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Y Combinators Demo Day was a bit different this time around.

As concerns grew over the spread of COVID-19, Y Combinator shifted the event format away from the two-day gathering in San Francisco weve gotten used to, instead opting to have its entire class debut to invited investors and media via YCs Demo Day website.

In a bit of a surprise twist, YC also moved Demo Day forward one week, citing accelerated pacing from investors. Alas, this meant switching up its plan for each company to have a recorded pitch on the Demo Day website; instead, each company pitched via slides, a few paragraphs outlining what theyre doing and the traction theyre seeing, and team bios. Its unclear so far how this new format in combination with the rapidly evolving investment climate will impact this class.

As we do with each class, weve collected our notes on each company based on information gathered from their pitches, websites and, in some cases, our earlier coverage of them.

To make things a bit easier to read, weve split things up by category rather than have it be one huge wall of text. These are the companies that are working on hardware, robotics, AI, machine learning or tools for developers. You can find the other categories (such as biotech, consumer, and fintech) here.

Datasaur: A tool meant to help humans label machine data data sets more accurately and efficiently through things like auto-correct, auto-suggest and keyboard hotkeys. Its free for individual labelers, $100 per month for teams of up to 20 labelers, with custom pricing for larger teams.

1build: Automatic, data-driven job cost estimates for construction companies. You upload your plans, and 1build says it can prepare accurate bids in minutes. The company projects a revenue run rate of over $600,000, and says it has completed estimates for mega companies like Amazon, Starbucks and 7-Eleven.

Handl: An API for turning paper documents including handwritten ones into structured data ready to be plunked into a database or CRM. While the company says that around 85% of its processing is handled by their AI, its backed by humans to validate data when the AIs confidence is low. Nine months after launch, the company is seeing an ARR of $0.9 million.

Zumo Labs: Uses game engines to generate pre-labeled training data for computer vision systems. By synthesizing the data rather than collecting it from photos/videos of the real world, the company says it can create massive data sets faster, cheaper and without privacy issues.

Teleo: Retrofits existing construction equipment to allow operators to control them remotely. The company says it has built a fully functional teleoperated loader since being founded three months ago, and plans to charge construction companies a flat monthly fee per vehicle. The companys co-founders were previously head of Hardware Engineering and director of Product Manager at Lyft, with both having worked on Googles Street View team.

Menten AI: Menten AI says its using quantum computing and machine learning combined with synthetic biology to design new protein-based drugs.

Turing Labs Inc.: Automated, simulated testing of different formulas for consumer goods like soaps and deodorant. Home products and cosmetics can be months of work for R&D labs. Turing has built an AI engine that helps with this process much like the AI engines used in drug discovery cutting down the time to days. Its already working with some of the biggest CPG companies in the world. You can find our previous coverage on Turing here.

Segmed: Segmed is building data sets for AI-driven medical research. Rather than requiring each and every researcher to individually partner with hospitals and imaging facilities, Segmed partners with these organizations (currently over 50) and standardizes, labels and anonymizes the data.

Ardis AI: Ardis AI wants to build the foundation of artificial general intelligence technology that read and comprehend text like a human. By combining neural networks, symbolic reasoning and new natural language processing techniques, Ardis AI can serve companies that dont want to hire teams to do data extraction and labeling.

Agnoris: Agnoris analyzes a restaurants point-of-sale data to recommend changes to pricing, delivery menus and staffing. For $3,600 per year per restaurant location, Agnoris claims to be able to raise profits by 20%. The company started after the founder opened a restaurant that was packed yet losing money, so it built machine learning tools to improve margins and now its selling that software to all eateries.

Froglabs: Froglabs provides weather forecasting AI to businesses for predicting solar and wind energy production, delivery delays, staffing shortages, sales demand and food availability. By ingesting petabytes of weather data, it can save companies money by ensuring their logistics arent disrupted. Founded by a long-time Googler who started its Project Loon internet-beaming weather balloons, its now signing up e-commerce, retail, rideshare, restaurant and event businesses.

PillarPlus: PillarPlus is a platform that automates the blueprint-designing phase of a building project. It takes a design from an architect or contractor and maps out mechanical, fire, electrical and plumbing details, and estimates the bill of materials and project cost, steps that otherwise take months of work.

