Author : zebethcontrol

Elon Musk ends Trump’s Twitter ban • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 20, 2022Posted in donald trump, Elon Musk, Social, TwitterNo Comments

Former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account has been reinstated following a permanent ban in January 2021. On Friday, new Twitter owner Elon Musk posted a poll asking if Trump should be allowed back on the platform. Just over 15 million people voted, with 51.8% voting in favor of reinstating Trump on Twitter. When the poll ended on Saturday, Trump’s account was unbanned. “The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated,” Musk tweeted. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei.” Trump’s controversial ban took place days after the January 6 riots on the U.S. Capitol, in which insurrectionists violently attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. “After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter wrote in a January 2021 blog post. Still, it is unclear whether the former president will actually return to Twitter. After he was deplatformed from mainstream social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, Trump created his own social platform called Truth Social. Image Credits: Donald Trump on Truth Social “Vote now with positivity, but don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere. Truth Social is special!” the former president posted on Truth Social this evening. Since taking over Twitter mere weeks ago, Elon Musk has already reversed suspensions on two high-profile accounts that were deplatformed for maliciously misgendering trans people: conservative satire publication The Babylon Bee and Jordan Peterson. He also reversed the ban on Kathy Griffin, a comedian who had impersonated Musk on Twitter. This story is developing…

Gopuff launches scheduled deliveries, gifting and in-store pickup • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 19, 2022Posted in Apps, goPuff, grocery delivery, on-demand delivery, Startups, TransportationNo Comments

Rapid grocery deliver startups like Getir, Gopuff and Gorillas, once heralded as the next big thing in on-demand ordering, are running up against logistical challenges that might very well be insurmountable. Even faced with competition and sky-high operating costs, though, they’re taking what steps they can to stick around. Case in point, Gopuff today launched features aimed at eliminating some of the platform’s biggest pain points, like the inability to schedule orders ahead or pick up orders from nearby stockrooms. Starting today, Gopuff customers can place an order when the Gopuff marketplace closes — the exact hours depend on the market — to have Gopuff deliver the order as soon as it reopens. (Needless to say, this doesn’t apply to locations where Gopuff delivers 24/7.) Alternatively, customers can schedule an order in advance for a specific date and time, similar to most major food delivery apps, or arrange for an order to be picked up where Gopuff offers retail and in-store shopping. The in-store shopping experience remains rather limited. According to Gopuff, only in BevMo! outlets — recall that Gopuff acquired BevMo!, the alcohol retailer, for $350 million in 2020 — and locations in New York City is shopping in-store an option. Strictly pickup of online orders will be offered at “many” locations, however, Gopuff says (it’s unclear just how many), with the hours mirroring that of in-app ordering. Gopuff is also introducing gifting, which will allow customers to add gifts to their cart for recipients both on and off the platform. Once they enter the recipient’s address, name and phone number and a gift message, both the gift recipient and the sender will receive a text message confirming a gift order is being prepared. The recipient will also receive SMS alerts when the order is close by, delivered or canceled. Somewhat concerningly, Gopuff didn’t respond to ZebethMedia’s question about whether gift recipients’ information will be retained for marketing or other purposes. Gopuff, like many app-based products and services, collects a broad swath of personal information that it reserves the right to use for ad targeting and promoting its subscription services, as well as sharing with third parties including business partners and “affiliates and subsidiaries.” The new features are only available via the latest Gopuff app (version 8.1.0), the company notes, which began rolling out nationwide this morning. While Gopuff has partnerships with Uber and Just Eat Takeaway to make its inventory perusable through Uber Eats and Grubhub, respectively, the company says that customers using those platforms won’t be able to take advantage of order scheduling, gifting and pick-up — despite the fact that Uber Eats and Grubhub support those features for most other businesses. Gopuff has had a rough go of it lately, no pun intended. Originally intending to IPO as soon as mid-2022 after tapping ex-Disney CEO Bob Iger as an advisor and investor, Gopuff this summer pulled out of Spain, one of its markets, to slash costs, and laid off 10% of its global workforce. Further cuts hit Gopuff in October — mainly affecting various customer service departments — as the startup reportedly looked to secure a credit line as high as $300 million to buffet against inflationary headwinds.

