title stringlengths 2 283 ⌀ | author stringlengths 4 41 ⌀ | year int64 2.01k 2.02k | month int64 1 12 | day int64 1 31 | content stringlengths 1 111k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Twitter now lets you pin up to 6 DM conversations | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Twitter is slowly continuing to enhance its direct messaging interface amid a tidal wave of product updates over the last year. The company announced today that it will now enable users to pin six conversations to the top of their DM inbox for easy access. The feature is available on iOS, Android and web. Keep your fave DM convos easily accessible by pinning them! You can now pin up to six conversations that will stay at the top of your DM inbox. Available on Android, iOS, and web. — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) Last year, Twitter made some to DMs, including the ability to DM a tweet to multiple people at once in individual conversations. Instead of timestamping individual messages with the date and time, Twitter also started grouping messages by day to “ .” It wouldn’t be shocking if Twitter unveiled even more new DM features over the next several months. Twitter acquired two messaging companies in the last few months of 2021: , a London-based group chat app, and , a would-be Slack rival. Employees at both Sphere and Quill were absorbed into Twitter, with former Quill staff working specifically on messaging. Quill founder Ludwig Pettersson, the former creative director of Stripe, joined Twitter as a project manager on the Conversations team. |
How to grow your organic traffic with earned media | Amanda Milligan | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | a ton of value, but not everyone understands how to measure its impact or grasp its full effect on your organic growth. While it immediately provides increased brand awareness, earned media can also be an excellent vehicle for building brand authority as well as dramatically improving your off-page SEO. Here at Stacker Studio, we’ve seen it work wonders with our brand partners, for whom we create newsworthy articles and syndicate them to our newswire. To determine the short-term impact of earned media, we conducted an analysis of organic performance of 11 new brand partners across the first 90 days of their partnerships with us. Here’s what we found: Domain ratings rose by 5 points over 90 days. Stacker Studio Referring domains rose by over 4,000. Stacker Studio Growth for ranking keywords rose to 400 keywords. Stacker Studio Organic clicks rose by over 8,600 in 90 days. Stacker Studio I’m going to explain the entire process we used with examples so you can utilize similar strategies for your own content, SEO and digital PR efforts. Our goal is to create articles the publishers in our newswire want to run because they’re confident it’ll help them gain visits, clicks, subscriptions and more. We get a lot of feedback from our publisher partners that has informed our content strategy. Here are a few of the insights we’ve gained after publishing more than 10,000 stories over the last four years. For example, one of the largest local TV groups in the country has regularly published entertainment and lifestyles content tied to holidays, e.g. “Best Christmas movies of all time, according to critics,” and “50 cute baby names with holiday meanings.” |
Ford’s Mustang Mach-E ousts the Tesla Model 3 as Consumer Reports’ top EV | Jon Fingas | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Tesla’s Model 3 has been ‘ top EV choice for the past two years, but the publication is ready to declare a new champion. has revealed that Ford’s has ousted the Model 3 as its EV Top Pick. The Mustang crossover is not only “more practical,” according to editors, but has better first-year reliability and a “far easier” infotainment system that doesn’t require multiple steps for basic tasks. A better ride and reduced noise help, too. Ford’s driver assist technology also gave the Mach-E an edge thanks to a more effective drive monitoring system that now . Tesla’s Autopilot was docked for functioning while drivers look away. still recommended the Model 3 thanks to its sports car-like performance, long range, charging network and technology. However, the outlet couldn’t recommend the Mach-E’s more direct rival, the Model Y, as an EV Top Pick. Tesla’s SUV-like ride has “much worse” reliability than average vehicles in the lineup, and is noticeably worse than the average-rated Model 3. This isn’t going to please Tesla, which has had a with over the years. The two have disputed test results, and has for some models. However, it also reflects lingering concerns about Tesla’s reliability. The EV producer has issued a in recent months, and owners have frequently reported . This might not have cost Tesla the lead by itself, but it certainly didn’t help the company’s chances. |
Vertical integration | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | for me this year. No drinking weird promotional energy drinks while watching bands play front yards at 9 AM or traveling out of my way to see the Daniel Johnston mural on the side of the delightfully named but permanently closed Thai, How Are You? restaurant. For a change of pace, I’ve decided to hole myself up in my apartment for the week, order take out and feel nostalgic for the series of minor inconveniences of air travel and just leaving my house, generally. If you do, however, find yourself in Austin this year, you can catch the premier of , directed by Gillian “Britta from Community” Jacobs at the film fest. For the rest of us pandemic shut-ins, the film hits Disney+ on March 18. The Lucasfilm-produced documentary focuses on the FIRST robotics competition, founded by Segway/iBOT inventor Dean Kamen way back in 1989. This week, we’re kicking things off by interviewing Kamen about FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and the state of STEM education in the U.S. FIRST There was no landscape. There were no competitions. So, we’re done with that subject. […] It’s not about the robots. It’s never been about the robots. Even the tagline for FIRST is “more than robots.” Thirty years ago, when I started FIRST, it never occurred to me that my goal was to make it about the robots or a robot competition. I don’t come up with the taglines, I’m not a marketing guy, but in order to get people to help me, I’d say to them, ‘we’re not using kids to build robots. We’re using robots to build kids!’ I need a way to compete with the world of sports. The academic world attracts a very small number of people to science, technology and engineering, and typically our culture has mastered the fact that only special, geeky, nerd people can or would like to do math or science. […]Thirty years ago, when I started FIRST, it was very simple. I’m not looking to give advantage to the advantaged by finding a new, better way to make a science fair that already attracts the smart kids to make an even bigger gap than the haves and the have nots as technology makes it easier to make more power, more wealth, more capability, leaving everybody further behind. I had exactly the opposite goal. I was afraid that what is now happening would happen, which is, we’re going to have two classes of people: the people who understand how to use the power of technology and will be on that ever-accelerating bus and there will be everyone else that’s under that bus. Yep. And the kids have nobody to blame, and if it works, they can strut around and be proud. The laws of physics are pretty neat, and kids — no matter what their background — when they start playing with technology, there are no loopholes. Mother nature is undefeated. You can get around every law we make in our society. But the laws of nature are subtle, but they’re fair, elegant and self-consistent. Kids that come through FIRST start to appreciate the laws of nature and the power of analytical thinking. That’s why we do it. We have dramatically narrowed the gap for all the kids in FIRST programs. Something like 30% of these kids are women, 50% come from Title One schools. We really are successfully going after the right kids to make the biggest difference in their lives. But, the background, everything that I was fearing was happening in our society, the wealth going more and more to those that are the haves and are using technology as a weapon, not as a tool, all of that has, sadly, become a real potential to undermine our whole society. When I first promoted FIRST, it was to be the prevention from that. Now I think it’s the antidote to that. It’s happened, and we’ve got to fix it. If there’s a place I would give myself a C- or maybe a D, it’s that when I started FIRST, I got almost all of it right. Make it aspirational, make it after school, make it like every other sport they do — keep it out of the classroom! The keep it out of the classroom was probably an unnecessary, self-inflicted wound. What I’ve come to realize is, while only a few kids play on the varsity football or basketball team, every kid in school gets to go to gym class and play a little baseball, a little basketball, a little football and get familiar with it. […]At the same time we started making it this great, aspirational, after-school fun thing, we should have at least made it available to get a taste of it in the classroom and we didn’t immediately start doing that. That’s nonsense. I would ask somebody to find me a single example of a new technology that ended up creating fewer jobs and lesser jobs in terms of enjoyment and pay them. People take a snapshot and think the world is a zero sum game. At some point, there were ditch diggers and you could make a hole to build a house and make a road. It would take a hundred people to make a hole big enough for a house and 10,000 people this long to make a road to go to town and then the bulldozer was invented. One person might say one bulldozer is going to do the work of 1,000 people with shovels, so a bulldozer is going to put 1,000 people out of work. Well, that would be true if you still needed one short road that went from place to place. But wait, a minute! Now that we have bulldozers, we can build super highways that cross North America in a couple of years. We will more than multiply the opportunity for this. It’s not going to simply replace what we used to do with literally backbreaking work. You know what we should do? We should create an organization that gives all these people the opportunity break down their unnecessary fear of technology. We should get kids into it, and then their parents, their teachers and corporate people could all participate. I think “FIRST,” For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology. And then maybe we can put generations together in a fun environment that’s non-threatening. I thought it would be adults like engineers and scientists inspiring kids, but having now seen it work, I realize it’s actually kids that are inspiring adults and the teachers and the parents and the corporate leaders. Traptic In the conversations around agtech robotics, I don’t think vertical farming gets mentioned enough. I suppose it’s because it’s a bit of niche of a niche at the moment, compared to the world of more traditional farming. But every vertical farming outfit I’ve spoken with (and I’ve spoken with a lot in recent years) has told me that robotics are an integral part of their plans. It makes sense. Vertically stacked produce is a bit tough for humans to navigate and monitor. Computer vision systems and robotic pickers, on the other hand, can thrive in these environments. Even so, was something of a surprise. Specifically because it represents a pivot for the Bay Area-based startup, which has thus far focused on strawberry-picking systems for the field. “As of today, Traptic’s technology will be exclusive to Bowery’s network of smart indoor farms,” Traptic co-founder and CEO Lewis Anderson told me. “We developed our technology to operate in a harsh, outdoor farm environment, and it’s going to work even better indoors. Bowery will be the first indoor farming company to use that Traptic technology.” Traptic’s move away from the field comes at an interesting time for agtech robotics. The interest is certainly there, with farms all over the U.S. dealing with labor shortages. It follows Abundant’s fizzling out and subsequent (well, forthcoming) relaunch under new ownership. The opportunity is certainly there for the right company. Of course, vertical farming is another exciting category, so it should be a fascinating new home for the Traptic team. Exodigo There was a big funding round for Tel Aviv-based Exodigo this week. The firm utilizes drone- or cart-mounted sensors to map subterranean areas for things like construction, mining and utilities. “Ending the era of blind digs, Exodigo gives companies an accurate, easy-to-understand map of what lies beneath the surface – empowering their teams to save time, money and lives,” co-founder and CEO Jeremy Suard said in a release. “Think of it like combining the scanning power of an MRI, CT scan and ultrasound all into one image of what is beneath the ground.” Exodigo announced a $29 million seed (!) round this morning. The funding will go toward piloting its technology in states like California, Florida and Texas. Cartken If sidewalk robots are your thing, Rebecca’s got with Cartken co-founder and COO Anjali Jindal Naik, which details the beginnings of the young company and some of her broader thoughts on the state of last-mile delivery: We definitely use our operators in early deployments and for mapping areas as well, and that just helps us deploy faster. It’s one of those things where we can drop a robot today in an area and operate tomorrow. We can do those things very quickly, and, in parallel, scale the autonomy to start off driving, move it in a semi-autonomous way, and move it to a fully autonomous state by having operators do that for us. Miso Robotics Following its recent launch of an equity crowdfunded Series E, Miso Robotics a dramatic expansion of its partnership with White Castle. The deal will bring its Flippy 2 hamburger cooking robotic arm to 100 locations. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch |
One day soon, a robot will make you a salad | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Hyphen grabbed a quick mention in (it’s good, you should ) when it came out of stealth, back in August. Automated food prep is going to be a big thing, going forward. Many predicted as much in the early days of the pandemic, when stay at home orders and fears around COVID transmission left many restaurant owners wondering how much of the process they might eventually be able to automate. I suspect many thought that would be something of a temporary issue. Two years into the pandemic, it’s probably safe to say our expectations for “temporary” have shifted some what. But even as spikes have died down in certain areas, finding staff for often low-paying food service work continues to be an issue. For this reason, we’ve seen a lot of investment interest around companies promising to help automate industrial kitchens. That side of the equation is starting to catch up to the level of excitement that’s surrounded robotic food delivery for several years now. We’re going to see special attention paid to certain food types at the beginning, due to the relative ease with which they can be automated. Pizza has been an obvious first choice for a while, due to its simplicity and the fact that, well, most people like pizza. Salads and bowls are a good candidate, too. They’re self-contained and have been growing in popularity as a quick lunch option for workers who find themselves with less and less time to break away from their computer screens. Hyphen offers Makeline, a modular solution to automate the bowl production process through a kind of conveyer belt process that happens under the counter. That latter detail is an interesting one, as many of these companies position automation as outward facing. Depending on how you look at it, you may consider a robot making your lunch a cool — or, at the very least, novel — idea. But Hyphen’s system relies on putting a human out front — in part to have a face for customer interactions. This week, the . The round, led by Tiger Global, brings its total funding to $34.4 million. This latest round will be used for the sorts of things you’d expect robotics funding to be used for, including additional R&D, building out a production facility and expanding into more markets. The company anticipates rolling out the Makeline system to five markets in the next two years, though is not yet offering specifics. |
null | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 28 | null |
Spotify must be more transparent about its rules of the road | Sudhir Venkatesh | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | With the controversy surrounding Joe Rogan’s podcast, Spotify has officially joined the ranks of media platforms publicly defending their governance practices. Rogan’s podcast is a harbinger of the company’s future — and that of social media. Platforms that didn’t think of themselves as social are now faced with managing user content and interaction. In the industry, we would say that Spotify has a “Trust & Safety” problem. Spotify, and every other platform with user-generated content, is learning the hard way that they can’t stay out of the way and rely on users to post appropriate content that doesn’t flout company policies or social norms. Platforms are finding that they must become legitimate, active authority figures, not passive publishers. Research shows that they can start by generating trust with users and building expectations of good conduct. Rogan is just one example. With Spotify’s acquisition of and its partnership with WordPress, which enable “access to easier creation of podcasts,” user-generated podcasts discussing politics, health and social issues are part of Spotify’s new frontier. To this, we can add platform integration: Users can now use Spotify with other platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Peloton. This means the Spotify user experience is shaped by content created across the internet, on platforms with distinct rules and codes of conduct. Without common industry standards, “misinformation” at, say, Twitter will not always be flagged by Spotify’s algorithms. Welcome to the future of social media. Companies once believed they could rely on algorithms to catch inappropriate content and intervene with public relations in high-profile cases. Today, the challenges are bigger and more complicated as consumers redefine where and how one is social online. Tech companies can adapt by working on two fronts. First, they must establish themselves as legitimate authorities in the eyes of their community. This starts by making the rules readily available, easily understandable and applicable to all users. Think of this as the rules of driving, another large-scale system that works by ensuring people know the rules and can share a common understanding of traffic lights and rights of way. Simple reminders of the rules, like stop signs, can be highly effective. In experiments with Facebook users, reminding people about rules decreased the likelihood of ongoing bad behavior. To create safety on platforms facing thousands, if not millions, of users, a company must similarly build out clear, understandable procedures. Try to find Spotify’s rules. We couldn’t. Imagine driving without stop signs or traffic lights. It’s hard to follow the rules if you can’t find them. Tech companies have historically been resistant to being responsible authority figures. The earliest efforts in Silicon Valley at managing user content were spam fighting teams that blocked actors who hacked their systems for fun and profit. They legitimately believed that by disclosing the rules, users would game the platform and that people would change behavior only when they are punished. We call this approach “deterrence,” which works for adversarial people like spammers. It is not so effective for more complicated rule-breaking behaviors, like racist rants, misinformation and incitement of violence. Here, purveyors are not necessarily motivated by money or the love of hacking. They have a cause, and they may see themselves as rightfully expressing an opinion and building a community. To influence the content of these users, companies need to drop reactive punishment and instead take up proactive governance — set standards, reward good behavior and, when necessary, enforce rules swiftly and with dignity to avoid the perception of being arbitrary authority figures. The second key step is to be transparent with the community and set clear expectations for appropriate behavior. Transparency means disclosing what the company is doing, and how well it is doing, to keep things safe. The effect of reinforcing so-called “platform norms” is that users understand how their actions could impact the wider community. The Joe Rogans of the world start to appear less attractive as people look at them as threatening the safe, healthy experience of the wider community. “We’re defining an entirely new space of tech and media,” Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek said in a recent employee meeting. “We’re a very different kind of company, and the rules of the road are being written as we innovate.” That’s just not true. Sorry, Spotify, but you are not that special. There are already proven “rules of the road” for technology platforms — rules that show great promise for building trust and safety. The company just needs to accept them and follow them. You’ll still have incidents of online “road rage” once in a while, but the public might just be more forgiving when it happens. |
Super Bowl ads boosted crypto app downloads by 279%, led by Coinbase | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Those paid off for a number of tech companies not just in terms of exposure, but also app installs, a new report indicates. But Coinbase’s viral ad — a QR code around on a black screen like the old DVD screensaver — outperformed the group, with installs jumping 309% week-over-week after the ad’s airing Super Bowl Sunday, February 13, and it continued to climb by another 286% the following day. The new data comes from app intelligence firm , which crunched the numbers to see how well the Super Bowl ads performed for the mobile-first brands that advertised during the big game. While the firm can’t share the actual download figures due to non-disclosure agreements with clients, its data can provide a look at what sort of impact these ads had. (This data is for U.S. app stores only.) Coinbase, as it turned out, wasn’t the only crypto app to do well. Among the top five apps whose ads delivered strong download growth, three were crypto apps. In addition to Coinbase, crypto trading platform grew app installs by 132% week-over-week on February 13, and by 82% on February 14. Meanwhile, Cryptocurrency exchange , whose ad featured “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David, saw a 130% boost in downloads week-over-week on February 13, followed by 81% growth the next day. Combined, Coinbase, eToro and FTX saw their U.S. installs grow by a collective 279% on February 13 compared to the week prior. This continued into the following day, when week-over-week download growth reached 252%. The other apps in the top 5 on Super Bowl Sunday were sportsbooks. The saw downloads pop 197% week-over-week on Sunday, just behind Coinbase. followed, seeing 147% week-over-week gains, earning it a spot in the top 3. Rounding out the top 10, in order, was online car buying platform (111% download growth), kid fintech (+89%), another online car buying platform (+53%), streamer (+38%), and (+25% — surprising, given its bizarre and ad.) Sensor Tower While download growth is one signal of the advertisement’s success, another is the app’s rank, which measures a combination of downloads, velocity . In some cases, the brand’s Super Bowl ad prompted an immediate jump in terms of new installs, but not all ads benefited in the same way. Plus, some apps would have likely seen a boost in installs, regardless of their ad spend — like the sports betting apps or those that had a more practical use, like Peacock and YouTube TV. But the rank can offer an indication of how popular these brands were before their ad aired. For example, Oculus was ranked No. 102 Overall on the U.S. iOS App Store on Saturday and only moved to No. 100 on Sunday, then fell even lower on Monday to No. 175, according to data from . That shows that even if it saw 25% download growth, as Sensor Tower says, it didn’t drive a large number of new users to try the app. Meanwhile, Coinbase went from No. 124 Overall on Sunday, then crashed due to the huge traffic increase. By Monday, however, it was the No. 2 app on the U.S. App Store. Other top apps on Monday included Peacock TV (No. 1), HBO Max (No. 6), FanDuel Sportsbook (No. 12), DraftKings Sportsbook (No. 25), Disney+ (No. 31) and YouTube TV (No. 42). Another interesting thing about this year’s Super Bowl ads, Sensor Tower realized, was that just as these digital brands were embracing traditional TV ads, traditional brands were turning to digital ads. Per , the top 10 advertisers by spend on over-the-top video platforms like Peacock, Paramount+ and Hulu, were mostly traditional brands. Weight Watchers, for example, spent approximately $1.4 million in marketing on those streaming services, while Volvo and Nike spent $1 million+ and $623,000, respectively. Grocery tracker Basketful — the only one in the top 10 that was a mobile-first brand — spent approximately $486,000. It was followed by Geico, which spent around $413,000. Sensor Tower |
Peloton adds gaming-inspired ‘Lanebreak,’ which looks like ‘Beatsaber’ on a bike | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Why stop at just gamifying fitness with a leaderboard? Peloton is literally adding games to its repertoire today as it launches , which the company calls its “first gaming-inspired experience.” Lanebreak falls into the genre of music-centric rhythm games, like virtual reality favorite “Beatsaber” or the classic “Guitar Hero.” But on a game like “Guitar Hero,” the musical notes correspond with frets on a guitar — on Lanebreak, you’re biking along a multi-lane track. To navigate between lanes, riders adjust the resistance knob, which moves the wheel left or right. So, a particularly challenging workout might lead you to the higher-resistance lanes on the right side of the screen. Peloton riders can choose from playlists like “Pop Essentials” with David Guetta, Bruno Mars and , as well as “David Bowie Remixes,” featuring St. Vincent, TokiMontsa and Honey Dijon. Unlike typical Peloton workouts, there’s no coach guiding you along. Peloton “The way the cues and movement perfectly match the music is one of my favorite aspects of it,” said Peloton instructor Emma Lovewell in a press release. “It’s also a great addition to our instructor-led classes. I know some days you need that butt-kicking inspiration from one of us instructors, and other days you just want to ride to some killer music without an instructor. I get it. Now you can have both!” Peloton first teased Lanebreak in , but given the slew of challenges facing the at-home fitness company, it seems like a good time to give subscribers a shiny, new experience. Peloton boomed during the pandemic as gyms closed and lockdowns rendered us homebound. But the company has had a rocky year thus far. In January, Peloton paused bike and treadmill production due to . Weeks later, the company laid off 2,800 employees, about 20% of its corporate workforce. At the same time, Peloton CEO John Foley as CEO ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report. This feature alone probably won’t be enough to encourage someone to buy an expensive bike and pay for a Peloton membership. But other at-home fitness-tech products have seen success with these rhythm game-inspired workouts. — created by Within, which was recently acquired by Meta (pending ) — also invites users to do boxing and dance workouts to the beat of licensed music, all in virtual reality. Peloton said that it will continue developing more mechanics and challenges for Lanebreak in the coming months. Lanebreak is now available to All-Access Members on the Peloton Bike and Peloton Bike+. |
Unit’s Itai Damti explains how the company fundraises using culture and value | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | years, I have never seen a document like it,” Emmalyn Shaw, managing partner at Flourish Ventures, said during TechCrunch Live. The episode was nearing the end, and Unit CEO and co-founder Itai Damti had just explained how the company’s long-running Culture and Values document helped pitch the company. “I’d seen, obviously, high-level values in culture documents with bullet points and whatnot — but nothing to this level of specificity or commitment. … Of course, it expanded over time, but you get a real sense of how he’s planning to lead, particularly across two different headquarters and how Unit scales. I think it’s impressive. It’s important for [Flourish Ventures].” Damti explained the document (embedded below). “When we were just two people before we even knew what we would do, we sat down and wrote a half-page on the type of environment we wanted to build. The same Google Doc we started back then is the doc we use today, but it’s grown to 11 pages. It touches on many, many pieces of learning that we accumulated over time.” raised its in 2020 when COVID prevented face-to-face meetings with investors. “It was important for us to give people a window into how we execute as a team, and this document gave them a chance to almost spend an hour in the office without being in the office with us. The best way to do it was to share what was then a seven- or eight-page book on culture and values.” “This got us a lot of excitement from investors,” Damti said. “We do it because it’s important for the business. We do it to set expectations with employee candidates. And this is something constitutional in the company that drives how we execute. I also found that one of the cool byproducts was taking this asset and sharing it with people I know. Some people would keep it confidential. I was, like, ‘Investors should get a window into how the company thinks.’ And that’s always been important.” |
Actual, which renders company ESG data in a SimCity-like platform, raises $5M seed | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Trying to deal with the huge amount of data associated with how companies are going to transition to a “net zero” economy is an uphill task. The interface of numbers would tax even the geekiest of CEOs. What if it could all be rendered visually, but also accurately? That’s the germ of the idea behind , a SimCity-like platform designed to render all this data in a manageable interface, but still accurately. It’s now raised $5 million in seed funding from Buckley Ventures, Hyper, Wndrco, Sequoia Scout, Signalfire Scout, and Craft Scout. It also says it has companies like Allbirds, Giga and VF Corp (a global apparel and footwear co.), New Zealand Merino and ZQRX using it to figure out their ESG mandates. Founded by LinkedIn and Airbus alums, the San Francisco-based platform says it combines urban planning, game design, data visualization, and scientific planning to model and execute on their environmental, social and governance plans. “We are at a point where companies who do not mobilize their pledges of corporate and social responsibility are falling behind,” Actual co-founder and President Karthik Balakrishnan said in a statement. “Investors are already favoring companies with higher ESG scores, leaving ‘less clean’ companies with limited access to capital. Actual is designed to help enterprises rapidly model and implement the various ESG scenarios that will update their existing operations to meet regulations, without delay.” Actual is co-founded by ex-CEO of Heighten (acquired by Microsoft/LinkedIn), Rajesh Chandran; former co-founder of Coin (acquired by Fitbit) and Altiscope (now known as Airbus UTM) Karthik Balakrishnan, Ph.D.; and former LinkedIn software engineer and Rhodes Scholar, Derek Lyons, Ph.D. Speaking to me over a call, CTO Derek Lyons told me: “If you look at the space of ESG tools that exist today, a lot of them are very what we would call ‘data first’. So they’re really focused on gathering a lot of data, populating things like carbon API’s and using all of that information to try and give organizations a very precise picture of where they are today, in terms of their ESG footprint.” He said Actual takes a different approach: “Our approach is what we call ‘model first’. And we’re very focused on building models that allow customers to take the data that they have today, even if it’s really low resolution, even if it’s just estimates, and plug that into actual models that strap that together with business logic, with the underlying science and engineering that’s important for many of these transformations. And then use that to be able to model out into the future, likely to change scenario.” |
Elon Musk accuses SEC of conducting a ‘harassment campaign’ | Jon Fingas | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | If you thought Elon Musk was upset about frequent … you guessed correctly. Musk and Tesla have to a Southern District of New York court accusing the SEC of conducting a “harassment campaign.” The regulator allegedly broke a promise to pay Tesla shareholders $40 million as part of its 2018 over his tweets about , and instead devoted its resources to “endless, unfounded investigations” into the CEO and his company. The two maintained the SEC was sending subpoenas “unilaterally” and that the court, not just the Commission, was to monitor his compliance with the consent decree from the settlement. The SEC was supposedly retaliating against Musk for being an “outspoken critic of the government,” and more interested in stifling his First Amendment right to free speech than fairly enforcing the law. There haven’t been any findings of wrongdoing, according to the complaint. Musk and Tesla asked the court for a “course correction” including a conference to discuss the SEC’s alleged failure to pay as well as the frequent investigations. They hoped the court would put the claimed harassment “to an end” while forcing the SEC to pay shareholders. We’ve asked the SEC for comment. The government body has made repeated inquiries into Musk’s tweets in the years since the settlement, over posts it found concerning. While it’s true the SEC hasn’t found Musk at fault for those tweets, officials still claimed Musk was discussing key financial topics (such as production levels and stock valuations) without the pre-approval required under the 2018 agreement. Tesla argued these tweets weren’t covered under the terms of the deal, but it’s safe to say the situation isn’t entirely clear-cut. |
Voltron Data grabs $110M to build startup based on Apache Arrow project | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | was launched last year by former employees from NVidia, Ursa Computing, BlazingSQL and the co-founder of . The group came together to build a company on top of Arrow to help companies that don’t want to deal with the headaches of managing an open source project on their own. Voltron Data co-founder and CEO Josh Patterson said that at its heart, the startup is a standards company that aims to spread the word on the power of data and analytics standardization via Apache Arrow. “Our goal is to take the existing data analytics ecosystem and improve it based on standards. And we’ve seen this time and time again in other industries when standards emerge, they become accelerators, enabling more efficient things to happen to make the community as a whole better by building these common building blocks. And we’re about bringing modularity and composability to the data analytics ecosystem,” Patterson explained. The standards part is where Apache Arrow comes into play. The project describes it thusly: “Apache Arrow is a software development platform for building high performance applications that process and transport large data sets. It is designed to both improve the performance of analytical algorithms and the efficiency of moving data from one system (or programming language) to another.” Patterson said that as data and analytics have evolved, developers have had to connect to a growing number of systems across a variety of languages. It’s a huge challenge, one that Arrow is trying to solve. “What if I wanted to connect this system and that system? I don’t want to rewrite all the glue code to make it happen. And that’s really what Arrow does very well. Arrow has become this de facto standard for connecting systems together,” he said. The open source tool has proved amazingly popular, with the company reporting more than 42 million downloads per month. It has companies like Snowflake, Databricks, Google and Microsoft all adopting it. That’s incredible traction for any open source project, and it’s no wonder they decided to build a company on top of it. Perhaps that also explains why venture capitalists are throwing money at the project. The company has garnered $110 million in seed and A money, a huge amount, even by today’s inflated investments. Patterson said that his company took the money for a practical reason. The problem they are trying to solve is difficult and multi-faceted, and they need to invest to accelerate as quickly as possible. “We don’t want [the open source growth] to hit this stagnation point where it’s [only well suited] for power users and experts, but it’s not conducive for this next wave of users and systems builders and library builders. We want to figure out where the pain points are, so we can build more tooling and libraries around that, and be even more readily available,” he said. The company is working on its first commercial product. While Patterson was not quite ready to talk about it in detail yet, it will involve a managed version of Apache Arrow for that second group that may not want to deal with the raw open source. With a distributed workforce, the company already has almost 100 employees and is actively hiring. For Patterson, who is Black, building a diverse and inclusive company is top of mind. “Inclusivity is really important to us, and we’re seeing that as we’ve had new employees across the spectrum of race, gender and sexual orientation coming to Voltron Data feeling like they can be heard, feeling empowered,” he said. From a pure numbers perspective, he said they have 20% African American, 15% Hispanic, 15% Asian and roughly 20% women, adding that as the company grows, they are continually working to improve diversity across the board. The funding breaks down to a $22 million seed round and an $88 million Series A. The A round was led by Walden Catalyst with participation from BlackRock, Anthos Capital, Battery Ventures, Coatue, GV, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nepenthe Capital, Redline and The Factory. For the seed, Black Rock and Walden led with participation from Lightspeed, GV and The Factory. |