Glisten: Glisten uses computer vision and machine learning technologies to develop better, more consistent data sets for e-commerce companies. Its first product is an AI-based tool to populate and enrich sparse product data. Find our previous coverage of Glisten here.

nextmv: Nextmv gives its customers the ability to create their own logistics algorithms automatically allowing businesses to optimize fleets and manage routes internally.

Visual One: Movement-detecting security cameras can bring up a lot of false positives: theres motion, yes, but not necessarily anything harmful. Visual One has built an AI platform that integrates with home security cameras to read the specific movements that they detect. Owners can create customised alerts so they get notifications only for what they care about. The companys software can check for furniture-destroying pets, package-lifting thieves, the death-defying antics of toddlers and more. Find our previous coverage of Visual One here.

PostEra: Medicinal chemistry-as-a-service is the idea here: PostEras platform can design and synthesize molecules faster and at a lower cost than the typical R&D lab, speeding up the research time it takes to test new combinations in the drug discovery process.

Cyberdontics: Robotics have already revolutionized surgery, courtesy of companies like da Vinci-maker, Intuitive. Cyberdontics is aimed at doing the same for oral surgery, beginning with crowns one of the more expensive and time-intensive procedures. The company says its robot is capable of performing the generally two-hour procedure in 15 minutes, charging a mere $140 for the job.

Avion: Focused on inhabitants of difficult to reach areas in Africa, Avion is building a drone-based delivery system. The plans consist of medium and long-range medical drones tied to a centralized hub. The drones are hybrid and autonomous with vertical take-off capabilities, able to take 5-kg payloads as far as 150 kms.

SOMATIC: Industrial bathroom cleaning is a prime dull/dirty candidate to be replaced by automation. Somatic builds large robots that are trained to clean restrooms via VR. The system sprays and wipes down surfaces and is capable of opening doors and riding up and down in the elevator. Find our previous coverage of SOMATIC here.

RoboTire: Anyone whos ever sat in a service shop waiting room knows how time-intensive the process can be. RoboTire promises to cut the wait time from 60 minutes down to 10 for a set of four tires. The company has begun piloting the technology in locations around the U.S. Find our previous coverage of RoboTire here.

Morphle: Designed to replace outdated analog microscopes, Morphles system uses robotic automation to improve imaging. The startup processes higher-resolution images than far pricier systems and with a much smaller failure rate. Morphle has begun selling its system to labs in India.

Daedalus: Founded by an early engineer at OpenAI, Daedalus is building autonomous software to allow industrial robots to operate without human programming, beginning with CNC machines. The company projects that it can improve productivity in the metal machining market by 5x.

Exosonic, Inc.: Exosonic makes supersonic commercial aircraft that dont have to produce a loud sonic boom, so they can be flown over land. Its goal is a plane that can fly from SF to NYC in three hours. The CEO worked on NASAs low-boom X-59 aircraft while at Lockheed Martin. Exosonic now has letters of intent from a major airline and two Department of Defense groups, plus a $300,000 U.S. Air Force contract.

Nimbus: Founded by a serial entrepreneur and based in Ann Arbor, Mich., Nimbus is developing the next-generation vehicle platform for urban transportation. Founder Lihang Nong previously launched the fuel-injection systems developer PicoSpray and is now looking to answer the question, Can a vehicle be several times more space and energy efficient than todays cars while actually being more comfortable to ride in?

UrbanKisaan: UrbanKisaan is a vertical farming operation based in India that delivers fresh produce subscriptions to households. Its farms of stacked-up hydroponic tables can be located near cities with just 1% of the land usage of traditional agriculture, and there are no pesticides necessary. In a market with a growing middle class seeking healthy foods, delivering from farm-to-door could let UrbanKisaan control quality and its margins.

Talyn Air: Two former SpaceX engineers have developed a long-range electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for passengers and cargo. The startup has created an electric fixed-wing aircraft that is caught mid-air with a custom winged drone during take offs and landings, an approach that its founders say give this aircraft three times the range of its competitors, at 350 miles.