Amazon layoffs begin, Ticketmaster can’t handle Taylor Swift, and much of Twitter HQ quits • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 19, 2022Posted in Layoffs, Media & Entertainment, media and entertainment, Social, Week in ReviewNo Comments

Hello again! Time for another edition of Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap the week’s most read ZebethMedia stories in one quick and easy-to-skim blast. Get it in your inbox every Saturday AM by signing up here. (There won’t be a newsletter next Saturday because I’ll be off being thankful/eating leftovers/being thankful for leftovers, but we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming the weekend after.) If you read last week’s edition, you’ll notice some echoes here: more layoffs, more FTX drama, and more absurdity at Elon’s Twitter. Let’s dive in! —Greg most read Mass resignations at Twitter: After laying off thousands of Twitter employees over the past few weeks, Elon presented something of an ultimatum to those remaining: commit to being “extremely hardcore” as “part of the new Twitter” or leave with three months severance…and, well, a lot of people took door number 2. It’s unclear at this point (even to Twitter, it seems) how many declined the ultimatum, but all indications are that it was hundreds/thousands. SBF DMs: For some reason the founder of FTX — the once massive crypto exchange that imploded last week — decided to have an impromptu interview with a Vox reporter by way of DM. Seemingly without any agreement that any of it was off the record, said DMs were, of course, quickly published. His biggest regret in all this? Weirdly, filing for bankruptcy. Evernote gets bought: Evernote was once something of an App Store darling — an early go-to example of design, quality, and company leadership. Then after a series of pricing/privacy/design changes pissed off the user base, it just sort of…faded away. This week the company was acquired by Italian app developer Bending Spoons, in what Kyle Wiggers calls “the end of an era.” Amazon layoffs: Rumors suggested layoffs were on the way at Amazon, with some estimates suggesting upward of 10,000 would be let go. This week the layoffs began, with CEO Andy Jassy writing in a memo that the layoffs will continue into next year. Ticketmaster face-plants: Tickets for Taylor Swift’s first tour in years went on presale this week, and Ticketmaster, the website that no one on earth is happy to use, couldn’t keep up with the Swifties. Things went so awry with the gated presale that the scheduled public sale was outright canceled. You know your site outage is bad when it relights the political fire to break up your company’s overwhelming dominance. audio roundup Podcasts! We’ve got them! People seem to like them! Or a lot of people are just downloading/subscribing for the sake of inflating our collective ego. That’s okay too. Here’s what’s up in TC podcasts lately: Live from our ZebethMedia Sessions: Crypto event during one of crypto’s wildest weeks in ages, the Chain Reaction crew “tore up the script” and talked all about Sam Bankman-Fried’s “surreal, absurd” DM conversation with Vox. What does a corporate comms team do? The Equity team sat down with a pair of deeply experienced comms people to learn how all that behind-the-scenes machinery works. ZebethMedia+ Two states received 80% of venture funds raised: “Through the third quarter of 2022, U.S. venture firms raised $150.9 billion across 593 funds,” writes Rebecca Szkutak. Where did it all go? Rebecca breaks down the stats. A look at Sateliot’s Series A deck: 90% of the planet has no cell connectivity. What if you need an IoT device to phone home from, say, the middle of the ocean? That’s the idea behind Sateliot, which raised an $11.4 million Series A earlier this year. The company shared the pitch deck it used to raise with our resident pitch expert Haje Jan Kamps, who explored “the good and the bad of this high-flying space deck.”

You shouldn’t skim over gross dollar retention • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 19, 2022Posted in customer retention, Enterprise, openview venture partners, Startups, TechCrunch Exchange newsletter, The ExchangeNo Comments

Welcome to The ZebethMedia Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily ZebethMedia+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. For SaaS companies, net dollar retention is on investor radar more than ever. But it shouldn’t eclipse gross dollar retention: If you are not tracking both metrics, you could be fighting to add new customers into a leaky bucket. Let’s explore. — Anna Gross dollar retention is “what protects you during really challenging times” “Gross retention really speaks to the true stickiness and health of your customer base. It’s what protects you during really challenging times,” growth stage VC Rene Stewart said in a sponsored talk at ZebethMedia Disrupt in 2021. And yet, the co-head of Vista Equity Partners’ growth-stage Endeavor Fund added, most VCs she talked to “probably only care about net retention.” However, her comments were made in 2021, not 2022. “Challenging times” have come upon us since then, making investors and founders more mindful of business fundamentals. Alex and I have already written about the importance of net dollar retention when efficient growth is the new holy grail. But how does it differ from gross dollar retention, and how has the latter been faring at most tech companies? Let’s dive in.