Beem, an app that lets you livestream yourself in AR, raises $4 million | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | What’s the next step beyond Zoom calls and FaceTime? How about beaming yourself from one device to another in real time using augmented reality? That’s the premise behind a startup called , which is today announcing its first consumer app, $4 million in seed funding and its longer-term plan to become a communications technology for the AR glasses of the future. Consumers today know AR technology thanks to interactions with Snapchat Lenses and TikTok Effects, through mobile games like Pokémon GO and by visualizing products they’re considering buying — like , or via an AR filter But using AR for telepresence, as Beem intends, isn’t a common use case. Surprisingly, the idea for the startup comes from a founder who grew up without much access to technology. Beem CEO Janosch Amstutz describes his parents as “hippies” who lived in a small Australian beachside town, , where they raised cows and chickens, used solar power, collected rainwater and didn’t even have a telephone — just a two-way radio that the community would share. “We put a very big emphasis on face-to-face communication,” he explains of his alternative childhood environment’s lack of modern technology. Meanwhile, communications continued to evolve from home telephones to cell phones to Skype. “But then we kind of stopped,” says Amstutz. “The premise of Beem is that there’s going to be an inevitable next step in the way that humans communicate digitally, which is more credible and more immersive than doing a video call.” Beem Amstutz initially rebelled against his upbringing by working in physical commodities trading in the steel industry. But he didn’t find the work fulfilling. He eventually realized he wanted to do something else — and specifically, he wanted to tackle the problem of evolving modern communication. The founder put together a team of computer scientists and researchers to work on the concept, which today includes Chief of Product , previously product head at AR pioneer ; and co-founder and CTO, whose background is in applied mathematics and physics. After its official founding in 2017, Beem (previously ) did not fully target the consumer market. Instead, it developed AR projects and campaigns for brands, businesses and other organizations, Vogue, Carolina Herrera, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, H&M, Forever 21, Warner Music, LADBible (in partnership with KSI and Craig David), the British Army, TEDx and several others. During this time, Beem’s technology was used to stream an artist’s music in AR, deliver a live conference to users’ homes in AR, create “virtual catwalks” and create other sorts AR experiences for its clients. https://youtu.be/-IHuY7Sxa-A This experience allowed Beem to stay afloat while testing and furthering its technology, but the company never intended to be a development studio, says Amstutz — it wanted to deliver a consumer experience. With the Beem mobile app, which soft-launched in its latest iteration last month, the goal is to put this sort of live AR — or 3D-like experience, if you prefer — into consumers’ hands. To work, users download the Beem app for or and position themselves in the camera’s viewfinder either by mounting the phone to capture their full frame or by having a friend record them. Beem takes the video, segments the human in the video away from the background using its proprietary computer vision algorithms and cloud infrastructure, processes the asset in real time and packages it for the viewer. The recipient receives the link, which they open in their mobile browser where they’re directed to a microsite that’s spun up for each different web AR-style interaction, then spun back down when the communication is finished. Here, Beem accesses the phone’s accelerometer, which allows the calculations on the server to skew and morph the video feed of the sender in your own space to give you the illusion of three-dimensionality. The recipient holds their phone up and places the “live beamed” person in their own space by tapping a dot on the floor — much as you do with other AR tools. Beem The end result is what appears to be a sort of hologram of the person in your room, talking to you in real time. You can pinch and zoom on the person and move them around, but you can’t view them from all sides, since that wasn’t captured in the original video. The quality is not as good as, say, or , but it’s clever because it’s live. “We don’t need to be super technical…We need the mind of the viewer to believe what they’re seeing is a real human and that’s enough,” says Amstutz. Beem users can use the app to host “conferences,” like AR Zoom calls, where they stream the holographic version of themselves up to 25 people with two-way audio. They can also launch one-way livestreams to a larger audience, or send pre-recorded video messages. Beem app Beem has filed for patents on the infrastructure of its engine, and specific patents on different pieces of its technology, like the video segmentation, its proprietary web experience and its method of creating 3D-like experiences without it “actually” being 3D. Two, so far, have been granted. To date, the app has been adopted by a few TikTokers, including , and , for content creation. In the U.K., Beem also partnered with an association for prep schools who trialed the technology for teacher-to-student communications, with plans for a 750,000-student rollout. Over Valentine’s Day, Beem users sent more than 1,500 AR messages. Beem now has a cadence of about 500 messages per day and has seen about 14.2 million views of “beems” over the past six weeks, the company says. The reality, however, is that Beem’s consumer use case is still somewhat cumbersome — you have to mount the phone or have someone hold it, record yourself and, when recording a message, there was a lag of a couple of minutes while it processes before your link can be shared. Beem app screenshot Amstutz, though, says Beem’s ideal use case won’t be the mobile phone. “The ideal circumstance for two-way telepresence to happen is wearing a set of augmented reality glasses and just having a tracking webcam in your room,” he explains. “So you could essentially voice command the glasses…and then the tracking webcam will know it’s time to track and record me, send me to you, and I will see you in my space at the same time and vice versa.” The company says Beem has a prototype of an AR glasses experience which it’s working on for a set of AR glasses, developed by an undisclosed FAANG company and major chip supplier. But ultimately, Beem wants to bring this system to any AR glasses in the future. Alongside its consumer app launch, Beem is announcing $4 million in seed funding from 5 Lion, Ascension Ventures, Grouport Ventures, Inertia Ventures, Lior Messika and other strategic angel investors. The funds will be put toward growing the team and further developing its product in readiness for AR glasses in consumer markets. “Innovation across AR is creating tremendous opportunities for a variety of different markets, and the potential for AR’s impact is colossal,” said Beem investor Lior Messika. “Beem’s technology creates the infrastructure through which AR can become truly accessible — and viral. The global shift to digital is occurring fast, and Beem is at the forefront,” he added. |
Backed by Accel, Minoan Experience is creating a new category of e-commerce called ‘native retail’ | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Imagine staying at an Airbnb and becoming so attached to a particular chair or tea set that you want to buy it. Instead of asking the property owner where it’s from and tracking it down, lets you order the product by scanning a QR code. Then it’s delivered to your home in a few days. The “native retail” startup announced today that it has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Accel. The company was founded by Marc Hostovsky and Shobhit Khandelwal, who worked together at Jet.com before the e-commerce marketplace was acquired by Walmart in 2016. During that time, Hostovsky worked closely with omnichannel teams — for example, e-commerce in Hoboken and San Bruno and the Stores team in Bentonville. “I realized pretty quickly that the best product experiences don’t happen on screens or shelves but instead happen ‘in the wild,’” he told TechCrunch. “In real moments where you’d actually use the product to assess whether you like something or not.” In late 2019, he stayed at an Airbnb and “became completely enamored with the furnishings. The bed was so comfortable, the knives were perfectly sharp and the host had done an amazing job optimizing counter space in the small kitchen.” Hostovsky and his partner lived in a small New York City apartment, so they took a lot of photos to replicate how the Airbnb space was laid out. “Then I sort of had this funny realization,” Hostovsky said, “’Huh… brands are spending billions of dollars on Facebook and Google ads just trying to get their products in front of consumers and here we are having an authentic experience with these products enough to feel inspired to buy it when we leave.” As it happens, Hostovsky left his job at Walmart to work at Minoan right before the pandemic hit the U.S. “What a time to take a leap and start a company at the intersection of hospitality and physical retail, two industries that were getting decimated,” he said. During the first two months of the company, travel was at a standstill, but gradually started picking back up by summer 2020. One of Minoan’s largest markets, the Hamptons, actually had a very busy season, with most of its short-term rental partners near 100% occupancy and charging higher rates due to demand. “The way people traveled changed but people started traveling again,” said Hostovsky. “I think the large push for flexible/remote work will result in a culture where ‘personal travel’ and ‘work’ aren’t oil and water anymore, and that’s where an experience like Minoan fits nicely between consumer and business.” Minoan co-founders Marc Hostovsky and Shobhit Khandelwal. Minoan Minoan partners with about 160 products brands, including Pottery Barn, Crate&Barrel, Society6 and Apotheke. Aside from providing an additional distribution channel, Hostovsky said working with Minoan can build brand loyalty. Most guests stay in Minoan spaces for three to four days and during that time, they are using products from Minoan partners every day. Then Minoan’s tech gives them an easy way to buy those products and also collect reviews. “There’s a lot of value to be captured there, especially in a time when only 9% of digital ads are viewed for more than one second,” said Hostovsky. Minoan currently has about 80 property partners, encompassing 1,800 spaces. This includes a network of more than 40 hotels, including properties like William Vale in Brooklyn, Lokal Hotels and Mint House 70 Pine. It is also focused on short-term rental properties listed on sites like Airbnb and Vrbo. The company operates throughout the United States, but has large groups of property partners in states like Texas, New York, California, Colorado, Tennessee and Ohio. Part of the funding will be used to expand Minoan’s geographical presence. For Minoan’s property partners, the company gives them a way to furnish spaces at below retail prices, which Hostovsky said many pay because of the hassle of purchasing wholesale. “Not only is it expensive, but it’s labor intensive, and if you’re an individual owner, it’s a huge burden,” he said. Minoan lets them save over 30% on items, plus they can earn a commission on whatever sells in their space, with Minoan taking care of the administrative side of the retail process. “We have a custom-built procurement platform where properties can search, purchase and track everything they need in one digital space,” Hostovsky said. “Typically, you’re doing this through each individual store you buy products from, but at Minoan we house all that in one portal.” Part of the new funding will be used on hiring in India, where Khandelwal is from. Minoan has offices in Hyderbad and Delhi there. “They’ll lead technology and product development across different elements of the platform,” Khandelwal said. “We are building our entire tech org in India, so it’s not a back office but our front office from a technology and innovation perspective. Everyone in the India team gets equity and salaries similar to the business folks in North America.” In a statement to TechCrunch, Accel partner Dan Levine said, “Retail has changed drastically over the last 10 years, and the way people shop has been the most disrupted. What drew us to Minoan was their end to end approach to retail, which typically companies are either consumer or business focused; Minoan has created an end-to-end native retail model that benefits both. We at Accel believe this format will blend the online/offline experience more than ever before and create better, more trusting shopping experiences consumers are demanding.” |
Metriport helps you take your quantified self to the next increment | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | Along comes , which aggregates all of your quantified-self data in one place, and adds clever features like mood tracking, medicine tracking and journaling. All your data lives locally on your device to protect your privacy, and the app can find correlations in your data to help you become a better you. Counting calories, summing steps, measuring your mood, proportioning your purchases, sizing your sleep span and enumerating the extent of your exercise — the quantified-self movement is becoming easier as our smartwatches, computers and other logging tools take some of the work off our hands. There’s a challenge, though: If you’re an obsessive tracker, you are running half a dozen apps that don’t talk to each other, and spotting patterns in the data can be hard. Does your period affect how sore you are after running? Does your mood affect how much you eat? Is there a correlation between how much coffee you drink or how much you walk and the quality of your sleep? Metriport can track it and lift the veil on patterns that hitherto were opaque. “We see this as the Swiss Army knife of tracking apps. Gone are the days where you need seven different apps for tracking — one for mood tracking, one for journaling, one for period tracking, one for health — With Metriport we put it all together in one privacy focused-platform, built around the concept of your personal data dashboard,” says Colin Elsinga, co-founder at Metriport. “So far, we built Metriport with no outside investment. My friend Dima and I have known each other since middle school; we are both developers and we’ve had a passion for health and fitness — mental health, especially. We were both using a lot of different tracking apps, and found them quite limiting.” The company is rejecting using ad tracking technologies, and stores all user data encrypted and locally on the device — even the developers can’t get to your data. The company also offers a premium plan, where it is possible to store your data on their servers. “Our cloud backups enables you to keep your data in case you lose your phone or want to move to a new device. You can opt out of that if you don’t want your data on our servers, and in any case, it is all encrypted. No one will ever see your data except for you,” says Elsinga. “W The company is bootstrapped so far, but suggests that once their user number starts climbing, they may develop a plan that requires more cash and some venture funding. “Growth is sort of a big goal for us, in terms of the actual product itself. We are working on a lot of exciting new features: In fact, we pushed an update live today that includes weather tracking. I have suffered from chronic migraines my whole life and now I can finally start tracking whether atmospheric pressure has an impact on my headache. I can just run the correlations insight and see whether it has a significant impact.” It’s still early days for Metriport, but the team is off to an impressive start with its and apps. In addition to all the standard, built-in measurements and data synchronizations, you can create your own custom measurements — severity of migraine, number of pancakes eaten, minutes of piano played — that can then be included in the correlations tracking. |
Mdundo eyes more telco partnerships after music streaming revenue growth from Tanzania, Nigeria deals | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Mdundo, an Africa-focused music streaming service, is banking on more partnerships with telcos across the continent to grow its earnings and user base. Last year, the company signed deals with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria, and Vodacom in Tanzania, which appear to be paying off after its user-base almost doubled as it added paying subscribers as a source of revenue. MTN and Airtel Nigeria have a combined customer-base of 124.5 million, while Vodacom Tanzania has 15.6 million subscribers, giving Mdundo access to a huge target audience. “This is a new revenue stream for us. When we listed the company in September 2020 we predicted that revenue from this revenue stream will account for 40% of revenue within a few years and this is still our forecast,” said founder Martin Nielsen. Mdundo users access music through USSD services on a bundled program (daily, weekly or monthly). The streaming service is also accessible through its website or app, which has more than 1 million downloads. By December 2021, Mdundo had 1.7 million international songs on its platform and 367,000 tracks uploaded by 122,000 African musicians, a 46 percentage point growth from December 2020. The company pays more than 50% of its income to music creators. The Kenya-based business was founded in 2013 and listed in the Nasdaq First North Growth Market — a Nasdaq Nordic division — in September 2020 to fast-track its growth across Africa. It has grown from a user base of less than one million in 2016 to 13.8 million by the close of 2021. It is planning to grow its user base past 18 million by mid this year. Paying subscribers accounted for 14% of Mdundo’s earnings in 2021, Nielsen said, as advertising revenue, from its free streaming service, grew by 63% after setting up sales teams in Nigeria and Tanzania to rapidly grow its commercial operations beyond Kenya. “We’re rapidly growing our commercial operation outside our home-market, Kenya. This allows us to be closer to advertising clients across the continent and, thereby, create awareness and educate around our unique advertising formats and reach,” he said. Mdundo co-founders Martin Moeller Nielsen (CEO) and Francis Amisi (Frasha), who is also an artist. Mdundo The company is also doubling down its commercial focus to Ghana and Uganda, and expects greater revenue growth this year following a new advertisement deal that saw it quadruple its monthly revenue from displayed advertisements to DKK225,000 ($34,581). Its overall income is also growing, doubling in the second half of 2021 to DKK 2.5 million ( $382,900) when compared to a similar period the previous year. Overall, it is projecting a 400% growth in revenue in its next full financial year. “The revenue growth is a result of scaling our sales operation to new markets,” said Nielsen. Across Africa there are more than 20 music streaming services, including Sweden’s Spotify, which is in 44 African countries after expanding to an additional 38 countries in the continent last year. Nigeria-headquartered Boomplay and Songa by Kenya’s telco Safaricom are other popular streaming products. Nielsen, however, is not worried about competition from new market entrants, noting that he is more disturbed by the prevalence of music piracy in Africa than anything else. In 2020 it partnered with anti-piracy specialists Audiolock to remove infringing links for African music from unlicensed websites. “We still see the biggest competition to our service as illegal consumption of music across the continent. This is still where the vast majority of people across Africa get their music from, unfortunately, and we aim to provide a great alternative to this.” |
Atommerce wants to scale its mental health platform with $16.7M funding | Kate Park | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Now, most of its users are millennials and Gen Z adult females in the country, Kim added. MiNDCAFE app |
What’s driving China’s autonomous vehicle frenzy? | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | industry first started seeing some traction around 2016, when a bunch of ambitious startups mushroomed following advances in lidar, computing and machine learning. But the nascent sector was still driving in low gear, as the people working on the tech mostly had computer science backgrounds, and there weren’t many with extensive experience in the automobile industry. Everyone wanted to build robotaxis at the time, recalls Hongquan Jiang, chairman and managing partner at Boyuan Capital, . “Back then, if you told people you were doing Level 2.5 or 3 [the human driver is expected to take over], you would be scorned. But people in the industry quickly realized Level 4 [the driver can take a nap in most circumstances] was still a distant dream,” Jiang told TechCrunch. Regardless, these founders’ ambitions kept them on the path, and the industry is finally seeing a resurgence in China. Unlike the previous generation of founders, the space is now seeing more automobile expertise flow in. This generation also seems to be more pragmatic, and rather than shooting for the stars, they’re focused on market demand. This focus is reaping fitting rewards for startups. The industry saw a period of unprecedented acceleration in 2021, with over $8.5 billion invested in robotaxi startups, self-driving truck developers, lidar makers, smart electric car manufacturers, and chipmakers focused on vehicle automation, . Investors these days have good reason to throw money at this industry, too: Sensors are getting cheaper and more capable, talent from the AI and automotive industries is coalescing, the government has introduced a slew of beneficial policies, and demand is rising as China prepares to cope with a . Momenta has a strategic partnership with the government of Suzhou, its home city, to put robotaxi fleets on the city’s roads. Momenta Like other sectors that depend on public infrastructure, companies working to put driverless taxis, trucks and buses on the road in China have benefited greatly from government support. |
Researchers warn that social media may be ‘fundamentally at odds’ with science | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | A special set of editorials published in today’s issue of the journal Science argue that social media in its current form may well be fundamentally broken for the purposes of presenting and disseminating facts and reason. The algorithms are running the show now, they argue, and the systems priorities are unfortunately backwards. by Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the basic disconnect with what scientists need and what social media platforms provide is convincingly laid out. “Rules of scientific discourse and the systematic, objective, and transparent evaluation of evidence are fundamentally at odds with the realities of debates in most online spaces,” they write. “It is debatable whether social media platforms that are designed to monetize outrage and disagreement among users are the most productive channel for convincing skeptical publics that settled science about climate change or vaccines is not up for debate.” The most elementary feature of social media that reduces the effect of communication by scientists is pervasive sorting and recommendation engines. This produces what Brossard and Scheufele call “homophilic self-sorting” — the ones who are shown this content are the ones who are already familiar with it. In other words, they’re preaching to the choir. “The same profit-driven algorithmic tools that bring science-friendly and curious followers to scientists’ Twitter feeds and YouTube channels will increasingly disconnect scientists from the audiences that they need to connect with most urgently,” they write. And there’s no obvious solution: “The cause is a tectonic shift in the balance of power in science information ecologies. Social media platforms and their underlying algorithms are designed to outperform the ability of science audiences to sift through rapidly growing information streams and to capitalize on their emotional and cognitive weaknesses in doing so. No one should be surprised when this happens.” “But it’s a good way for Facebook to make money,” said H. Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. Thorp, , told me that there are at least two distinct problems with the way scientists and social media interact these days. “One is that, especially with Twitter, scientists like to use it to bat things around and openly air ideas, support them or shoot them down — the things they used to do standing around a blackboard, or at a conference,” he said. “It was going on before the pandemic, but now it’s become a major way that kind of interchange happens. The problem with that, of course, is that there is now an enduring permanent record of it. And some of the hypotheses that get made and turn out to be wrong, overturned in the ordinary course of science, get cherry picked by people who are trying to undermine what we’re doing.” “The second is naivete about the algorithms, especially Facebook’s, which put a very high premium on disagreement and informal posts that spread disagreement. You know, ‘my uncle wore a mask to church and got COVID anyway’ — that’s going to beat out authoritative info every time,” he continued. As Brossard and Scheufele point out, the combination of these things puts scientists “at a distinct disadvantage…as some of the very few participants in public debates whose professional norms and ethics dictate that they prioritize reliable, cumulative evidence over persuasive power.” Sadly, there isn’t much anyone can do on the science side. Arguably the more they participate in the system, the more they reinforce the silos around themselves. No one is arguing that we should just give up — but we really need to acknowledge that the problem isn’t just a matter of the science community being less effective communicators on social media than peddlers of disinformation. Thorp also acknowledged that this is only the latest phase of growing anti-factual tendencies and politicization that goes back decades. “I think people tend to get a little more emotional about this without recognizing it’s a very simple thing: The political parties aren’t going to take the same position — and when one of those positions is scientifically rigorous, the other is going to be against science,” he explained. That the Democratic party is more often on the side of science is true enough, but it has also been on the other side with GMOs and nuclear power, he pointed out. The important thing is not who is for what, but that the two parties define themselves by opposition. “That’s a political party coming to the realization that it was more politically useful to be against science than to be for it,” he said. “So that’s another thing scientists are naive about, saying ‘we’re not getting our message across!’ But you’re up against this political machine that now has the power of Facebook behind it.” Brossard and Scheufele make a final parallel in the defeat of Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue — afterwards, no one called for special training to outplay supercomputers, and no one blamed Kasparov for not playing well enough. After the shock wore off, it was clear to everyone that we’d turned a corner not just in chess but in the possibilities of computing and algorithms. ( have evolved as well, as he told me a while back.) “The same understanding is now here for scientists,” they write. “It’s a new age for informing public debates with facts and evidence, and some realities have changed for good.” |
Daily Crunch: Tesla facing lawsuit after ‘hundreds’ of racial discrimination allegations | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, February 10, 2022! Trying new stuff is always risky, but I wanted to say thanks to everyone who came out today to watch Equity record live. Up next: Found, next Thursday! – And because I exist to test my editors’ patience, |
Indiegogo will designate legit crowdfunders with a ‘Trust-Proven’ badge | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Indiegogo has a trust problem. It’s something the company is keenly aware of. For years, the platform has been viewed by many as the destination for those campaigns that didn’t make it through the initial Kickstarter vetting process. As CEO Andy Yang told me in We’ve had our number of failures on our site, of campaigns that haven’t fulfilled or just, the campaigns have ghosted their backers, and we own up to that. Over the last two years, that’s been a major focus for us, of what can we do from a trust and safety perspective. It starts with education, making sure that the backers understand that crowdfunding is not shopping. It’s very visible in our checkout site, but again, Amazon and other companies have trained people, just click a button and I’m going to get it in two hours. In terms of trust, people that have been burned, absolutely. We own up to that. The platform is looking to address some previous shortcomings with a number of new initiatives, in an effort to “help backers make more informed decisions.” As far as those things go, the isn’t a huge change, but it’s a step toward fostering the kind of trust the firm has been looking to create between companies and backers. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve been home to thousands of successful campaigns, and the relationships we’ve built with these entrepreneurs are no small feat,” Indiegogo says in a blog post announcing the new feature. “We want to use the Trust-Proven Badge to highlight campaigners’ record of success, providing this information directly on the campaign pages so backers can make more informed decisions.” The company says it’s currently in the process of reviewing the track records of its most active campaigners and will start awarding the badges based on things like fulfillment, campaign management and positive feedback from backers. The move is part of a broader overhaul of Indiegogo’s Trust & Safety team, aimed at improving relations across the site. It comes during a time of upheaval for crowdfunding. In December, Kickstarter was greeted with wide-ranging user backlash over to decentralized blockchain technology. More recently, longtime rewards fulfillment provider TopatoCo announced the launch of its own crowdfunding service, . “We’ve been doing this long enough that we figure it’s time to cut out the middleman and make it easier on everyone involved by doing it all ourselves,” TopatoCo founder and CEO Jeffrey Rowland said of the new service. “Over the years we’ve shipped hundreds of thousands of things and we’re pretty good at it. We have great people working every day and two warehouses, several dozen computers, a van, and a forklift. We have so many rolls of those ‘fragile’ stickers. By shifting our crowdfunding and fulfillment totally in-house, it will allow us to make better deals for creators, streamline our internal processes, invest more into our community, and help the environment by not using blockchain for some reason.” |
Augmented reality finds a foothold in cars via safety features | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | The technology needed to electrify and automate cars is coming of age in tandem with the technology that powers augmented reality. Automakers keen on capturing the attention of their customers, and even attracting alternate forms of revenue, are considering the potential use cases of AR, now and in the future. The integrations that are coming to market today are less gimmicky than you’d expect, given the metaverse-fueled hype around AR, and are actually poised to be useful to drivers. Augmented reality safety features that can help drivers with navigation and detecting possible threats on the road are the first applications that the auto industry is seeing, and those deliver value now, providing an on-ramp to a future-proof business that anticipates a driverless future. A handful of software companies are racing to offer products for the growing sector and integrate their tech with OEMs. On Wednesday, Basemark, a Finnish company that specializes in automotive software, announced that its AR over-video application would now be available in some of the latest BMW iX models. The next day, , a subsidiary of Samsung that specializes in connected car technology and other IoT solutions, said it would be acquiring Apostera, a company whose AR software would help Harman expand its automotive offerings to provide an AR platform-as-a-product. “For us this was a really important acquisition, just because we feel there’s a tremendous change going through the industry, and it’s not only electrification,” Armin Prommersberger, senior vice president of product management in Harman’s automotive department, told TechCrunch. “Electrification is just the starting point. What’s really happening from our perspective is consumerization. The car is becoming much more than a transportation device from A to B.” Basemark’s integration with BMW and Harman’s acquisition of Apostera not only signal some of the players in the industry that are making their mark, but also what use cases we can expect to see from augmented reality in vehicles. Drivers with certain BMW i4 vehicles will experience augmented reality directly through their infotainment screen while they are using BMW’s navigation system, according to Tero Sarkkinen, CEO and founder of Basemark. The vehicle’s front-view camera will automatically send live footage of the street in front of the car to the touchscreen, where interactive arrows appear over the real-world environment to show the driver when and where they need to turn or if they should switch lanes. The screen will be split to also show the map alongside the video. There are of course other applications for this kind of tech, like heads-up displays (HUD), which appear over windshields so drivers don’t have to take their eyes off the road, Sarkkinen says. Apostera already has a , which is reactive enough to accurately stick to a driver’s real environment. The AR windshield on the Audis displays important information like the driving speed, traffic signs, the status of the driver assist system and navigation symbols as static displays. Drivers will also be able to perceive floating symbols to be about 30 feet away, and those will alert drivers to things like lane departure warnings or highlight an active car driving in front when in adaptive cruise control mode. Basemark is working toward using sensors to give drivers more information about their surroundings. At CES, the company displayed its AR with object detection prototype, which takes in raw camera and radar data and performs sensor fusion to help drivers when there’s low visibility to increase safety. Basemark is currently conducting pilots with other OEMs, so we might be seeing more of them in the future. Many of the impressive ADAS features on new vehicles are taking over an increasing number of driving tasks, but that doesn’t always put drivers at ease, says Andrey Golubinskiy, former CEO of Apostera and now senior director of Harman’s ADAS strategic business unit. “If you’re turning on some functionality, you as a driver don’t have an understanding of why the car behaves in a certain way,” Golubinskiy told TechCrunch. “So we solve it in the way that we constantly visualize what the car sees and provide object recognition for the driver. We also visualize what the car thinks, so you know what the car is going to do next.” Harman’s software offering, with Apostera’s IP integrated, will compute this information and visualize it for the driver and passenger so they know why the car might suddenly change lanes or try to avoid an obstacle. This helps to increase the trust, and therefore the usage of the already available ADAS systems in vehicles, says Golubinskiy. But it doesn’t stop at visual cues. The new ADAS unit at Harman is also working on adding audio warnings to accompany visual object recognition. “That’s pretty helpful because everything that goes through the ears ends up in your brain much faster and is processed much faster than any visual,” said Prommersberger. “So this kind of immersive combination of augmented reality, mixed reality, visuals and audio is the next evolutionary step. And now with our acquisition of Apostera, we have all the components in-house.” While Harman says its AR platform is already in the market with some customers, it’s able to continuously onboard new features with over-the-air updates. The company says its product is hardware, operating system and sensor-agnostic, so it’s designed to reuse data that’s coming in from any vehicle network. Down the line, in a future where self-driving is the norm, AR will allow passengers to engage with the surrounding of the vehicle, says Golubinskiy. “For example, you might drive through the Alps and see some beautiful churches or lakes, and you can engage with a touchscreen on the windows and get a different level of interaction,” said Golubinskiy. “The information is actually projected, and with a touchscreen you can touch, for example, the mountain and get information about the height or other information.” Cars with augmented reality options are still few and far between, but the trend we’re seeing with other in-car tech at the moment is to monetize smart vehicle offerings through subscriptions. At CES, Google and Amazon introduced new in-car features that enhance a car’s infotainment systems, even allowing things that are likely to become available through a monthly purchase. Last year, for things like OnStar, emergency services, ADAS systems and navigation to generate nearly $2 billion in revenue, with a potential to make as much as $25 billion for the company by the end of the decade. In a world where pandemic-related supply chain issues are causing delays in new vehicle production and automakers are spending more on electrifying, it’s easy to see how AR applications might be used to give automakers a new avenue to increased profits. |
Deepdub raises $20M for AI-powered dubbing that uses actors’ original voices | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Netflix’s Korean drama “Squid Game” was one of the dubbed series of all time, proving the massive potential for foreign-language programming to become a hit in overseas markets. Now, a startup called is capitalizing on the growing demand for localized content by automating parts of the dubbing process using AI technology. With its end-to-end platform, Deepdub can decrease the time it takes to complete a dubbing project, allowing content owners and studios to have results in weeks instead of months. What’s more, it does this by using just a few minutes of the actors’ voices — so the dubbed version sounds more like the original. The Tel Aviv startup has now closed on $20 million in Series A funding for its efforts, led by New York-based investment firm Insight Partners. Existing investors Booster Ventures and Stardom Ventures also participated in the round, alongside new investors at Swift VC. Deepdub was additionally backed by several angels, including Emiliano Calemzuk, former president of Fox Television Studios; Kevin Reilly, former CCO of HBO Max; Danny Grander, co-founder of Snyk; Roi Tiger VP, Engineering at Meta; plus Gideon Marks and Daniel Chadash. The company was founded in 2019 by two brothers, and , whose backgrounds included machine learning and AI expertise. The older brother, Ofir, “basically founded the machine learning division of the Israeli Air Force,” explains his younger brother Oz Krakowski, who’s also Deepdub’s CRO, having joined the startup at a later stage. (Ofir had in the unit, including head of data science and integration, chief architect and CTO of the AI branch, plus AI research and innovation manager.) The team’s youngest brother, Nir, meanwhile, has some 25 years of technology R&D expertise, including in cybersecurity roles, and had previously co-founded the . Entrepreneurial in nature, the brothers had been looking for a new business where they could leverage the knowledge they acquired over the years in a way that would bring the most value to consumers, says Oz. They landed on what became Deepdub after having conversations with several people in the industry. With Deepdub, the aim is to bridge the language barrier and cultural gaps of entertainment experiences using advanced AI technologies with an end-to-end platform for content creators, content owners, and distributors. That means Deepdub isn’t just involved in the actual dubbing process itself — it supports all other aspects of a dubbing project, including the translation, the adapting, and the mix. In other words, it’s not just an AI platform, it’s a full business that includes human experts at every step along the way to help oversee the work and make corrections, as needed. But Deepdub’s use of AI and machine learning is what makes it a unique solution in this space. Where a traditional dubbing process may take 15 to 20 weeks to convert a two-hour movie into another language, Deepdub can wrap the same project in just about four weeks. To accomplish this, Deepdub first takes two to three minutes of the original actors’ voice data and uses that to create a model that translates the characteristics of the original voices into the target language. And, notes Oz, Deepdub’s AI voices can “scream, shout, and do all those things that are very complicated for AI voices in general,” he says. “We basically cracked something that has not been done so far,” Oz adds. “You and I will not be able to tell this is a machine. This will entirely sound like a human voice.” The details as to how this process is being accomplished are the startup’s secret sauce — in other words, they’re not saying, beyond noting they’ve jumped ahead of the published academic research on the matter. The proof, Deepdub claims, is in the output, the investor backing and the studio relationships it’s gathered. For example, Deepdub recently entered into a multi-series partnership with streaming service Topic.com to dub their catalog of foreign TV shows into English. Deepdub also became the first company to dub an entire feature-length film into Latin American Spanish utilizing AI voices (“ “). And now, Deepdub says it’s working with both small and large Hollywood studios on projects, but isn’t able to say which ones due to non-disclosure agreements. There is, however, much debate over whether viewers should enjoy foreign language films and shows in their original language with subtitles, or the dubbed version. Netflix’s “Squid Game,” for example, may have seen a lot of dubbed streams, but there was controversy around how the dubbed version lacked accuracy when compared with the original Korean dialogue. Even “Squid Game’s” that viewers watch the subtitled version instead. One of the issues is that dubbed versions try to match the language to the movement of the actors’ lips so as not to detract from the viewing experience. But there’s an art to this — and it can be complicated to get right. Some dubs have to be stretched out or cut shorter using different words and phrases so that the dubbed speech is in line with the actor’s mouth movement, and this can slightly change the meaning of what was said as a result. Oz, of course, argues that the dubbed version is better than reading subtitles. “Some people are not as fluent in reading,” he points out. “And reading subtitles makes you look at the bottom of the screen…with subtitles, you find yourself sometimes rewinding just to watch what really happened because you missed it,” he says. In addition, the demand for dubbed content is growing as the streaming industry becomes more competitive. Being able to more easily convert titles into other languages can help expand a platform’s offerings without requiring direct investment in the production of new, original content or in the acquisition or licensing of other studios’ titles. It can provide more value from an existing catalog by allowing titles to reach global audiences. This trend is on the rise, too. Recently, Netflix COO and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters noted the streamer and had subtitled 7 million. “At that scale, we’re learning […] how to make that localization more compelling to our members,” he said. “We are accelerating to a world where AI is now augmenting humanity’s creative potential,” said George Mathew, managing partner at Insight Partners, who’s joining Deepdub’s board of directors with this round. “As the media industry continues to globalize, we see Deepdub’s AI/NLP-based dubbing platform as essential in scaling great content to audiences everywhere. We believe Deepdub represents the next great leap forward in global content distribution, engagement and consumption,” he added. The startup said it will use the funds to double its current team of 30 full-time employees, most of whom are based in Tel Aviv. It’s in sales and marketing to help increase brand awareness and global market reach, as well as researchers and engineers to improve its AI engine and further develop its platform. |