BuildBuddy: Two ex-Googlers want to provide a Google-style development environment to all by building an open-source UI/feature set on top of Googles Bazel software. The company says that their solution speeds up build times by up to 10x. Its free for independent developers, with the price scaling from $4 per user to $49 per user depending on the size of the team and the features required.

Dataline: Meant to let websites gather analytics data from users who are using ad-blocking tools. Claiming that most ad-blocker users care mostly about display ads or cross-site tracking, the company says that first-party analytics gets hit as collateral damage. By acting as a smart proxy that runs on a sub-domain, Dataline avoids most ad-blocking systems (for now, presumably.)

Cortex: Many modern online software applications are powered by countless independent, purpose-focused tools or microservices. Cortex monitors your apps microservices to automatically flag the right person (hooking into Datadog/Slack/PagerDuty/etc.) when one breaks.

apitracker: Even if your website seems to be loading fine, the APIs you use to make it work might be having trouble, breaking things in not so obvious ways. Apitracker tracks your APIs. It monitors the APIs you use, alerting you when one of them starts to fail and providing insights into their overall performance.

Freshpaint: Freshpaints autotrack system collects all pageviews/clicks/etc. across your site, allowing you to push it into tools like Google Analytics/Facebook Pixel etc. retroactively without requiring your dev team to make manual trackers for each event. The base plan is free for sites with fewer than 3,000 users and $300 for sites with up to 50,000 monthly users, after which point the pricing shifts to custom packaging.

Datree: Datree allows companies to set up rules and security policies for their codebase, and ensures those rules are followed before any code is merged. Charging $28 per developer (noting that its free for independent/open source projects), theyve pulled in ~$230K in revenue to date. Find our previous coverage of Datree here.

fly.io: Deploys your app on servers that are physically closer to your users, decreasing latency and improving the user experience. If your app grows more popular in a certain city, Fly detects that and scales resources accordingly.

Sweeps: Sweeps claims that they can make your website 40% faster with one line of code, by more intelligently loading all of the third-party tools that a website is using. The team says that their tech not only improves speed but does so while improving SEO.

Orbiter: Orbiter is an automatic real-time monitoring and alert system integrated with Slack to ensure better customer service and revenue management.

Release: Product releases can be tricky. Release provides a staging management toolkit it builds a staging environment each time theres a pull request, allowing for faster/more collaborative development cycles.

Signadot: Signadot is monitoring and management software for the microservices that modern startups rely on to power their own applications and services, hopefully flagging issues before they become apparent to the end user.

Raycast: Raycast is a universal command bar for developers and many of the tools they use. Users can integrate apps including Jira, GitHub or Slack and take a Superhuman-like approach to completing forms and tasks. The team is pitching the tool as a way to help engineers get their non-engineering work done quickly.

Cotter: Cotter is building a phone number-based login platform that authenticates a users device in a workflow that the companys founders say has the convenience of SMS-based OTP without the security issues. The startup is aiming to target customers in developing countries where email is less utilized and less convenient as a login.

ditto: Dittos founders are hoping to create the Figma for words, helping teams plan out more thoughtfully the copy they use to describe their products and workflows. The collaboration tool created by Stanford roommates Jolena Ma and Jessica Ouyang currently has 80+ different companies represented among their users.

Scout: A continuous integration and deployment toolkit for machine learning experiments inside a GitHub workflow.

ToDesktop: ToDesktop has designed a service to automate all of your desktop application publishing needs. It works with Windows, Mac and Linux and provides native installers, auto-updates, code signing and crash reports without the need for any infrastructure or configurations for developers.

DeepSource: DeepSource is a code review tool that allows developers to check for bug risks, anti-patterns, performance issues and security flaws in Python and Go.

Flowbot: Flowbot is a natural language, autocomplete search tool for coding in Python. It lets Python developers type in plain English when they cant remember the exact function theyre thinking of, with Flowbot digging through documentation and considering the context to find the code it thinks youre looking for.

PostHog: PostHog is a software service that lets developers understand how their users are actually working with their products. Its a product analytics toolkit for open-source programmers.

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All the companies from Y Combinators W20 Demo Day, Part III: Hardware, Robots, AI and Developer Tools - TechCrunch

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If youre a publisher, you already know that news SEO is absolutely crucial.