A love letter to micro funds, the backbone and future of venture capital

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 19, 2022Posted in EC venture capital, fundraising, micro funds, PitchBook Data, Startups, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

While the Sequoias and the Andreessen Horowitzes of the world continue to swell in size, their influence on venture capital may be heading in the opposite direction as micro funds increase their impact on the industry. Whether you define micro funds as below $50 million or sub-$25 million, these are truly the funds that power the future of the industry. They help venture hubs take off, bring expertise and specialization to the market, and fill a role in the venture capital ecosystem that larger firms simply can’t. They also can be credited with getting a lot of the large unicorn and public companies we know today off the ground, as many of them received some of their first dollars from a micro fund: Robinhood (Elefund), Coinbase (Initialized Capital, which was investing out of a $7 million fund at the time) and Flexport (Anorak Ventures). I’ve written about the rise of micro funds in the U.S. before, but when Sweetwood Ventures reached out to me a month ago about its new fund-of-funds strategy to back nano — sub-$15 million — funds in Israel, I was intrigued. I hadn’t realized that the explosion of micro funds extended beyond the U.S. market, but Sweetwood general partner Amit Kurz told me it was one he had been tracking for a few years now.

Drive Capital’s investors hit a fork in the road • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 19, 2022Posted in Chris Olsen, Drive Capital, Mark Kvamme, sequoia capital, Venture, venture capitalNo Comments

Drive Capital was founded by two former Sequoia Capital Partners looking to start anew in the Midwest. But investors in the Columbus, Oh.-based firm have had a bumpy ride of late, and according to our sources, they aren’t enjoying it. It’s a dramatic turn for Drive, which announced $1 billion in capital commitments back in June, a healthy amount for a 10-year-old firm whose mission it is to invest nearly everywhere in the U.S. outside of Silicon Valley. In fact, in June, the firm — cofounded by veteran VCs Mark Kvamme and Chris Olsen — seemed to be riding high, with a couple of apparent wins and news funds that brought Drive’s assets under management to more than $2 billion. Yet dating back to September — soon after we talked with Olsen about VC doubling back to California — we heard rumblings about a rift, along with separate plans that Kvamme was making. Then came the announcement last month that the team was splitting up. At first, the story was that Kvamme, who logged more than twice as many years at Sequoia than Olsen, was transitioning to “partner emeritus” because, as he told a Columbus Business First, 10 years and four funding cycles was longer than he originally planned to lead Drive Capital. (This was probably a big surprise to the investors who’d just agreed to let Drive invest their capital.) This week, the other shoe dropped. Columbus Business First reported that Kvamme, who races cars, is not zipping off to semi-retirement but instead talking with potential backers about a new fund, the Ohio Fund, which will apparently invest in multiple asset classes, including other funds, public stocks, private companies in Ohio, and infrastructure. The idea is to “focus on the future economic vitality of Ohio,” said an unnamed source to the outlet. Olsen now says that he’s surprised by this development. We obtained a letter that Drive sent out to its limited partners tonight that reads: Dear Limited Partner,This week an article was published indicating that our Partner Emeritus Mark Kvamme is launchinga new investment fund. All of us at Drive were surprised by this news, as we are sure you were too.While we will not send you a note each time a new article about Mark is published, we feel that, inthe spirit of being a good partner, it’s appropriate to provide you with a transparent update aboutthis situation and our relationship with Mark.After the article was published we spoke with Mark and learned that the prospect of him raising anew fund was leaked to a journalist from an unknown source. According to Mark, he has not yetdetermined what he is going to do next. Raising a new type of fund is something he is considering,along with other options in public service and personal endeavors.We have a formal separation agreement with Mark that prevents him from starting a competitivefirm or fund to Drive. Please know that this was a heavily negotiated agreement to ensure that itsubstantially protects Drive, our Limited Partners’ interests, and everything we are building towardat Drive.Again, we do not intend to communicate with you each time a new article is written about Mark,but in this instance, we thought it appropriate to provide clarification. Should you have anyquestions, please do not hesitate to reach out [contact information redacted by ZebethMedia]. Sincerely,The Drive Team Olsen declined to comment for this story; we reached out to Kvamme and did not receive a response. But it’s complicated, to say the least. According to our sources, part of the split traces to a relationship between Olsen and Yasmine Lacaillade, who was Drive’s COO for nearly seven years before leaving the firm in April to launch her own investment outfit. Asked about this, a Drive spokesman downplayed any tensions that may have arisen from a romantic relationship between the two, writing: “Yes you heard right in that Chris and Yas are in a relationship. That’s been public knowledge for some time. No comments beyond that.” Like most venture outfits, Drive also finds its portfolio in rougher shape than a year or two ago. One of Drive’s biggest exits to date has been that of Root Insurance, a now seven-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based insurance company that specializes in automotive coverage and that staged a traditional IPO in November 2020. Though the shares performed initially, they’ve tanked since, currently priced at roughly $7 each after a reverse stock split, down from $486 per share the day the company went public. Olsen stepped off the board in November of last year. The other big star of Drive’s portfolio currently — Olive AI — is trying to overcome its own challenges. The Columbus-based healthcare automation startup, founded in 2012, has long framed its extensive history of pivots (more than 30 to date) as an inspirational story of trying, then trying again. Olive was rewarded by investors for its willingness to shift gears, too. It has raised a staggering $902 million over the years and said last year that it was valued at $4 billion. But the outfit, a robotic process automation company that aimed to take on hospital workers’ most tedious tasks, was never all that it appeared, according to a series of damning Axios pieces; and by September, the wheels began to come off. Most notably, the company’s chief financial officer and chief product officer were abruptly fired, following out the door numerous C-level executives who also left this fall, including its president, a senior director of operations, its EVP of operations and its SVP of payer product strategy. Olive AI has since said it will sell a portion of its products and services to Rotera, a company built out of Olive’s own venture studio. Limited partners aren’t happy about these developments, but as far as we’re aware, they have not talked in earnest about taking action and it seems unlikely that they will. At least, it’s exceedingly rare for limited partners to cancel their capital commitments and only slightly more common for VCs

