperature checks and more. As Lemkin tweeted:

The event will now be folded into the companyfall conference, which they say will be even bigger now, while replacing the companyannual Scale conference. &Following that [guidance from Santa Clara County] and guidance from the CDC, and the growing escalation of the Covid-19 outbreak around the world and in the United States, SaaStr Annual must now be rescheduled and merged with our existing fall event into a new, less formal ‘SaaStr Bi-Annual& to take place in September 2020,& the company wrote in a statement.

Lemkin expressed frustration with authorities today on Twitter about the lack of leadership on this:

The event included some of the biggest names in SaaS, from Jennifer Tejada of PagerDuty and Aaron Levie of Box and many more. Itan event thatdesigned to help SaaS companies of all sizes discuss the issues facing them, in one place, with panels, interviews and sessions. Many other tech conferences are being cancelled as well, including SXSW.

The US telecom T-Mobile has revealed that it fell victim to a security breach that impacted its customers as well as its employees.

The company provided more details on what occurred in a notification to its customers, saying:

“Our Cybersecurity team recently identified and shut down a malicious attack against our email vendor that led to u

Extra Crunch is now past its first birthday. Over the past year, we&ve learned a lot, made some changes and generally found our groove.

Toward the end of 2019, former TechCrunch writer Alex Wilhelm returned to the publication to help grow Extra Crunch, though he still writes for the main site as well. His daily columns dig into the financial side of the startup world and have resonated deeply with our audience, so I wanted to talk to him about what hedoing and why more people might want to read his work.

Normally, we&d run a Q-A like this on Extra Crunch, but we&ve removed the paywall so everyone can learn a bit about how we approach our work at TechCrunch so we can better serve our audience of founders, operators, tech fans and investors.

Read on for an unvarnished look at our process, from two of our own. Cheers!

Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm

Chatting with Alex

Walter Thompson: I&d like to introduce you to readers. What is your daily column about?

Alex Wilhelm: I&m always trying to figure out whatgoing on and why. And I think that one thing that the news media does traditionally quite well, is to present everyone with a set of facts.

But one thing that the news has always been hesitant to do is tell people why they might care or why things are happening, because they don&t want to lose their journalistic status. I don&t share that perspective. And so my morning column is essentially me thinking out loud about markets, trends and news events that I&m trying to piece together into themes and narratives to help explain the world around me on topics that I find interesting. Itreally just a process of thinking out loud, trying to learn, and put the LEGOs together to make something a bit larger than the parts themselves.

Who should be reading your daily column? Is it just for Silicon Valley insiders?

Itdesigned to help people who want to be more on the inside. I&m writing for the people in the world of technology, and the financial world that encompasses startups, to better understand where they work and how their jobs function inside the context of business.

If you work for a startup — you know, seed through late-stage — it probably is something that you might want to read, because you&ll better understand whodoing well, and business models, where money is going, how exits are happening, what your options might be worth and maybe we&ll talk about the company you work for. So if you&re in that area, I would read it, but if you&re not, itprobably wildly esoteric and not tailored for you.

Do you think your column could help someone become a better founder, or are you offering more specialized knowledge?

If founders wanted to understand more about the world around them, it is a useful read.

You can certainly build a company with blinders on and just run straight forward. And if everything goes well, you&ll look like a genius. But if you did want to kind of maybe look around a bit more — I cover transportation, fintech and venture trends, and you know, the Chinese market and stock market trades — I try to bring all this stuff in to explain whatgoing on. If you wanted a broader view, I hope that my column will help. If it doesn&t, I&m failing.

Any interest in using what you&ve learned writing about startups to found your own company?

I worked for a bunch of startups. I worked for a startup in Chicago during college. Then I also worked for a startup in Portland and I founded a company with some friends called Contenture. TechCrunch covered us back in the day when I was in college, and the dissolution of that startup got me into writing. So I guess I rephrase your question, &am I willing to go back into building companies?& And the answer is no.

I love what I do. And I&m very, very lucky to get to do it. And this is the job that I want. So at least today, no. Maybe down the road as my perspectives, you know, change maybe, but I love writing. I get to write about stuff that I find fascinating.

Use discount code ALEXat checkout to save 25% off the price of an annual or two-year Extra Crunch subscription.

If you&re a founder wholooking at the novel coronavirus, a possible recession, real uncertainty in public markets and more VCs who are demanding profitability, is this a good time to launch a startup? Or is this a bad time? Or is it just as dodgy as it ever was?

Ita really good question. I&ve been talking with many people about this, in particular, Elizabeth Yin, who was breaking down the two-tiered founder world — how some people can raise infinite money and some people are kind of starving.

I think ita pretty good time to found a company because even if the fundraising market does change and become a bit more stiff and strict, it will be nothing compared to how bad it was in 2008. And nothing as bad as it was 2000 and 2001. So theregoing to be more capital and more risk tolerance. And sure, maybe you won&t be quite as fantastic, but it&ll still be good.

And that means that you have the fuel to build whatever it is that you think is going to change the world if ita good idea. I would get out there and go do it. &Good companies are born in bad times& as a theme isn&t wrong. They&re also founded in good times. But if you&ve got a really good idea and a solid team in mind, I don&t think the macro conditions should change the way you think about building a business.

Is there anything you wanted to add before we wrap up? We&re doing this interview for readers who aren&t already Extra Crunch subscribers. Why do you think they should sign up?

Extra Crunch is a grand experiment, and one thatbeen a real pleasure to get to be a small part of. I want to thank everyone whocome along for the ride so far. And if you haven&t yet, come over to try it.

TechCrunch as an organization is now doing three things at once. We&ve always done news and events. And now we&re doing something a little bit different at the same time. So thank you for everyone whotaking this up with us. And we&re going to earn everyone elsesupport and time as soon as we can.

Dell's semi-annual sale is happening right now and includes massive savings on best-selling laptops and electronics. Dell's top laptop deal is the XPS 13 that's on sale for $799.99. That's a massive $400 discount and a fantastic price for the powerful laptop.

The Dell XPS 13 laptop features a 13.3-inch FHD infinity edge display and packs 8GB of

The media, culture, and tech showcase SXSW 2020 has been canceled due to coronavirus concerns, making it the latest major event this year to shut down rather than risk spreading infection.

The city of Austin pulled the plug on SXSW, according to a blog post on the event’s site, which clarifies who made the final call with some curious language: 

“As

There's no doubt that AMD is going strong with some of the best processors on the market. And right now, there's a hefty discount that cuts 16% off the Ryzen 9 3900X. That might seem like a small percentage, but given the processor's $499 starting price, the discount saves you close to $100.