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European cloud firms call for clearer ‘ex ante’ rules to end abusive software licensing | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | European cloud computing companies have raised the alarm over what they say is a “critical loophole” in the EU’s flagship plan to tackle anti-competitive behaviors by gatekeeping digital giants. In an sent to competition commissioner and EVP Margrethe Vestager this week, 41 European cloud enterprises called for an urgent clarification to be made to the draft Digital Markets Act (DMA) to ensure that productivity and enterprise software are brought clearly in scope. The signatories to the letter range in size from startups to larger enterprises. Companies that have signed include Aruba, elogic, Leaseweb and netalia. “We are facing an urgent situation. Monopoly software providers are once again using their dominant position to lock in customers, forcing them to use the cloud infrastructure they provide. This abuse of software licences means that other, smaller cloud infrastructure providers cannot compete. That includes innovative European cloud companies which are being shut out of their own market,” they write. “Today it is essential that the DMA includes clear remedies to stop the unfair practices by software gatekeepers. Minor clarifications are all that is needed to close this critical loophole.” The Commission unveiled its DMA proposal to apply ex ante rules to so-called digital “gatekeepers” — aka, large, intermediating platforms with significant market power — back in , That said, vis-à-vis enterprise software licensing, it’s worth noting the DMA list “cloud computing services” as potentially falling in scope, as a “core platform service”, i.e. provided the company in question has been designated as a gatekeeper. Nonetheless, the European cloud companies penning the letter to the Commission are The letter flags a CISPE commissioned into cloud infrastructure and software licensing, conducted by professor Frédéric Jenny, which highlighted a number of potentially anti-competitive behaviors — such as lock-ins, inflated costs and frequent audits, and billing for potential rather than actual use — suggesting such unfair tactics are being used by legacy providers to squeeze out smaller cloud service players. CISPE also noted that while European cloud infrastructure services have been growing their revenue in recent years their market share has dropped — from 27% in 2017 down to <16% in 2021. In one of the conclusions to his study, Jenny also writes that the DMA should “guarantee” that abusive practices by the “very large incumbent software providers” are stopped: The presence of lock-in effects, high switching costs, barriers to entry, economies of scale and potential network effects in a fast-growing cloud services market make action particularly urgent, as it will be difficult for other cloud services providers to compete on the merits and for the innovation in this sector to continue to grow for the benefits of the cloud users. Customers of cloud infrastructures services should be guaranteed to rely on the Digital Markets Act to stop abusive practices of the very large incumbent software providers. The DMA has already had a first pass through the European Parliament last year, when MEPs agreed their negotiating position. At that point a number of amendments, which CISPE said had been aimed at closing potential loopholes around enterprise and productivity software giants, did not manage to gain support. The EU’s co-legislative process has now moved to trilogue negotiations between the parliament, Council and the Commission — so CISPE said its hope is that there is still an opportunity for the legislation to be tweaked to put it beyond doubt that the bloc’s incoming ex ante regime will apply to gatekeeping enterprise software giants. The big three companies in this space that are likely to fall under the regime are Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. While Microsoft and Oracle are U.S. companies, ERP giant SAP hails from Germany — which may be one reason for EU lawmakers to be reluctant to more explicitly target the sector in the choice of examples written into the DMA. The Commission was contacted for its response to the cloud companies’ open letter but it declined to comment. |
Envisioning Partners closes on $64M fund for climate tech startups | Kate Park | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | null |
Destinus plans to fly a hydrogen-powered, hypersonic cargo craft with $29M seed round | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | A new venture from space infrastructure company Momentus founder and former CEO Mikhail Kokorich aims to build a hypersonic aircraft for autonomous cargo delivery around the world. While the craft is far from completion, let alone testing and certification, a $29 million seed round should help things along. The stated plan is to build a (i.e. multiples of the speed of sound) powered by liquid hydrogen and with only water as exhaust, which would enable point to point delivery nearly anywhere on the planet. Ambitious, yes. Expensive, yes. Difficult to engineer, also yes. The new company, Destinus, is Kokorich’s first big move since he exited Momentus shortly before the latter’s SPAC. He left under something of a cloud, as there were allegations of the company having misled investors and soft-pedaled security issues relating to his ownership (Kokorich being Russian). These troubles (and subsequent $7 million settlement with the SEC) do not seem to have affected the confidence of Destinus’s investors, including Conny & Co, Quiet Capital, One Way Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, Cathexis Ventures and ACE & Company. The 26.8 million Swiss franc (about $29 million) round suggests they see a market and a way to capture it. A spaceplane is a winged aircraft designed to take off from the ground and travel outside the atmosphere and re-enter, all under its own power and navigation. The most famous is probably the U.S. government’s mysterious (as it is invariably described) X-37B, which is purportedly used for space-based testing for three-letter agencies. The Jungfrau, as the prototype craft being designed by Destinus is called, would be an entirely autonomous “hyperplane,” as it doesn’t quite go to space, staying well below the Karman line but for aerodynamic purposes quite close to vacuum. They are aiming for speeds as high as mach 15 at 60 kilometers up — the actual groundspeed will depend on a lot of factors and isn’t so simply stated. Then the plane will re-enter and glide to its destination. Illustration of a hypothetical (and not to scale) flight path from Miami to Seoul. Destinus This is all untested, not to say hypothetical. Kokorich told TechCrunch that the company flew its small-scale prototype, about the length of a car, last year, and that it expects to fly the larger Jungfrau later in 2022. They’re currently nailing down the guidance, navigation and control systems that will allow the craft to operate autonomously. “This year, we plan to start ground and flight tests of ATR [air turbo rocket] engines with hydrogen as fuel, which we are developing ourselves,” he said. “Like a turbojet, the ATR engine is an airbreathing jet engine. Due to its parameters, it is a suitable engine for both the subsonic and supersonic flight phases of our hyperplane. Later next year, we plan to fly the next iteration of the prototype with both ATR and a second hydrogen rocket engine — it will be the configuration for our commercial vehicles.” And what will these commercial vehicles do? They plan to start at a payload capacity of about a ton, with the intention to provide “relief and emergency cargo anywhere on Earth.” Using cheap, clean hydrogen for fuel could let them cut costs and compete at some levels with existing cargo providers. “But first we plan to target a few categories of early adopters,” Kokorich said. “First and foremost, emergency cargo — such as parts for sensitive production cycles, or valuable perishable goods such as isotopes with a short half-life for cancer treatment, or human organs.” It’s a pleasant thought. But that all presumes that the craft is able not just to fly at the speeds and distances planned, but do so within a complex and international legal framework. Autonomous and supersonic aircraft are subject to numerous restrictions in many countries, and Destinus’s craft would be both. Kokorich said that the company has permission to fly at subsonic speed already (presumably in Switzerland, where the company is based), and that supersonic tests and the requisite permissions will come with the third prototype (i.e. next year’s). Because it flies so high, the noise from its boom would be a fraction of that created by low-altitude fighters and the like. But there may need to be new regulatory schema altogether, something Destinus hopes to anticipate. “We have begun to work with both the European and national regulators to prepare new certification and regulatory requirements for the hyperplane,” he said. “There is currently an active effort between the national and European regulators to define certification requirements and regulations for autonomous aircraft and high-speed systems such as suborbital, hypersonic, and supersonic aircraft.” It’s a lot of ifs and big claims, but the fact that there’s a flying prototype (even if it could only transport a couple bags of groceries) puts them ahead of many others attempting to push the envelope, so to speak, in aerospace. We’ll check back with Destinus closer to the planned test flights. |
