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Calm acquires healthcare technology company Ripple Health Group | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 2 | Meditation app is acquiring , a San Francisco-based healthcare technology company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Calm says the acquisition will accelerate its mental health care ambitions. Following the acquisition, Ripple Health Group CEO David Ko will take on the role of Calm co-CEO, alongside Michael Acton Smith. Calm co-founder Alex Tew will move from co-CEO to executive chairman. Founded in 2019, Ripple connects users with proper healthcare options and builds solutions that address pressing health problems. Ripple’s first two products, which last month, focus on aging in society and alleviating the burden of caregiving for both professional and non-professional caregivers. The Ripple team will now join Calm and focus on building Calm Health, which will replace the company’s existing employer offering, Calm for Business. Calm Health is expected to launch soon, with the aim of supporting mental health across the care spectrum. The Ripple team will be tasked with building out a suite of Calm Health solutions that integrate into current healthcare technology and are both secure and simple to use. Calm says Ripple will also continue to build products that aim to reduce the burden of caregiving. “As an advisor to Calm since 2019, I’ve witnessed firsthand the team’s ability to pioneer the future of mental health, redefining both the category and the distribution channel,” said Calm’s new co-CEO, David Ko, in a statement. “Calm is on a mission to make the world happier and healthier. I can’t think of a better fit for Ripple’s team and technology. We’re incredibly honored to join the company. I’m excited to work alongside Michael to bring Calm to healthcare.” Before joining Ripple, Ko was the president, COO and board member of , a digital health company that develops mobile solutions that aim to make it easier for consumers to access care. “David’s business acumen, operational excellence and proven record scaling healthcare companies will be invaluable for Calm as we enter into new ventures and shape the future of the category,” said Calm co-CEO and co-founder Michael Acton Smith, in a statement. Calm’s acquisition comes a few weeks after it made its first foray into physical activity and video content with the launch of its new feature. The feature guides users through simple exercises to get them moving. Calm sees the new feature as an entry point into mindful content for people who find traditional meditation a difficult place to start. The company also recently a new “Premium Family” subscription plan that includes up to six accounts. The new offering is available globally for $99.99 per year, whereas a premium individual plan costs $69.99 per year. Calm, along with other meditation apps, has and has seen a surge in users. The company boasts more than 100 million downloads to date, and says it averages 100,000 new users daily. In December 2020, Calm raised $75 million in Series C funding, pushing the company’s . Prior investor Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round. |
Waldo raises $15 million for its automated mobile testing service | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 2 | 2 | has raised for its “no code” automated testing tool. Mobile development teams using Waldo can set up tests without writing a line of scripting code. It then seamlessly integrates in your continuous integration (CI) pipeline. Insight Partners is leading today’s Series A round, with participation from Matrix Partners and First Round Capital. Some business angels are also investing, such as Nicolas Dessaigne, Ben Porterfield, Tyler Gaffney and Keenan Rice. With the new funding, the company wants to hire more people and nail down its go-to-market strategy. The best way to understand Waldo is by talking about mobile testing first. Small development teams usually rely a lot on real-life testing. They keep several smartphone models and run a development build of their app on those devices. If someone goes wrong, they track the bug and try to fix it. As your app and team grow, manual testing doesn’t scale that well. You can develop testing scripts, but that’s a tedious task that requires more development time. Either you have a lot of money and you can allocate development time to testing scripts, or your developers will neglect those scripts over time. Waldo thinks there is a third way. Over the past four years, the startup has built a testing platform that is both easy to set up and easy to maintain. When you start using the product, you upload the app package to the platform — the .ipa or .apk file that you get from your development environment. After that, Waldo runs your app in a browser window. It’s a live version of your app and you can interact with it just like in a local emulator. For instance, you can tap on buttons, enter a login and password and swipe your finger across the screen. Waldo records every step of your test. If you choose to use this test in your production environment, then Waldo will go through the same steps and alert you if there’s an issue — if it can’t reach the final step of the test. Tests are triggered directly from your continuous integration workflow, which means that your app is automatically sent to Waldo when you commit some new lines of code to your Git repository. Waldo What makes Waldo work well over time is that it understands the screen structure. For instance, you can go back to your test and identify elements of the screen. “Imagine you’re opening the web inspector on a web page and looking at the HTML,” co-founder and CEO Amine Bellakrid told me. This way, you can say that screen similarity should be above a certain threshold and you can configure some elements manually. For instance, you can select a text box and say that it’s fine if it’s in another language. Over time, after tweaking your test so that it passes and fails as expected, you get a real end-to-end testing platform. Waldo doesn’t just look at the user interface, it also interacts with the app and checks analytics events. For instance, if you’re running a Waldo test against your production server, Waldo knows that the server is working fine because you can log in without any issue. Behind the scenes, the company repackages your app and puts some additional code to extract some information about your app. The company then executes the app on a simulator on a server. Waldo also fetches some information from the emulator. “Our goal is to be a pipeline breaker, we are the last test before you ship to the App Store,” Bellakrid said. Some customers like Alan don’t have any QA team as they want developers to take care of QA. Others like Lemonade already have QA teams but think they can save time and improve their workflow with a product like Waldo. “In mobile, speed is what separates winners from losers,” Bellakrid said. And testing has been a bottleneck for many mobile development teams. Once your start chaining Waldo tests, you can cover a lot of testing ground and ship faster. Waldo |
How the conflict in Ukraine threatens US cybersecurity | Philip Reiner | 2,022 | 2 | 2 | As Russian troops stand poised to yet again invade Ukraine, much attention has been focused in recent days on how to avoid escalation of the conflict. Recent (and likely ongoing) escalations in cyberattacks on Ukraine suggest that this conflict will be unfortunately severe in the digital domain. And unlike a ground invasion, the U.S. government has that the digital conflict zone may expand to include the United States, as well. Years of Russian cyber probing and “preparing the environment” could well culminate in significant and potentially destructive attacks against private-sector American interests in the coming weeks and months. If this level of vulnerability feels intolerable, good — it should. But how did we get here? And what are the moves needed to avoid disaster? To start, it’s critical to understand how President Vladimir Putin has experimented with 21st Century technical methods to contribute to achieving his longstanding vision for Russia. Russia’s motives are conventional enough. In April 2005, Putin the fall of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and “a genuine tragedy…for the Russian people.” This core belief has guided many of Russia’s actions since. Today, the drums of war are unfortunately beating loudly in Europe, as Putin seeks to forcibly return more of Russia’s periphery back under formal control and push back on perceived Western encroachment. While there are a number of factors driving why Russia has chosen now as the time to increase its aggression against Ukraine — and assert itself in Europe more broadly — its asymmetric capabilities in areas like cyber certainly give it a broader set of tools to shape the outcomes in its favor. Russia’s geopolitical position — with a waning population base and woeful economic situation — drives its leadership to find ways to reassert itself on the global stage. Russian leaders know they can’t compete conventionally, so they turn to more easily accessible and, as it turns out, immensely powerful and effective asymmetric tools. Their disinformation campaigns have done much to contribute to the pre-existing societal fissures here in the United States, exacerbating our fracturing politics in keeping with standard Russian intelligence practices. Indeed Russian leadership likely sees an opportunity with the West as distracted by the COVID pandemic and internal turmoil that it sometimes helps sow. But Putin’s long embrace of asymmetrical methods means Russia has been preparing for this moment for years. There is a familiarity to these activities: old means and tools from the Soviet era that have taken on a new face through the manipulation of twenty-first-century digital tools and vulnerabilities. And in recent years, it has used Ukraine, Libya, the Central African Republic, Syria, and other contested spaces as “ ” for its information operations and damaging cyber capabilities. Today, Russian actors have deployed a vast array of techniques for “ ” to confuse, sow doubt, and delegitimize basic democratic institutions. The mercenaries and clandestine agents Russia is deploying into Ukraine have honed their skills in hybrid battlespaces abroad, using a mix of deception and kinetic action, deftly mixed with deniable influence operations and offensive cyber actions. In cyberspace, Russia has graduated from its then-unprecedented 2007 cyberattack on Estonia and later cyber attacks, which targeted Ukrainian utilities, ministries, banks, and journalists, which spilled over into one of the most costly cyberattacks in history to date. Russian intelligence services have been found into U.S. critical infrastructure systems for some time now as well—yet, to date, without significant kinetic or deleterious impact or actions (unlike in Ukraine and elsewhere as detailed in books like Andy Greenberg’s ). They’ve tested the reactions of the United States and its Allies, learned what they can get away with, and are pressing ever further as NATO countries debate what to do about Ukraine. In sum, Russia has done its reconnaissance and likely pre-placed tools it may want to use against countries like the United States on a rainy day. That day may soon arrive. As Russia ramps up its aggression against Ukraine, the United States has threatened a “devastating” economic response as part of the escalatory ladder (how nations methodically raise the stakes in the hopes of deterring an adversary in a conflict) toward an ever-increasingly more dangerous and likely violent resolution. What often goes unsaid is that Russian cyber capabilities are attempts at their own form of deterrence. Those preparatory activities Russia has engaged in over the years, as noted above, would allow those cyber eggs to hatch — and the consequences to come home to roost here in America. The U.S. government has explicitly and broadly warned that Russia may attack American private industry in response to those potentially severe U.S. sanctions. It is highly unlikely, knowing the sophistication of Russian actors in this space, that these attacks would be brazen, or even immediate. While they can be sloppy and imprecise at times (see NotPetya), their capabilities will likely allow them to meddle with our critical infrastructure and private industry via and other indirect and difficult-to-attribute means. In the interim, companies and service providers could face significant damage and deleterious downtime. If the past has been a nuisance, the near term portends potentially much greater negative economic impact as Putin and his oligarchs continue to press their longstanding agenda. Hope remains that Russia will not continue to ramp up its aggression, and will indeed find off-ramps, avoiding these various scenarios. We should all hope that none of this will ever unfold. It is prudent however, indeed overdue at this point, that industry ensure that it takes the appropriate steps to protect itself from what we must now consider a potentially highly likely attack – doubling down on multi-factor authentication, segmenting networks, maintaining backups, gaming out crisis response plans, and closing off access to only those with real need. What is happening with Ukraine seems a world apart, but with a few clicks, the impact may end up right here at home. |
PrimaryBid raises $190M to double down on making it easier for ordinary people to invest in IPOs and follow-on fundraises | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 2 | 20 | Thanks to the growth of fintech, financial services like investing are getting ever more accessible to the wider population of consumers. Now, one of the bigger players pushing the boundaries of that concept is announcing a big round of funding on the heels of strong demand and what it believes are even bigger opportunities ahead. — which helps companies that are going public, or public companies that are raising more money, offer their shares to retail investors (that is, ordinary people, not professionals) alongside more traditional share sales — has raised $190 million. Anand Sambasivan, the CEO and co-founder of PrimaryBid, said the London-based startup plans to use the funding both to continue building out the products that it offers to companies, such as the ability to invest in SPAC-based public listings and investments in retail bonds; and to expand to new geographies, specifically with an eye on building out an office in the U.S., where it is going through the process of getting regulatory approvals to work with companies listing in that market and is likely to launch in late 2022 or 2023. PrimaryBid today interoperates with some 60 channels to enable investments, which include brokerages and apps that people use to make investments today, and that list also is likely to continue growing. The company’s mission is to bring the “public” back into the concept of a public offering, giving ordinary people a chance to invest directly in IPOs alongside banks and other large, professional investors, Sambasivan said. If public markets were invented today, would they look like they did 100 years ago? No, services would interoperate with APIs, with mobile apps, and more accessible investing,” he said. “It’s a system in need of an upgrade.” SoftBank, via its Vision Fund 2, is leading this round, a Series C, along with participation from previous, unnamed investors (previous backers in its included the London Stock Exchange Group, Draper Esprit, OMERS Ventures, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, ABN AMRO Ventures, Pentech and Outward Ventures). Sambasivan said that PrimaryBid is not disclosing a valuation, although , from January when it noted $150 million had been secured, pegged the valuation at $650 million. That may have followed from a report on at the time that first floated rumors of the round and put the pre-money valuation at $500 million. If those figures are accurate, PrimaryBid’s valuation now is around $690 million. Between that Series B and now, PrimaryBid has been on a growth tear, fueled by an increasing appetite among everyday people to get more involved in the world of investment. The company says that in the past 18 months it has helped facilitate share offerings for retail investors for some 150 IPOs and follow-on share issues. These have been primarily in the U.K., although the company is now also starting to work with companies in France, and — with the help of its investor ABN AMRO, it is also looking to open for business in The Netherlands. Some of the bigger share sales that it has powered include sales for Deliveroo, PensionBee and the US IPO of MCG Group (Soho House) in 2021, which was done via a share sale in the U.K. “We’ve found a foothold in the capital markets in a big way,” he said in an interview. “The notion that [we are battling is that] the public is no longer included in the public markets, and some of the best companies going public have a strong ethos of their stakeholders, and they were unable to include that in an IPO. They all see the value of including them in a thoughtful and robust way and we are giving them the ability to do that through our platform. Now we are seeing sustained growth and [we believe] what we are doing is too big to fail.” PrimaryBid is riding on a wave of interest that has been a long time in the forming, helped by a series of other developments. Financial apps like Robinhood and Revolut, and the growth of a new approach to investing popular in Europe, the ETF, have made it much easier for ordinary consumers to invest in public companies and currencies (including cryptocurrencies) that interest them or that they think might bring them good returns — something that previously would have been only possible for high net-worth individuals working with brokers, or professional investors. And events like the Gamestop stock frenzy of 2021 may have also highlighted the pitfalls of that democratization, but nevertheless underscored just how powerful general public investing had become. It was only a matter of time before that democratization moved to IPO and follow-on share issues. But Sambasivan points out that consumer-focused businesses are not the only ones that are benefitting from that market demand, either on the part of companies or investors themselves. In fact B2C forms only about 10% of the trades that PrimaryBid has worked with, he said. “PrimaryBid is powering inclusivity in the capital markets by making it simple and easy for anyone to access stock issuances previously reserved for institutional or professional investors,” said Anthony Doeh, a partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “We believe the team has created a platform that combines technology, data and an ‘ecosystem friendly’ approach to the challenge of widening participation, including developing a unique Community IPO platform for corporate issuers. We’re excited to partner with them and believe we can add significant value to the business through our global network and expertise.” |
Philippines payment gateway PayMongo gets $31M Series B, will explore regional expansion | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 2 | 20 | PayMongo founders (from left to right): Jaime Hing III, Chief Technology Officer, Francis Plaza, Chief Executive Officer and Luis Sia, Chief Commercial Officer Philippines-based fintech , which enables merchants to accept digital payments, announced today it has raised $31 million in Series B funding with an eye on regional expansion. Investors include Justin Mateen’s JAM Fund, ICCP-SBI Venture Partners and Lisa Gokongwei’s Kaya Founders, along with returning investors Global Founders Capital and SOMA Capital. The startup says the round also included founders from European fintechs like Qonto, Viva Wallet, Billie and Scalable. This brings PayMongo’s total funding to just under $46 million. Its last funding was a The company works with businesses of all sizes, but targets micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses in particular, enabling them to accept different forms of payments, including credit cards, online wallets and over-the-counter. Its products include PayMongo API and e-commerce plugins. The new funding will be used to further develop PayMongo’s current payments infrastructure and add more financial services, including disbursements, capital lending, BNPL, and subscriptions and recurring payments. Part of PayMongo’s product roadmap includes acquiring new licenses that will allow it to operate more financial services. At the same time, the company is also exploring regional expansion. “There is so much more work to do in the Philippines. We also forecast more than doubling our team size to support this increasing demand and deliver on our aggressive product roadmap. In parallel, we have started some initial exploration and leg work to expand in the SE Asia region, a work we have kicked off last year,” co-founder and CEO Francis Plaza told TechCrunch in an email. Other digital payment gateways in the Philippines include DragonPay, PesoPay, PayMaya and Paynamics. Plaza told TechCrunch in an email that the company differentiates itself by its focus on SMBs and high-growth startups and companies since it was founded in 2019. “Beyond that, as we work with thousands of businesses on the platform, we are geared towards building more products and services that not only enables merchants to easily accept payments but also to grow through access to other financial services,” he said. “From the ability to move money, store balances, access to credit and other expanded payment options for customers.” Plaza added that it is already testing out several new products and services in beta with merchants. In a statement, Justin Mateen, the founder of Tinder and JAM Fund, said “As one of PayMongo’s first investors, I’ve seen their path from simplifying payments for a handful of businesses to now being a company that thousands of merchants depend on for their day-to-day operations. I’m excited by their progress and thrilled to support the team once again as they generate greater economic opportunities through the digital economy.” |
India’s CRED eyes investment in Amazon-backed Smallcase | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Indian fintech CRED is in talks to back the Bengaluru-headquartered startup Smallcase, three sources familiar with the matter said, as the Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global-backed firm looks to expand its wealth offerings to customers. CRED’s proposed investment in Smallcase values the startup in the range of $300 million to $400 million, one source said. The size of the investment is unclear, but one source said it could be a majority stake acquisition. Everyone requested anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing, at an early stage and private. CRED declined to comment. A founder of Smallcase did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Smallcase operates a platform to help a new generation of investors participate in the Indian equity markets. The startup serves over 3 million users and connects them to an in-house team of licensed professionals who offer more than 100 portfolios of stocks and exchange-traded funds as well as access to independent investment managers, brokerages and wealth platforms. Smallcase, which counts Amazon, Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures and Arkam Ventures among its existing investors, works with a number of stock broker services including Kite and Upstox. An investment in Smallcase will allow CRED to broaden its wealth management offering. The startup, founded by Kunal Shah, has three marquee offerings. It rewards users for paying their credit card bill on time to help them improve their financial behavior. It also helps them pay and track their rent, education and several other bills. Its third offering is wealth management. Last year, CRED called Mint, that offers its customers inflation-beating investment opportunity. If the deal materializes, it will be the latest of a series of investments by CRED in recent quarters. The startup, in its most recent financing round, last year backed business-to-business debt startup CredAvenue, and acquired Happay, which operates a corporate expense management platform. |
Fintech Roundup: What investors really, really want | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 2 | 20 | Jake Gibson and Sheel Mohnot / Better Tomorrow Ventures It’s always fun to see a company I’ve covered at a very early stage go on to raise more capital in a relatively short amount of time. And, I’m a sucker for startups that tackle “unsexy” but very important industries. That’s why I enjoyed reporting on how , which aims to help companies control fuel and fleet spending with its expense management software, in a Series A financing co-led by Accel and Insight Partners. The raise came just seven months after New York-based Coast announced it had raised $6 million in a seed round of funding. Interestingly, a long list of founders are backers in the company, including Affirm’s Max Levchin, Plaid’s William Hockey, Unit’s Itai Damti, Flexport’s Ryan Petersen, Marqeta’s Jason Gardner and Alloy’s Laura Spiekerman and Tommy Nicholas, among others. I also covered how which has built a low-code/no-code application platform specifically for the financial markets, landed a $200 million investment led by Tiger Global Management after “nearly tripling” its recurring revenue. While the company was based in London, I was told most of its leadership team is located in the U.S. Meanwhile, a post-money valuation of $725 million and that it now powers payroll for platforms that serve 250K businesses and 4M employees across the country. Told ya infrastructure is hot. A couple of weeks back, I did a little . Well, this week, Alex reported that , a startup in the corporate spend space, announced that it is that will see its service offered to certain customers of the credit giant. The deal also included a “strategic investment.” Feels like a big deal for Airbase, which some surmise could be an acquisition target for Amex and a no-brainer for the credit card giant who wouldn’t have to build out its own technology. |
New regulation in China to hit food delivery giants’ profit model | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 2 | 20 | Between 2016 and 2020, the number of people who ordered food online in China to 400 million. The boom was in part thanks to the generous subsidies shelled out by the country’s food delivery contenders for customers and businesses. As two companies, Meituan and Ele.me, came to dominate the market, they began to raise fees on merchants. But a new regulatory change is about to hobble their profit model. On Friday, a group of Chinese authorities that food delivery platforms should further reduce the service fees charged to restaurants in order to lower the operating costs for food and beverage businesses. The news sent Meituan’s stock down more than 15% on Friday, erasing over $25 billion in market value. Alibaba, which operates Meituan’s archrival Ele.me, saw its shares slide about 4%. The proposal came in a directive led by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s state planner, to “help struggling service industries recover.” The new rule China’s food delivery platforms have grappled with other changes that could erode their profitability. A viral article from 2020 the high-stress environment that put China’s millions of food delivery workers in danger. Efficiency-optimizing algorithms that don’t fully factor in human capacity and road incidents mean riders are often running the light to complete assignments. Chinese authorities have ordered food delivery platforms to improve the safety of their workers. Meituan and Alibaba began giving riders connected helmets that come with voice command functions, so drivers won’t need to check their phones while dashing down the street on their scooters. The platforms have also relaxed delivery time limits for riders. The challenge for Meituan and Ele.me is how to balance workers’ well-being and business profitability. Meituan is already working to reduce its reliance on manual labor. It a fleet of food delivery drones that have been running small-scale trials in several Chinese cities. The flyer is in its early stage of product iteration and regulations for low-altitude drones are still taking shape in China. The economic viability of drone-enabled food delivery is also unproven. But automation is at least one way for labor-intensive, on-demand services providers like Meituan to test out a safer, more cost-saving future. |
Experts Weekly: Recruiting recruiters, crypto marketing, earned media 101 | Miranda Halpern | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Do you have recent experience recruiting talent for pre-revenue startups? If this describes you — or someone you know — please read . Facebook began allowing crypto companies to advertise on its platform last December, but marketers should be aware of the limitations. Reporter John Biggs walks readers through the basics and shares a social media punch list. Miles Jennings, founder and COO of Recruiter.com, share tips on how founders can subtly encourage investors to become more effective advocates. For example: if you’re trying to hire an important role, ask one of your backers if they can share your job posting with their network. Amanda Milligan, head of marketing at Stacker Studio, dives into an analysis of the short-term impact of earned media, then shares tips for pitch timing, promoting content and incorporating internal linking. |
LG announces the first 50 participants in its LG Nova program | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | LG’s innovation center — among friends — today announced that it has selected the first 50 companies for its Mission for the Future global challenge competition. From 1,300 applicants, the company picked its first cohort to start building opportunities with the startups. Nova itself is a counterpoint to profit-focused corporate venture capital outfits, and is instead focusing on abilities to collaborate with the LG conglomerate across the board, in a few key verticals: the metaverse, connected healthcare, smart homes, electric vehicles (EV) and the wonderfully fuzzily named . “These companies represent the top of the diverse pool of innovative ideas and companies who applied to our Mission for the Future challenge to address the challenges facing our community. In these companies, we see great potential opportunities to explore transformative changes that will take our commitment of innovating for a better life to the next phase,” said LG Nova head Dr. Sokwoo Rhee, senior vice president for innovation at LG Electronics. “Our work with these companies will be guided by our role as a leading global innovator of next-generation products, technologies and services as we help them accelerate their growth and deliver positive impact to the world.” I spoke with Dr. Rhee in great detail earlier this year, to figure out how startups can work with LG Nova: Here’s the full list of companies that made the cut: |
Reusable packaging startup bags $3.1M to pick a fight with single-use packaging | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Quick pop quiz: Is it better to recycle your cardboard boxes, or use a sturdier packaging bag that can be used again and again until it meets its maker again? ‘s bet is the latter, and the company just raised $3.1 million from , continue the work the company has been doing with Estée Lauder, New Balance, Rent the Runway, Walmart and others — and to further expand its operations. “And it’s been a pretty long journey. We originally actually started out as a reusable shopping bag business that happened to have James Reinhardt (the co-founder and CEO of ) as a customer, buying reusable shopping bags. His challenge to us was if we can make a reasonable shipping bag. That’s where it all started,” recalls Mike Newman, CEO at Returnity. “We’ve been on this journey ever since. We had this reusable shopping bag we came up with, and we thought it was really cool, but it didn’t really go anywhere because we had to learn that packaging is really about systems — and not about product. If you don’t have a system to support reusable packaging, they just end up being press release programs. They don’t scale; they don’t sustain. A big part of our journey as a business — and I think for the reusable concept in general — has been that if we don’t build scalable, sustainable options for reuse, we’re never really going to make a dent in the packaging.” The company is taking on an enormous challenge — more than 20 billion parcels are delivered every year in the U.S. (100 billionn worldwide, trending toward twice that over the next five years), resulting in an enormous amount of wasted materials. Reusable packaging makes sense, especially in industries where there’s a natural send-and-return model; the fashion rental industry, regular grocery deliveries and other businesses with regular delivery or pickup models, for example. Now, if you recall, there was a huge reduction in the amount of rental business that happened for a while — people weren’t renting high-end fashion clothing to sit in isolation in their living rooms, and Returnity had a brutal awakening in 2020. “We were poised for enormous growth in 2020. And then 80% of our revenue disappeared overnight, due to the pandemic shutdown. We really had to figure out how to be relevant beyond inherently circular businesses. If we hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” says Newman. “That was a very painful part of our journey, but a necessary one because it forced us to confront some of these basic questions of how we work for brands.” The company has a sizeable stack of pilot programs and case studies it is celebrating, too — including some with some seriously hard-hitting clients. For Walmart, the company supplies reusable bags optimized for home grocery delivery service and manages the cleaning and resupply of the packaging. For New Balance, it leads reusable shipping packaging deployment for the New Balance Team Sports initiative, creating an efficient and environmentally friendly system to ship samples to and from partners. This reusable packaging replaces 10,000 shipments of single-use cardboard boxes, and the company claims this reduces emissions up to 63%. It worked with Aveda to create its Returnable Shipper Program specifically for Aveda’s one-litre bottles. For Happy Returns, the company changes how goods are moved between stores and warehouses with . This means that shoppers can exchange and return e-commerce items without printing, packaging or person-to-person contact. Returnity is creating reusable packaging solutions that prevents huge amounts of cardboard and plastics going through the recycling loop. Returnity The investment will help Returnity “double overnight,” adding account development bandwidth, improving the back-end and improving the product and marketing in ways the company hasn’t been able to date. Standardizing its onboarding process means that the company is ready to start growing in earnest. “We h |
Better.com loses more senior execs as employees brace for another mass layoff | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | News of Wallace’s departure was leaked on Blind earlier this month when an internal email was . The turmoil may be impacting the outfit’s bottom line. The company disclosed in a recent SEC filing that its fourth-quarter net loss may reach $182 million, while revenue fell as much as 22% from the previous quarter. In the meantime, reported earlier this week, Better.com has been hiring more aggressively in India, purportedly due to the lower cost of labor. |
Daily Crunch: Meta fires executive after ‘predator catchers’ interview video goes viral | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Friday, February 18, 2022! First, a note that much of TechCrunch is off Monday for a U.S. holiday, so some regular stuff might land a day later than usual. But we’re a global team, so we will not be quiet to start next week. That’s a promise. – And from the Equity team, ? / Getty Images Few entrepreneurs are natural-born storytellers, and maybe it’s unfair to expect them to do any better. Many startups are paying a PR agency a monthly retainer of $10,000 or more, but their odds of getting a story placed about their company aren’t much better than spinning a roulette wheel. According to Amanda Milligan, head of marketing at Stacker Studio, startups can increase organic traffic and improve SEO by developing newsworthy content that will get picked up and shared by media outlets. In a classic TC+ how-to, she explains how to create earned media that organically boosts ranking keywords, referring domains, clicks, and other key SEO metrics. SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Fintech investor survey, data-driven fundraising, VC scouting jobs | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | The public markets may have cooled on fintechs in recent months, but for entrepreneurs who are still considering starting up, “outlook good,” says the Magic 8 Ball. In 2021, one-third of all unicorns created were fintech companies: investor FOMO, increased use of digital payments, BNPL, and other financial services created a gravitational field that attracted more than one out of every five dollars VCs invested last year. But that data is available anywhere. What founders really want to know is: ? To find out, fintech reporter Mary Ann Azevedo contacted several active fintech investors to hear . “Each respondent was kind enough to let us know how they want to be pitched, and for grins, one shared an example of a cold e-mail that worked,” she writes. Here’s who we surveyed: “Crypto came up more than once, and LatAm is hot, hot, hot when it comes to investor interest,” she found. The survey includes many valuable takeaways for other investors, but we put this together primarily to help fintech entrepreneurs and founders, so if you’re considering starting up in this sector, or know someone who is, please read and share. We’ll be off on Monday, February 21 in observance of Presidents’ Day in the U.S. Thanks very much for reading TechCrunch+, and have a great weekend. Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
/ Getty Images It’s an opportune moment to launch a new company, but rising interest rates, inflation and any other number of unknown factors could make investors more judicious when it comes to placing bets. But data-driven founders who can tell a sweet story with the right metrics are much more likely to get an investor’s attention, according to Blair Silverberg, co-founder and CEO of Hum Capital. “Unfortunately, many companies lack an efficient way to gather, synthesize and interpret data into real-time insights, resulting in the default reliance on static, Excel-based samplings that may not capture the full picture of your company’s potential,” he says. Here’s something people in tech don’t like to talk about: there’s not a lot of institutional memory in this industry. For example, many founders who closed funding rounds last year believe that when it rains, it pours — but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, early-stage startups are raising capital at a higher level and valuations today than their late-stage counterparts did a decade ago. But were these older startups undervalued, or did market dynamics dictate their pricing? Following a deep dive of new PitchBook data, Alex Wilhelm reports that it could be a mix of both: “It appears that more competition helped unlock a more fair market price — yes yes, irony — and that startups are now getting their dollar’s worth earlier on.” / Getty Images Could your startup use more marketing support? Most companies will put off making a full-time growth hire as long as possible, relying instead on a PR firm to bolster their public presence, but that leaves one critical resource untapped: investors. According to Miles Jennings, founder and COO of Recruiter.com, investors will gladly amplify your messages, but only if you make them shareable and engaging. In an article for TC+, Jennings shares six tips that can help turn investors into advocates who’ll serve as an extension of your marketing team. Sign with message reading “Please Check In” at the headquarters of short-term rental technology company Airbnb in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood of San Francisco, California, October 13, 2017. SoMa is known for having one of the highest concentrations of technology companies and startups of any region worldwide. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) The pandemic was especially tough for companies in travel and hospitality, and for Airbnb, it was nearly catastrophic. But the company has since bounced back on the back of resurging demand for hospitality and tourism, and a number of favorable changes to its host policies, to the point where it is “hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Q4 revenue larger than in 2019, when it posted $1.11 billion in total top line,” writes Alex Wilhelm. / Getty Images The future of work is still being written, but in the meantime, every startup still needs to set aside money to obtain laptops, monitors, and things employees can sit on. In the two years since the pandemic began scattering office workers, many companies are now renting crucial hardware with an eye toward flexibility, optimizing tax deductions and scalability, reports Anna Heim. In a well-researched post, she reviews the benefits and drawbacks of renting hardware, along with tax implications for companies based in Europe and the United States. / Getty Images Few entrepreneurs are natural-born storytellers, and maybe it’s unfair to expect them to do any better. Many startups are paying a PR agency a monthly retainer of $10,000 or more, but their odds of getting a story placed about their company aren’t much better than spinning a roulette wheel. According to Amanda Milligan, head of marketing at Stacker Studio, startups can increase organic traffic and improve SEO by developing newsworthy content that will get picked up and shared by media outlets. In a classic TC+ how-to, she explains how to create earned media that organically boosts ranking keywords, referring domains, clicks, and other key SEO metrics. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch / Getty Images No lie: some venture capitalists are as rich as Croesus, and getting richer all the time. Many are former founders, but even so: becoming a VC isn’t easy without the right connections and experience. Without a successful exit or a Stanford network, one way to break in is by working as a scout who sources deals. Versatile VC founder David Teten and associate Akshat Dixit explain what it means to work as a scout, the role’s earning potential, the process for finding a job, and which questions to ask should you find yourself in an interview. Additionally, the authors compiled a long list of VC firms that offer scout programs: happy hunting. Even though deep tech laid a foundation for many mainstream and enterprise applications, investment in this area has been largely limited to specialist VC firms. The space, however, is seeing a resurgence, and European VCs seem to be doubling down on a belief that deep tech startups will reap generous returns, wrote Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm. For The Exchange, they analyzed Angular Ventures’ report on VC investment into enterprise and deep tech in Europe and Israel, which revealed “that capital is flowing into the right areas for a European deep tech nexus, or cluster of nexuses, to form.” Unit / Flourish Ventures Culture is an aspect many founders like to gush about, but few have a concrete plan or vision of how to cultivate the environment they want. For Unit’s Itai Damti, culture is so important that he and co-founder Doron Somech drafted a document the company uses to communicate their values and expectations to its employees. Emmalyn Shaw, managing partner at Flourish Ventures, said it was a key factor in her decision to back the company: “In my 20-plus years, I have never seen a document like it.” In the latest edition of TechCrunch Live, Damti and Shaw discussed Unit’s pitch deck, its unconventional format that put their experience above the product, and how the deck has helped them fundraise successfully. |