Create a social media punch list for cryptocurrency marketing | John Biggs | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | officially began allowing crypto advertisers to . This quiet but important change meant that a long-closed marketing avenue for crypto products was now open. But what are best practices for crypto marketers in general? And is the platform worth exploring for crypto and NFT projects? First, let’s understand just what is allowed on Facebook and other platforms. Facebook allows some crypto companies to advertise without submitting proof of financial licenses. These include crypto tax services, events, blockchain news and wallets. What’s interesting, however, is you probably haven’t seen many of these ads popping up on social media at all, a testament to the long-running contention between crypto marketers and platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Further, if you want to advertise mining hardware, cryptocurrency exchanges or trading platforms, or even a wallet that allows you to buy, sell, or swap crypto, you will need a BitLicense (if you’re in New York) or a FinCEN Money Services Business license (in the rest of the U.S.). For international projects, you can find your requirements on . But just because you can advertise on Facebook doesn’t mean you should. Many marketers have given up on Facebook entirely. “What’s Facebook?” asked Itai Elizur of . “I think the crypto ‘watercooler’ is Twitter, but the real opportunity is SEO/organic, as we see search volumes increasing while Google keeps penalizing many crypto news sites. This means there is a place for brands to capture that high-quality user intent traffic.” Elizur doesn’t believe paid ads on Facebook or Twitter work for crypto projects, which makes things much harder for traditional marketers to take on these kinds of gigs. Crypto marketing is a very new field. A few years ago, PR professionals would avoid crypto entirely, but now they’re running to well-heeled clients who may or may not have a real business model. And they’re finding out that it is wildly hard to get the attention they once got for other tech products like gadgets and software. “Paid social does have a place for driving awareness for blockchain and crypto projects, but there are a lot of challenges in the space right now,” said Rachel Stoll, founder of Persephone Digital. “Specifically, NFT social is filled with pay-to-play opportunities for promotion, giveaways, or pinned posts across various subreddits and Discords without any real transparency. Most of our clients who do these types of paid placements as one-offs don’t see success, and I suspect that is because the people selling these spots are relying on their bot-driven following.” |
With steady growth, Egnyte reaches $150M ARR and looks to future IPO | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | After 14 years, it’s hard to keep calling a startup. It’s more a wily veteran private company with steady growth, one that might have taken 12 years to reach , but took just two more to reach $150 million. It could surpass $200 million this year, and Egnyte CEO and co-founder says that its next milestone could be an IPO. Like most CEOs, he’s vague on the timing of such an event, but he believes that it’s coming at some point, possibly this year. Jain told TechCrunch that in the last year or two he has had interest from companies wanting to take him public via a SPAC or private equity firms, who would feast on a SaaS company with 35%-40% growth, wanting , but that is not the direction he wants to take. He wants very badly to become a traditional public company whenever the timing is right. “It’s mainly the macroeconomic conditions that can impact when you go public. If the market is frozen, it doesn’t matter what your financials are, but I am absolutely committed to going public,” he said. A big part of that is that he wants to pay back the people who have stood by him — early investors and employees who have patiently watched the company grow slowly, but steadily without taking short cuts. There’s also a personal reason why he wants to do it. He says as an immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1993, he sees building a successful company that enters the public markets as a huge milestone for him personally. “I still wear that immigrant chip on my shoulder. I want to take a company public. I want to put a stamp on the middle of my forehead to say this guy could take a company public after building it from scratch, and he built a great public company,” he said. Jain has always taken pride in building a financially responsible company with steady growth, while avoiding the cash burn we have seen some companies spending to drive fast growth. And he says he is starting to see more alignment with that approach from investors, especially as we find ourselves in a more volatile market. “[More recently], I’m seeing a major shift where our fiscal prudence is getting more recognition than ever before.” That includes a growth rate of 25% to 35% in the last five years, along with gross margins in the 70s and improving retention metrics, and the fact that three out of the last five years they’ve been cash flow positive. “I’m building a fiscally responsible growth company. I’m not a high flier where I might start with 90% or 70% [growth that will] keep going down. My growth rate is accelerating ARR-wise, growing from 18% to 26% to 30%, and it’s going to go higher. That story is getting a lot of [attention],” he said. Egnyte has been fueling its growth in recent years by adding a layer of on top of its content storage and collaboration products on which the company was originally built. Over the last several years the company has found success with that combination, especially in three key verticals — life science, construction and financial services. Those three categories have been driving the company’s growth with a three-year ARR compound annual growth rate of 59%, 29% and 24%, respectively. He said for now he is not tempted to expand that vertical strategy beyond adding a government vertical some time in the next year. He said they are working on achieving FedRamp certification ahead of that goal. There are also plans to create products designed specifically for these verticals to continue pushing the growth. Egnyte is an unusual SaaS company. It has been built with slow and steady growth into a viable company with growing revenue that could hit $200 million in ARR this year. That kind of balanced and low-risk approach could prove attractive to public market investors whenever the company chooses to go public. |
null | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 17 | null |
In Hollywood, everything gets a reboot — even MoviePass | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | MoviePass’ 2.0 kickoff press conference got off to a suitably rocky start. After a high energy introduction montage of upcoming film trailers, founder and new owner Stacy Spikes took the stage amid some audio issues, eventually switching over to a handheld mic. Say what you will about the firm’s previous struggles, but Spikes has learned to laugh at things (a bit), quickly clicking into an image of the Hindenburg on the slide deck behind him as a kind of shorthand for how things had previously played out. The entrepreneur devoted the first few minutes of the Lincoln Center event to unpacking some of what went wrong with the firm. “First we’re going to talk about basically what happened,” he explained with a laugh. The slide advanced to a shot of MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe and Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth smiling and holding up MoviePass cards. Spikes waved off what sounded like jeers from the friendly audience. “A lot of people lost money, a lot of people lost trust,” he explained. “There were a lot of people who were hurt and disappointed, and I was one of those people.” Less than three years after acquiring the company, Helios and Matheson declared Chapter 7, sealing MoviePass’ fate in the process. MoviePass In a perfectly 2022 startup twist, Spikes says he was informed that MoviePass was back on the market by a documentary crew making a film about the company’s admittedly spectacular rise and fall. Twenty-one days after making a bid, a bankruptcy court approved the purchase. We shortly after the news broke last November and he offered the following very blunt assessment of the app’s technical issues: That wasn’t technical, because it was intentional. When I was CEO, the MoviePass app worked great. It functioned. Peopled loved the ease of service. I can go wherever I want, I can walk up to any theater. We had a larger footprint than Fandango and Movie Tickets combined. In any theater, probably except for drive-ins or cash-only, you could use MoviePass. So that ease of use and simplicity was perfect. We worked a lot of years to get that that right. Everything that transpired after that was intentional. Those weren’t technical issues. Them deciding to pull AMC Theaters, or your app not working fully were not technical issues. It’s clear those old wounds won’t heal overnight, but today’s event was about the form MoviePass 2.0 will take when it launches (according to plans) this summer. It also found Spikes putting out a call for in the relaunch. The service’s site has a signup form for those interested in investing. Spend enough and you can score a lifetime membership. In a sense, the original version was a victim of its own successes, growing at an unsustainable rate. Spikes’ presentation attempted to walk the line between modest growth plans, while laying out a “moonshot” of facilitating 30% of all theatrical sales by 2030. MoviePass At the core of the new service is a credit system — one MoviePass says is fostered by underlying web3 technologies (without laying out too many details on that front). Effectively, films will cost a different number of credits depending on a variety of variables, including whether you chose to see a film, say, on a Tuesday afternoon or a Friday night. Credits will roll over monthly and can be traded. Users can also spend more credits to bring a friend. MoviePass refers to it as a “virtual currency.” It’s one that users can earn by watching ads through Preshow — another Spikes-founded firm. of the feature back in 2019 thusly: Spikes demonstrated this feature for me last week, showing me how his face unlocked the PreShow app. Once he’d chosen the film he wanted to watch, he was presented with a package of video ads that were specifically selected to run with that movie — and any time he looked away from the screen or moved too far away from his phone, the ads would stop playing. (Apparently the sensitivity can be dialed up or down depending on user feedback.) The visual of an ad that stops the moment a user stops looking is certainly a jarring one — and something that’s already drawn its share of dystopian comparisons. But it’s also probably the future of ad monetization, if we’re being honest here for a minute. In addition to all of that, the new MoviePass is also opening a signup for theaters to partner with the service. It says a number are currently on-board, including New York’s Angelika. |
So long, powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | As of this afternoon, if you try to go to — the confusing URL that used to host the internet’s favorite daily word puzzle — the website will redirect to The New York Times’ website. There, we’re greeted with an uncannily familiar webpage, yet something feels slightly amiss, until you realize: the title “Wordle” now sports The New York Times’ signature typeface, a departure from the classic we’ve grown to expect. Screenshot by TechCrunch It was that The New York Times announced it would purchase Josh Wardle’s viral hit for an amount of money in the “low seven figures.” But already, the legacy publisher is making moves — a URL redirect! Even three hours ago, when The New York Times published a list of for Wordle, they hyperlinked to the old “power language” URL — perhaps those writers are as nostalgic as we are. We knew this was coming, and the changes to the game are so subtle that you might not even realize it at first (now, there’s a hamburger menu in the upper left corner that will direct you to other New York Times games). But at least at TechCrunch, we grew fond of that strange URL. We loved powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle because it was so counterintuitive, so clearly not designed to go viral. No one agonized over search engine optimization and discoverability, yet it blew up anyway. Even if you had heard about Wordle from a friend, you might Google it and be confused about whether that “power language” website is where you’re supposed to go — maybe you’d think it was an app and accidentially download some kind of fake. Why powerlanguage? We did, thankfully, ask Wardle about the origin of his online persona when we talked to him , which must feel like a lifetime ago for the suddenly-sought-after coder. “That’s just a username I’ve used online for a long time, which originates from mishearing someone,” Wardle told TechCrunch. “Someone was berating my friends and me in my youth. We were being told off for swearing at each other. I thought he said, ‘power language.’ In retrospect, he was saying ‘foul language,’ and I misheard it, but I was so delighted by the idea of swearing being called ‘power language’ and just kind of ran with it in a way you do when you’re 16 or whatever.” Here’s the bad news, though — while the web migration retains your gameplay statistics, some users are reporting that it’s resetting their daily streak (Yesterday, mine reset. But now, it’s back — so, don’t give up hope!). That sucks, but maybe this is a chance to untether ourselves from the necessity of perfection, allow ourselves to guess a really bad first word tomorrow, and simply bask in the power of language — how simply arranging and rearranging letters can offer us such joy, which we share with our friends as a daily ritual. Or angry-tweet about it — that’s also acceptable. |
Disney+ outshines Netflix with 11.8M new subscribers in Q1 and strong forecast | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Disney+ added 11.8 million new subscribers last quarter to reach 129.8 million subscribers, Disney as part of its Q1 2022 earnings release, and said it’s still on track to reach 230 to 260 million subscribers by 2024. The company’s quarter beat projections after only adding 2 million subscribers in the previous quarter. Disney broke down the streaming service’s global subscriber count by domestic and international categories. Disney+ has 42.9 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada and has 41.1 million internationally. It also has 45.9 million Disney+ Hotstar subscribers, which is a collaborative service offering between Disney and Star India’s existing streaming service. The streaming service’s growth topped Wall Street’s expecations of around 7 million new subscribers. It may have also eased investor concerns about the state of the streaming industry after which delivered its lowest subscriber growth since 2015, with just 8.3 million new additions compared with the expected 8.5 million. As for Disney’s other streaming services, Hulu added 6.6 million new subscribers to reach 45.3 million subscribers and ESPN+ added 4.2 million subscribers to reach 21.3 million. Total subscriptions across Disney’s streaming portfolio reached 196.4 million. Disney’s stock popped by 8% on news of the company’s strong earnings, which also saw . Speaking to investors during the company’s earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said Disney+’s success during the quarter was largely due to a combination of organic growth and new content. Over the past quarter, Disney+ launched several big-name titles, including Oscar-nominated “Encanto,” “Eternals,” “Hawkeye” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” Chapek said the company reached its goal of releasing one new title each week and that it plans to double this content target. In addition, Chapek revealed that the new Star Wars Disney+ series, “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” which picks up a decade after “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,” will be released on May 25. The series features the return of Ewan McGregor as the younger Obi-Wan and stars Hayden Christensen, Moses Ingram, Joel Edgerton, Kumail Nanjiani, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend and more. Another Star Wars Disney+ series, “Andor,” is expected the launch sometime this year. The series will see Diego Luna reprise his “Rogue One” role as Cassian Andor. It will also feature Stellan Skarsgård, Adria Arjona, Fiona Shaw, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, Genevieve O’Reilly and more. Obi-Wan Kenobi, a limited Original series, starts streaming May 25 on . — Star Wars (@starwars) Disney+’s new subscriber numbers come as the streaming service is in 42 additional countries and 11 territories in Europe, the Middle East and Africa this summer. Notable new countries include South Africa, Turkey, Poland and the United Arab Emirates. Disney hasn’t specified the exact dates that the service will launch in these new countries and hasn’t shared information regarding regional pricing, but will likely do so in the coming months. Currently, Disney+ is available in 64 countries, including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Disney that it plans to more than double the number of countries Disney+ is available in to over 160 by its fiscal 2023. The company plans on expanding its direct-to-consumer streaming business to more global markets and is creating a new International Content and Operations group to aid in this push. Disney+ in late 2019 and has spent the past couple of years competing with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and several other streaming services. The streaming service has been able to make a name for itself in the streaming space, largely due to its Marvel and Star Wars content. As for ESPN+, Chapek revealed during an interview with that Disney is going to bid on the rights to be NFL’s Sunday Ticket. DirecTV’s contract as the exclusive provider for NFL Sunday Ticket is set to expire after the 2022 NFL season and many companies, including and , are in early talks about a deal. Chapek outlined that sports programming is a pivotal part of the company’s streaming strategy. |
Virtual events platform Hopin cuts 12% of staff, citing goal of ‘sustainable growth’ | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Hopin, a virtual events platform often lauded for its rapid-scale growth amid the pandemic, has cut 138 full-time employees, or 12% of staff, as well as some contractors, according to multiple sources. A Hopin spokesperson, who confirmed the layoffs to TechCrunch, also confirmed that employees impacted by Hopin’s layoffs will receive three months of compensation, health benefits and their laptops. The company also removed the one-year cliff for stock vesting and is using RiseSmart, a recruitment agency, to help them with job hunting. “Following unprecedented growth and several acquisitions, we are reorganizing to align with our goals for greater efficiency and sustainable growth,” the company said in a statement to TechCrunch. “It’s not easy to part ways with teammates, and we’re deeply grateful for the impact they’ve had while at Hopin.” According to a screenshot obtained by TechCrunch, Hopin CEO posted a statement in Hopin’s Slack about the reorganization. “We are committed to becoming more efficient while ensuring we have the required financial discipline and organizational rigor,” the co-founder wrote. He also pointed out that the layoffs were to “solve overlaps and duplications that crept into the business” following rapid growth and acquisitions. Notably, Hopin acquired five companies in just 2021, The statement strikes a different tone than merely 11 months prior, when Hopin . Then Boufarhat told TechCrunch that “his company intends on being operationally IPO-ready next year.” The venture-backed startup amassed up to $1 billion in known venture capital over a two-year window, from top investors including Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Accel, Slack Fund, Coatue, Salesforce Ventures and others, Reporter , who broke news earlier today that layoffs were underway at the unicorn, noted that “Hopin’s biggest problem is how they were blindsided by demand during the pandemic and were unprepared for the post-COVID world.” It’s a similar story — a startup loses discipline in pursuit of rapid growth to keep up with pandemic-amplified demand — that we’ve seen ripple across other industries over the past weeks. Peloton has been perhaps the harshest signal of this easy come, easy go trend, this week and removing its CEO John Foley from the helm of the company. The move comes after the fitness hardware company had to halt production of treadmill and bike products, due to slowing demand from consumers. |
Astra’s first rocket launch from Florida goes awry | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Astra launched its first rocket from Florida’s “Space Coast” today, with a liftoff from Space Launch Complex 46 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It was the startup’s second attempt after an earlier one was scrubbed on Monday due to a technical issue, and this time the rocket got off the pad — but unfortunately, the payloads didn’t make it to orbit. According to the company, the rocket encountered an issue during flight that meant it didn’t get a chance to deliver any of its payloads to their target destination. That means NASA’s four CubeSats on board will be lost. Astra was awarded this contract under , and it was intended to show the efficacy of a low-cost alternative light-load rocket delivery to space for small payloads. We experienced an issue during today's flight that resulted in the payloads not being delivered to orbit. We are deeply sorry to our customers and the small satellite teams. More information will be provided after we complete a data review. — Astra (@Astra) During Astra’s live launch webcast, something appeared to have gone wrong shortly after the cut-off of the rocket’s main engine and separation of the booster and upper stages of the vehicle. The upper stage appeared to be tumbling out of control on the video feed before it cut out. Astra’s approach has focused on mass producing small rockets at a higher volume than its competitors in the industry, with a focus on speed and efficiency. Astra CEO Chris Kemp has that it is fully aware it could incur a higher failure rate than competitors as a trade-off for its lower-cost approach, and that that is baked into the business model. However, Astra has now had a couple of failures in relatively close proximity — both after going public on the NYSE via a SPAC merger. The last one happened in August, when its first . Astra did successfully launch in November, however. |
OnlyFans of NFTs will like this profile picture update | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Who’d you think was going to by making NFT profile pictures a thing? If you guessed OnlyFans — the NSFW creator monetization platform that’s strangely trying to despite — you win! Until you remember that OnlyFans is doing NFT profile pictures now, which means maybe no one wins (except for the intersection of people who both love crypto and also want to compensate NSFW creators for their work?). Per a report from , this feature has been in the works since December. TechCrunch was able to reach OnlyFans to confirm the report. On OnlyFans, only NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain will be supported, and they will be denoted by an Ethereum icon. When users click on an NFT profile picture, they will see more information about the digital asset from OpenSea. Newly installed OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan said, “This feature is the first step in exploring the role that NFTs can play on our platform.” OnlyFans NSFW content from the platform last year, which would have upended creators’ livelihoods — this news came in light of changing regulations. But OnlyFans the decision after revealing that the changes were “no longer required due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators,” the company at the time. Still, this was a wake-up call for OnlyFans creators that the platform might pull the rug out from under them, at any moment, depending on the whims of credit card companies. But the thing is, helping sex workers maintain a stable income is actually not a bad . One former OnlyFans creator, Allie Rae, is now working on , a crypto-centric OnlyFans alternative. Along with Twitter and OnlyFans, has also tested an NFT profile picture feature, while is very publicly flirting with the idea. “We believe new technologies like blockchain and NFTs can allow creators to build deeper relationships with their fans,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan wrote , echoing Ami Gan’s statements to Reuters. “Our mission is to empower creators to own their full potential,” the OnlyFans CEO said. |
And just like that, Peloton is experiencing a correction | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | minute since a publicly traded hardware company experienced a valuation correction as dramatic as Peloton’s. As a former hardware founder and investor, I can’t help but feel sorry for the no-mercy hill climb the company finds itself in. Peloton hasn’t been able to catch a break, even in an era where working out at home became a much better idea than sharing equipment at the nearest gym. After hitting a 52-week peak of $155.52 per share, the company’s stock crashed 84% in value in just a few short months. It’s nothing short of incredible, given that it was once a darling of Wall Street and customers alike. While it’s hard to point at a single point of failure, the company’s streak of bad luck has been so spectacular that it’s not too soon to ask if gross mismanagement might be at play, and some . So far, the story goes like this: Peloton users’ private account data was , GPS coordinates were accidentally in users’ profile pictures, products were after the tragic death of a 6-year-old, and two different TV dramas showed characters getting hurt while using a Peloton, followed by a textbook example of bumbled crisis management. The company’s public market journey has been far from calm. Peloton filed for an IPO back in 2019, targeting a price range of $26-$29 per share for a valuation of up to $1.2 billion. Eventually, it listed at $29 per share, only to struggle alongside other hardware IPOs of the time. Peloton built up a cult following even before we all went into lockdown, but the pandemic helped fuel a meteoric rise in value and investor adulation. But even as its stock price climbed and subscriptions soared, analysts seem to have read the writing on the wall: They gradually downgraded it from “buy” to “hold” before cutting their rating to a “sell.” The company appears to have ultimately failed to bolster its long-term financial health during its time in the spotlight. This week, Peloton announced that longtime CEO John Foley was stepping down. Former Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy will take the helm. McCarthy was the CFO of Netflix from 1999 to 2010, the tail end of the DVD years before the company became a streaming giant. With a resume that lists board experience at Pandora, Eventbrite, Wealthfront, Spotify and Instacart, he’s facing a hell of a ride as he tries to right the ship at Peloton. One thing is for certain: Peloton needs a beast of a turnaround to save its bacon. Armed with a team from McKinsey to see what can be salvaged, McCarthy must pool his available resources to chart a new course for the morale-battered company. So, what happened? Let’s take a closer look. In 2019, Peloton endured lots of bad press — deservedly so. A TV ad seemed to be a turning point, coming around the same time the company reported that its churn rate had doubled. In a SaaS universe where customer retention is one of the most important metrics, that’s not a good look. Once news broke at the end of 2020 that vaccines were coming to market, fitness stocks arrested their free fall, and a few companies that saw their fortunes rise during the pandemic were left scratching their heads. Zoom and Peloton both took a beating, and while there’s an easy case to be made for remote meetings, an exercise bike that sells for nearly $2,000 and comes with a relatively expensive subscription is not nearly as essential. As TechCrunch’s Alex Wilhelm , “Companies are worth the present value of their future cash flows, so when the latter part of that equation changes, the former does as well.” Peloton launched apps on Android TV and (much later) on Apple TV with $13-per-month subscriptions in 2020, seemingly in a bid to cash in on the pandemic home exercise boom for people who didn’t own its hardware, and that it was going to offer a lower-end treadmill and a higher-end bike. It . |
After Zambia, Kenya explores possibility of a digital currency | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Kenya’s central bank has called on the public to share their views, before May 20th, on the possibility of adopting a digital currency, just one day after it emerged that Zambia is also testing its viability too. (CBDC), dubbed the eNaira, in October last year while Ghana is said to be at an advanced stage of rolling out its e-cedi. The is also carrying out research on digital currencies. The CBDCs, unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, are developed by central banks and pegged on countries’ fiat currencies. The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has today issued as the basis for a public discussion, noting that cost reduction, interoperability and enhanced cross-border payments would be the main drivers for the digital currency’s adoption in the country. The CBK said that mobile money (e-money), which East Africa’s biggest economy pioneered in 2007, has already helped the country to enhance access to financial services — one of the value propositions of digital currencies. “The trend in Kenya’s domestic payments indicates the existence of a digital currency (e-money) that is robust, inclusive and highly active. Therefore, the consideration to introduce a CBDC in the payments system in Kenya would not majorly focus on enhancing access to financial services given the existing and growing penetration of mobile money,” said the CBK. Kenya’s 38 million mobile money subscribers transacted a total of $55 billion during the first 11 months of last year, according to CBK data. This is a 20% growth from a similar period in the previous year. “Looking to the horizon, it will be critical to connect our payment systems across the region and globally. Existing proposals indicate that CBDC might hold the potential to achieve this interoperability,” said the CBK. The CBK said that a digital currency that is compatible with others could play a role in improving cross-border payments, which are currently slow and expensive. According to the IMF, discussions on how CBDCs could be used for cross-border payments are ongoing but this, too, has potential risks. “Adverse macroeconomic implications, such as increased currency substitution and vulnerability to financial shocks, are possible as retail CBDC becomes available across borders,” said the in the paper released yesterday. To date, nine countries have launched a digital currency, with Nigeria being the first outside the Caribbean — 14 are in the pilot stage while 87 others are exploring it. |
Super Bowl, Spot | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | things arrive in fits and starts. Last week’s newsletter left me stumbling to cram everything into the allotted column space. Things are considerably more quiet this week, which can only mean that we’re heading for another deluge. Hey robotics world, if you could spread out the news a bit more, you’d be doing me a solid. Still, plenty of stuff to discuss this week, from radiation detection to some familiar robots going full-on frat bro. We’re kicking things off with another interview this week. This time it’s a conversation with SoftBank Robotics Senior Vice President & General Manager Brady Watkins, who heads up SoftBank Robotics America. Watching the firm’s operations in the space has been fascinating from the outside. Softbank Robotics The broader SoftBank Group has key investments in 18 firms: Boston Dynamics (with a ), Agile Robots, Opentrons, Autostore, Gaussian, Berkshire Grey, Brain Corp, Nuro, CMR Surgical, XAG, Keenon, Aurora, Trax, Cruise, EDDA Technology, Automation Anywhere and Whatfix. Also on that list is SoftBank Robotics, which effectively serves as the commercialization tip on its robotics spear. It was formed out of the investment group’s acquisition of French startup Aldebaran Robotics, makers of the research robot . That gave rise to , the longtime humanoid face of the firm — though production was last year. A bigger success story of late has been , a cleaning robot whose adoption has been accelerated during the pandemic (for reasons we’ll be getting into in a moment). “Go-to-market” and “commercial” are terms we focus on. When you think of how you take an investment in robotics or take a product to market, making sure that you focus on the critical factors around commercialization and go-to-market are really critical. That’s our main focus and remit. How do you make sure you take something all the way to completion? Enterprise-grade, smart robotics — that’s where you really start to create commercial adoption, so we think about that as our focus. And then how do we work back, in terms of understanding the larger market trends and where we see a lot of growth on the macro view and how do we tie into it from a commercial accelerator? At every iteration of a new product, we see the adoption curve shrink. As time progresses, two things are happening. One, the technology is expanding at a rate that’s really exciting. We’re starting to see things like technology, connection, components — all of that is starting to be more accessible and digestible, and a value proposition. Specifically, we can consume these parts that actually create a good value proposition together. The second piece for us is, given all the investments we’ve done, we’ve really focused on adoption as a principle. Adoption is understanding it’s not the tech, it’s not a product feature — it’s a solution. How do we adopt the product within an environment that people are the final component of success. There are two inherent things that have shifted. One, health and safety has elevated importance. How do I ensure the health and safety of whatever location I’m in — whether it’s a hospital, senior care, hospitality, university — how am I now ensuring that I have a place that is safe and healthy for me? The second challenge is, that with work transformation that’s happening, you have labor markets that are extremely volatile. Those two components have made this a priority. I have to deliver a safe environment with consistency and certainty like proof-of-performance. And I have a challenge where I can’t deliver that unless I have a toolset that can be consistent. It’s not fair to say it’s “done,” because we have clients that are utilizing it and coming out with new use cases for it. We’ve paused production on Pepper. We have enough created. We’re continuing to sell it into clients. It has usage and applications. It’s great in school systems. It still has its use case and we’re going to continue to allow that to pursue. I think in terms of scalability and our focus — that’s one product and we’re going to continue to support it and as the market shifts, we can, and then we continue to grow in other areas. I think consumer is really hard. What we focus on is where smart robotics can successfully adopt in scale in the commercial space. Where we see investment, where we see value prop and adoption, we’re still at a contract value that is above a consumer scenario in the near term. So that’s where we’re focusing — where we see the biggest growth. I think there are huge developments in home automation, but you also have a lot of big players from a saturation perspective. So, for us, the open space and the ability to scale is still on the commercial side versus the consumer. We never say never, but for us, we want to follow the trends, in terms of where there’s an opportunity and I think smart robotics — the mobility of it — really sits in commercial versus consumer. Q5D One of the more interesting bits of funding to arrive this week comes to us . The pandemic and resulting supply chain bottlenecks have shone a light on the need for some more efficient manufacturing processes. SOSV/HAX hardtech startup alum Q5D seeks to employ robots to perform one of the more complex hardware manufacturing tasks. The firm announced a $2.7 million seed led by Chrysalix Venture Capital this week aimed and accelerating its automated process of producing wiring harnesses for electronics. “This is a time of great change — the rapid electrification of our transport systems and the increasing function of everything from washing machines to mobile phones means that wiring is becoming more complex and labor intensive,” says co-founder and CEO Steve Bennington of the tech. “The way the world has made wiring for the last 80 years has to change.” Tsunami waves on March 11, 2011 smashed into much of northwest Japan, such as here in Fukushima prefecture. SADATSUGU TOMIZAWA/AFP via Getty Images The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is often pointed to as a prime example of conditions ideal for robotic scouting. And, indeed, we’ve seen a number of expeditions over the years using remote-controlled technology that allows inspectors the ability to examine progress at the site from a remote distance. The — which recently picked up after a delay from last month — finds Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings utilizing submersible robots to examine the state of a damaged reactor and collect fuel samples. The action comes five years after a similar probe. Further examinations will be conducted by five robots developed by Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning. Symbio Just under a year after emerging from stealth, that it’s working with Toyota North America to automate assembly robots for the company’s Camry, RAV4, Sequoia and Tundra lines. In particular, the firm is highlighting the work being done on its EV lines, using real-time sensor data to help make the assembly systems more adaptable. Given the massive press push Boston Dynamics has been making in recent months — from to — it was just a matter of time before the robots appeared in . With the post-Brady Patriots eliminated after a short post-season run, the robotics firm teamed up with fellow Boston-area institution Samuel Adams for that features Atlas photocopying its robotic ass and a cameo from founder and chairman, Marc Raibert. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch |
The early bird has landed — buy your in-person pass to TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 today and save | Alexandra Ames | 2,022 | 2 | 19 | Who’s ready to mobilize and meet up in real life? And by “mobilize” we mean join more than 2,000 mobile-minded movers and shakers at in San Mateo, California, on May 18-19. We’re back for our fourth straight year, and can’t wait to see you in person for two days dedicated to exciting, new and emerging technologies designed to move people and packages from Point A to Point B. Early-bird pricing is now in effect, and that means keeping more money in your wallet. and you’ll save $300. Your all-access pass includes breakout sessions, networking, access to our expo area and videos on-demand following the live event. Whether you’re an early- or late-stage founder, an investor, engineer or builder, or you’re focused on the policies and ethics of rolling out new mobility technologies across cities and towns, this event is meant for you. During panel discussions, one-on-one interviews and smaller, more intimate breakout sessions and topic-driven roundtable discussions, you’ll hear from and engage with top mobility leaders, experienced VCs, government regulators and subject-matter experts. Walk away with fresh perspectives and actionable tips that can help drive your business to the next level. Why is TC Sessions: Mobility 2022 worth stowing your sweatpants and meeting people face-to-face? Here’s how Karin Maake, senior director of communications at FlashParking, described her IRL TC Mobility experience: TC Sessions Mobility offers several big benefits. First, networking opportunities that result in concrete partnerships. Second, the chance to learn the latest trends and how mobility will evolve. Third, the opportunity for unknown startups to connect with other mobility companies and build brand awareness. Speaking of opportunities, here’s an excellent way to reap even more opportunity from your TC Mobility experience. Plant your startup flag in our demo area and exhibit your mobility tech and talent directly to the industry’s most influential founders, investors and media. Build your brand, attract more customers and discover new opportunities. Take advantage of early-bird pricing, and save $200. The package includes four full-access passes, so bring your team and cover even more ground. Don’t forget to check out our outdoor playground, where you can see the latest e-bikes, scooters and autonomous vehicles. Go ahead, take a test drive or two! takes place on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California. , save $300 and get ready to learn about the latest in mobility tech and trends — live and in-person. It’s a great strategy to keep your mobility business moving forward.