To cope with stricter data regulation, enterprises should look to fully open APIs | Jean-Paul Smets | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | as a young enterprise: You are a customer of Azure, AWS, or the Google Cloud Platform, assuming they are the frontrunners. While traveling in Russia or a European Union country on a mission to expand your business, you discover that you’re required to have data locally stored. Even worse, in the EU, you face the GDPR and have national regulatory authorities warning you how . This is a huge problem. No matter where you go outside the U.S., you’ll have to comply with different regulations that could ultimately prevent you from deploying your applications successfully. By using the APIs of the big players, there’s either the possibility of no connectivity or even legal risk. How can enterprises get around this issue? This is where fully open APIs based on open source software are a great help and the technology of the future. “Fully open” APIs contain open source software with open source operation procedures so that the technology can be reproduced and audited in any region, which resolves the geopolitical conflict mentioned above. Fully open APIs give the end-user control on how to debug the software (which powers the API) while also potentially keeping costs down due to their scalability and a complete lack of maintenance costs compared to a closed-loop system. These closed systems are limited by their dependency on a particular platform, driving costs and other limitations on developers. Fully open APIs don’t just harness open-source software, but rather are combined with a complete description of how the infrastructure is made and how it operated – it’s an entirely open process. In Europe, security is becoming increasingly critical. New security qualifications, such as the for secure cloud computing, are examples of cooperation aimed at raising the level of cybersecurity in Europe. Any technology that extends the extraterritorial application of U.S. law could soon be banned from both government markets and processing personal data. In many international markets, local laws regarding personal data require that the services or technologies used are free of technical components that could lead to foreign surveillance by the U.S. This creates an apparent conflict that is deeply connected to legislation, and U.S.-based companies that provide APIs are in the middle of it. To implement a fully open API, you essentially require an open process that lets third parties implement APIs independently of their original creator. For the process to be open, all the steps need to be described in such a way that a third party can reproduce them and verify that the outcome satisfies customer expectations. Ideally, the software and hardware that implement the API should also be open source. Use of software without being able to audit its source code poses a risk of backdoor presence, which is incompatible with certain legislations for data protection. Use of hardware without being able to audit its design poses a . Both risks are well understood by hyperscalers for their own infrastructures, which are now mainly based on open source hardware and software. |
Egyptian investment app Thndr nabs $20M from Tiger Global, Prosus Ventures and others | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | null |
Shared mobility company GoTo Global is going public through a shell company merger | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | GoTo Global, an Israeli mobility company that offers shared micromobility and car-sharing services in Spain, Israel, Malta and Germany, is going public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) through a merger with shell company Nera Tech Media. The merger is expected to close in early April, which will initially give GoTo access to the $12 million Nera Tech holds in cash assets, money GoTo will use to expand its footprint in Germany, according to the company’s CEO Gil Laser. GoTo, which was founded 13 years ago, , giving the company an entry into the German market, specifically Hamburg, Berlin and Munich. The plan is to use the funding from the IPO to build out GoTo’s vehicle offerings in Germany with cars and either electric kick scooters or electric bikes, as well as invest in product development. The startup world has seen a major trend of special purpose acquisition companies forming to merge with private companies and accelerate them on their paths to the public market, but this deal with Nera Tech is a bit different. Merging with a shell company is often referred to as a “reverse merger” and involves an active private company taking control of and merging with a dormant public company, AKA the shell company. Shell companies are usually companies that have previously gone through the IPO process but have sold off their operations, leaving them with just the structure, or “shell”, of a company. Nera Tech itself was formed after the publicly listed company Somoto split into two, with 75% of its shares going to a company called Nostromo, which deals with energy storage and management, as part of a merger with the company. Somoto divided its activities in video and audio advertising and transferred that to Nera Tech Media, which then listed for trading on the TASE. Nera Tech still owns an AI-powered audio platform startup called Trinity Audio, which Laser says will be sold off, giving GoTo more cash towards its IPO — Laser expects Trinity to sell for around $30 million over the next 18 months. Even with the $18 million that GoTo currently has in cash assets, the $12 million from Nera Tech and the potential $30 million from Trinity, Laser reckons GoTo will need to raise an additional $18 to $20 million for its pre-IPO from VCs, angels or family offices. The newly formed company “We think going public is the best situation right now rather than raise money through VCs, because they’re looking for early-stage or huge companies that mainly focus on SaaS and technology,” Laser told TechCrunch. “We are in the middle because we have the technology, but we also have the operations. We took the decision to be a public company because we have a strong product; we are pretty sure that we are advancing the market in two years, and we need to run fast if we want to keep our advantage.” The decision to go public through a merger with a shell company rather than the traditional IPO is because it was a good deal, so to speak, says Laser, who noted that GoTo has enough money to fulfill all its targets for the next two years and generate its business to be profitable. Merging, he says, is just a shortcut to IPO. While GoTo is not profitable globally yet, Laser says the company has achieved profitability and generates positive cash flow in Israel. Usually, shared vehicle companies need to raise a lot more money in order to achieve favorable unit economics that lead to profitability, but GoTo does things a bit differently. The company, which has a fleet of 5,800 vehicles that have been accessed by more than 450,000 subscribers, has memorandums of understanding with companies like Renault, Toyota, Nio and Segway to lease cars and mopeds from them rather than purchasing their own fleet. GoTo still owns the majority of its micromobility vehicles at present, but the goal is to lease those in the future, too. Leasing, rather than purchasing assets which depreciate with time and use, allows the company to enjoy arbitrage. In other words, it will make a profit by taking advantage of the price difference between renting out assets for a period of two years and then renting them back out to users for 10 minutes, for example. GoTo expects this business model to speed up the road to profitability, anticipating that it will earn $35 million in revenue by the end of the year, an increase of 58% over 2021’s reported revenue of $22 million. it hopes to achieve an annual revenue that exceeds $116 million by the end of next year — a tall order that will require quick scaling. One of the verticals GoTo wants to continue to expand into is B2B. Currently most of its customers are everyday passengers who have subscribed to GoTo’s ecosystem of available vehicles, but to achieve its goal of doubling the users of its platform, it hopes to bring on businesses. Many companies are giving employees stipends toward travel and commuting every month, which GoTo wants to capitalize on, offering dedicated vehicles for those companies and their employees and even, eventually, longer-term rentals for any vehicle. “The goal is to increase the target audience and to increase the variety of the product,” said Laser. In the long term, GoTo wants to facilitate all types of transport within the ecosystem. It’s currently doing pilots with ridesharing companies and prepping its app for such an integration, and wants to find ways to work with public transit agencies to create a holistic ecosystem. |