Google introduces Workspaces Spaces Chats conversations summaries • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 18, 2022Posted in Enterprise, Google, Robotics & AI, summarizationNo Comments

Having trouble keeping up with the conversations in your Chats in your Workspace Spaces? Google feels your pain, and is “excited to introduce conversation summaries in Google Chat for messages in Spaces.” Now your conversations in Spaces Chats will be summarized right in your Premium Workspace. The issue is, of course, that while Chats in Spaces are perfectly good for conversations, in larger Workspaces these Chats conversations can be difficult to keep up with unless you’re always checking your Spaces for new conversations in Chats. You know the drill – you log into your Workspace, click over to your Spaces, pull up the Chats, and your conversations are just too numerous and long-winded to catch up on! You can’t very well tell your Workspace Spaces conversationalists to leave off chatting in your Chats. Conversation is the very reason Chats exist, that’s why they call it Spaces! I mean Chats! Fortunately Google is bringing its expertise in communications apps to remedy this conversational crisis in your Workspace Spaces Chats. Starting soon, the messages in your conversations will be summarized right in your Chats, inside Spaces in Workspaces! Selected Premium Workspaces, anyway. Google put a summary in your Premium Workspace Spaces Chat conversations. You read that correctly. The Conversation Summary of the messages in your Workspace Spaces Chat will appear at the top of the Chats within Spaces, summarizing any unread chatter in the Chats conversation. Click on the summary of the Spaces Chats and you’ll jump straight to the conversation, even if it’s already visible and the Conversation summary has only summarized a few lines of the Chats conversation. If you use Spaces in your Workspace, and tend to have conversations in the Chats of those Spaces, Conversation Summary in Google Chat could be just the thing to keep those chatty Chats summarized. Sadly, this doesn’t appear to be available for Google Chat, though — which is to say regular Google Chat (that is, the newish one in your Gmail that used to be Hangouts, possibly), only Google Chat for Spaces in Workspaces, and (don’t forgot) select Premium Workspaces at that. Definitely not Meet messaging. So you probably don’t have access. But you might eventually, if Workspace Spaces Chats are still something that exist in six months. (I’m checking with Google on this.) Check out the technical details on how the Google AI team quickly and effectively summarizes conversations in Chats in Spaces in Workspaces right here. 🙂

Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison for Theranos fraud • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 18, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, elizabeth holmes, TheranosNo Comments