Goodbye Samsung Galaxy Note, hello S22 Ultra | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | I was a skeptic when Samsung . And I certainly wasn’t alone among the crowd at the Messe Berlin that IFA. The 5.3-inch display was unimaginably large in a year when the average screen measured a hair over 3.5 inches. The stylus graced the phone like a vestigial organ — some strange and unnecessary relic from the days of the Palm Pilot we’d collectively (and happily) evolved away from. Samsung rightfully points out such skepticism in reference to more recent devices that received similar pushback, early on. It’s something I think about a lot, faced with new innovations like foldable displays. You’d have a pretty great track record if you spent your time betting on new innovation to fail. It’s the nature of the beast — and this strange industry in which we find ourselves. The more radical the innovation, the more likely it is to faceplant. But the Note was a success by any reasonable metrics. Within nine months of launch, the company announced that it had sold 10 million units. It helped inject new ideas into a category that was already starting to feel stagnant 4.5 years after the arrival of the first iPhone. It saw Samsung working to find new ways to embrace the idea of a mobile-first virtual office in a post-Blackberry world and, perhaps most profoundly, it ushered in the era of the phablet. By 2014, even Apple had to admit that the age of celebrating 3.5/4-inch as some kind of platonic screen size ideal was at an end with the introduction of the 4.7-inch iPhone 6. Brian Heater Not all of the Note’s innovations were so transformational, of course. There was a period following the product’s release when it felt like the stylus was having a moment. That perhaps the input device had been unfairly maligned on the mobile form factor. A number of manufacturers experimented with them, ultimately finding far more success with larger pencils designed specifically for tablets. Broader trends or no, the Note hung on to the S-Pen until the bitter end. It remained the one true differentiator as Samsung continually blurred the lines between it and the Galaxy S line, and in a bitter twist of irony, the smartphone S-Pen has now officially outlived the Galaxy Note as a brand. Ten years is a good run for a consumer electronics brand — particularly for a company like Samsung, which has a tendency toward the fickle, when it comes to brand names. Just look at the dance the company has done with its budget flagship brand. Toward the end, sales began to stagnate — and even drop — according to analytic firms. Though the Note certainly wasn’t alone in that respect. The entire premium smartphone market suffered even prior to the pandemic. People simply weren’t in the market to upgrade as quickly. Premium phones were getting more expensive and also good enough to keep around for an extra couple of years. Meanwhile, the Galaxy S line kept getting bigger and, last year, added S-Pen support. Brian Heater Like many amid the Great Resignation, the Note took the year off to regroup. By the time 2022 rolled around, Samsung had declared its foldable line their own flagship, another piece of evidence that the Note wouldn’t be returning. Once Samsung integrated the S-Pen slot into the Galaxy Ultra 22, the Note’s spirit left its body and floated in the liminal region of brands that sometimes get mentioned in passing in marketing materials. Which is to say, in a conversation I had with a Samsung rep ahead of launch, they added that the company reserves the right to refer to a more abstract “Note experience,” with regards to features like S-Pen note taking. I said my piece around the announcement, but it bears repeating here: the Note brand is stronger — or at least more instantly recognizable — than Galaxy S. Samsung should keep it around, even if it’s as the Galaxy S22 Note. We had a little time with the device ahead of launch a couple of weeks back. That’s where a bunch of the photos in this story came from. Basically, it’s a time to get shots of the product and play around with it a bit ahead of the official review. Naturally, I beelined directly toward the Galaxy S22 Ultra. The thing that occurred to me the moment I picked up the device is that it is, indeed, the Galaxy Note 22 in all but name. It looks like a Note, it acts like a Note, it notes like a Note. So if you’ve been wearing all black and lighting Galaxy Note-shaped candles, you can chill out now. Think of it as though the Note witnessed a terrible murder and had to go into government protection. Or it married a Galaxy S and took its last name. I dunno. Whichever makes you feel better. Brian Heater What is interesting (and less discussed), however, is how the new device effectively disrupts the top of the S22 line. If you’re a bell and whistle-type person when it comes to buying a new phone, the S-Pen is now among the bells and/or whistles. It’s the logical extension of Samsung’s longstanding approach of going all in on the top end. Although $200 sepa11rates the S22 from the S22 Plus and the S22 Plus from the S22 Ultra, the former two share more common DNA than the latter two. In fact, display and battery size are the two meaningful distinctions. Those apply in the case of the S22 Plus versus the Ultra, as well, while the top-of-line device also gets a higher-res main camera and additional telephoto, more memory and storage options (though it starts at the samne 8GB, 128GB) 100x Space Zoom (versus 30x) and the aforementioned S-Pen and all that entails. Here are the basics of what you get for the $1,200 Galaxy S22 Ultra • 6.8-inch display at 501 ppi
• Four rear-facing cameras: 108MP (wide), 12MP (ultrawide), 10MP (telephoto), 10MP (telephoto), 100x Space Zoom, 10x optical
• 5,000mAh battery
• 8GB-12GB RAM and 128GB-1TB storage
• 4K video capture
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (market dependent)
• In-display fingerprint reader The last three bullet points are the same across the board. But if, say, you want a 6.8-inch screen and 5,000mAh battery, instead of 6.6 inches and 4,500mAh, congratulations, you’re getting an S-Pen, as well. The flip side of this is, of course, you won’t get that Note functionality without spending at least $1,200. Samsung made it clear that it plans to maintain S-Pen functionality as a delineating factor between the ultra-premium and the rest of the Galaxy S line, moving forward. In the grand scheme of very expensive smartphones, I don’t think any of this is end of the world type stuff, but there was bound to be at least a little friction when the company integrated one long-standing product line into the other. And listen, if I’m being entirely honest with myself here, I think we’d be critiquing the company for overly complicating things if suddenly there were like six S22 base models. Brian Heater Samsung had to make some decisions here and it went toward making the S-Pen a super-duper premium feature. So suddenly some folks are going to have to ask themselves whether they like the S-Pen $200-400 worth. I certainly can’t answer that question for anyone but myself. I’ve long found the S-Pen to be an interesting and sometimes quite useful feature. Its evolution over the past decade has been a combination of software upgrades that have made it far more user friendly, with additions that felt like a company trying to figure out how to keep fresh the product’s most interesting feature. Is using the stylus to advance PowerPoint slides wildly useful? Not really. Is it neat? Yeah, sure, kinda. On the truly useful side are improvements like Convert to Text. I’m consistently impressed at how well it does with my wildly illegible chicken scratch. My writing is bad enough with a pen and paper, let alone stylus on a glossy screen, and yet the software nearly always figures out what I’m attempting to communicate. Either my writing isn’t as bad as I thought (it is, spoiler) or the software is very good (spoiler, it’s this one). Brian Heater Samsung has done a fine job fulfilling the S-Pen’s promise over the past decade. But even by the time first Note arrived, many users had already trained themselves to type proficiently on a touchscreen. For many, the Note was an entre into the world of large-screen phones that currently finds Samsung users choosing between 6.6 and 6.8 inches, on the high end. In its bid to improve the Galaxy S line, the company effectively cannibalized the Note. What we’re left with, however, is a great (if, perhaps, overstuffed) fallout from more than a decade of smartphone wars. For all its heft, the S22 Ultra maintains a surprising sleek profile. The truth is that the original Galaxy Note was viewed as impossibly large, and in many ways, it fit the bill. In 2011, it took a lot more phone to support that much screen. But breakthroughs like edge-to-edge displays have managed to fit more screen into a smaller overall footprint. Make no mistake, the S22 Ultra is a tank at 6.43 x 3.07 x 0.35 inches. As an average size adult male with (anecdotally) average size hands, there were moments when the 8 ounce device felt unwieldy. It’s the price you pay for going big. And, as Samsung would no doubt happily interject here, if it’s too big a surface area for you, it’s got a couple of foldables it’ll happily sell you. [gallery ids="2269377,2269378,2269379,2269380,2269382,2269383,2269384,2269385,2269386,2269404,2269405,2269406,2269407,2269408,2269409,2269410,2269412,2269413"] The cameras are top line here, too. I happily took it for a spin around my neighborhood on an unseasonably warm February morning. The S22 takes some of the best photos you can capture on a handset in 2022. Night shots have made impressive progress over the last few generations. Samsung’s most meaningful competition on that front (and imaging, generally) is the latest Pixel, which finds Google giving in and finally admitting that hardware also matters. Night shots are one of the places you’ll see the biggest difference between the Ultra and lower-speced S22 models — meaning that those improvements are likely to filter down in a generation or two. Space Zoom, too, offers a mind-boggling 100x, but that comes with a dramatic decrease in fidelity. I’ve not seen a super compelling case that the feature has moved far beyond novelty. Features like nona-binning, which combines pixels shot with the 108MP sensor to allow more light in, are far more meaningful for everyday use. Baby Brian, remastered Earlier additions like Photo Remaster and Object Eraser find the company continuing to improve on the software front. Autoframing improves shots with multiple subjects, while the improved Portrait Mode utilizes a depth map to take more precise cutouts with the bokeh effect. I’m happy to report it works surprisingly well with rabbits. The display offers improved outdoor viewing — a longtime sticking point for handsets, particularly on those aforementioned morning photo excursions. The beefy 5,000mAh battery, meanwhile, got me through 26 hours of moderate to heavy use. Brian Heater The S22 Ultra is a very good phone. That was never a question, really. You can’t say it combines the best of both Galaxy lines, exactly, so much as meeting in the logical center point between the two. The S and Note have, after all, been slowly morphing into one another over the past several generations. What is a broader question, however, is what the product says about the fate of the premium smartphone. The category has lost much of its luster over the past several years. It’s an excitement Samsung hopes to revive with the arrival of the foldable. Though even with the most optimistic projections, we’re a long ways away from that form factor dominating the conversation. Brian Heater Meantime, Samsung will continue doing what it does best: jamming every bell and whistle into a device at a truly premium price point. Unless the S-Pen is a total dealbreaker, however, the vast majority of users should be perfectly content staying on the lower end of the Galaxy S22 offerings. For a well-loved brand that’s weathered as many storms as it has, it’s strange to see the Note quietly drift into the background the way it has. But it undoubtedly had its moment in the sun, and its innovations will live on through their broader impact on the smartphone landscape, even as the company sunsets the brand to make room for its next gambit. |
Extreme H is an upcoming off-road racing series with hydrogen cars | Kris Holt | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | An off-road racing series that uses hydrogen cars is to debut in 2024. Extreme H will be a companion championship to , an off-road motorsport with electric vehicles that . The two series will hold races in the same locations on the same days using the same format. According to Alejandro Agag, who also founded , organizers are looking at two options for hydrogen integration: combined racing or full transition. Development on the Extreme H car is underway and there are plans to have a prototype ready by early 2023. The vehicle will have the same powertrain and chassis that’s . The main difference is that the central power source will be a hydrogen fuel cell instead of a battery. Extreme H organizers say that the fuel cells will be powered by green hydrogen, which combines water and solar energy. Extreme E uses the same process to power EV batteries, while the paddock runs on a combination of batteries and green hydrogen. |
Walmart is expanding autonomous delivery pilot with GM’s Cruise this year | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Cruise plans to expand the self-driving delivery pilot it has with Walmart in Arizona, the company’s senior government affairs manager said in a recent public meeting with state legislators. The autonomous vehicle company, which is a , is mostly focused on testing — and eventually launching — a commercial robotaxi service in California. But Cruise also has a small fleet of electric autonomous Chevy Bolts in Arizona as part of a limited pilot program with Walmart. Today, that pilot involves just one Walmart store located on Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community lands near Scottsdale. The autonomous vehicles all have human safety operators behind the wheel. The company plans to expand to as many as eight Walmart stores in 2022, Carter Stern, Cruise’s senior government affairs manager, said during an Arizona Senate Transportation Committee meeting held earlier this month. Walmart “We’ll really continue to see that grow in Arizona first and then it’ll be exported to the rest of the country,” Stern said in describing the intended ramp-up of the program. Cruise employs more than 100 people in Arizona, which includes the team that monitors the company’s global fleet. That group is expected to grow, although Stern didn’t provide a figure or timeline for when more people would be hired. The comments provided by Stern provided a rare insight into Cruise’s activity in Arizona and its pilot with Walmart, which for now is the only source of revenue for the company. While the bulk of Cruise’s operations is in San Francisco, the company cannot currently charge for ride-hailing services (or delivery, for that matter) in the state because it lacks the proper permit from the California Public Utilities Commission. (Cruise has been providing free delivery services through its partnership with San Francisco Marin Food Bank & the SF New Deal. The company told TechCrunch it has completed 113,000 deliveries to date.) Cruise has nearly all of the permits required to operate and charge for rides in vehicles that operate without a human driver behind the wheel. It has the three permits required by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test and deploy “drivered” and driverless vehicles, including one that allows it to carry the public. It also applied for a permit with the California Public Utilities Commission to charge for those rides, though the company has not yet received that permit. Earlier this month, Cruise opened up its to the public in San Francisco. For now, these rides are free and a public waitlist has been set up via Cruise’s website. The company has previously said that members of the public who join the waitlist will not have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before using the service. Cruise’s initial driverless service is available from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Cruise tests its autonomous Chevy Bolt vehicles throughout San Francisco. However, the driverless service is limited to certain areas and streets within the Haight-Ashbury, Richmond District, Chinatown and Pacific Heights neighborhoods. |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 2 | null |
The average person doesn’t have a chance with the smart home | Owen Williams | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Owen’s HomeKit setup. The author’s messy smart hubs piled up in a closet. , Matter promises to bring the smart home together. Matter |
ICON raises $185M in Tiger-led round to build more homes with its 3D printing tech, now approaching $2B valuation | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | A spokesperson wrote via e-mail: “We are excited for the opportunity to continue partnering with world class investors, board members and organizations at every level.” |
For startups, the message is clear: Grow fast or die | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | crossed the $800 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) threshold last year , but more notable was its growth rate of greater than 80% during the same period. That’s a wild expansion pace for a company of Databricks’ size, and it backed up its CEO’s general vibe that his team could weather any change in market conditions regarding the value of software startups, provided that he keeps the growth flowing. This is akin to noting that you don’t need more than one dart at the bar because you intend to hit the bullseye on your first go. Most folks aren’t going to manage it. So what about the companies with slowing growth in the startup market, especially those now contending with a changing market that is turning what used to be tailwinds into full-force headwinds? Well, the public markets are detailing an increasingly clear and perhaps bleak image for companies valued on growth more than profitability — which is to say, all startups and a good chunk of recently public unicorns. It goes something like this: Your trailing results don’t matter, and if your growth forecast is even off by a hair, we’re going to trash your value and call you names. Last summer, The Exchange jokingly said that cloud companies — software firms that deliver their products via the internet — , comparing difficult results from Dropbox and Box with a few high-growth startups. From where we sit today, June 2021 might as well be a decade ago in terms of market conditions, but I raise the reminder to underscore that growth has always mattered; we’re not treading new water here. What has changed, it appears, is that the bar for what counts as a good performance in earnings is weighted nearly entirely on forward growth. This is to say that good trailing results are expected as a matter of course, and stock price — corporate value — is predicated instead of future results. Which is to say, guidance. For startups, the lesson here is that no matter how well you did in 2021, investor sentiment appears more tied to what you are projecting for this year than anything. |
FBI eyes ransomware profits with new cryptocurrency crimes unit | Carly Page | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is launching a new unit dedicated to tracking crimes and profits. U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the formation of the Virtual Asset Exploitation Team (VAXU) during a speech at the Munich Cyber Security Conference this week, saying the unit will help the U.S. government to keep pace with “threat actors who exploit innovations as fast as the marketplace produces them.” This includes “the explosion of ransomware and the abuse of cryptocurrency,” Monaco added, noting that the FBI is currently tracking more than 100 different ransomware variants. that scammers wiped over $7.7 billion in cryptocurrency from victims globally in 2021, an increase of 80% compared to the previous year. The FBI’s VAXU unit will combine cryptocurrency experts, analysis and virtual asset seizure in one place to work investigations and provide training to the rest of the FBI. The specialized unit will form part of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET), a division of the U.S. Justice Department created in late-2021 to investigate the criminal use of digital assets, with a particular focus on virtual cryptocurrency exchanges and other technologies that enable the misuse of cryptocurrency or facilitate criminal activity. “Ransomware and digital extortion, like many other crimes fueled by cryptocurrency, only work if the bad guys get paid, which means we have to bust their business model,” said Monaco. “The currency might be virtual, but the message to companies is concrete: if you report to us, we can follow the money and not only help you but hopefully prevent the next victim.” Monaco also announced this week that Eun Young Choi, a federal prosecutor with experience in arraigning cybercriminals, has been appointed the first director of the NCET. “The NCET will play a pivotal role in ensuring that as the technology surrounding digital assets grows and evolves, the department in turn accelerates and expands its efforts to combat their illicit abuse by criminals of all kinds,” said Choi. The announcement comes just weeks after , currently valued at $3.6 billion, that were allegedly stolen in the 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex, marking the “largest ever” financial seizure by the department. |
Do you want your paycheck in crypto? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week, and and got together with and to rock our regular Friday news roundup. This time, however, with extra zip, as we’re staring down a long weekend that, let’s be clear, everyone needs. Regardless, here’s the show rundown: Thanks to those of you who tuned into our live show last week, we’ll be back next week on Hopin and Twitter Spaces to hear our OG show without edits. Anyways, fun show as always and just a reminder that w |
Meta axes a head of global community development after he appears on video in underage sex sting | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has confirmed to TechCrunch that Jeren A. Miles, who had been a manager of global community development, is no longer employed by the company after a video went viral on , which was then reposted on and , featuring him in a sting operation conducted by amateurs with the intent of catching paedophiles. The two-hour video, posted by an amateur group called PCI Predator Catchers Indianapolis on its YouTube page, does not depict Miles caught in any sex act, nor admitting to any specific sex act, nor admitting to intending to carry out any sex act. And it is not clear what the legal ramifications of this will be, if any. But it does feature two people questioning Miles, who in the course of the interrogation admits to having graphic and inappropriate communications with a 13-year-old boy. It’s a damning enough exchange that Miles has subsequently deleted his social profiles on sites like and , and — whether he was fired or resigned voluntarily — Miles has left his role at Facebook over the matter. ”The seriousness of these allegations cannot be overstated. The individual is no longer employed with the company. We are actively investigating this situation and cannot provide further comment at this time,” said a statement from a Meta spokesperson provided to us by Drew Pusateri. I’ll point out that Pusateri also tried to talk me out of the newsworthiness of this story over the phone before sending over the statement, noting that other outlets were not covering it (thanks for the advice). Meta feels like it’s been hit by wave upon wave of controversy for years, ranging from stories related to data protection and privacy, troubled product executions and falling engagement numbers. at this point. You could argue that this is all part and parcel of being as big and exposed as Meta is — billions of people around the globe are habitual users of its portfolio of products, which include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, Workplace and Oculus — although none of it adds up to anything good. Coincidentally, the company has been trying to its PR offense, starting with naming former U.K. politician as their president of global affairs. They will have their work cut out for them. |
Build a versatile startup team to make pivots easier | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Steve Blank’s definition of a startup is “a temporary organization in the search of a repeatable business model”. Temporary, because as soon as you have built a machine where you pour $10 into the top of it, and $11 falls out of the bottom, you’re no longer a startup. Or, if you run out of cash, and the whole thing collapses like a poorly-built house of cards, well, that’s the end of your company as well. But few people talk about what you’re actually building as a startup. New founders often believe that they are building a product, a marketing machine or a well-oiled operations machine. That may all be true, but it isn’t enough. The world is full of examples where the second-best product wins. HD-DVD was objectively better than Blu-ray, but the former was brutally ground to dust by Sony. There are a thousand solutions that are better than Jira, but hordes of product managers are using it through gritted teeth. And the annals of startup history are litered with companies that built supremely efficient machines that were ready for incredible scale, only for the demand to never materialize. One great example of that is WebVan, which built millions of dollars’ worth of logistics and operations, only to never quite get the customers it needed — for a great analysis of that particular disaster, . As a startup CEO, you have three jobs: Don’t run out of money, set the direction and culture of the company and — most importantly — hire the right team. The latter is the crux of everything you do, because it is what enables you to pivot. Stewart Butterfield is a good example of a founder who does this particularly well. He has attempted to start a games company several times, and “failed” every time. The first time he built a game, his company wanted a mechanism for sharing pictures and screenshots. The second time he built a game, he discovered that it was hard to communicate with his teammates and keep everyone in the loop on what they needed to know. They built tools to solve both of these problems and spun those tools out as separate businesses. You may have heard of them — Flickr for photo sharing, and Slack for internal communication. Both turned out to be supremely successful companies. And both were possible because the founding team didn’t hold on too tightly to their original idea; they spotted an idea, validated that it might be a good idea and then pivoted the company. The important thing about hiring is to hire folks who are inspired, inspiring and curious. You need team members who are willing to develop deep domain expertise. If you are building a HIPAA-compliant SaaS solution for electronic patient records, you’re not just hiring a team that can solve those specific problems. Yes, that is what you need in the , but the magic of startups is that you don’t quite know what comes next. You’re not building a specialist team at first — that can wait until you hit a growth stage in earnest, when you need true, deep specialists who can solve these problems in a best-in-class way. At the earliest stages of founding a company, you are collecting a gang of humans who care about patient confidentiality, data safety, compliance and user experience, and who can apply those skills to different problems. Startups need to be nimble; if an unbeatable competitor shows up out of the blue, side-step the challenge by redefining what you are doing. Don’t fight in the red, blood-soaked ocean against behemoth competitors that can out-spend you at every turn; where you are choosing a slice of the market that nobody is interested in just now. With one of my recent companies, we were building a virtual events platform. That was exciting because we launched within weeks of a certain pandemic that caused a bunch of lockdowns — and we saw incredible growth as a result. It was also exciting because out of the blue, . We had an amazing team, and were able to pivot into a niche that nobody else was serving at scale: white-label events for companies that deeply care about the branded experience of their events. Sure, it was a very small slice of the market, but it was a blue-ocean strategy with extremely high-value customers who paid orders of magnitude more for highly customized events. Over the years, I’ve worked as an advisor to a few hundred startups, both in my role as director of Portfolio at a venture firm, and as an independent advisor. Without fail, the strongest startup teams are the ones that are versatile, hungry and knowledgeable. The startups launch minimum viable products (a misnomer, because they aren’t minimal, they aren’t viable and they aren’t products) — often defined as “the smallest amount of work you can do to validate a hypothesis”. In the process of running these experiments, the companies learn a tremendous amount about what the customers want. They learn about pricing, about the problems they are solving, about the buying dynamics of the customers, about the competitive landscape and the different business models that are available to them. A lot of the time, a company gets six-nine months down a path and realizes that their original assumptions weren’t completely accurate. At that point, they have a choice: double down and pig-headedly continue down the path — and some startup founders are able to will their companies into being and find tremendous success that way. The other option is to pivot; take the hard-earned knowledge you picked up along the way, and leverage the flexible team you’ve built to pick a different direction. Abandon that game you were building in favor of building a communications tool. Give up on the generalist virtual events platform and build a specialist, niche product that can give you a foothold in the market. Or turn to your team and say “hey; this isn’t going to work, but we learned a lot about this industry over the past year. What other problems have you guys spotted, that we can start looking at?” Over-specialization too early means you build a sniper rifle of a company, perfectly designed to solve a very specific problem in a tightly defined way. If you’re lucky, that may work — but what you really need to maximize your chances of success is a shotgun and as many shells as you can carry. Hire accordingly. |
Snapchat is rolling out a new buddy system-like real-time location sharing feature | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | is rolling out a new buddy system-like feature that will allow users to share with a friend their real-time location for 15 minutes or a few hours, the company announced on Friday. The new global feature is meant to help users look out for their friends as they continue to resume their social life, return to campus or begin to travel again. It can be used for day-to-day things like making sure your friend gets home safe at night. Users can only share their real-time location with individual friends. Snapchat says that for safety reasons, there isn’t an option for users to send their real-time location details to all of their Snapchat friends. The company also notes that both parties have to accept each other as friends on Snapchat before they can share their location. When users decide the turn on the feature, they’ll be prompted with a reminder that the tool is meant to be used with close friends and family only. Since 2017, the app has given users the option to share their location with their friends on the Snap Map when using Snapchat. Now, 250 million people use the Map to connect with their friends each month. The company says this new real-time feature was built on feedback from users about how they were using Snap Map with their friends. It notes that 78% of Snapchat users in the United States say they aren’t hesitant to share their location on the Snap Map and that they do so because they think it’s a safe way to stay connected with others. The company is releasing the new feature as part of a broader partnership with , a national nonprofit dedicated to combating campus sexual assault. In addition to the new feature, the app will also publish a new PSA focused on increasing bystander awareness. The launch of the new feature comes a day after that users will be able to change their usernames starting February 23rd. The username change won’t impact aspects of users’ accounts, such as their friend lists, Snap codes, Snap scores, memories, etc. You won’t be able to select usernames that have already been used and you can only change your username once a year. |
Sirona Medical acquires Nines’ AI algorithms to rebuild radiology’s IT from the ground up | Emma Betuel | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | Sirona Medical, a company developing an “operating system” for digital radiology, has acquired — a company that has developed FDA-cleared analysis and triage algorithms. This acquisition comes during a somewhat shaky moment in AI-based radiology. But Sirona is betting this move proves out its thesis: to bring AI into the clinical workflow, we need to rebuild things from the ground up. To understand where Sirona and Nines fit together, think about the IT behind radiology as a layer cake. The first layer of that cake is made of medical image databases. The second layer is software that radiologists interact with on a day-to-day basis, like viewing or reporting software. The third consists of AI algorithms that can search for patterns in those images or help doctors make decisions. RadOS, Sirona’s core product, aims to bring together these bottom two pieces, and allow for AI algorithms to be layered on top — which is where Nines has made significant progress. The company has created algorithms that it claims can actually aid in physician decision-making. allows scientists to measure the size of lung nodules (abnormal growths) to help detect respiratory diseases. evaluates CT images of the brain for signs of intracranial hemorrhage and mass effect. The goal is to help doctors triage patients. (Both algorithms have received FDA 510(k) clearance.) The RadOS platform. Sirona Medical This acquisition is happening because, to truly integrate algorithms into clinicians’ workflow, you need to unify layers one and two, Sirona CEO Cameron Andrews told TechCrunch. RadOS, he said, was poised to solve that problem. When it comes to AI in healthcare, it’s been a mixed bag lately. On one hand, you have the in January — a blow to AI radiology optimists. But it’s not enough to dampen enthusiasm. , Radnet, the largest outpatient diagnostic imaging provider in the country, acquired two companies invested in AI imaging analysis for cancer, pulmonary diseases and neurodegeneration. Then there’s the elephant in the room: The has yet to arrive. of about 1,400 members of the American College of Radiology done in 2021 found that just 30% of radiologists currently use AI in their clinical practices, and 20% of those that did not use AI planned to purchase new AI tools within the next five years. Sirona’s pitch is that the issues that have stymied AI applications in radiology are baked deep into industry’s legacy tech. All those aforementioned “layers” aren’t designed to work together. Even before you add on clinical support algorithms, radiologists are already working with three or four different pieces of software, said Andrews. Then, if you want to add on a new software program that employs AI capabilities, you have to add yet another to that bundle. in Radiology Artificial Intelligence notes, robust AI software requires the installation of vendor-specific software on individual workstations. This process, the paper notes, can add complexity when it comes to adopting new technology. “We recognized that the underlying radiology IT stack itself, and the underlying imaging IT stack more broadly, is fundamentally unable to handle both the tasks that radiologists have, and the tasks that third-party AI and software vendors are going to be demanding of it in the next decade,” said Andrews. In that light, Sirona’s acquisition of Nines will unite those top-layer algorithms into RadOS. What does that actually mean for doctors? It means they’ll be able to move seamlessly from an annotated image, to report. A doctor could now click on a lung nodule, have it measured using Nines algorithm, and then with another click, insert that measurement into a report. This seems almost mind-numbingly simple. And yet despite that, it was “impossible to achieve,” Andrews said. The note-taking application fueled by the RadOs platform. Sirona Medical “AI and computer vision represents the ability to correlate pixels with words, [and] natural language processing represents the ability to correlate words back to the pixels themselves,” he explains. “That bi-directional connectivity cannot be achieved today because software used to create the report and the software used to look at images are functionally separate. And they’re totally separate from the algorithms.” Sirona has only acquired Nines’ clinical data pipeline, its two FDA-cleared algorithms, its machine learning engines and its radiology workflow management and analytics tools. The company, interestingly, has not acquired Nines’ teleradiology arm. Nines also employs radiologists who work remotely, and provide their expertise to hospitals and clinics. The teleradiology arm wasn’t a fit for Sirona because Sirona “isn’t in the radiology services business,” said Andrews. But he declined to discuss the details of the deal. The genesis of the deal came as a result of investor overlap and mutual connections. 8VC is an investor in both companies, and Sirona has connections with Accel Partners, an investor in Nines. Sirona has raised $62.5 million. |
Coatue backs Kubecost’s goal to supply data to millions of Kubernetes developers | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 2 | 18 | In the past year, Kubernetes adoption exploded, with using the cloud-native tools — an increase of 67% from the year prior. For those who need a refresher on Kubernetes, it is an open source container project created by Google in 2014 to automate, monitor and run applications. Kubernetes is one of the most-used tools by cloud-native developers and can be challenging as a company grows, but aims to alleviate some of those growing pains through its open source tools for monitoring, managing and optimizing Kubernetes spend at scale. The company was founded in 2019 by two former Google employees, Webb Brown and Ajay Tripathy, who previously worked on infrastructure monitoring solutions for Google infrastructure and Google Cloud. “There has been a problem in the space around cost, performance and reliability, by far, with this major transition to containers,” Brown told TechCrunch. “Teams were getting benefits, but totally sacrificing visibility in spending, kind of like having a payroll of millions of dollars, but not knowing what department, team or individuals are getting paid what.” Without that visibility, Brown explained that the downstream effects could be seen in additional waste — he has seen teams overspend, in some cases, by 80% when they don’t know the cost of a product. Recognizing the need for teams to have spending safety nets to cushion for future shocks, Kubecost set out to provide the real-time cost visibility and insights required to continuously monitor and reduce millions of dollars in Kubernetes-related cloud costs. The company’s core product is open source and freely available for teams, something Brown said will always be true. It also has a commercial product for enterprises that can be functionally installed in minutes and tried or used without having to talk to sales. Customers don’t have to share information with Kubecost, but instead the technology takes the open source information and brings it into the customer’s environment and integrates with its cloud or on-premise data center. From there, information is collected in real time and insights provided that show all the areas where a company is spending resources, driving up costs and why costs are going up. Kubecost then provides insights on how to reduce costs and sends alerts or can help set policies so that it can be managed over time. Kubecost Kubecost is already working with more than 2,000 companies, including over 100 enterprise customers — a number that went up three times over last year with five times the engagement metrics — and manages over $2 billion in Kubernetes spend. The company’s annual recurring revenue is growing three times year over year. Brown did not share a specific company valuation, but did say it went up five times from last year. With adoption expected to continue on its trajectory, the company secured $25 million in Series A funding in a round, led by Coatue Management, with participation from seed investors First Round Capital and Afore Capital. As part of the investment, Coatue partner David Cahn will join Kubecost’s board of directors. The new capital will be investing in hiring across the board. Kubecost’s origins started with open source, and Brown plans to make some major investments in that community and on more features. It is also preparing to implement tons of new features, integrations with other products in the ecosystem and more development on insights and optimizations. In addition, the company is also starting its journey with “Hosted Kubecost,” a value-add for teams that, after trying the product, want to let the company manage the functionalities on their behalf. “Overall, there has been an amazing wave of fundamental transformation from cloud to containers, which when you look at it is as big as the transition from data centers to the cloud, so we expect that to continue,” Brown said. “Kubernetes is at the heart of the modern enterprise tech stack. We plan to go deeper there to make transitions and get to a high-scale product that can run all applications through it.” |