Daily Crunch: After slashing 2,800 jobs, Peloton taps former Spotify CFO to replace outgoing CEO | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, February 8, 2022! Today we’re talking layoffs, blockchain infra, a called-off mega-deal, and chip-based national security. It’s a killer group of stories, bringing us around the world and from the earliest stages of startup activity to the top of governance. A quick reminder before we begin that . Equity is up first this Thursday. All the cool kids will be there, so, be cool and come! – Before we jump into news items involving one startup or another, let’s talk about Africa. It’s well-known by now that the continent is seeing rising venture capital totals. But . Billions of dollars were put to work, indicating that there’s still lots of room for startups to tackle big challenges around the world. And to close, “should participate actively in the conversation and development of web3 and metaverse as soon as possible with concrete ideas and solutions.” I am skeptical, but give the piece a read regardless. / Getty Images Entrepreneurs who are fortunate enough to make it across the finish line of an exit often still find themselves running uphill: Reorganizations and layoffs create profound cultural shifts that few are prepared for. Last month, enterprise reporter Ron Miller who’ve managed acquisitions to learn about how they oversee the process. For balance, he also interviewed three executives who worked at the companies that were acquired: The trio generally agreed that transparency is key for a smooth transition. Fundamental changes are inevitable, but a collaborative process can smooth out some of the bumps and potholes on the journey. “Though they aren’t about to talk crap about their new overlords, you do get the sense that they landed in a pretty decent spot, all things considered,” writes Ron. And to close us out today in news terms, . Which, I mean, all right. It’s very 2018 neobank, but all good, you have to try new things at times, right? SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch wants you to recommend software consultants who have expertise in UI/UX, website development, mobile development and more! If you’re a software consultant, pass this along to your clients; we’d like to hear about why they loved working with you. |
Indian logistics firm Xpressbees becomes unicorn with $300 million fresh funding | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Xpressbees, an Indian logistics startup that , has more than tripled its valuation to $1.2 billion in a new financing round. The Pune-headquartered startup said on Wednesday it has raised $300 million — $100 million in primary and $200 million in secondary (to give partial exit to Alibaba and full exit to one unspecified Chinese investor) — in a Series F funding from Blackstone, TPG and ChrysCapital. The new funding takes the startup’s all-time raise to $575.8 million. is the second Pune-headquartered startup to become a unicorn this week. Commerce startup ElasticRun disclosed in a filing on Monday that it had . Xpressbees helps more than 1,000 customers — including financial and e-commerce services giant Paytm, social commerce startup Meesho, eyewear seller Lenskart, phone maker Xiaomi, online pharmacy NetMeds and online marketplace Snapdeal — deliver their products across the country. It has presence in over 3,000 cities and towns and it processes more than 3 million orders a day. Data: company data, Bernstein 3PL (integrated supply chain services) e-commerce delivery players have gained significant traction in the past four years thanks to the proliferation of e-commerce and social-commerce startups that don’t have their own logistics networks. As more rural and semi-urban populations of India begin to order online, these logistics firms are expected to gain more marketshare as they provide the “most efficient last mile delivery to pin codes in rural in semi urban region,” analysts at Bernstein wrote in a report last year. “We are excited to welcome our new partners Blackstone Growth, TPG Growth, and ChrysCapital in our growth journey. With their vast network and operational expertise, we believe that they will further fuel our efforts in pursuing newer opportunities and will help expand our footprint,” said Amitava Saha, fonder and chief executive of Xpressbees, in a statement. The startup, which is expecting a 70% growth in the current financial year, plans to deploy the fresh funds to become a “full-service logistics” firm. Xpressbees competes with a number of firms, including Delhivery, which has in November. Delhivery counts FedEx, SoftBank and Tiger Global among its investors. “Xpressbees is playing an important role in India’s booming ecommerce sector, which is still at an early stage and has a long runway of development,” said Mukesh Mehta, senior managing director at Blackstone Private Equity, in a statement. |
Lyft’s revenue growth masks active riders slippage | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | U.S. ride-hailing company Lyft dropped its fourth-quarter financial results Tuesday, a report that showed a mixed bag of growth — that in the area of active riders failed to meet analysts’ expectations. The public company had Q4 2021 revenues of $969.9 million, up around 70% from its year-ago quarter that was hit hard by the pandemic and its economic disruptions. On a sequential basis, Lyft grew 12% from its Q3 top line result. In the fourth quarter, Lyft’s net loss came to $258.6 million, inclusive, the company is quick to point out, of “$164.2 million of stock-based compensation and related payroll tax expenses and $122.3 million expense related to changes to the liabilities for insurance required by regulatory agencies attributable to historical periods.” Depending if you are willing to allow that to all slide off the back of the company’s net results, Lyft’s adjusted net income came to $32.1 million for the final three months of 2021, or adjusted earnings per share of $0.09. Analysts had expected the former unicorn and startup to report revenues of $938.9 million, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.09, per averages shared by our sister-publication Yahoo Finance. Lyft also bested its guidance, but that matters less than meeting analyst projections. In Q2 and Q3 2021, Lyft reported its first adjusted EBITDA positivity, an adjusted method of calculating profit. It bested those results in Q4 2021, with $74.7 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Shares of Lyft were off more than 3% in after-hours trading. Leading commentary concerning the company’s results in the quarter seem to indicate that softer-than-expected unique rider numbers could be at fault for Lyft’s share price decline; the company reported 18.728 million active riders in the fourth quarter, up from Lyft’s year-ago result of 12.552 million. However, the street had just over 20 million for Q4 2021, perhaps indicating softer-than-expected demand for Lyft and related services. Critically, the company’s active rider number fell in the fourth quarter of last year, when compared to its third-quarter result, and remains under pre-pandemic levels: Screenshot of Lyft’s active riders and revenue per active rider for 2020 and 2021, taken from Lyft’s investor deck Despite the fact that rider levels are still much lower than expected, Lyft’s full-year revenues grew 36% versus 2020 due to general increased ridership. In 2020, there was an average of 13.75 million active riders per quarter, versus an average of 17 million per quarter in 2021. Higher revenue per active rider is mainly attributable for the growth in revenue overall. There’s been an increase in revenue per ride due to, in large part, longer rides, many of which went to and from airports. In addition, Lyft says pickup and ride frequency also drove the high. While Omicron had a significant impact on ride volumes causing a reduced demand for rideshare, Lyft expects demand to begin to recover. O |
Hydrogen production without CO2 is getting a boost with new tech from Verdagy | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Hydrogen pioneers — from “verde” for green, and “agy” for energy — raised $25 million from a fistful of strategic investors in the energy sector in a bid to take a messy, not-that-environmentally-friendly process of making hydrogen and replacing it with an industrially scalable solution with no nasties going into the air. that the most common way (more than 90% of hydrogen made in the U.S.) of producing industrial amounts of hydrogen is steam-methane reforming (SMR). In other words: You take methane gas (CH ), and you chuck a load of steam (H O) at it under high pressure. The chemistry gods do their thing, and you get a bunch of hydrogen (yay!) and a load of CO . If you’ve been reading about climate change, you might recall that CO is something we’re trying to avoid. As you’re cruising your saucy , or into the sunset with a drizzle of water toppling out of the tail pipe, without a trace of CO in sight, it’s easy to feel smug. There’s a snag: Unless you know where the hydrogen came from, it’s possible that instead of being thrown out of the tail-pipe of your car, it was instead produced at a big factory somewhere. Whoops. Of course, there’s a chance they capture and repurpose the CO at the source, but wouldn’t it be delightful if we didn’t produce it in the first place? Funny you should mention that. The other major way of making hydrogen is by splitting a water atom. H 0 has two hydrogen and one oxygen atom. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could just convince them to part ways peacefully, creating oxygen (in case your high school bio-chemistry is a little out of date: oxygen good) and hydrogen? Well, in a nutshell, that’s what Verdagy is doing. Using a large electrolyzer (ideally) hooked up to renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power, the company can create large amounts of hydrogen. They do that with no byproducts, other than the aforementioned bio-hazard of “smug grin” on the faces of the drivers of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. A hazard I am just about willing to tolerate in the name of a cleaner climate. The company’s core innovation is to “If you take a look at something like (AWE), they’re using a diaphragm, which has a physical limit of how much current density it can use. There may be similar materials and constructions to what we’re doing in terms of cells, that diaphragm limits their ability to run at higher current densities. [ PEM has a limited active area that the cell can use,” explains Marty Neese, CEO at Verdagy, demystifying and outlining the company’s patent-pending technology. “Our cells are very, very large, and it would be very hard to replicate what we do. We have a single-element architecture cell, which means you take an anode, a cathode, and a membrane in the middle. The interior architecture of the cell is what’s proprietary at patent pending. How the cell actually dissipates heat, circulates gas and liquid, and how you can manage the circulatory flow within the cell — that’s the difference in what we do compared to everyone else.” The over-subscribed $25 million round was led by , with additional investment by an impressive array of investors. These include , who was also an investor in the company Verdagy was spun out from last year — . Other investors include oil and gas giant , energy and climate-tech investors , the Singapore government investment company , material commodities giant , (the investment arm of the agriculture, chemicals, water infrastructure, and data communications company formally known as Mexichem) and a number of additional investors, some of whom the company declined to identify to TechCrunch. The fact that Verdagy was able to round up such an incredible lineup of strategic investors for a $25 million round just a few short months after it announced its spin-out is a testament to the enormity of what the company is doing — and the quality of the team. The company’s new CEO , including a seat on the Ballard Power Systems board (which, incidentally, makes PEM fuel cells), COO of home solar pathbreakers for nine years and a founder of company . “TDK” is an initialism of the original Japanese name of the company: Tokyo Denki Kagaku Kōgyō K.K (Tokyo Electric Chemical Industry Co., Ltd.). “If we don’t invest in electrochemical companies like [Verdagy], what we invest in,” jokes , investment director at TDK Ventures. “Our vision is to invest in companies that will be guiding the future path for TDK Corporation. And electrolysis — specifically for green hydrogen — is one of the key areas for strategic thrust internally. TDK has over 110 factories across the globe and just decarbonizing each of those could be quite exciting, as it will bring our footprint down. For us to be investing into the future of the world means we’re thinking of decarbonizing these big petrochemical or industrial chemical facilities.” The company points out that — my lame jokes about fuel-cell vehicles aside — its main focus is industrial uses of hydrogen, typically as part of large industrial parks, for large-scale hydrogen applications, including oil refining, producing fertilizers, food processing and creating metal alloys. Making the hydrogen on-premises (or at least in a distance that a short pipeline can supply) is beneficial to all of these industries — and Verdagy promises to do that with a smaller footprint and a far greener eco impact than most of the current solutions. |
Daffy aims to make using donor-advised funds as easy as a few phone taps | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Renowned Silicon Valley operator Adam Nash thinks you want to donate more than you do, and he’s about to make it dead simple for you to give more. Such is the message we received when talking late last week with Nash, whose most recent full-time roles include as a VP at Dropbox and president and CEO of the financial advisory firm Wealthfront, but who also serves on the boards of the auto e-commerce platform Shift and with Acorns. In fact, it’s that last role with Acorns, a micro-investing app, that informed what Nash is building now, which is a new financial platform for giving called . Freshly backed by $17.1 million in Series A funding led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from XYZ Capital, Coinbase Ventures and more than 50 notable angel investors (Reid Hoffman, Aaron Levie, Amy Chang, the list ), the idea is to help people to be more generous, more often. How, exactly? Daffy provides access to what it claims is the lowest-cost, and lowest-friction, way to set up and use a donor-advised fund (DAF), a kind of 401(k) for charitable giving. With DAFs, one donates some money (or stock, or even cryptocurrencies), receiving a tax break at the time of the contribution, and that donation moves into a managed investment account, where it hopefully grows over time. At some later date, the donor direct the funds to the charity or charities of his or her choice. DAFs have become hugely popular as a means of avoiding taxes on unrealized capital gains by both the extremely wealthy and those who perhaps aren’t billionaires but aren’t struggling to pay their bills, either. According to the National Philanthropic Trust (NPT), the average donor-advised fund account had as of last year, and there is now enough sitting in DAFs (more than $140 billion) that grants from DAFs to qualified charities reached an estimated in 2021, a 27% increase compared to 2019. The NPT called this a “high-water mark.” Nash said Daffy intends to open up DAFs so that many more people across the economic spectrum can participate. The first step toward that end is making access to them more affordable. Whereas a customer of or or can right now set up a donor-advised fund, each of these financial heavyweights charges an administration fee of 0.60% of assets, which can add up over time. (Vanguard also has a minimum required donation of $25,000 to get started.) Daffy meanwhile requires that users make a minimum $100 one-time contribution (or $10 per week until they get there), and it charges just $3 a month, or $36 per year, regardless of the dollar amount that someone is donating. That fee shoots to $20 per month if a user is also donating appreciated stock or cryptocurrency, which have “more expenses tied” to them, noted Nash. But if the assets in question are substantial, that’s still probably a good deal. The second step toward ensuring that DAFs are adopted more widely is making them easier to access. On this front, Daffy, which is based in Los Altos, Ca., is making progress, too. In fact, the app can now be download through the , with Daffy claiming it is the first “fully featured” DAF available on the platform currently. As for where the donations go to (ostensibly) grow, Daffy currently provides its customers access to but Nash said to expect many more to appear on the platform over time. Daffy isn’t alone in tackling this big and growing piece of the economy. In addition to stalwarts like Fidelity, startups like , a recent graduate of Y Combinator’s accelerator program, are beginning to chase after similar customers. There’s also the question of how it survives and thrives, given its low costs. After all, it seems possible the young outfit will increasingly attract clients to the platform who might traditionally use a more expensive DAF product but who switch to Daffy to save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in administrative costs. Asked about penny-pinching millionaires, Nash, who noted that Daffy already has clients with “seven-figure” portfolios, insisted that Daffy doesn’t plan to introduce another, higher-cost tier. He also made clear that Daffy does not receive lead generation fees from the funds with which it works, and that it welcomes all customers no matter their assets. Likely, he simply sees some percentage of customers as loss leaders. Indeed, like many financial services startups, DAFs appear to be Daffy’s first step toward many other product offerings. Nash isn’t ready to fully raise the curtain, however. “It’s definitely a wedge for something bigger but not aimed at financial services,” Nash told us last week. “This isn’t a megabank play. Our mission is to help people be more generous more often and to put money aside proactively for those less fortunate than themselves.” There are “a lot of ways that people give, there are a lot of ways that organizations raise money, and these are all areas that we’re very excited about,” he continued. For now though, Nash is focusing his efforts entirely on turning Daffy into a daily habit for users. It’s ambitious, he acknowledges, but people establish all kinds of routines, aided by technology. “We’re seeing more and more apps and services that are trying to help people live the life they want to live, whether it’s Calm or Headspace or some of the religious apps out there,” he noted. Many, he said, “are using services to be the type of person they want to be. We see no reason that wouldn’t apply to generosity and to philanthropy and charity.” |