You might have also learned that optimizing stories for Google News and Google universal search results is fairly difficult to do on the fly.

However, if youre an SEO or PR professional, then you may not even realize just how useful press release SEO can be for your company or clients.

Well, Ive just spent the last two weeks testing a news SEO tool called NewzDash that can help thousands of publishers especially the ones that are covering a rapidly evolving news story like the Coronavirus pandemic.

NewzDash can also help hundreds of SEOs as well as scores of PR agencies and departments if they can learn how to collaborate more closely at a time when most marketing professionals are trying to increase their social distance or work remotely.

So, first Ill show you what NewzDash can do for 25,000 publishers in 15 countries to:

Then, Ill explain how SEO and PR professionals can use a news SEO tool, too.

As I mentioned, publishers understand why optimizing stories for Google and Google News is crucial.

In September 2018, Megan Radogna wrote The ultimate referral guide to your audience, which reported that Google and Google News were sending 51.5% of the external referral traffic publishers in Parse.lys network, while Facebook was sending just 29%.

Also in 2018, a Searchmetrics whitepaper on universal search revealed that Top Stories (the News Carousel formerly known as the News box) were blended into Googles SERPs for 11% of keywords on desktops and 9% of keywords on mobile devices.

And, according to a study of the impact of search features conducted by Perficient Digital and AuthorityLabs Data Services, which was updated on March 3, 2020, News Carousels have a 20% click-through rate.

In other words, organic search traffic has become as essential to online publishers today as single-copy sales by newsies were to Joseph Pulitzer back in 1899.

This is why news SEO is as crucial to journalism in the early 21st century as banner headlines were in the late 19th century.

Now, during the early days of news search SEO, the only tool available to help publishers and SEO professionals to track their rankings in Google News was called Newsknife.

It was a project of Industry Standard Computing Ltd (ISC), a software development organization based in New Zealand.

And, back in December 2010, I wrote in a post in Search Engine Watch entitled, Newsknife Ranks Top News Sites and Journalists of Google News for 2010, which reported that Newsknife had analyzed more than 161,000 listings by 5,859 news sites in the U.S. edition of Google News and created a list of Top News Sites for 2010. They were:

Although Newsknife disappeared from the market a few years later, its worth comparing their list of the Top News Sites in the U.S. a decade ago with one compiled by NewzDash last week.

NewzDash was created by John Shehata, who is now the vice president of audience development and SEO at Cond Nast, home to some of the worlds most iconic brands, including Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Wired.

I met him in 2009, when he was Director of SEO & Social Media at Advance Internet, which included 13 local online news sites like NJ.com.

We were both speakers at a session on News Search SEO at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York.

Later, Shehata became the Executive Director of Search and Social Media at Walt Disney Television, which included ABC News, ABC Entertainment, and Oscars.

Thats around the time that I met other panelists at similar sessions at SES London, SES Chicago, and SES San Francisco. This included:

Thats how I know that their news organizations have been optimizing their stories for Google News for at least a decade.

Today, there are more than 50,000 publishers in 127 countries with local editions of Google News and NewzDash is working to collect data on 25,000 of these publishers in 15 key countries.

However, for my two-week test, the data that I was able to analyze was limited to the top publishers in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Belgium, France and Germany going back to October 1, 2019.

The complete data set is available for subscribers and not available to trial accounts, which is what I used.

Nevertheless, here are the top news publishers in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

As you can see, CNN, The New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today, are still in the top 10 just as they were a decade ago.

But, missing from the old top 10 list are the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and the Associated Press, ABC News, and BBC News U.K.

Things have shifted significantly since I last looked at a similar list of top news publishers in Google News a decade ago.

What happened to some of the news publishers that were optimizing their stories a decade ago?

Well, NewzDash provides a partial answer in its list of the top video news publishers in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

As you can see, ABC News is #1, followed by CBS News at #2, Fox News at #3, and CNN at #4.

So, ABC News seems to have mastered video news SEO on YouTube.

In fact, YouTube would be the #1 domain in Google News by far, but NewzDash chooses not to show YouTube as a publisher, opting to show individual YouTube channels for a long list of publishers instead.

