Techcrunch blog!: Daily Crunch - Goldman Sachs calls for diverse boards

Friday, January 24, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

Happy Friday

Goldman Sachs takes a stance on the board diversity of startups going public, the London police move forward with facial recognition and Sonos tweaks its approach to old speakers. Here’s your Daily Crunch for January 24, 2020.

Goldman Sachs says it won't take startups public without at least one 'diverse' director; it should go further

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.

Goldman Sachs says it won't take startups public without at least one 'diverse' director; it should go further image

Image Credits: Denis Balibouse / Reuters

Seeking Startups Building Frontier Technologies

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."

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.

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.