Ten months after she was found guilty of fraud, the former youngest self-made female billionaire Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11.25 years in prison, plus three years of supervised release. At her trial, she was found guilty on four of 11 counts related to defrauding investors, but she was not found guilty of defrauding patients. The former founder and CEO of Theranos, Holmes could have faced up to 20 years in prison for each of the four counts. By comparison, former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud, but was released after a bit more than four years. At the courthouse in San Jose, both sides of United States vs. Elizabeth Holmes presented their cases regarding whether Judge Edward Davila can consider Holmes’ “reckless disregard” of patients in sentencing. Davila rejected that proposal, since at the original trial, Holmes was only found guilty of defrauding investors. Regardless, it took over four hours before Holmes’ sentence was decided. Alex Schultz, father of whistleblower Tyler Schultz, spoke to the court, recounting how his son slept with a knife under his pillow when he suspected he was being followed by Theranos’ private investigators. Alex Schultz says Holmes hired an investigator to follow his son Tyler Schultz and he slept with a knife under his pillow b/c he thought someone was going to kill him. “My family home was desecrated by Elizabeth and the lawyers,” he says. — Dorothy Atkins (@doratki) November 18, 2022 Then, Holmes herself spoke. “I regret my failings with every cell of my body,” she said. That was when Judge Davila delivered his decision. Holmes is expected to report to prison in April. Currently, she is pregnant with her second child. Fraud at Theranos Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford. She pitched investors and partners on technology that would revolutionize the healthcare system — instead of drawing blood intravenously and waiting days for test results, her technology would prick a tiny bit of blood and instantly conduct dozens of tests on it. Soon she was the CEO of a company with a $10 billion valuation, but it turned out that the technology didn’t work. Theranos has been defunct since 2018, but Holmes’ criminal trial only began last fall after delays due to the pandemic and the birth of her first child. According to a letter from Holmes’ husband in a public court filing, she is now pregnant with a second child. The filing includes 282 pages of other letters from Holmes’ friends, family and business associates, ranging from childhood photos and drawings to notes from high-profile supporters like Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and venture capitalist Tim Draper. “Although there is substantial popular outcry against Theranos and Elizabeth, the attitude in much of the venture world is very different,” Draper wrote. “Venture-backed startup companies often announce and deliver products to the market before they are ready.” The former CEO’s sentencing was further delayed because her lawyers tried to request a new trial, arguing that new evidence had come to light after former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff visited Holmes at home in an attempt to find closure. Rosendorff, who worked at Theranos between 2013 and 2014, testified for six days last year during Holmes’ four-month trial. With his highly technical knowledge of the inner workings of Theranos’ labs, Rosendorff’s testimony was key to the trial. In court, he said that Holmes knew that Theranos’ technology produced inaccurate blood test results, yet she pushed for it to be used on patients anyway. After repeatedly raising his concerns about the faulty technology, he ultimately quit Theranos. Holmes’ lawyers alleged that when Rosendorff visited her home this summer, he expressed guilt that he made Theranos seem worse than it was in court. But Judge Edward Davila did not find merit to these allegations. Rosendorff affirmed once again that last year’s testimony was accurate. The former lab director clarified that he felt sorry for Holmes’ child, who will grow up without a mother if she is sent to prison, but not for Holmes herself. Holmes’ former boyfriend and Theranos COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani awaits sentencing. He was convicted on twelve out of twelve counts in his own trial, where the jury found him guilty of defrauding both patients and investors.

Booz Allen says former staffer downloaded employees’ personal data • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 18, 2022Posted in Booz Allen Hamilton, cybersecurity, data breach, defense contractors, government contracts, SecurityNo Comments

U.S. government contractor Booz Allen Hamilton has disclosed that a former staffer downloaded potentially tens of thousands of employees’ personal information from the company’s internal network. The government and defense contractor said that one of its staffers, while still employed by the company, downloaded a report containing the personal information of “active employees as of March 29, 2021.” A copy of Booz Allen’s website archived in March 2021 said the company had 27,600 employees, many of which are contracted to U.S. government, military and intelligence agencies and hold high-level security clearances. The notice said that the report downloaded by the employee contained, “your name, Social Security number, compensation, gender, race, ethnicity, date of birth, and U.S. Government security clearance eligibility and status as of March 29, 2021.” Booz Allen said the report containing the personal information was “improperly stored on an internal SharePoint site,” but did not say what circumstances led to the discovery of the data, only that it “recently learned” of the staffer’s activity. The data breach notice, filed with the California attorney general’s office this week, said Booz Allen discovered the data exposure on April 14, 2022. The data breach notice said the now-former staffer acted “in direct contradiction” of the company’s policies, but that the company does “not believe that the individual intended to misuse any of the personal information in the report to cause harm to Booz Allen employees.” It’s not clear if the individual has been charged with any criminal offenses.