And NewzDash provides another part of the answer to my rhetorical question about the BBC News U.K. in its list of the top news publishers in the U.K. version of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

And, as you can see, BBC News is #2, behind The Guardian, which has also been optimizing its stories for more than a decade. And the other familiar name on this list is The Telegraph, which ranks #9.

And NewzDash provides the final part of the answer to my rhetorical question in its list of the top video publishers in Google News UK from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

Check out the list above. The Telegraph ranks #1, Guardian News ranks #3, and BBC News ranks #6.

British national newspapers on the other side of the pond have not only mastered news SEO but have also become proficient at video news optimization for YouTube.

Thats a success story that their American cousins on this side of the pond should examine.

NewsDash also lets you drill down to see the top publishers in Google News sections, including:

For example, heres the list of the top publishers in the Sports section of the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 9, 2020:

NewzDash not only reports that ESPN ranks #1 in the Sports section, but that it had a 9.6% share of voice in that category over that period of time.

And heres the list of the top publishers in the Technology section of the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 9, 2020:

The Verge not only ranked #1 in the Technology section, it also had a 5.4% share of voice in that category.

In the trial account, NewzDash provides examples of local news reports for Michigan, New Jersey, New York City, and Los Angeles.

More locations are added on-demand per client requests.

For example, heres the list of the top publishers for New Jersey in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 9, 2020:

And heres the list of the top publishers for Michigan in the U.S. edition of Google News from October 1, 2019, to March 6, 2020:

And you can imagine how useful this will be to local news sites in other locations.

Cities and other states can be added in a matter of minutes to customer reports.

There are also NewzDash reports that track news site stats for a single publisher as well as competitive weaknesses and strengths of a group of publishers.

These are all crucial because you cant manage what you cant measure, as Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying.

And the old Newsknife tool didnt enable publishers to track their market share by Google News section, location, or direct competitors.

Now, back before the internet was invented, I was the news editor at an evening newspaper who had to compete for newsstand readers with another evening daily in the same region.

And before that, I was a radio reporter who had to update breaking news stories every hour.

I understand why todays online news editors will want to use the next couple of NewzDash reports every 15 minutes to win todays round-the-clock battle for Google News traffic.

Optimizing breaking news stories is difficult because the rapid flow of new developments quickly makes almost any SEO strategy outdated.

But, NewzDash enables publishers to track keyword rankings every 15, 30, or 60 minutes in Google News SERPs as well as Top Stories the News Carousel, formerly known as the In The News box in Google universal search results.

This enables news publishers to track competitors headlines and see which stories are getting better rankings.

For example, NewzDash did a study on Black Friday and Cyber Monday for 25 days, from Nov. 15 to Dec. 10, 2019. They tracked 25 keywords, including:

And you can see above, Forbes ranked #1 and USA Today ranked #2.

But look at the middle of the image above and you will note that Forbes published 243 unique stories over that 25-day period, and USA Today published 194.

Both publishers flooded the zone on these topics.

However, the top stories on Black Friday and Cyber Monday during this period were:

So, different publishers can have different strategies for covering planned event like these ones or other tent-pole events like the Super Bowl, the Oscars, back to school, Halloween, or Christmas.

What NewzDash enables publishers to do is see which competitors and stories dominated these events.

It also lets publishers understand the tactics that competitors are using like updating the same content every day and switching their URLs, which explains why they won.

So, this is why tracking keywords in near real-time is so crucial.

But, I also wanted to see how NewzDash could be used for a rapidly evolving news story like Coronavirus, which is also known as COVID-19.

It was first reported in Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2019, and the World Health Organization announced last week that the pandemic had swept into at least 114 countries and killed more than 4,000 people.

According to Google Trends, it has prompted a number of questions, including:

As the breakout has spread, there has been a surge in searches in the U.S. for:

So, I used NewzDash to track coronavirus and COVID-19 every 60 minutes from March 3-5.

My test revealed that the top ranking sites are The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC News, USA Today, and CNBC.

In addition, the top stories during that timeframe were:

A quick analysis of this limited sample shows:

Now, if youre an online news editor, then you might use more than a couple of keywords and check rankings more frequently than every 60 minutes for longer than a few days as I did a week ago.