|
The first developer preview of Android 13 has arrived | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | Right on , Google today announced the first developer release of Android 13. These very early releases, which are only meant for developers and aren’t available through over-the-air updates, typically don’t include too many user-facing changes. That’s true this time as well, but even in this early release, the company is already showing off a few changes that will impact how you’ll use your Android phone. Unlike with Android 12, Google plans to have two developer releases and then launch a beta in April, a month earlier than in 2021. The final release could come as early as August, based on Google’s roadmap, whereas Android 12 launched in early October. All of this is happening while Android 12L, the Android release for large-screen devices, is still in development, too, though Google notes that it will bring some of those features to Android 13 as well. These include improved support for tablets, foldables and Android apps on Chromebooks. Google One of the most visible changes in Android 13 so far is that Google will bring the dynamic color feature of Material You, which by default takes its cues from your home screen image, to all app icons. Developers will have to supply a for this to work, which many will hopefully do, because the current mix of themed and un-themed icons doesn’t make for a great look. For now, this will only be available on Pixel devices, though, and Google says it will work with its partners to bring it to more devices. Google As with previous releases, Google is putting an emphasis on privacy and security here. There is a new system-wide photo and video picker, for example, which allows you to share with an app photos from your local device or the cloud — all without giving that app access to all of your photos. Android already featured a document picker, but not a dedicated photo and video picker. Developers that want to use this feature will be able to do so with a new API and their apps won’t have to ask for permission to view all media on a device. Google In a similar way, Google is also now making it easier for apps to ask for a list of nearby Wi-Fi devices having to ask for location permissions. Until now, these two were intertwined and you couldn’t get information about nearby access points without asking for location permissions. With Android 13, Google continues its efforts around Project Mainline, its project to make more of the operating system updatable through Google Play system updates without having to wait for vendors to make Android point updates available to their users. “We can now push new features like photo picker and OpenJDK 11 directly to users on older versions of through updates to existing modules. We’ve also added new modules, such as the Bluetooth and Ultra wideband modules, to further expand the scope of ’s updatable core functionality,” the company explains in today’s announcement. For the multilingual among you, Android 13 will also feature — or, at least, apps will be able to let you choose a language that’s different from the system language. There will be an API for that, as well as a similar API in Google’s Jetpack library. In Android 13, Google will also make it easier for developers to highlight that they offer Quick Setting tiles. Apps could already offer custom quick settings before, but unless you knew about them, chances are you’d never seen them. Now, developers get a new API that allows them to prompt users to directly add their custom tiles to the Quick Settings menu. Google Other new features include , updates to the Android core libraries to align them with the OpenJDK 11 LTS release and — get hyped — faster hyphenation. “In we’ve optimized hyphenation performance by as much as 200% so you can now enable it in your TextViews with almost no impact on rendering performance,” Google explains. Google For a lot of the opt-in changes in Android 13, Google now also once again makes it easier for developers to test them by providing a list of toggles to turn them on and off from the developer options or . As usual, these early releases will only be available as downloads, so if you want to give them a try, you’ll have to flash a system image to your phone (after that, you’ll get over-the-air updates). With this release, Google supports the Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 4a (5G), Pixel 4a, Pixel 4 XL and Pixel 4 (sorry, Pixel 3 owners). There will also be a system image for the Android Emulator in Android Studio and (that is, pure Android) for vendors who want to test that. |
This Week in Apps: Android’s Privacy Sandbox, Super Bowl app ads, App Annie rebrands | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 19 | Welcome back to This Week in Apps, that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the year-end . App Annie global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021, and mobile ad spend grew 23% year-over-year to reach $295 billion. In addition, consumers are spending more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue, App Annie . This was up 20% from 2020 when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too. Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch Google this week its take on Apple’s App Tracking Transparency system with . The system is based on the Privacy Sandbox initiative for Chrome, but isn’t going live anytime soon. Instead, Google says its current system will remain active for at least two more years while it runs tests. Google — which makes a majority of its revenue from advertising let’s not forget — is going in a different direction than Apple did. Google even took a bit of a swipe at Apple when announcing the news, noting that It says this sort of approach is “ineffective” and leads to “worse outcomes” for user privacy and developers. Google then touted its system as one where it will work with the industry and developer community to balance the need for user privacy with businesses’ needs. (Not to mention Google’s own.) The system, broadly, will involve phasing out the Advertising ID tracking feature, while still allowing advertisers to show personalized ads to groups of users with similar interests. This is based on Google’s work developing “ ,” which offers users more control and transparency over the ads they see. It will also offer some level of attribution reporting to advertisers and a developer SDK. (A technical run-through .) Already, the system has support from Snap, Rovio, Activision Blizzard, Duolingo and others. Google’s decision to engage in dialogue, rather than rolling out a policy change that disrupts the existing ecosystem, makes sense for the company because so many Android apps are free and ad-supported, compared with apps on iOS. Plus, Android serves as a gateway to serve ads, which benefits Google’s bottom line. In addition, Google pointed out that Apple’s approach can lead advertisers to turn to other, less visible means of tracking users which is bad for users, too. In fact, it says this is already happening, by ex-Apple engineers that backed up this opinion. The study showed how trackers built features to circumvent Apple’s ATT rules, making ATT something that only gives the illusion of privacy in the long run. But critics ” as an optional system for advertisers, and can’t even really do anything to prevent its competitors from running “effective ads on Android” since it’s already facing antitrust accusations of being an ad monopolist — which limits its ability to change things in this space. Then there’s the fact that Google’s announcement was more of a plan to create a plan (after much discussion) than it was any sort of definitive step forward. In the end, there isn’t much detail as to how all this works because there just aren’t details yet — they’re TBD. Meanwhile, Android user privacy remains unimpacted. Sensor Tower The paid off for a number of tech companies, not just in terms of exposure, but also app installs, a new report indicates. But Coinbase’s viral ad — a QR code around on a black screen like the old DVD screensaver — outperformed the group, with installs jumping 309% week-over-week after the ad’s airing Super Bowl Sunday, February 13, and it continued to climb by another 286% the following day, according to Sensor Tower data. Among the top five apps whose ads delivered strong download growth, three were crypto apps. In addition to Coinbase, crypto trading platform grew app installs by 132% week-over-week on February 13, and by 82% on February 14. Meanwhile, Cryptocurrency exchange , whose ad featured “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David, saw a 130% boost in downloads week-over-week on February 13, followed by 81% growth the next day. Collectively, Coinbase, eToro and FTX saw their U.S. installs grow by a collective 279% on February 13 compared to the week prior. This continued into the following day, when week-over-week download growth reached 252%. Other apps that did well during the big game were sportsbook apps — but they may have seen downloads pop anyway! The company this week the new name will reflect its “vision to drive comprehensive digital performance with products and partnerships.” Arguably, it will also unlink the old brand name from the embarrassing news last fall which saw both . App Annie and former CEO Bertrand Schmitt had to pay more than $10 million to settle the fraud charges related to its deceptive practices and making material misrepresentations about how its data was derived. The firm had used non-anonymized data to alter its estimates, and even directed engineers in China to manually update its estimates at times, before automating those adjustments to better match up with the actual — and confidential — revenue and download figures it had from clients. The new company name implies those days are behind it, as it references how it will fuel its digital insights using the power of artificial intelligence (AI). Related to this news, data.ai also announced a new reseller agreement with Similarweb that will allow the firm to offer a unified mobile and web market data set. Microsoft Rainbow led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm Seven Seven Six. The app offers a pleasant and colorful interface that’s helping it take on the top wallet app MetaMask with its broader consumer appeal. The company has been around since 2017 but originally did work for clients, like businesses and brands. It’s now more directly targeting consumers and developing a prototype for AR glasses. led by Delta-v Capital, and announced its plans to acquire Tampa-based corporate wellness platform Peerfit for an undisclosed sum. The LA-based company FitOn hit 10 million users in 2021 and offers workouts from a range of partners, including OrangeTherapy, Zumba, Kingry and others. The company employs artists, trained by a team of clinical psychologists, therapists and neuroscientists to produce music to help users achieve a desired mental state, it says. for its platform that lets developers turn their apps into “super apps” either by building their own mini-apps or by accessing them from its marketplace. The company’s clients include GCash, Paytm and VodaPay, among others. according to a report by Axios. The app is expected to launch this summer in D.C. to an invite-only crowd to start. in angel funding while participating in the Techstars program, and is working to raise a seed round of $2 million. Shortwave TechCrunch’s Frederic Lardinois called , which aims to pick up where Google Inbox (RIP) left off. The email app is available on desktop (as a PWA), i Obscura The popular released its latest version this week, a refreshed design, improved performance and other changes. The apps’ exposure and focus controls are now controlled entirely by gestures, while haptics provide feedback to let you feel the control without having to look. The app’s capture modes have been updated to reflect the iPhone’s improved camera system, and now offers five separate modes. These include Photo (for fast shooting), Pro Photo (where you can control every aspect like focus, white balance, shutter speed and more), Depth (Portrait effect), Live Photo and an all-new Video mode — the first time the app has supported video capture. The app also added support for alternative aspect ratios, more white balance controls, manual exposure controls and other features. is double the price of the prior version at $9.99, but also ships with a Watch companion, support for connecting controllers and will soon offer Widgets and support for iPad. |
When to pivot your product, and a tale of two earnings calls | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 19 | Oh yeah, y’all, it’s the weekend and it’s a long one here in the United States as we have Monday off. As you read this I am – hopefully – napping on the couch with three dogs festooned around me, all four of us drooling while we snooze. But! First! There’s much to do, so let’s dive into one startup’s pivot from earlier in the week and, yes, talk a little about money. The esports world is a pretty fragmented place. Built atop different games, forums, tournament series, platforms, chat apps, and websites, it can be a legit effort to figure out what the hell is going on, even in your favorite game. So, set out to build a centralized news hub for all things esports back in 2020. The company saw some early success, raising a seven-figure round . But according to co-founder , the service had a period of rapid growth, what he described as “up and to the right” in graph form, before seeing its active user count plateau last year. What happened? According to Goldhaber, who also goes by the gamertag “FishStix,” Juked wound up serving the top 1% of esports fans, but wasn’t reaching a larger audience. So, the nascent company did the smart thing of asking its users about its service and what they thought of it. From those conversations, Goldhaber said that users brought up issues endemic to esports like community toxicity, spam, and hot takes. So, Juked decided to pivot slightly and build the social network that its users were effectively asking for – a less toxic place to be an esports fan. The product launched Thursday after a period in a closed alpha after having tested it with around 750 users before making it more generally available. According to information from AppAnnie (now Data.ai, apparently), the service did chart among iOS users in the United States this week, albeit only in the social networking category. We’ll check back with the company in a few months to see how downloads shake out. Big questions remain, including how the service intends to combat toxicity at scale — I had to agree to a pretty strong set of terms to sign up. Juked intends to use human moderation with AI in the future, and requires users to sign up with a phone number. All good ideas, but untested for the company at mass scale. I dig what Juked has been working on because I am an esports fan. But I am also not precisely in the market for a new social network. Let’s see how the startup’s in-market juke can help it score more points. (And probably raise money, since it’s been a year since its equity crowdfunding round, so we wouldn’t fall over in shock if the company worked to pick up more cash in the coming quarters.) This week brought with it another sheaf of earnings calls from tech companies. And as always, we’ve had our eyes tuned into the market for hints about what’s ahead for startups. Most of our work , in our dive into just how important forward guidance is for tech companies today. Trailing results appear to be far less important to investors than what they see ahead. So when Amplitude got whacked by public-market investors, we took notes. There were other companies that took similar knocks, , so don’t think that we’re pointing a finger at the recently public Amplitude. (It , recall.) But there was another side to the coin, namely . The low-code automation company has been a quieter public-market story than most tech debuts. That’s not a diss, mind; its CEO told me as much this week when discussing the company’s results. How so? It boils down to Calkins’ definition of what innovation is, and it’s not just building something. Telling TechCrunch that his company has long been an engineering-led organization, he told us that it’s not enough to make something cool. If the company doesn’t a new feature, sell it, and get it used, then it hasn’t actually innovated. Innovation, he said, is an experience, not a product. The final result of innovation, he added, is a customer testimonial of a new feature – when someone will go on record and say that a new thing really is good. Which requires people to, well, know that something exists so that they can give it a whirl. I like his perspective. It helps explain why much of the so-called innovation in the blockchain world seems less like real innovation than the creation of a collection of ; yes, some of the more esoteric web3 products that are in the market today will have real impact, but most are more coding tricks than useful tools. A little more before I let you go. The staffing crunch that companies are feeling in the United States is not merely driving up the cost of hiring, it’s helping companies like Appian. The company is seeing demand from customers to automate more of their work because employees don’t want to do it. And unhappy employees bounce. Finally, Appian’s growth has been accelerating for a little while now. And it had an earnings report that led not to a share-price collapse, but a . Returning to our entry point for this conversation, that’s the bar that companies have to clear today to grind out a few hundred basis points of market cap extension. It’s a far harder market than a few quarters ago. Which is why, I think, the IPO window is kaput for some time yet. Hugs, and I hope your weekend is restful! |
Hire, then wire with a twist | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 2 | 19 | Since launching the venture firm Backstage Capital in 2015, Arlan Hamilton has invested millions in more than 195 companies led by underrepresented founders, to a team . Despite the breadth in the business, Hamilton says she is consistently asked two questions by her portfolio companies: “Can you help us raise money? And, “Can you help us with hiring?” While Hamilton’s fund is a response to the former, her latest bet — built by Hamilton herself — is a startup that explores the latter. is a labor marketplace that connects startups with operations people looking for part-time work. It seeks to combat some of the largest tensions in early-stage startup building, such as deciding when it’s time to hire your first head of talent, or figuring out what to contract out, or what to build in-house when it comes to staffing. It’s launching with an explicit focus on operations roles. “There are so many places you can go if you want to learn how to code or if you want to get a job as in the more technical side of things,” Hamilton says. “But where do you go right now if you want to be someone’s right hand, the COO, etc. … it’s sort of an afterthought for most [companies].” Conceptually, Runner isn’t contrarian. Upwork and Fiverr have built solid businesses atop the freelancer economy. What’s different about the startup, though, is in who it targets — operations folks in tech — and how it employs them. Every “runner,” or part-time professional who is looking to get a new gig, is employed by the company under a W-2 classification. Around 200 runners are on the platform today. And Hamilton tells TechCrunch the approach has attracted $1.5 million in pre-seed backing weeks before Runner is set to launch on the app store. For the entire story, including how one cohort of investors in the company is raising an interesting set of questions, read my story on TechCrunch: . In the rest of this newsletter our heart will Flutter, and then it will ride the wild wave of crypto. We’ll also get into the latest in SEC filings and notes from my calls throughout the past week. As always, you can support me by sharing this newsletter, or , Flutterwave is now the highest valued startup in Africa. The cross-border payments platform beat out OPay and Chipper Cash with its savvy API approach. Africa’s tech scene may see a whole lot of consolidation. As Tage Kene-Okafor , “in the future, Flutterwave will look at acquisitions that will further consolidate its authority in the fintech space. And as the payments giant continues to deepen its influence in the SMB and consumer fintech space, we can speculate that smaller startups — including those it has backed, like CinetPay — may become acquisition targets.” , we chatted through Deel’s recent launch, which gives businesses the option to run their payroll in crypto. As reported : This is yet another step in the mainstreamification — if that’s actually a word — of crypto. Also, and is volatile, sure, but it’s also a signal that the asset is being taken seriously enough to have debate. Which is different from where it was just a few years ago. Techcrunch Early Stage 2022 is April 14, aka right around the corner, and it’s in San Francisco. Join us for a one-day founder summit featuring GV’s Terri Burns, Greylock’s Glen Evans and Felicis’ Aydin Senkut. The TC team has been fiending to get back in person, so don’t be surprised if panels are a little spicier than usual. , and Also, , the tech news podcast I co-host alongside Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo, is going live! Join us for a – tickets are free, puns will come at the cost of our producers’ sanity. Our bestie pod, Found is also joining the live circuit, Until next time, |
Will rising interest rates decimate startup valuations? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 19 | Hello and welcome back to , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is Saturday, which means it’s not a day for us to drop an episode. But what are we if not try-hards at heart? So, we’re back today. What do we have on store for you? I brought onto the podcast — and a Twitter space, so make sure you are following the podcast, yeah? — to chat interest rates, technology growth, startup valuations, and how they all tie together. Sharma was the right person to have on the show because he’s been a big tech employee (Oracle, Salesforce), an investor (Storm Ventures, and as an angel), and he’s a founder to boot. So he’s been around not just the block, but several in the world of technology over time. TechCrunch has covered , his startup, a few times including . Sharma finds some of the in-market worry about rising rates harming tech stocks silly. His thesis boils down to the value of growth on a longer time-horizon than what a DCF-tuned spreadsheet might tell you. That said, rising rates will impact some startup inputs, like venture funds in the medium-term, so there was a lot to chew on. We try to keep Equity pretty high-level, and focused on discrete events. But why have a show if you can’t use it to scratch your own itches from time to time? The pod is back on Tuesday due to an American holiday this Monday. Chat soon! |
Arlan Hamilton wants to reroute how startups hire | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 2 | 19 | venture firm Backstage Capital in 2015, Arlan Hamilton has invested millions in more than 195 companies led by underrepresented founders, to a team . Despite the breadth in the business, Hamilton says she is consistently asked two questions by her portfolio companies: “Can you help us raise money? And, “Can you help us with hiring?” While Hamilton’s fund is a response to the former, her latest bet — built by Hamilton herself — is a startup that explores the latter. is a labor marketplace that connects startups with operations people looking for part-time work. It seeks to combat some of the largest tensions in early-stage startup building, such as deciding when it’s time to hire your first head of talent, or figuring out what to contract out, or what to build in-house when it comes to staffing. It’s launching with an explicit focus on operations roles. “There are so many places you can go if you want to learn how to code or if you want to get a job as in the more technical side of things,” Hamilton says. “But where do you go right now if you want to be someone’s right hand, the COO, etc. … it’s sort of an afterthought for most [companies].” Conceptually, Runner isn’t contrarian. Upwork and Fiverr have built solid businesses atop the freelancer economy. What’s different about the startup, though, is in who it targets — operations folks in tech — and how it employs them. Every “runner” or part-time professional who is looking to get a new gig is employed by the company under a W-2 classification. Around 200 runners are on the platform today, including those with experience in corporate roles or those who were previously entrepreneurs who want another stream of income. Many current executives at the company first joined as runners. For example, head of customer success Melanie Jones joined the platform after spending time as a product manager at a dental network. Within a month, she was hired as an executive, alongside a number of other runners-turned-decision-makers at the company. Separately, Boeing exec Dianna Moore joined as a COO just four months ago. For Hamilton, Runner is a return to an idea she’s been working on before she even broke into venture. Before Backstage, Hamilton was a production coordinator and tour manager for musicians (she continues to pepper music references into her work as an investor). While in that role, she would often work with runners, or individuals with local expertise who could be a right-hand helper to make things happen while on the road. When she was building Backstage, she began using runners in her own life, hiring people for one-day help while meeting founders across the country. After the investor saw synergies between this role within the production world and tech’s love for flexibility, she brewed up Runner, with a logo and everything. “We were building Backstage, we had no resources, because COVID hadn’t happened yet, people were really kind of confused by the idea of it,” she said. “So it was just one of those whiteboard ideas.” Now, nearly two years into a still ongoing pandemic, the market is ready. The company’s business model is a 25% cut of a runner’s hourly rate. Additionally, if a runner is recruited by a customer to join them full-time, the customer must pay a 10% recruitment fee of the runner’s first year’s salary. Unlike Backstage, which wants to upend the way venture capital is distributed and to whom, Runner isn’t building under the guise of helping companies recruit underrepresented talent — a choice Hamilton made, interestingly, because she didn’t want to “pigeonhole” the company. “It would have been really easy for us to just categorize ourselves as a DEI recruitment company, but we didn’t want to be responsible for that — it should be everyone’s responsibility,” she said. That said, today, all executives at Runner come from historically overlooked backgrounds. Before it went to the waitlist model to better deal with demand, Runner secured around 120 pilot customers at a $500,000 run rate. Its app is set to launch on March 15, 2022. As for financing, Hamilton initially bootstrapped the company and, within the first 100 days, raised a $500,000 angel round. Most recently, Runner raised a $1.5 million pre-seed round on a SAFE note at an undisclosed valuation. Backers in that round include Precursor, Lunar Startups, Freada Klein of Kapor Capital, 360 Venture Collective and Gaingels. Backstage Capital’s crowd syndicate, Backstage Flex Fund II and Backstage Opportunity Fund I, also invested in the startup. It’s rare to see investors pour their own fund’s money into a company they started, but, as Hamilton notes, it’s not unheard of when you consider Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures investing in his company, Bright, or David Sacks’ Craft Ventures investing in his audio company. Still, it can create a conflict of interest if decision-makers at the firm feel pressure to put money into a GP’s company, because they are, well, the GP. Hamilton was part of the investment committee that decided to put money into Runner, but also gave each person authority to make autonomous decisions, she says. She also added that the eight-page deal memo — which gets into challenges, opportunity and gaps — was written by Backstage partner Brittany Davis, and associate Kelly Lei, without any alterations from her. The Runner team provided the pitch deck. “It’s my fiduciary duty at the firm to bring back returns, and it’s my duty as a CEO of Runner to bring in the best investment partners possible. I did both,” Hamilton adds over Twitter DM. Another balance in the mix is that any Backstage portfolio company that uses Runner doesn’t have to pay the 25% service fee, or the amount that goes to the company’s revenue and operations. “Our goal is to have 1,000 or more [runners] by the end of the year making an average of $40,000,” Hamilton said. “[Then] we are a half a billion dollar company.” |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 10 | null |
Startups scramble in wake of Ukraine invasion | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 2 | 26 | I’m doing an abbreviated newsletter this week as I want to spend most of my energy amplifying the brave journalists on the ground reporting about this scary time. As so many have said — — the invasion of Ukraine is a story that impacts all of us, whether we’re on the ground there or not. And it’s hard to celebrate a funding round My brilliant colleagues put together a story on ; I urge you to read it. While the situation is still ongoing, it’s clear that it’s already a tech story. And startups such as Grammarly, Ajax, People AI and Preply, backed by some of the world’s biggest VCs, are scrambling to support employees and operations amid the invasion. What I’m hearing from sources is that startup founders are mainly offering financial assistance to employees who are in Ukraine or neighboring countries. The cash is supposed to help with fleeing the country. WhatsApp groups are also being formed between founders to see what is the best course of action; expect hubs with information on refuge or resources to roll out far and wide. Then, there’s the startups that could actually make a dent in how consumers gain or share information amid a new war. One reaction of note is that of Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince, who said the company had “removed all Cloudflare customer cryptographic material from servers in Ukraine,” as a response to the new war. The move is an effort to protect customer data in case its data center, which opened in Kyiv in 2016, is compromised. Michael Seibel, president of Y Combinator, on everyone’s minds: “Honest question, if US technology companies worked together right now – what could they do to deter Putin’s invasion?” As you can tell by the responses, there’s no perfect answer. As my colleague Zack Whittaker put it, our mission at TechCrunch is staying the same. “We’re still a tech news pub with a focus on business, finance and startups. We still do that day in and day out, and the invasion is going to affect a lot of things. So, as you would with any other major event, we adjust our tone and we serve our audience the best way we can by telling them what they need to know.” Reminder: You can always take a break, close this tab and give yourself grace. And, as always, you can support me by sharing this newsletter, or Gloria Lin, the brains behind ApplePay, has a new startup: Senior reporter Mary Ann Azevedo, who is , gave readers a first look at the company that wants to combine construction with fintech. Antiquated industries catching the ol’ fintech bug is anything but a new phenomenon, but it is always a signal when someone with a successful track record picks up the baton. The question is, can Lin bring her understanding of consumer fintech habits to an industry with complexities no one company has yet been able to crack? / Getty Images On Equity this week, Alex and I spoke about , with a specific focus on the employee. We talked through what startups are facing today in terms of a labor market, how it has changed and how they might be able to compete with Big Tech’s big dollars. After all, is any company going to be able to beat Meta on comp? Probably not. It appears that the forces driving more venture capital into early-stage companies are not too far from the causes of the labor shortage. Everyone is looking for a return, either on their labor, or their capital. And that means a tight hiring market, and picky workers. Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch Techcrunch Early Stage 2022 is April 14, aka right around the corner, and it’s in San Francisco. Join us for a one-day founder summit featuring GV’s Terri Burns, Greylock’s Glen Evans and Felicis’ Aydin Senkut. The TC team has been fiending to get back in person, so don’t be surprised if panels are a little spicier than usual. , and Also, my dear colleague and first work best friend Chris Gates is moving on to other opportunities. My eyes have been puffy all week because there’s nothing quite like the relationship between a co-host and a producer. Thanks for editing out the ums and the likes, and for making me feel like I have something important to say. To those who want to follow Chris’ next step, and stay tuned for an episode next week in which we walk through his journey (and celebrate a huge Equity milestone). Until next time, |
PerchPeek raises $11M to woo ‘great resignation employees’ with easy relocation | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | Relocating employees can involve up to 20-30 different complex processes, while many of the support packages on the market can be inflexible and expensive. Plus, relocating services are usually only available to company leaders, not staff. But an even bigger issue looms over companies today: the “great resignation” brought on by the pandemic, as employees seek new opportunities abroad. Can offering easier relocation woo them into staying on? is a relocation platform that has now raised £8 million in Series A funding to address this employee relocation problem — and make it easier for companies to acquiesce to employee requests to move locations. The raise was co-led by Stage 2 Capital and AlbionVC. In a joint statement, Paul Bennett, Dr. Ace Vinayak and Oliver Markham, co-founders of PerchPeek, comment: “By bringing all the processes into one platform, with great support at accessible price points, we help both the relocating employee with their move but also their employer provide a high-value employee benefit.” According to Beroe, a SaaS-based procurement analytics provider, the global employee relocation market , due to the costs and complexity involved in making relocation possible. PerchPeek says it has a step-by-step app that supports employees relocating to 47 countries around the world — including more remote locations, and claims it can save companies up to 70% in relocation costs. It also has experts, available via instant messaging, to guide employees through properties and amenities. The startups’ competitors include and (both U.S.-based). But PerchPeek says it plans to compete on customer experience and its large range of locations. Since January 2020, it claims to have moved more than 5,000 people. Clients include Thoughtworks, Liberty Global, Impala Travel and INEOS. Nadine Torbey, Investment Manager at AlbionVC, said: “The pandemic has accelerated the shift in the way people choose to work and live… PerchPeek is the long-awaited disruption that will help unlock the full market and enable an increasingly mobile and global talent pool.” |
MarketForce raises $40 million Series A, introduces BNPL merchant stock financing | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | , the retail B2B and end-to-end distribution platform founded in Kenya, has raised $40 million in Series A funding for its merchant inventory financing and expansion across Africa. MarketForce, which was launched in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda last year after , plans to introduce buy now, pay later (BNPL) options to help merchants access fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) on credit. It also plans to enter additional markets in East and West Africa. Through its merchant super app , informal traders can source goods (hundreds of SKUs) directly from manufacturers and distributors, make and pay for orders digitally, accept payments for utility bills and access loans for their businesses. The RejaReja retail marketplace was launched in 2020 as a brainchild of MarketForce, a SaaS product for the formal markets, founded by and in 2018. “Our mission is to enable SMEs to grow, and what we’ve realized over time is that offering them loans is great, but that we need to empower them to access goods. And that’s why we’ve introduced this merchant inventory financing, which is like an overdraft facility, where they’re able to order goods and pay later after selling them. We started a pilot and it is going well,” MarketForce CEO and co-founder Mbaabu told TechCrunch. During the pilot, Mbaabu said that order stock value tripled, underlining the demand for such tailored inventory financing options for traders who sell a huge chunk of all the FMCGs sold across sub-Saharan Africa. “We’re very deliberate about extending working capital and that’s why we raised some debt and also because we are looking at that fintech angle as our big frontier for the next phase of our business,” said Mbaabu. This latest round (equal amount of debt and equity) brings the total funds raised by MarketForce to date to $42.5 million. It also comes seven months after the startup . The latest round was led by V8 Capital Partners, a London and Lagos-based African-focused investment vehicle with participation from Ten13 VC, SOSV Select Fund, VU Venture Partners, Vastly Valuable Ventures and Uncovered Fund. Existing investors that took part in the round include Reflect Ventures, Greenhouse Capital, Century Oak Capital and Remapped Ventures. Cellulant co-founder Ken Njoroge, who joins the MarketForce board as chairman, also took part in the round. “MarketForce demonstrates what we see as a triple threat with regards to returns. A strong executive team with an amazing track record, an expansive untapped market of informal retailers across the continent and a business model that scales extremely quickly,” said V8 Capital general partner and member of the MarketForce board, Tobi Oke. About 80% of household retail in sub-Saharan Africa is delivered through informal retailers. MarketForce MarketForce also plans to double its team to 800 and grow the number of merchants using the RejaReja app by 2.5 times to 250,000 over the next few months, an increase from 5,000 they served a year ago. A growth in merchant number and RejaReja’s expansion also means new markets for FMCG brands. RejaReja is an asset-light model, meaning that it doesn’t own capital assets like warehouses and delivery trucks, as most of them are provided by its partners (which include manufacturers and distributors). Its nature of business allows it to grow fast. “We grew to tier two cities in markets that we are in. This has also opened up distribution opportunities for brands that were not previously able to access these markets,” said Mbaabu. During an interview in December last year, Mbaabu told TechCrunch that RejaReja expects its merchants to grow to 1 million by the end of this year as it works toward digitizing the estimated 100 million small traders across sub-Saharan Africa. He also said that since launch, RejaReja had grown exponentially with more than 87,000 orders made through the platform at an average basket value of $151. With a 40% month-on-month growth, it expected to record over $60 million in annualized transaction volumes at the end of last year. Other players streamlining the informal B2B supply chain in Africa include and About of household retail in sub-Saharan Africa is delivered through informal retailers, but these shops are faced with a number of challenges like stockouts, earnings instability and lack of financing, factors that make it hard for their businesses to grow. MarketForce, through RejaReja, solves this by providing a marketplace where informal traders can source goods directly, which also keeps the prices of products competitive by removing the need for agents, and ensures the next-day delivery of goods. It also uses the traders’ transaction history to develop the credit profiles needed to secure loans. The startup has a partnership with Pezesha — a digital financial marketplace platform — to extend loans to its merchants. MarketForce plans more partnerships to bring on board other services for merchants, like insurance, savings and investment. “The goal of RejaReja is to be the super app of the informal market. We’d like the merchants to have one access point for all the different financial and digital services they need to grow in the digital age,” said Mbaabu. |
Early-stage Euro VC Backed brings in another €150M, puts a heavy focus on founder events | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | London-based early-stage European VC fund is bolstering its position by adding €75 million to its seed fund, while adding another €75 million via a new follow-on fund vehicle. The Backed Core 2 fund will continue to invest in seed-stage startups, while the new Backed Encore 1 will do follow-on investments in later-stage rounds of existing portfolio companies. Partner Alex Brunicki said in a statement: “We’ve pushed ourselves to be an entrepreneurial fund… I’d say we’ve made it to our ‘Series A’. We’re developing deeper edge in frontier markets like Biotech and Crypto; we’re bringing nascent communities together – such as Coin-Op – in a meaningful way; and we’ve built an exceptional team to support our founders at scale.” Co-founded and launched in 2016 by partners Andre de Haes and Brunicki, Backed says it now has 67 companies with an aggregate value of €10.7 billionn. It’s also claiming three unicorns: SkyMavis owners of crypto game Axie Infinity; banking platform Thought Machine; and the Ethereum Layer 2 solution Immutable X. It also had exists such as mobile gaming studio Hutch Games, which sold to MTG for $375 million in November 2020. LPs in the fund include firms such as Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (through their Sienna Capital vehicle) and private firms such as Wilshire Associates, alongside 20 family offices and more than 20 entrepreneurs. The question is, with so many early-stage VC funds now playing across Europe, what sets Backed apart from the others? Backed says it’s all about being “human-centric”. That translates into an 18-month founder support programme, with leadership training, workshops, in-house recruiter, mental health service providers and an in-house executive coach for founders and leadership teams. In other words: a large swathe of training and events. Backed’s other “special sauce” — it says — is plenty of off-sites and founder retreats. Whether you want to describe those as “parties” or not is up to you, but it’s just as well that, in modern times, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johson has re-defined the meaning of the phrase “work events”. This emphasis on hosting translates into 30 events annually, from founder dinners to a 1,000 person party at the Finnish tech conference Slush, and co-hosting conferences such as Coin-Op, a global blockchain-gaming summit held at the London Science Museum. Backed also has 60 venture scouts in its network across Europe, such as Maximilian Bade, GP at Nucleus Capital; Abi Mohamed, programme lead at Tech Nation; Saloni Bhojwani, partner at Pink Salt Ventures; and Nalden, founder of WeTransfer and Adelee. In an interview de Haes told me: “During the pandemic, we launched three different kinds of workshop or webinar series for founders, such as how do you survive a pandemic and how do you look after your people. Now that we’re moving back to an offline world… it’s ramping up again. So this year, for example, we’ve got two three-day retreats in Italy and Ibiza for founders, six crypto gaming events. So we’re going back to a much more in-person experience.” The question, however, is how are all these events funded, given VCs aren’t usually in the events business? “We’re funding from management fee and from voluntary contributions that attendees make up the events,” de Haes told me. “And then from sponsors, so AWS, Pernod Ricard — these sorts of businesses want to be associated with this clan of people.” What next, a Backed “Fyre Festival”? • 21% web3 / Blockchain • 15% Gaming & Entertainment • 12% Biotech • 10% Financial Services • 10% Manufacturing • 6% Beauty / Fashion • 7% Food / Agtech • 6% HR / Legal • 4% Pharmaceuticals • 4% Property • 3% Utilities • 2% Education • White male (71.2%); white female (6.3%)
• Black male (1.8%); Black female (4.5%)
• Asian/NBPOC male (13.5%); Asian/NBPOC female (2.7%) |
Not all SPACs are garbage, and the power of teamwork | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 26 | Hello and happy Saturday! Today we’re taking on two topics. The first fits neatly into our usual coverage area. The second not so much. Let’s go! In the 2021 SPAC rush I missed the public debut of Alight Solutions. Based outside of Chicago, the company is a business process outsourcing shop that supports tens of millions of employees in the United States. It combined with Foley Trasimene, a blank-check company, last July after announcing its intentions to list via the SPAC . It also reported earnings this week, and I chatted with its after the fact. There are three things that matter from that I want to noodle on with you. In order: And now, something different. I am writing to you, as I do every week, on Friday afternoon. I type up this little missive, contribute to Daily Crunch, and then bounce into the weekend. This Friday, however, has been a grinder. Not only because of economic uncertainty, the pandemic, or the invasion of Ukraine, but also because Chris Gates is leaving TechCrunch for a new role elsewhere. You probably don’t know Chris, which is evidence that I haven’t done enough along the way to shout him out. Regardless, he was a founding member of , and his last day was today. By the time you read this, he will be gone. We worked together for around a half decade, recording hundreds of shows, suffering from failures, celebrating wins and generally making the show work as a team. Through host changes, the sale of our parent company, and so very much more, he was there, steady, warm and ready to fucking go. It goes without saying that Equity is also Grace and Mary Ann and Natasha, and has also had the pleasure of having Danny and Kate and Matthew and Katie and Connie in the mix during its life. It is very much a group project. I’m going to miss working with Chris so much. But his exit is a good reminder of the very human force-multiplier called teamwork. The man, the myth, the smile. Chris posted this to Slack when he announced his exit, so it’s only fair to troll him with it here. This is the energy he brought every single day. This newsletter, for example, gets written by myself. Then Annie or Richard give it a read. Henry often peeks at it, as well, as he helped dream it up with me a few years back and supported its birth. Finally, it’s moved into our email software, into a slot that our sales team prepares to include the correct advertising elements. It then gets sent out to your inbox and posted on the site, which our tech crew makes possible. I just get my name at the top because I wrote the words. But this product is the result of material, longitudinal teamwork. I’ve had better luck than I have deserved when it comes to teams. The folks I have had the pleasure of working with in my career have, with very few exceptions, been people I have loved having in my life more generally. Chris and I worked on Equity together through weddings, the birth of kids, moves and more. We did life together, you know? And let me just note that the TechCrunch+ team, which is where The Exchange lives generally, is aces. Walter and Annie and Ram and Anna and the rest of the team are excellent folks I am lucky to orbit around. I get to do so much more because we work together. And I hope I am returning the favor. Teamwork. It’s the best. And it makes work breakups all the harder. Godspeed, Chris, in your next adventure. I look forward to being your #1 fan in whatever it is you’re cooking up next. — |