Future Retail, Amazon’s estranged partner in India, scales down operations | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 27 | Future Retail, India’s second largest retail chain, is scaling down its operations to reduce losses, it said, the latest casualty in its years-long battle with estranged partner Amazon. The firm, led by Kishore Biyani, said in filings to the stock exchanges that it has been finding it “difficult to finance the working capital needs,” and its losses at store level are “increasing” and of “grave concern.” Future Retail has lost about $593 million in the last four quarters, it said in the filings. The admission follows a local media report that said Reliance Industries — which entered into a now-hotly contested — was taking and absorbing as many as 30,000 workers of the smaller retail giant after brokering deals with landlords. Reliance will rebrand those outlets as its own, Business Standard reported. Reliance Industries had no comment. India’s Future Retail operates over 1,700 stores across brands including Big Bazaar. On Sunday, Big Bazaar told customers that its stores were not operational for two days. (Screen capture from Twitter) Reliance Retail operates the largest retail chain in India. Shortly after it announced that it will acquire Future Group’s retail, wholesale, logistics and warehousing businesses, things started to get complicated. Amazon, which had , accused Future Retail of violating its contract and approached the Singapore arbitrator to halt the deal between the Indian firms. At the time of the partnership with Amazon, a Future Group spokesperson said the American giant’s investment “provides an opportunity for us to learn global trends in digital-payments solutions and launch new products.” Amazon’s deal with Future Retail had given the American e-commerce giant the first right to refusal on purchase of more stakes in Future Retail, Amazon has argued. The Indian firms, in return, said in 2020 that the Singapore’s court order wasn’t valid in the South Asian market. India’s watchdog Competition Commission also approved the deal between the Indian firms. In August last year, India’s Supreme Court . “The ongoing litigation initiated by Amazon in October 2020, and which is continuing for the last one and a half years, has created serious impediments in the implementation of the Scheme, resulting in severe adverse impact on the working of the company,” Future Retail (PDF) the stock exchange. Amazon identifies India as a key overseas market. The firm, which has invested , has also bought stakes in More chain of supermarkets and hypermarkets and department-store chain Shoppers Stop in the country. |
Ukraine takes the resistance to cyberspace, assembling an ‘IT army’ to hack sites from Russia and its allies, calls on tech leaders to get involved | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 2 | 27 | As Ukraine continues to make efforts to mobilize and equip ordinary citizens on the ground to resist Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the country, those who are outside Ukraine who want to help are being asked to get involved in the fight in the virtual world. While the G7 (today with the ) mobilize to to the Swift banking system, the country has been running campaign corralling developers to join an “IT army” tasked with specific cyber challenges. It’s also making specific calls to technology leaders to do their part. The “ “, announced yesterday and already with nearly 184,000 users on its main Telegram channel (and that number is growing — it gained almost 10,000 users in the time I wrote this story), is using that account to name specific projects and call-outs for help to shut down Russian sites, Russian agents and those working in concert with the country, and to mobilize those living in Ukraine around work they can do. (It also has a Gmail address for those not using Telegram: itarmyua@gmail.com. We have reached out to that address to see if the organizers would speak with us more about the project.) And it seems to be making some progress. A on the channel to shut down the API for Sberbank, one of Russia’s major banks, earlier today appears to have come into play, with the site currently offline. Ditto Belorussia’s official information policy site, which it says was also after a call out on the channel. It’s taking the tongue-in-cheek approach similar to the one adopted by Anonymous and other activist hacker groups when going after specific targets. “‘Unbelievable cyberattacks hit Russian governmental services portal, Kremlin, Parliament, First Channel, Aerospace, Railroad websites on February 26th,'” it notes citing Russian media. “‘Fifty plus DDoS-attacks contained over one terabyte capacity.’ Who has done that? ;) what a pity accident.” The effort is getting discovered by word of mouth, but also with tweeting out the link. (However, it’s not clear that the government is actually behind it.) “We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents,” Mykhailo Fedorov, who is both Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister for Digital Transformation, noted on Twitter. “There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists.” Fedorov has not been wasting his words on Twitter. He’s also been singling out and to use their platforms and existing products in aid of the efforts, respectively to ban access to Facebook platforms in Russia, and to extend Starlink access to Ukraine to give users a data backup. Success is a mixed bag: Musk has said the Starlink satellites have been trained over Ukraine now; but the Facebook ask seems to be going a little slower (ads have been banned but it seems , at least so far). Fedorov also gave DMarket, where people trade NFTs and other virtual goods, a for freezing accounts for users from Russia and Belarus, because the proceeds could be used to support their efforts against Ukraine. The country’s position on cryptocurrency platforms has been pretty bullish overall, with the official Ukraine Twitter account yesterday addresses to take donations in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether (USDT). Many people assumed the account was hacked, although that tweet has now been pinned and seems serious. Still, in the scramble there’s no certain information about how those funds would get extracted, and what exactly they would be used to fund. All of this speaks to how fast things move in tech, and just how much is dependent on it working. It’s an interesting counterpoint to the shutdown of the Swift financial messaging network — which ironically, may not be very Swift in coming, since it will need not just states to take a stand but then for the member institutions — Swift includes some 11,000 banks and other financial services companies across 200 countries — to switch off, too. “SWIFT is a neutral global cooperative set up and operated for the collective benefit of its community of more than 11,000 institutions in 200 countries. Any decision to impose sanctions on countries or individual entities rests solely with the competent government bodies and applicable legislators. Being incorporated under Belgian law, our obligation is to comply with related EU and Belgian regulation,” Swift said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “We are aware of the Joint Statement by the leaders of the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States in which they state they will implement new measures in the coming days with respect to Russian banks. We are engaging with European authorities to understand the details of the entities that will be subject to the new measures and we are preparing to comply upon legal instruction.” Make no mistake: losing Swift access is a big deal and will deprive Russia and its companies of being able to transact for buying and selling goods. But the last blockade of this kind was made against Iran and it took years for it to go into full effect. “Being banned or removed from Swift would have a definite impact, since there are not many alternatives to that point to point network,” Virginie O’Shea, an analyst and founder at fintech consultancy Firebrand Research, told TechCrunch. She noted that Russia had previously tried to set up its own internal network for Russian banks, but it doesn’t extend internationally at this point. “It takes time and hoops to jump through [to set something like Swift up].” As with Iran, there will be huge implications for other countries, especially those who rely on Russia for products like gas and energy, which is one reason why implementing the Swift resolution might take time to come through. “If you think about it from the perspective of oil and gas, you are hampering paying for those services, so you’d impact those countries as well as Russia.” |
Why are cybersecurity asset management startups so hot right now? | Carly Page | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | of cybersecurity, you can’t secure something if you don’t know it’s there. Enter cybersecurity asset management, an admittedly unsexy fragment of the booming industry that investors have shown an ever-increasing appetite for over the past 18 months. The cybersecurity industry experienced what is being hailed by some as a “golden year” — funding for cyber startups by 138% to $29.5 billion in 2021 and M&A activity skyrocketed by more than 294% to $77.5 billion. And those focused on securing an organization’s internet-facing assets have received more attention than most. Over the past 12 months alone, Sternum, a Tel Aviv-based startup that provides real-time asset management for internet-connected devices, ; Censys, a search engine for networked devices, ; JupiterOne, a platform that helps companies see all of their digital and cloud assets, ; and Axonius, which lets organizations manage and track computing-based assets, . Big-name tech giants clearly see the value in this often-overlooked area of the industry, too. Microsoft spent to acquire RiskIQ, a company that provides visibility into what assets, devices and services can be accessed outside of a company’s firewall, describing the takeover as a “powerful” addition to its portfolio. While asset management was once the concern of in-house IT teams managing on-premise hardware, it has evolved to warrant the purview of the chief information security officer and is the backbone of any effective cybersecurity strategy. That’s because, in order to effectively address security issues, enterprises need a comprehensive and reliable inventory of their internet-facing assets. Once comprised of PCs and servers, the pandemic-induced digital shift means that organizations have increasingly diverse assets and more platforms in place than ever before — from operational technology systems and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to company-owned and cloud-based services. The proliferation of new asset types, along with the widespread shift to remote work, has resulted in assets becoming more highly distributed, making them even more difficult to manage and inventory. “Asset inventory has historically been a challenge when workforces were physically sitting in company offices and on company networks,” Paul Baird, chief technical security officer at security and compliance giant Qualys, told TechCrunch. “With the pandemic solidifying a new normal of either fully remote or hybrid working approaches, the complexities surrounding asset inventory have only increased in difficulty.” |
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What does a real economist think of cryptocurrencies? | John Biggs | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | Tyler Cowen is an economist and writer who co-founded the popular blog, . A professor at George Mason University, Cowen was named one of the Economist’s top 36 economists who were most influential over the past decade. He’s a popular thinker and blogger in a world of academics, and his work has appeared in Bloomberg and the New York Times. All this is to say that he’s a smart guy. And he’s pro-cryptocurrency. In an effort to understand what economists think of this burgeoning industry, I reached out to Cowen to talk about the history of crypto as it deals with monetary policy and ask a simple question: What would the greatest economists of the past have thought of the current crypto mania? What are economists thinking of crypto? Do they study it? Worry about it? I think most of them haven’t followed it much. A significant subset are puzzled. They’ve not been the leading thinkers behind the crypto movement. Some in particular such as Paul Krugman have been quite harsh. There’s a fair number of working papers people trying to model it, people who are intrigued and curious. So I don’t think there’s a consensus yet. But unless you work on monetary theory, the professional incentive to ponder crypto is pretty small and most people don’t do it often. But the fact that they’re economists doesn’t make them as qualified to have an opinion as you might think. Do you see a new crop of Economist coming out or just focus on cryptocurrency? You need really a lot of external training outside of economics that none of us had in grad school, including just basics in cryptography wage. Some amount of time and experience helps as well. So, most of the best work on crypto is on medium, on Twitter. It’s in weird places, and it’s not by professional economists. Not even monetary theorists. I find this disheartening about my own profession, but that’s how it is. What’s your take on the current industry? I started out as a crypto skeptic but over time I have become what I call a crypto hopeful. I’m not sure it will all work, but I can see legitimate use cases with high benefits. And I think there’s a good chance they’ll succeed and I’m impressed by the high amount of talent in crypto work or the crypto movement. Folks liken this tech to cargo cults. You build the trappings of an economic system in hopes that one magically appears. Is this accurate? I think the crypto people are super, super smart on average. They’re smarter than economists on average. And they have skin in the game, right? Does the profit motive color the experience? Well, people in crypto want to build systems that work. It’s fair for all of us to have uncertainty about how that will go. But the price of crypto assets have been pretty high for a while now and they’ve taken big hits and come back. So I don’t think you can now say it’s just a bubble. So what exactly it would be is still up for grabs, but I think the bubble view is increasingly hard to maintain. Are we assuming this stuff is here to stay? That bitcoin won’t disappear in a decade? That is strongly my belief. Now, there’s a lot of other cryptoassets and I think most of those will disappear. There were many social media companies fifteen years ago also and many are not around but obviously social media is very much a thing. What’s your take on decentralized, from an economic perspective? I think we will end up with both centralized crypto and decentralized crypto, and they will serve quite different functions. So, obviously, there were advantages to centralized systems. You can change the more quickly, more readily. There’s someone to manage them, someone to oversee them. But you also pile up costs. So I think both will prove robust. But again, I would readily admit that still up for grabs. When do you expect governments to go all in with stablecoins and the like? Well you could say right now. The dollar is a stablecoin. There will be more central bank digital currencies within the next year. There’s already some that either exists or literally on the very verge of existing. And I think five years from now, you’ll see a large number of them. Now, they’re not crypto to be clear. But I think that they will be significant is a near certainty. Looking back in time, what’s the clearest historical analog to cryptocurrencies? I think of crypto not so much as a currency. You can’t really use it to buy a coffee at Starbucks.They’ve been failing as that kind of currency. I think of them as new kinds of computers, new kinds of legal systems, and new ways of achieving reliable decentralized consensus. So I think they’re most analogous to advances in computing rather than some kind of monetary It’s a computing question, but obviously intersects with economic issues and the core question is how will all this stuff pay for itself, which is still unclear. Economists do or at least could have a lot to say about that. I wouldn’t say the economists are worthless. I would say they haven’t been valuable yet. They may come to the party very late. Cryptocurrency is not fundamentally new monies, but you will find people in the sector who still will argue these things will serve as literal currencies. I think the name cryptocurrency has become unfortunate but clearly they are currencies can be used for some purposes sometimes black or gray market purposes, but I don’t think fundamentally that’s what they are. You see this with NFTs which are their own thing and they’re closely related to crypto. But like, how does that relate to a currency? Is an NFT an artwork? But within the language of cryptography it all makes more sense. It’s more of a unified development and that’s a way to think about it rather than thinking of them as currencies. What should a CFO or even just a budding economist general be doing in the space? It depends where they’re starting from, but they should put a fair amount of time. They should be reading all the basics about these systems and setting up a Twitter feed, so they can follow what’s happening because the sector changes very rapidly and having a network of people they can ask questions too because it’s not like cooking roast chicken where there’s more or less a tried-and-true formula, right? It’s all changing incredibly rapidly. What do you read on a daily basis to keep up? A lot of what I do is chat with people, you know privately or in groups. I think Twitter overall is the best place to follow crypto. You’re not seeing any hardcore mainstream crypto coverage in the economics journals. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them necessarily, but it’s not where I go to see what’s happening with crypto. Economists are really the laggards here. Is that is that to their benefit or detriment? You know, I think as a profession we will regret having missed the boat, but I’m not sure like any particular individual is going to be worse off, but I think it’s a sign that we’re not sufficiently in touch with actual innovations. It’s a very hard field to make sense of. So when I say good luck. I really mean that and it doesn’t matter how much, you know, or have smart you are or how much time you put into it. It’s just remains a very difficult thing. |
Fintech Roundup: More female founders in fintech? Yes, please | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 2 | 27 | My heart goes out to all the people of Ukraine and our TechCrunch readers there. Co-founders Gloria Lin and Joel Poloney / Bonnie Rae Mills Photography Co-founder and CEO Lily Liu / Piñata Still, we have a long way to go in seeing more equal gender representation when it comes to leadership roles in fintech. In 2020, Deloitte that “in the world of startups, the global fintech founder community was still dominated by men, with women making up just 7% of the total pool.” Leasy Wilshire Lane Capital Founder and Managing Partner Adam Demuyakor / LinkedIn And while we’re talking about proptech, |
Daily Crunch: At SpaceX’s Starship update event, Musk offers updates on plans, progress | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Friday, February 11, 2022! Today we’re talking big rockets, self-driving cars, tech stocks getting rekt, and more. It’s a fun, and good mix of news. Enjoy! – And the first live Equity taping of the year was this week, which was good fun. ! Photo by Yang Bo/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images / Getty Images All new technology needs evangelists to drive adoption and raise money: A straight line connects Steve Jobs’ Apple launch announcements with Thomas Edison’s public demonstrations of incandescent light and alternating current. In China, the central government is the biggest booster of the autonomous vehicle industry, which “saw a period of unprecedented acceleration in 2021, with over $8.5 billion invested,” reports Rita Liao. According to Hongquan Jiang, chairman and managing partner at Boyuan Capital, “Chinese regulators prioritize safety. They’d gladly put up a few more sensors to provide more redundancy so businesses can test more advanced solutions like cars without safety drivers.” |
Reface, a viral face-swap app from Ukraine, adds anti-war push notifications | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 27 | , an synthetic media app that’s developed out of Ukraine, has added push notifications informing its ~200 million-strong global user-base about Russia’s invasion of the country — urging people to #StandWithUkraine, including by watermarking face-swapped videos created with the app. On first opening the app after this update, it also displays an image of civilians sheltering in Kyiv, with a caption that describes the picture as “evidence” of Russia attacking Ukraine. The message also calls for Russia to be excluded from the SWIFT international banking payment system — in order to “stop the war”. Reface said another incoming update to the app will urge all users to “Make a statement against war in Ukraine”. It is also pointing users towards resources where they can help Ukraine. Reface The startup began the anti-war campaign this weekend and so far it says 9 million messages have been sent out — with 2 million of those delivered to users in Russia. It’s a surreal turn for an app which typically turns reality into fantasy by mapping users’ selfies onto video clips of famous people — letting consumers live out a few seconds of imaginary fun. However with Reface employees experiencing Russia’s aggression first hand the team decided it needed to do something to raise global awareness of the situation and encourage people to protest. Reface Messaging with TechCrunch from Ukraine, CEO and co-founder Dima Shvets said: “Reface has started a massive informational campaign and sent push-notifications to all Russian users, showing the evidence of Russian attacks in our cities, asking people to stand with Ukraine and go for protests. Moreover, we’ve added in-app messages to the users from all over the world to support our country, and now every video made with our app has watermark with #standwithukraine and Ukrainian flag.” “We understand how risky this campaign is, and are taking all of them. We’ve already got a lot of 1-star reviews and reports from those who were not ready to see the truth,” he added. Reface is targeting specific messages to its 5.5 million users in Russia who are all being sent push notifications urging them to protest, as well as a link to a video showing a slideshow of war imagery from inside Ukraine — including several images of burnt out and bomb-damaged buildings, as well as photos of civilians trying to shelter. Captions accompanying the slideshow in Russia read: “Wash disgrace from Russia’s face”; “We can stop the war together”; “Flood the streets”; and “Show the world that we are against it”. “The initial goal is to spread the real information to Russians and encourage them to protest, as they don’t have an access to independent media or trust-worthy sources,” a Reface spokeswoman told us. “We do understand the risks and take all of them but it’s such a small price to pay for our freedom. And we hope, App Store and Google Play will support us.” The Kremlin’s grip on mainstream media in Russia means Russia citizens are routinely exposed to state propaganda — such as Putin’s claim that the invasion of Ukraine is a “special military operation”, not an act of war and unprovoked aggression. This means that many ordinary Russians may not have seen footage from inside Ukraine since Putin’s armed forces began bombarding the neighboring country from land, air and sea. The Kremlin has also moved to prevent its propaganda outlets from being restricted by foreign mainstream social media platforms. On the Russian government said it is partially restricting access to Facebook — apparently in retaliation for the social media platform applying fact-checking labels to Kremlin-linked media outlets. By taking a stand and denouncing Russia’s war in Ukraine, Reface could be risking similar action by Roskomnadzor. The Russian internet regulator could, for example, lean on Apple and Google to eject its apps from their mobile stores. A Reface staffer who has remained in Ukraine sheltering in a subway. Reface , the two tech giants bowed to pressure from the Russian state to remove a tactical voting app from their stores created by the organization of jailed Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny. Roskomnadzor had threatened them with fines if they did not remove the Smart Voting app. The internet regulator has also previously targeted VPN apps to try to make it harder for Russian citizens to circumvent local blocks. Russia’s information-shaping cyberOps expand far beyond hard blocks, though. And it is at least possible that the sudden influx of 1-star reviews for Reface since it added anti-war messaging is a coordinated action by Kremlin-backed disinformation agents attempting to discredit the app and discourage usage as part of wider anti-Ukraine propaganda efforts. It’s also notable that, announcing a in recent days, the EU added a notorious Russian troll factory (aka the Internet Research Agency) and its oligarch financier (Yevgeny Prigozhin) to its expanded list of sanctioned entities and individuals. However Reface said it difficult to determine whether the negative reviews of its app since it went public with an anti-war message is a coordinated action or not. (It is — of course — entirely possible and probably quite likely that its decision to push anti-war messaging in what is otherwise purely an entertainment app has simply annoyed some of its users.) Given the negative responses, Reface is urging people to support its ability to “keep informing the world about the current situation in Ukraine”, as it puts it, by helping it to “keep our rates in App Store and Google Play Store high”. So even app ratings can be appropriated as a cyberwarfare propaganda battleground, it seems. Asked about the situation on the ground facing Reface’s team, many of whom are now working from a war zone, the startup told us that most of its staff are still in Ukraine. Although it said some were able to go abroad or have been working remotely abroad since December Male employees are generally unable to leave the country since the invasion owing to government restrictions. For those staff that have stayed, Reface’s spokeswoman said a lot have moved to Western Ukraine to try to find a safer location, while others have stayed in Kyiv “helping informationally and technologically from bomb shelters”. Some have voluntarily joined the territorial defence forces, she also said. “Despite the fact that the team was forced to split up, we have never been so united,” she told us, adding: “We are brave and strong enough and won’t let the Russian invaders destroy us. However, we won’t stop this war without full support from the world.” Another Reface employee’s work space during war in Ukraine. Reface Reface is urging world leaders to impose tougher sanctions on Russia and also provide more support to Ukraine (such as weapons). On SWIFT, EU leaders had appeared to be wavering over a ban — but on Friday the bloc agreed on sanctions that exclude 70% of the Russian banking market, among a number of other measures (via ). Later this weekend — in a further step she described as “unprecedented” — the president of the European Union incoming measures against Russian state media mouthpieces, Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik (and their subsidiaries). In the , Ursula von der Leyen said the will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to saw division in our Union” — adding that the EU is “developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe”. It’s not clear exactly what the EU intends to do, nor how a ban would work in practice — whether it would apply not just to the TV channels themselves but to online platforms that host their content (such as YouTube) — or, indeed, whether it’s even meaningful to talk about blocking Russia’s propaganda machine in the porous (dis)information age — but the fact the bloc says it wants to try is notable. In digital policymaking, EU lawmakers are often very wary of proposing measures where they could be accused of speech policing. But it seems that Putin has pushed them over that line. |
A new main series Pokémon game is coming in late 2022 | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 27 | Step aside, whatever “ is — the ninth generation of Pokémon is coming. This morning, a broadcast announced “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet,” the latest installment in the main series Pokémon games after “Pokémon Sword and Shield” came out in late 2019. The Nintendo Switch games are expected to be released in late 2022. Check out the extremely dramatic trailer here: From the trailer, the graphics look similar to the recently released (and very fun) “Pokémon Legends: Arceus,” but the footage may not show actual gameplay, so it’s still up in the air if we’ll encounter over-world Pokémon again (that implementation worked in “Arceus,” but let’s not pull a “Pokémon Let’s Go” again, please.) But, the YouTube description of the trailer declares, “Welcome to the open world of Pokémon,” so maybe this game will take a nod from “Arceus” (which isn’t an open-world game, but it’s the closest thing the Pokémon franchise has to a “Breath of the Wild”-style adventure). We see some familiar friends like Magnemite, Lucario, Hoppip, Drifloon, Combee, Meowth, Pikachu and others in the trailer, but the only new Pokémon we see are the generation nine starters, which have yet to be named. (Update: these new friends are: Sprigatito, a “capricious, attention-seeking Grass Cat Pokémon;” Fuecoco, a “laid-back Fire Croc Pokémon that does things at its own pace;” and Quaxly, an “earnest and tidy Duckling Pokémon.” Don’t ask me how any of these are pronounced.) We’ve got a strange trio here. There’s a cute little grass kitty (easily my pick), an apple-shaped, fire-type dinosaur (serious potential for a final evolution here, don’t let us down), and a water Pokémon that literally looks like Donald Duck — don’t tell Disney’s legal department. Serebii Update: We have added multiple direct feed screenshots to our Pokémon Scarlet & Violet pre-release screenshot section @ — Serebii.net (@SerebiiNet) In other Pokémon news, the broadcast announced that Pokémon from the Alola region will now appear in “Pokémon Go,” there are some minor updates to “Diamond and Pearl” and “Arceus,” some new playable Pokémon in the “Pokémon Unite” and “Pokémon Masters EX” side games, and … I don’t know, something new in whatever “Pokémon Cafe Remix” is supposed to be. Find out for yourself on a replay of this morning’s broadcast: |
Citing ‘changing real estate market,’ Utah-based Homie lays off one-third of its staff | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | On its LinkedIn page, the company said: Today, we made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our company based on the impacts of the changing real estate market. It was the hardest decision we have ever had to make. Each and every one of these talented individuals are not just our co-workers; they are our friends. Those affected are some of the most skilled, committed, and incredible professionals and people. Their contributions have shaped Homie’s culture and products and made it possible for us to help thousands of customers across multiple markets. We are doing all we can to support each and every homie while they transition to the next chapter of their careers. This reduction will not impact our ability to serve our clients in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Idaho. Limited housing inventory has also created a challenging real estate market for home buyers; driving up prices and making homeownership less and less accessible. We are now refocusing on helping solve this problem by making buying a home possible for more people. Those leaving today have helped to build the products to make this a reality. They will be greatly missed. |
Startups are evolving to manage growth alongside profitability | Amit Anand | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | a matter of time. As more tech companies go public, the necessary disclosure has meant that with access to more information on the financial condition of many startups, mainstream investors have begun questioning just how profitable and sustainable these startups are. Naturally, this has resulted in some skepticism, and tech firms around the world are slowly changing how they function to address these concerns. At Jungle Ventures, we have observed the following key trends in how the startup ecosystem is evolving: Building a defensible moat is essential for the long-term success of any startup. For undifferentiated tech-enabled services like food delivery or mobility, user exclusivity is challenging to attain, as the user base is rather flirtatious and has low to no switching costs. In such cases, innovating just to meet customer demand might not be enough. It is interesting to note that startups are now focusing on supply-side innovation to build a long-term competitive advantage. One of these success cases is DoorDash, which has managed to edge out Grubhub and catch up with Uber Eats despite being relatively late to the food delivery scene in the U.S. Instead of just focusing on user (demand-side) acquisition, DoorDash has launched several services to empower its restaurant partners and help them grow their businesses. For example, DoorDash Drive is a white-label, flat-fee delivery service that lets merchants generate their own orders and use DoorDash to execute deliveries. We also have DoorDash Storefront, which allows restaurants to create their own online stores (on DoorDash) for pick-up and delivery orders. It provides restaurants with customer data, which other third-party delivery platforms usually do not share. Such initiatives and value-added offerings helped DoorDash increase its restaurant partnerships (supply-side) and exclusivity, which, in turn, improves user retention and engagement. Indian food delivery company Zomato also has a similar merchant/B2B initiative called Hyperpure, a one-stop procurement solution that supplies fresh, hygienic, quality ingredients directly to restaurant partners from farmers, producers, mills, etc. Although Hyperpure represents a small part of revenue (about 10% of its total revenue in fiscal year 2020), the company is planning to invest more than $50 million in the business in the next 18 to 24 months. |
Zendesk spurns $17B private equity takeover offer | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | on your door waving a check for $17 billion, you have to let them in for a chat. But when presented with that very offer this week from a consortium of private equity firms, board on grounds that it undervalued the company. In a statement, they said they were duty-bound to review such an offer, but after doing so, they felt confident about rejecting it: “Consistent with its fiduciary obligations, after careful review and consideration conducted in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors, the Board concluded that this non-binding proposal significantly undervalues the Company and is not in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders.” The that the company could find itself in a shareholder battle concerning private equity interest in its business, along with its efforts to close the deal for the company so the matter may not be closed with management’s dismissal of this particular offering. Jesús Hoyos, principal consultant at Cx2 Advisory, which monitors the customer experience (CX) market in which Zendesk competes, said the company made the right decision rebuffing the offer because it has plenty of opportunity to expand its CX market. “It was wise to reject the takeover bid,” Hoyos told TechCrunch. “Their expansion in Latin America has been a success due to their integration with WhatsApp and excellent marketing. I see them being worth more than $17 billion in the future.” Zendesk’s core product is help desk software, but it has expanded into other areas in recent years. the Zendesk Suite, which bundles Zendesk Support, Guide, Chat and Talk into a single package. It’s been doing well, with the company reporting that it accounted for $500 million in ARR and 35% of total ARR in its first year. Last fall, , owner of SurveyMonkey, giving it a more direct path into customer experience. Zendesk spent more than $4 billion for Momentive, betting on the company as a way to expand its market in the future. That projected growth is a big part of why it rejected the private equity offer, but it’s also a cause of controversy among activist investors who don’t like the direction Momentive would take the company. |
The James Webb Space Telescope takes a selfie and a big step towards its first ‘real’ image | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | An apparatus as complex as the James Webb Space Telescope takes a little while to get running, so while it entered its orbit late last month, it’s still working through its startup process. , with Webb spotting its first star, 18 times over. And it took a selfie to celebrate. As you probably know if you’ve glanced at coverage of this enormous orbital telescope over the many years of its development, assembly and deployment, the Webb is basically a honeycomb-shaped collection of 18 mirrors, which help it capture large amounts of infrared light from its chosen target. But each of these mirrors (plus the secondary mirror out front and many other components) needs to be precisely tuned in order for the image reflected in it to match and overlap that of the others. “We know that the primary mirror segments aren’t aligned, so they actually act like 18 separate telescopes, and we expect to see 18 separate images, one for each mirror, that are a little bit blurry at this point because we haven’t aligned or focused anything,” said Lee Feinberg, manager of the optical elements on the Webb, in a NASA video that explains all this better than I ever could. Think of it like the cartoons where a character wakes up after being knocked unconscious and sees the world in double or quadruple, then gradually lines those images up. In this case, of course, the telescope is out in the middle of space, so the best (and pretty much only) thing to safely look at is stars. The team needed a star that’s distinct and not surrounded by others of a similar brightness. They picked one called HD 84406 in the Ursa Major constellation, on the cosmic bear’s neck ruff. For those of us who are more familiar with the Big Dipper, if you look at the two stars that make up the top of the dipper itself, HD 84406 is about an equal distance to the right along that line. Pointed at HD 84406’s general direction, the Webb took 10 images each at 156 slightly different directions, resulting in 1,560 shots and 54 gigabytes of raw data. NASA “This initial search covered an area about the size of the full Moon because the segment dots could potentially have been that spread out on the sky,” said Marshall Perrin, a scientist on the Webb team, in a NASA news release. “And we found light from all 18 segments very near the center early in that search! This is a great starting point for mirror alignment.” After six hours of processing they were able to locate the same star in each of the telescope’s 18 mirrors and assemble them into one image (at top) that shows how the array needs to be realigned. As Perrin noted, it’s totally possible that one or more of these might have been way further away from the center, necessitating a longer and more intense mirror correction procedure. But they’re all clustered near the center, meaning the mirror deployment has gone very well. This isn’t the only camera system on board the Webb, and not the only setup process either, by a long shot. It’ll still be quite a while before we get the first “real” image out of it, but today’s success shows that the IR camera and primary mirrors are working as planned — though not at full capacity just yet. Fortunately another instrument was functional enough to get that most crucial of content: a selfie. NASA We’ll be covering major steps like this one, but if you want to keep up with the Webb’s every move, keep an eye on the . |
Of course, Netflix ordered a movie about the big crypto scandal | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | When news broke earlier this week that the Department of Justice had seized of allegedly stolen bitcoin, we had some questions. What do these revelations mean about government intervention in crypto? Will this scandal impact the decentralized finance sphere in the long term? Most importantly, which streaming service will order a documentary about the Bonnie and Clyde of bitcoin? At least one of our questions has been answered: Today, that it will tell the story of what it calls “the biggest criminal financial crime case in history” with the help of director Chris Smith, who brought “FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened” and “Tiger King” to the streaming service. Smith will executive produce alongside Nick Bilton, who produced HBO’s documentary “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” about the . Like the stories of Elizabeth Holmes and Billy McFarland, Smith and Bilton have a lot to work with here. The alleged criminals, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan (who moonlights as the rapper Razzlekhan), were arrested on Tuesday for conspiracy to launder nearly 120,000 bitcoin, which is now worth around $5 billion. Currently, the husband-wife duo awaits trial, but they were not released on bail because the prosecutor deemed them to be at risk of fleeing. According to , Lichtenstein kept a folder labeled “personas,” and there was a file on his computer called “Passport_ideas” with links to fake passports. The prosecutor added that a plastic bag labeled “burner phones” was found under their bed. You can’t make this stuff up, which is why based-on-a-true-story movies keep Hollywood moving. |