Donation site for Ottawa truckers’ ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest exposed donors’ data | Zack Whittaker | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | The donation site used by truckers in Ottawa who are currently protesting against national vaccine mandates has fixed a security lapse that exposed passports and driver licenses of donors. The Boston, Massachusetts-based donation service GiveSendGo became the primary donation service for the so-called “Freedom Convoy” last week after GoFundMe froze millions of dollars in donations, citing police reports of violence and harassment in the city. The protest, which began in January, saw descend on Canada’s capital to oppose mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, paralyzing the streets with snarling traffic. A fundraising page on GoFundMe reached about $7.9 million in donations before the crowdsourcing giant stepped in to block the campaign, prompting the fundraising effort to move to GiveSendGo, which publicly for the protest. According to a press release, GiveSendGo said it had processed more than $4.5 million in donations for the Freedom Convoy protesters during its first day of the company hosting the campaign. TechCrunch was tipped off to the data lapse after a person working in the security space found an exposed Amazon-hosted S3 bucket containing over 50 gigabytes of files, including passports and driver licenses that were collected during the donation process. The researcher said they found the web address for the exposed bucket by viewing the source code of the Freedom Convoy’s webpage on GiveSendGo. S3 buckets are used for storing files, documents or even entire websites in Amazon’s cloud but are set to private by default, and require a multi-step process before a bucket’s contents can be made public for anyone to access. The exposed bucket had over a thousand photos and scans of passports and driver licenses uploaded since February 4, when the Freedom Convoy’s page was first set up on GiveSendGo. The filenames suggest that the identity documents were uploaded during the payments process, which some financial institutions require before they can process a person’s payment or donation. TechCrunch contacted GiveSendGo co-founder Jacob Wells with details of the exposed bucket on Tuesday. The bucket was secured a short time later, but Wells did not respond to our questions, including if GiveSendGo planned on informing about the security lapse those whose information was exposed. It’s not known for exactly how long the bucket was left exposed, but a text file left behind by an unnamed security researcher, dated September 2018, warned that the bucket was “not properly configured” which can have “dangerous security implications.” |
Eight years into his tenure, Satya Nadella looks to diversify | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | that Microsoft used to stumble from time to time, especially when you look at its gaudy today. Around 2010, four years before Steve Ballmer as CEO, the company pretty much completely missed . When Nadella came on board as CEO eight years ago, his mission seemed to be to make damn sure the company didn’t make the same mistake with the cloud. One way to do that would be to throw money at the problem, and just buy the companies to make the path easier. Since its founding, Microsoft has acquired 250 companies, , but most of the biggest deals, , have come during Nadella’s tenure. The two exceptions were and , both of which happened under Ballmer, and neither worked out very well. The three biggest, including announced in January, for LinkedIn in 2016, and the last year all happened with Nadella in the corner office. Microsoft has long had the resources and capability to handle multiple large businesses, as Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Office 365, pointed out in last year: “The context for Microsoft had been our ability to develop multiple, very large businesses that ran in parallel. So this idea that we had multiple billion-dollar-plus businesses [like the] Windows business and Office businesses … Even a server business associated with productivity [certainly helped].” Those resources have grown dramatically as the company’s market cap has soared. Consider that since I covered Nadella’s , the company’s public market value has grown from just over $800 billion to over $2 trillion. That kind of growth gives you a lot of options, which Nadella has certainly taken advantage of. YCharts |
DOJ seizes $3.6B in bitcoins after busting entrepreneur couple in Bitfinex laundering scheme | Anita Ramaswamy | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) has seized over 94,000 bitcoins that were allegedly stolen in the 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex and arrested a married couple suspected to have laundered the money, . The couple — Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and Heather Morgan, 31 — faces charges of conspiring to launder money and to defraud the U.S. government. Facing up to 25 years in prison if convicted, they are set to make their initial appearance in federal court in Manhattan later today. The asset seizure, worth $3.6 billion at today’s bitcoin prices, is the largest in the Justice Department’s history, officials said. They did not recover the entire sum of funds lost in the 2016 hack, though — the 119,754 bitcoins allegedly stolen in total are now worth $4.5 billion. While Morgan and Lichtenstein were not formally accused of perpetrating the hack, prosecutors said they discovered the suspects because the bitcoins were sent to a digital wallet Lichtenstein controlled. The couple obtained the coins after a hacker breached Bitfinex’s systems, initiating more than 2,000 illegal transactions, the DOJ said. Lichtenstein and Morgan are both deeply involved in the tech startup ecosystem, according to their LinkedIn profiles. , a dual citizen of the U.S. and Russia who goes by the nickname “Dutch,” founded a Y Combinator-backed sales software company called MixRank. is the founder and CEO of B2B sales startup SalesFolk, where Lichtenstein has served as an advisor since 2014, according to and LinkedIn. Lichtenstein also serves as a mentor at venture firm 500 Startups and an advisor to Ethereum wallet provider Endpass, per his profile, while Morgan has written columns for Forbes and Inc. Over one-third of the stolen bitcoins were transferred out of Lichtenstein’s wallet “via a complicated money laundering process” involving making accounts with fake names and converting the bitcoins to other, more private digital currencies like Monero, a process known as “chain-hopping.” The 94,000 bitcoins that weren’t laundered remained in the wallet that was used to store the proceeds from the hack, which is how agents say they were able to recover them after conducting an extensive online search through court-authorized warrants. Bitfinex said today that it would work together with U.S. officials to attempt to return the stolen funds to their rightful owners. “Today, federal law enforcement demonstrates once again that we can follow money through the blockchain, and that we will not allow cryptocurrency to be a safe haven for money laundering or a zone of lawlessness within our financial system,” assistant attorney general Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the DOJ’s criminal division said in the agency’s statement. |
Meta’s Oversight Board urges Facebook and Instagram to tighten doxing rules | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Meta’s external advisory organization issued Tuesday, urging the company to bolster its policies that protect users against doxing. Facebook requested advice on the policy last year, acknowledging that it had difficulty balancing access to public information with privacy concerns. The company now known as Meta’s current policy on sharing private identifying details carves out an exception for cases when that information becomes “publicly available:” We remove content that shares, offers or solicits personally identifiable information or other private information that could lead to physical or financial harm, including financial, residential, and medical information, as well as private information obtained from illegal sources. We also recognize that private information may become publicly available through news coverage, court filings, press releases, or other sources. When that happens, we may allow the information to be posted. Citing how this kind of harm can be “difficult to remedy” — i.e. once someone’s address is out in the wild it’s impossible to put that cat back in the bag — the Oversight Board recommended that Meta remove the exception in its Privacy Violations Policy allowing “publicly available” home addresses and identifying images. The new rules would be “more protective of privacy” according to the board, in light of the unique risks that erring on the side of too little caution poses. “Once this information is shared, the harms that can result, such as doxing, are difficult to remedy,” the Oversight Board wrote. “Harms resulting from doxing disproportionately affect groups such as women, children and LGBTQIA+ people, and can include emotional distress, loss of employment and even physical harm or death.” The board’s recommendations would create a few common sense exceptions, like in the case of sharing an image of a residence that is the focus of a news story or when someone shares a picture of their own home. The group still advises Meta disallow images of private addresses shared for the purposes of organizing protests. The Board also argues that Meta should allow residential imagery to be shared if a protest is being organized at “official residences provided to high-ranking government officials” like federal and local government leaders and ambassadors, otherwise an event planning to demonstrate at a location like the White House might run afoul of the rules. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: After the exit, starting up in stealth, Wag’s SPAC plans | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Startups do not have a great survival rate. Nine out of ten will fail, and those that persist will likely need at least three to four years to become profitable. Entrepreneurs who are fortunate enough to make it across the finish line of an exit often still find themselves running uphill: reorganizations and layoffs create profound cultural shifts that few are prepared for. Last month, enterprise reporter Ron Miller spoke to executives who’ve managed acquisitions to learn about how they oversee the process. For balance, who worked at the companies that were acquired: The trio generally agreed that transparency is key for a smooth transition. Fundamental changes are inevitable, but a collaborative process can smooth out some of the bumps and potholes on the journey. “Though they aren’t about to talk crap about their new overlords, you do get the sense that they landed in a pretty decent spot, all things considered,” writes Ron. Thanks very much for reading TechCrunch+ this week! Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