This Week in Apps: Facebook Reels goes global, Trump’s own social app arrives, all eyes on TikTok | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 26 | Welcome back to This Week in Apps, that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the year-end . App Annie global spending across iOS, Google Play and third-party Android app stores in China grew 19% in 2021 to reach $170 billion. Downloads of apps also grew by 5%, reaching 230 billion in 2021 and mobile ad spend grew 23% year-over-year to reach $295 billion. In addition, consumers are spending more time in apps than ever before — even topping the time they spend watching TV, in some cases. The average American watches 3.1 hours of TV per day, for example, but in 2021, they spent 4.1 hours on their mobile device. And they’re not even the world’s heaviest mobile users. In markets like Brazil, Indonesia, and South Korea, users surpassed five hours per day in mobile apps in 2021. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours, either. They can grow to become huge businesses. In 2021, 233 apps and games generated over $100 million in consumer spend, and 13 topped $1 billion in revenue, App Annie . This was up 20% from 2020 when 193 apps and games topped $100 million in annual consumer spend, and just eight apps topped $1 billion. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and suggestions about new apps and games to try, too. The world is watching in horror this week as Russia invaded Ukraine, in an aggressive, cold-blooded assault on democracy. And many people are watching the conflict unfold in real time on TikTok, which has found itself squarely in the middle of the international conversation as a source for firsthand information from the region. And, . While mobile access to live and recorded video from conflict situations definitely isn’t a new phenomenon, there’s something unique about TikTok’s window into the world. Maybe it’s the odd juxtaposition of war footage amid videos of cooking, fashion, dance and humor — a reminder of what life is supposed to be like positioned against the atrocities of the invasion. Or maybe it’s how a short scroll back through the profiles of the creators-turned-citizen journalists shows that, only days ago, they were uploading everyday content, including scenes from their lives with family and friends. Or maybe it’s the fact that TikTok creators have always come across as more “real” than those on Instagram, where polished and perfected images had put them at a distance from their fans — that just makes what’s now happening feel all the more personal when viewed on TikTok. But the video platform isn’t just delivering an emotional punch; it’s also been with its videos of weaponry, planes, vehicles, rockets, soldier movements, protests and more, by everyday citizens. A man walking his dog recorded as ballistic missile launchers passed him by; another person filmed as they drove past a convoy of armored fighting vehicles; young adults went live from the underground train stations which have turned into bomb shelters. And so on. Plus, TikTok’s advanced algorithm plays a role here in getting this footage seen. The more coverage you watch on TikTok, the more you’ll receive on your For You page — TikTok’s personalized feed, which, by its very nature, surfaces videos from people you don’t follow, unlike social rivals. It remains to be seen how or if TikTok will step in to moderate, elevate or suppress any of this content, or handle the onslaught of misinfo, but for the time being, it’s all relatively easy to find. TRUTH Social Last weekend, the Trump-backed TRUTH Social app launched on the App Store, and gained just over 400,000 downloads by mid-week, per Sensor Tower data. But it’s difficult to calculate if those figures represent true consumer demand — some could be attributed to curiosity seekers or media reporting on the launch, for example, rather than Trump die-hards. , many of those who did want to engage with the service received error messages upon trying to create an account, and others were placed on a waitlist, . Some also reported never receiving their email verifications and not being able to move past the verification step. A rocky launch to say the least. Without immediately gaining access, some of the more casual early adopters may not swiftly return — after all, TRUTH Social is still an app, and apps have a limited window to capture a user’s attention before they’re abandoned. that nearly 25% of users will open a newly installed app only once. And in the case of TRUTH Social, it may have a verified Trump account, but it’s for conservatives to gather — they also have the Rebekah Mercer-backed app Parler, Gab, Gettr, MeWe, CloutHub and various private social channels. Another complication is that TRUTH Social could end up being an echo chamber for the right, which could limit its appeal to a mainstream audience who would rather hear from both sides on a given topic, and engage in a debate. But the app could help to stoke fires within Trump’s base; that’s likely its main goal anyway — not toppling Twitter. Meta After publicly in the U.S. this past September, Facebook Reels in more than 150 countries. The feature, which is a key part of Meta’s response to the TikTok threat, allows creators to share short-form video content on Facebook or cross-post Reels from Instagram in order to reach a broader audience. Alongside the global rollout, Facebook introduced more creative tools, including Remix, 60-second videos and more. It also detailed new ways for creators to make money from their Reels through advertising, and soon, Stars (virtual tipping). The company said it’s expanding tests of to all Reels creators in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. By mid-March, the test will expand to nearly all the 50+ countries where in-stream ads are already available. These new Overlay Ads are non-interruptive ads, as they sit transparently atop the playing content instead of pausing the video to show the ad. Banner ads appear as a semi-transparent overlay at the bottom of a reel, while stickers are static images that can be placed anywhere within the reel. Creators keep 55% of the ad revenue for the time being. The ability to actually monetize a following could encourage creators to at least keep Facebook in the mix when considering publishing destinations, but it may not be enough to actually unseat TikTok from its current top spot. Sensor Tower A from Sensor Tower indicates the top 100 non-game, subscription-based apps saw their consumer spend increase 41% in 2021 to $18.3 billion, up from $13 billion in 2020. And this represents just a small portion (14%) of the overall revenue from in-app purchases across both apps and games, which totaled $131.6 billion in 2021. However, this group’s portion of the market is growing. In 2020, subscription revenue in non-game apps represented just 11.7% of the total consumer spend for the year, for comparison. The U.S. figures mirrored the global trends when it came to mobile spending on subscriptions, the data showed. Last year, U.S. consumers spent $8.5 billion in the top 100 non-game subscription apps, up 44% from $5.9 billion in 2020 — more sizable growth than the 28% rise seen the year prior. In total, U.S. consumers spent $40.7 billion on in-app purchases in 2021. Subscriptions have become the dominant means of driving app store revenue. In the fourth quarter, 90 out of the top 100 top-grossing U.S. apps included a subscription. This figure is only slightly down from the 91 in Q4 2020 or the 93 in Q4 2019. Tumblr Google which publishes popular apps like Facetune and Videoleap, among others. The strategic investment remains undisclosed. including Ashton Kutcher (by way of his fund Sound Ventures), The Weeknd, Kevin Hart, Post Malone, Diddy, Amy Schumer and Marshmello. On the tech side, Discord co-founder Jason Citron, Rec Room co-founder Nick Fajt and Sonos CEO Patrick Spence also invested. from Zayn Capital, MSA Novo, Graph Ventures and others. The fintech aims to onboard 5 million users over the next five years. co-led by Accel and Lightrock India. The app now has more than 4 million customers using its banking and wealth management services. which helps travelers with alternate routes when flights are disrupted, for an undisclosed sum. The deal brings a partnership with Air France-KLM with it. which offers asynchronous video reading from astrologers and psychics. The companies didn’t disclose the deal terms. valuing the business at $125 million from Day One Ventures and Elysium. The app has an annual revenue run rate of $32.4 million and 3.5 million MAUs after 51 million downloads. |
Last-mile delivery e-bike supplier Zoomo tacks on $20M to Series B | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | Zoomo, an Australian startup that builds utility e-bikes for delivery workers, has raised an additional $20 million in equity to close out its Series B round. In November, , which it used to fund further software development and more vehicles to expand. The additional funds, which bring Zoomo’s total funding up to $101.5 million, will be used for much of the same purpose, specifically hiring more team members globally and investing into further fleet and vehicle management offerings for both mechanics and customers, as well as developing an end-rider app, Mina Nada, co-founder and CEO at Zoomo, told TechCrunch. The startup is also continuing development and rollout of its new high-performance utility e-bike, the Zoomo One, and is investing in new vehicle form factors and accessories. Zoomo offers its e-bikes as a flexible, weekly subscription for gig workers for anywhere from $20 per week to $35 per week in the U.S., which includes servicing and support. Often those prices can be cheaper if a gig worker is signing up through a partnership with one of the app-based delivery companies like Uber Eats or DoorDash. It also provides fleets of e-bikes (and third-party manufactured mopeds, in some markets), as well as fleet management software, to enterprise customers like Domino’s. Since Zoomo was founded in 2017, it has expanded to 16 cities in six countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe, with Spain, France and Germany being added to the list just last year. The startup says its revenue grew 4x globally and its enterprise business grew 20x in 2021, but up from what, it didn’t clarify. “2021 was a transformative year for Zoomo, as we saw enterprises and fleet managers, in addition to gig-workers, benefit from our innovative platform,” Nada said in a statement. “2022 is the year we take the business up a gear…At Zoomo, we see a world within the next decade where every last-mile delivery will be completed on a light electric vehicle supported by the Zoomo ecosystem. Our investors will help bring us one step closer to making this a reality.” The raise was led by Collaborative Fund, with strategic investors MUFG Innovation Partners, SG Fleet, Akuna Capital and Wind Ventures also joining the round. This is the first time Zoomo has secured strategic funding, and marks the potential for future benefitial partnerships and initiatives, particularly in Latin America and Japan — Wind is the venture capital arm of COPEC, one of LatAm’s largest energy and forestry companies, and MUFG is the corporate VCarm of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s Open Innovation Strategy. |
Sydney-based startup Upflowy raises $4M to optimize web experiences with its no-code solution | Kate Park | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | . Upflowy founders (from left to right): CTO Alex Girard, CIO Matthew Browne, CEO Guillaume Ang “Modern organizations need simple, no-code solutions that remove the friction between data collection and customer experience,” Patrick Eggen, co-founder and general partner at Counterpart Ventures, said in a statement. “The market is full of clunky solutions that rely on engineers to create web experiences, which inhibits testing and improvement. Upflowy is in the unique position to re-envision this market, enabling teams to create the web experiences that consumers need and demand.” |
Apple’s standoff with Dutch antitrust authority over dating apps’ payments continues | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | The Netherlands’ competition authority has once again increased a fine levied against Apple for failing to comply with an antitrust order . The fifth penalty payment of €5 million issued today means the tech giant is now on the hook for €25M (out of a possible total of €50M) — and stands accused of continuing to throw up barriers rather than offer solutions by a very exasperated-sounding regulator. In a statement the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), said: “In the past week, we did not receive any new proposals from Apple with which they would comply with ACM’s requirements. That is why Apple will have to pay a fifth penalty payment. That means that the total amount of all penalty payments currently stands at 25 million euros. “We have clearly explained to Apple how they can comply with ACM’s requirements. So far, however, they have refused to put forward any serious proposals. We find Apple’s attitude regrettable, especially so since ACM’s requirements were upheld in court on December 24. Apple’s so-called ‘solutions’ continue to create too many barriers for dating-app providers that wish to use their own payment systems. “We have established that Apple is a company with a dominant position. That comes with extra responsibilities vis-à-vis its buyers and, more broadly, society at large. Apple must set reasonable conditions for the use of its services. In that context, it cannot abuse its dominant position. Apple’s conditions will thus have to take into account the interests of buyers.” A spokesperson for the regulator confirmed that Apple hasn’t offered any new proposals since last week’s were found to be “ “. “We expect Apple to comply with the order,” they added. “If they fail to do so, we have the opportunity to impose another order subject to periodic penalty payments.” Apple was contacted for a response to the latest fine from the ACM but the company’s comms department has been keeping its powder dry in recent weeks as the fines and accusations have ticked up. The tussle between a competition regulator in a single (small) European country trying to enforce a complaint by a subset of apps wanting to sell digital content without being forced to hand Apple a big chunk of their revenue and a platform giant intent on maintaining control of its ecosystem, or — at very least — its ability to charge a sizeable commission fees on in-app purchases howsoever it can — looks instructive in that it foreshadows far bigger battles to come, once the EU (and ) adopt (and ) tough new ex ante regulations against digital giants, with penalties to match. Under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) proposal, for example — which is speeding towards adoption — platforms that are judged to be “gatekeepers” and found to be breaking a list of pre-set, operational ‘dos and don’ts’ could face penalties of up to 10% of their global annual turnover. Which — in Apple’s case — would mean a fine that’s closer to €25BN than €25M (so certainly harder for Cupertino to shrug off). Even so, it’s clear regulators will face a massive task trying to get resource-rich tech giants to dance to their exact tune. Apple’s response to the ACM complaint has shown it’s not willing to simply abandon a lucrative revenue stream just because a regulator decides it’s unfair — and will instead work against that by reconfiguring its operations to find a new way to extract much the same fee… (Apple said it would charge Dutch dating apps tapping into third party payment tech vs the standard 30% App Store commission). Staying on top of fast-iterating tech giants — who may be highly incentivized to route around regulatory limitations, especially those that challenge their revenues — is a game we’ve already seen is very easy to lose to . |
Instagram quietly limits ‘daily time limit’ option | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | RIP Mark Zuckerberg’s “ “? In a move that appears to coincide with , photo-sharing app Instagram appears to have quietly removed the ability for mobile users to set a lower daily time limit reminder than 30 minutes. Indeed, the app’s UX design nudges people to choose a three hour ‘limit’ (see screengrab below). This daily time limit setting pops up a notification to the user once their app activity hits their preferred limit, reminding them to be conscious of how much time they are spending on the app — and maybe making it easier for them to choose to quit out of the app voluntarily. Instagram’s daily time limit setting puts “3 hours” in the top slot — burying lower available limits (Screengrab: TechCrunch) Previously the company supported a user-defined limit for Instagram that could be as low as 15 minutes — or even 10 minutes — per day, when it was making a big PR push to suggest that more ‘mindful’ usage of its services was possible, as concern over social media addiction surged. But it seems the attention-loving adtech giant now wants Instagram users to spend longer eyeballing content feeds on the photo- and video-sharing platform where it can cash in by targeting them with ads. Which could be a result of pressure from the business side to eke out growth… In its , Meta reported flat quarter-over-quarter usage for its eponymous app (Facebook) — and near flat growth for its other apps, which it wraps into a “family of apps” moniker, rather than breaking out Instagram, WhatsApp etc usage individually. (Daily active users of this ‘other apps’ category rose from 2.81BN in Q3 to 2.82BN in Q4; while monthly active users rose from 3.58BN in Q3 to 23.59BN in Q4; but usage of Facebook itself stayed entirely flat, quarter-over-quarter, at 1.93BN DAUs and 2.91BN MAUs.) The disappointing Q4 results wiped 20% off the company’s value when they hit — which could be one reason why Meta’s growth teams may be seeing what levers they can tweak to drive engagement from existing users. TechCrunch was alerted to the Instagram settings change by an tipster who shared screenshots of their account (see pics below) which show the company nudging them to “set a new value for your daily limit” — because, as it puts it, “the available daily limits are changing as part of an app update”. (Full marks to Meta for penning a sentence that fails to contain any meaningful explanation of why it’s making arbitrary changes to limit users’ control.) This user had previously specified a 10 minute daily limit. However they’re now suddenly being informed this option is no longer available — and, presumably, any users who had not yet specified a daily limit or had picked a different (higher) limit would be unlikely to even realize that the 10 minute option had been deprecated. And while Instagram’s notification to the user of this change to daily limits state that they can retain their current 10 minute limit, the app uses blatant dark patterns to nag them into changing it — including by popping up a notification right above the 10 minute limit that’s indicated on their “time on Instagram” settings page, which further instructs: “This value is no longer supported. Please edit” — all of which is clearly designed to make them think they do actually have to switch to a higher limit. [gallery ids="2274860,2274861"] “My choice has gone away, and if I try and change it, my old minimum of 10 minutes triples to 30 minutes as the new minimum,” the tipster told TechCrunch. The source, who preferred to remain anonymous, likened this silent switch to “a tobacco company saying you can limit your packs a day, as it takes away smaller packs”. “They don’t force the change but if go into the edit screen as it tells you to, then you have to force quit the app to get out without changing it,” they added. We’ve recently seen Facebook/Meta using a similarly manipulative persistent notification tactic when trying to push a policy update on WhatsApp users in the face of a major T&Cs backlash — which has . But the company has a long, ignoble history . So none of this is surprising. But ofc that doesn’t make it okay. It’s getting harder for companies like Meta to pull the wool, though. Oversight bodies are wising up to dark patterns. See for example — again in European Union — lawmakers in the parliament who into upcoming rules set to apply widely to digital platforms. So the scope for platforms to profit off of cynically self-serving defaults (or “available” settings) looks to be shrinking. Our tipster wasn’t sure exactly when the 10 minute option they had been able to select previously was discontinued — but they told us the app had been “nagging for a couple of weeks” to press them to “edit” the setting. We also checked what we could see ourselves to confirm this change applied more widely than to a single Instagram user — and found that 30 minutes seems to be the new ‘norm’ for app users. A US-based TechCrunch reporter found the app also only offers them 30 minutes as the lowest available daily limit. As with the tipster, the top option this user was presented with in the list of available times — and thus the option they’re most likely to notice, from a UX design point of view — was “3 hours” (aka 6x 30 minutes). Another UK-based TCer who checked their app could also only select 30 minutes as the lowest daily limit for the notification on their Instagram. Interestingly, the picture looked different on the Facebook mobile app. There the options offered to a TechCrunch reporter based in France technically included “0 hours, 0 minutes” — although that did not work when selected. However they were able to select a 5 minute limit (rising in 5 minute increments thereafter) so it looks as if the 30 minute minimum may not have been applied to the Facebook mobile app by Meta (yet). We were also able to confirm that another UK-based Facebook mobile app user could select a 5 minute minimum on that app. We asked Meta to confirm any changes it has made to the Instagram daily limits setting — as well as putting a number of other related questions to it — but at the time of writing the company had not responded. Users would also be able to view a daily average of time spent on the mobile app, based on a week’s usage. “We want the time people spend on Instagram and Facebook to be intentional, positive and inspiring,” Ameet Ranadive, product management director at Instagram and David Ginsberg, director of research at Facebook, wrote as they introduced the bundle of time management features. “Our hope is that these tools give people more control over the time they spend on our platforms and also foster conversations between parents and teens about the online habits that are right for them.” The feature launch was linked to a wider company push — starting around 2017 — when it appeared to engage publicly with . However Facebook did so by seeking to reframe the narrative by suggesting any problems with usage are incremental and manageable (i.e. rather than existential for its attention-dependent business) — just so long as the user has “tools” to support what it dubbed “meaningful social interactions”. Hence the flotilla of tweaks and “ ” Facebook/Meta went on to announce — offering self-serving ‘fixes’ to address societal concerns about social media usage, with the aim of preventing users actually stopping the habit entirely. Of course these controls rarely — if ever — put users in control. Moreover the underlying content ranking algorithms actively undermine user autonomy by optimizing for profit-maximizing ‘engagement’ — as Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, went on to detail in . The Instagram daily time limit feature, for example, was a lot more mindfulness theatre than meaningful control right from the get go — since users just got a notification if/when they reached their desired daily time, rather than the app taking firmer action like actually locking them out until the next day. As Haugen has testified, Facebook has demonstrated a systematic unwillingness to give up little slivers of profitability in service of a greater good (aka the welfare of its users/society) — up to and including, it now seems, letting Instagram users select a 10 minute soft limit on their usage. Which would allow for fewer ads to be served vs a 30 minute minimum — which means less profit for Meta… So the company’s claim of trying to deliver ‘time well spent’ on its platforms looks to have past its sell by date: Another hollow publicity stunt to buy Fb time while its growth teams drum up new UX hacks to keep the eyeballs busy. So if the secret of your ad-platform’s growth is dark pattern design and manipulative messaging — not to mention — then your investors do, certainly, have reasons for concern. In the statement responding to our questions, Meta claimed the removal of “daily limit” limits that are shorter than 30 minutes is related to the launch of newer time management feature, which it calls “Take A Break” — saying it wanted to avoid sending people multiple notifications at the same time. Here’s the statement in full: “We have two time management features. Our existing ‘daily limit’ shows you a notification when you’ve hit your daily limit, but our newest feature ‘Take A Break’ shows you full-screen reminders to leave the app, and includes 10 minute intervals. We changed the ‘daily limit’ options to avoid sending people multiple notifications at the same time.” This raises a number of new questions — such as why Instagram’s notifications to our tipster, nudging them to set a new (higher) daily time limit than 10 minutes, did not at the very least inform them of (or even link them to!) the existence of the Take A Break feature? And why a setting that is marketed as providing users with greater control over their Instagram usage should — in practice — lead to a user feeling they like have less control, given it keeps nudging them to remove their self-selected time limit without properly informing them of relevant alternatives. In any case, the wider point about shape-shifting, self-serving settings is that ever iterating user controls which require users to track incremental platform updates in full dimension detail do the polar opposite of putting users in control. Instead the person whose settings have, yet again, being reset or otherwise reconfigured must constantly work to understand the updated ‘version’ of control they are now being offered — at the very least learning to navigate a new menu interface. And if they don’t do that — say they feel too tired to do the research required to grok yet another finicky settings change — they risk being reset back to a lower level of control vs what they may have previously specified. Facebook has infamously used this tactic with privacy settings over its — notoriously flipping access to content that users had expressly told it should remain limited to being viewable by “friends only” (for example) to opening access to make their stuff entirely public on a totally global service. Damaging, resetting defaults and function-shifting settings are the very bread and butter of dark pattern design. “Take A Break” slots neatly into this ignoble tradition. It appears to have been first mentioned by Instagram back in a September 2021 — when the company wrote that the feature had “tentatively” been given that name; and said the idea for it is to enable users to “put their account on pause and take a moment to consider whether the time they’re spending is meaningful”. (The blog post did not actually specify what “Take A Break” would do. God forbid the company were to actually inform its users in plain English how something works!) Understanding these ever iterating new features — or new user control mechanisms, as they really are — is typically left to the tech press. Which means many publications generate a lot of coverage simply by explaining the nuance. This is often very helpful to Meta from a PR point of view, given it can routinely expect huge attention to the quotidian detail of incremental feature tweets/launches — which works to suck the oxygen out of the room/detract attention from more meaningful critiques of the platform giant — like why Zuckerberg continues to have absolute monarchy levels of power over what Meta does via his majority voting shares; or whether . But back to the detail of “Take A Break”. Instead of a simple setting that notifies users when their app usage hits their self configured limit — and maybe offers them a single, big red button to ‘Close App’ — Take A Break offers a far more staged and controlled version of the concept of a usage limit. At a glance, this looks mostly intended to quickly convince the user to return to the comfort of passive scrolling in the app, owing to a curated selection of alternative suggestions Meta presents in bolder, darker text (vs only a faint grey text where it suggests they “take a moment to reset by closing Instagram”). covered Take A Break in a video back in December — and the listed suggestions that appear in its video don’t seem optimized to actively discourage more content grazing in its app. Far from it. Some indeed may have the opposite effect (“do something on your to-do list”, for example, sounds a helluva a lot like work; while “take a few deep breaths” sounds like something you could literally spent a few seconds doing and then feel as if that’s job done, break over and back to scrolling on Instagram… Additionally, as CNN’s reporter pointed out, the feature’s 10 minute limit is sneaky. It is not a hard limit on daily usage — it’s merely a resetting pop up that ultimately encourages you to close it and go back to the app like every other tedious pop-up that the data industrial adtech complex routinely ( ) sicks onto the web. And if you do take Instagram up on one of the listed “Take A Break” suggestions, and actually switch away from the app — say so you can fire up Spotify to “listen to your favorite song” — Meta wins again because the app’s break counter resets back to zero! So it’s not actually a daily 10 minute limit at all! Really, “Take A Break” is a very different, far more manipulative feature than “Daily Limit” — one that looks intended to groom users into feeling as if they’re taking a break while simultaneously working to minimize how much time they actually stop using the app. A few breaths of ‘time out’ or a couple of seconds “writ[ing] down what you’re thinking” — or even a minute or two listening to a pop song — is all Meta says your eyeballs need before it serves up the next batch of ads. Frankly you can’t reform this level of dark pattern. The cynicism is so utterly pitch it should have its own event horizon. |
Meta sent a new draft decision on its EU-US data transfers | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | Facebook has received a “revised” preliminary decision from its lead EU privacy regulator with implications for its ability to continue to export user data to the US, TechCrunch has learned. “Meta has 28 days to make submissions on this preliminary decision at which point we will prepare a draft Article 60 decision for other Concerned Supervisory Authorities (CSAs). I’d anticipate that this will happen in April,” a deputy commissioner at the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), Graham Doyle, told us. Doyle declined to detail the contents of the preliminary decision. However, back in , the DPC sent a preliminary order telling Facebook to suspend data transfers, per a report at the time, citing people familiar with the matter. Meta, as the tech giant has recently rebranded its data-mining empire, has been flagging the ongoing risk to its EU-US data transfers in . It also immediately sought to challenge the DPC’s earlier draft order in the courts — but that legal avenue ran out of road in when the Irish High Court issued a dismissing the challenge to the DPC procedures. It’s not clear there has been any material change to the facts of the case — which hinges on the clash between European data protection law and US surveillance powers — since the earlier draft order telling the company to suspend transfers that would lead the regulator to arrive at a different conclusion now, regardless of what Meta submits at this next stage. Moreover, in recent months, other European data protection agencies have been issuing decisions against other US services that involve the transfers of personal data to the US — — which is, from an optics perspective at least, amping up the pressure on the DPC to finalize a decision against Meta. The regulator also faced a procedural challenge by the original complainant, Max Schrems, who extracted an agreement from it, in , that it would swiftly finalize the long-standing complaint — so that’s another quasi deadline in play. Under the terms of that settlement, the DPC agreed Schrems would also be heard in its (parallel) “own volition” procedure — which it opened in addition to its complaint-based enquiry related to his original (2013) complaint, and which is now moving forward via this new preliminary decision issued to Meta. Schrems confirmed he has been sent the decision by the DPC — but made no further comment. (For yet more twists, back in , the privacy advocacy group founded by Schrems filed a complaint of criminal corruption against the DPC — accusing the regulator of “procedural blackmail” in relation to attempts to prevent publication of other draft complaints… ) It’s still not clear how long exactly this multi-year data transfer saga could drag on before a final decision hits Meta — ordering it to suspend transfers. But it be closer to months than years, now. The Article 60 process loops in other interested data protection agencies — who have the ability to make reasoned objections to a draft decision by a lead authority within, initially, a month timeframe. Although there can be extensions. And if there is major disagreement between DPAs over a preliminary decision it can add months to the final decision-making process — and could ultimately require the European Data Protection Board to step in and push a final decision. All that’s still to come; for now the ball is back in Meta’s court to see what fresh blather its lawyers can come up with. The tech giant was contacted for comment on the latest development and in a statement a Meta spokesperson told us: “This is not a final decision and the IDPC have asked for further legal submissions. Suspending data transfers would be damaging not only to the millions of people, charities, and businesses in the EU who use our services, but also to thousands of other companies who rely on EU-US data transfers to provide a global service. A long-term solution on EU-US data transfers is needed to keep people, businesses and economies connected.” There is another moving piece to this apparently neverending story — as negotiations between the European Commission and the US on a replacement to the defunct Privacy Shield data transfer arrangement remain ongoing. In recent months, Facebook and have been making public calls for a new transatlantic data transfer deal to be agreed — urging a high level fix for the legal uncertainty now facing scores of US cloud services (or at least those that refuse to give up their own access to people’s data-in-the-clear). However the Commission has this time — saying back in 2020 that a replacement would only be possible if all the issues identified by the European Court of Justice in its can be resolved (which means both a legal and accessible means of redress for Europeans and tackling disproportionate US surveillance powers which rely on bulk intercepts of Internet communications). So, in short, Privacy Shield 3.0 looks like a tall order — certainly in the kind of short order that Meta’s business-as-usual demands… So , certainly has his work cut out! |
Trump’s TRUTH Social launches at the top of the App Store, but no one can get in | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | Donald Trump’s media group released its app today in the U.S., but a scan of the app’s API using publicly available tools revealed that it already closed itself to registrations (also, the scan showed that its “proprietary account registration microservice” is named “Pepe,” which is also the name of a meme with ). Though TRUTH Social sits at the No. 1 spot for free downloads in Apple’s App Store, most users can’t get into the app. When you download TRUTH Social, you’re prompted to enter your email and date of birth (users must be 18+) before waiting for a verification email. But at every step of the process, TechCrunch received error messages. Once we received a verification email, the link yielded more error messages, making it impossible to create an account. Some users have reported being with more than 100,000 users, while others or couldn’t the verification step. TechCrunch reached out to the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) for comment on these sign-up difficulties. Former President Trump became interested in building his own social media platform after he was removed from TRUTH Social The announcement of TRUTH Social was also rife with growing pains. The new social network used open-source code from Mastodon, yet claimed the code as its own. “The terms of service included a worrying passage, claiming that the site is proprietary property and all source code and software are owned or controlled by them or licensed to them,” Mastodon at the time. “Notably, neither the terms nor any other part of the website contained any references to Mastodon, nor any links to the source code, which are present in Mastodon’s user interface by default. Mastodon is free software published under the AGPLv3 license, which requires any over-the-network service using it to make its source code and any modifications to it publicly accessible.” In December, TRUTH Social Mastodon’s source code to its website on a section labeled “ .” “Our goal is to support the open source community no matter what your political beliefs are. That’s why the first place we go to find amazing software is the community and not ‘Big Tech,'” TRUTH Social’s website . In December, Congressman Devin G. Nunes (R-CA) from the House of Representatives to join TMTG as its CEO (Trump serves as chairman of the company). In with Fox News this weekend, Nunes said that the full launch of TRUTH Social is a few weeks away — currently, it’s only available for download on iOS. “Every day we bring on more and more Americans, and we’re getting to you as soon as possible,” Nunes said on Fox News. |
Groundfloor steps up its real estate debt crowdfunding platform with fresh capital | Anita Ramaswamy | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | Crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular way for companies to raise capital, and investors are taking notice. , the first real estate crowdfunding platform to gain regulatory approval, announced today that it raised its first round of institutional capital since 2015. Brian Dally, a former mobile network exec, and Nick Bhargava, a co-author of the bipartisan JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, founded Groundfloor in 2013. The Atlanta-based company led by Fintech Ventures shortly after new crowdfunding rules under the JOBS Act took effect, allowing small businesses to fundraise up to $75 million from non-accredited investors without needing to register the offering. Groundfloor’s platform offers investments in real estate debt to its 150,000+ users, with a minimum investment of $10. Nearly all of the products available on its platform are open to non-accredited investors, Dally, who serves as CEO, told TechCrunch. Groundfloor users have a wide range of reasons for using the platform, from new investors who are looking for a safer alternative to public markets to experienced investors who prefer investing through an app instead of using the broker, Dally said. Dally and Bhargava started Groundfloor to help average investors access opportunities similar in their risk-return profile to those available to institutions, according to Dally. Groundfloor offers an alternative way for these investors to access real estate “without having to buy a publicly-traded REIT (real estate investment trust) or having to go buy a whole rental property and take on the operational risk and concentration risk,” Dally said. The company’s “secret sauce” comes from its deep understanding of regulatory frameworks, according to Dally. Launching its first product felt like waiting for regulators to approve a new drug, he added, noting that it took two years and roughly $1 million for Groundfloor to gain Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval to operate in its first U.S. state. Today, the company sells securities in 49 of 50 U.S. states and lends capital to real estate projects in 35 states. Groundfloor underwrites the loans on its platform using an algorithm that assigns each loan a grade based on its risk across six different factors, with an emphasis on the track record and experience of the real estate investor receiving the loan, Dally said. Investors on Groundfloor can then make allocation decisions that are appropriate for their own risk tolerance levels based on these scores, he continued. Groundfloor has scaled its platform by adding new debt investment products, including a saving and investing app called Stairs that it launched last fall, which now has $22 million in assets invested. On Stairs, users earn between 4% and 6% interest on cash held in what is essentially a checking account. Groundfloor uses the capital it gets from Stairs users to make loans to real estate entrepreneurs, which it holds briefly on its own books before selling them to investors, Dally said. Stairs users have constant liquidity and can take their money out of the app whenever they want, he added — a novel structure that he said took nine months to qualify with the SEC. “These are heavy RegTech lifts. A lot of legal engineering goes into it. So that process takes a lot takes a long time, but we think it’s worth it,” Dally said. In 2018, the company began raising capital from its own users through its own platform and equity crowdfunding platform SeedInvest, totaling $30 million over four public equity raises since then. Individual investors now own about 30% of Groundfloor, Dally said. The newly-announced Series B comes on the heels of substantial growth for Groundfloor, which saw revenue grow 114% to $12 million in 2021, according to the company. Groundfloor said its investors enjoyed an average return of 10% across all its real estate loans during the year. Groundfloor’s real estate loan crowdfunding platform The latest round brought in a total of $118 million for the company, with $5.8 million in equity coming from Israeli real estate company and $7.2 million from 3,600+ individual investors who back Groundfloor through crowdfunding platform SeedInvest. 86 individuals also participated in the round directly through the Groundfloor app, with their investment comprising $5.0 in convertible notes. Dally noted that convertible notes are one of the only products on Groundfloor that aren’t available to non-accredited investors, partially because the company rarely raises them. Groundfloor announced a strategic partnership with Medipower, which specializes in shopping centers and retail real estate, as part of the funding news. Medipower plans to invest up to $100 million this year in loans on Groundfloor, and up to an additional $220 million next year. The company, which is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange under the ticker MDPR, will invest in these loans on the same terms as individual investors on the platform and will be limited in how much it can invest to ensure other investors don’t get crowded out. As part of the deal, Medipower founder and chairman Yair Goldfinger will join the Groundfloor board. Medipower’s investments could amount to 25% of Groundfloor’s assets under management by the end of 2022, Dally said. He sees the Medipower loan investments as a non-dilutive source of financing because he expects the institutional validation from Medipower investing on Groundfloor to attract revenue for the company from other sources. “That [capital] is going to be directly benefiting real estate entrepreneurs who are doing new construction projects and building housing all over the country,” Dally said. Groundfloor plans to use the proceeds from the fundraise, in part, to add 50 new employees to its team, which is currently composed of about 70 people. Around 40% of these new hires will be engineers to support the company’s growth plans, particularly on the product side, Dally said. “We’re getting ready to go from 160,000 investors to a million investors in the next couple years,” Dally said. |
Jambo raises $7.5M from Coinbase, Alameda Research to build ‘web3 super app’ of Africa | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | James Zhang (co-founder and CEO, ). |
Sweden’s Volta raises $260M at a $490M valuation to get its all-electric trucks into production by the end of this year | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | — the Swedish electric vehicle startup that believes it can build better urban delivery vehicles and other trucks that are safer and take up a smaller carbon footprint than their gas-guzzling, more clumsy, existing counterparts — has closed a big round of funding to help it through that last mile of work before its Volta Zero trucks go into commercial production later this year. The company has raised €230 million (around $260 million), a Series C round of funding that appears to value the company at just over $490 million (€433 million). Volta will be using the money to fund engineering and business operations ahead of its first trucks rolling off the assembly line, on the back of what looks like a healthy list of customers: Volta said that its pre-order book for its all-electric Volta Zero — said to be the first fully electric, purpose-built commercial freight vehicle designed for urban freight distribution — is currently totaling over €1.2 billion, covering more than 5,000 vehicles. Volta’s wider business strategy will be based both on selling trucks as well as offering its vehicles on a trucking-as-a-service model. New York-based Luxor Capital, which led the company’s , is also leading this round. Real estate investment firm Byggmästare Anders J Ahlström (like Volta, based in Stockholm), supply chain services giant B-FLEXION (formerly Waypoint Capital) also participated. While Volta has not disclosed its valuation, notes that it is now just over $490 million — a figure that we have now confirmed also with sources close to the company. Volta’s growth, and the large amount of capital it has now raised — over $325 million to date — are part of a bigger sea change in the automotive world. Startups, tapping into new manufacturing techniques, new batter technology, and new energy infrastructure, see a ripe opportunity to build new vehicles to disrupt the current status quo with safer and cleaner alternatives. Investors — likely wowed by the success of electric efforts like Tesla’s with smaller cars — are putting their money behind these ventures to give them more firepower, and more credibility with would-be customers. These are all essential building blocks for catapulting cars into the next wave of technological innovation, where trucks like Volta’s become hardware platforms capable of gathering and working with massive data sets to help the vehicles and the businesses using them operate at new levels of productivity. That is the theory, at least. The process of getting there inevitably ends up being slower, and more costly, than initial rosy projects, which is another reason why it’s important for companies in the space to raise large rounds and corral together groups of strategic backers to help them get to market. “We are investigating autonomy / self-driving for the future but as a vehicle that’s specifically designed as a city centre distribution and delivery vehicle, the goods within the vehicle will need delivering from the vehicle to their end destination. As a result, the purpose of the vehicle will always need a person involved, making self-driving less relevant for this type of vehicle,” said a spokesperson. The company is building a production facility in Austria, with plans to produce 5,000 vehicles in 2023; 14,000 trucks in 2024; and up to 27,000 trucks in 2025. “The successful and oversubscribed conclusion of our Series C funding round gives us a positive external validation of our journey,” said Essa Al-Saleh, CEO of Volta Trucks, in a statement. “As an innovator and disruptor in commercial vehicles, we are working at industry-leading pace and have significant ambitions. Today’s closing of the Series C funding round, bringing €230 million into the company, gives us the financial runway to be able to deliver on all our goals as we transition from a start-up to a manufacturer of full-electric trucks. The confirmation of our orderbook of over 5,000 vehicles with an orderbook value exceeding €1.2 billion, gives us and our investors, confidence that our pioneering product and service offering is both wanted and needed by our customers.” |