That would enable you to keep up with this rapidly evolving news story in near real-time.

Now, Ive been mucking around in this field since the beta version of Google News was released in September 2002.

And I pioneered what Tad Clarke, the Editorial Director of MarketingSherpa, once called the tactic known as SEO PR to generate measurable results for a wide variety of organizations, including newspaper and magazine publishers.

For example, early press release SEO efforts produced:

But, interest in this tactic dropped like a hot brick in 2013 when Google updated its examples of link schemes to explicitly include:Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites.

Shortly thereafter, conferences like Search Engine Strategies (SES) stopped having sessions on News Search SEO. Training organizations like Market Motive stopped offering courses on Online PR.

And articles like Google News Optimization: How to Boost Your Sites Visibility & Traffic suddenly became as rare as black swans.

But, if you go back and review the list of early results above, then youll see that only one of them involved building backlinks.

The other eight involve boosting brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, increasing sales, or producing a return on marketing investment.

So, maybe its time to take a second look at news SEO, news optimization, or whatever you want to call it these days.

And its worth noting that NewzDash tracks:

So, your biggest challenge wont be finding a press release distribution service thats in Google News or a news SEO tool to track your results.

Based on my experience training SEOs as well as PR agencies and departments since 2002, your biggest challenge will be getting SEO and PR professionals out of their organizational silos and using the best practices from both marketing disciplines.

Now, you may not want to sit around the same table during the coronavirus pandemic. But, you can use a video-conference service to begin tackling this opportunity.

More Resources:

Image Credits

All screenshots taken by author, March 2020

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Why News SEO Is Crucial to Publishers Covering the Coronavirus Pandemic - Search Engine Journal

You do not need to leave your house to watch TV. You do not need to travel long distances to watch TV. You do not need to join a large group of people to watch TV.

This confluence of factors has long made TV the stereotypical standby for the incapacitated, depressed, or introverted. But as the past few weeks have rendered millions of Americans housebound, whether by mandate or caution-informed choice, TV has taken on increased importance as a go-to source of entertainment and distraction. The coronavirus that has spread across the globe and affected more than 156,800 people to date may be an invisible threat, but its impacts on the rhythms of daily life are already clear. Movie theaters, malls, and restaurants have transformed from sites of leisure into potential sites of disease transmission. The living room though, always a metaphorical safe harbor from the stresses of the outside world, has now become a literal one.

The current pandemic is an obvious source of worry as the coronavirus continues to spread. For those of us in lower-risk populations self-isolating out of concern for more vulnerable ones, the anxiety and helplessness are as acute as fear. Among my fellow TV critics, an impromptu practice has rapidly sprung up of offering recommendationssome custom; some generalto the housebound on social media, the virtual equivalent of Lucy indicating the doctor is in. Some publications have inevitably fed widespread demand with more durable resources, creating a more SEO-friendly answer to the question of what, exactly, were supposed to do with ourselves.

Theres a cynical take to be had in translating an ongoing global crisis into clickable content; god knows Ive applied it to myself in the drafting of this piece. But the more optimistic, and ultimately more true, read is that such responses are both a small assertion of controlcertainly a more responsible one than flooding bars with crowds (and denial) on St. Patricks Day weekendand a sincere act of service. Its a small way to make ourselves feel useful; we cant staff hospitals or donate supplies, but we can at least offer some small form of guidance. (While drafting this paragraph, a colleague contacted me on Slack to ask if he should use his quarantine to sink into Gilmore Girls. I was happy to advise.)

As central as TV already was to how we spend unstructured, unscheduled time, further disruptions to daily life have made it more so. Major movie studios have delayed wide releases: MGM pushed the upcoming Bond film No Time to Die; Universal, Fast 9; Disney an entire chunk of its spring slate, including Mulan and New Mutants, all contributing to the lowest weekend box office in more than 20 years. Coachella, instigator of the music-festival boom and its continued standard-bearer, bumped its April dates back by a full six months. Sports leagues like the NBA and the NHL have suspended their schedules, while the MLB has delayed its spring start date and called off spring training.