Approximately 23 million American households acquired a pet since the pandemic began. For non-essential workers, spending time with a new canine companion quickly became one of the top benefits of working remotely. But as companies resume working out of offices, dog-walking app Wag hopes that its services will be in demand once again, Alex Wilhelm reported in The Exchange. The company, which recently said it would go public via a SPAC merger, is seeing demand recover after sales fell off a cliff when the pandemic struck. “The deal may serve as a reminder that bad times don’t last forever, and if your business tanks due to market conditions, those old conditions may come back. In time.” / Getty Images Consumers who are concerned about sustainability appreciate seeing their contributions quantified: the company that delivers my weekly grocery box keeps a running total of how many pounds of food, water and CO2 my purchases have conserved. Similarly, investors care about the potential impact of the companies they’re backing. But how do you tell if a startup will live up to its environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) goals? In a post for TechCrunch+. Bruce Dahlgren, CEO of MetricStream, identifies four signals investors can check for to see if an ESG investment is viable. “Investors need to start thinking about ESG risk in the same way they consider investment risk, as a first step,” he says. / Getty Images Hiring for an early-stage startup is challenging, but recruiting for a company that’s still in stealth brings a unique set of problems. How do you get a developer excited about an upcoming interview if you can’t share any details beforehand? Black box testing is one thing, but few engineers are looking forward to a black box interview. In a TC+ article, Michael Fey, co-founder and CEO of Island, described the process he and his co-founder used “to turn interviewees into believers without actually divulging the details of what we were working on.” Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images Most businesses tend to struggle to diversify in the face of competition, regulation, and changing market forces. But for Amazon, revenue from its fast-growing AWS business is allowing the company to experiment, invest and venture into new areas that will bolster its core e-commerce offering, report Ron Miller and Alex Wilhelm. “Yes, Amazon has done well by offering its internal compute services externally, allowing other companies to leverage the work it has done on building low-cost, high-quality cloud services. But it is also able to use AWS to cover operating losses posted by its global e-commerce businesses.” VladSt A friend of mine is a well-known YouTube content creator. They spent years building a following with tutorials, topical commentary and other material that has created real value for viewers — and advertisers. But they don’t rely on YouTube: they also write books, make paid appearances, and offer group and private instruction. Diversification is a core tenet for many creators, but given how frequently major platforms rewrite their terms of service agreements, how should they monetize their work? No one seems to want public insurtech stocks, but VCs were as hungry as ever for insurtech startups in 2021: funding reached 566 deals and $15.4 billion in capital. But insurtech startups’ fortunes in 2022 might be different depending on where they stand: purely insurance players stand to lose value, while those innovating could benefit, report Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim. “Insurtech startups that are more tech than insurance might do just fine, while insurtech startups that are more insurance than tech are going to see their multiples cut until they fit with a whole set of comps they wanted to avoid.” / Getty Images It’s easy to get lured in when a course promises a job placement, but what happens if students don’t land a job once the course is over? Natasha Mascarenhas delves deep into the ethics and issues around placement rates promised by tech bootcamps, and whether transparency is the key to delivering a fair deal to customers who have high expectations. “When you promise jobs, that gives you the liberty to increase your cost as much as you want because you promise the job,” said Nucamp CEO Ludovic Fourrage, who plans to cease using the stats in advertising materials. |
Come hang with us for live recordings of TechCrunch podcasts Equity and Found | Jordan Crook | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Are you a numbers nerd? A people person? In either case, there’s a TechCrunch podcast for you. TechCrunch’s premier (only) podcasts and are kicking off 2022 with live recordings of the shows starting in February. Listeners can catch the live recordings on YouTube, Facebook or (to get even more involved) chat directly with the hosts by registering on Hopin. Here’s a look at the schedule:
If you’ve been listening to Equity for a while, this is a chance to go even deeper. You’ll get to listen to the episode a day early, get behind-the-scenes access and even chat live with the Equity crew, including Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo. If you’re brand new to the Equity fandom, come on in and have a look around. The water’s nice. Equity is all about unpacking the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. The Equity crew wades through the hype to keep you up to date on the world of business, technology and venture capital, and they have a blast doing it. Found, TechCrunch’s newer (and arguably better — as a co-host I’m only a little biased) podcast focuses on the stories behind the startups. We talk to founders about the peaks and pits of running a business, including the fundraising process, hiring, leadership tactics and more. We’ve talked to folks like Ro co-founder Rob Schultz, Envoy CEO Larry Gadea, Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger (who co-founded MOSH) and Hims and Hers co-founder Hilary Coles. For our first live recording of Found, we’ll sit down with , who has proven himself a master of developing viral mobile games, and learn about his template for success and what he’s learned from his failures. Folks who register (for free) to join the live recording on Hopin will be able to ask their own questions to Thor throughout the episode. It should be pretty damn cool. |
null | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 2 | 9 | null |
Subaru opens up reservations for its first EV, the Solterra | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Forget the electric pickup truck wars, which has Ford, GM and Rivian duking it out for market share. The electric wagon-meets-crossover battle is heating up with Toyota, Subaru, Hyundai and Kia all introducing new EVs this year. The latest is Subaru, which Tuesday for its upcoming 2023 Solterra EV. The Solterra, the automaker’s first electric vehicle, will go on sale this summer in all 50 states. Customers can pay a $250 refundable reservation fee to select their preferred retailer, pick trim and color — a few choices that will give Subaru important insight into what vehicle variants to prioritize. Subaru has been squeezed by a global shortage of semiconductor chips, meaning any information on what the coming demand might be is useful. Customers will be contacted between April and May 2022 to make the final agreements on the order, including the pricing, availability and financing, the company said. Subaru also announced Tuesday a partnership with EVgo to give customers access to its public EV charging network. The Subaru Solterra is , both of which were showcased at the 2021 Los Angeles Auto Show in November. Both the bZ4X and the Solterra are the product of a partnership between Toyota and Subaru to jointly develop a platform dedicated to battery electric vehicles. There are a few slight differences between the two vehicles, the taillights being one example. The inside of the Solterra looks a lot like the Toyota bZ4X. The exterior, chassis and all-wheel system — a hallmark of the outdoorsy focused automaker — is Subaru. Solterra comes with a 71.4 kWh lithium-ion battery pack, which is sourced from Toyota, that sits low between the axles and is paired with two electric motors that generate 215 horsepower and 248 lb-ft of torque. Subaru has estimated the range to be around 220-plus miles and claims the vehicle can be charged from 0 to 80% in just about 30 minutes using DC fast chargers. |