Google’s adtech targeted by publisher antitrust complaint in EU | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | Google’s dominance of the online ad market has been targeted by another antitrust complaint filed in the European Union by a coalition of publishers. This time it’s the (EPC) — whose members include the CEOs of News UK, Condé Nast, New York Times, Axel Springer and The Guardian, among others — arguing that, beginning with its 2008 acquisition of adtech firm DoubleClick, Google has deployed “a barrage of unlawful tactics to foreclose competition in ad tech” which they assert has allowed Google to gain a “stranglehold” over press publishers and all others in the adtech ecosystem. Although the timing of this complaint also looks interesting. given the U.K. competition regulator that will allow it to continue to develop a stack of non-tracking-based ad targeting technologies which it intends to replace cookie-based tracking. (Not to mention that, , a key component of the current privacy-hostile adtech regime of tracking and profiling web users to target them with ads was found in breach of EU privacy rules, and given a six-month deadline to reform.) It’s also amusing to note that the EPC seems to have by as the CMA’s announcement accepting Google’s Privacy Sandbox commitments hit. Hmmm! In a statement on its complaint to EU competition regulators, EPC chairman Christian Van Thillo, writes: It is high time for the European Commission to impose measures on Google that actually change, not just challenge, its behaviour — behaviour that has caused and continues to cause considerable harm, not just to Europe’s press publishers but to all advertisers and eventually consumers in the form of higher prices (including ad tech fees), less choice, less transparency and less innovation. “Competition authorities across the world have found that Google has restricted competition in ad tech, yet Google has been able to get away with minor commitments which do nothing to bring about any meaningful changes to its conduct. This cannot go on. The stakes are too high, particularly for the future viability of funding a free and pluralistic press. We call on the Commission to take concrete steps right now that will actually break the stranglehold that Google has over us all.” The EPC further summarizes its complaint by claiming that Google’s monopoly dominance of the adtech “value chain” has enabled it to charge a very high commission of at least 30% on transactions it intermediates between publishers and advertisers — accusing it of “This Complaint presents a unique opportunity for the European Commission to rectify the problems that have arisen as a direct result of its 2008 clearance of the Google/DoubleClick merger, by imposing effective remedies that will restore competition in ad tech, for the benefit of European press publishers, marketers, and consumers,” Van Thillo adds, avoiding a more direct swipe at the Commission’s now very long record of . The Commission confirmed receipt of the EPC complaint — which it told us it would assess “based on our standard procedures”, adding: “The Commission investigation into whether Google has violated EU competition rules by favouring its own online display advertising technology services in the so called ‘ad tech’ supply chain, is ongoing.” We also reached out to Google for a response to the EPC complaint and it sent this statement, attributed to a spokesperson: Online advertising underpins much of the content we enjoy and learn from online. It has enabled millions of small businesses to afford advertising for the first time, and for news publishers big and small, it’s created new opportunities and substantial new revenue streams that did not exist in the print age. When publishers choose to use our advertising services, they keep the and every year we pay out billions of dollars directly to the publishing partners in our ad network. In further background remarks, Google said it hasn’t yet seen the complaint — saying it therefore can’t comment in detail — but it noted it has been responding to European Commission antitrust oversight attached to its adtech for many months, in addition to what it couched as an open consultation process with the wider industry around its Privacy Sandbox proposals. It also told us it’s committed to continuing to answer the ecosystem’s questions on that. In additional remarks, Google also claimed it faces plenty of adtech competition, and suggested its ad tools drive positive ROI for its clients — claiming that, on average, publishers receive €8 back in profit for every €1 they spend on Google ads. It also claimed publishers keep the majority of the revenue from adtech, also suggesting that news publishers keep over 95% of the digital advertising revenue they generate when they use Google’s Ad Manager tool to show ads on their sites. While the EU’s competition division has brought a series of antitrust enforcements against Google under current chief Margrethe Vestager — including one focused on search ad brokering ( ) — the Commission has had more of a blindspot on the broader issue of Google’s role in the adtech supply chain, only finally opening a formal investigation last summer into issues that other European regulators have already dug deeply into and, in some cases, acted upon. Such as the over self-preferencing in the ad market on both the demand and supply sides. (The French regulator also extracted an offer of behavioral commitments from Google, including around interoperability.) While a market study into online advertising carried out by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), , also ended in a final in July 2020 which concluded that the market power of both Google and Facebook generates “wide ranging and self reinforcing” concerns. Although the U.K. regulator has, so far, been wary of wading in with structural remedies to tackle the adtech duopoly — electing to wait for domestic competition reforms to bring in ex ante powers so that a new Digital Markets Unit will be able to proactively curtail abusive behaviors, via interventions tailored to each platform, instead of taking immediate enforcement action (despite consulting on ). Since then, the CMA has intervened to extract behavioral remedies vis-à-vis another adtech complaint related to Google’s Sandbox proposal to deprecate support for tracking cookies in Chrome in favor of alternative ad targeting technologies — accepting a series of legally binding pledges over how it will develop this so-called Privacy Sandbox proposal, as we , with the aim of allaying competition concerns while ensuring consumer privacy is not squeezed out by one-sided adtech market interests. In recent months, Google’s Sandbox has been targeted by other complaints from the wider adtech ecosystem, too. Just , a coalition of German publishers also petitioned the European Commission to act against it. They complained that Google’s proposal to migrate to a stack of novel ad targeting technologies — which the company claims will better protect web users’ privacy while still allowing publishers to target and measures ads and generate revenues — poses a threat to their relationship with site visitors and to their ability to ask people for their consent to ad targeting. However, since that complaint landed a flagship mechanism which was devised and promoted by the adtech industry as a “GDPR compliant” standard for obtaining and passing user consent signals for targeted advertising (aka the IAB’s TCF framework) has been confirmed to be . So, very clearly, there are quite a number of moving pieces to this story. Certainly it’s a tug of war over market power — but also around how power is and/or should be obtained. On the one hand, Google’s dominance of online advertising is a clearly drawn and evidenced concern; and there are substantial competition questions related to the current structure of the ad value chain that absolutely require regulatory interrogation (and action). After all, the adtech giant is facing major antitrust challenge in the U.S., too — where a lawsuit, led by Texas and filed back in , accuses it of operating an illegal monopoly in online advertising; and, more recently, eye-raising accusations from the suit have , fleshing out these antitrust concerns. (And that’s just one of the anti-competition charges Google is now facing on home soil.) At the same time, there is — originating in, but not limited to, Europe — a need for the adtech market as a whole to evolve its practices beyond the tracking and profiling creepy status quo which has been shown to be and hated by consumers (who have flocked to ad-and-tracker-blockers); and, at least in the EU, it’s also been found to be operating illegally — where experts argue the model is fundamentally incompatible with the long-established legal framework of privacy and data protection by design and default. EU lawmakers are also starting to take up the baton to call for privacy respecting ad targeting alternatives to abusive tracking. (See, for example, the European Parliament voting to put explicit limits on behavioral targeting into incoming digital regulations.) Unfortunately, rather than spotting this very obvious trend away from tracking-based ad targeting — and seeking to press a solid-looking market structure antitrust case against Google (say by acknowledging the web-wide privacy abuse that its dominance of the ad value chain has entrenched flipping to a reformist position that backs privacy compliant ad targeting alternatives) — the adtech industry (and some publishers) instead appears to be trying to tie Google by using antitrust claims to sustain an illegal abuse of privacy, just with less control for it and more chance for people’s data to flow through their own profiling machines. Clearly increased competition at the expense of privacy is not reform, it’s just more abuse. These complainants are also making their play right at a time when European competition regulators and privacy watchdogs have woken up to the need for nuanced joint working to effectively regulate the digital sphere. (See, for example, the put out last year by the CMA and the ICO, following close working on the Privacy Sandbox case.) The CMA’s resolution of the Privacy Sandbox complaint — in the form of accepted commitments from Google — similarly bakes in joint working with the U.K.’s data protection watchdog to ensure consumers’ privacy protection standards are not forgotten in the name of increasing competition. And when the Commission its probe of “possible anticompetitive conduct by Google” in the online ad sector last summer, it also made a point of publicly highlighting the need for digital advertising solutions to protect people’s privacy — saying it would “take into account the need to protect user privacy, in accordance with EU laws in this respect, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)”. “Competition law and data protection laws must work hand in hand to ensure that display advertising markets operate on a level playing field in which all market participants protect user privacy in the same manner,” the Commission also warned then. In additional notes in its press release the coalition also writes: Absence of effective competition in ad tech causes considerable harm to press publishers, advertisers, and European consumers in the form of supra-competitive fees, lower quality of service, and less innovation. Less advertising revenue means press publishers have less resources to invest in news content and fulfil their socially important mission of informing the general public and holding those in power accountable. Supra-competitive ad tech fees are also borne by advertisers, which they may pass on to consumers in the form of higher prices for advertised goods or services. Everyone loses but for one company: Google. But statement is overwhelmingly silent on how current-gen adtech routinely — and, indeed, — means that consumers get less/no privacy and little/no data protection. Which suggests (these) publishers are still missing in action when it comes to the key strategic fight over reform and the future of ad targeting — even as the U.K.’s antitrust watchdog gives the okay to a Google-shaped evolution of ad targeting. And that looks incredibly dumb. The wider adtech ecosystem appears to be pinning its hopes on EU regulators taking a different tack versus the U.K. Although the joint working that’s now going on on digital issues also extends to chatter between international counterparts, including between the U.K. and the EU, so it may well find there are far fewer schisms to exploit than it hopes. Regardless, the tracking industry is not for turning. Back in , a coalition of (unnamed) marketers, adtech players and publishers — which self-styles as the “Movement for an Open Web” (aka MOW) — also complained to the European Commission about Google’s Privacy Sandbox. And in a today, fast-following the CMA’s acceptance of Google’s Sandbox commitments, the group can be seen respinning its complaint from one that’s targeted at stopping Sandbox to broadly blasting Google in the hopes of summoning a more radical regulatory intervention — larding on the flattery with a claim that “all eyes” are now on Brussels (i.e. after the U.K. didn’t stop Sandbox), and going on to press the Commission for “swift and comprehensive action; addressing not only Google’s Privacy Sandbox Browser changes but also other issues throughout the adtech ecosystem, on which publishers and society depend”. “Google has a series of conflicting positions being both an ad buyer, a seller and owner of the largest ad exchange. It gives itself an inside track which it misuses for its own benefit, undermining free and fair competition — a position that demands regulation and remedies, as the European Publishers Council has highlighted,” MOW goes on, before entreating the Commission “and concerned parties” to acknowledge what it calls “the scale and depth of Google’s strategy of enclosing the Open Web”. “Far from disconnected issues, the Privacy Sandbox and its recently announced are both subject to the Commitments and such gatekeeper controls affect everything — requiring public interest oversight,” it also urges, echoing a piece of terminology the Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal for ex ante rules to curb abusive digital giants also uses (aka “gatekeeper”). Although the DMA isn’t likely to make it into EU law before 2023; plus, if the EU parliament gets its way, both the DMA and the broader Digital Services Act will bake in hard limits on behavioural advertising. As with MOW’s missive today, the EPC complaint tries flattery on the Commission, with the publishers penning that the EU is “uniquely positioned” to act on their complaint — and implying the Commission can go one better than other local and international competition authorities, including by drawing on findings in . That the adtech industry would be guilty of bundling legitimate competition complaints with an illegitimate desire to continue tracking and profiling everyone on the Internet should hardly surprise us. That is, after all, their original sin. Where exactly the industrial data complex is on the “denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance” scale of grief is interesting to ponder. Clearly they haven’t got to “acceptance” yet — since they still haven’t realized their old way of doing business is fast going away. Still, a direct appeal to the European Commission to take radical action against a U.S. tech giant may soon deliver adtech into a deep depression, given and eschewing structural remedies. And the bloc’s record on antitrust enforcement and tech M&A which also makes clear that the U.S.’ own antitrust enforcers will have to grapple with whether — and how — they might want to break up homegrown data empires. So if the tracking industry has got to the point where it’s trying to bank on the Commission to save it from the privacy doom of its own making — opting for cynical complaints instead of good-faith engagement with a process of reforming an abusive business model — then this mob of mostly faceless data brokers, adtech entities, unknown marketers and a smattering of named publishers do kinda look like they’re drinking in the last chance salon. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Investor warning signs, China’s AV frenzy, 2022 insurtech trends | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | February 2014 seems so long ago. Bitcoin exchange Mt Gox shut down after it was hacked, the Nokia X was unveiled at Mobile World Congress, and Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft’s Server & Tools division, was promoted to the CEO spot, replacing Steve Ballmer. To mark the eighth anniversary of Nadella’s ascension, enterprise reporter Ron Miller to grade his performance and identify potential pitfalls that lie ahead. “When a company has this much financial clout, it can pretty much push its way into any market,” writes Ron. Microsoft’s largest acquisitions have taken place since Nadella took the reins: $69B for Activision, $26B for LinkedIn, and $20B for Nuance Communications. But the Biden administration has taken a stronger interest in antitrust legislation, and that could directly impact Redmond’s long-term expansion strategy. “The challenge for Nadella and Microsoft in the years ahead will be navigating increasing regulatory oversight while working to keep the company broadly diversified,” says Ron. Thanks very much for reading TechCrunch+, and have a great weekend! Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch / Getty Images Many VCs like to be heard saying that they’re founder-focused, but in practice, investor-entrepreneur relationships are largely transactional. “Founders need to see their investors demonstrating real concern for their well-being — and it has to be visible in their check-in structure, communication and post-pitch behavior,” says Michael Redd, co-founder and chairman of 22 Ventures. “If it isn’t, that should be cause enough for founders to back away.” Last week, Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm reported some unhappy news for publicly-traded insurtech companies: despite a hot year for fundraising, valuations declined. In a follow-up, they examined some of the sector’s potential winners, specifically private neoinsurers, companies that bundle services, and startups that are expanding access to underserved customers. “Venture capitalists and founders that we spoke with indicated a general optimism about tackling the insurance market: It’s too big, too valuable, and too out of date to not wind up on the receiving end of a shovelful of technology, the argument goes.” / Getty Images Now that regulators in markets as scattered as China, California and the EU are implementing new data privacy laws, working with APIs from U.S.-based cloud vendors has become more complex. Startups hoping to expand internationally may find it a good idea to use open source software that can be audited for vulnerabilities and reproduced, writes Jean-Paul Smets, CEO of Rapid.Space. In a deep dive into open source APIs, Smets explains why open source makes sense for applications that don’t need to depend on vendors’ closed systems. Yang Bo/China News Service / Getty Images All new technology needs evangelists to drive adoption and raise money: a straight line connects Steve Jobs’ Apple launch announcements with Thomas Edison’s public demonstrations of incandescent light and alternating current. In China, the central government is the biggest booster of the autonomous vehicle industry, which “saw a period of unprecedented acceleration in 2021, with over $8.5 billion invested,” reports Rita Liao. According to Hongquan Jiang, chairman and managing partner at Boyuan Capital, “Chinese regulators prioritize safety. They’d gladly put up a few more sensors to provide more redundancy so businesses can test more advanced solutions like cars without safety drivers.” Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch Meta, Microsoft and other companies are jumping in feet-first when it comes to building metaverse experiences for enterprise customers. Presenting one’s self as a floating 3D avatar during remote meetings may appeal to some, but given its immersive potential, wouldn’t consumers prefer to use the metaverse to play instead of being productive? Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Anita Ramaswamy share their thoughts: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch “The Ant and the Grasshopper” is one of my favorite fables, although I always thought it was a bit mean of the ant to allow the grasshopper to go hungry just because it played the fiddle all summer instead of gathering seeds. I’m guessing former Peloton CEO John Foley is unfamiliar with Aesop’s story. When sales spiked at the start of the pandemic, his company embarked on a number of very optimistic initiatives. And today, Peloton has a new CEO after laying off 2,800 employees. In an in-depth analysis, reporter Haje Jan Kamps examines the company’s history, its wins and losses, and how its management failed to prepare for winter. |
Why Affirm’s stock is getting hit, and what the selloff means for the BNPL startup market | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | building buy now, pay later (BNPL) services is long. Just this year we’ve seen , , , and that appears to include BNPL services. There were other funding events and product launches, but that’s enough of a sample for us to understand that private-market investors around the world are investing in the consumer checkout-and-credit capability, even after industry incumbents Affirm went public and Klarna has grown to massive scale with global reach. The was also good for startup BNPL volume, we reckon. Until some recent turbulence, there’s been good reason to consider BNPL startup investments sensible bets. After all, public-market investors had pushed Affirm’s stock to over $175 per share in late 2021 from an IPO price of $49 per share. And Klarna raised $639 million at a valuation of . With momentum like that, why not power up a host of BNPL services targeted at particular geographies around the world? All the warm and fuzzy of the above paragraph comes with a huge caveat, namely that the value of Affirm has eroded sharply in the public markets. After trading to just over $81 per share this week, an early tweet containing earnings data sent shares of Affirm sharply lower yesterday. The company’s full results and earnings call failed to stanch the bleeding. Exclusive of yesterday’s declines of more than 20%, shares of Affirm are off another roughly 15% today as of the time of writing, worth just $49.70 per share. That’s peanuts more than the company’s IPO price. Sadly, we don’t have Q4 data from Klarna to dredge up in comparison; the company most recently shared its Q3 data. So we’ll have to try to unspool the change in the value of Affirm by itself. What we need to understand is why Affirm’s earnings were so deleterious to its value, and if other companies are at similar risk. More simply: Should the myriad well-funded BNPL startups see Affirm’s descent as a warning concerning their own efforts or something more company-specific to the U.S. fintech? Affirm’s corporate calendar is the same as Microsoft’s, it appears, with its calendar Q4 2021 being the second quarter of its fiscal 2022. This means that some of the language below will be slightly tortured as we discuss time periods. Not much we can do about it, frankly; the finance world isn’t really set up for us to enjoy smooth phrasing. Onward. In its Q2 fiscal 2022, Affirm GMV of $4.5 billion (+115% YoY), revenues of $361.0 million (+77% YoY), revenues minus transaction costs of $183.6 million (+93% YoY), an operating loss of $196.2 million (+632% YoY), and an adjusted operating loss of $7.9 million, a few million worse than its $3.1 million adjusted operating loss from its Q2 fiscal 2021. Helping drive the rapid GMV and revenue gains were and . There’s good and bad in there. GMV growth was strong, revenue growth solid, and revenue ex-transaction costs even better. Even more, Affirm crushed revenue expectations, . So what went wrong? For its Q3 fiscal 2022, or calendar Q1 2022 by our reckoning, Affirm anticipates $325 million to $335 million worth of revenues. Barrons has Wall Street expectations at $335.5 million for the current quarter, so the company’s guidance is a miss by that benchmark. There were other data points that were less than investor-exciting. Observe the following chart, from Affirm’s set of investor materials: |
Twitter is down, so you’ll have to wait a little longer to scream into the void | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | It looks like Twitter’s wings have been clipped. Twitter has been down since about 12:15 PM ET today, per user reports on . Going on for at least 45 minutes, the outage appears to be selective — some users are having more trouble than others (personally, I wasn’t able to post a joke about , but it’s also possible Twitter was just sparing me from sharing mediocre content). The outage is affecting both the web and mobile apps, though more users seem to be reporting web issues, per Downdetector. TechCrunch has reached out to Twitter for comment on the cause of the outage, and how widespread its effects are. About an hour after the outage was initially reported, Twitter Support posted a statement: We’ve fixed a technical bug that was preventing timelines from loading and Tweets from posting. Things should be back to normal now. Sorry for the interruption! — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) |
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship event leaves a lot of questions around the company’s big rocket | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | Elon Musk delivered an update on the company’s progress and plans for Starship, its next-generation launch spacecraft, from the Starship development site in Boca Chica, Texas. Musk had an impressive backdrop — the combined Starship and Super Heavy booster launch craft, standing nearly 400 feet tall. But much of what Musk had to say about Starship wasn’t new, and what he could share about the actual current state of where the project is with regards to the next steps of flight testing and development do raise some questions about how we get from here to the fanciful planet-jumping vision SpaceX depicted in a new concept video. Musk has repeatedly cited his existential justification for his mission to get humans to Mars and beyond on a more permanent basis, but at this update he had an addendum to that goal centered around broad Earth species preservation. He didn’t reference Noah’s Ark by name, but the analogy works, as you can see: For those who really care about not just the humans but all the life on Earth it is very important essential that over the long term that we become a multi-planet species, and ultimately even go beyond the solar system and bring life with us. You know we are life stewards, life’s guardians, […] the creatures that we love, they can’t build spaceships, but we can and we can bring them with us and I think that’s pretty important for those that that care about the environment and care about all the creatures on Earth. Ultimately the SpaceX CEO downplayed this justification for the project, assigning more weight to a second reason: Inspiration. Starship and making civilization multi-planetary is among the things that can make people “excited about the future,” he said — another note he’s struck previously when discussing SpaceX’s ambitions. Mostly this was part of a longer answer in response to criticisms that Musk and SpaceX are spending inordinate amounts of money on this that would better be spent addressing problems here on Earth, to which he said that he agrees “more than 99% of our resources should be oriented towards solving problems on Earth” and that that’s already the case. SpaceX has talked about and even shown concept animations of the Starship launch process before, but they had a new and more current version of what they envision on display for this update. The short clip, viewable above, more closely resembles the actual launch facility as it is currently set up in Boca Chica, but with some visual flair on the towers that lend them Blade Runner vibes. The animation also shows in-orbit docking of two Starship spacecraft, which is not something SpaceX has modelled previously, though it has discussed how they’ll be able to refuel in space in order to top up for the trip to Mars. Musk said it’s something that the company still needs to solve in terms of the details of the docking process, but said it should actually be “way harder to dock with the space station than to dock with yourself” and noted that SpaceX spacecraft dock with the Space Station all the time. Another topic of discussion that came up, which lead to notably different information versus what’s been shared previously, was launch facilities for Starship. Musk said that because of the requirements of having large spans of relatively unpopulated area around the site, combined with the ability to quickly evacuate what population does exist, and necessities in terms of launch inclination and properly positioning spacecraft upon entrance to space, only two real options for Starship launch exist: The Starship development site in Texas where the event took place, and also Cape Canaveral in Florida. Musk said he wasn’t actually privy to the specifics of where the site review for the Texas launches sit with the Federal Aviation Administration, but expects approvals to come through sometime in March. That said, there’s a Starship construction site and launch pad being worked on at Cape Canaveral for redundancy, which could become the primary site if environmental and FAA reviews don’t go SpaceX’s way in Texas. One reason SpaceX didn’t want to just stick with Florida’s Space Coast for Starship launches to begin with, Musk said, is that there’s already a lot of rocket traffic there and they didn’t want to disrupt any of those existing operations. During a Q&A session, Musk also reiterated that he believes ultimately there will “probably” be a number of ocean or sea-based floating spaceports, like the ones that SpaceX is currently developing from old oil platforms, to help deal with the fact that the rockets taking off will be “quite loud” and will require that lift-offs happen at least “20 or 30 miles away from a major city” in order to minimize disruption. That’s important for any Earth-based point-to-point travel, he said. Most of what observers are looking forward to with Starship next is its first orbital test flight. Prototypes have flown already (minus the Super Heavy booster) to altitudes similar to those flown by commercial airliners, but nothing has yet gone beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Musk has been typically optimistic with timelines in past statements — including at the first Starship update in when he anticipated that it could reach orbit within six months, and even fly people sometime in 2020. That obviously didn’t happen. Instead, timelines have constantly been shifting, from to , and now to potentially March, with Musk saying only that he’s “highly confident that we’ll get to orbit this year” in terms of an actually successful orbital test. The entire Starship Update presentation can be viewed below. |
How much is a pitch deck really worth? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We had the full crew aboard today for our live taping, headed by our killer production team and , and hosting crew , and . Overall, it was a success? Our streaming tech took us to various internet platforms, and people came to Hopin and asked questions. Thank you! It’s always a risk to do something new, so thank you for making it a win. But enough of all that, what did we talk about? Here’s the rundown: Whew! We’re back with another live show in two weeks. Until then, we’re back to normal! |
RedRoute wants answering customer service calls to be as easy as using ‘Alexa’ | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | , a voice-based customer service experiences and conversational artificial intelligence startup, is going after an emerging sector. When Brian Schiff, Sam Krut and Jacob Cooper founded the company in 2015, they were still undergraduates at Cornell University and it was initially an Uber-like social transportation app to help people find rides on college campuses where the transportation giant wasn’t operating. Working with a number of taxi companies, Schiff told TechCrunch they realized much of the business was coming into the taxi services over the phone, and there would be too many requests and not enough phone representatives. That’s when they realized there was an opportunity to fix the back-end channels of customer service and contact centers. Seeing the modern world of voice technology as more people were outfitting their homes with Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home and voice-controlled televisions, the trio pivoted their business in 2017 to create a similar experience for the world of customer service. RedRoute Here’s how it works: Imagine calling customer service and being greeted by a voice-driven “Alexa-like experience” that is able to engage back and forth with a caller to help them resolve the simple requests that are coming in, Schiff explained. It takes as little as 30 minutes to get RedRoute set up, and customers can try the software with zero upfront costs and risk-free, performance-based pricing, an industry first, according to Schiff. He estimates that RedRoute’s AI is able to handle an average of 50% of requests entirely with the product. For the other 50% of calls that are more complex, RedRoute will take in information and pass it along to agents who now have more time to give to those calls. They worked on their product for a year and entered the market in early 2018 to work with their transportation customers. When the pandemic hit in 2020, RedRoute moved further into the contact center space and is now working with customers like Brooklinen, UNTUCKit, Pair Eyewear and GNC. “It was an opportunity to move into e-commerce, and we got in with an initial batch of successful pilot customers and started to scale it up,” Schiff said. “Then we went in for the fund raise to really double down on those efforts.” The funding round he refers to is $6.5 million in seed funding led by ScOp Venture Capital and Bullpen Capital, with participation from a group of angel investors. RedRoute previously raised a $2 million pre-seed round. Schiff plans to use the new capital to grow the business across the board, product development and key leadership. Among RedRoute’s competitors, he sees his company differentiating itself by offering those zero upfront costs and the call automation technology that is intelligently engaging with the customer, having a conversation and completing requests on its own. The company is also targeting smaller contact center organizations, where Schiff said there is not much adoption of call automation technology at all. “These are companies looking to buy things off-the-shelf that are pre-integrated with their existing tech stack and don’t require engineering or some intense upfront investment,” he added. “We’re coming in with that solution where you’re able to step into the product, no money upfront, it’s free for 30 days, takes about 30 minutes to turn it on and you can see results on day one.” Meanwhile, RedRoute is pushing 100 customers today, with three-times e-commerce growth in the fourth quarter where revenue also grew 10 times. That was all done with an employee headcount of 25 people, a number Schiff expects to increase to 40 by mid-year. The e-commerce side of the business is “growing at an amazing feat,” while the transportation side is recovering, he added. “We feel like we’re in a position where we have established product-market fit,” Schiff said. “We’ve got strong traction in a big market, we understand how to grow it and this is the opportunity to scale it. That’s really what we’re thinking about and working on every day.” |
Agot AI gives restaurants computer vision to see where food orders go wrong | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | Artificial intelligence has infiltrated a number of industries, and the restaurant industry was one of the latest to embrace this technology, driven in main part by the global pandemic and the need to shift to online orders. That need continues to grow. In 2021, some 60% of Americans at least once a week, and 31% used a third-party delivery service. predicts the global restaurant management software market to grow nearly 15% annually to reach $6.95 billion by 2025. However, we’ve all had that experience where you receive your food delivery only to find the order is wrong. is using machine learning to develop computer vision technology, initially targeting the quick-serve restaurant (QSR) industry, so those types of errors can be avoided. The company was founded three years ago by Evan DeSantola and Alex Litzenberger to solve that operations perspective in restaurant technology, reward employee success and improve a restaurant’s customer satisfaction. Agot AI Its product confirms order accuracy in real-time for online ordering and notifies employees if an order needs a correction; for example, they forgot to add cheese or ketchup. Since unveiling its technology, the company has worked with a group of large food service brands to deploy it, including Yum! Brands, which Agot is partnering with to pilot the technology in about 20 restaurants (with plans to expand to 100 restaurants if the pilot is successful), CEO DeSantola told TechCrunch. Gavin Felder, chief strategy officer at Yum! Brands, said via a written statement that the company is “always looking for innovative ways to leverage technology to empower our team members, and improve both their experience and the customer experience in our restaurants,” and that early results from the pilot program “indicate a promising potential to deliver more accurate orders to our customers across all the channels we serve.” Yum! Brands isn’t just a customer, but one of Agot AI’s investors — it participated in Agot’s $12 million funding round that included Conti Ventures, the venture arm of strategic investor Continental Grain Co., Kitchen Fund and Grit Ventures. That brings the company’s total fundraising to date to $16 million. Agot will deploy its new capital into growing its engineering team, securing more pilot programs with QSR brands and adding more features so restaurants can provide better overall experience both at the drive-thru and behind the counter. The company has shown operational capabilities in small and medium-sized proof-of-concept deployment and is ready to scale its technology to larger markets and audiences. Though Agot did not disclose its growth metrics, Mike Regan, the company’s chief business officer, said he was previously an investor when he met DeSantola and saw how big of an opportunity order accuracy was and how Agot was taking a holistic approach in doing it, calling the company’s vision “nothing short of transformational.” While companies, like , were some of the restaurant management pioneers, other startups picked up on this need from the industry in the past two years and not only came with their own approach, but also received venture capital. For example, just in the past few months, we saw , , , , and all announce new rounds, suggesting that there is plenty of money to go around as restaurants figure out how to quickly adapt to the new ordering norm. The restaurant industry is “tight” right now, Regan added, but Agot is “way beyond where a startup of three years” should be in terms of success and that it is poised to take on a majority of the QSR business in the next couple of years. Indeed, the new capital will “bring Agot to the next stage of our business,” DeSantola said. “We have demonstrated success in early pilots and are excited to scale across current and additional enterprise partners,” he added. “We intend to use the capital to expand our suite of offerings, customer pace and analytics, operations analytics and drive-thru technology.” |
How Texas is becoming a bitcoin mining hub | Leigh Cuen | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | of pounds of bitcoin mining equipment still in transit from China to Texas, part of a multi-month caravan, as Texas Governor Greg Abbott makes a pinnacle part of his re-election campaign in 2022. Texans are broadly looking to pick up on China’s missed opportunity, as the forces bitcoin mining operations to relocate or go underground, ensuring that Texas will have a major role to play in the cryptocurrency industry. “We have launched our first bitcoin mine in downtown Fort Worth, which will be a showpiece for our larger mine located right outside the city,” co-founder Caleb Ward described a new Texas facility that opened in January 2022. “We’re using income from this 20,000-square-foot facility outside of Fort Worth to bootstrap a significant solar power build.” By the end of March, Ward expects to have roughly 530 bitcoin mining machines operating in his facility alone. And he’s not the only bitcoin miner turning an eye toward Texas. There are 27 local bitcoin mining companies tallied by the . Abbott’s challenger in the upcoming election, Don Huffines, a Republican real estate developer and candidate for Texas governor, that he would look to opportunities beyond the mining industry and be even more pro-bitcoin than Abbott. Huffines he would make bitcoin tender if he’s elected. Across the board, Texan politicians appear to be pro-bitcoin. Republican Senator Ted Cruz said in that bitcoin mining could help “strengthen our energy infrastructure.” There are, however, critics in Congress who doubt the bitcoin mining industry would benefit the power grid. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., pointed out that bitcoin’s proof-of-work mining process requires massive amounts of power. “Last year, there were hundreds of thousands of transactions on this network. Just imagine the climate implications,” Pallone . The massive shift of bitcoin mining facilities to Texas, currently underway, could offer a proving ground for whether the mining industry is good, or bad, for the power grid. Supporters argue bitcoin mining will help regulate energy demand across the grid. Critics say it will take more energy than it provides and regulates. The stakes have never been higher. Over the past year the Texas power grid experienced , with . Some analysts blame for the electricity infrastructure’s woeful state. Right now it’s still prohibitively expensive and difficult to send energy from production sites to consumers. Electricity gets lost in translation, crippling the grid. Meanwhile, the march of businessmen and equipment continues. Poolin CEO Kevin Pan, leading one of the in the world and representing roughly 13% of the global network , told TechCrunch that his own company’s goal is to expand their new two- mining facility in Texas, more than quadrupling their operations in Texas over time. “Texas will be the bitcoin capital of the world in the next two years,” Pan said. Pan and Ward both said the best way to make Cruz’s vision happen, using bitcoin mining to strengthen the energy infrastructure in Texas, is to power bitcoin mining facilities using renewable energy sources like solar and wind power. “We’re building solar panels around our site in Texas,” Pan said. “There’s a lot of wind mills around the coast as well.” Wind power is generally , fluctuating from 7- % of in Texas, depending on the month. Because solar power has the same temporal limits, these bitcoin miners will use a mixture of energy sources throughout the year. Mining consultant Alejandro de la Torre, founder of , said that’s why Texas lawmakers are busy meeting with bitcoin mining executives from around the world. They’re working to counteract the assumption that the local bitcoin mining industry’s power consumption will harm . If companies build, from the start, to optimize for local renewable energy sources, then the industry could expand to bring in lucrative taxes as reliance on the oil and gas industry . “In Texas, they’ve been incentivizing renewable energy initiatives so that it’s affordable to add wind and solar power equipment,” de la Torre said. “I’m focused right now on connecting Chinese miners to businesses in Texas. One of the main reasons that Chinese miners are interested in operating in Texas is they believe it is less likely the government will come to shut down their operations if they’re located in Texas.” When the pandemic started, managed roughly of the bitcoin network’s global hashrate, compared to just in the United States. It remains to be seen if the bitcoin cowboys of Texas will help the Americans conquer the industry by 2024, as Pan predicted. China’s ongoing on bitcoin miners now outweighs the local economic incentives, the that made bitcoin mining so profitable in China. So those Chinese companies are moving to Texas and competing with American bitcoin companies like . “Before this year China was the biggest market for bitcoin mining equipment. So the standards and transformers were optimized for China,” Pan explained, noting that miners are the most profitable when the hardware is optimized for the local environment, including the local power grid. “Manufacturers are already switching to making hardware for American standards…Riot Blockchain started building in Texas two or three years ago, so they have the advantage in Texas.” As such, Pan said he believes will become one of the world’s leading bitcoin companies, rivaling Poolin, over the next few years. Meanwhile, Ward added that the best way for smaller bitcoin miners in Texas, like himself, to become globally competitive is to tap into the renewable energy sector. “When you can consume 20% of your electricity on site and sell roughly 80% back into the grid, and can shut down our miners in a minute if we need during peak hours, that offers a massive benefit with regards to smoothing our supply and demand across the energy grid,” Ward said, describing the benefits of building on-site solar panels. “We can still make money [when bitcoin miners are turned off] by selling our leftover solar energy back into the wholesale system. This won’t hurt our profitability, yet the relief it could provide to the end consumer could be massive,” he said. Ward doesn’t want Geosyn Mining to stay a small player for long. The goal is for his company to bootstrap a $1 billion facility by starting small and renting bitcoin miners to American retail consumers. Ward’s company buys and operates the machines, charging a percentage of the bitcoin mined, giving the bulk of newly mined bitcoin to remote customers. “For example, a retired schoolteacher was able to purchase four from us that will yield her approximately two bitcoin in two years,” Ward said. “We plan to house approximately 2,400 of our own miners in this [second] location, as well as a significant number of client miners. Ultimately, this will provide us with the financial ability to break ground on our first solar farm by year’s end.” Although Texas pale in comparison to the cheap electricity once provided by , Texan politicians are eager to attract industry experts by reducing the reputational risk associated with bitcoin mining’s . In addition to Texas Governor Greg Abbott meeting with bitcoin miners and the industry, the GOP primary challenger, former state senator Don Huffines, also announced his own pro- . “I am committed to making Texas the Citadel for Bitcoin,” Huffines said in a . Indeed, CEO Laura Pommer, who recently launched a investment service relying on two new natural gas-powered bitcoin mining facilities in Texas, said that “all the people running for office in Texas right now are pro-bitcoin and want to make it easier for Texans to mine bitcoin.” It appears that most Texan political candidates running for various offices in 2022 plan to make the bitcoin mining industry an integral part of Texas’s energy infrastructure. “We’re going to see exponential growth in the bitcoin mining industry in Texas,” she said. “Our customers are earning profits in bitcoin or dollars, it’s their choice…We’re waiting for more of our miners to arrive from China, we’ve already got one tranche of mines in.” It’s worth noting that EnergyFunders’ mining operations are off-the-grid, relying on natural gas instead. So they won’t add stress to the overburdened and congested power grid across Texas. Overall, only time will tell who will benefit from the millions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin being mined in Texas throughout this gubernatorial election and subsequent term. “Texas is a totally different market,” Pan said, betting that either outcome will benefit bitcoin miners. “We want to do long-term business here.” Pommer Fidler, who has previous experience working in the energy industry in Colorado and Wyoming, agreed. “There are more on-grid facilities spinning up more bitcoin mining, as well, plus a lot of people like the idea of having fractional ownership of [EnergyFunders’] off-the-grid bitcoin mines,” she said. “Texas is Bitcoin country.” |