Amid all this upheaval, TV can feel like a rare pillar of certainty. The status quo is hardly intact, with late-night shows forgoing live studio audiences and Emmy campaigns calling off promotional events, but these departures from the norm feel relatively minor held up against the rest of entertainment, let alone the world. In the past few days, Ive watched coworkers process their shock and plan next steps as the events they cover vanish from the calendar. Meanwhile, my own schedule has remained relatively intact, as have the viewing habits of everyday consumers. Westworld attempted a reset on Sunday, as planned. Later this week, Hulu will premiere yet another prestige miniseries anchored by movie stars, as planned. Larry Davids fictional persona will soon engage in even more elaborate faux pas, as planned.

At a time when face-to-face interaction may be limited to our families, partners, roommates, pets, or even just ourselves, TV can preserve some small shred of the communal experience. I may not have attended my weekly Drag Race outing, but I have exchanged thoughts on Fridays episode (mostly negative) with my circle of friends who watch. Coordinated movie viewings on Zoom and Skype, When Harry Met Sallystyle, have turned into a popular makeshift hangout. Watching a new episode of TV offers the same benefitswith slightly less logistical effortas experiencing the same event as others while being in different places. Its another intrinsic aspect of TV thats taken on an outsized importance: not just a mass medium, but one of the few left standing without a blockbuster or music festival in sight.

TV cant and wont stay unaffected for long. The CW teen drama Riverdale has suspended production in British Columbia, as has Apples celebrity-studded The Morning Show, Netflixs Grace and Frankie, and dozens of other shows, and the list of impacted series is growing by the day. Its unclear how these stoppages will affect future release calendars, only that they eventually will. The gap between production and release that can make TV such a balmit is, quite literally, a dispatch from a different timeguarantees an inevitable delay. But crises can make it difficult to think past the current moment, and at the current moment, TV feels reliable when little else does.

Its normal to start thinking of TV characters as your friends, a tendency encouraged by TV shows increasingly taking the place of in-person friendships. The past few weeks have revealed TVs ability to serve as a social, psychological, and logistical crutch, one increasingly leaned on as preventative measures escalate. Cable news is where we go to learn about the world; the rest of TV is where we go to immerse ourselves in another world, one less or more exotically chaotic, but a much-needed escape. Your local bar may not be open, but Cheers always is.

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TV, the Last Shred of Normalcy in an Abnormal World - The Ringer

PASO ROBLES, Calif., March 14, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- A good accountant is as important to business as quality products and services, loyal customers and reliable vendors. "The relationship between you and your accountant is a partnership," says Robert Borish, CPA with the Atascadero payroll firm, North County Tax and Accounting, "that relies on the information you provide and the accountant's experience and knowledge."

Of course, a strong working relationship with a good accountant is an absolute necessity for tax preparation. The same can be said for other aspects of operating business including payroll, bookkeeping, invoicing, accounts payable and receivables, and all financial matters.

The key is understanding how to get the most out of your accountant and getting the best service from a valuable resource.

North County Tax and Accounting draws on more than 25 years of experience. The accountants and staff care about building lasting client relationships and freeing up business owners and managers from the complicated details of accounting, payroll, taxes and tax planning so they can focus on growing their businesses.

North County Tax and Accounting 5905 Capistrano Ave. Atascadero, CA 93422 (805) 466-7121

This press release is by Paso Robles SEO and advertising company, Access Publishing, 806 9th Street, #2D, Paso Robles, CA 93446. (805) 226-9890.

SOURCE North County Tax and Accounting

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Atascadero Payroll Firm Releases 'The Top Ways To Get The Most From Your Accountant' - Benzinga

Its a little difficult to strike handshake deals when, you know, youre not supposed to shake hands.

An increasingly denuded 2020 events calendar the live event components of the upfronts are the latest cancelations could soon start to have a chilling effect on their ability to attract new clients.

Lead gen and pipeline will be impacted, said Tiffany Coletti Kaiser, EVP of marketing at digital media solutions company Digital Remedy. The question is not if, but when.

Screwed together

Of course, everyones pretty much in the same boat, which helps leaven the impact for now.