Amazon expands its telehealth service nationwide | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | Amazon’s telehealth program, Amazon Care, is now available nationwide, the company on Tuesday. Amazon Care offers both virtual care and in-person services. The Amazon Care model combines on-demand and in-person care and is meant as a solution from the search giant to address shortfalls in current offerings for healthcare. The company also announced that the in-person services are rolling out in more than 20 new cities this year. Amazon says the expansion comes as it’s continuing to invest in growing its clinical care team and its in-person care services. The in-person service is already available in Seattle, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Arlington. In 2022, Amazon plans to bring in-person care services to major metropolitan areas like San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, New York City and more. Amazon Care first in 2019 in Seattle as a pilot program for Amazon employees. In March 2021, Amazon made the service to other companies across the United States. Amazon notes that numerous notable companies, including Whole Foods and Silicon Labs, currently offer Amazon Care to their employees. The service offers urgent and primary care services, including COVID-19 and flu testing, vaccinations, treatment of illnesses and injuries, preventive care, sexual health and prescription requests and refills. When concerns can’t be resolved virtually, Amazon Care dispatches a nurse practitioner to a patient’s home for additional care, ranging from routine blood draws or listening to a patient’s lungs. “Patients are tired of a health care system that doesn’t put them first. Our patient-centric service is changing that, one visit at a time,” said Kristen Helton, the director of Amazon Care, in a statement. “We’ve brought our on-demand urgent and primary care services to patients nationwide. As we grow the service, we’ll continue to work with our customers to address their needs.” Amazon has been investing in healthcare over the past few years. In 2018, the company PillPack, an online pharmacy that lets users buy medications in pre-made doses. In 2020, Amazon Amazon Pharmacy, its online and mobile prescription medication ordering and fulfillment service. More recently, Amazon new solutions for healthcare providers and senior living centers. The solutions, which are a part of Alexa Smart Properties, are designed specifically to meet the needs of deploying Alexa devices at scale and will allow the facility’s administrators to create customized experiences for their residents or patients. |
Europe’s Chips Act to bake in up to €2BN in funding support for startups and scale-ups | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | European Union lawmakers have today presented a Chips Act: Their plan, : to bolster regional sovereignty in semiconductor production and supply chain resilience through a package of targeted support for chip production inside the bloc, including in areas like R&D and via funding for startups and scale-ups working on cutting edge tech in the sector. The proposal also includes a loosening of strict EU state aid rules that will allow Member States to provide financial support to novel “first of a kind” chip fabs. The overarching goal for the regulation is to ensure continued access for the EU to the high-tech chips now needed to power all sorts of machines and devices. “Chips are at the centre of the global technological race. They are, of course, also the bedrock of our modern economies,” said EU president, Ursula von der Leyen, in a on the proposal which links the slow pace of the EU’s post-pandemic economic recovery to the global shortage of chips, itself triggered by rising demand outstripping supply. The Commission wants to more than double the bloc’s share of global chip production to 20% by 2030 — up from the 9% currently. It said it hopes the Chips Act will lay the foundations for a thriving semiconductor sector — “from research to production” — while recognizing that Europe can’t go it alone, so the regulation will also work to foster greater resilience in access to global supply chains by strengthening partnerships with other chip producing regions, such as the U.S. and Japan. Hence von der Leyen’s talk of “balanced interdependencies” (albeit state aid for local chip production may risk some trade tensions). In terms of financing, the EU is already mobilizing more than €43 billion in public and private funding to support broader policy goals (around digitalization, the green transition and European R&D) but the Commission said €11 billion in EU public funds will be “directly provided” for semiconductor capacity support — under a “Chips for Europe Initiative” in the Act — which it said would be used to finance “technology leadership in research, design and manufacturing capacities up to 2030”. There will also be funding specifically ringfenced for startup A dedicated semiconductor equity investment facility (under ) will also support scale-ups and SMEs with market expansion, per the Commission. It said expects Chips Act “support equity” for startups and scale-ups in the sector to reach €2 billion. A planned framework to ensure security of semiconductor supply in Europe by attracting investments and enhanced production capacities will also seek to drive innovation and investment in areas such as advanced nodes and energy efficient chips — areas where the Commission may also hope to encourage startup innovation. Other measures in the Chips Act proposal include a co-ordination mechanism between the Commission and Member States for monitoring the supply of semiconductors, estimating demand and anticipating the shortages. And the EU’s executive is encouraging Member States to make an immediate start on co-ordination efforts, rather than waiting for the Act to be passed. There is no time frame being provided publicly for when the regulation might be adopted as yet, given the European Parliament and the Council, the EU’s co-legislators will need to weigh in and agree on the detail before it can be adopted as pan-EU law. Commenting in a statement, Margrethe Vestager, the Commission EVP who heads up the digital strategy, said: Chips are necessary for the green and digital transition — and for the competitiveness of European industry. We should not rely on one country or one company to ensure safety of supply. We must do more together — in research, innovation, design, production facilities — to ensure that Europe will be stronger as a key actor in the global value chain. It will also benefit our international partners. We will work with them to avoid future supply issues.” In another supporting statement, Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, added: “Our objectives are high: Doubling our global market share by 2030 to 20%, and producing the most sophisticated and energy-efficient semiconductors in Europe. With the EU Chips Act we will strengthen our research excellence and help it move from lab to fab — from the laboratory to manufacturing. “We are mobilising considerable public funding which is already attracting substantial private investment. And we are putting everything in place to secure the entire supply chain and avoid future shocks to our economy like we are seeing with the current supply shortage in chips. By investing in lead markets of the future and rebalancing global supply chains, we will allow European industry to remain competitive, generate quality jobs, and cater for growing global demand. More details on the EU proposal — including which types of chip fabs are intended to qualify for state aid rules breaks — can be found in this . |
UK Foreign Office calls in ‘urgent support’ after cyber incident | Carly Page | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | The U.K’s Foreign Office was the target of a “serious incident” that forced it to request urgent help. The incident was confirmed in a recently released . This document, published on February 4, reveals that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) called in “urgent business support” from its cybersecurity contractor, BAE Applied Intelligence. According to the notice, the FCDO paid the company £467,325.60 — about $630,000 — for its assistance after issuing a contract for “business analyst and technical architect support to analyze an authority cyber security incident,” which concluded January 12, 2022. But details about the incident — which had not previously been made public — remain unknown. “The Authority was the target of a serious cyber security incident, details of which cannot be disclosed,” the document reads. “In response to this incident, urgent support was required to support remediation and investigation. Due to the urgency and criticality of the work, the Authority was unable to comply with the time limits for the open or restricted procedures or competitive procedures with negotiation.” Details of the BAE contract were first reported by . An FCDO spokesperson, who did not provide their name, told TechCrunch that the office does not comment on security, but has “systems in place to detect and defend against potential cyber incidents.” The spokesperson declined to answer further questions about the incident, such as whether classified information had been accessed. TechCrunch also contacted the to confirm if the incident was reported, but has not yet received a response. News of the apparent incident comes days after a significant security lapse was uncovered affecting the British Council, an organization that specializes in international cultural and educational opportunities. Security researchers at Clario found 144,000 unencrypted files on an unprotected Microsoft Azure storage server, which included personal and login details of British Council students. In December 2020, Wilton Park, a Sussex-based executive agency of the FCDO, was hit by a cyberattack, which following an investigation by the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Center, found that hackers had access to the agency’s systems for six years, though there was no evidence that data had been stolen. |