The Station: DeLorean teases an EV, VW and Huawei are ‘talking’ and feds investigate Tesla | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 21 | Hello readers: Welcome to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Before you dive into our weekly roundup of news and analysis, I wanted to flag two items. First up, the founders series with , co-founder and COO of autonomous sidewalk robot maker Cartken. Secondly, is coming up and I will be there IRL. Reach out if there’s a talk or presentation you believe I simply must see or a person I just have to meet. It’ll be a quick trip, but I am looking for any and all compelling transportation goings on. I am also moderating two panels: one is on with folks from Arrival, Uber and autonomous vehicle consultant Selika Talbott. , with Enel and Uber, is focused on EV charging infrastructure and the electrification of ride sharing, corporate fleets and service fleets. Bah! wait, how could I forget … this is huge and finally we can have cars in the U.S. that don’t blind people! The issued a final rule to install adaptive driving beam headlights, which automatically adjusts as you are driving, on new vehicles. These systems are already in Europe. As always, you can email me at to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to Kirsten at Twitter — . One of my favorite podcast and newsletter hosts, , dedicated a whole podcast to micromobility! On Exponential View, where Azhar explores the impact of technology on business and society, he had on micromobility expert Horace Dediu. They talked about the role of software in driving the adoption of micromobility (a trend that people questioned and even gave me a lot of flack for ), the integration of AR and micromobility and how big tech companies will integrate into micromobility. There’s really no end to the companies trying to fuel the micromobility revolution, so catch up with just a few of them here. is consolidating a less talked-about market in the micromobility world: shared mobility aggregating. The company just , , so that it can better offer comprehensive price comparisons for shared mobility. This helps users check the price, availability and travel time from multiple operators in one search. Funnily enough, this is something Dediu has said big tech companies, like Google, have an opportunity to capitalize on via Maps, so we’ll see how this kind of service unfolds in the long run. is extending its permits and increasing its fleet size in a few markets. It’ll be sticking around a little while longer in Long Beach, Portland and Decatur, and adding more vehicles to Durham, Isla Vista and Arlington. , an online motorcycle buying and selling startup, to expand its platform outside of Spain and into the rest of Europe. is starting to double down on its , per its Q4 2021 earnings. This supports comments that Tony Ho of Segway made to TechCrunch last year when he that some of the “big rideshare guys” would be “coming back to play.” is designing an electric two-wheeler that has a top speed of (!!!). It’ll need a special metal called niobium that is found on rocket ships. This isn’t a deal, so much as a rumored one. Still, it’s worth noting because of the implications. German media reported that is in talks with to acquire the latter’s nascent autonomous driving unit for billions of euros. Huawei said it had no immediate comment when contacted by TechCrunch. VW China said it has no comment. As , the potential merger will be a powerful one. Huawei’s autonomous unit sits under the telecom equipment and smartphone behemoth’s “smart vehicle solution” business unit, which started only in 2019. The founding of the smart car BU spurred much speculation over whether Huawei would develop its own cars, though the firm has repeatedly denied any manufacturing plans and said it instead wants to be the “Bosch of China”, or a components supplier for car brands. , the Australian car subscription company, in a round led by Insurance Australia Group and Seven West Media. , a California startup that developed a way to replace traditional wiring harnesses in vehicles, in a funding round backed by several strategic investors, including BMW iVentures, Lear Corp., Robert Bosch Venture Capital and 3M. Previous investor Ford Motor did not join the latest round. , a lidar company that went public via a merger with SPAC partner Growth Capital Acquisition Corp, held its opening bell ringing ceremony at Nasdaq on February 17. , a company that developed software to connect CDL drivers to trucking companies with assignments, announced it raised $10 million in a round led by B Capital Group. Other investors included previous funders, Hack VC, Next Coast Ventures, Pipeline Capital Partners, RPM Ventures, Value Chain Ventures, as well as new participants, Bam Elevate, FJ Labs, WTI and angel investor Will Redd (cofounder of ZipRecruiter). has a new focused on early-stage mobility companies. The firm, which is based in Denver with offices in New York and Tel Aviv, has already tapped into the fund to invest in Aifleet and Visionary.ai. , a German-based startup that offers emissions-free last-mile delivery services, in a seed funding round led by SpeedInvest and with participation from Norrsken VC. , a connected car API startup, said it in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners. Existing investors also joined including Story Ventures, FM Capital, Monta Vista Capital and Avanta Ventures. , an autonomous electric rail company, in grant money from the Department of Energy as part of its Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy initiative. is launching a new engineering and development office in Los Angeles where researchers will engage in R&D to advance its self-driving tech. Argo is bringing on Caltech professor Yisong Yue as principal scientist, who bring an expertise in ML and a . Argo’s new office is close by Caltech, which will allow Argo to tap into that university-to-startup pipeline. that it is partnering with “to design optimal deployment strategies for autonomous technology in its commercial operations.” Think of this as a data exchange mission to find the lanes that would most benefit from early deployment of Aurora’s self-driving trucking technology. Separately, Aurora (Q4 and full year) as a publicly traded company. There weren’t too many surprises for a company that is still developing its technology and therefore pre-revenue. It’s R&D spend caught my eye though. Whooo weee! Aurora reported it spent $697.3 million on research and development in 2021, compared to $179.4 million in 2020. Aurora has $1.6 billion in cash on hand. is launching its autonomous ride-hailing service, Apollo Go, in yet another city. Shenzhen will be the company’s seventh city where it’s , starting with the Nanshan District, which is home to companies like Huawei and Tencent, as well as many tourist attractions. The company will be deploying Apollo’s 4th gen vehicle, the Hongqi EV, and has promised to bring its 5th gen robotaxi onto the fleet soon. Users will be able to hail a robotaxi via the Apollo Go app at one of 50 stations from 9am to 5pm. Baidu hopes to expand to more than 300 stations by the end of the year. : This is still a trial operation. Baidu has gone commercial in Beijing and will be bringing a commercial service to Cangzhou in March. The Shenzhen service will also involve “drivered” autonomous vehicles (human safety operator is still behind the wheel) while Baidu seeks permission to test driverless in the city. plans to expand the it has with Walmart in Arizona to eight stores. Today, that pilot involves just one Walmart store located on Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community lands near Scottsdale. launched an on-demand delivery service in Pleasanton, California, which is in the Bay Area. This is an expansion of its existing partnership deploying autonomous sidewalk robots for The Save Mart companies, which began in 2020. autonomous trucking and cargo division and freight logistics company are gearing up to launch a pilot. The companies said within the coming months Waymo’s test fleet will be for one of C.H. Robinson’s customers. The pilot is part of a larger partnership between the two companies that aims to combine Waymo’s AV technology, which is available to any carrier, with C.H. Robinson’s logistics data on over 3 million trucking lanes and access to a network of nearly 200,000 shippers and carriers, many of which are medium and small carriers that Waymo is interested in reaching. Remember all of those electric vehicle ads that aired during the Super Bowl? Apparently, Cars.com saw an 80% increase in EV page views after all that marketing. TechCrunch reporter Rebecca Bellan tells me she from General Motors, featuring Dr. Evil and crew from the Austin Powers movies, in part because it went nicely with the throwbacks from the halftime show. Putting aside my Gen Xer reaction to the word “throwbacks” (we’ll talk later, Rebecca) I was struck by how many of the EVs in these ads are not yet on sale. When all those people turned to the internet to find these EVs were they disappointed? Or excited for what was to come? is coming back as an EV! Or at least that’s the intention of some Texas executives who are working with Stephen Wynne, . Wynne owns the DeLorean branding rights and supplies parts for the 6,000 or so remaining vehicles. DeLorean Motor Company ReImagined LLC that teases the upcoming EV; no word on timing. confirmed in an earnings call that it’s still on track to start production of the Ocean SUV in November, with reservations for its first electric vehicle . Interestingly, there are 1,600 fleet reservations for the Ocean, including an incremental 200-unit order from software company ServiceNow. , the startup founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, is launching an in California with Ford and Volvo as inaugural partners as pressure mounts to source materials for EVs. The two automakers will cover some of the cost of retrieving, properly packaging and then transporting the batteries back to Redwood’s recycling facility in northern Nevada. The program will be free for those turning in vehicle batteries. Redwood says it will accept all lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride batteries in the state, regardless of the make or model of the vehicle. said non-Tesla owners can charge their electric vehicles at all Supercharger stations , marking an expansion of a pilot program that kicked off in November 2021 with 10 stations. Speaking of Tesla, the company to No. 23 out of 32 brands in annual auto brand rankings. And not to pile on, but … federal safety regulators into Tesla after receiving hundreds of reports alleging “phantom braking.” The investigation covers an estimated 416,000 Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles from the 2021-22 model years. is expanding its collaboration with Walgreens and will install at over stores throughout the U.S. signed a non-binding MoU with Avolon, an aircraft leasing company, to that were built by Vertical Aerospace. , a Chinese eVTOL company, completed the proof-of-concept, transition test flight for its air taxi Prosperity I, in which the aircraft switches from a vertical take-off motion to horizontal flight and back to vertical flight before landing — an important milestone for an eVTOL startup trying to make it in the business. is to bring aerial ridesharing services to Japan. Toyota Motor Corporation will be partnering with the two companies, as well, in order to explore ways to connect the air taxis to ground-based transportation. In other Joby news, the company reported one of its test vehicles crashed. . is launching express grocery delivery, which brings customer groceries in under 30 minutes, in partnership with , which owns stores like Safeway, Vons, Tom Thumb, ACME Markets and more. keeps scoring those automaker partnerships. This time, it is The automaker said it will use Nvidia’s end-to-end Drive Hyperion platform in all of its vehicles starting in 2025. This platform will be used to power features like advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving. , the auto fintech startup formerly called MotoRefi, has . The company promoted former COO and Uber alum Eric Stradley to the role of president, appointed Jason Tepperman as chief lending officer, hired Arlene Dzurnak as the company’s chief compliance officer and named Jennifer Khazai chief accounting officer. , the satirist and bestselling author who also wrote for Car and Driver, died February 15. Car and Driver has a nice featuring some of his work for the magazine. left In-Q-Tel, where he was partner, and is now at JetBlue Technology Ventures. announced that Chairman , whose SPAC took the company public in 2019, is stepping down from the space-tourism company’s board of directors, effective immediately, . |
Nvidia calls off its efforts to acquire Arm | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Nvidia’s is off, the two companies and Arm owner SoftBank Tuesday. With this, there is also a major leadership change at Arm. The company’s current CEO, Simon Segars, is leaving his post, effective today, with , the president of Arm’s IP group (and former Nvidia VP and general manager of its computing products business), taking his role. Since the deal is now off the table, Arm says it is exploring a public offering in lieu of the acquisition. The current plan is for the IPO to happen sometime within the next 12 months. The Financial Times that the deal had collapsed earlier today. As Haas told me in an interview shortly before today’s announcement, Segars’ decision to leave the company was very much a personal choice. “He has decided that at this stage of his career, the time and energy required to take the company public and everything around that was not something he wanted to sign up to,” Haas said. “So he’s going to step down. I’m going to take over for him.” “Rene is the right leader to accelerate Arm’s growth as the company looks to re-enter the public markets,” said Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. “I would like to thank Simon for his leadership, contributions and dedication to Arm over the past 30 years.” Haas noted that Arm’s business today is stronger than ever. “We are very enthusiastic and excited about this next chapter for the company,” he told me. “The company’s been doing great. […] Revenue and profitability levels never seen by Arm before and certainly not seen before we joined SoftBank. But, probably more importantly, the diversification of the business relative to what it looked like pre-SoftBank, we’re a much stronger company now in areas like the cloud and the data center, we’re a much stronger company in markets like automotive and we have a huge opportunity for future markets such as IoT and metaverse.” While Haas wouldn’t comment any further on Nvidia’s and SoftBank’s decision, noting that the deal finally collapsed today, he admitted that the discussions about a leadership change had started earlier. “While we are disappointed that the acquisition didn’t go through, we are, at the same time, very excited about our prospects going forward and can’t wait to get this next chapter started,” he said. Haas wouldn’t say just yet what that will look like, but he noted that the company will continue its efforts to push into the CPU and GPU market, as well as continue its efforts in the AI space. “Continuing what we’ve been doing and executing on that is going to be really important, because we’ve demonstrated a recipe on how to grow the business and we definitely want to continue that,” he said. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang echoed this. “Arm has a bright future, and we’ll continue to support them as a proud licensee for decades to come,” he said in a statement. “Arm is at the center of the important dynamics in computing. Though we won’t be one company, we will partner closely with Arm. The significant investments that Masa has made have positioned Arm to expand the reach of the Arm CPU beyond client computing to supercomputing, cloud, AI and robotics. I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade.” In some ways, today’s announcement doesn’t come as a surprise. After the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced that it would to block the merger, that the combined company would be able to “unfairly undermine Nvidia’s rivals,” Bloomberg that Nvidia was preparing to . In the U.K., where Arm is headquartered, the merger hit similar roadblocks , as well as with EU antitrust regulators. In the end, an Nvidia that dominated the GPU and AI accelerator market and also owned the IP to the chips that power virtually every smartphone and IoT device rang all kinds of alarm bells. The two companies would’ve likely had to make considerable changes to their deal to get it through the regulatory process. Nvidia first its plans for this mega-merger in September 2020. At the time, Nvidia CEO Huang that this would allow his company to create “a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI.” Throughout all of this, Nvidia’s and Arm’s leadership publicly remained optimistic that the deal would eventually pass muster with the regulatory authorities. Knowing that there would be some pushback, the two companies had always given themselves a lot of time to close this deal, with an expected closing date of March 2022, 18 months after the announcement. In recent months, both companies admitted that they would miss this date. They were also up against a bit of a deadline of September 2022, after which SoftBank would keep its , though now that the deal is off, SoftBank will keep it anyway. |
Clikalia clicks on $86M to expand its iBuyer marketplace across Europe and Latin America | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Companies like Opendoor opened the door to a new way of buying and selling properties by inserting a strong middle player who could buy houses or apartments and redevelop them at scale, and then sell them to new homeowners at a profit. Now , another player in the so-called iBuyer space, has raised €75 million ($86 million) to take that model to markets in Europe and Latin America. The company is primarily active in Spain and Mexico, where it currently has a run rate of 2,400 properties acquired. As a point of comparison, that is 600 up on the 1,800 run rate Clikalia disclosed only when it raised $518 million ($70 million in equity; the rest in debt) to scale the business. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Fifth Wall are co-leading the round, with participation from existing investors Luxor Capital and Guillaume Pousaz. This is SoftBank’s first property tech investment in Europe, although it’s no stranger to the iBuyer model. Both it and Fifth Wall were of Opendoor, one of the pioneers in the space. (It also helps it potentially offset some of the drama it’s been facing with some of its other holdings, one of the latest being the .) Alister Moreno, the CEO who co-founded Clikalia with Pablo Fernandez, said that Clikalia will be using the funds to expand the business, both by taking it to more cities in its main markets, and by entering other countries. It’s already doing some work in Portugal, and we understand France is next on the list. It will also be investing in inking more partnerships with companies that bring in a steady stream of inventory and those that can make the renovation process more efficient. Moreno said that last year Clikalia started working with Ikea in Spain and one of the bigger banks in the country, la Caixa, to buy houses under the control of la Caixa, and then with Ikea completely renovate those homes and sell them on again. Moreno and Fernandez started Clikalia after working for years in the U.S. on behalf of Santander, where they came across Carvana, which applies the iBuyer model to cars. After leaving Santander and returning to Spain, they first built a Spanish version of Carvana called , and then they turned their attention to applying the model to property, with Clikalia, to tackle what they estimate to be a $1 trillion market for second-hand homes, which in Europe and the dense cities of Latin America are just as likely to come in the form of apartments as single-unit structures. While there is a very physical asset, a home — and an equally physical process involved with the renovation of that home — at the center of Clikalia’s work, Moreno said he thinks of the company as a technology and data company first. “The iBuyer model is an excuse to travel with the customer,” Moreno said, with the idea being that Clikalia brings together and simplifies the many steps needed to sell or buy a home in a one-stop shop model. “Every step of the process could be an independent company,” he added. The stages include marketing and listing of the property, the data tracking the pricing based on location and how much to invest in renovating a home in a particular area, and a number of other services before, during and after a home purchase. All of that technology definitely came into its own during the peak of COVID-19, he said, when in Spain people were virtually forbidden to leave their homes without special permission. All of these steps, and the different variables that come into play across different home types, different demographics and different country regulations make for a very fragmented market, which is one reason why investors are interested in Clikalia: It has positioned itself as a platform that can potentially simplify all of that not just for home buyers and sellers, but also the many others involved in the home buying and ownership process. That’s not guaranteed to be as smooth as it sounds, and plenty have found it a bumpy market: Opendoor, for example, currently has a market cap of , far below its when it first went public in a SPAC merger. But belief remains that the model can, over the long term, produce positive returns. “The residential real estate market in Southern Europe is highly fragmented, with limited price transparency, poor quality stock and transactions on average taking twice the time of other European markets,” said Elizabeth Wells, investor for SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “We believe Clikalia’s technology directly addresses these legacy asymmetries and improves the customer experience at every stage. We’re excited to partner with Alister, Pablo and the whole team in their mission to make the process of buying and selling homes more transparent, efficient and affordable for consumers across Europe and Mexico.” “We’re excited to continue supporting Clikalia’s team due to their continued strong execution and financial outperformance,” added Miguel Nigorra, partner and co-head of Europe for Fifth Wall. “Clikalia’s plans to expand their activities across several European markets shows their commitment to become the dominant residential real estate platform in Europe.” |
Vietnam-focused investment app Infina boosts its seed round to $6M | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Retail investment apps in Southeast Asia , and the trend looks set to continue with Vietnam-focused announcing that it has added $4 million to its seed funding. Along with it announced in June, this brings the round’s total to $6 million. Investors include Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program, Y Combinator, Saison Capital, Starling Ventures, Alpha JWC and AppWorks. Infina was part of and aspires to become the “Robinhood of Vietnam.” It launched in January 2021. Like other Southeast Asian investment apps that have attracted venture capital over the past year (a partial list includes Indonesia’s Pluang, which , , , and ), Infina is focused on first-time Gen Z and millennial investors. More Vietnamese people began participating in the stock market last year, by a jump in the market value of publicly traded companies. Infina says it saw a compound monthly growth rate of 64% in funded accounts in 2021. The app enables investors to pick from several asset classes, including fixed-income products, mutual funds and stock trading. It also offers fractionalized trading, which means users can invest with lower minimum amounts. Part of the reason for Infina’s growth is its integration in third-party super apps, including e-commerce app Tiki. |
3D content collaboration startup Taichi Graphics closes $50M Series A | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | For years, open source software in China was only attracting developers and was poorly understood by returns-seeking investors. But they are finally having a moment like their Western counterparts. The latest open source project to get funded in China is , a 10-month-old startup that aims to make 3D content creation easier. It operates Taitopia, a for 3D graphics creation, sharing and remote collaboration, sort of like “ for 3D content” in its own words. Undergirding the platform is its open source programming language which offers a high-performance computation on spatially sparse data structures like those from 3D visual graphics. Taichi Graphics closed a Series A investment at $50 million with lead investors Source Code Capital, GGV Capital and BAI Capital. Other participants in the round included returning investor Sequoia Capital China. TechCrunch has reached out to ask about their operation and valuation. Taichi Graphics’ 3D content platform Taitopia allows creators to collaborate remotely. screenshot from Taichi Graphics The nascent startup joins a handful of open source software companies founded by Chinese returnees who have studied or worked in the U.S. Rather than focusing on their home market, these founders take advantage of their experience in both worlds and build products tailored to global users at the outset. Cloud-native event streaming platform , which nabbed a , was started by and operates out of both China and the U.S. Unstructured data analytics startup Zilliz . Taichi Graphics itself was started by Yuanming Hu, a computer science PhD from MIT, and Ye Kuang, a Google veteran. It’s gradually drumming up interest in the global developer community. The project was starred 17,700 times on GitHub as of 2021, up from 12,700 a year before, according to the company; 152 developers from a dozen countries had contributed to Taichi Graphics by 2021. In a introducing Taichi in 2019, Hu and his co-authors explained why a domain-specific language was needed for 3D content computing: 3D visual computing data are often spatially sparse. To exploit such sparsity, people have developed hierarchical sparse data structures, such as multi-level sparse voxel grids, particles, and 3D hash tables. However, developing and using these high-performance sparse data structures is challenging, due to their intrinsic complexity and overhead. We propose Taichi, a new data-oriented programming language for efficiently authoring, accessing, and maintaining such data structures. Taishi Graphics’ tools have found use cases in physical simulation, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, robotics and special visual effects in films and games. With the new proceeds, the startup plans to strengthen the influence of its parallel programming language and build tools targeting digital content creators. It will also continue recruiting roles in R&D, product development, monetization, strategy and design. |
Selina raises $150M to dish out flexible loans that leverage home equity | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | For many of us, our home is by far our biggest asset, and in the world of fintech, that’s led to a logical extension: when you need money, borrow against that biggest asset. Today, a London fintech called , which provides flexible capital to consumers on five-year terms against up to 85% of the value of their homes — so-called Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) loans — is announcing $150 million in funding on the heels of making $100 million in loans out to homeowners. The Series B equity portion of $35 million is being led by Lightrock, with previous backers Picus Capital and Global Founders Capital also participating. (The latter two firms are tied in part to the Samwer brothers, who also built the Rocket Internet e-commerce incubator in Berlin.) The remaining $115 million is coming in the form of debt from Goldman Sachs and GGC. Hubert Fenwick, the CEO who co-founded the company with COO Leonard Benning, said Selina is not disclosing its valuation with this round, but a source said it is based on standard Series B dilution, which works out to around $140 million. Selina plans to use the funding to continue expanding its business in the U.K. before considering how to tackle other markets in Europe, which Fenwick called “white space” because of how nascent the HELOC market is there; and to launch more products around its loans business, including a credit card that it will launch this year, which will draw down funds from a customer’s loan to make the funds more accessible. The U.K. market is ready to be taken and the size is massive,” Fenwick said, estimating the potential asset base for homes in the country at $30 billion. “We need quite a war chest to unlock that, so we think the cash flows will support the U.K. business very quickly, but we also need capital to grow into international markets.” When we last covered Selina, the company was breaking new ground in the U.K. and had just raised $53 million to provide its HELOC service to SMBs, not individual consumers. Fenwick tells me that consumers were always in its sights, but the company needed to secure regulatory clearance first. “The real opportunity was consumers,” he said. That happened at the end of 2020, and now 90% of Selina’s business is consumer lending, he said. In both cases, the gap in the market is the same: People who need capital for a large project, say a building renovation or for educational purposes, might otherwise apply for a loan from a bank, or they might refinance their homes to pick up some extra liquidity. Selina’s HELOC approach differs from these in part because of the speed at which its loans are approved — the money can be available as quickly as 24 hours — and the fact that the funds are doled out as needed, meaning consumers are only paying interest on the part they eventually drawn down. These might be seen as competitive with mortgage refinancing, but in fact Fenwick said that the opposite is the case: Banks are strong partners for Selina, because they are always on the lookout for ways to keep customers from churning from their mortgages, and refinancing to get some liquidity is often one way that their customers churn. Offering those customers an HELOC is one way to keep them from touching their mortgages. But it’s not an area that the banks would necessarily touch themselves, he said. “The HELOC is the preserve of specialist lenders marrying credit card-type charges with mortgage lending security,” Fenwick said. “You have to manage the liquidity in a different way. The primary mortgage market is much bigger, so banks would rather partner with smaller companies and retain the mortgage customer [as is] rather than enter a new market.” Fenwick notes that Selina typically is crunching a mixture of its own data and that of third parties to determine a person’s eligibility for a loan and to run different aspects of the business, and that data science creates another barrier to entry for others to compete. “Our algorithms are proprietary and specialized for the lending we do,” he said. “The stack is very long.” Selina works out that because you are only charged interest as you draw down funds, the rates you pay back each month will not be as high as someone borrowing and drawing down a lump sum. One comparative chart on a £50,000 loan shows how it works: Selina HELOCs are relatively commonplace in the U.S., Fenwick points out, where it’s estimated to be a $150 billion market, with some of the bigger names in the space including Blend (which is now public), Noah and Hometap. The approach is a relatively new one in the U.K., although Fenwick believes that this will likely (and rapidly) evolve not just because HELOC businesses like Selina’s are being given the green light, but because of the ubiquity of home ownership; and the fact that more people, as they move around less due to the pandemic, have turned their attention to spending bigger amounts on things like home renovations or less-frequent but much bigger vacations. “Historically, homeowners across the U.K. have been underserved when it comes to accessing wealth created from their largest asset — their home,” said Ash Puri, growth investor at Lightrock, in a statement. “The team at Selina have achieved impressive growth with over $100 million in loans issued since founding in 2019. Lightrock is delighted to be backing such an innovative team and looks forward to supporting Selina as it disrupts traditionally inflexible lenders.” “Selina Finance’s HELOC product is innovative, and bridges the gap between the consumer credit and mortgage markets,” added Anna Montvai, executive director at Goldman Sachs. “We are excited to support the Selina Finance team in the growth of their business and loan portfolio.” |
4 signs to look for when evaluating ESG investments | Bruce Dahlgren | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | on Google Flights, you may have noticed that airlines have begun to incorporate carbon emissions data into their offerings to consumers. As a frequent flyer, all things — including price — being equal, I’ll always choose the more carbon-efficient flight. This is novel and striking to me. It’s exciting to have a new data point to understand my personal carbon footprint, but it also highlights a real inflection point for the investor community. If environmental data is already available and marketable at the consumer level, this means the era of ESG – environmental, social and corporate governance – is essentially here at the enterprise level and it is the next big frontier in corporate governance, risk and compliance (GRC). But right now, ESG is seen by some as all talk, little action – there may be hundreds of executives touting the importance of ESG, but we still lack a universal measuring stick for clearly understanding ESG performance. Without that, it’s difficult to determine what is right from what is wrong, or what is a strong investment from a shortsighted one. The common denominator that investors must understand, without a doubt: The key to understanding ESG is all about collecting the data and having it in an actionable format for analysis. Once key metrics are measured, investors and executives alike can make smarter decisions. So how do we value ESG performance and make it more actionable? A recent Morgan Stanley determined that 85% of all individual investors were interested in sustainable investing, up 10 percentage points from 2017, while a indicated that ESG assets may hit $53 billion by 2025, which would be one-third of the world’s total assets under management. Investors need to start thinking about ESG risk in the same way they consider investment risk, as a first step. Most stakeholders expect companies to play a role in decarbonizing the global economy and being responsible global citizens. Consider how strongly consumers react when corporate entities are caught being irresponsible: If companies are not holding themselves to a certain ESG standard, they have to answer to their customers, employees, investors and the larger global community. Interestingly, we have seen this same paradigm play out in the broader risk management sector. Governments haven’t yet caught up to fast-evolving risk factors in a more digitized world – the metaverse and cryptocurrencies are great examples of new and risky territory with no set regulations. As governing bodies catch up, companies must then set their own internal standard for how they manage and measure risks. This internal regulation is reinforced by the rest of the enterprise ecosystem – partners, suppliers, consumers and institutional investors all drive the need for GRC requirements as they size up their own risks and investments. ESG investors can also take insight from the broader risk management space when considering how to value the role of ESG: For any risk, the best way to understand how to make informed risk decisions is to measure the risk as a monetary value. As a tail risk, ESG has long flown under the radar – the cost is so high, and the likelihood of a risk event is so low, corporate leaders tend to underestimate the likelihood and cost of an ESG risk event. As investors, correctly quantifying ESG risk and understanding their plans to address risk events is essential to provide the proper discounts and premiums on an investment. Look for the following signs when evaluating investments – these will point toward companies that are taking steps to self-regulate their ESG standards and are aware of the true size and scope of ESG risk threats. Regulation in the ESG space will only increase as governing bodies continue to catch up to what is happening in real time within and between organizations. Congress recently passed the , and the Securities Exchange Commission announced its . |
Automotive simulation platform Morai secures $20.8M Series B to expand its global footprint | Kate Park | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Digital Twin Environment developed by Morai SIM – Las Vegas, NV The startup posted $1.7 million of revenue in 2021, increasing at a 226% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2018 through 2021. Last year, Morai set up its U.S. office in San Francisco. |
Max Q: Earth observation is the place to be in space | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Your friendly neighborhood Max Q welcomes you to the week of February 7! This past week saw some strong signs that the big boom in commercial space for the foreseeable future is going to land in Earth observation. It’s not like this has been an ignored market in the past: GPS is basically a type of EO. But changes in market dynamics, as well as cost and availability of related technologies (not to mention the cost for a ride to space), have all come together in a way that ends up being kind of a perfect storm. One of the earliest commercial players in the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging market has , bringing its total raised to nearly a third of a billion. SAR basically means satellite-based Earth imaging that allows you to see through cloud cover, the darkness of night or basically anything else that might obscure a regular old visible light camera. The company now claims that it’s second only to SpaceX in terms of the amount it has raised while remaining a private company. That’s not just important because of bragging rights: It’s a clear signal from private equity investors that this is an area they expect to become a lot bigger and more profitable in the future, particularly if helped by some fuel for the fire. ICEYE Another EO startup at the opposite end of its lifecycle has raised a significant amount of new money, in the form of a sourced from an initiative run by the government of Canada. The funding vehicle backs startups working on clean technology innovation, and doesn’t take equity, instead parceling out its awards over a set term in response to the startup meeting certain milestones. This comes hot on the heels of its $4.5 million seed round, which includes both equity backing and a Canadian government grant (separate from the injection today). For a young startup that’s still small, that means a considerable war chest without having to hand out all that much in terms of ownership. Wyvern’s business is hyperspectral imaging, which, like SAR, lets you see more and with more detail than traditional optical imaging. Hyperspectral has long been too expensive to commercialize properly, and restricted by certain governments (i.e. the U.S.) in terms of its use by private companies — but all that’s changing, and the gold rush is on. The Olds College “Smart Farm.” Olds College Starlink has now been available for quite a while, but a better connectivity for those willing to fork over more money. It’s quite a bit more money — 5x more at $500 monthly, but for that price you get a better receiver that can handle moving more internet bits up and down (150-500Mbps, up from 40-250 on the consumer offering, per SpaceX). This one’s squarely aimed at businesses, which is a good idea for Starlink in terms of seeking much more recurring revenue from a less price-sensitive customer segment. Starlink launches yet more and an . tests the jettison process for its huge . is opening a new in Colorado to add to its growing U.S. footprint. |
Daily Crunch: Investors pour $450M into Ethereum scaling platform Polygon | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, February 7, 2022! Welcome back to the working week, team. Here’s hoping you got some sleep over the weekend because we’re still in a busy tech cycle. That means lots of news from technology companies big and small. But before we dive into the news, with Heartbeat Health and Kindred Ventures. And , which should be a jam. Both events are free and likely to be good fun. We’re doing a lot of live stuff this year, both virtual and IRL. Get hype! – What’s the best way to make money off the blockchain economy? One way is to buy into well-known coins – bitcoin, ether – and wait. You can also day-trade or flip NFTs. Some companies, however, are betting that building infra for the crypto space is going to be the real golden ticket. Investors appear to agree, with as it “expands its portfolio of Ethereum scaling solutions and works to attract the larger developer ecosystem.” Who else is in the market? It’s a big space, so don’t take the following comparisons too seriously, , , and maybe Anchorage Digital? It’s busy. And for fun, we took a stab at the creator economy recently, with a on how creators should approach the platform question. / Getty Images Even as the pandemic has kept many people closer to home, companies of every size are turning to cloud-based location services. Once upon a time, merchants could predict the ebb and flow of foot traffic, but today, SMBs are using location intelligence software to track customer preferences, tweak marketing campaigns and uncover other insights. SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images Are you all caught up on last week’s coverage of growth marketing and software development? If not, read it . TechCrunch wants you to recommend growth marketers who have expertise in SEO, social, content writing and more! If you’re a growth marketer, pass this along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you. |
The IRS won’t make you verify your identity with facial recognition after all | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | The IRS announced plans Monday to back away from a third-party facial recognition system that collects biometric data from U.S. taxpayers who want to log in to the agency’s online portal. The IRS says it will abandon the technology, built by a contractor called ID.me, in the coming weeks. The agency says it will instead swap in an “additional authentication process” that doesn’t collect facial images or video. The two-year contract was worth $86 million. “The IRS takes taxpayer privacy and security seriously, and we understand the concerns that have been raised,” . “Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition.” The update to the U.S. tax collection agency’s online verification system, set for a full roll-out over the summer, was roundly criticized for collecting sensitive biometric data on Americans. Many tax filers already encountered the ID.me system live on IRS.gov, where they were required to submit facial videos to create an online login. If that system failed, tax filers were put into lengthy queues to have their identities manually verified in video calls with a third-party company. In a , Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY) raised concerns that allowing a private company to collect face data from millions of Americans posed a cybersecurity risk. The lawmakers also pointed to the body of research demonstrating that facial recognition systems are often built with inherent racial bias that makes the technology far less accurate for non-white faces. “To be clear, Americans will not have the option of providing their biometric data to a private contractor as an alternative way to access the IRS website,” the lawmakers wrote. In choosing to roll out the facial recognition technology, the IRS ran afoul of privacy hawks but also the federal government’s own General Services Administration, which has unless such a system undergoes “rigorous review” to evaluate if it will cause unforeseen harm. The GSA’s existing identity verification methods eschew the need for biometric data, relying instead on scans of government records and credit reports. |
Peter Thiel to leave Facebook board, which you probably forgot he was still on | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Meta, the parent company of Facebook, today that board member will not seek reelection to his post, effectively ending his tenure in the top echelon of the social media company’s leadership. The move is not an enormous surprise. Thiel has been increasingly publicly involved with political activities, including . Given the importance of Meta’s Facebook and WhatsApp services in the global conversation, especially during electoral periods, having a less politically charged board could prove salubrious. Commentary on the move has been rapid. Business journalist that Thiel’s connection to Facebook, a big tech platform, could be irksome to his candidates who have criticized major technology companies. Thiel also , who has for their content moderation policies. More to the point, the general climate in right-leaning American political circles is that Facebook and other tech giants are inherently biased against their political viewpoints; Facebook has in fact to conservative and reactionary figures, but the narrative has been fed long enough to persist in the face of evidence. We’re not harping on the political point merely to be churlish. Early reporting on Thiel’s exit details his desire to become more political. The Thiel “wants to focus on influencing November’s midterm elections” after leaving Meta’s board, while “plans to increase his political support of former President Donald Trump’s agenda during the 2022 election.” At some point Thiel had to choose between working for Big Tech and financing candidates attacking Big Tech. Since he’s already wealthy, perhaps it was not too hard to choose the latter option over keeping his board seat. Regardless, the move marks a material change in the makeup of Facebook’s leadership, which matters; a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen remains on the board, along with the CEOs of Dropbox, DoorDash and others. Facebook’s stock, off just over 5% in regular trading, is largely unchanged in after-hours trading. |
From movies to shipping, AWS is driving Amazon’s revenue diversification | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | about Amazon, it’s usually about some aspect of its vast retail and logistics operation that allows customers to order just about anything and receive it relatively quickly. But with a market cap of $1.6 trillion, it’s actually a conglomerate of multibillion-dollar businesses. That diversification means it doesn’t have to rely on a single revenue stream, even one as large as its public cloud business. But at what point might it be too big? Last week, the company reported . Let’s start with its cloud business (AWS), which generated , up 40% year over year in Q4 2021. That result put AWS on a run rate of over $70 billion, up from the $51 billion pace on which it closed 2020. Amazon’s public cloud , and in many ways it’s the fuel that drives the company’s revenue engine by helping to underwrite other bets its parent company is making. Part of the reason for AWS’s financial success — and therefore its ability to influence the company’s aggregate results so positively — is its ability to run its data centers extremely efficiently, which extends server life and reduces overall costs, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky explained to analysts in . “We’ve been operating at scale for over 15 years, but we continue to refine our software to run more efficiently on the hardware,” he said. “This then lowers stress on the hardware and extends the useful life both for the assets that we use to support AWS’s external customers, as well as those used to support our own internal Amazon businesses.” The external results speak for themselves, with Amazon’s cloud business not just posting huge operating incomes, but also showing growth similar in percentage terms with far-smaller rivals like Microsoft and Alphabet. Internally, things are even more interesting. |
Spotify will invest $100M in content from underrepresented creators, says CEO Daniel Ek | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | In the of the , CEO Daniel Ek sent out a company memo on Sunday addressing Joe Rogan’s use of harmful racial slurs in past episodes of his podcast. Over 70 of these past episodes have now been removed from Spotify. In the memo, which was published by , Ek declared that Spotify will invest $100 million in the licensing, development and marketing of music and audio content from historically marginalized groups. This is the that Spotify paid to Joe Rogan for his exclusive content deal. “I want to make one point very clear — I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,” Ek wrote to Spotify staff. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope. Looking at the issue more broadly, it’s critical thinking and open debate that powers real and necessary progress.” Spotify “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan’s podcast, to an exclusive, multi-year $100 million deal in May 2020, making 11 years of content available only on the platform. But it wasn’t long before the already controversial figure stirred up even more concern from Spotify users after like Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has spread about COVID-19. Tensions escalated recently when signed an open letter to Spotify urging the company to implement rules around misinformation after Rogan, who is one of the most-listened to podcasters in the industry, hosted Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. High-profile figures like , and author pulled their content from Spotify in protest of the company’s inaction against Rogan’s platforming of false public health information. “One of the things I am thinking about is what additional steps we can take to further balance creator expression with user safety,” Ek wrote. “I’ve asked our teams to expand the number of outside experts we consult with on these efforts and look forward to sharing more details.” So far, Spotify has published its — which were previously not public — which prohibit content that promotes “dangerous deceptive medical information,” like asserting that COVID-19 isn’t real. The platform has also committed to adding a to any podcast that includes a discussion of COVID-19. Despite its current PR nightmare, Spotify hasn’t yet lost much of compared to other streaming services. |