If were screwed, were all screwed in the same way, said Maor Sadra, CEO of Berlin-based user acquisition platform Applift.

In Sadras view, the ad tech industry at large can probably tolerate at least a couple months of the new normal without any ill effects.

Remote work is relatively common in the tech world, and, if anything, the coronavirus crisis is generating higher eCPMs for publishers. Theres also no reason to imagine well see a slowdown in ad spend from companies that sell virtual goods, such as games and utility apps.

There will come a point, though, when the sales funnel starts to evaporate. Events usually generate roughly one-third of Applifts sales leads, and the company hasnt been able to attend any since January.

Several Applift employees were supposed to meet with representatives from Publicis a few days ago, but an hour before the plane was scheduled to take off, the holding company put out a memo cancelling all external in-person meetings.

In a way, this is almost like a test of brand positioning in the market, Sadra said. Hopefully our SEO and our positioning is good enough for people to remember us if theyre looking for a partner.

But Applift, unlike some others, is lucky in that its somewhat insulated in case of a dry spell. The company, which is profitable today, was acquired by German conglomerate Media and Games Invest in June 2019, and that provides a helpful cushion.

If I was burning cash right now and was in a position where I needed to make certain moves, it would be a very different story, Sadra said.

In terms of sales targets, Applift, which sets its targets quarterly, is playing it by ear. March will remain unchanged, but Applift will most likely recalibrate in April, Sadra said, and hope for the best.

B2B account-based marketing vendor Demandbase is doing much the same. Although the sales team is currently on track to hit quarterly goals despite the pandemic, we are being realistic that things may shift and are fully prepared to address any changes, said CEO Gabe Rogol.

No more steak dinners?

Companies in certain industries teleconferencing, home entertainment and pharmaceutical, for example can take the long view and implement thoughtful, data-centric strategies. Theyre well positioned to weather most of the business-related vicissitudes coronavirus brings.

Applift has one client, a bus company, that is pausing its ad spendbecause its also temporarily pausing all of its routes due to coronavirus. Meanwhile, another company that provides in-person training services is panicking for obvious reasons, said Chris Franks, CEO at CleverFunnel, a Denver-based agency that works with the company.

CleverFunnel has several projects in the works with this training company, all of which have been tabled until further notice.

But for companies with the option to do their business online, the coronavirus is a forcing function for the new digital world in which theyll be able to see how much bang they really get from all the money they spend traveling around the world to wine and dine existing customers and new prospects, said Jeff Lunsford, CEO of Tealium.

Companies that are reliant on travel, on steak dinner-type interactions, are going to struggle, and companies that know how to operate efficiently digitally will do well, Lunsford said. I believe face-to-face engagement is extremely valuable, but I also believe its possible to run your business and engage with customers remotely. Ive been an entrepreneur for 24 years, and Ive done it both ways.

Getting creative

Videoconferencing is the obvious replacement for the lack of in-person engagement. But there are also other ways to create connections while in quarantine.

Since networking during happy hour at trade shows isnt possible, Criteo, for example, is encouraging its commercial team to use LinkedIn and Twitter to reach out to other registered attendees of canceled events to request virtual one-on-ones.

Outside of just replacing conference networking, social media is a great tool for salespeople to utilize to continue building leads and connecting with contacts, said Criteo CEO Megan Clarken. By connecting with potential clients online and engaging with what theyre posting and sharing, salespeople are able to build virtual relationships while in-person meetings are on pause.

But some companies are putting a whole new spin on virtual conferencing.

Cockroach Labs is a computer software provider that develops commercial database management systems and usually relies heavily on events to capture leads and generate broad awareness. Without events to attend, it created a virtual badge scan that uses a landing page to capture contact info and then makes a small donation to Women Who Code for every email address it gets. One-on-one meetings with company reps are incentivized with the promise of a larger $50 donation.

The silver lining is the impact this will have for new creative ways to build out a [go-to-market] strategy, Jim Walker, VP of product marketing at Cockroach Labs.

But, perhaps, theres also another benefit: Cutting down on unnecessary meetings that should never have been meetings in the first place.

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Tech Companies Get Creative As Coronavirus Threatens To Parch Their Pipelines - AdExchanger