Can an AI be properly considered an inventor? | Dave Davis | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | Several years ago, I wrote a piece titled “ .” As I looked over the state of several interesting questions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and copyright at that time, my bottom line was pretty simple: If the copyright laws and regulations required a work to contain the expression of a human person, then that body of law (especially the text of the statutes, e.g., in the U.S., but also the common law or civil law history of cases) did not yet countenance the assertedly “independent” creations of an AI, of which there are many types. That is, at least in the U.S., essentially still the case. However, there’s been a significant volume of water that’s passed under the policy and lawmaking bridge since then, so I wanted to revisit the question. First, let’s back up a little. I have to admit that my reasoning in 2018 was narrow rather than broad. In this way, it was also based on that of the U.S. Copyright Office or USCO (see, for example, the , Third Edition (2021), p. 384, which is similar on this point to the earlier edition I used at the time), and so I focused on the “expression” requirement for copyrightability. The work – and let’s note that it doesn’t have to be considered aesthetically “good” or have required a lot of skill – must simply be original (meaning that it was independently created and has at least a “modicum” of creativity) and an expression of some sort. This is why an unadorned set of directions, such as stripped-down basic instructions in a baking recipe, does not qualify, but “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child (a book that contains much more expressive text, which served to make it a bestseller) does. While I am fully at peace with the personhood of (fictional) ” in the 24th century, in our world devices by themselves do not and cannot express anything (even if your copy of Alexa or Siri appears to). I can’t say that I know how long that will continue to be the case, but even “Star Trek” suggests that it may be at least 350 years. In 2020, the USCO and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) hosted a “symposium that took an in-depth look at to create original works.” And then, in 2021, the USCO and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) held a second symposium of machine-created works. The legal and regulatory environment for these tools remain at the forefront of copyright policy, and we observe that government agencies entrusted with administering these issues are thinking about them and soliciting views from the public about them. More about that in a moment. Beginning in 2019, perhaps jumping the gun a bit on the USCO/USPTO/WIPO’s “let’s think about it” approach, something truly interesting happened in this domain. , owner and developer of a patent-writing program known as , submitted patent applications in several countries. As a result of these applications, the government of Thaler, an advocate of recognizing these devices as inventors, clearly believes the time has come, , “It’s been more of a philosophical battle, convincing humanity that my creative neural architectures are compelling models of cognition, creativity, sentience, and consciousness. … The recently established fact that DABUS has created patent-worthy inventions is further evidence that the system ‘walks and talks’ just like a conscious human brain.” (We should bear in mind, however, that an “author” in copyright is not an identical legal construction with that of an “inventor” in the domain of patents, but they are closely related concepts.) We also need to consider that the South African patent system does not involve an examination of the substance of an application, but unlike in a lot of countries leaves both first consideration and final resolution of patent validity to the courts, and so the patent grant was in some sense automatic and not policy-driven.) Importantly, the U.S., the U.K., and the European Patent Offices (all of which do preliminary consideration of patentability) rejected this same patent application on the basis of its ineligibility. , at least to the degree that the application met its technical requirements “to the letter of the law” of Australian patent statutes. We may point out that while the patent grant under South African law is , the question is no longer merely theoretical and we can perceive a threshold as having been crossed. For the purposes of this essay, I think South Africa and Australia have called the question: The question of whether AI ought to produce “authorship” for purposes of copyright cannot be far behind. Most recently, over in the U.K., they are in the midst of an . And I think are the right ones: As I wrote earlier, “In my view, a self-aware, autonomous AI would be the prerequisite for its works to be protectable by copyright. At that time, such a revolution in technology might bring along with it a much greater revolution in society, with the law, including copyright law, changing, as well.” I still think we are at the very beginnings of what looks to be a long period of change in the interplay of technology and the law in this domain, but it is equally clear to me that the play has started to move. |
Chasing Cruise and Waymo, Chinese AV company AutoX plans to begin testing in San Francisco | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | AutoX, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company that has made plays in both the U.S. and its home country, is now making a move into San Francisco, an area where its biggest competitors are creeping toward commercialization. The company, which has been testing its vehicles in the greater San Jose area since 2016, shared plans to launch robotaxi operations and build an operations center in the Golden City. The center will be responsible for vehicle housing, maintenance and charging, as well as processing data collected by the cars locally and calibrating their sensors. AutoX is hiring to build out its local San Francisco team, according to AutoX’s CEO Dr. Jianxiong Xiao, who also goes by Professor X. AutoX plans to initially start testing its hybrid Fiat Chrysler Pacificas, equipped with the company’s latest fifth-generation AV platform and a redundant drive-by-wire system, with human safety operators behind the wheel. The AV company has already acquired both a drivered testing permit, which allows testing with a human safety operator behind the wheel, and a , which allows testing without a human safety operator, from the California Department of Motor Vehicles. However, AutoX’s driverless testing permit is for its third-generation vehicle and is strictly limited to San Jose, so AutoX will have to request that the DMV expand that permit to include driverless testing using its newest system in San Francisco. The Dongfeng Motor-backed company did not say when it plans to pull the driver out for testing in San Francisco, but it did say that it would continue driverless testing in San Jose. AutoX is moving into San Francisco at a time when others like Cruise and Waymo are actually spinning up commercial operations. , which means they can start earning revenue for autonomous deliveries. Cruise still needs a final permit from the California Public Utilities Commission before it can charge for its robotaxi service, but the General Motors-owned company just as it opened up its driverless ride-hailing service to the public. The , which were released on Wednesday, showed that Waymo drove 2.3 million autonomous miles on California’s public roads in 2021, which was far more than any competitor. Cruise followed second with around 900,000 miles driven, both with and without a human safety driver. The same data shows that AutoX, which only drove around 50,000 miles with a safety operator, did not report any driverless testing of its vehicles. That said, AV developers aren’t required to report testing done on private tracks or closed courses. In California, AutoX’s fleet size is 44 vehicles, according to the company. The DMV’s data shows that only six of AutoX’s total fleet were actively used for autonomous testing last year. AutoX attributes this to COVID leading the company to scale down testing, but it plans to ramp it back up this year. AutoX is also claiming to be scaling massively in China with a robotaxi fleet of 1,000 vehicles, which the company says are distributed throughout the cities of Guangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and . The company would not share the number of rides it has accrued via said fleet. AutoX frequently touts its in-house full stack hardware capability, which includes a compute platform and various kinds of sensors. The kind of tech to back this up, combined with the move to increase operations in San Francisco and the expansion of a robotaxi fleet back in China, would require seriously large amounts of capital to fund. The company last publicly announced a Series A raise in 2019, an investment that put AutoX at $160 million in total funding. For comparison, nearly all of AutoX’s Chinese competitors received funding in 2021. and raised $1.2 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively, within a span of five months last year and , a relatively newer company, has raised $350 million as of September 2021. To the question of how AutoX is able to do so much scaling with less funds, Professor X told TechCrunch that while the company is indeed looking to raise a round in the coming months, it leans on the support from previous investors as well as the massive market in China for robotaxi services. |
UK’s CMA accepts Google’s post-cookie pledges, will ‘closely monitor’ Privacy Sandbox plan | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 11 | The U.K.’s competition authority has accepted commitments from Google over how it develops the post-cookie future of interest-based ad targeting online under its self-styled “Privacy Sandbox” proposal. In an , the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it is satisfied that the legally binding commitments secured from Google will ensure that the evolution of ad tracking will promote competition, support publishers to raise revenue from ads while also safeguarding consumer privacy. So quite the juggling act. In a statement, the CMA’s chief exex, Andrea Coscelli, said: Our intervention in this case demonstrates our commitment to protecting competition in digital markets and our global role in shaping the behaviour of world-leading tech firms. The commitments we have obtained from Google will promote competition, help to protect the ability of online publishers to raise money through advertising and safeguard users’ privacy. While this is an important step, we are under no illusions that our work is done. We now move into a new phase where we will keep a close eye on Google as it continues to develop these proposals. We will engage with all market participants in this process, in order to ensure that Google is taking account of concerns and suggestions raised. The CMA has been investigating Google’s plan to deprecate support for tracking cookies in its Chrome browser for — following complaints by a coalition of digital marketing companies that the move risked further entrenching Google’s dominance of the digital advertising market. The competition watchdog very much agrees there are competition problems in the mobile market — per preliminary findings of its mobile market study, which were published in . (And it continues to consult on potential interventions aimed at boosting competition and increasing consumer choice in both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile ecosystems — such as making it easier to switch between the two ecosystems and sideload apps or access web apps; mandating the ability for apps to use alternative payment tech; and making it easier for users to choose an alternative [non-bundled] services as the default, such as browsers.) But the CMA is also, today, giving Google the greenlight to continue developing Privacy Sandbox — just with a set of legally binding conditions attached to how it does that. An on the Sandbox were not deemed sufficient, following market feedback, leading to an improved offer — which added the key element of a monitoring trustee, as well as a slightly longer time frame for the reporting requirements (six years) and other tweaks intended to provide greater reassurance to the market. It’s this beefed up set of commitments the CMA has accepted now. Although it notes that it could choose to reopen an investigation if it’s not satisfied with how the Sandbox is being developed — also retaining the ability to impose interim measures in the future if necessary. Otherwise, Google’s commitments are set to terminate six years from February 11, 2022 — so running until 2028 — unless it is granted an early release by the regulator. The full list binding Google — which spans development and implementation criteria for the Sandbox; transparency and consultation requirements with third parties; mechanisms for regulatory involvement in the design process and more — can be . In its press release, the CMA highlights a few elements, noting the agreement commits Google to involving the CMA and the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which leads on consumer privacy issues, in the development and testing of the Sandbox proposals; boosts transparency and engagement for third parties, including the publication of test results and an option for the CMA to require Google to address specific concerns; and binds Google by banning self-preferencing of its own ad services and through restrictions on data-sharing within its own ecosystem to ensure it doesn’t gain an advantage over competitors when third-party cookies are removed. It also that Google will not remove tracking cookies until it is satisfied that its competition concerns have been addressed. The appointment of a monitoring trustee — which will clearly be a crucial role in ensuring Google does what it has agreed it will here — is expected to be made “shortly”, per the CMA. In its own on this latest chunk of the tracking cookie deprecation saga, Google writes that the aim of the commitments is “to provide reassurance that the Privacy Sandbox will protect consumers and support a competitive ad-funded web, and not favor Google”. The adtech giant sumarizes the package of pledges into three main “principles”: First, the changes we will make in Chrome in the context of the Privacy Sandbox initiative will apply in the same way to Google’s advertising products as to products from other companies. Second, we will design, develop and implement Privacy Sandbox with regulatory oversight and input from the CMA and the ICO. And third, we will inform the CMA in advance of our intention to remove third-party cookies and agree to wait for their feedback on whether any competition law concerns remain. “We’re pleased that today the CMA has accepted these commitments, which now go into immediate effect,” Google adds, before reiterating its promise to apply the agreed approach everywhere: “We will apply the commitments globally because we believe that they provide a roadmap for how to address both privacy and competition concerns in this evolving sector.” It is still tbc what the Privacy Sandbox will actually be and mean in practice — as the stack of alternative ad targeting and measurement technologies remains in development. Just recently, for example, by killing off FLoCs — aka, its erstwhile flagship replacement ad targeting idea to put web users into buckets of interest-based cohorts for targeting (aka FLoCs), which critics such as the had dubbed a privacy disaster — swapping in a new idea to target web users based on “topics” tracked locally in the browser. Whether or not topics-based tracking is a substantial improvement, in privacy terms, versus FLoCs — or, indeed, whether it’s substantially worse than contextual targeting (which does not require any user data to be processed to select relevant ads to serve but instead ads are targeted based on the website content that’s being accessed at the time, likely combined with broad-brush signals such as a general location) — all remains to be seen. So we still don’t know exactly what will replace tracking cookies when/if Google finally turns off support ( ). But what we do know is that it won’t only be Google deciding what that future looks like — given it’s given a legally binding pledge to involve regulators, factor in feedback from third parties and act on concerns. In its blog post today, Google writes that it will be “consulting with the CMA and ICO on a regular basis in relation to the design, development and implementation of the Privacy Sandbox (including testing and public announcements)”, as well as “increas[ing] its engagement with industry stakeholders (including publishers, advertisers and ad tech providers) by providing a systematic feedback process to take on board reasonable views and suggestions”. Info on how Google is engaging with third parties in the design and development of the Sandbox are set out on a website — — which includes a project overview and ; and, per the CMA, now includes new details on how it will engage with third parties. For all the criticism Google can and does attract — including via some highly relevant in the U.S., which certainly underline the need for close monitoring of its behavior — when it comes to Privacy Sandbox the tech giant is at least evolving its proposals in response to antitrust concern and critical feedback. Meanwhile the U.K.-based coalition of marketers, which has been raising complaints against Privacy Sandbox — — was still sounding off about Google’s proposal earlier this week. The self-styled (aka, MOW; neé Marketers for an Open Web) put out a press release calling for the CMA to include what it described as “non-discrimination remedies” against Sandbox in its ongoing mobile ecosystem study. In it MOW appears to be lobbying to continue the privacy-horrible status quo — in which scores of faceless identity- and data-trading third parties are able to track web users’ browsing via the use of what are billed as “pseudonymous identifiers” — yet which, through syncing and matching (with other “alternative ID providers” in a surveillance-based tracking ecosystem) allow for ad IDs to be linked back to individuals to power user profiling and exploitative targeting, all of which are horrible for privacy. The ICO itself has put the adtech industry on notice that a “keep on tracking” scenario simply won’t fly — with the outgoing commissioner writing in an that adtech must move away from online tracking and profiling, stop obfuscating how it operates and provide consumers with genuine control over what’s done with their data. “Any proposal that has the effect of maintaining or replicating existing tracking practices (such as those described in the ) is not an acceptable response to the significant data protection risks that the Commissioner has already described,” the outgoing commissioner Elizabeth Denham also warned in a thinly veiled parting shot at unreformed adtech. Google’s blog post today makes an explicit reference to this opinion — with the company writing: Privacy by design and by default have been at the heart of the Privacy Sandbox from the outset, and we are also intent on ensuring that the new tools meet the requirements set out in the recent ICO’s . To that end, we are designing these new tools to avoid cross-site tracking, provide people with better transparency and control, and result in better outcomes for people and businesses on the web. The data-mining tech giant’s claim to be championing privacy of course deserves plenty of critical scrutiny. However when set against the vista of a trench-digging adtech industry at large — which desperately continues to reject calls for reform in favor of clinging to creepy tracking, whether by sicking up some new window dressing for the same old tracking wheeze via slightly respun jargon or through head-in-the-sand that its built its ad auction castle on — Google’s Privacy Sandbox starts to look very enlightened indeed. As ever, the devil will be in the detail. But if it’s a choice between change or the creepy status quo it’s clear where the web needs to go. We asked MOW for its response to the package of commitments the CMA has now accepted. At the time of writing it did not have one but a spokesman it was preparing a press release to put out later this morning — so we’ll update this report when we get it. MOW has now published its — which we’ve broken down in more detail in this piece of (on another antitrust complaint against Google that’s been filed in the EU today). But the gist is it’s pressing for even more regulatory oversight of Google and other adtech giants. The UK’s ICO has also put out a to the CMA’s announcement in which it welcomes the commitments obtained from Google, writing that “consumers benefit when data protection, privacy and competition objectives have to be considered together” — which it says the commitments oblige Google to do. Stephen Bonner, the ICO’s exec director for regulatory futures and innovation, adds: “We will continue to work with both organisations to ensure Google’s Privacy Sandbox proposals are compliant with data protection law and deliver good privacy outcomes for individuals. “Our set outs clear data protection standards that organisations must meet when developing online advertising technologies. As several proposals are under active development, we will continue to engage with organisations developing them to ensure that they raise standards of data protection and privacy.” |
Indian social commerce DealShare bags $45 million from ADIA, eyes international expansion | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is backing the Indian social commerce startup DealShare, the two said Thursday, joining a roster of marquee investors doubling down on India’s fast-growing e-commerce market. A wholly owned subsidiary of Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund is investing $45 million in , extending the size of the Jaipur-headquartered startup’s recently unveiled Series E financing round to $210 million. The round, which TechCrunch , values DealShare at $1.7 billion and pushes its all-time raise to $393 million. DealShare, which counts Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global among its investors, operates a so-called social commerce startup through which it is serving customers in more than 100 Indian cities and towns where the likes of Amazon and Flipkart have made little to no inroad. To reach the masses, DealShare is “gamifying and socialising the elements of purchases,” said Rajat Shikhar, the startup’s co-founder and chief product officer, in an interview with TechCrunch. These strategies include incentivizing customers to buy in a group and inviting their friends as well as “bargaining” on prices, he said. “We provide very high engagement on the platform because we are serving customers who are not so tech-savvy and have historically not made online purchases,” he said. By giving incentive to customers to get their friends on the platform, DealShare has been able to considerably reduce its customer acquisition and order fulfilling costs, he added. On the platform, customers also negotiate on prices with the system, replicating a behaviour that is a norm in physical shops. The startup also works with local brands and also operates its own ecosystem of in-house private labels to make its offering affordable to customers, he said. Three-year-old DealShare processes more than 400,000 orders a day and is in “touching distance of hitting $1B of gross revenue run rate.” “We aim to democratize online shopping for Bharat users with unmatched service and experience by developing innovative products and tech solutions. This will be supported by building our teams across the country and hiring new tech talent at all levels,” said Vineet Rao, co-founder and chief executive of DealShare, in a statement. A look at the social commerce market in India and China, where this new e-commerce trend first took shape. Bernstein At stake is the world’s second-largest internet market, where e-commerce has hardly made any dent to the overall retail. The social commerce market alone is expected to be worth up to $20 billion in value by 2025, up from about $1 billion to $1.5 billion last year, analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein said last year. “Social commerce has the ability to empower more than 40 million small entrepreneurs across India. Today, 85% of sellers using social commerce are small, offline-oriented retailers who use social channels to open up new growth opportunities,” they wrote in a report clients. kickstarted its journey the day . The startup began as an e-commerce platform on WhatsApp, where it offered hundreds of products to consumers. DealShare is additionally also planning to expand to several international markets, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain, it said. “We are likely to hit $3B of gross revenue run rate in the next 12 months,” said Sourjyendu Medda, co-founder and chief business officer, in a statement. “India’s e-commerce ecosystem is developing rapidly, and DealShare is addressing an underserved and growing segment within it. This investment aligns with our approach of backing innovative businesses with differentiated business models to execute on their growth strategies,” said Hamad Shahwan Al Dhaheri, executive director of the Private Equities Department at ADIA, in a statement. |
Fisker touts 31,000 reservations for its Ocean SUV as production draws closer | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Fisker is still on track to start production of the Ocean SUV in November, with reservations for its first electric vehicle jumping to 31,000, the company said Wednesday during its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call. The EV startup said production of prototypes have started at the Fisker Ocean assembly facility, which is operated by automotive manufacturer Magna Steyr’s factory in Graz, Austria. The facility will soon have the capability to produce two prototypes per day to support its test and validation program for global certification. There are 1,600 fleet reservations for the Ocean, including an incremental 200-unit order from software company ServiceNow. Unraveling the figures in its earnings report, it appears the company has added about 6,000 reservations since the start of the year. Fisker reported $6.3 million in deposits by the end of 2021. Given that it charges $250 for Ocean SUV deposits, the company likely had about 25,000 reservations at the close of 2021. Fisker reports the net daily retail reservation rate in 2022 year-to-date increased more than 400% compared to the last fiscal year, and is on pace to hit over 55,000. Roughly 80% of the Ocean reservations came out of North America, with the remainder coming out of Europe, according to CEO Henry Fisker, but the company is expecting that number to change when it launches in Europe. The company is going to the Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona to launch the Ocean. Henrik Fisker said he’s expecting Europe to make up 40% to 50% of total demand. A survey of reservation holders conducted by the company in December 2021 showed the majority, 81%, plan to buy one of the top two trims, the Ocean Ultra, priced at $49,999, and the Ocean Extreme/One, priced at $68,999. This implies an initial average selling price of about $56,000 and that current reservations have an indicative future gross revenue value of about $1.7 billion, based on the more than 30,000 reservations. The lower tier trim, the Ocean Sport, is priced at $37,499. During the call, Fisker touted the company’s opportunity to own market share in the “sexy, sustainable” category, saying that there are no other competitors selling affordable, good-looking, high-tech EVs since most of the cars hitting the market, including some of Fisker’s, are priced much higher. “I’m challenging you to find a sexy, high-tech electric vehicle under $30,000,” said Fisker during the earnings call. “Now, with that in mind, think about what’s going to happen in the next two years. All this market share is going to be up for grabs. And if we are to have a vehicle among the very few, we will have the ability to take a much larger market share than we normally would have if you would have 50 competitors, and we don’t. All these competitors that everybody’s talking about are coming out with $60,000, $70,000, $80,000-plus cars.” While Fisker was mainly referring to the potential for its Pear, an electric crossover that , it’s clear from Fisker’s Ocean reservation breakdown that current buyers are still more interested in chasing the highest form of luxury available in an EV. That said, even though the Pear has been open for reservations for only a day, it already has 1,000 signups, according to Fisker. The company announced the completion of the concept phase for the Pear, which will be manufactured in partnership with Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn in Ohio at an expected annual volume of a minimum of 250,000 per year after full ramp-up. “My goal is that we will ultimately produce over a million Pears a year, sometime after 2025,” said Fisker. “Obviously, that’s going to demand multiple factories in multiple continents. But I think this vehicle has the potential of being iconic, globally. It’s designed not to fit in a segment, but to fit in a future lifestyle.” The CEO cited the company’s agreement announced in Q3 last year with battery cell manufacturer CATL, which should give Fisker an initial annual capacity of over 5 gigawatt-hours through 2025, with the potential to increase volumes. Among other announcements during the earnings call, Fisker said it has nominated JPMorgan Chase in North America and Santander in Europe as its banking partners for point of sale retail loans for all its customers. “Our teams are now knee-deep in architecting and fully integrating systems for a frictionless user journey, from the ordering process to creating valuation to financing to ownership experience,” said Dr. Geeta Gupta-Fisker, co-founder, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Fisker. The company also announced that is has “greenlit” its powertrain development center in Southern California that will focus on everything from pack design to battery management system design. “We have already built strong internal capability in these areas, but we’re building that out and providing the technology and tools required to increase expertise in this critical area,” said Gupta-Fisker. “The Center of Excellence will also be used for vehicle tear-down benchmarking, as well as root cause analysis.” Fisker generated a revenue of $41,000 in the fourth quarter — thanks to some merchandise sales — and $161,000 for the year. The cost of the annual sales was $87,000. As one might expect with a pre-revenue company trying to scale, it saw operating expenses hit $ Loss from operations totaled $133.4 million, an increase of about 22%. Similar to last quarter, Fisker is throwing money at R&D, spending $115 million in Q4, up from $99.3 million in Q3. When we zoom out to full-year spending, Fisker spent $286.9 million on R&D, up from $21 million in 2020, a typical turn for a pre-revenue and pre-production company that is gearing up to sell cars equipped with tech like the . As a result of such hearty spending, Fisker’s cash supply is down slightly, from $1.4 billion last quarter to $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter, but that’s still plenty to play around with since the company doesn’t have much in the way of long-term debts. It does have convertible notes, but those are likely to become equity in time. The company says it has stayed pretty disciplined with spending, and as a result has the resources to fund the Ocean program launch in November and stay on track with other projects in 2022. However, post-November Ocean ramp-up, Fisker is developing “a very robust working capital model” and is in “discussions with several large balance sheet banks for access to asset-backed credit lines to fund working capital needs in a non diluted-way,” said Gupta-Fisker. The company is also relying on its access to industry-standard payment terms by many suppliers, and is open to fundraising again on the public markets should it need to bolster the balance sheets further, according to Gupta-Fisker. Fisker’s stock was briefly up to $14 per share after hours, but has settled at around $12.90 at the time of this writing, an increase of nearly 2% today. |
Staten Island Amazon workers’ union election planned for next month | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Late next month, workers at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment center will hold a long-awaited union vote, if all goes according to plan. The in-person election is tentatively set for March 25 through 30, coinciding with the culmination of a mail-in re-vote being held at the company’s Bessemer, Alabama warehouse. Christian Smalls — a former employee of the JFK8 warehouse in the New York borough and current president of the Amazon Labor Union organization — acknowledged that Amazon had reached an agree with the National Labor Relations Board for the election. The company confirmed the process with employees via text message, while encouraging them to vote “no” more than month in advance. It’s the beginning for what is certain to be an aggressive anti-unionizing push for the retail giant. Amazon employed aggressive tactics in the lead up to last April’s election. Ultimately, factors like an on-site mail box and “vote no” signage were enough to affirm the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union’s objections and force the . The Staten Island election is the culmination of JKF8 employees’ own long-time push. Not wasting anytime ‼️ — Christian Smalls (@Shut_downAmazon) Things hit a fever pitch at the massive warehouse in 2020, with employees protesting conditions as essential workers during the cresting of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. An assistant manager at the time, Smalls was fired the day he led the walkout. The company accused him of violating COVID safety protocols. The company reportedly began In October, the Amazon Labor Union had previously pushed for an election that would include all of the company’s Staten Island warehouses, ultimately withdrawing for lack of signatures. Instead, this latest election is focused specifically on JFK8, the borough’s largest fulfillment center. In December, centers staged their own walkout as part of a groundswell of worker pushback against warehouse conditions. The symbolism of effectively holding two major votes together in different parts of the country no doubt has not escaped Amazon, which has long resisted union organizing, pushing back against years of negative coverage and insisting that workers in its centers are treated fairly. The weeks leading up to both will no doubt continue with a fair amount of fireworks — particularly with the New York election occurring in person. We’ve reached out to Amazon, the ALU and the NLRB for additional comment. |
Blueland raises more money to avoid shipping water around and reduce single-use plastics | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | The cleaning products you use in your house are 99% water. Yes, the same stuff that comes out of the spigot at your house. With the radical idea that the municipal water system is probably a better way to transport water around, just raised $20 million to expand its successful line of cleaning-products-in-tablet-form, in a bid to reduce single-use plastics and put a stop to the silliness of shipping water around from factory to retail store, and from retail store to your house. “Looking back to when we first started working on the business, my co-founder John and I were on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic packaging. It was actually never about cleaning products. We explored a wide range of potential categories and formats that we could start in. At that point in time there was so much skepticism,” laughs I feel like I had 20 investors in a row telling me that no one cares about eco — and that people will not change their behaviors for the planet.” The company is flexing its eco-credentials loudly; it’s a certified B Corporation, and is Climate Neutral Certified — an impressive feat for a company that has also shipped more than 10 million products and grown its customer base to more than 1 million members. It calculates it has already prevented a billion plastic bottles from going to landfills in the process. Sarah Paiji Yoo and John Mascari, co-founders of Blueland. supplied by Blueland The company had to make some big investments in tech along the way; whereas most consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies use a contract manufacturer and relies on them for their formulations, Blueland had to go a different path, as they weren’t able to find anyone who could work to their specs. “We didn’t initially want to formulate everything ourselves, but we didn’t have the luxury of being able to use a contract manufacturer. Once we realized that cleaning sprays have 90% water, we decided that it wouldn’t make sense to take a traditional approach. We went to all these cleaning manufacturers — over a dozen of them — and they all looked at us like we had three heads; as if we were stupid,” Yoo recalls. “They didn’t have tablet machinery; most of their ingredients comes to them as liquids, and they weren’t able to make what we needed. That kicked off a wild goose chase. We talked to everyone from candy manufacturers to vitamin manufacturers trying to figure out if the dry-format folks could help us with this. The takeaway from those conversations was that we were going to have to formulate our own product. Neither my co-founder nor myself are chemists, but we were able to bring on the director of formulation for Method, which is one of the largest natural cleaning brands in the world. There is a lot to be proud of — we have been the first to bring the tablet form factor to market across a range of cleaning products, from hand soaps to spray cleaners to laundry and dish soaps. That has enabled us to become the leading cleaning brand that uses no single-use plastic across all of our products. |
Daily Crunch: With $250M Series D, fintech Flutterwave becomes Africa’s highest-valued startup | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Wednesday, February 16, 2022! Most funding stories don’t go viral, but today is a bit of an exception – Flutterwave’s huge round made an impact, I can confirm. But before that and the rest of the news, am happy to announce , which should be a great session. See you there! – Today we’re starting off with what I’m calling the Mary Ann beat. is at once a brilliant journalist and human while also being the single busiest person on the planet. From her voluminous archive, two stories from : (Scroll down a wee bit to see one more from Mary Ann!) And now onto the rest of the day’s startup news and happenings! And of course there was even more, including , , and digging into the correction underway at Hopin. / Getty Images The public markets cooled on fintechs in recent months, but for entrepreneurs still considering starting up, “outlook good,” says the Magic 8 Ball. In 2021, a third of all unicorns created were fintech companies: the sector hoovered in more than one out of every five dollars VCs invested last year. But that data is available anywhere. What founders really want to know is: What are investors looking for right now? To get an inside view on what fintech investors are thinking about in Q1 2022, Mary Ann Azevedo reached out to nine of them. “Each respondent was kind enough to let us know how they want to be pitched, and for grins, one shared an example of a cold e-mail that worked,” she writes. SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