Apple fined again over Dutch dating app payments order | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | The bill for Apple’s antitrust stand off in the Netherlands over dating apps’ payment methods has ticked up by another €5 million — and now stands at €15M, the Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) confirmed today. The penalty relates to an order by the competition authority requiring Apple to allow local dating apps to use third party payment providers for sales of digital content, rather than mandating these app use Apple’s own payment infrastructure which incurs a commission fee to Apple. The iPhone maker has been fighting the Dutch order since last year and continues to appeal against it. But — as a first deadline for compliance with the threat of a penalty loomed — it agreed to let apps plug into alternative payment tech, saying it would be introducing two “optional new entitlements” exclusively for dating apps on the Netherlands App Store so they could provide additional payment processing options for users as required by the order. Apple’s claim of compliance last month was, however, by the ACM for non-compliance — as the regulator apparently took issue with Apple foot dragging on fulfilling all the requirements of the order. The exact details remain murky as parts of a court order related to Apple’s challenge to the ACM’s order have not been unsealed so the competition regulator has said it is limited in what it can discuss. Apple, meanwhile, has concentrated its own public-facing comms on this saga at attacking the order — claiming the changes “could compromise the user experience, and create new threats to user privacy and data security”, as it put it in a statement . Information it has provided to local developers wanting to take up the ability to use non-Apple payment tech in their dating apps has also seemed intended to be as off-putting as possible, with Apple warning them that their users may be excluded from certain App Store features, and suggesting they will have to take on additional responsibilities to deal with issues that may arise around such sales, such as support with refunds, purchase history and subscription management. In an extra kicker , Apple also revealed that it intended to charge a commission fee of 27% on any dating app sales that use non-Apple payment tech — which is a barely any reduction on the 30% fee Apple typically levies on in-app purchases. So a tiny discount on the standard fee combined with extra customer service responsibilities plus some extra technical overheads doesn’t exactly sound like a revenue windfall for apps that qualify — suggesting Apple is trying to make it as difficult and expensive as possible for local devs to use third-party payment systems. This in turn implies that Apple’s approach is to opt for — pushing against the spirit if not the literal letter of the ACM’s order by making it very unattractive for developers to take up the “entitlements”. (Albeit, the ACM’s latest penalty suggests Apple is not even hitting the core of what the regulator mandates in the order.) Asked for details of these ongoing compliance issues, the competition authority told TechCrunch Apple has failed to provide it with full and complete information — which presumably means it feels unable to properly assess whether it’s complied or not. “ACM has not yet received any information from Apple itself regarding the changes that Apple says it has already implemented so that it complies with the order subject to periodic penalty payments. Under said order, Apple is required to do so. Since Apple has failed to provide us with such information in a timely manner nor with complete information, Apple continues to fail to comply with the requirements laid down in the order. As such, Apple must pay a third penalty payment, which means the total amount that Apple must pay currently stands at 15 million euros,” said a spokesperson. “On the basis of the information on Apple’s website, we are unable to assess whether or not Apple complies with the substantive requirements laid down in the order subject to periodic penalty payments,” they added. “ACM is disappointed in Apple’s behavior and actions. We hope that Apple will eventually comply with ACM’s requirements. Moreover, these requirements have been upheld by the courts.” Apple was contacted for comment — but at the time of writing it had not replied. While a sub-set of apps in a single, relatively small European market may not sound like much of a big deal to a money-minting tech giant, the company’s App Store commission fee model is now facing developer complaints and regulatory pressure from . That also means Apple likely sees a far greater risk to its business if it to quickly make sweeping and meaningful changes that cut into its core App Store revenue model based vs dragging its feet per market, creating complexity and doubt for local developers and generally spinning out this process into something slow and painful. The ACM has said the penalty for Apple’s non-compliance will keep going up each week — until it reaches a maximum of €50M. But ofc that’s still pocket change for a company with a market cap of $2.817TR… So, basically, Apple can afford to make this hard and unfun. That said, several markets in Europe already have — or are in the process of — retooling their competition laws to tackle the singular challenge posed by tech giants, such as the EU’s proposal for ex ante rules for so-called Internet “gatekeepers”; or Germany’s (already legislated) faster powers of intervention against platforms with “paramount significance across markets” which are now . The German Federal Cartel Office also has an — which could also step up a gear if it confirms the company meets the local threshold for special competition measures. The UK is also working on a that will, parliamentary time willing, see it introduce bespoke rules for tech giants which are deemed to have “significant market status”. So regional lawmakers are fast dialling up their powers to target platforms that simply ignore rules they don’t like. |
Changing how we approach data privacy to unlock economic opportunities | Vivek Narayanadas | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | From securing a loan to renting a car to getting a job, our lives increasingly depend on the digital world to enable trust-based interactions online. That world is now borderless: people can interact with one another anytime, no matter where they are. However, online services often lack the ability to understand their users, and need to rely on external data sources to unlock access to their services. These data sources are often completely invisible to users, who have little insight into how a service is making decisions about their trustworthiness, and as a result, can be skeptical of using a new service or working with a new online provider. Given this trend, data privacy and user control have become the new currency of economic opportunity – service providers that can give users transparency and comfort around the use of their personal data can more successfully expand into new regions and markets, and gain the trust of new verticals of customers. While the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the ability to live our lives largely online, around the world some 4 billion people remain “digitally invisible” because their data is locked away in fragmented silos and databases. Without the ability to control who can access their data, when and for what purpose, these individuals are unable to access many of the services we’ve come to rely on, from gig work platforms like Uber, to sharing platforms like Airbnb, and even financial apps and services, like crypto exchanges. Worse, users often have no ability to understand why they are blocked from accessing these services – if the service is simply making a decision based on where they live, if some third party has incorrect information about them, or even if the service provider is looking at information about someone else entirely. With the passing of data privacy regulation such as the GDPR in Europe, the California Privacy Rights Act, and currently under review around the world, it is clear that the future of privacy will center around the consumer. Yet, despite growing demand for and awareness of privacy, these laws and regulations . And with the rapidly growing decentralized web3 economy, where users may not be able to rely on intermediary platforms to help them make choices about their privacy, we need to act now to develop a global standard that puts users in the driver’s seat and gives them full transparency into and control over how services assess their trustworthiness. Information privacy is the right to control how your information is collected and used, when, and by whom. Today, vast amounts of our data are controlled by governments and big tech platforms like Google and Meta. Many technology companies derive revenue by buying and/or selling personal user data, often in ways that are completely invisible to or not fully understood by users. GDPR, the landmark legislation that governs data processing in Europe, gives individuals certain rights over their own data such as the right of erasure (i.e. the ability to ask a provider to delete information about you) and data portability (i.e. the ability to get a copy of your data and “port” it somewhere else). This is great progress, but it is in stark contrast to other areas of the world. In emerging markets, like Africa and Latin America, where significant portions of the population are still disconnected from the internet, do not have any detailed privacy legislation or regulations. In practice, this means that online services in these countries often fail to give individuals basic rights over their data even at the level offered by laws like the GDPR and CPRA. This means consumers in these countries can be denied access to critical online services without any idea why they were denied access, and with no recourse. This gap only exacerbates growing economic inequality across the world. For individuals in many countries, accessing the digital economy is central to economic mobility. Whether it is the ability to start an online store selling homemade goods, offering services through a gig platform, or buying and selling crypto assets, many innovative online platforms offer individuals the opportunity to earn a secure living in any part of the world. For many, access to these platforms can mean a pathway to a more stable economic and financial situation. But today, residents in many of these emerging economies are regularly blocked from accessing certain critical online services because there is no underlying infrastructure that enables users in those regions to “prove” their trustworthiness. This means that service providers lack the ability to assess their customers using reliable data, which means that they often have to paint with a broad brush (e.g., users in Country A cannot be allowed to sell goods through our platform), or are forced to accept harsher terms (e.g., users in Country B have to pay a higher interest rate because the risk of default is higher in that country). Even when service providers do have access to data, consumers are often left in the dark about where that data comes from, what it says, or how a consumer can correct mistakes in the record. Companies like Mercado Bitcoin, Kudabank, Binance, Creditas, EBANX, and Oyster are already paving the way in this direction in Latin America and Africa. The end result is that users in these countries are left without access to these empowering digital platforms and services, and without any ability to offer these services information about themselves that could and should allow the service to trust them enough to permit them access. This is ultimately a privacy issue, because their data is either inaccessible, or is used without any transparency or control over this usage. Consumers deserve better, and services should build their digital workflows to allow consumers to drive the process of providing information about themselves to establish their merits. The borderless future demands that all people – no matter who they are or where they’re from – have access to and control over their personal data. Not only will this help people live comfortably in what will be a fully-digitized world, but it will also boost the global economy, letting businesses connect with the billions of people they haven’t been able to reach in the past. As the digital economy grows, without proper user-centric privacy controls, large segments of the world’s population risk being left behind. To ensure that individuals have access to digital services and economic mobility, companies should work together to build a global user-centric design standard that places users at the center of decisions about their trustworthiness, and gives users transparency into and control over how their data is used to make decisions about them. |
What does the new era of location intelligence hold for businesses? | Gary Little | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | environment, businesses are now tasked with balancing the push toward recovery and developing the agility required to stay on top of reemerging COVID-19 obstacles. Location data is absolutely critical to such strategies, enabling leading enterprises to not only mitigate challenges, but unlock previously unseen opportunities. Throughout the COVID-19 recovery era, location data is set to be a core ingredient for driving business intelligence and building sustainable consumer loyalty. Advances in cloud-based location service are ushering in a new era of location intelligence by helping data engineers, analysts, and developers integrate location data into their existing infrastructure, build data pipelines, and reap insights more efficiently. Scalable and data-rich location services are helping consumer-facing business drive transformation and growth along three strategic fronts: Better in-app experiences lead to improved consumer engagement and lasting loyalty. Many of the world’s largest tech companies are already accessing point of interest (POI) data via the AWS Data Exchange (ADX) platform in order to power the core search, discovery, and map-building features that make their apps more useful and entertaining. For example, Nextdoor, which helps users explore and engage with others in their neighborhoods, utilizes POI data to improve business data coverage and quality as well as discovery, verification, and onboarding experiences. Brands across industries are using cloud-native location data with other downstream cloud services. For instance, integrating independent data location platforms with knowledge graph applications helps brands uncover popular nightlife and leisure trends for their users, fueling powerful in-app search and discovery experiences. |
Wag’s recovery is a bet on you going back to work | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | dog-walking app made huge waves back in 2018 when it . Competing with rival , Wag’s service fell out of our minds in the years since its mega-deal. Today, Wag is back in the news thanks to a that will take the company public. This means we get a look inside the machine. In basic terms, Wag’s results detail a company that took blows during the pandemic as folks stayed home, meaning that they needed external dog care less than before. But, with its results ramping up, Wag expects to continue its recovery thanks to workers heading back to the office this year. The office-return dynamics make Wag’s forward-looking projections very interesting. Let’s hammer through the SPAC deal terms and then look at Wag’s historical results and what it expects for the future. After all, the return-to-office question will impact a host of companies beyond Wag. From Uber to DoorDash and beyond, a return to more old-fashioned working conditions would rejigger our economy once again. Wag is merging with CHW Acquisition Corporation. The deal calls Wag a “vertically integrated technology platform,” notably. The release also states that capital is being provided as part of the deal by “current Wag! and CHW investors,” including “Battery Ventures, ACME Capital, General Catalyst and Tenaya Capital.” That, in a nutshell, is why we care about this deal; it’s a venture-backed company that is still raising venture capital. In more boring terms, the “transaction values the combined company at a pro forma enterprise and equity value of approximately $350 million,” which isn’t much. Especially given that private capital into Wag to this point is around the same number. The deal, presuming “no redemptions from the CHW shareholders, [will] deliver approximately $175 million in gross cash proceeds to the combined company.” Shares of CHW Acquisition Corporation trended lower last week, but recovered to $9.82 per share today, a slight discount to the usual $10 per share SPAC price that we tend to see pre-combination. Still, the market hasn’t thrown up its arms at the deal’s concept since its announcement. Why? In part because Wag’s numbers are pointing in the right direction. To understand Wag’s return to growth, we have to discuss its declines. In short, when the pandemic hit, demand for Wag’s service — dog walking, pet care, etc. — fell off a cliff. Observe: |
How one founder is teaching enterprises how to be truly accountable for their climate footprint | Maggie Stamets | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | This week, Persefoni co-founder and CEO Kentaro Kawamori is joining us to talk about his climate tech startup that aims at helping asset managers, banks and other financial institutions measure their emissions footprint and purchase offsets. But he is also sharing his spicey takes on the fundraising landscape and what he thinks stands the best chance of combating the climate crisis. Darrell, Jordan and Kentaro get into the importance of building the team that’s a perfect fit for the industry you’re disrupting and the web3 company “Holy Smokes” they’re all launching together. . Don’t miss your chance to listen to episodes early and interact with Darrell, Jordan and their guests. On February 17th at 10am PT/ 1pm ET, Thor Fridriksson will be talking about his experience launching two viral games and founding his new company, Rocky Road. and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND. Links from the episode: Connect with us: |
Boutique hotel tech platform NUMA raises $45M growth financing round led by DN Capital | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Based out of the U.S., is a tech-driven hospitality company. It’s raised $529.6 million, and, in the post-pandemic world where the population has become far more movable due to remote working, similar businesses are raising funds to attend to the needs of this global, nomadic workforce. We first covered the (then called Cosi) back in when it raised €5 million for its “full-stack” hospitality alternative to boutique hotels, and then later on when it . It has now raised an additional $45 million in growth capital, in a round led by DN Capital Group (which has also backed Auto1, HomeToGo, and Shazam, previously). Co-leading the investment is Headline (formerly eventures). Also participating is Cherry Ventures, Soravia, Kreos Capital, TruVenturo and Scope Hanson. NUMA provides boutique hotels, offering around 2,500 units in Berlin, Munich, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona and Vienna. It partners with investors, property owners, developers and hotel operators to create technology-based units. The platform is designed to increase profits for hotel operators through automated business processes, intelligent pricing and higher occupancy rates. Germany-based NUMA Group expanded into Spain, Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic in 2021. Christian Gaiser, CEO, and co-founder of NUMA Group said: “Our clear goal is to establish NUMA as the dominant technology and creative solution provider for a completely new generation of hotels in Europe. NUMA used the pandemic to prove the resilience of its business model. We achieved 500% revenue growth and 85% booking occupancy despite Corona using our NUMA concept and proprietary technology.” NUMA’s two main main differences with Sonder are that, from a guest point-of-view, NUMA is aimed at a broader demographic (Sonder focuses on a higher price point), plus it launched a “tech franchise” solution called “NUMA go” where it provides third-party hoteliers with NUMA’s tech stack for a percentage of revenue. Nenad Marovac, founder and managing partner of DN Capital Group, said: “We are very impressed by NUMA’s strategy, performance and its consistent expansion in a very challenging market environment. The team behind NUMA has consistently achieved high occupancy rates and sustainable profitability of its units despite Corona. NUMA’s business model offers an attractive risk-reward profile for real estate partners, operators – and, most importantly, a completely new travel experience for modern travelers.” |
Founder launch tickets to TechCrunch Early Stage are almost gone | Alexandra Ames | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | Ready to kick your j-o-b to the curb and finally unleash your entrepreneurial ambition? Working hard on launching your startup, but need next-steps advice you can trust? Looking for a supportive community of folks traveling a similar path? You’ll find that and much more at . This day-long, live and in-person summit takes place on April 14 in our airy , Pier 27. You heard that right. Stow your sweatpants back in the dresser and get ready to meet people IRL! We have a limited number of $199 Founder Launch passes. They’re almost gone, and when that happens, the price increases. , and you’ll save $350. This is our first live event since well, you know, and we want you to learn, connect and network safely. Make sure you before you buy your pass. You’re no doubt wondering what you’ll glean from this conference and why it’s worth both your time and your money. is focused exclusively on new founders and emerging entrepreneurs. You’ll learn from, talk to and otherwise engage with leading industry experts or other founders — both seasoned and freshly minted. We’re keeping this event small so you can soak up as much content as possible. You’ll have plenty of time to ask questions and receive feedback from experts on your top-of-mind issues. The TechCrunch editorial team will also be there to offer their insight on market trends. You’ll come away with actionable tips and strategies you can put to work right away. And if, at times, you feel like you’re going it alone, rest assured — you’ll connect with a supportive community of like-minded founders and builders. The workshops and smaller roundtables will cover a range of topics that every founder needs to know at any given point in their startup journey. We’re talking funding tips — like creative bootstrapping, securing that elusive Series A and perfecting your pitch. We’re talking about marketing — building your brand, attracting earned (as in unpaid) media attention and growth marketing. And we’re also talking about operations — like scaling your average annual return (AAR), finding your product market fit and hiring great people on a budget. We’re building out the official agenda, and we’ll have plenty of updates in the coming weeks. to stay informed and get the inside scoop on the latest speakers, additions to the agenda and ticket discounts. takes place on April 14. Why not lock in the lowest price and save $350? before they sell out, and then get ready to move your startup dream forward. We can’t wait to see you in San Francisco! .
|
California agency sues Tesla for alleged racial discrimination and harassment | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Tesla on Wednesday alleging racial discrimination and harassment. The complaint, which was filed in state court, calls out issues at Tesla’s Fremont, California manufacturing plant. The California agency had received “hundreds of complaints from workers” and found evidence that the Fremont factory is a “segregated workplace where black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay and promotion creating a hostile work environment,” said the agency’s director, Kevin Kish, in a statement, The This isn’t the first time the electric vehicle maker has faced lawsuits for harassment and discrimination. Back in 2017, , Marcus Vaughn, who alleged Tesla failed to investigate complaints of Vaughn being repeatedly called the “n-word” by managers and co-workers at the Fremont plant. Just a few months ago, in damages to a Black former contractor who accused the company of turning a blind eye to discrimination and racial abuse at the same plant. In the lawsuit, the worker, Owen Diaz, alleged that he was subjected to racial slurs and that Tesla employees left drawings of racist graffiti, swastikas and offensive cartoons, all of which supervisors neglected to halt. At the end of 2021, at the very same factory. The women said they were subjected to discrimination, catcalling, unwanted advances and physical contact while at work. Tesla defended itself in a published before the lawsuit was filed, doubling down on its strong opposition to discrimination and harassment and touting the corporate measures it says it has taken to respond to complaints and address diversity, equity and inclusion. “Tesla has always disciplined and terminated employees who engage in misconduct, including those who use racial slurs or harass others in different ways,” the blog post reads. “Tesla is also the last remaining automobile manufacturer in California,” the blog post continued, a point that . “Yet, at a time when manufacturing jobs are leaving California, the [Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH)] has decided to sue Tesla instead of constructively working with us. This is both unfair and counterproductive, especially because the allegations focus on events from years ago.” last year, after CEO Elon Musk threatened to potentially cease any manufacturing activity in California at all depending on how “Tesla is treated in the future.” Tesla had filed suit against Alameda County in May 2020, a suit that was later dropped, over the shuttering of the company’s manufacturing facility in Fremont to stop the spread of COVID. The DFEH told WSJ that Black workers often heard Tesla supervisors and managers using racial slurs and saw racist graffiti in the factory, and that they were assigned to more physically demanding roles, were disciplined more harshly and were passed over for professional opportunities. Tesla published its , which showed that 10% of its U.S. workforce is Black and African American. At the director level only 4% is Black. Hispanic and Latinx employees are 22% of the total workforce, and only represent 4% of the director level and above employees. Asian employees make up 21% of the workforce, and that group represents a quarter of director level employees. The DFEH said its complaint would be available online Thursday morning, according to WSJ. |
Tiger Global in talks to invest in GoMechanic at over $1 billion valuation | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Tiger Global is in talks to lead a new financing round in GoMechanic, an India startup that operates a network of technology-enabled automobile service centres, two sources familiar with the matter said. The proposed talks for the Gurugram-headquartered Series D funding values the startup at $1.2 billion, up from $325 million in Series C that it disclosed in June last year, sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing and private. The size of the proposed round is between $50 million to $80 million, they said. The terms are yet to be finalized so they can change, the sources cautioned. Tiger Global and GoMechanic declined to comment. Six-year-old GoMechanic, which counts Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India among its existing investors, is building an “auto after-market ecosystem.” GoMechanic customers use the startup’s eponymous app to order servicing for their cars from their doorsteps. The startup has built a network of more than 900 workshops in over 60 cities in India, Europe, the U.K. and the MENA region. It has serviced over 800,000 cars, according to an update it shared with its investors last month. As of December last year, the startup’s annual gross sales stood at over $166 million and its annual net revenue had exceeded $50 million, GoMechanic shared in the presentation to investors, reviewed by TechCrunch. Tiger Global has also , another Gurugram-based startup, which facilitates the purchase and sale of used cars. |
The rise of the Black Angel Group inside of Alphabet | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | A year ago, inside of the corporate leviathan Alphabet, Black Googlers and other Black Alphabet employees were invited to some informal programming around angel investing during Black History Month. It was organized by employees so that anyone interested could learn a bit more about how startup deals are structured, the typical timeline for a possible exit and much more. The idea wasn’t to create a lot of structure around this ad hoc angel-investing school. It was merely an opportunity for staffers curious to hear from some of their knowledgable colleagues, including Jessica Verrilli, a general partner with GV who was part of the speaker lineup. “It was more like, ‘Hey, here are some ideas; you might even want to invest together,'” says Candice Morgan, herself a GV partner who is focused on equity, diversity and inclusion. Within two weeks, five attendees came together to turn that idea into reality. Then more raised their hands, asking how to participate. Fast forward, and the organization, , now features 35 Black leaders and operators inside of Alphabet, including from Google, GV, CapitalG, YouTube and Gradient Ventures. Alums of the company like Malik Ducard, a former VP at YouTube who recently joined Pinterest as its chief content officer, are also part of the collective. These are powerful individuals and an even more powerful group, and its members are just beginning to use their collective expertise — from product management to software management to user experience to people operations — to wedge their way into interesting deals. Over the last year, they’ve invested more than $500,000 in roughly 10 companies, including Bowery Farming, Polar Signals, Matter and Career Karma. In each case, members are brought deals by a smaller committee and then invited to decide on each for themselves. And while half so far have featured Black founders and in , Black founders who are also former Google employees, backing Black founders isn’t the objective and neither is seeking out companies founded by former colleagues. The focus is instead on “ethical” seed- to Series A-stage companies. suggests Jackson Georges Jr., who is a growth partner at CapitalG and a member of the collective. “We’re Black angels, and Black angel networks are typically more diverse than most angel networks,” suggests Georges Jr. The primary focus, however is on “figuring out the best deals in order to create generational wealth” for its members. Which explains why Black Angel Group is ready to raise its profile and to put even more muscle behind a greater number of deals. Part of that growth will come in the form of dollars. Morgan expects the group to invest a “multiple” this year of what it has invested to date. Part of that growth will also come from new members. As Jason Scott, who is the head of startup developer ecosystems for Google, explains it: “Participating in that angel program [last year] was the foundation for a lot of members. But we’re now launching a process so that other interested Black-identified Googlers and Alphabet members can apply to join.” Not all have to be millionaires. To make the collective as inclusive as possible, members plan to encourage people who perhaps aren’t accredited investors but are on the path to becoming them to participate in the deal flow. It isn’t purely altruistic. Georges Jr. suggests it’s a win for the group to actively educate employees or alums who are still rising through the ranks yet eager to learn more about sourcing and investing in deals. There is strength in numbers — and networks. Certainly, the world of Black investors could use some broadening. Currently, less than 4% of venture partners and just 1% of angel investors are Black. With those kinds of numbers, a growing network of Black angel investors who are charting a path at one of the most powerful companies on the planet could prove especially compelling. Indeed, look for the group to show up in more deals going forward, given the collective experience of its members, their willingness to write more checks and because of the growing interest founders are showing in bringing more diverse investors into their cap tables. Morgan points as one example to the performance insight startup , saying its CEO and founder Frederic Branczyk was “very deliberate about his cap table, which is very diverse.” She says a number of other founders have also “been pretty explicit,” calling it “awesome to see.” As she notes, “An important part of our value proposition is working with founders who have values aligned with us.” A focus on diversity “gives us a lot of signal about those founders as well.” |
Brick closes $8.5M seed to enable open finance across Southeast Asia | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Financial apps are proliferating across Southeast Asia, making things like bookkeeping or securing an online loan easier. But this means fintechs need access to large amounts of data that they can use to verify customer identity, creditworthiness or aggregate information from online accounts. wants to simplify the process with a suite of APIs that connects financial apps to “hyper-local” sources of data, including banks, mobile wallets and telecoms. The company announced today it has closed an $8.5 million seed round led by Flourish Ventures and Antler. This amount includes Brick’s previously undisclosed seed funding, which , but the majority of it is fresh capital, said co-founder and CEO Gavin Tan. Brick currently operates primarily in Indonesia, but is planning to expand into Singapore and the Philippines before eventually covering all markets in Southeast Asia. Other participants include Trihill Capital and returning investors Better Tomorrow Ventures and Rally Cap Ventures, along with individual investors like Creative Juice co-founder and CEO and Plaid’s former head of business development and strategy Sima Gandhi; Bond Financial Technologies co-founder Yan Wu; Brian Ma, founder of Divvy Homes; Iterative co-founder and managing partner Ooi Hsu Ken; Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau; and Aspire co-founder and CEO Andrea Baronchelli. Founded in 2020 by Tan and CTO Deepak Malhotra, Brick now has more than 50 paying clients and supports more than 13 million API calls and almost one million consumers a month. Tan was an early employee at Aspire, the neobank, while Malhotra was co-founder and CTO of Indian neobank Slice. Brick’s 25 data partners include some of Indonesia’s largest banks, but Tan says that over the past year, “we actually moved away a bit from the focus on just banking because of the local landscape and huge unbanked/underbanked population in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Only 25% of adults regularly use a bank account in Indonesia, so we’ve expanded to covering mobile wallets, e-commerce, telcos and government social security data, which has proven to be very popular.” Brick’s APIs include Brick Data, Brick Verification and Brick Payments, which can enable an end-to-end process for online loans, including verifying user identity, underwriting and making sure that funds are disbursed into the right bank account. When TechCrunch first spoke to Brick last year, many of its customers were online lending providers, but it has since expanded into new verticals. Its second most popular vertical are personal financial management apps, where its APIs powers the budgeting function. Its third-largest vertical are bookkeeping and accounting apps used by businesses. Other customers include investment firms, banks and some of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates, including Sinarmas Group and Astra Financial. The funding fill be used to double down on Brick’s presence in Indonesia and regional expansion. The Philippines was chosen as one of Brick’s next markets because of “the development in open banking,” Tan said. “There are already draft regulations out in the Philippines by regulators, a lot of open banking and open finance-friendly banks,” said Tan. Singapore was chosen because “regulators have always been a leader in terms of open finance thinking, so that’s helpful, but another big factor is that there are a lot of modern fintech startups there, meaning they are already aware of open finance solutions.” Other open finance API startups in Southeast Asia include , and . Tan says Brick’s advantage is “we are by far the market leader in terms of coverage with 25-plus discrete different data connections” in Indonesia. In an email to TechCrunch, Flourish Ventures global investments advisor Smita Aggarwal said, “Brick plays an important role as a digital conduit that bridges financial institutions, businesses and customers. It allows platforms, apps and fintechs to integrate identity and financial data through simple automated processes. This investment strongly aligns with our greater commitment to a support financial ecosystem that is inclusive and serves everybody.” |
Rino gets $3M pre-seed for 10-minute grocery deliveries in Vietnamese cities | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Meal deliveries in Vietnamese cities typically take less than half an hour, but grocery deliveries are lagging behind, sometimes taking up to two to three hours, says founder Trung Thanh Nguyen. By creating a vertically integrated logistics infrastructure centered around “dark stores,” or stores set up for order fulfillment only, Nguyen says Rino can cut grocery delivery times down to just 10 minutes. The startup, which will launch this month in Ho Chi Minh City, announced today it has raised a $3 million pre-seed round from Global Founders Capital (GFC), Sequoia Capital India, Venturra Discovery and Saison Capital. After a wider public launch in March 2022, Rino (which stands for “right now”) plans to expand quickly, first in Ho Chi Minh City’s most densely populated areas, then in Hanoi. Before starting Rino, Nguyen was part of the founding team and chief operating officer of Baemin Vietnam, one of the country’s largest food delivery apps. Before that, he served as Grab Vietnam’s head of GrabBike and GrabExpress. Rino’s grocery delivery app. Rino When asked why he wanted to focus on grocery deliveries after Baemin, Nguyen told TechCrunch that the rapid adoption of food deliveries in Vietnam “created a clear roadmap for the groceries segment.” “Four years ago, food delivery in Vietnam was slow. Meals took up to an hour to reach customers, which meant that individuals had to get used to planning meals in advance,” he said. “Once the platforms reduced it to under 30 minutes, consumer behavior changed quickly and the sector as a whole had an opportunity to grow more than 10-fold within a very short time.” Nguyen believes grocery deliveries will follow the same pace. Adoption of grocery deliveries increased during COVID-19 lockdowns in Vietnam last year, and have become a regular part of consumer purchasing habits, he said. “Customers are ready, but existing delivery options including retail chains or third-party platforms who deliver on behalf of retailers are either too slow or unreliable.” Rino plans to cut that time down by owning its inventory, purchased directly from suppliers and integrating its own dark stores into its logistics infrastructure. In order to make deliveries in such a short time, Nguyen said Rino will divide each of its cities into service zones with a radius of one to three kilometers. Each zone will have a dedicated dark store owned and operated by Rino, with last-mile deliveries performed in batches by its own fleet of riders. In a prepared statement about the investment, Saison Capital partner Chris Sirise said, “The quick commerce landscape has benefitted from permanent gains as consumers of all demographics continue to rely on e-commerce options even after COVID-19 lockdowns taper off. What we’ve seen from the founding team leading up to the launch reaffirms what we’ve seen from Trung throughout his time spearheading growth at Baemin Vietnam and Grab — high caliber industry leaders who not only have the insights required to lead the market but also the local know-how needed to truly cater to local needs.” |
Daily Crunch: Samsung erases the Note, starts new page with Galaxy S22 Ultra phablet | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Wednesday, February 9, 2022! I just got a look at the initial run-of-show , and it looks wicked good. Also, I’m helping . So, you know, swing by and hang out. Bring food and a question; we’re going to have fun! – Getty Images To mark the eighth anniversary of Satya Nadella’s ascension to Microsoft’s CEO spot, enterprise reporter Ron Miller looked back at the executive’s tenure to grade his performance and identify some of the 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. “The challenge for Nadella and Microsoft in the years ahead will be navigating increasing regulatory oversight while working to keep the company broadly diversified.” |
3 views: Is the metaverse for work or play? | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | of platforms ranging from Second Life to Roblox shows that people are open to virtual worlds where they can socialize, play games, exchange information, and share some laughs. More recently, the rise of virtual HQs, Meta’s investment in interactive social software, and a handful of acquisitions by Microsoft signal that the metaverse could play a role in the future of work as well. We’re lucky there’s still a lack of consensus regarding what the metaverse may look like long-term: dueling perspectives help us think more broadly about use cases that will help define this still-amorphous concept and bring it into the mainstream. We unpacked our initial thoughts on Equity, so for a starting point. Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm and Anita Ramaswamy, , discussed the future of the metaverse and whether its prevailing use will be for work or for play: We can’t analyze the future of the metaverse without defining it. To people who don’t live and breathe on the blockchain, the internet in its current state is the metaverse. The metaverse people are buzzing about today is a layer over existing tech, not a departure from it. Ultimately, the companies that will see actual gains from the rise of the newer metaverse are the ones that can attract users beyond the crypto-native set — and those will likely be the big tech platforms through their focus on the office. |
Mirantis on run rate over $100M two years after buying Docker Enterprise assets | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | When announced in 2019, it was a big surprise to industry watchers. Perhaps an even bigger surprise was that the buyer was , a company best known for commercializing the OpenStack project. After the sale, Docker company and reported last week last year. In a conversation with TechCrunch this week, Mirantis CEO Adrian Ionel said the company expects to make $28 million in total revenue this quarter, putting it on a run rate of well over $100 million. He says about 80% of that is recurring. He adds that the revenue split is about 50/50 when it comes to the assets it bought from Docker and rebranded as Mirantis — including Docker Enterprise Engine, Docker Trusted Registry, Docker Unified Control Plane and Docker CLI — and the cloud platform tools all built on Kuberentes that the company had prior to that purchase. It’s worth noting that in 2020, an IDE (integrated development environment) designed specifically for Kubernetes, and that also helped. But essentially both Docker and Mirantis came in at $50 million ARR in terms of what Docker was able to create on its own after selling the enterprise product, and what Mirantis turned those Docker enterprise assets into. It’s a rare deal that matches up so well for both parties two years after it happened, but Ionel says he certainly couldn’t have known that at the time. “It’s been a fantastic journey, an unbelievable journey. It started with signing the deal in November 2019. But it was far from clear to everybody at the time how this was going to work out,” he said. For starters, it created some confusion for customers about what the acquisition meant for the future of the company, but he says that it didn’t take long for them to see the vision the company had for the combined product sets. “It turned out that people very, very quickly understood what our shared product vision was, and how we were creating a new company and I think this is the key theme. It’s really not just about Mirantis acquiring Docker Enterprise. It’s much more about us building a company that leverages the assets of both companies and emerging as a fresh and stronger company,” Ionel explained. The board also debated the merits of buying these assets. “It was heavily debated in our board prior to the acquisition, as you can imagine, because a lot of acquisitions can go wrong, but it’s been super successful. It’s added tremendous shareholder value. It’s been definitely a fantastic bet for us that really accelerated our journey with Kubernetes and into the future,” he said. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though, after the deal closed. It began with laying off 40% of the company it had acquired, which Ionel acknowledged was a painful way to start. But by consolidating engineering and some other business functions under one umbrella, the company was able to save money that would lead to its eventual success. Ionel reports that Mirantis has been cashflow positive for the past two years, generating over $19 million in cash in that time. It expanded relationships with 300 customers in place at the time of the merger, including Apple, Visa and Booking.com, while adding 100 new ones along the way. Overall, Ionel couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome than he got from the Docker Enterprise deal. “It’s been a fantastic journey, challenging at times because we did have to restructure the Docker Enterprise business, but we did it quickly and decisively and I think successfully and the net result is that we have a thriving business on our hands now.” |