VinFast’s bid to attract U.S. buyers includes 4 all-electric SUVs and maybe a sports car • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 18, 2022Posted in EV, LA Auto Show, Transportation, VinFastNo Comments

VinFast showcased four battery-electric SUVs at the LA Auto Show this week and even hinted at a sports car as the Vietnam-based automaker pushes ahead with its plan to break into the U.S. market. The four EVs, which ranged in size from small five-passenger crossovers to large 7-passenger SUVs, is part of the company’s effort to resonate with U.S. consumers. In an EV market that now has just about every automaker jumping in, it may take more than simply offering SUVs. Although choice is part of the plan, according to Craig Westbrook, the Chief Service Officer of VinFast U.S. Vinfast’s plan is to flood the space with plenty of options so that Americans get familiar with the new brand, Westbrook told ZebethMedia. The executive also hinted that by this time next year, VinFast may show off a sports car for the U.S. market. “We need a product offensive,” Westbrook said in an interview at the LA Auto Show. “We need to come to market strong. We don’t need to trickle down or ease out models and buying opportunities for the few. So within probably less than a 12-month period, you’ll have all four models, all SUVs across these four major size and price segments.” Vinfast expects to bring two SUVs, the VF6 and VF7, to market by early 2023. The VinFast SUVs Vinfast VF6 VinFast showed off the VF6, VF7, VF8, and VF9 at the LA Auto Show, and offered ride alongs in the five passenger VF8 outside the convention center. Unlike last year’s auto show, where the company showed off global vehicles the VFe36 and VFe35 with no interiors, the VF6 and VF7 had interiors that customers and media could poke around to get a feel for what the new-to-the-U.S. company might deliver. In the two short laps around the tiny test track in front of the LA Convention Center the VF8 felt like any other EV crossover — the weight of the battery pack that VinFast estimates will get up to 292 miles of range, is apparent, especially over uneven bumps. The vegan leather interior and large central screen make the interior feel luxurious and surprisingly ample. A large dual pane roof makes the backseat feel spacious and open, and the ride in the rear is equally engaging. Westbrook said that the VF8 and VF9 vehicles are currently on their way to the U.S. and should be delivered to buyers in early 2023. Globally, VinFast says its taken 65,000 reservations for the VF8 and VF9, but the company didn’t have a specific breakdown for North America at the time of our interview. Most of those orders are coming to California, according to Westbrook, and customers, are according to Westbrook’s observation, are mostly those who are making the first time EV-leap. California focused “Most of the pre-orders have taken place here, [California],” Westbrook said. “California is easy. This is where headquarters are and where a port is, and so, we’re going to serve these customers first. Obviously we want to look at all our customers, but that’s going to be the first way that we can try to splash into the market is effectively as possible.” VinFast currently has six retail locations open in California, all located in shopping malls where people can come in and check out the vehicles, much like a Tesla store. Westbrook says that some of the first vehicles coming off the boat from Vietnam will go to stores so that more potential customers can get into the vehicles and test drive them. Westbrook said that many of the reservation holders have not come to the point in the buying journey where they have to decide between opting for the company’s somewhat controversial battery leasing program, or buying their vehicle outright. When asked about the reception that reservation holders had to the battery leasing option, Westbrook said “We’ve seen sort of growing acceptance and interest in the option.” During the presentation at the LA Auto Show, Westrbook noted that Vinfast recently took an order for 2,500 vehicles from the car subscription company, Autonomy, which generally deals only in Teslas. New warranty and service options VinFast’s goal is to make the transition to battery-electric as barrier free as possible for new customers. Westbrook said, and to that end, the company announced more details of its bumper-to-bumper warranty, offering an industry-leading 10-year and 125,000-mile of coverage and a 10-year, unlimited mile battery warranty that the company says is designed to offer EV customers peace of mind as they transition to electric driving. The company also announced a mobile service that will come to customers or offer ride share options if customers get stranded. “I would say that when it comes to quality, people have an expectations, and we have to meet them,” Westbrook said “We do understand that that when you purchase car over here and our service point is over there, you may not want to come to us. So we can help you, right? And that’s part of our model. It’s not being forced into something. We realize that’s what you want as a customer.”