How to find a job as a scout for a VC firm | David Teten | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | to work with and for VC funds is to become a scout, getting compensated for sourcing investments. But how do you do that? We’ve been studying VC scout programs, not just to improve our deal sourcing, but for four broader reasons: Versatile VC runs a no-cost community for founders in transition, “ .” We have collected a wide range of resources for founders who may be considering launching a new company; angel investing/becoming a VC; buying a company; joining boards; consulting; serving as an interim executive; or just getting a job. Our goal is to invest in, co-invest with and/or recruit founders in transition. All VCs, including us, regularly see investment opportunities that don’t fit our mandate. We may as well get compensated for referring them to others. There are a number of VC funds that share the carry earned in their co-investment to the referring party. Another option is our becoming a formal scout for other VCs through programs like those we list below. We already have a senior team of venture partners who help us in origination and diligence. They may also consult with companies directly or serve on boards, in which case we’ll expedite their being compensated directly by the relevant company. Scouts are intended to be a lighter-touch relationship, focused only on sourcing. We envision we can have an unlimited number of scouts, but only a small number of Venture Partners. This is true both on the investor side and also among portfolio company management. We’ve identified a number of VCs besides us that have publicly discussed their scout programs, and in some cases publicly shared their economics. We found these by looking through firms’ websites, social media, blog posts, etc. We list all of them below. In addition to formal scout programs, note that many VCs will structure one-off arrangements with “friends of the firm” to compensate them for sourcing. You can’t normally “apply” for those relationships unless you have a pre-existing relationship with the VC. Scouts are typically paid a percentage of carry-on investments they source. So excluding any upfront cash, your cash compensation, which is normally paid out when that startup exits (typically three to 12 years from the present) equals: # companies you source * (% of companies the VC invests in) * (average VC check size) * (average multiple generated, minus 1) * (your percentage of the carry pool, typically 2.5%-10% of the fund’s carry pool on a given investment, i.e., of the typical 20% that the fund earns) If you’re paid on a per-deal basis, your contract may have adjustments for netting of carry. For example, if the overall fund is a 0.9X multiple, you may get paid zero even if you source a winning investment for that particular fund.) Certain late-stage VCs have invested in some of my past funds, partly to motivate us to refer future investment opportunities to them. A few firms also or instead pay a cash bounty to scouts, typically 1% of the amount invested into the company. Alternatively, some firms pay a fixed percentage of total fund carry per deal sourced, i.e., if you source one company out of a planned 30 companies in a fund, you might get 10%*(1/30) = 0.333% of the carry pool. This structure has the advantage of simpler accounting and it motivates the scout to be a resource for the entire portfolio, not just the one company she sourced. A few funds (e.g., Accel, Sequoia) give the scout a small pool of capital. Effectively, the scout is then managing a tiny pocket of that VC fund. Typically, the backing VC will have some ability to veto the scout’s investments in this structure. That said, a generous carry percentage is irrelevant if the fund’s metrics for the other components of the formula above are low. What really matters is . You’re not going to earn any money if the sort of investments you source are not a fit for the VC you’re scouting for, because they just won’t put money to work. Some scouts also have the opportunity (or expectation) to help raise money for the fund by seeking fund commitments from potential LPs. Typical incentive payments for fundraising from VC limited partners is 0.5%-2% of cash raised, with larger percentages for smaller funds. Check with counsel to make sure that these compensation structures are compliant. Our focus here is venture capital, but the private equity industry employs origination-focused team members also. These are primarily full-time team members, but PE funds also employ investment banks as well as freelance “finders.” Including bonuses, the ballpark salary for a new business development associate with a private equity firm is around $100,000. Some PE funds publicly advertise rewards for anyone who refers them to an investment, while independent sponsors can earn a 20% fee for facilitating deals. Similarly, certain revenue-based finance investors also have open-access scouting programs. “Given the instant nature of RBF, the payout is immediate: a successful affiliation typically generates up to 1% of the amount raised to the finder,” CEO Stephane Nasser noted. “If you have access to post-revenue SaaS or e-commerce companies, you can easily make $1,000 to $10,000 per company within a few days.” Most scouts get paid only on a success basis, without a retainer. If your responsibility is just forwarding emails and making an occasional intro, it’s less common to get a retainer. You can make an argument for a retainer (or an investment in your fund, if you’re a VC yourself) if some combination of the following applies: Scouts are typically hired because they are well-networked and credible in an industry, geography and/or community that a VC is focusing on. , CEO of , observes that scouts usually fall into one of three categories: |
AWS brings its Local Zones mini data centers to 32 new cities | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Latency is critical for a lot of workloads, yet the large cloud providers typically build their major data centers where the electricity is cheap and the local tax incentives high. In recent years, though, we’ve seen a new twist on this with projects like AWS’ Local Zones. These are small data centers adjacent to major population centers that provide core cloud features for applications like gaming, video streaming or machine learning inference that require low latency connections. Today, after first this announcement at its re:Invent conference last year, AWS is announcing a major expansion its original set of 16 Local Zones to 48. These new zones will be located in cities across 26 countries: Amsterdam, Athens, Auckland, Bangkok, Bengaluru, Berlin, Bogotá, Brisbane, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Chennai, Copenhagen, Delhi, Hanoi, Helsinki, Johannesburg, Kolkata, Lima, Lisbon, Manila, Munich, Nairobi, Oslo, Perth, Prague, Querétaro, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Toronto, Vancouver, Vienna and Warsaw. Until now, Local Zones were only available in the U.S. The promise is that developers will be able to give their users in these cities single-digit millisecond performance for their applications. “The edge of the cloud is expanding and is now becoming available virtually everywhere,” said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS, in today’s announcement. “Thousands of AWS customers using U.S.-based AWS Local Zones are able to optimize low-latency applications designed specifically for their industries and the use cases of their customers. With the success of our first 16 Local Zones, we are expanding to more locations for our customers around the world who have asked for these same capabilities to push the edge of cloud services to new places. AWS Local Zones will now be available in over 30 new locations globally, providing customers with a powerful new capability to leverage cloud services within a few milliseconds of hundreds of millions of end users around the world.” |
Meta crowns Nick Clegg president of tilting at regulatory headwinds | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister of the U.K., has been elevated to new heights at Meta, the tech giant formerly known as Facebook — under a new title of president of global affairs in its senior management team. This is an upgrade on the VP of global affairs and communications title Clegg was recruited for — with more responsibilities and a direct reporting line to founder Mark Zuckerberg in addition to COO Sheryl Sandberg. Why is a US tech giant elevating a Brit to such a senior position? In a statement announcing Clegg’s new crown, Zuckerberg said Clegg would be key to helping Meta chart the choppy waters of a fast changing regulatory landscape ( it’s been ) — this of course as it simultaneously seeks to rebrand its data-mining ad empire as a future-building “metaverse company”, while continuing (it hopes) to trample privacy so it can mint money by targeting ads at “relevant” eyeballs. Thing is, incoming European regulations look . Which could slay the cash cow it needs to fund an expensive rebranding of its ads business as really just an even more invasive and immersive surveillance environment (aka “the metaverse”). Moreover, long-delayed enforcement of EU privacy laws now also to Meta’s empire (see, for example, the recent for breaches of GDPR transparency rules). Indeed, they now threaten to cut off its . (And, well, if — and, indeed, — breach the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation over personal data exports it’s hard to see how even a very well paid Meta lawyer could successfully defend a claim that Facebook’s data flows don’t.) In Europe, Meta’s long game of forum shopping and regulatory whack-a-mobile which has enabled the adtech giant to just keep spinning make a mockery of EU citizens’ privacy rights — successfully dodging data protection regulations for well over a decade — may, finally, be approaching a hard stop. Unless, that is, Meta can pull out a trump card to flip European lawmakers into ‘alignment’ with its preferred policy positions. (Clegg has been .) And that is the role Zuckerberg is not-so-subtly sketching for president Clegg. Indeed, the strategy is so very obvious as to almost look like trolling tbh. Which may explain the exceptionally bland choice of language in Zuckerberg’s announcement — anointing Clegg on his mission to stop those regulatory headwinds a-blowin’. “We need a senior leader at the level of myself (for our products) and Sheryl (for our business) who can lead and represent us for all of our policy issues globally,” he writes in a public statement accompanying Clegg’s ascendance. “Nick will now lead our company on all our policy matters, including how we interact with governments as they consider adopting new policies and regulations, as well as how we make the case publicly for our products and our work.” (For “interact with” read ‘ which will allow us to continue our privacy-hostile ad-targeting business as usual’, in case you needed a deeper take.) Meta president of global affairs is undoubtedly the most powerful position Clegg has ever held — in politics, government or the private sector; yes, even as deputy U.K. PM — which simply underlines the vast power Meta/Facebook has come to wield in the global world order, off the back of having 2.5BN+ users whose attention it monetizes by selling access to (to anyone). Clegg was deputy PM/willing stooge in a coalition government led by David Cameron’s Conservative Party. A highlight of his tenure was when he for breaking a Liberal Democrat election pledge to oppose any rise in student tuition fees after he ended up doing exactly that once in coalition government… Oops. Having a reputation as an opportunist/Tory stooge appears to have done nothing to harm Clegg’s career at Meta/Facebook, of course — where he’s spent several years acting as chief spin doctor for smoothing the sizeable cracks between claimed platform policies and corporate ‘mission’ statements and the actual reality of how MetaFace operates — pumping out a steady flow of societal harms, via its systematic deployment of mass Internet surveillance, population-level profiling and engagement-chasing algorithms — all the way up to . Can stop Meta’s manipulation machine? This is certainly a question lawmakers and regulators across Europe are pondering hard these days. (Indeed, the U.K.’s current digital minister seems — vis-a-vis incoming Internet content rules — although it’s highly likely she’d be more than happy to throw Clegg in the clink instead.) Opting for a European — Clegg may be British but he’s also worked in the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, and been an elected member of the European Parliament, so has deep ties to the bloc’s co-legislating institutions — suggests that if Zuckerberg fears anything could challenge the power of his absolute Meta monarchy (via majority share voting power) it is . That too should give governments all around the world pause for thought. Zuckerberg would prefer lawmakers don’t think too deeply though. “The work we do at Meta matters to a lot of people around the world,” pens the Facebook founder with studied banality. “We’re at the center of a lot of debates about technology and society. I can’t think of anyone better placed to represent us and help shape the future of internet policy than Nick.” |
Sorry, Jack, you can send ETH tips via Twitter now | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey might be a devout Bitcoin bro, but since he’s as head tweeter… why not send an ETH tip? Today, Twitter added a number of new payment options for its tip jar feature, including Ethereum addresses. Twitter also now supports international fintech providers , and , expanding tipping to users in Nigeria, India and Ghana. Bitcoin tips were already enabled on Twitter via Strike’s Lightning Network, which reduces fees on payments. But the addition of Ethereum supports Twitter’s foray into non-Bitcoin crypto features, like the infamously hexagonal . Have you set up Tips on your profile yet so it's easy for people to show their support? Yes: Cool, we’ve added Paga, Barter by Flutterwave, Paytm, and the option to add your Ethereum address. No: What are you waiting for? Here's how: — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) “Like Twitter, digital currencies operate without global barriers. We’re excited to incorporate Ethereum in addition to Bitcoin payment in Tips, enabling more people to participate in the digital economy with as little friction as possible,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch. Twitter’s ETH tips don’t support — just your long, clunky alphanumeric one. When you send an ETH tip, you’re not actually tipping via Twitter. Instead, clicking on a user’s ETH tip option just copies their address, so you can then navigate to your crypto wallet and send the user an ETH tip. But because tips are likely to come in smaller increments, tipping to an Ethereum address might not make sense, given the fees associated with transactions. Basically, this feature is just a more user-friendly way of sharing your wallet address with your followers. Twitter tips are available to all users 18+ on iOS and Android. |
Senators propose the Kids Online Safety Act after five hearings with tech execs | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Last year, former Facebook employee leaked a trove of internal company documents, which illuminated just how apps like Instagram can be for teens. These bombshell revelations sparked five Senate subcommittee hearings on children’s internet safety, featuring from executives at TikTok, Snap, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. As a result of these hearings, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) introduced the (KOSA) today. The bill would require social media companies to provide users under age 16 with the option to protect their information, disable addictive product features and opt out of algorithmic recommendations; give parents more control over their child’s social media usage; require social media platforms to conduct a yearly independent audit to assess their risk to minors; and allow academics and public interest organizations to use company data to inform their research on children’s internet safety. “In hearings over the last year, Senator Blumenthal and I have heard countless stories of physical and emotional damage affecting young users, and Big Tech’s unwillingness to change,” Sen. Blackburn said in a press release. “The Kids Online Safety Act will address those harms by setting necessary safety guide rails for online platforms to follow that will require transparency and give parents more peace of mind.” There is a lot of overlap among KOSA and other legislation floated over the last year by members of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, on which Blackburn and Blumenthal both serve. Meanwhile, the bipartisan , introduced in both the House and the Senate, addresses concerns about the secrecy around algorithms and how they influence users. That bill would require social networks to allow users to choose to use a standard reverse-chronological feed instead of using the platform’s opaque, sometimes proprietary algorithm. The newly introduced KOSA bill doesn’t require this toggle, but it would force tech companies to turn over “critical datasets from social media platforms” to the government, the bill’s says. Then, academics and nonprofit employees could apply to gain access to the data for research purposes. In California, bipartisan state lawmakers plan to tomorrow that’s modeled off of the . This bill would require companies like Meta and YouTube, which are headquartered in the state, to limit data collection from children on their platforms. Given the prevalence of Big Tech in California, even state laws could potentially force platforms to take action toward making their platforms safer for young users. It’s too soon to say which of these proposed legislations, if any, will gain enough momentum to change the way that social media platforms operate. But lawmakers have proven committed to asserting more control over Big Tech. In an emailed statement to TechCrunch, Frances Haugen commented on the bill. “Today’s development on Capitol Hill is good news for a number of reasons. 1. Transparency: The legislation introduced today allows researchers to access data from tech companies and investigate potential harm to children and teens. 2. Empowerment: It provides kids and parents basic tools that serve as guardrails for their online activity. 3. Bipartisanship: Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal deserve huge credit for joining forces. Whatever your party affiliation, the wellbeing of kids matters,” she said. |
Spotify snaps up podcast measurement and analytics firms Podsights and Chartable | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Spotify this afternoon two more acquisitions in the podcasts market, this time on both the measurement and analytics side of the business. The company is acquiring the podcast measurement service and the analytics platform for undisclosed sums. Measurement and attribution are still two of the biggest, unsolved challenges for podcast advertisers, Spotify explained, which is what it hopes to address with the Podsights acquisition. Initially, Podsights’ technology will be used to help Spotify’s advertisers more accurately measure the impact and actions driven by their podcast ads. Over time, however, Spotify aims to expand the measurement tools to other ad formats, including audio ads within music, video ads and display ads. Podsights has 40 full-time employees and all will join Spotify as one integrated unit. Spotify says it has no plans to adjust that team at this time. Chartable, meanwhile, will be another addition to Spotify’s Megaphone, which was recently beefed up with a deal for a comapny called , which allows radio broadcasters to convert their programming into podcasts. Chartable will integrate its audience insights and its promotional tools, SmartLinks and SmartPromos, with Megaphone so podcasters can learn more about their listener base and grow their business. After Chartable is fully integrated into Megaphone, Spotify will deprecate the standalone Chartable platform. Until then, however, it will remain available to both new and existing publisher and advertiser clients. This team is smaller, having only 11 employees, but Spotify isn’t planning to make any immediate changes here, either, it says. There may be some concern that these previously independent firms will now be in-house at Spotify. But Spotify notes the Podsights team will operate independently from other service functions within Spotify for the foreseeable future in order to maintain trust with its clients, which include podcast brands and agencies. Spotify’s name has been in the headlines in recent weeks related to its exclusive hosting of Joe Rogan’s podcast, which critics said is helping to spread COVID-19 misinformation. led several artists, including Neil Young, to pull their music from Spotify’s catalog in protest. But so far, the criticism hasn’t impacted Spotify’s broader plan to invest in podcasts and podcast technology, as it believes the medium has the potential to drive revenue for its business in the longer term. “We believe we’re still in the early chapters of digital audio and the opportunity for advertising in this space remains significant,” said Dawn Ostroff, chief content & advertising business officer at Spotify, in a statement. “Our acquisitions of podcast technology players Podsights and Chartable are important steps in our pursuit of taking digital audio to the next level, underscoring the powerful impact it delivers for advertisers and publishers, respectively.” Though Spotify doesn’t tend to immediately disclose the acquisition price for the smaller tech companies it buys, it will often later do so in its SEC filings. For example, Spotify it acquired the podcast discovery firm Podz, Inc. for €45 million in June 2021 and €57 million for Betty Labs, whose tech became Spotify’s live audio platform, Greenroom. Megaphone was one of its larger podcast tech deals |
AI acquires the power to manipulate fusion, but wait, it’s actually good news | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | A research group has taught AI to magnetically wrangle a high-powered stream of plasma used for fusion research — but wait! Put away your EMPs and screwdrivers, this is definitely a good thing, not a terrifying weapon for use against humanity in the coming robocalypse. The project is a collaboration between Google’s DeepMind and l’École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) started years ago when AI researchers from the former and fusion researchers from the latter met at a London hackathon. EPFL’s Federico Felici explained the problem his lab was having with plasma maintenance in his tokamak. Such an everyday complaint! Yet it struck a chord with DeepMind and the two got to work. Fusion research is conducted in many ways, but all of them involve plasmas formed at incredibly high temperatures — hundreds of millions of degrees. Sounds dangerous, and it is, but a tokamak is one way to keep it under control and allow close observation of the fusion activity happening within. It’s basically a torus or donut through which the superheated plasma travels in a circle, its path carefully constricted by magnetic fields. To be clear, this isn’t a fusion reactor of the type you hear about giving nearly unlimited clean energy; it doesn’t produce energy, and if it suddenly started, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere nearby. It’s a research tool for testing and observing how these volatile but promising processes can be controlled and used for good. In particular, the “variable-configuration” tokamak at the Swiss Plasma Center allows not just the containment of a ring of plasma, but for researchers to control its shape and path. By adjusting the magnetic parameters thousands of times per second, the ring can be made wider, thinner, more dense or diffuse, all kinds of factors that might affect its qualities. DeepMind & SPC/EPFL The precise settings for the machine’s magnetic fields must be determined ahead of time, naturally, as the cost of improvising them badly is potentially serious damage. The settings are configured using a powerful simulator of the tokamak and plasma, which the team has been updating for years. : “Lengthy calculations are still needed to determine the right value for each variable in the control system. That’s where our joint research project with DeepMind comes in.” The teams trained a machine learning system first to predict what plasma pattern a given set of settings would produce, then to work backwards from a desired plasma pattern and identify the settings that would produce it. (Simply stated, not so simply achieved, as is often the case with AI applications like this.) According to a paper , the approach was a resounding success: This architecture meets control objectives specified at a high level, at the same time satisfying physical and operational constraints. This approach has unprecedented flexibility and generality in problem specification and yields a notable reduction in design effort to produce new plasma configurations. We successfully produce and control a diverse set of plasma configurations on the Tokamak à Configuration Variable including elongated, conventional shapes, as well as advanced configurations, such as negative triangularity and ‘snowflake’ configurations. And here are some examples of different shapes and configurations the model was able to produce: Slice of the tokamak “donut” showing cutaway view of interior and beam. DeepMind & SPC/EPFL This is important work because experimenting with plasma like this — let alone using it for power — involves lots and lots (think millions) of tiny tweaks and those can’t all be manually configured. If a theory calls for two streams, one 22% larger than the other, it might take weeks or months of work to come up with the theoretical settings to produce that using “traditional” methods (which, to be clear, are already fantastically complex digital simulations). But an AI could come up with a good match in a tiny fraction of that time, either creating the solution right there or giving human auditors a strong starting point to work from. It also could be important for safety, since no human can improvise settings over a second or two that could contain an anomaly in time. But an AI might be able to change the settings in real time to prevent damage. DeepMind researcher Martin Riedmiller admitted that it’s “early days,” but of course that can be said for nearly every AI application in science. Machine learning is proving to be a powerful and versatile tool for innumerable disciplines — but like good scientists they are taking every success with a grain of salt and looking forward to the next, more confident result. |
Dear Sophie: Should we seek a K-1 visa or marriage-based green card? | Sophie Alcorn | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. “Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says , a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to in my next column.” TechCrunch+ members receive access to weekly “Dear Sophie” columns; . Joanna Buniak / Dear Searching, These days, very few things are speedy when it comes to immigration — the deep backlogs created by the pandemic are the most recent challenges causing delays. My law partner, Anita Koumriqian, and I chatted about the backlogs, the K-1 fiancé/fiancée visa, and marriage-based green cards in a recent podcast episode, “ .” Before the pandemic, it was faster for a fiancé or fiancée to get to the United States via a K-1 visa than for a spouse to get to the U.S. via a green card. But things have shifted. |
Twitter officially launches labels to identify the ‘good bots’ | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Twitter last fall a new label that would allow what it calls the “good bots” on its service to identify themselves. While the word “bot” can often have a negative connotation, Twitter noted there were useful bots, too, which were automatically tweeting out useful information like COVID-19 updates, earthquake alerts, bills being introduced in Congres and more. These “good bot” labels, which had been in testing with a small group, are now publicly available to all automated account holders. As during tests, the Twitter accounts that label themselves as bots will display this information on their Twitter profile. Underneath the account’s name and @username, a small robot icon appears next to the words “Automated by” followed by the name of the account’s operator. The Twitter bio, meanwhile, will detail the bot’s purpose. When the bots tweet, their automated status will also be visible in users’ timelines. Twitter says this information will help users to decide which accounts to follow, engage with and trust. Twitter The account labels had been first made available to some 500 Twitter developer accounts in September, which tested the feature and offered feedback, including bots like , , , , and . These accounts represented a range of bot use, from critical updates to interesting information to fun content. In addition to the “good bots,” many people automate their Twitter accounts in other ways — like using IFTTT integrations to tweet out links, for example. But Twitter has been less concerned about that sort of automated tweeting, it said — noting only that users should investigate any third-party application they use with their account and make sure to follow Twitter’s rules. Twitter The bot labels, while useful, don’t necessarily address the larger issue with bots on Twitter’s service. The bad bots can range from the annoying — like bots that tweet spam (or promote cryptocurrency schemes!) — to the more worrisome, like bots that try to . As an opt-in system, bot owners trying to do good with their creations will be able to add labels and promote themselves as the person behind the account. But bad bots won’t participate. The feature is available today to that use the Twitter API. But Twitter says there is no auditing of the system for now. “All accounts on Twitter are subject to the Twitter Rules,” a Twitter spokesperson said. “As the label is opt-in only, we will not be auditing accounts that choose to adopt it at this time and will rely on our reporting process should an account violate the Rules.” Twitter will discuss the news further on today hosted by the , which will be followed by a developer demo on TwitterDev’s Twitch channel on Thursday at 11 am PT. |
Giving discounts will bite ya — use them with caution | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | I’ve run a startup or two in my time, and I’ve run companies that have struggled to meet payroll from time to time. More than once, running a limited-time sale with a discount saved the company — but doing the math shows how while selling at a steep discount may well improve your bank balance, it’s somewhat disastrous for your bottom line. Here’s why. People love a discount; and if you’re a customer, it looks so simple — the price goes down by 20%, and you get a good deal. As a retailer or startup, however, the math ain’t in your favor. Let’s walk through it. Imagine you’re running a small import business. You buy cheap widgets, and you slap a fancy brand on them before attracting customers via Instagram ads and funky lifestyle images. When you buy 5,000 of these units, you can buy ’em at $9 each from Alibaba — and that’s a bargain. Well done you. You order 5,000 units, and you import them. You’ve now spent $45,000 on them, you spent another $1,500 on shipping, 10% on import taxes, and you discover that 9% of the units don’t work (this is Alibaba, after all). Luckily, as if by magic, you discover this without shipping them to the end customers and having to take them in return for an exchange or a refund. In any case, taking off the units that didn’t work, and the total spend of $51,000, each of the working 4,550 units cost you $11.21 each. Let’s take a look at the cost breakdown: Of course, you’re gonna have to do some advertising, too. You figured out how to acquire a new customer for $3. That’s impressive, and of course that’ll eat into your profit margin, too: After a few months, sales are slowing significantly, because there’s other people entering the market. , you think. . And you break out the discounting knife. At first, you try a 10% discount. That works pretty well. You’re making here. But of course, the competitors are still at your heels, so you decide to really go for it. First with a 25% discount. Then with a 40% discount. From the customer’s point of view, they are happy. This is all see: The customers are noticing that the prices are going down. Awesome! They are buying like crazy. At some point, you’re noticing something: You’ve only reduced your price by a little bit, but you’re not making nearly as much money. What happened? Well… The thing to remember is that you’re giving discounts not on the sales price; you’re giving your discounts out of your profits. All the other costs remain the same. As soon as you start looking at the numbers more carefully, you see why perhaps the discounting wasn’t such a great idea. Sure, dropping the price from $19.99 to $14.99 is only a $5.00 difference… but your profit has taken a nose dive from $5.78 per unit to $0.78. That’s… not a business. Of course, if you don’t have physical product logistics, the unit cost is probably less dramatic than these charts — but even in a SaaS business you will have costs; customer support, server costs, etc. Ensure you know what your cost of goods sold (COGS) is before you start slicing your prices. Also, all of this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever do discounts; if you have items in your warehouse and a bill coming up, liquidating it and paying your bills makes more sense than going out of business. Perhaps you want to clear out old stock, maybe you want to reward new customers or perhaps you are trying to entice new customers into the fold. It all makes sense — but bear in mind what it means to your bottom line to give a discount. Break out the spreadsheets, do the math and don’t accidentally end up selling your items at a margin where it doesn’t make sense. |
Google wants to bring its Privacy Sandbox to Android | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative for its Chrome browser hasn’t exactly been an unmitigated success, but it has definitely kicked off a healthy discussion about online privacy — and the company’s own role in the advertising ecosystem. Now, with many of the initiatives around Chrome still in flux, Google also plans to many of these tools to its Android operating system — and that will likely have a profound impact on the advertising industry. If you’re in the advertising ecosystem, though, don’t despair just yet. Google says the current system will remain active for “at least” two more years while it tests these new systems. Typically, on Android, advertisers use Google’s advertising ID to serve personalized ads and track your behavior across applications so they can, for example, attribute a purchase you made to an ad you clicked on. Simplified, you can think of the advertising ID as Android’s version of cookies. You can turn this off and opt for non-personalized ads in the Android ads settings by deleting your advertising ID. When you do, Google will then helpfully remind you that ads help keep many services free — which is also an argument Google makes for today’s changes. In a briefing ahead of today’s announcement, Google’s VP of product management for Android security and privacy specifically stressed the importance of advertising (which, of course, also drives the vast majority of Google’s own revenue). “It’s useful to highlight some of the critical capabilities that matter to the ecosystem,” he said. “So tools like [advertising] ID help provide better, more relevant advertising experiences, tackle fraud, and more. And this has helped make possible much of the free content and services that we enjoy today in mobile apps. So it’s vital that we ensure that these capabilities are supported as we build the next generation of mobile technologies.” The elephant in the room here, of course, is Apple, which is using what Google’s team would consider a very blunt instrument since it basically makes tracking impossible. That’s a win for privacy, but Google argues that, in their desperation, advertisers will just come up with new ways to fingerprint your behavior and devices to get that lucrative tracking data. The fact that Meta said it would lose $10 billion in ad revenue in 2022 because of Apple’s changes seems like it would invalidate this argument, though. If Meta can’t find a good way around this, who can? So, like on Chrome, Google is trying to have it both ways: preserve your privacy and preserve the advertising ecosystem. And just to be clear, Google says its own advertising systems will follow the same rules here as third-party advertisers. Some of the proposals here are based on Google’s work with Chrome. They include , the recent replacement for FLoC and FLEDGE, a system that allows advertisers to show ads based on their own definition of a “custom audience” without having to rely on individual identifiers. There would be no modern ad ecosystem without attribution reporting, so Google is also proposing here that promises to still give advertisers the data they need while still improving its users’ privacy. There will also be that isolates third-party advertising code so that it will run separately from the app’s own code. As of now, this looks to be an Android 13-only feature as it requires a different overall SDK architecture that focuses on both these new privacy features but also provides additional security guarantees to any SDK. Google says it wants to work with the advertising industry on this new system. So far, all of its supporting quotes are from app developers, not the wider advertising ecosystem. |
Red Cross says ‘state-sponsored’ hackers exploited unpatched vulnerability | Carly Page | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | The recent cyberattack on the , which compromised the data of more than 515,000 “highly vulnerable” people, was likely the work of state-sponsored hackers. In , the ICRC confirmed that the initial intrusion dates back to November 9, 2021, two months before the attack was disclosed on January 18, adding that its analysis shows that the intrusion was a “highly-sophisticated” targeted attack on its systems — and not an attack on third-party contractor systems as the ICRC first said. The ICRC said it knows that the attack was targeted “because the attackers created code designed solely for execution on the concerned ICRC servers.” According to the update, the malware used by the attacker was designed to target specific servers within the ICRC’s infrastructure. Hackers gained access to the ICRC’s network by exploiting a known but unpatched critical-rated vulnerability in a single sign-on tool developed by Zoho, which makes web-based office services. The was the subject of an advisory from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in September, which was given a CVSS severity score of 9.8 out of 10. By exploiting this flaw, the unnamed state-sponsored hackers then placed web shells and carried out post-exploitation activities, like compromising administrator credentials, moving throughout the network, and exfiltrating registry and domain files, according to the ICRC. “Once inside our network, the hackers were able to deploy offensive security tools which allowed them to disguise themselves as legitimate users or administrators. This in turn allowed them to access the data, despite this data being encrypted,” the ICRC said. The Red Cross added that it has no conclusive evidence that the data stolen in the attack has been published or is being traded, nor was a ransom demand made, but said it’s contacting those whose sensitive information may have been accessed. The ICRC says its anti-malware tools on the targeted servers were active at the time of the attack and blocked some of the malicious files used by the attackers, but that most of the files deployed were “specifically crafted to bypass” its anti-malware protections. These tools, the ICRC notes, are typically used by advanced persistent threat (APT) groups, or state-backed attackers, but the Red Cross said it has not yet formally attributed the attack to any particular organization. A from November 2021 linked exploitation of the same vulnerability to a Chinese state-sponsored group, known as APT27. As a result of the cyberattack, the Red Cross said it’s had to resort to using spreadsheets to carry out its vital work, which includes reuniting family members separated by conflict or disaster. “It is our hope that this attack on vulnerable people’s data serves as a catalyst for change,” Robert Mardini, the director-general of the ICRC, said in a statement. “We will now strengthen our engagement with states and non-state actors to explicitly demand that the protection of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s humanitarian mission extends to our data assets and infrastructure. “We believe it is critical to have a firm consensus — in words and actions — that humanitarian data must never be attacked.” |
Green is the fashion flavor of the week with Rubi Labs’ materials made from captured CO2 | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | When you think of green, climate-aware industries, you’d be forgiven if fashion isn’t at the top of your list. wants to put a dent in that by creating new, environmentally friendlier fabrics. The company does that by capturing waste CO and creating natural textiles, bypassing agriculture and manufacturing. The company claims it is carbon-negative, water-neutral and naturally biodegradable. Not a moment too soon, either — the fashion industry emits more carbon than international flights and shipping combined, representing around 10% of greenhouse gases every year, . While it’s laudable to make the industry greener, I’d argue that the problem may actually be with the fashion industry itself; before it is discarded, it seems like the “ ” mantra of greener living falls short on all three counts, as far as fashion is concerned. Still; people are gonna people, fashion isn’t going to go away in a hurry, and perhaps it’s better if a garment worn twice rots away and fades from memory in a landfill faster rather than slower. Against that backdrop, is flying a green banner over the industry with “carbon-negative cellulosic textiles.” The company, founded by the nieces of the founder at the brand ( ), announced it raised a $4.5 million seed funding round from and , and a fistful of additional institutional investors (the company’s press release lists Climactic, Collaborative Fund, Plug and Play, Incite Ventures, Darco Capital, Cayuse Partners, Axial VC, Climate Capital Collective and CapitalX) and a slew of angel investors (including James Reinhart, CEO and founder of thredUP; Manny Mashouf, CEO and founder of Bebe Stores; Nicolaj Reffstrup, founder of GANNI; Alexander Lorestani, CEO and co-founder of Geltor; and Rei Wang, co-founder of The Grand and former CEO of Dorm Room Fund). On top of that, the funding round also includes a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. “I’ve always been passionate about sustainability and climate. When we founded Rubi, it all just clicked together. Starting when I was 15 years old, I published my first paper on artificial photosynthesis at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,” explains Neeka Mashouf, CEO at Rubi Laboratories. “Since then, I have been really focused on sustainable materials research. I studied materials engineering and business at UC Berkeley, and then dabbled in launching ventures around sustainability.” For Rubi Labs, the duo developed technologies and filed a number of patents. Its first product is a cell-free biocatalytic process that resulted in viscose — also known as Rayon — the textile fiber by the world. It is used as a cheaper and more durable alternative to silk and synthetic velvet. It is typically made by taking wood pulp, dissolving it in chemicals and spinning it into fibers that can be turned into threads. Threads make fabrics, fabrics make clothes, you get the picture. Leila Mashouf in the lab. Rubi Labs “I found myself really wanting to understand the biological systems that evolved to build carbon-based life, and how you could take inspiration across nature and engineer intelligent systems of biology that could solve human problems that evolution itself was not necessarily solving for. I’ve worked in bioengineering research labs since I was around 15, as well, leading projects from ideation and execution and transfer to clinical trials, mostly focused on solving one of the arguably most difficult-to-treat diseases in medicine: brain cancer,” says Leila Mashouf, CTO at Rubi Laboratories. “And that work led me to medical school at Harvard Medical School, where I was exposed to so many different speakers who came in, who talked a lot about climate change and the threat to human health that climate change posed.” To fulfill its goals, Rubi captures CO from the waste streams of manufacturing facilities using its proprietary enzyme system. It is able to capture and convert CO from a gas input at any concentration. “What’s exciting is our technology is actually really flexible on the source of CO . We’ve tested and proven that it can work even on direct air capture, which is very low levels of CO ,” explains Leila Mashouf. She adds that it makes even more sense to capture CO from sources directly related to textile production. “We like to use concentrated sources of CO , like flue gas from a factory, or an industrial source.” Once captured from whatever source is available, CO is then converted into cellulose, which can then be used to create viscose-based yarn. By utilizing enzymes as the catalyst, Rubi claims it is able to turn 100% of CO input into the reactors into an end product, all with zero waste. If at some point the company is able to replace all of the viscose used in the fashion industry, the product is widely used in other industries, too, such as automotive tires, food, packaging and building materials. As mentioned, the company raised $4.5 million, which is largely earmarked to develop the product from the concept and sample-scale to launch commercialization. From an investors’ point of view, Talis saw an enormous opportunity to shake up the textile industry. “When we think about where [Talis Capital] likes to invest, materials was always a big one. In the next decade or so, we really need to rethink everything around us, from chemicals to building materials to packaging. Textiles is one of them, too. I have spent a lot of time in the fashion space, and we are acutely aware of the problem the industry has from a supply chain perspective. What we really liked about Rubi was that if we look at the textile space, there’s cotton as the most-used material, but it’s really hard to remake that with synthetic biology. Then there’s polyester, which is a great material, but it’s a kind of plastic and a fossil fuel-based material,” Cecilia Manduca, associate at Talis Capital explains. “And then finally there’s viscose, which is the third-largest material. It comes from natural base materials but has a lot of production problems. But if you can clean those up, you can have a massive impact in the space. We started to look there, and we liked the look of it from a returns potential and impact perspective. We found Rubi, and we love their CO approach. It fits perfectly.” Rubi’s first textile samples are expected to be available in February 2022. Rubi has validated its technology by creating a successful prototype and claims it has developed test plans with numerous top-tier global retail and fashion brands. Rubi is also in discussions with various multinational energy and manufacturing companies to provide CO to scale up production. For now, the company targets the fashion industry, as its product comes at quite a premium compared to the existing fabrics that are available; but as the technology improves and scale increases, the company is hoping to drive prices down, too. “Our goal is to reach price parity with standard viscose. That really unlocks [our product], because viscose is a really common material both in fast fashion and in higher-scale designer fashion too,” explains Neeka Mashouf. “Being able to be price-competitive with the standard textiles on the market means that the playing field has been leveled.” “Our vision is a world where human prosperity and economic growth is planet positive. And we really see this technology reaching that vision by being a platform technology,” says Neeka Mashouf. “We’re rethinking the way that we produce materials starting with textiles, but also extensible to other things, like building materials, packaging, food and so much more. We can achieve this vision that’s symbiotic with the planet using CO to make critical materials in a way that is water and land-neutral, chemical-neutral, symbiotic with the planet.” |