Uber wrapped 2021 with strong revenue growth and greater adjusted profitability | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Today after the bell, Uber its fourth-quarter financial performance. The company saw $25.9 billion in gross platform spend, up 51% compared to its year-ago result, and revenues of $5.78 billion, up 83% compared to Q4 2020. The company also reported GAAP net income of $0.44 per share, though that number did include non-operating items relating to investments. Analysts had expected the company to report a per-share loss of $0.35 against revenues of $5.34 billion, according to estimates . Shares of the American company are up just under 6% in the immediate aftermath of its earnings disclosure. On a per-segment basis, here’s how Uber’s key business units performed in revenue terms: Uber The company’s diversification is in full-force in the above numbers, with ride-hailing posting the slowest growth of Uber’s core unit results, even losing the revenue crown to delivery. However, when it comes to generating heavily adjusted EBITDA, things are rather different: Uber Here we can see that Uber’s ride-hailing business remains utterly supreme when it comes to the creation of margin for the company’s corporate operations to charge against. In contrast, delivery and freight-focused operations effectively canceled out one another in the quarter. Still, for Uber, posting positive adjusted EBITDA is a useful indication that its business has matured into something less awash in red ink than it once was, helped in no small part by the company’s delivery work shifting its results into the green. Yesterday, Uber’s rival Lyft reported another quarter of adjusted profitability, and revenues in the fourth quarter that bested expectations. Shares of Uber and Lyft were higher during regular trading. While the above news is generally positive, by more traditional metrics Uber remains unprofitable. For example, in Q4 2021 the company’s operating income came to -$550 million. However, $1.47 billion in “other” income more than filled that deficit. What was that other income? Per the company, the line item was “primarily due to aggregate unrealized gains related to the revaluation of Uber’s Grab and Aurora equity investments, partially offset by an unrealized loss related to the revaluation of Uber’s Didi equity investment.” While welcome, those gains won’t persist on a quarterly basis, implying that Uber’s business, once all expenses are factored into its operating results, remains unprofitable. Though less so than before. A good way to view the situation is operating cash burn per year. In 2020, Uber’s operations consumed $2.75 billion; in 2021 the company’s operating cash flow was a far smaller -$445 million. Looking ahead, Uber expects to generate gross bookings of “$25 billion to $26 billion” in Q1 2022, and adjusted EBITDA of “$100 million to $130 million.” The gross bookings (gross platform spend) is flat, to slightly negative compared to Q4 2021 results, while the adjusted EBITDA number is a modest improvement on its fourth-quarter $86 million result. Of course, more to come after the earnings call, but that’s your first look! |
Microsoft says it will open up the Xbox store in light of the Activision Blizzard deal | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Microsoft is working to warm lawmakers up to its plans to bring a collection of the world’s most popular video games under its wing. The company announced its last month in a deal that would be worth $68.7 billion — the largest gaming acquisition of all time, if the deal goes through. The acquisition isn’t exactly ill-fated, but it’s a risky time for Microsoft to attract attention from regulators. In the U.S., lawmakers and regulatory agencies have largely focused on some of the tech giant’s peers, particularly Meta (formerly Facebook), Google, Apple and Amazon. Microsoft’s name doesn’t come up in contentious conversations about social networks, advertising or online marketplaces, so the massive company has managed to mostly fly under the radar in recent years in spite of its size. With the Activision Blizzard deal on the table, that’s unlikely to last. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that the proposed acquisition will be reviewed by the FTC, an agency now chaired by Lina Khan, an antitrust scholar keen to disrupt escalating consolidation in the tech industry. Microsoft President Brad Smith addressed regulators directly in a , striking a cooperative tone and outlining a set of “Open App Store Principles” that the company will adopt in light of proposed regulation and its own plans to buy a cluster of the world’s most popular gaming titles. Microsoft framed the new ideology as a preemptive effort to accommodate regulatory changes, but it’s also clearly an appeal to the federal government to sign off on the acquisition: … We recognize that the emerging new era of tech regulation brings with it both benefits and risks, not just for a single company but for our entire industry. As others have pointed out, there are risks with any new regulation, and these deserve a fair hearing and thorough consideration. But as a company, we continue to be more focused on adapting to regulation than fighting against it. In part this is because we have been adapting for two decades to antitrust rules, and we’ve learned from our experience. While change is not easy, we believe it’s possible to adapt to new rules and innovate successfully. The principles Smith lays out here touch on a handful of issues of interest to regulators, including a promise to not leverage app store data to compete against developers and a commitment against self-preferencing. The company also committed to not forcing developers to use its payments system or disallowing them from communicating with customers about better deals to be had on other platforms. Microsoft says that the set of open principles is adapted from guidelines it created for Windows, but it plans to institute them for the Xbox “beginning today.” Notably, the company stops short of making those promises for the key bits about opening up payments in the Xbox store, though claims it will work to “close the gap” by implementing the remaining principles in the future: We will not require developers in our app store to use our payment system to process in-app payments. We will not require developers in our app store to provide more favorable terms in our app store than in other app stores. We will not disadvantage developers if they choose to use a payment processing system other than ours or if they offer different terms and conditions in other app stores. We will not prevent developers from communicating directly with their customers through their apps for legitimate business purposes, such as pricing terms and product or service offerings. Smith also addressed some specific concerns around the deal directly. He confirmed that if the deal goes through, Call of Duty will still be available through Sony’s PlayStation “beyond the existing agreement and into the future” so Sony console owners won’t be left out in the cold. “We are also interested in taking similar steps to support Nintendo’s successful platform,” Smith wrote. “We believe this is the right thing for the industry, for gamers and for our business.” Smith notes that “other popular Activision Blizzard titles” will also get the same treatment rather than immediately becoming Microsoft exclusives. Beyond Call of Duty, the Activision Blizzard deal includes a deep roster of hit games like Overwatch, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Hearthstone and Candy Crush. It’s hard to imagine that Microsoft wouldn’t leverage the massive deal to draw gamers toward the Xbox side of the gaming equation, but the console wars aren’t as relevant as they used to be — at least, not in the way that we’re used to thinking about them. During the Epic v. Apple trial, Microsoft admitted that the company subsidizes hardware sales and . Game sales and game subscription services are how console makers actually make money, but hardware isn’t totally irrelevant: Much like the app model, gaming is all about getting customers into your software store and keeping them there. Making hardware people want to buy is one of the main ways to pull that off. If customers are playing your game on someone else’s console, your competitor can take a cut of that cash — the standard 30% — but you’re still making money. For Microsoft, deciding how open its gaming ecosystem should remain is all about doing that math and balancing it against the expanded customer base it’ll maintain if hit titles — particularly those with subscriptions and in-game purchases — remain playable across platforms. Smith acknowledged this reality explicitly in the blog post, noting that app stores are both the future and present of the game industry. “Just as Windows has evolved to an open and broadly used platform, we see the future of gaming following a similar path,” Smith wrote. “… Our vision is to enable gamers to play any game on any device anywhere, including by streaming from the cloud.” Of course, the way app stores work right now is subject to change. One antitrust bill wending its way through Congress, , would explicitly prevent companies from self-preferencing and putting competitors at a disadvantage on their platforms. Another bill, , would similarly tear down the walled gardens that software platforms have been tending for the last decade. Both bills made it out of committee in the last month and are likely looming large for companies like Microsoft, even if gaming platforms won’t be subject to all of the changes that could sweep over the App Store and other software marketplaces. “We want to enable world-class content to reach every gamer more easily across every platform,” Smith wrote. “We want to encourage more innovation and investment in content creation and fewer constraints on distribution. Put simply, the world needs open app markets, and this requires open app stores.” |
Scopio aims to turn hematology into remote work with $50M C round | Emma Betuel | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Today, if a hematologist wanted to dive into the exact organization and structure of your blood cells, they’d probably need a microscope in a lab. Scopio, an Israel-based startup that just closed a $50 million Series C round, argues that soon, a lot of that work could be done with nothing more than a laptop. , Scopio is an imaging company looking to re-imagine a common blood test called a peripheral blood smear. In essence, that’s a test where a doctor, usually looking to understand an anomaly in a blood cell count, literally takes a look at your blood cells. That process involves onto a slide, and examining the shape, size and structure of certain cells using a well-trained eye. Scopio has developed a scanner, , capable of imaging that whole blood sample, while maintaining the ability to achieve 100x magnification. The result is a zoomable, digital image that CEO and founder Itai Hayut argues will allow peripheral blood smears to be done remotely, and bring down the costs of these procedures in the first place. Once samples are scanned in the lab, they could be reviewed by hematologists working from anywhere. You can zoom around in one of the images “We’ve seen lines of people in hematology labs leaning over microscopes, in some cases, using a manual clicker to count cells,” Hayut told TechCrunch. “We thought this is just a perfect example of how computer vision tools can assist the experts, and get better results much quicker.” Scopio Peripheral smear blood tests are part of a battery of different assessments that can be used to identify blood diseases. But these days, they’re not the first-line option, in most cases. If your doctor is concerned you might have a blood-based disease they might first order a complete blood count. Those tests are done almost entirely autonomously: an analyzer will count out different levels of blood cells types in your body, and give the doctor a rough idea of how much of each type of cell is present. If those tests present anomalies, a doctor might want to see the samples for themselves. In that case, they’ll perform a peripheral blood test to examine cell size, structure and look for indicators for a specific disease. There has been evidence that the peripheral blood smear landscape has some big pain points. For instance, some papers argue, the manual review of samples doesn’t often add much to doctors’ diagnostic dataset. published in 2020 in Diagnostic Pathology, for example, found that just 23% of 515 peripheral blood smears ordered across three medical centers added clinical value. That paper doesn’t necessarily mean the technique itself is extraneous; the authors do add that efforts to make the process more efficient are probably warranted. Plenty of other papers confirm that the peripheral blood smear isn’t likely to fall by the wayside. of analyzer tests are still referred to hematologists for a blood smear to confirm findings. And, on a less scientific note, some researchers see the ability to divine diagnoses from blood cells as In short, it seems like we’re still going to have to manually look at blood cells to confirm diagnoses for the time being. And other companies have already looked to develop imaging tools that can make that manual review faster, and more automated. For example, two major companies in this space already are Cellavision and Sysmex, systems which are responsible for most of the peer-reviewed studies in this space, per a In some ways, the fact that this tech already exists works in Scopio’s favor, because research already suggests that cell-imaging systems have benefits to offer, and scientists are already familiar with them. Namely, these for remote review (though about 10-20% of samples still need in-person confirmation), reduce eyestrain, can lower labor costs, make it easy to archive and retrieve blood films and make good teaching tools. Scopio Hayut argues that Scopio can represent the next generation of this technology because the company appears to have found a niche within that world: The existing imaging tech doesn’t capture the . To attain greater magnification, the breadth of the image is compromised. Think about what it’s like to zoom in on something using a camera lens: the field of view gets smaller. In this case, that means only portions of the slide are scanned and displayed, said Hayut. Independently published papers have . “Scopio is the first company in the world that managed to break the trade-off between field of view and resolution,” Hayut said. In short, they’ve managed to capture the whole slide and still achieve up to 100x magnification, with what’s needed to perform a peripheral blood smear. The ability to scan the entire slide leads to the second half of Scopio’s pitch: that “two orders of magnitude” more visualized and digitized cells means that more applications can be developed around them. In essence, Hayut said this will allow new algorithms to learn more from the peripheral blood smear in the first place. Scopio, like several of the other major players in this space, has been investing in getting certain clinical decision-making algorithms FDA approved. (Think of this like support software that helps a hematologist distinguish between cell types.) , the FDA approved a clinical support system from Scopio that classifies cells, and allows a hematologist to review those automatic classifications, through the 510(k) new device pathway. (It was granted approval through this pathway because the classification process was substantially similar to an equivalent already on the market.) The company has also recently completed a on an application intended to assist technicians with review of bone marrow aspirate — samples to scan for conditions like leukemia, multiple myeloma or anemia. The data on that study has yet to be published, but the company plans to file for FDA approval of another clinical decision-support system targeted at bone marrow aspirate analysis in March. As for the Series C funds, the company has a singular focus: commercial delivery. The company plans to expand the commercial team in Europe and the U.S., and attempt to make inroads into clinical labs (Scopio’s core client). This Series C round brings Scopio’s total funding to $85 million. The round was led by OurCrowd, and an unnamed strategic investor. It includes new investors Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank Invest, Ilex Medical and existing investors Olive Tree Ventures and Aurum Ventures. |
Apple launches its own book club, ‘Strombo’s Lit,’ in the Apple Books app | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | , and now…Apple? The iPhone maker has just launched its own book club directly in its Apple Books app for readers in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia, where it will curate both fiction and non-fiction titles for readers. But unlike Apple’s other editorial efforts in apps like Apple Podcasts or the App Store, the club’s selections aren’t curated by a nameless team of editors. Instead, Apple’s book club picks are being curated by Canadian media personality and host, George “Strombo” Stroumboulopoulos. In fact, the book club itself is being called “Strombo’s Lit.” Although Stroumboulopoulos is on the Apple Music team, the book club won’t focus on music-related titles. Instead, the theme of Strombo’s Lit is fairly broad: It will offer a lens through which to better view the world, Apple says. And the target demographic for the club will be anyone interested in learning the stories from some of the world’s best authors. Apple A broadcast and radio veteran, Stroumboulopoulos joined Apple in August 2020, as the pandemic was well underway. He now hosts a show called “ ” on the Apple Music Hits live radio station, which attempts to connect the artist and listener. On the most recent episode, which aired on Tuesday, he announced the launch of Strombo’s Lit. The book club reportedly came about because Stroumboulopoulos, a lifelong lover of books, began to read a lot during COVID lockdowns and would talk about favorite books with his friends. The club, of course, will broaden access to his personal selections to a much wider group of readers. Those interested in the new book club can find it in the Apple Books app on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple Watch, or they can choose to follow George across his own social channels via the username @strombo. In addition to the book club picks themselves, the club will feature author interviews and other content, some of which will be shared on social media, as well. Hey hey… Hope you’re all having a great day… I’m really excited about this. We’re starting a book club friends! Conversations, connections, giveaways. Check it out. First up is Neal Stephenson’s “Termination Shock”. — George StroumbouloPHÒulos 🐺 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇬🇷🇵🇱🇪🇬 (@strombo) The first “Strombo’s Lit” pick is the sci-fi thriller “ ” by Neal Stephenson, the best-selling author of other titles like “ ,” “ ” and “ ,” which are also available on Apple Books. Apple clarifies that the new book club isn’t meant to replace the Apple Books curation that’s already underway. Apple Books editors will continue to curate titles into various collections that are found in the “Book Store” tab of the Apple Books app. The club simply offers a new way to discover titles via Strombo’s own personal selections. The decision to launch a book club like this is a bit of an odd one on Apple’s part. Often, book clubs succeed based on the cult of personality that the curator brings with them — whether that’s someone like Oprah Winfrey or . Strombo may have a bit of an online following — his Twitter tops 860,000 followers, for instance; but he’s not likely a name everyone knows. Still, the idea of a book club from a big tech company isn’t new. its own book club in October, which aims to connect readers with books that are turned into series and films. |
null | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 2 | 7 | null |
3 warning signs that your investor will leave you on the sidelines | Michael Redd | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | demonstrates how quickly investors will fall over themselves to seize a golden egg deal. When investors pay so much attention to only the (supposed) big tickets, they leave smaller companies in their portfolios behind. The investment space is in the midst of a mental health crisis and skyrocketing burnout rates. Founders of companies of all sizes and returns need dedicated support, and an unhealthy business relationship can have a heavy toll on your mental health. Ultimately, every founder needs to know their investors are playing with them. Drawing from my time as a professional NBA player and as a seasoned investor, here are a few warning signs that a VC may be leaving you on the sidelines: Most VCs have packed agendas, and they have an unspoken practice of allotting founders a weekly or monthly time slot to touch base. Not only is this too little time to really catch up with founders and also hear about their life outside of work (which ultimately impacts their work), it sets the precedent that communication has to be regimented. Founders and investors should want to spend time with each other outside of the boardroom and Zoom calls. When there is genuine trust, discussions about hobbies, family, and vacations will arise naturally and break down the formal barriers that stop investors and founders from talking about their well-being. These subjects won’t come up organically if founders are only given an appointment-like meeting with investors. That’s not to say that investors shouldn’t have scheduled meetings with founders. Rather, investors should make it clear founders have the freedom to call them when they need to — whether for business guidance or personal support, there has to be an open line of communication. Of course, investors can set boundaries and say they’re not available after certain hours or on specific days. |
Reddit rolls out a web version of Reddit Talk, its live audio product | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | After unveiling its Clubhouse clone , Reddit is new features to Reddit Talk that are intended to boost engagement. Among these additions are web compatibility, recordings of past sessions, live commenting during talks and a live bar at the top of the home feed (similar to Twitter’s) that shows what live chats are taking place. “In the last three months, we’ve seen more than 250% growth in daily active listeners of Reddit Talk,” the company wrote on its . Reddit added that live audio chats have taken place in over 1,000 subreddits (or communities), including a talk in r/cryptocurrency with investor Kevin O’Leary, and a session in r/movies with stuntmen from the “Jackass” franchise. Reddit The idea of live audio rooms on Reddit might seem a bit counterintuitive at first, since many Redditors flock to the platform for anonymity. But the ability to comment and send emojis during live rooms will make it easier for shy (or secretive) users to chime in — previously, listeners could only speak by raising their (digital) hand. Plus, discovery features like web compatibility, the live bar and asynchronous listening will make it easier for users to engage with this new realm of Reddit content. Talks still can only be created on Reddit’s iOS and Android apps, but the ability to start a talk on desktop is coming later this month, Reddit . Currently, only Reddit moderators ( who try their darndest to keep things civil and orderly in subreddits) can start live talks. They can apply to host a talk through . Given the that platforms like and have faced, this might be a good way for Reddit to keep things under control for now. “There aren’t any plans to extend the live audio feature to Reddit users outside of moderators,” a Reddit spokesperson told TechCrunch. . |
The Spotify-Rogan saga highlights the distinction between publishers and platforms | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | As our , “How many times must Spotify step on a rake?” The streaming service is learning the hard way that it’s counterintuitive to act as both a platform and a publisher — now, in trying to reassert its status as a platform, it’s acting even more like a publisher. Back in 2020, Spotify was celebrating its success when it one of the most popular podcasters, Joe Rogan, to an exclusive, multi-year podcasting deal worth $100 million for “The Joe Rogan Experience.” But the controversial host has repeatedly about COVID-19, recently prompting 270 physicians and scientists to sign an to Spotify demanding that it institute misinformation policies, which then led high-profile figures like and to pull their content from Spotify. Spotify belatedly published — something that the which prohibit the spread of false or deceptive information about COVID-19 and other illnesses. As a result, Rogan asked Spotify to remove of “The Joe Rogan Experience” for various reasons, including the use of racial slurs. Many of the slurs were uttered in older shows, but still, as recently as January, Rogan has made when sharing his opinions about the use of the word “Black.” Now, in an attempt to buy Spotify some goodwill during a PR crisis, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek committed to into audio content from underrepresented groups. This is a good gesture, but it also means that Spotify is inadvertently leaning into its decision to act as a publisher. Spotify creates an inherent tension as it postures itself as both a platform and a publisher. A platform would be something like Twitter — anyone can post a tweet, so long as it follows the platform guidelines. But if someone posts what many would consider a “bad take” — like saying that Scooter Braun didn’t do anything wrong in the , for instance — that doesn’t mean Twitter itself also endorses that opinion. But when money and editorial curation is involved, the company becomes responsible for the results of their financial choices. Since Spotify funneled $100 million into Joe Rogan’s content — which happens to be the exact same amount that it is now pledging to a vague collection of underrepresented creators — they are not impartial; they’re literally paying him to talk to far-right conspiracy theorists. Spotify wants to have it both ways. CEO Daniel Ek Spotify is a platform for Joe Rogan’s exclusive podcast, but that it’s a publisher for studios it owns, like Gimlet, The Ringer and Parcast. “I understand the premise that because we have an exclusive deal with him, it’s really easy to conclude we endorse every word he says and believe the opinions expressed by his guests. That’s absolutely not the case,“ Ek in a company town hall. He later added, “A publisher has editorial control over a creator’s content. They can take action on the content before it’s even published. They can edit, they can curate, they can change the guest, they can even decide not to publish altogether. And even though ‘JRE’ is an exclusive, it is licensed content.” Still, when his library of content first moved over to Spotify, the company did remove , which featured guests like Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, conspiracy theorist David Seaman and Stefan Molyneux, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center as an alt-right extremist who amplifies eugenics and white supremacism. Per Ek’s speech, Spotify does not currently have editorial control over Joe Rogan’s podcast — they are not involved in editing, booking and producing the show. But that doesn’t absolve Spotify of responsibility. The company might not be working hands-on with Rogan on a daily basis, but they still gave him $100 million to partner with Spotify exclusively. Yet as Rogan continues to become more popular, it’s a win for Spotify’s service, too. “In December, ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ became exclusive to Spotify, driving a meaningful uptick in audience for the show on our platform. As of year-end, The Joe Rogan Experience was the #1 podcast on our platform in 17 markets,” the company wrote in its shareholder letter. “While it remains early days, we are very encouraged by the performance of this content since its arrival on our platform, as it has stimulated new user additions, activated first-time podcast listeners, and driven favorable engagement trends.” Spotify has referenced Joe Rogan’s exclusive deal in every quarterly shareholder letter since the start of his exclusive deal. But there’s no mention of Rogan (or any other exclusive podcasting deals) in Spotify’s shareholder report, which was posted last week. Spotify’s not the only company acting as a publisher, yet claiming to be just a platform. Substack has fallen into the same trap. Repeatedly, the newsletter monetization company has doubled down on its “ ” content moderation policies. Substack does some kinds of content, like pornography, spam, impersonation, posts funding hateful initiatives or inciting hateful violence, posts promoting illegal activities and more. But the company has also come under fire for and its through its “Substack Pro” program, which provides select, but undisclosed writers with cash advances. In choosing which writers to pay an advance, Substack is making inherently editorial choices. Netflix also had a rough moment in the press in late 2021, when a new Netflix-exclusive Dave Chapelle special, in which the comedian made a number of harmful, transphobic comments. B. Pagels-Minor, the organizer of the walkout and global lead of both the Black and Trans employee resource groups, was from Netflix due to allegedly leaking company data. The leaked information in question appeared to be internal metrics on Chapelle’s special that appeared in a , which reported that Netflix spent $24.1 million for the one-off special. Like Spotify, Netflix made a decision to become a publisher, not just a platform — but Netflix isn’t shy about that. While Netflix hosts tons of content that its own studios didn’t produce, it’s also investing into original content. While Netflix subscription numbers have , they’re still growing. Like Substack, Spotify is cutting deals with people from a variety of political perspectives — though it may platform Joe Rogan, Spotify also with the Obamas to make exclusive content. Spotify also inked a with Alex Cooper, host of the podcast “Call Her Daddy,” which used to appear on Barstool Sports. Dax Shepard, host of “Armchair Expert,” also has an with Spotify, as do Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Ek’s commitment to invest $100 million into audio projects from underrepresented creators is an editorial decision too, even though it appears that Ek is using it to prove that he’s not making editorial decisions. Spotify retains a among music streamers, making it the most popular service available — but , Spotify’s strategy to maintain that dominance has been to invest in podcasting. In Q2 2021 alone, its podcast ad revenue . Aside from its landmark of Gimlet and Anchor for around $340 million, Spotify earmarked another $400-$500 million in 2019 specifically for in the podcasting space. Since then, the company has acquired the studios Parcast and The Ringer, along with podcast monetization platform , discovery engine and podcast advertising company . So where does this leave us in the Spotify-Rogan saga? Despite its current PR nightmare, Spotify hasn’t yet lost much of compared to other streaming services. However, when Spotify its fourth-quarter financial results, it gave weak guidance on monthly active user expectations for Q1 2022. The stock tumbled as a result, indicating that this PR crisis could become a business crisis, too. Socially-conscious consumers want to feel good about where their dollars go — but even as we head into the third week of online Rogan discourse, Spotify doesn’t seem to be too affected by all this, despite social media outrage. It calls into question how much power consumers really have (and how real the threat of cancel culture is for figures like Rogan). Even if Spotify were to have cut ties with Rogan, he could have fallen back on a from Rumble, a Peter Thiel-funded video company that as “immune to cancel culture.” This was likely just a PR stunt, which caused Rumble’s SPAC to . Rogan has said he Spotify, but the podcaster has such a large audience that it would’ve been a huge acquisition for Rumble, even if they might not have as deep pockets as Spotify. It’s possible that among Gen Z, this could power independent creators. In podcasting, for example, listeners can directly support their favorite shows through memberships, tip jar donations and more. But where do you listen to podcasts? , you probably use Spotify. |
Travel app Sēkr scores $2.25 million to bring campsite inventory into the digital age | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | Consumers spent in 2020 on camping reservations across the U.S., but the camping industry itself has yet to be fully digitized. Today, reserving a space at some campgrounds, both public and private, may require a phone call. And the reservation itself is still often recorded using old-school systems, like pen and paper. A startup called , which offers a mobile app for outdoor enthusiasts and campers, wants to change that. The early-stage startup didn’t immediately set out to become an Airbnb for campsites, however. Back in 2017, Sēkr’s co-founders, (CEO) and (COO), were just looking for a better way to scout out new camping locations. The two had been traveling independently with their partners in their camper vans, having embraced the so-called “ ” lifestyle. But they soon realized it was hard to find safe places to camp, as well as people to connect with while on the road. Plus, they both wanted a simpler way to locate campgrounds with the specific services they needed — whether that was shower facilities, restrooms, overnight parking for vans, access to water or free Wi-Fi. “Trip planning is the number one problem for anyone going outdoors,” explains Acio. And it’s particularly difficult for campers, she notes. “Just like in the ’90s, if you wanted to book a hotel or travel somewhere, you’d have to call hotels individually. There’s no online website or availability.” Camping today is similar. “We were using 15 different apps — most of which were inaccurate because they’re databases that are based on or are taken from old government websites or old databases,” she says. Some of these challenges here weren’t just annoyances; they complicated the reality of living and working while on the road. At the time, Shisler had a job in PR, and Acio, who later went on to run a campervan conversion company, was a professor at San Diego State University. They couldn’t go fully off the grid without even a cell signal to stay connected. Sēkr / Sēkr founders founders Bre and Jess After meeting through social media, where they had become micro-influencers in the van life space, the co-founders decided to build a mobile app for people in the same position. The founders wanted to offer a way for campers and others in the van life community to come together and share their individual knowledge and experiences about various campsites and other locations. In March 2018, they launched the first version of this app, then called The Vanlife App. In addition to providing a centralized community for fellow campers and “van lifers,” the app also offered a social component. Users could connect with fellow travelers who wanted to participate in outdoor activities together, like rock climbing or skiing, as well as write reviews about specific places. “Even if you have your partner, [traveling] gets very lonely,” notes Acio. “Being able to find community — community [where people] are like-minded and like the same things and are similar to you — is a really powerful thing,” she says. But the original version of the app was too niche. Although there are around 5 million people in the U.S. who are traveling in their self-converted or manufactured camper vans, or other smaller vehicles, the founders realized this narrow focus was leaving out people engaged in other styles of travel and camping. The rebrand to Sēkr allowed them to address the broader market of anyone who wants to go camping — even if that’s just a once-per-year trip with the family. In the Sēkr app, you can search for campsites all across the U.S., filter them by amenities and services, save favorites and network with others through social features. Its listings are created by way of public repositories of data from the government and other databases, which are then enhanced with crowdsourced information. Sēkr’s team of ambassadors will scout locations, verify information and take photographs to share with the community, as do the app’s members. Sēkr Now, the company is working to add more reservable inventory directly to Sēkr by digitizing and aggregating campgrounds and campsites, ranging from private lands to campgrounds. This work is still in the early stages, though. At the moment, there are around 200 properties that can be booked from within Sēkr’s app, ranging from those where you can park in someone’s driveway for free to upscale glamping sites. To generate revenue, Sēkr takes a 5% fee from guests and a 5% fee from property owners for facilitating the transactions. The company is also planning to partner with others to bring more reservable inventory to the app over time. Currently, Sēkr sees an average of more than 10,000 user sessions per week — an early bit of traction that’s attracted investors. Sēkr The San Diego-based startup has closed on $2.25 million in seed funding led by Storyteller Overland, along with Backstage Capital, Techstars, Ad Astra Ventures, Crescent Ridge Ventures and Andy Ballester, co-founder of GoFundMe. The funds will be put to use to grow Sēkr’s reservable inventory and its community initiatives, which also include its coalition called which aims to unite women and minorities to take scalable action to evolve the outdoor industry into a more inclusive space. “The camping industry is one of the only hospitality verticals yet to successfully adopt technology, and Sēkr seized the opportunity to digitize campsite inventory at scale, transforming the outdoor planning process from a frustrating loop of hours of failed Google searches into something consumers can do by themselves,” said Jeffrey Hunter, CEO at Storyteller Overland and the lead investor of the round, in a statement. “Like the leaders before them in the hotel and vacation rental verticals, we believe the Sēkr team is uniquely positioned to have the largest influence and impact on the outdoor travel planning experience for the nearly three-fourths of Americans who participate in outdoor travel annually,” he added. |
Dear Sophie: How can early-stage startups compete for talent? | Sophie Alcorn | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | 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; . Dear Fledgling, Thanks for your question. In a recent , I chatted with , an associate partner at who leads talent and recruiting support for startups in the GGV portfolio. We talked about fallout from a paradigm shift happening right now with respect to work and the unprecedented talent crunch, and how that is affecting sourcing, attracting, hiring, retaining, and developing employees. Ms. Holmstrom offered her take on recruiting, which may be helpful for you to consider: Look beyond compensation when recruiting. “Companies are more effective at attracting and retaining talent by focusing on creating a work environment where people want to work, where people can grow, develop, and do the things they truly love to do rather than focusing on compensation alone.” She emphasized that startup founders need to be prescriptive and intentional, paying attention to their company culture and each employee’s journey. That’s not easy, especially in today’s world of remote work teams. With clarity on vision and values, a startup can help candidates make the changes they want to see in the world through their job. In addition to creating a great company culture where employees can do the work they love, here are a few more tips to help you with hiring from abroad: Joanna Buniak / Although your startup’s runway may not be as long as you’d like it to be right now, think about talking with an immigration attorney. An experienced immigration attorney can help you devise a strategy for recruiting international talent to meet your growth plans while staying within your budget. While most business immigration attorneys charge flat fees for their services, those fees can vary significantly, so look around. For instance, government and legal fees for filing an can range anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000, according to the (NFAP). |
James Murdoch and Uday Shankar return with $1.5 billion Qatar-backed investment firm Bodhi Tree, to focus on India and Southeast Asia | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | James Murdoch and Uday Shankar have launched a new venture called Bodhi Tree with a $1.5 billion backing from Qatar Investment Authority as the duo looks to double down on their investment in Southeast Asia and India, the two said on Thursday. The duo most recently worked at investment firm Lupa Systems after Murdoch’s departure as chief executive of 21st Century Fox. Shankar previously served as the chair and chief executive of Star India, which was owned by Fox prior to the . Lupa Systems was looking to in a SPAC last year. Lupa Systems made a number of investments, including in media outfit Vice and and news aggregator and short video platform DailyHunt. “We are very pleased to announce Bodhi Tree,” the two said in a joint statement on Wednesday. “Opportunities abound to scale exciting businesses in India and the broader Southeast Asia region. Our continued focus on investing and building relationships in these regions comes from our deep conviction in the long-term growth of these economies and the incredible power of these consumers, as these sectors are transformed by technology.” Through the new venture, the duo plans to invest in “deep consumer engagement” firms with a focus on media, education and healthcare. The goal with the investments is to “positively impact millions of consumers across the region,” the venture said in a statement. Bodhi Tree, which has yet to announce any investment, did not disclose whether it will have any other LPs. (It’s rare for an investment firm to have just one giant LP.) “QIA is proud to play a key role in bringing Bodhi Tree to reality. QIA is investing in the technology and media space and India is a key market for us. QIA looks forward to backing Bodhi Tree as they drive forward their growth plans in the future,” said Mansoor bin Ebrahim Al-Mahmoud, chief executive of QIA, in a statement. |
‘Woke capitalism’ is a new ideology for a digital economy | Brett Hurt | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | When the head of the world’s largest money manager BlackRock issued his annual letter to CEOs, his latest and strongest push for business leaders to embrace social purpose beyond profits, he continued to turn more than a few heads. “We focus on sustainability not because we’re environmentalists, but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients,” wrote Larry D. Fink, in his letter entitled “ “. Such language from a CEO managing some $10 trillion has drawn criticism across the spectrum. It was “ ” for Fox Business, while on the left, he’s been scorned for not being “ .” To be sure, it’s a healthy debate, but what virtually all the headlines miss is the long-building tectonic shift in thought leadership. In fact, just a week earlier, unnoticed in the business press was BlackRock’s annual , which advocated that businesses considering conversion of “corporate form” to public benefit corporations should put it to a shareholder vote. However quiet, Fink’s letter is nothing less than a signature on a profound ideological document. What he has embraced is the emerging ideology of “Conscious Capitalism.” I understand that “ideology” is not a common phrase in business discussions. But as shorthand for a body of ideas and ideals, ideology is effectively the operating system by which societies and institutions organize themselves – commerce included. I’ve dubbed the reigning business ideology of the 20th century, the “OS” as it were, “Sloan/Rooseveltism,” and Fink may well have concluded it. I’ve so named the old ideology for Alfred P. Sloan, the mastermind behind the rise of General Motors and long associated with an apocryphal remark attributed to his CEO Charles Wilson: “What’s good for business is good for America.” Though the remark is perhaps legend, it’s entered our lexicon and reflects the ethos that the pursuit of profit is a virtue unto itself, the rising tide that lifts all boats. The other side of this body of thought is the ethos captured in trust-busting President Theodore Roosevelt’s foundational campaigns to balance capitalist excess with his idea that “Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded” by great institutions of government. In tandem, these two schools created an equilibrium that became the rough roadmap for not only Wall Street and Main Street, but for regulators from the federal EPA to the nation’s 20,000 municipal zoning authorities. Broadly, Sloan/Rooseveltism has served us well, delivering a century of exponential economic growth with cleaner water, safer food, virtually accident-free air travel, and, most recently, a life-saving mRNA vaccine. Soon, we may get to put upwards of $100 billion into research to boost our chip-making capacity, fund STEM scholarships, reinvigorate space exploration, and bolster AI and other technologies. This implied contract has worked in the past, and it works occasionally today. But in the main, the two bookends of this ideology are fast wearing and crumbling as we witness the erosion of Sloan/Rooseveltism. What Fink has confronted is something deeper than passing woke-ism or a sop to shareholder activism. He has confronted head on the malady of a collapsing business ideology whose feverish symptoms we see in the endless primal screams about the at the top, the at the bottom, and the future of everyone in between. It’s not as if we were not warned. “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, a phrase that graces his monument. If not, he added, “We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy.” To re-frame Jefferson’s counsel in our age of exponentially increasing technological progress: Which is why a new ideology for our new digital economy and its means of production is nigh. Only the institutions of commerce themselves can lead this. In fact, they have begun. The new and emerging ideology is “Conscious Capitalism,” manifested most vividly in the global proliferation of firms organized as what are known as – toward which BlackRock’s move is the latest. Under this model, firms bind themselves to a public benefit mission and continually report on the standard financials on how the company is living up to that mission. That status protects the company against profit-demanding shareholder lawsuits, and also attracts employees and investors who want to combine profit with purpose. My company, , is just one of the thousands of certified B Corporations doing well while doing good. The roots of this new ideology can be traced back at least three decades to work by Paul Hawken, a successful entrepreneur, and his 1993 book, “ .” For Hawken, it is an issue of how we design and manage the commercial marketplace, the ethos of production. “To create an enduring society, we will need a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable and restorative,” he wrote. “Business will need to integrate economic, biologic, and human systems to create a sustainable method of commerce.” Hawken’s argument — intriguing back then, but imperative today — is not simply that business has a responsibility to donate to PBS. Rather, his argument was — and is — that only the institutions of commerce have the scope, power, resources, and innovative spirit capable of taking on our most pressing global challenges. Since Hawken and others first began to imagine this new commercial ethos decades ago, these ideas have cohered in many ways. This coherence includes the formation of in 2006 to help companies organize themselves for explicit public benefit. More broadly, it found a voice with “ ,” a 2013 book by John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, and business professor Rajendra Sisodia. Relatedly, the World Economic Forum is championing a “ ,” combining purpose with profit. Conscious Capitalism seeks to replace the old ideology of shareholder value-maximization that cements a slavish adherence to the judgment of the “market,” even when other social signals are more powerful. It challenges executives enriched by stock options, empowers companies fearful of “activist investors” who attack whenever stock prices fail to meet quarterly “expectations,” and curtails often-frivolous shareholder lawsuits pushing for stock gains at all costs. Last year, I with Arizona State University’s Ann Florini, in which we called on Facebook to reorganize itself as a public benefit corporation. I’m not hopeful that Mark Zuckerberg will take us up on the pitch. But I do believe it’s a far more sensible course than continuing the battle over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which grants Meta immunity from the actions of its users – a perfect expression of the collapse and fecklessness of Sloan/Rooseveltism. But Zuckerberg would hardly be alone if he took up this call. Thirty-five states have passed laws enabling companies to organize and operate this way, with the benefits of sustainability in their bylaws. Such laws now exist in Canada, Colombia, and Ecuador, and are pending in Argentina, Chile and Australia. Among the globally noted companies embracing the new OS are in France, renewable energy producer in Denmark, the largest financial institution in Latin America, Canada’s consulting firm , U.S. food and spice producer , and countless smaller companies. Mackey and Sisodia’s Conscious Capitalism suggests this as the best – and perhaps only – exit from Jefferson’s conundrum: In the early years of the twenty-first century, we are becoming acutely aware that our natural resources are finite,” they wrote. “But we are also coming to realize that there is no limit to our entrepreneurial creativity. When we learn how to manifest our creativity on a mass scale, when many more of the seven billion of us are enabled to blossom and empowered to create, we will discover there is no problem on earth that we cannot solve, no obstacle we cannot overcome. This is our new business ideology. This is, as Fink put it, “The Power of Capitalism.” |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.