Daily Crunch: Goldman Sachs calls for diverse boards
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
CEO David Solomon told CNBC that beginning this year, Goldman will no longer take companies public if they don’t have at least one “diverse” member on its board of directors.
Some will, perhaps rightly, see the announcement as little more than marketing. After all, it’s already widely viewed as unacceptable for a company to go public without at least one female board member and preferably far more diversity than that.
2. London’s Met Police switches on live facial recognition, flying in face of human rights concerns
The deployment comes after a multi-year period of trials by the Met and police in South Wales. The Met says its use of the controversial technology will be targeted to “specific locations … where intelligence suggests we are most likely to locate serious offenders.”
3. Sonos clarifies how unsupported devices will be treated
If you use a Zone Player, Connect, first-generation Play:5, CR200, Bridge or pre-2015 Connect:Amp, Sonos is still going to drop support for those devices. But at least the company is backing away from its initial decision that your entire ecosystem of Sonos devices would stop receiving updates, as well.
4. Meet the B2B videoconferencing startup that’s gone crazy for online dating
Eyeson’s website touts “no downloads, no lag, no hassle” video calls. But when TechCrunch came across founder Andreas Kröpfl last December, pitching hard in Startup Alley at Disrupt Berlin, he was most keen to talk about something else entirely: video dating.
5. Layoffs hit Q&A startup Quora
Quora, the 10-year-old question-and-answer company based in Mountain View, is laying off staff in its Bay Area and New York offices. CEO Adam D’Angelo did not disclose the scale of the layoffs.
6. As SaaS stocks set new records, Atlassian’s earnings show there’s still room to grow
Atlassian reported earnings after-hours yesterday and the market quickly pushed its shares up by more than 10%. Alex Wilhelm explores why. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
7. Wikipedia now has more than 6 million articles in English
The feat, which comes roughly 19 years after the website was founded, is a testament of “what humans can do together,” said Ryan Merkley, chief of staff at Wikimedia, the nonprofit organization that operates the online encyclopedia.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Goldman Sachs says it won’t take startups public without at least one ‘diverse’ director; it should…