Microsoft shuts down AltspaceVR’s social hubs to combat harassment | Igor Bonifacic | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | Microsoft is to to combat harassment within the virtual reality app. As of today, the company has removed the Campfire, News and Entertainment Commons social spaces. Those were hubs where AltspaceVR users could freely gather and talk to one another. But that same freedom also meant harassment was an ongoing issue. By default, AltspaceVR’s feature is now turned on for all users. It creates a barrier to prevent other people from entering your avatar’s personal space. Last but not least, Microsoft says the app will automatically mute new attendees when they first join an event. The company has also promised to increase moderation and improve event content ratings to supplement those changes. In the coming weeks, Microsoft said it would require people to use a Microsoft Account to access AltspaceVR. As a result of that requirement, parents will have the option to use the company’s Family Safety feature to limit how much time their kids can spend within the app. “As platforms like AltspaceVR evolve, it is important that we look at existing experiences and evaluate whether they’re adequately serving the needs of customers today and in the future,” said Alex Kipman, the head of Microsoft’s mixed reality division. “This includes helping people better connect with those who have shared common interests while also ensuring the spaces they access are safe from inappropriate behavior and harassment.” The changes come as other VR platforms grapple with their own harassment issues. At the start of February, Meta rolled out a feature called to . Like AltspaceVR’s Safety Bubble, it’s there to prevent people from entering your personal space. More broadly, the changes appear to indicate Microsoft is committed to working on some version of the despite recent reports suggesting the company’s mixed reality division had lost a significant number of . |
Still managing engineers remotely? Okay has a performance dashboard for that | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 2 | 16 | As employers try to manage the loss of workers to “The Great Resignation” and engage employees working from home, co-founder and CEO Antoine Boulanger says the company is seeing its quantitative and empathetic management approach become more in demand as “the distinction between productivity and employee satisfaction is disappearing for knowledge workers.” , we profiled Okay, an engineering visibility tool helping engineering managers lead effective and engaged teams, which was fresh out of Y Combinator with $2.2 million in new funding in its pocket. Boulanger said he and co-founder Tomas Barreto started Okay after meeting at Box. “What we’ve seen in the past couple years is a transition for people, managers and teams on how to manage teams fully remote,” Boulanger added. “There is a notion that people want more visibility and to understand what is happening with the team. We saw at the beginning of the pandemic, when there was an increase in meetings, but as people got used to different things, and now going back into the office, those same transitions are happening again.” Okay’s suite of tools are meant to largely replace tools built in-house and provide a look at the interruptions and inadequate tooling keeping engineers from feeling productive and engaged. The product can be integrated with a company’s existing tools, including software like Google Calendar, GitHub, PagerDuty and CircleCI. In the past year, the company saw both its revenue and customer base grow around 10 times, including customers like Sourcegraph and mParticle, which Boulanger attributes to its approach to engineering productivity that is focused on identifying bottlenecks in the development process instead of measuring output. To build on that momentum, Okay took in another round of capital, this time $4.4 million, led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and executives from Plaid, Brex and Instacart. The new funding will go toward increasing the number of integrations, new features and hiring. Boulanger’s aim is to support bigger companies — its focus is in a market with companies that have hundreds of engineers, but eventually to be able to support companies with thousands of engineers. “We spent three years building the product, which is a complex data product, so we have had our senior team working on this and partnering with customers,” he added. “The idea is to double down on our engineering team, go-to-market efforts and design. One area we are excited about is creating a way for sharing queries, so everyone in the company can share the data.” |
Payhawk becomes a unicorn as it extends its Series B | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | European spend management startup has added $100 million to its Series B round that I already covered back . The startup confirms that it has reached a post-money valuation of $1 billion, as The Information’s Kate Clark . Lightspeed Venture Partners is leading the new $100 million investment. Sprints Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HubSpot Ventures and Jigsaw VC are also participating in the round. All existing investors are putting more money on the table as well. When the company raised the first part of its Series B, it raised $112 million at a $570 million valuation. Today’s news represents a 75% increase in valuation in just three months. If you are familiar with or in the U.S., Payhawk offers a somewhat similar product, but for the European market. It also competes with , , and others. The company wants to replace multiple services in the B2B payment stack with a single, unified platform. In particular, you can use Payhawk to centralize all your payments in a modern interface. When you open a Payhawk account, you get a dedicated IBAN and you can upload money from your existing bank account. After that, you can start using Payhawk cards, track payments more efficiently and use Payhawk’s software stack for all your expenses. When it comes to cards, employees can get virtual and physical Payhawk cards to spend money more easily. The startup lets you set up rules, budgets and an approval workflow. Payhawk customers receive 3% cash back on card payments with a cap at the Payhawk subscription price. Sometimes, it’s not possible to pay with a card. Employees can also enter cash payments and get reimbursed later. Similarly, you can pay for bills with outgoing bank transfers from your Payhawk account. There are several integrations with ERP and accounting systems. This could be useful to reconcile payments and collect invoices from Payhawk directly. The startup currently operates in 30 countries and focuses on large SMEs. It has been growing nicely as the company’s annualized recurring revenue has been doubling every quarter for the past few quarters. Payhawk plans to launch new features, such as Oracle NetSuite integration, subscription management and budgets. It has offices in London, Sofia, Berlin and Barcelona. Up next, the company plans to open offices in Amsterdam, Paris and New York. Originally from Bulgaria, Payhawk is also the first-ever Bulgarian unicorn. |
Singapore-based Volopay accelerates APAC and MENA expansion with $29M Series A | Kate Park | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Volopay has already seen its total payment value increase 98% monthly and its revenue jump 41% since its seed funding round, It’s promising growth like this that usually attracts new investors or solidifies support from previous investors. |
Benchmark’s Sarah Tavel on the ‘bifurcation’ coming to the world of web3 | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | One of just five general partners at the storied early-stage venture firm Benchmark, Sarah Tavel may be leaning the most into crypto, but that hardly means she’s actively writing related checks. On the contrary, Tavel has led one of the only crypto-related bets that Benchmark has made in recent years, making an in the blockchain analysis outfit Chainalysis after it helped crack the famous Mt. Gox case. The only other web3-type investment that Benchmark has announced in recent years is Sorare, a Paris-based outfit whose fantasy soccer game using non-fungible tokens (NFTs) attracted a whopping in funding last year across two rounds, the first of them . (Tavel says Benchmark has also made a yet-unannounced investment in a startup in the “gaming space with some crypto or web3 flair.”) It’s not for lack of interest, says Tavel, who says she has long been fascinated with the idea of blockchain-based smart contracts, used to hold “white paper reading parties” and credits Katie Haun, the federal prosecutor-turned-investor, for pointing her to Chainalysis. (Years ago, Haun mentioned to Tavel that she used the company’s technology in her government role; Tavel promptly cold-emailed the company’s founder, Michael Gronager.) While Benchmark’s pacing seems aggressively slow compared with other top-tier firms, some of which have in order to shift their into overdrive, Benchmark, says Tavel, prefers its age-old practice of making concentrated bets in all areas, with each general partner leading just one to two new deals each year. Tavel might even argue that Benchmark’s deliberate approach gives the team more time to ruminate on the changing landscape. She obviously thinks about it quite a bit, as we learned during a conversation with her last week about crypto, web3 and so-called decentralized autonomous organization or DAOs. (We trotted out all the buzzwords.) Here’s part of that chat, edited for length. ST: Going back to Bitcoin, it was kind of oppositional against centralized entities [like] big banks that were being bailed out [during the financial crisis of 2008]. Now, so much of the conversation you hear on Twitter is people shaking their fist at our centralized overlords at Facebook. [At some point] the idea of decentralization was completely intertwined with the idea of creating value for users, which led to the crypto ecosystem that we have today, where you have this incredible breadth and diversity of Layer 1 solutions like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, atop which protocols are built. And the whole point of this crypto infrastructure is to be decentralized because of all the [attendant] benefits. But that’s different than what I think of as web3. To me, when people talk about web3, they almost use the word [as a synonym for] crypto, but it’s not. To me, they’re very distinct. You have crypto, and that [involves this focus on] decentralized infrastructure and the financial incentives, the tokens, the tokenomics that you need in order to coordinate all the decentralized entities and people behind them. But decentralization isn’t the end in itself anymore. To me, decentralization is like a new palette for builders to build new consumer experiences, where the decentralized infrastructure is now a means to the end. You’re building value for a consumer, but that doesn’t mean that you want to go as decentralized as possible in order to do that. If you look around at the consumer names that get mentioned — Sorare, Axie Infinity, OpenSea — these are actually centralized companies that are built on a decentralized infrastructure to take advantage of this decentralized infrastructure as a means to creating more value. It’s like when the iPhone came out — this of my hypothesis for the future is that we’re going to start to see more and more of a bifurcation of web3 from crypto, with web3 being a revolution of web 2.0, not just an evolution of crypto. Like so much in crypto, it’s one of these concepts that is expansive in its potential — and provocative in that potential. But I think the use cases for which a DAO makes the most sense should start a little bit more narrow than where people are using them [sometimes right now]. Back to the idea of bifurcation, with crypto companies, you have companies that are decentralized already and almost as a regulatory imperative, have to continue down the path of decentralization. A DAO is a further manifestation of that decentralized ethos, and there’s no question that there’s tremendous value [behind the idea] of these organizations that are economically aligned. The Constitution DAO, even though it wasn’t successful in what it wanted to achieve, was a pretty good use case for a DAO where you had a very specific goal in mind, which in this case was to purchase something offline. These are a great way of aggregating on-chain funds and making decisions collectively… [At the same time], if you’ve put everything through a process in your DAO, it’s going to take a long time to build the things that you need to build. The value of a centralized entity is that it lets you move really quickly and make difficult decisions and build the kind of the consumer products that are pretty unique and hard to build. There’s a lot of noise right now. There’s a lot of incredible progress being made by the people working on these various blockchains. I think we’re in absolutely kind of a skeuomorphic phase in NFTs [rooted to this idea] of digital scarcity. That’s why you see things like these collectibles. I [understand it]; [while initially skeptical], I remember thinking at some point that I didn’t just want a of a CryptoPunk, I wanted to actually own it; there was an emotional connection with that idea. But the current generation of NFTs that are primarily these collectibles or profile photos — it’s a bit much. There’s certainly an exuberance around it that I think will die down. And I look forward to that because these digital tokens can have so many attributes to them. There are a couple of different classes of NFTs that we’re already starting to see. One is gaming, where you can create or earn in a game. Also, beyond the idea of an NFT within a closed ecosystem, with decentralized infrastructures, you’re going to start to have the opportunity to really see the things you’ve earned and have your own wallet and trade those things or sell them on [the NFT marketplace] OpenSea. The second thing you see are companies like [NFT music right startup] Royal that are innovating around what’s possible with NFTs. For example, does an NFT give you access to future cash flow for a song? Does it give you access to the artists? Does it give you access to a community? There are so many more things that we’re going to start to see emerge. First, I’m so excited for Katie. Look, I think it goes back to the bifurcation that I articulated. The first generation of investing in the space was in these protocols and these blockchains. And it’s a specialized domain. Investing in protocols and and DeFi is very much a specialized domain. I also think that investing in consumer-facing products and founders is its own specialty. And it’s useful to understand the underlying infrastructure and understand how people in the network are being incentivized and motivated and the pluses and minuses of the various options that consumer builders have to work through to figure out. But at the end of the day, I think the experience of a firm that has built enduring consumer companies is its own specialized discipline that’s going to be more and more relevant in this new web3 world. It’s why though I’m focused on web3, I’m confess that I’m not focused on crypto at the protocol level. Part of the reason why people have to launch crypto-focused funds is that when they are investing in the protocol level and buying tokens, my understanding is that those are technically a passive investment, so that’s why you have to register [as registered investment advisor]. With a traditional venture fund, there’s a certain percentage of your fund that you’re allowed to have in those types of passive investments and once you cross that threshold, you have to register. Our model at Benchmark is that we view the work that we do with companies to be our product, so we orient toward the types of companies that have to build organizations and hire people and create experiences. That’s a bridge that, if we end up having to cross, we will cross it. There’s no religion against it. But it’s not clear to me that it’s a bridge we’ll have to cross. |
NASA extends SpaceX’s Commercial Crew contract by three missions for $900 million | Stefanie Waldek | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | NASA announced today that it has officially awarded SpaceX the Crew-7, Crew-8 and Crew-9 missions to the International Space Station, bringing SpaceX’s total Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract to $3.49 billion. The original $2.6 billion contract was issued to SpaceX in 2014 for the development of American crewed launch capabilities, which had ended in 2011 with the retirement of the Space Shuttle. The private spaceflight company has delivered, successfully launching three operational missions, Crew-1 through Crew-3 (plus one crewed test flight), to the ISS via its Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket since 2020. Prior to the modification, SpaceX was contracted to fly three more missions to the ISS: Crew-4 and Crew-5 in 2022 and Crew-6 in 2023. The extension is “fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity,” per . SpaceX’s period of performance now runs through March 31, 2028 — a nice regular paycheck for the growing launch and space operations company. “It’s critical we begin to secure additional flights to the space station now so we are ready as these missions are needed to maintain a U.S. presence on station,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, said in the agency’s to modify SpaceX’s contract, published in December 2021. “Our U.S. human launch capability is essential to our continued safe operations in orbit and to building our low-Earth orbit economy.” In that notice, NASA acknowledged that SpaceX is the only American company currently certified to transport crew to the ISS. Boeing also received a six-mission CCtCap contract from NASA in 2014, with a total value of $4.2 billion, but its Starliner spacecraft is still in its uncrewed testing phase. Its next test flight is currently scheduled for May 2022, when it will launch atop an Atlas V rocket to rendezvous with the ISS. Eventually, NASA intends for the SpaceX and Boeing Commercial Crew programs to work in tandem to fly astronauts to the ISS. Between the retirement of the Space Shuttle and SpaceX’s Commercial Crew Program certification, NASA solely relied on Russian space agency Roscosmos for transportation to the station. According to a by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), NASA paid an average of $55.4 million per seat on Roscosmos’ Soyuz launch system between 2006 and 2020. By the end of that period, NASA was paying the Russian agency a reported $86 million per seat. The same OIG report estimated SpaceX’s average cost per seat to be $55 million and Boeing’s $90 million. |
Waymo to begin charging for robotaxi rides in San Francisco | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet, has scored a permit with the California Public Utilities Commission that allows it to charge riders for ride-hailing trips in its autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. A human safety operator must be present, though, per the permit’s stipulations. Securing this permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is one of the company’s final steps on the road to commercializing AVs in San Francisco. Last September, the California Department of Motor Vehicles , which allowed the company to receive compensation for services provided by an AV. The permit did not allow Waymo to charge specifically for robotaxi services, but the company was able to earn revenue from autonomous delivery. In November, Waymo partnered with supermarket chain Albertsons to deliver groceries to select customers in San Francisco. Since August last year, Waymo has been to members of its Trusted Tester program, a vetted group of individuals that help the company learn about its service by offering detailed feedback on their riding experience. They also sign a nondisclosure agreement to be a part of the program, the waitlist of which is tens of thousands strong, says Waymo. In the next couple of weeks, Waymo will advance the program to offer paid rides anywhere within Waymo’s SF service area 24/7. “We take a step-by-step approach on the path to rolling out our fully autonomous experience to the public,” Nick Smith, a Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch. “That’s the approach we took in Arizona — deeply rooted in our focus on safety — and it’s the approach we’ll take in any of the cities we operate in going forward. We start with an autonomous specialist behind the wheel operating in autonomous mode, and open the rides to a select group of Trusted Testers for free, before we begin charging. Eventually we move to launching in rider-only mode (without anyone else in the car). This path helps us to gain learnings about operating our service and worked well for us in Arizona, where we’ve completed tens of thousands of trips in rider only mode for thousands of riders.” The company would not share how many of its autonomous Jaguar I-PACEs it has in its fleet, but the latest CPUC quarterly found Waymo had around 100 vehicles available for trips by a rider at some point during the reporting period. Waymo One, the company’s ride-hailing service, is already available in Phoenix, Arizona as a driverless service, and should give an indication of how much the service might cost. A recent report found a five-mile ride that took 14 minutes ended up costing around $1 per minute. The average Uber ride is about . “Pricing will be reasonable and competitive with other services in San Francisco, but we don’t have any specifics to share at this time,” said Smith. Once Waymo makes the full transition to paid rides, it will stop offering free rides to Trusted Testers in San Francisco, said Smith. Waymo’s biggest competitor in the city, Cruise, was granted a driverless deployment permit by the California DMV on the same day that Waymo was granted a drivered permit, and has been since early February. Cruise is still awaiting a CPUC permit to charge for those rides. Waymo declined to comment on whether or not it had applied with the DMV for a driverless permit. |
Daily Crunch: Asian and Hispanic e-grocer Weee! bags $425 million Series E | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, February 28, 2022. Today we are bringing exclamation points back. Because it’s Monday, we need the boost, and a startup whose name includes a “!” just raised north of $400 million in a single round. 2022! It’s a whole thing. – Speaking of huge venture rounds at high prices, OneCard . Our piece, by our ace India reporter Manish Singh, also notes that the new round comes just a month after FPL Technologies, the company behind OneCard, last announced new capital. Catching you up, OneCard is a consumer credit card startup in India that also provides credit scoring services. Moving along, . Data from the well-known startup accelerator indicates that one in six, or about 16% of the companies it has incubated that are now worth $150 million or more – some 267 now – are headquartered outside of the United States. I’m not surprised at the ratio, and the rising tally of international companies that it implies. My question is how quickly the portion of high-value Y Combinator-backed startups moves towards being majority international. Index Ventures / DeepScribe While raising a Series A for AI-powered medical transcription platform DeepScribe, CEO and co-founder Akilesh Bapu set clear timelines for the investors he approached. Index Ventures partner Nina Achadjian received Bapu’s pitch deck while she was still on vacation, but the founder wouldn’t let her schedule a meeting for the following week. As it turned out, Bapu’s instincts served him well. “When I walked out of the meeting, I went immediately to one of my partners, and was like, ‘Finally, I found the company that is following the right approach,” said Achadjian. SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
This imaging sensor sees right through you with terahertz waves | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | You may not be able to see ’em with your eyes, but in the space between infrared light and microwaves is an invisible stretch of the electromagnetic spectrum where neither electronics nor optical devices can manipulate energy. The cool thing about terahertz waves, though, is that they’re a lot like X-rays: You can use ’em to see through certain solid materials, but without the “oh dear, now I’m dead” side-effect of high doses of X-ray radiation. Researchers from the , led by Associate Professor Ruonan Han, are trying to tap into this space. Fresh off the lab bench at MIT is an electronically steerable terahertz antenna array, which operates like a controllable mirror. The upshot is that by using this deck-of-cards sized slice of technology, the researchers are nudging open the door. The tech may enable higher-speed communications and vision systems that can see through foggy or dusty environments. The researchers are calling it a , and explain that it operates like a controllable mirror with its direction of reflection guided by a computer. The reflectarray packs nearly 10,000 antennas onto a small device that is able to precisely focus a beam of terahertz energy on a tiny area. It can control it precisely and quickly with no moving parts. The images the device generates are comparable to lidar devices, but is able to penetrate rain, fog and snow. The researchers claim that this is the first solution that could create military-grade resolution for commercial devices of this type. “Antenna arrays are very interesting because, just by changing the time delays that are fed to each antenna, you can change what direction the energy is being focused, and it is completely electronic,” says Nathan Monroe, who recently completed his PhD in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). “So, it stands as an alternative to those big radar dishes at the airport that move around with motors. We can do the same thing, but we don’t need any moving parts because we are just changing some bits in a computer.” When used as an imager, the one-degree-wide beam moves in a zigzag pattern over each point in the scene in front of the sensor, creating three-dimensional depth images. Unlike other terahertz arrays, which can take hours or even days to create an image, theirs works in real time. Traditionally, computing and communicating enough bits to control 10,000 antennas at once would dramatically slow the reflectarray’s performance. The researchers avoided this by integrating the antenna array directly onto computer chips. The phase shifters are very simple — just two transistors — which means they were able to reserve about 99% of the space on the chip, which they use for memory. The upshot is that each individual antenna can store a library of different phases. The two-transistor phase shifter has an additional benefit; halving the power consumption of the solution, and eliminating the need for a separate power supply. “Before this research, people really did not combine terahertz technologies and semiconductor chip technologies to do this beam forming,” Han says. “We saw this opportunity and, also with some unique circuit techniques, came up with some very compact but also efficient circuits on the chip so we can effectively control the behavior of the wave at these locations. By leveraging the integrated circuit technology, now we can enable some in-element memory and digital behaviors, which is definitely something that didn’t exist in the past.” “Because this reflectarray works quickly and is so compact, it could be useful as an imager for a self-driving car, especially since terahertz waves can see through bad weather,” Monroe says. Monroe and his team are working to licence the technology to bring it to market through a startup, suggesting that the device could be well-suited for autonomous drones because it is lightweight and has no moving parts. In addition, the technology could be applied in security settings, enabling a non-intrusive body scanner that could work in seconds instead of minutes. Below, a video demonstrating how the system works |
Rocket Lab’s Neutron will be built, launched and landed at Wallops Island, Virginia | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Rocket Lab has the latest expansion of its growing empire of rocket building and launching facilities. While its existing pads in New Zealand and the U.S. will continue to field the company’s smaller Electron rockets, a fresh facility will be built in Virginia to house and eventually launch The new Neutron Production Complex will be located right inside NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, on a 28-acre plot hosting approximately 250,000 square feet of interior space. It’s a lot of space, but of course rockets are big, and Rocket Lab plans to make quite a lot of them. Not only will the vehicle assembly take place there, but the specialized carbon composites that make it up will be manufactured on-site. Rolls of the stuff will be available fresh from the composites equivalent of a warm oven, ready to wrap around Neutron’s 23-foot girth. “The intent here is the entire launch vehicle will be manufactured in that facility,” said Rocket Lab CEO and founder Peter Beck on a media briefing call Monday. “The stage diameter is really quite large — we made that decision really early. We didn’t want to define the diameter by the largest bridge between Wallops and California.” Beck spoke to the advantages of this large diameter back in December when the Neutron’s specs were first publicly revealed. As a launch vehicle designed from the ground up for reusability, Neutrons will also return to Wallops after delivering their payloads and be refurbished in the same facility where they were born. It’s an all-in-one complex, including a launch and orbit ops center, that should offer hundreds of jobs for the area and further cement Wallops’s longstanding importance in the space industry. The state has earmarked some $45 million in funds to expand and improve the Wallops NASA facility, though the money is still working its way through the capitol, said Ted Mercer, head of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (and USAF Major General, retired) on the call. “Assuming that is done and blessed by the legislature, and we have no reason to believe it will not be, $15 million will go into construction for the facility, and the 30 million will be geared toward the construction of the new launch pad,” Mercer said, noting that the pad would be multi-purpose, not a Neutron exclusive. Beck added that “We’re hoping to break ground here extremely shortly,” as naturally the sooner they can build one, the sooner they can test it. |
Test automation platform Tricentis acquires Tx3 Services | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | , a enterprise-centric test automation platform, is on a bit of an acquisition spree these days. Last year, it performance testing service Neotys. Earlier this month, the company announced that it had UI-testing startup Testim and the company has now announced that it has also picked up . Unlike some other testing services, Tx3 focuses on a single vertical: healthcare and life science companies. It provides them with a solution that’s specifically tailored to their and audit requirements. The company offers a DevOps platform that allows life sciences companies to comply with the FDA’s , for example. Unsurprisingly, the company plans to use Tx3’s specialized capabilities to strengthen its position in the life sciences industry. It already its services to these companies, in part through an with — you guessed it — Tx3. “Tricentis is already helping thousands of organizations produce high-quality software more quickly and efficiently,” said Kevin Thompson, chairman and CEO of Tricentis. “And by combining our robust portfolio of software testing products with Tx3’s specialized digital validation platform, Tricentis will provide an incredibly comprehensive and powerful solution specifically for life sciences and healthcare organizations looking to advance their digital transformation journey.” Only a few days ago, Tricentis also a new set of solutions to help its customers through their digital transformation projects and to adopt cloud-based testing. The company also recently appointed Amanda Borichevsky as its chief legal officer. She previously held the roles of associate general counsel at SolarWinds (before the became public) and, most recently, as general counsel at Thrive Pet Healthcare. The company also recently hired Darren Beck (also previously of SolarWinds) as its new chief marketing officer. |
Lucid rolls back production goals even as demand for luxury EV rises | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Earnings season rolled along today with notes from Lucid Motors’ fourth-quarter results. The company, like other electric vehicle (EV) companies, is nascent in revenue terms, albeit further along than some. The company publicly debuted as a in July last year after merging with Churchill Capital IV. The company’s value has had a turbulent day. Lucid’s stock rose nearly 10% during regular trading, adding $2.63 to its per-share value. However, after the company reported its results, its shares fell, erasing 10.8% of its value, or around $3.14 per share. In aggregate, Lucid is net down a fraction today as of the time of writing. Why? Revenue came in under expectations. But as with all companies like Lucid that have been busy building in anticipation of future sales, there’s more to the story. To get a proper grip on Lucid’s Q4, and full-year 2021, results we’ll start with a look at its non-earnings results, including customer reservations and the like. Then, we’ll explore its financial results in detail. for the Lucid Air, the company’s luxury sedan that boasts a long range and the largest “frunk” on the market, customer reservations topped 25,000 as of Monday, reflecting potential sales of more than $2.4 billion. The first deliveries for the Lucid Air, which , began in November. Only 125 Airs were delivered in the fourth quarter, but to date, there have been a total of 300 — a sign that Lucid might be ramping up production and delivery. The EV company noted that production currently exceeds 400 vehicles and that 2022 should see a range of 12,000 to 14,000 Lucid Air vehicles being produced, which is down from the 20,000 units Lucid had promised during its . The company blames supply chain issues for the setback, and expects those issues to lessen in the second half of the year. Lucid Air production will be powered by Lucid’s manufacturing facilities in Casa Grande, Arizona, where the company’s 2.85 million-square-foot expansion is on track, bringing production capacity from its current 34,000 Lucid Airs per year to 90,000 units, says the company. Lucid is also building a that it expects to finish by 2025. The company estimates the Saudi plant could bring in up to $3.4 billion in revenue over the next 15 years. For its part, working with Lucid helps Saudi Arabia’s goal of transforming and diversifying its economy by developing sustainable energy and transportation. But the relationship between Lucid Motors and Saudi Arabia goes further back than this recent agreement. Lucid was founded in 2007 as Atieva, a company that was more interested in supplying the budding EV market rather than manufacturing cars itself. It pivoted to the mission and brand of Lucid Motors in 2016, but had trouble raising funds. The company almost died before being saved by the Saudi Sovereign fund’s $1.3 billion investment in 2018. Lucid has also gone back on the timing for its Gravity project, its luxury SUV that will also be manufactured in Saudi Arabia. In Q3 2021, Lucid set it was on track to begin production and first deliveries in 2023, but on Monday, the company said it expects production to begin in the first half of 2024. “ The company is exploring additional manufacturing sites in China and possibly Europe, said CFO Sherry House during the Q4 2021 earnings call on Monday. Lucid generated Q4 2021 revenues of $26.4 million. The company sold $21.3 million worth of its Lucid Air Dream Edition vehicles during the period, which its earnings notes helpfully explain has up to 1,111 horsepower, depending on trim selection and other options. The lamest, weakest, slowest, most-pokey car from the company has to glide along with a mere 800 horsepower, we hasten to add. Regardless, delivering 125 cars after building a total of 400 to date may seem minute, but for an EV company, reaching production ramp is a material milestone. The deliveries were not enough to push Lucid close to breaking even. Indeed, the company remains nearly comedically unprofitable. Revenue costs came to $151.5 million for the fourth quarter, research costs were $163.6 million and SG&A costs came to a staggering $197.0 million. All told, Lucid posted an operating loss of $485.7 million in Q4 2021. Or, in the quarter, for every car Lucid delivered in the final three months of 2021, it lost $3.9 million in operating terms. Investors expected Lucid to report revenues of $36.74 million in the fourth quarter, . The company’s GAAP earnings per share losses of $0.64 failed to excite the investing public. In full-year terms, the pace of Lucid’s investment in scale and R&D is even more obvious. In the calendar year, against revenue of $27.1 million, Lucid posted an operating loss of $1.53 billion, and a GAAP net loss of $4.75 billion. You might look at a company with $2.58 billion in negative operating cash flow for a year and say, hey, that’s a lot. But Lucid closed out 2021 with cash and equivalents worth $6.26 billion, so it remains utterly stuffed-full of cash. The company can self fund for some time, even if it fails to cover more of its expenses with gross profit in time. Lucid does carry around $2 billion in long-term debt, it’s worth stating at this juncture. Looking ahead, investors expect the company’s revenue to scale to $2.01 billion in the current year, . Is that number possible? Well, with 125 cars delivered in Q4 2021 and $21.3 million worth of revenue from those sales, Lucid had an ASP of $170,000 in the quarter. If it manages to build 13,000 cars, the mid-point of its guidance, sells them all and holds to its Q4 ASP, then the company would see $2.22 billion in 2022 revenues. That’s the bull case. Bears might note that the company’s ASP should decline with scale, and that the company won’t sell every car is builds this year, but, hey, a battery that is charged to the midpoint is half-full, right, not half-empty? |
Max Q: International space collaboration under threat | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | This week, the biggest story in the space industry is understandably the biggest story in world events overall: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Of course, the most immediate and devastating impact of Russia’s actions are those felt by the people on the ground in the besieged country, but already there are signs that this could forever change how the international space community operates, and in particular it’ll test the long-standing collaborative relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Via a series of tweets the head of Russia’s space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, was quick to respond to sanctions imposed by the U.S., noting that the joint stewardship of the International Space Station could be at risk as a result. Rogozin went so far as to imply that without Russian support, the orbiting station could theoretically fall on the U.S., Europe, China or India (its path doesn’t place it over Russia at any point). Non-military space cooperation between the two countries isn’t affected by the sanctions currently imposed by the U.S., but Rogozin and by extension Roscosmos apparently don’t see the measures as fully unentangled from agency collaboration. NASA One immediate impact of the ongoing Russian aggression toward the Ukraine is that it’s no longer going to be launching rockets from the European Space Agency’s spaceport in French Guiana. Roscosmos is saying this is their decision in response to sanctions against Russia, and that it will be immediately withdrawing all on-site staff that support its Soyuz launches. There were a number of international payloads on the docket to launch via Soyuz rockets over the course of the next few months, with the earliest in April. At a minimum, those will likely have to find new rides, unless the decision is somehow reversed. Arianespace could fill in the gaps with its own launch vehicles, so it’s unclear if Russian rockets would ever launch from the ESA facility again even if tensions were to de-escalate. KOUROU, FRENCH GUIANA DECEMBER 16, 2019: A mobile service tower for a Soyuz-ST rocket booster at the Guiana Space Centre. The rocket carrying CHEOPS telescope (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite) of the European Space Agency, a COSMO-SkyMed satellite, an EyeSat satellite, and two small satellites to be launched on December 17, 2019, 11:54 Moscow time. Soyuz rockets are launched from the Guiana Space Centre as part of a collaborative programme between Roscomos and the European Space Agency. Sergei Savostyanov/TASS (Photo by Sergei SavostyanovTASS via Getty Images) NASA’s decision to enlist the aid of private companies to provide astronaut transportation services to and from the ISS now looks more prescient than ever. Elon Musk to Rogozin’s thinly veiled threats about the ISS mentioned above, suggesting SpaceX could step in and play an even greater role in the ongoing operation of the station should Russia exit the picture. NASA could theoretically get even more help once Boeing’s commercial astronaut flight services get up and running, though those have been met with significant delays late in the program. SpaceX |
EU confirms ban on Kremlin-backed media is expected to cover online platforms | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | The EU’s ban on Kremlin-backed media outlets, Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik (plus any subsidiaries), is expected to cover online platforms and apps as well as traditional broadcast channels, TechCrunch has confirmed. The “unprecedented” sanction was announced yesterday as the bloc dialled up its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A spokesman for Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, told us the ban is “expected to cover all means of distribution or transmission, including internet video sharing platforms and applications”. He also confirmed that the EU’s executive intends to use a sanction legal instrument for the RT ban, rather than trying to amend the existing Audiovisual Media Services Directive — likely so it can move faster. A separate Commission source suggested the ban could even be in place within a matter of days. In parallel with the bloc’s move to sanction the two Kremlin mouthpieces, a number of tech platforms have today announced fresh restrictions on Russian state-backed media. Twitter said it would reduce the visibility of Russian state media-linked outlets on its platform and label tweets that contain links to them, as we — expanding its prior policy of labelling the media outlets themselves. The social media platform said the changes would be deployed immediately — and trailed more to come, suggesting it would add similar labels for other “state-affiliated media accounts” in the next few weeks. Also today Facebook’s parent, Meta, promoted fresh measures. Policy president, Nick Clegg, said it will be “restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time”. Although it was not immediately clear whether or not the company is fully banning the Russian state media firms or just geoblocking access to them. We’ve asked Meta for more details. We have received requests from a number of Governments and the EU to take further steps in relation to Russian state controlled media. Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time. — Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) Microsoft has also announced fresh measures to tackle Russia disinformation in the last few hours. Writing in a the company said: “We are moving swiftly to take new steps to reduce the exposure of Russian state propaganda, as well to ensure our own platforms do not inadvertently fund these operations. “In accordance with the , the Microsoft Start platform (including MSN.com) will not display any state-sponsored RT and Sputnik content. We are removing RT news apps from our Windows app store and further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages. Finally, we are banning all advertisements from RT and Sputnik across our ad network and will not place any ads from our ad network on these sites.” also just reported that TikTok will geoblock RT and Sputnik throughout the EU. New: TikTok spokesperson confirms to NPR that media accounts backed by the Russian government, including RT and Sputnik, are now geo-blocked throughout the EU following the European Commission's action against state-backed media channels. — Bobby Allyn (@BobbyAllyn) European governments have been pressing for US tech platforms to take tougher action on Kremlin-affiliated media outlets throughout the day as Russia’s armed forces have continued their aggression in Ukraine — conducting a brutal bombardment of the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, which destroyed residential buildings and left scores of civilians dead. Earlier today, reported on a letter from the leaders of three Baltic states and Poland pressing platforms to do more to snuff out what they dubbed Russia’s “massive disinformation campaign”. France’s digital minister also earlier today about a meeting with social network firms and search engines — “to discuss operationalizing the fight against Russian propaganda online” and to talk about the EU’s new sanctions against Kremlin-backed media. Meeting with social networks and search engines to discuss operationalizing the fight against Russian propaganda online, and the sanctions announced last night by against Russia-funded media and . — Cédric O (@cedric_o) Breton himself also personally pushed the CEOs of Google and YouTube to take tougher action against “Russian war propaganda” in a video call, as we . The EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, the bloc’s incoming ban on Kremlin-backed media outlets yesterday as part of a package of fresh sanctions targeting Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. “The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to saw division in our Union,” she said, trailing what she billed as an “unprecedented” move. The pace of the EU’s action on this front may look surprising but the bloc has spent years establishing channels of communication with mainstream tech platforms specifically for tackling online disinformation — via a voluntary Code of Practice which a number of major platforms have been signed up to . While that Code is not legally binding the mechanism generates an expectation of action, as well as establishing fast track channels for the Commission to reach and be heard by mainstream (US) tech platforms. It has previously used these channels to press for more to be done in relation to the coronavirus ‘infodemic’, as it dubbed the wave of disinformation targeting COVID-19 crisis in . War is clearly another pressing cause. “A continuous coordination is also taking place at technical level with representative of the platforms,” an EU spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Platforms agreed to keep adapting and updating platforms’ policies in light of the current situation. “Regarding the next steps, we are exploring various options to best coordinate with platforms. Intense work and coordination is taking place.” The total ban on the Russian media mouthpieces’ content distribution channels (including all things digital) is a huge step for the EU to take. The bloc’s lawmakers are typically extremely wary about measures that might risk accusations of speech policing. However Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed the context of its propaganda — recasting trolling media outlets as no longer just something that’s perennially chaffing at the margins of democratic Europe but an inexorable part of Putin’s “war propaganda” machine as his armed force attack a sovereign nation. Von der Leyen’s remarks yesterday were also noteworthy — as she said the bloc is “developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe” — hinting at yet more action to come. It remains to be seen exactly what the Commission is intending to expand its approach to cutting off the Kremlin’s “toxic media machine” beyond the incoming ban on RT and Sputnik — but further online content restrictions are unlikely to escape controversy. The reference to “developing tools” suggests the EU could be hoping to lean on tech platforms to proactively chase down Russian propaganda that’s being spread via non-official outlets — perhaps by applying AI or other filtering technologies. Although there are legal prohibitions in EU law that prevent general monitoring mandates being applied to digital platforms. |
China’s social media giants remove ‘inappropriate’ Ukraine content | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | China of refusing to call Russia’s military actions in Ukraine an “invasion” or condemn Moscow, but its people are taking to social media to express their feelings about the war. Over the past few days, Ukraine-related topics have become some of the top trending hashtags on Weibo, the bellwether for public discussion on the country’s internet. In the meantime, Chinese social media giants have started to clamp down on “inappropriate” and “misleading” information related to Ukraine in the days after Russia’s attack on the country. Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, had removed more than 4,000 posts deemed to have “provoked war, made fun of the war, or spread vulgar content,” the company said in an over the weekend. Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, removed that included “vulgarity, content that trivialized the war, incendiary information, and unfriendly comments.” Scores of posts surfaced on Weibo calling on “Ukraine’s beautiful women” to go to China. Some users fabricated false information claiming that enlisting to fight in Ukraine could help one “earn course credit,” according to a from WeChat. On Douyin, hundreds of click-bait posts misleadingly told users that typing in “Ukraine” would generate “explosive effects” on the short-video app. Other users have resisted such trivializing content, calling for more empathy for the war in Ukraine. “Peace doesn’t come easy. We need to respect and value life,” WeChat said in its statement. “We are calling on all online users to keep an objective and rational attitude toward hot-button global issues, be reasonable when participating in discussions, and together preserve a clean and bright cyber environment.” |
Shark Tank India host Ashneer Grover resigns from BharatPe board amid turmoil at Indian fintech | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Ashneer Grover, a founder and the public face of BharatPe, has resigned from the board and left the managing director position he held at the Tiger Global-backed Indian fintech startup following the ongoing turmoil at the firm as it undertakes what it says is an an all-encompassing review of business practices and fraud allegations. In a scathing email to the board Tuesday midnight, Grover said he was leaving the firm “effective immediately” following what he described as “baseless and targeted attacks” on him and his family and a “battle of egos” among BharatPe’s other co-founders, investors and board members “under the charade of ‘good governance.'” The move is the latest in a series of strange events at the fintech startup, which was and counts Sequoia Capital India, Insight Partners and Ribbit Capital among its backers. The three-year-old startup, which helps millions of merchants accept money online and provides them with loan, is one of the fastest growing firms in the country. The 39-year-old Grover, a “shark” in the Indian version of Shark Tank, said in late January that he was going on after an alleged audio clip surfaced on Twitter of a man hurling abusive and life threatening statements over a phone call to a Kotak Bank representative over not getting financing to buy shares in fashion e-commerce Nykaa’s IPO. The clip created enough pressure on the startup’s board that it announced an investigation into, among other things, financial irregularities charges levelled against Grover and his wife, Madhuri, who served as the startup’s head of controls. Grover — who rubbished the audio clip in a tweet, which he has since deleted — last month asked the board Suhail Sameer from the board and called him a “puppet of the investors.” A preliminary investigation by Alvarez and Marsal (A&M) commissioned by BharatPe’s board found fraudulent transactions, including payments to non-existent vendors as well as irregularities of invoices being produced to substantiate spends, Indian newspaper Economic Times reported last month. A BharatPe spokesperson said Tuesday that Grover resigned “minutes after receiving the agenda for upcoming board meeting that included submission of the PWC report regarding his conduct and considering actions based on it.” “The Board reserves the right to take action based on the report’s findings,” the BharatPe spokesperson added. Last week, the board terminated the position of Madhuri Grover, following which she tweeted damaging information about the startup’s other co-founders and questioned the integrity of Rajnish Kumar, a board member of BharatPe and who previously served as the chairman of the State Bank of India. “The fundamental fact is that all of you as investors are so far removed from reality that you’ve forgotten what real businesses look like and have no appreciation for what it took to run this enterprise day in and day out,” wrote Ashneer in the Tuesday email, a copy of which was seen by TechCrunch. “None of you, including the ones based in India, have ever been to our office even once, since the pandemic turned our lives upside down and sought to suffocate the economy. […] This is how connected you are to BharatPe. Your views of businesses and problems on the ground are so colored by the windows of the Ivory Tower in which you all reside that you have no connect whatsoever with the human element of the business.” “It is sad that you have even lost touch with the founder. […] For you, the founder of this company has been reduced to a button to be pressed when needed. I cease to be a human for you. Today, you have chosen to believe gossip and rumors about me instead of having a frank conversation. You are easily spooked because you have no touch with reality.” Grover is the largest individual shareholder of BharatPe. He has previously offered to sell his entire stake in the firm. |
Instagram is shutting down its standalone IGTV app | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Instagram is ending support for its standalone app for IGTV, the company on Monday. Meta, Instagram’s parent company, confirmed to TechCrunch that the app will be removed from app stores in mid-March. In a , the company explained that the change is part of its efforts to make video as simple as possible to discover and create. Instagram says it will now focus on having all video on its main app and that it will continue to simplify and improve video in the main Instagram app over the coming months. Today’s announcement comes as Instagram last October when it combined IGTV’s long-form video and Instagram feed videos into a new format called simply “Instagram Video.” At the time, Instagram had said the IGTV app wouldn’t be going away and would instead be rebranded. The company also announced today that in-stream video ads, previously known as IGTV ads, will no longer be supported as it shifts its focus to Reels. Instagram says creators who are actively monetizing with in-stream video ads will receive a temporary monthly payment based on recent earnings. Although this seems like a step back in terms of creator monetization, Instagram revealed that it’s exploring more ways for users to earn revenue. Later this year, the company will begin testing a new ad experience on Instagram, which will allow users to earn revenue from ads displayed on their Reels. The new monetization option will join the , which offers creators opportunities to earn money each month. As part of today’s announcements, Instagram reiterated its focus on Reels, its short-form video TikTok rival. The company notes that Reels continue to be the largest contributor to engagement growth on the app and that it plans to continue to invest in the feature. “Video is a huge part of why people enjoy Instagram, and we love how our creator community uses it to express themselves, collaborate with others, and connect with their followers,” the company said in the blog post. “Reels continues to be a growing and important part of Instagram and we are excited to invest even more in this format.” The decision to shut down IGTV’s standalone app was already losing ground as a standalone product. In early 2020, Instagram from Instagram’s home page due to lack of traction. The move came at a time when, at most, just 7 million of Instagram’s 1-billion-plus users had downloaded the standalone IGTV app, TechCrunch previously reported, citing research. |
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Leverage early investors when raising a Series A, says DeepScribe’s Akilesh Bapu | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | A is a different ball game from raising a seed round, and for Akilesh Bapu, CEO and co-founder of AI-powered medical transcription platform DeepScribe, giving prospective investors a hard deadline while leaning on early investors for support and guidance made all the difference. “We were at this trajectory as a company where we had a semblance of product-market fit,” said Bapu, reflecting on the summer of 2021. “We had proven our product. We had about 200 live customers on the platform… We were excited about bringing DeepScribe to more customers and looking for the best partners to us there — not just in the short term but also in the long term. We had a long-term vision… and wanted a partner that bought into that vision.” Eventually, led by Index Ventures partner Nina Achadjian, as the duo discussed on the latest episode of , our weekly program featuring entrepreneurs, developers and investors. The entire episode is available below, along with a portion of DeepScribe’s Series A pitch deck. If not for the fact that Bapu and his team had set deadlines for the funding round, he said DeepScribe might have not partnered with Index — Achadjian was on vacation when she read their pitch and tried to push the meeting to the following week, but Bapu said the process was moving fast. They met the following day. Afterwards, Achadjian was sold. “When I walked out of the meeting, I went immediately to one of my partners, and was like, ‘Finally, I found the company that is following the right approach,” she said. She added that this was a critical win for DeepScribe, as it’s essential to leave potential investors fired up and armed with a few bullet points, including on the team and market. Since Index was interested in DeepScribe, the firm started conducting due diligence. Achadjian said founders can expedite the process by anticipating questions, especially on market size and competitive landscape. Companies can also provide investment firms with summaries of customer call notes. “Then we come up with a list of key questions we want to go deep on,” Achadjian said. “What’s the business model? How do you scale? References. I actually called one of Akilesh’s Berkeley professors. We do a lot of customer calls and check references on the entrepreneurs. Then, honestly, we like to spend time with the team and see them in different environments.” |
After 2 rejected deals, Zendesk considers its next steps | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | earlier this month, it did so partially on the basis that the proposed transaction undervalued the company, especially in light of its then-pending $4.13 billion attempt to purchase . But after investors , it left open questions about how the company proceeds from here. On February 10, Zendesk declined a major offer from a consortium of private equity firms, partially because it projected that it would have $5 billion in revenue by 2025. With the deal off the table, the company now anticipates $3.4 billion worth of revenue in the same year, a significant $1.6 billion difference. Was Momentive’s potential revenue sufficient to justify the price tag that Zendesk was ready to pay, its plunge into the customer experience market, and the fact that it would have led the acquirer away from its core customer service orientation? Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials, says it’s unlikely that SurveyMonkey will become a big player in the customer experience market. “From a CX perspective, I didn’t really see this as an acquisition that would have any real significant impact on the competitive landscape of the industry,” he said. But you could argue that customer experience is still a logical area for Zendesk to move into, as company CEO and founder Mikkel Svane indicated announcing the end of the Momentive deal. “We believe true understanding comes from taking billions of customer interactions and transforming it all into actionable insights for our customers. We remain as committed as ever to creating value for customers by empowering them with rich, multi-dimensional customer intelligence capabilities and insights,” he wrote. Leary doesn’t disagree, but says he sees survey technology becoming a smaller part of it as more automated signal gathering takes hold. “While surveys are an important tool to leverage in understanding the current mindset of customers, the acceleration of signals automatically created by digital interactions coming from human exchanges, as well as from using devices will continue to grow exponentially,” he said. |
Stämm Biotech raises $17M for its next-generation, 3D printed bioreactor | Emma Betuel | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | In the past year, there’s been a lot of — from growing cell-based meat to microbe-powered medicine manufacturing. But none of synthetic biology’s darlings can exist without one key piece of equipment: a bioreactor. While the world debates how best to bring biology-fueled manufacturing into existence, one company is already rethinking its most important instrument. , founded in 2014, is developing a desktop-sized bioreactor that looks pretty different from the tanks, tubes and knobs traditionally seen in industrial or even benchtop bioreactors. The Buenos Aires-based company just announced a $17 million Series A round; combined with previous seed and pre-seed rounds, that brings its total raised to $20 million. To get what Stämm is doing, you have to know what a bioreactor usually looks like, and what’s going on inside it. At a basic level, industrial-scale bioreactors are giant, sterilized tanks. Those tanks are filled with the medium needed to grow a certain type of cell or microorganism, which may either produce the desired product or be the product itself. These cell cultures are stirred using a motorized instrument, kept at the correct temperature using coolants, and supplied with the right amount of oxygen (or lack thereof) to support their growth. You can also do this process in a , rather than a tank, which cuts down on the time needed to re-sterilize a tank before you can grow something else. What Stämm has done is essentially cut the tank, stirring and tubes out of the equation entirely. Instead, it’s developing a unit that 3D prints a dense network of microchannels that pass cells through the nutrients and oxygen they need. The movement itself acts as the stirring motion. An example of a 3D-printed fluid channel piece. Cells, oxygen and nutrients can be added at a variety of places. Stämm Biotech Those channels are designed using Stämm’s software component. You can think of the whole process as a “CDMO [contract development and manufacturing organization] on the cloud,” as Yuyo Llamazares, the co-founder and CEO of Stamm, told TechCrunch. “We detected this breach between the will to develop a biological product and the abilities of tools that were out in the market. That inspired us to take ownership of this problem,” he said. There’s already been in the biomanufacturing space based on the idea that growing stuff in cells is the next , from biopharmaceuticals to chemicals, textiles, fragrances and even full cuts of meat. . None of the promise of biomanufacturing can actually happen without the bioreactors. Stämm’s approach is to scale down the size of the reactor through the use of microfluidics. CG representation of the fluid flow through one of the printed pieces. Stämm Biotech At the moment, the company claims to be able to reduce the size of a biomanufacturing facility by two orders of magnitude. But it is still operating on a smaller scale than most large bioreactors. Stämm’s bioreactors can reach an output of about 30 liters, not the thousands often seen at industrial scale. (That said, the company does claim that its core concept can scale to about to about 5,000 liters.) Despite the potential of the technology, Stämm is still in the early stages of commercializing it. It currently is working with one European biopharma company focusing on producing biosimilars, and says it has five potential new partners in the pipeline. The company plans to move to “pilot scale” in 2022. At this moment new partnerships are Stämm’s major metric of success, said Llamazares. “We want to interact firsthand with as many partners as possible, understand how the product that we have developed can further help,” he said. If you dive a bit deeper into the business side of things, Stämm is still working out some kinks. When I asked Llamazares the cost of one of the units, he didn’t give a dollar figure. Stämm is looking to get clients used to working with microfluidic bioreactors, as opposed to the traditional machines, he said. In the meantime, the price of the machines and services isn’t fixed. “We are exploring at this stage, understanding diverse business models and interaction with clients,” he said. As for this round, Stämm plans to double its headcount to around 200, and expand its international presence. The company will also further refine and develop its microfluidic bioreactors and the tools needed to control them. New investors in the round include lead investor Varana, Vista, New Abundance, Trillian, Serenity Traders, Teramips, Decarbonization Consortium. They join existing investors Draper Associates, SOSV, Grid Exponential, VistaEnergy, Teramips, Draper Cygnus and Dragones VC, who also participated in the round. |
Second-time founder of climate tech company Supercritical discusses learning how to balance motherhood and being a CEO | Maggie Stamets | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | In this week’s episode of , we’re joined by Michelle You, co-founder and CEO of Supercritical, who is on a mission to help companies get to net-zero — but she refuses to sacrifice her personal life for the startup. Michelle talks with Darrell and Jordan about how motherhood has eased her imposter syndrome, the “scar tissue” she had from a tough exit of her first startup, why the planet needs more effective carbon removal methods now and how she’s using those learnings as a second-time founder. Connect with us: |
Huawei gets into the e-reader game with a combo note-taking device | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | Nearly 20 years after the release of the first e-reader, the category isn’t exactly a hotbed of activity. Amazon has ruled the roost for over a decade now, in spite of the best efforts of companies like Kobo (Rakuten) and what remains of Barnes & Noble’s hardware efforts. This week at MWC, embattled hardware maker Huawei announced that it’s getting in on the action with the With a 10.3-inch E Ink display and the ability to take notes with the company’s M-Pencil writing tool, offerings from reMarkable could ultimately be the best comparison point. Reviewing , Devin noted that the product “remains firmly in its niche” — which has been a bit of a theme with e ink products outside the Kindle universe. Huawei’s hoping to push through with a device aimed at being a little bit of everything. At its heart, it’s a massively sized reader with access to the 2 million or so titles in the Huawei Books store, as well as various other file types, including PDF. The device runs Huawei’s proprietary HarmonyOS — a theme you’re going to see across its MWC announcements, after having lost access to Android. But that effectively makes it something more akin to an e ink tablet, albeit Huawei’s still limited access to third-party apps at the moment. What it does offer, however, are widgets for things like e-mail, notes and events. The large screen can be split to have something like reading open in one window and 26 ms writing with the M-Pencil in the other. One of the other upshots of the software is the ability to quickly move files back and forth between a MateBook laptop. There’s also built-in translation available. Another bit backing up the tablet thesis here is the inclusion of a microphone for notetaking and a pair of built-in speakers for audio books. There’s a fingerprint reader for security and fast charging that allows for six days of reading with a 90-minute charge for the 3625 mAh battery. The downside to all of those features is the fact that the thing runs closer to a high-end tablet than e-reader, at €499. Due to ongoing geopolitical issues, it’s hard to imagine this thing getting a proper U.S. release at any point. Still, it’s easily one of the most interesting consumer announcements at MWC this week — which may say more about the show than the product itself. |
Tata Group’s super app TataNeu is not so super | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | The Indian conglomerate Tata Group plans to launch its “super app” as soon as next month, bringing together many of its established and recently acquired consumer services for the first time as the salt-to-software giant attempts to go head-to-head with rivals, including Jio Platforms and Amazon. The firm originally planned to launch the app, called TataNeu, to consumers early last year and has been testing it with its employees for several quarters. It plans to launch a major marketing blitz at the IPL cricket tournament in April this year to promote TataNeu. There’s only one hiccup. Despite the delays, TataNeu looks anything but modern and executives at the firm are still scrambling to figure out how they can draw customers to the super app, according to two people familiar with the matter and materials provided to TechCrunch. The app includes online grocer BigBasket, in which Tata Digital , retail chain Croma, entertainment service Tata Play, luxury portfolio TataCLiQ, flight ticketing with AirAsia, IHCL, which operates Taj hotel, and food and business offerings from Starbucks, which operates in India in a joint venture with Tata Group, and many more services. TataNeu also offers the ability to send people money and pay broadband, electricity, water and satellite TV bills and secure loans. (The payments hook is interesting. Tata is additionally also one of the key players that is bidding for the NUE license to help build and leverage a new Indian payments infrastructure that is positioned to compete with widely adopted UPI.) But the app is comically buggy, horribly slow and the integrations merely point to different Tata services via an in-app browser — sometimes with the desktop view on a phone. (Image credits: TechCrunch) The app that Tata is testing with its employees is the same it plans to offer its consumers and no major revamp is in the works, a person familiar with the matter said. To incentivize customers, Tata plans to offer them “NeuCoins” as reward, where one NeuCoin will be equivalent to one Indian rupee. The firm plans to eventually phase out different loyalty offerings by BigBasket, 1mg and other services, and use NeuCoins universally across all its services. The rewards is one of the major focuses for Tata Group as it attempts to build a “connective layer” for its services that operate in a wide range of categories. If successful, the 155-year-old giant is positioned to conjure up the largest loyalty program in the country. “TataNeu is a unified platform that connects several brands across the Tata universe like never before. Designed to be a super-app, TataNeu offers everything from daily grocery, electronics, finance solutions, flights, holidays, and more. Each brand on TataNeu is connected by a common reward called NeuCoins, which can be earned across all brands online and at physical locations and can be used similarly as well,” Tata says. But customers can accrue NeuCoins by shopping with BigBasket and other Tata services directly and don’t need to use the TataNeu app for it, according to Tata’s current plan. And the firm, which reaches hundreds of millions of consumers in India, is struggling to get some brands, including Starbucks and others in which its ownership or partnership is limited, to fully or even partially participate in the new loyalty program, according to one person briefed on the matter. A lot is riding on Tata’s consumer digital push. It is targeting a GMV of $10 billion for the fiscal year ending in March 2023, Indian news and analysis publication the . Like Reliance Industries — which raised over $27 billion from scores of high-profile investors including Meta and Google for its digital and retail empires two years ago — Tata Group is also in the market to raise money for its super app. At last two major investors have already made up their mind to not invest, according to people familiar with the matter. A Tata Digital spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment this week. |
NTSB investigating Joby aircraft crash | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | The National Transportation Safety Board is on Wednesday in Jolon, California. The incident involved a prototype that was being remotely piloted during flight testing at Joby’s test base in California, according to regulatory filings. During the early testing phase of aircraft, the Federal Aviation Administration often requires aircraft to be uncrewed for safety reasons. There were no injuries in the crash, and the test was conducted in an uninhabited area, the company reported. “Experimental flight test programs are intentionally designed to determine the limits of aircraft performance, and accidents are unfortunately a possibility,” reads the filing. “We will be supporting the relevant authorities in investigating the accident thoroughly.” The NTSB investigates most serious incidents and reports on everything from aviation accidents to certain types of highway crashes to ship incidents and bridge failures. Joby’s crash on Wednesday caused “substantial damage” to the aircraft, NTSB spokesperson . Joby’s shares are down 9% in after-hours trading. |
When the founder becomes the story | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | A year ago, few knew the brand , a checkout technology company that was founded in 2014, nor its founder, Ryan Breslow, a seemingly archetypal Silicon Valley type: smart, strong-willed and a college dropout who left Stanford after only two years to start a company. Fast-forward to today and Bolt has suddenly become a company to watch, with Breslow commandeering the attention of reporters, investors and founders through a series of beginning this past January. The question is, is courting so much controversy in the best interests of Bolt? Breslow’s latest declaration came this Monday, when he announced on Twitter that Bolt — which already offers employees more time to exercise their stock options than most companies — was offering every employee the chance to borrow money from the company to exercise their stock options. This “ ” and possibly unprecedented proposal, Breslow explained, promised to give regular employees the same tax benefits in purchasing stock as high-level executives. (Employees who buy their stock earlier theoretically reduce their tax exposure if the value of the stock continues to rise.) Numerous founders applauded the move, including Harry Hurst, the co-founder and co-CEO of Pipe, a fast-growing outfit that provides upfront capital to companies with recurring revenue streams. “Yep, no brainer! We did this back in 2020 and it’s been incredible. It’s the right thing to do,” Hurst tweeted. But many others weighed in to suggest the idea was neither novel nor wise, suggesting that such loans could put employees in a highly precarious financial position should their company’s shares sink. Jeff Richards, a managing director of GGV Capital, was among them. Asked yesterday for comment, Richards wrote us in an email, “Usually I stay out of commenting on founder ‘advice’ threads, but on this one I couldn’t remain silent. It is literally one of the worst pieces of advice you can give fellow founders. So many of us have lived through the nightmare scenario of trying to help employees with loans deal with the inevitable downside, it’s just sad. Most importantly, contrary to Ryan’s tweet, it’s not ‘new.’ Thousands of companies have done this. There’s a reason good ones don’t do it anymore – it’s a terrible idea.” Vieje Piauwasdy, the senior director of equity advisory at Secfi, agrees. Secfi is not impartial: it’s a stock option financing outfit that provides non-recourse loans, wherein it gives money to employees upfront in exchange for a payout later. But Piauwasdy, who previously spent five years with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, calls the kind of loans Breslow is proposing “insanely risky.” “I hope that Bolt succeeds,” Piauwasdy says. “Ryan wants Bolt to be a pro-employee company. But you can’t predict the future, and if the stock ends up being worth zero, you’re still going to owe back that recourse loan in one way, shape, or form.” Breslow, who is 27, predicted in his tweets on Monday that VCs “will say that this is disaster,” yet his bombastic thread about stock loans for employees seems emblematic of other proposals he has made. Just two weeks ago, in a that also drew both praise and disdain, he wrongly accused the payment company Stripe of exerting control over Y Combinator’s message board, said that YC is unwilling to fund rivals to Stripe (it has), and called out Lyft as a YC company (it was never part of YC’s accelerator program). Following blowback from this tweet storm, Breslow as CEO and became the company’s executive chairman, a move he has said was long in the works. Breslow clearly has a lot of skin in the game: he reportedly owns a 25% stake in Bolt, which closed on funding at an $11 billion valuation last month, including from such heavyweights as BlackRock, General Atlantic and Willoughby Capital. But it’s hard to see how Breslow’s Twitter game is helping his company’s reputation with customers and investors, who are reportedly investing even more money into the company at a $14 billion valuation. Breslow’s latest revelation was likely intended to attract job candidates in what is undeniably a highly challenging market, but it must also send confusing signals to potential hires about who is really in charge at the checkout startup. (You have to wonder what signals it sends to the company’s new CEO, former Amazon executive Maju Kuruvilla, too.) We asked to speak with Breslow earlier this week and were told he is “off the grid” for the time being. Still, don’t look for Breslow to stop making news on Twitter. At the end of his tweets, Breslow — now among the country’s on paper — asks readers to follow him, and says that he is committed to sharing “radical” ideas on how to build startups. Pinned to his profile is a February 9th tweet underscoring his mission. It reads: “The last month was WILD. +50k followers in 30 days. For context: it took 8 yrs to get to 4k followers. The lesson: people appreciate when you speak your truth.” |
Daily Crunch: Salesforce, AWS collaborate to offer bundled services for streaming content providers | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, February 17, 2022! Heading into a long weekend here in the United States, you might think that the news is slowing down but, nope. It’s not. So we have major crypto-football news, European startup analysis, and even some notes on platform dynamics. It’s a busy day, so let’s dive in! – Before we dive into the day’s startup news digest, a bunch of academics . It’s worth your time if you are building something that will depend on third-party content, and doubly so if you plan on blending first- and third-party material. Now, the news: Still want more? How about led by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, or the fact that / Getty Images It’s an opportune moment to launch a new company, but rising interest rates, inflation and any other number of unknown factors could lead investors to become more judicious when it comes to placing bets. Data-driven founders who can tell a sweet story with the right metrics are much more likely to get an investor’s attention, according to Blair Silverberg, co-founder and CEO of Hum Capital. “Unfortunately, many companies lack an efficient way to gather, synthesize and interpret data into real-time insights, resulting in the default reliance on static, Excel-based samplings that may not capture the full picture of your company’s potential,” he says. SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
As Databricks reaches $800M ARR, a fresh look at its last private valuation | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Databricks is back in the news, disclosing a new revenue figure and its 2021 growth rate. TechCrunch has been tracking the company for years, curious about its growth and what its rising worth said about its market. Today we’re revisiting its last private round measured against its most recent financial data. But to do that, we have to do a little background work first. When Databricks raised at a $38 billion post-money valuation, TechCrunch got on the phone with CEO to chat through his company’s latest mega-raise. We had a few questions. One of mine was how he felt about the inherent pressure that such a huge private-market valuation would seem to engender — after all, startup valuations are estimates until they exit, meaning that higher prices mean greater expectations for future success. Ghodsi wasn’t sweating it. He said at the time that he didn’t feel much pressure, and that he was sleeping well. He gave a few reasons for this. First, per our notes from the conversation, was his belief that his company is really building a new category of service. Second, he hadn’t maximized for valuation in the fundraising event, and that in both of his company’s 2021 rounds there was more demand to put capital in than there was room to accept it. The above is somewhat standard CEO-fare when it comes to startups and unicorns in a hurry. More interesting was his third point, that companies expanding rapidly — he threw out a 75% growth rate as a talking point — can surmount market corrections by growth. In simpler terms, if the market changed its tune about the value of software revenues, so long as Databricks kept growing, things would math out just fine. Well, the market since that conversation, with the value of software revenue being repriced by the public markets starting in late 2021 and continuing into the early-2022 period. And Databricks kept growing. So we can have a little fun this afternoon, calculating the company’s revenue multiples back in August, and at the end of the year using today’s market data. The experiment will show us how much, if any, ground Databricks has to power through before its private-market valuation can translate on a 1:1 basis to the public markets. I promised myself that I would stop making “when will Databricks go public jokes,” so let’s just get into the math. |
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