GoStudent acquires UK’s Seneca Learning and Spain’s Tus Media Group | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | European edtech unicorn has acquired the U.K.’s and Spain-based in a move which extends its reach into areas not previously touched by the Austrian unicorn. Seneca provides algorithmic learning content while Tus Media is an open tutoring marketplace. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Both acquired companies will continue operating independently under their current leadership teams and with their established brand names. Launched in 2016, Seneca Learning did not previously take on venture capital backing, according to . Tus Media was also privately owned, with unspecified backing from Barcelona-based investor Redarbor. The move comes a month after GoStudent raised €300 million in a Series D funding and follows GoStudent’s 2021 acquisition of Fox Education, an Austrian all-in-one school communication solution. Seneca Learning is a “freemium” homework and revision platform in the U.K. with 7 million students on it. Children can choose from KS2, KS3, GCSE & A-Level courses. Felix Ohswald, CEO and co-founder of GoStudent, said: “The United Kingdom is one of GoStudent’s core regions, and we aim to become the market leader. We have listened to the needs of our customers, and adding a content platform to our core offering is an important strategic step for us, allowing us to further enrich our learning offerings and diversify our portfolio.” Stephen Wilks, co-founder and CEO of Seneca Learning, said: “Working with Felix and the GoStudent team will allow us to bring Seneca’s free content and personalized learning experience to millions more students in different countries across the world. The team is excited to build on our success in the U.K. and take our product international to give more children access to an amazing free education.” Founded in 2011, Tus Media offers an open marketplace for tutors serving 4 million students, with teachers in Spain, as well as several European and LATAM countries. Albert Clemente, founder and CEO of Tus Media Group, said: “The acquisition by GoStudent gives us the thrust to further scale Tus Media with all its brands to new markets and expand to even bigger regional geographies.” Gregor Müller, COO and co-founder of GoStudent, commented: “Albert Clemente is one of the most passionate and dedicated education entrepreneurs we have ever met. Working with him as a partner and learning from each other will allow us to get one step closer to becoming the No. 1 global school.” David González Castro, founder and CEO of Redarbor — Tus Media’s former investor — commented: “In 2018, we acquired 20% and later 30% of participation in Tus Media. After the acquisition by GoStudent, we will leave the shareholding. I am very proud of all the success we have achieved in collaboration and value creation with Albert Clemente.” GoStudent now has a roughly €3 billion valuation. Founded in Vienna in 2016 by Felix Ohswald (CEO) and Gregor Müller (COO), it provides paid, one-to-one, video-based tuition to primary, secondary and college-aged students using a membership model. Backed with €590 million in funding, investors include Prosus Ventures and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Speaking to me over a call Ohswald added: “Both of these companies are very complementary for GoStudent. Seneca has built a tremendous content company, so they created content customized for the UK school curriculum that 1000s of teachers and then millions of kids use and that is something we don’t have. We have never done content in the past. So they bring this content element that we are missing, and we want to help them scale their business in many more countries, while building some synergies.” He added: “On the side of Tus Media, they created an awesome SEO-driven company. So all the traffic they generate on their marketplace comes via SEO with no marketing spend. That’s something we have not achieved in the past. Together with them we can learn from them and also help them to scale more quickly.” |
EV SPAC Faraday Future is restructuring leadership following review of inaccurate statements to investors | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Faraday Future is revamping its board, cutting the pay of two top executives and suspending at least one other, following an internal investigation that determined employees made inaccurate statements to investors and that its “corporate culture failed to sufficiently prioritize compliance,” . Faraday Future, which has had a long string of controversies since its founding in 2014, became a publicly traded company in July 2021 after . Trouble percolated just months later when a short seller report alleged that Faraday Future had made a number of inaccurate statements. An internal review conducted by a special committee of directors and which tapped the expertise of a forensic accounting firm and independent legal counsel soon followed. The committee found that company employees understated the involvement of founder and former CEO Jia Yueting, who is now chief product officer. The review also determined that the company’s declaration that it had received more than 14,000 reservations for the FF 91 vehicle were potentially misleading because only several hundred of those reservations were paid. The remainder, which totaled 14,000, were unpaid indications of interest. The company’s internal controls over financial accounting and reporting also require an upgrade in personnel and systems, the reviewers found. As a result, Sue Swenson, who was the audit committee chairperson, has been appointed to a new position of executive chairperson. She will have oversight of the senior executive leadership team and will continue to direct additional investigations and remediation. CEO Carsten Breitfeld and Yueting will receive a 25% pay cut and report directly to Swenson. Brian Krolicki will step down from his role as chairman of the board and chair of the nominating and corporate governance committee and become a member of the audit and compensation committees of the board. Jiawei (Jerry) Wang, the company’s VP of Global Capital Markets, will be suspended without pay until further notice, effective immediately, and Jarret Johnson, general counsel and secretary, “will be separating from the company,” according to a regulatory filing. The special committee also approved strengthening internal controls, including hiring a chief compliance officer and hiring of additional financial and accounting support. |
Daily Crunch: India announces plans for digital rupee, 30% tax on crypto profits | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, February 1, 2022! I celebrated the first day of the month by having my internet cut out right as I started to prepare this newsletter for you. Am I panicked at having 1,000 words to produce in the next 38 minutes? Yes! But a lot is going on, so let’s get to work. – On the subject of new funds, , or around $493 million USD. As we wrote in our piece dissecting the news, “money is flowing into Australia and New Zealand’s startup ecosystems.” Yes, that’s true in many places, but you might not have anticipated that the Aussies and Kiwis were so deep in the action. They are! (You may have heard of Atlassian, for example.) Changing gears, our own Ron Miller has a neat piece up on the site reporting that after retooling its business. Docker had faded somewhat from my brain in the last few years, but that revenue number indicates that we should probably start paying attention once again. There’s no better signal of having a product in-market that people need than the fact that they pay you for it. From the cash register: And a lot more, including a ; neat , which I suppose still counts as a startup; and Natasha Lomas has and how they may – or may not – manage to clean up a business that is shadier than you’d like it to be. / Getty Images Capturing investors’ attention isn’t enough when you’re raising money — often, you have to convince them your funding process is efficient and that you’re talking to other investors. Momentum is key to building this level of interest, writes Nathan Beckord, CEO of Foundersuite.com, and that energy will propel your entire fundraising process. After opening with a “great hack for asking for email introductions,” Beckord shares five hustle tips for maintaining and capitalizing on momentum that will maximize investor interest and appeal. SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images 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. If you’re curious about how these surveys are shaping our coverage, check out this article on TechCrunch+ from Elise King: |
GM’s Chevy Silverado EV already has 110,000 reservations | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | General Motors said it has secured more than 110,000 reservations for its new all-electric Chevrolet Silverado, which includes reservations from more than 240 fleet operators, Chair and CEO Mary Barra said in the company’s full-year and fourth quarter earnings letter to shareholders. The fresh reservations details on Chevy Silverado EV comes just a few weeks after the RST First Edition variant of the all-electric pickup truck sold out in 12 minutes. The figures also illustrate the seemingly insatiable appetite among U.S. consumers for trucks. Ford, GM’s biggest rival, announced in early January that it will nearly double production capacity of its to 150,000 vehicles a year by mid-2023 in response to customer demand. The Silverado reservations signal future demand, which should have pleased investors, but wasn’t enough to keep GM’s stock price from initially falling after the market closed Tuesday. Shares have since rebounded and are up 2.54% to $54.07. The automaker reported that it , or $1.16 a share, in the fourth quarter, compared to $2.85 billion, or $1.93 a share, in the same quarter last year. The company also reported that it generated $33.6 billion in the fourth quarter, slightly under the $34 billion that analysts had expected and 10.4% lower than the $37.5 billion in sales from same year-ago period. Sales and earnings were squeezed by the ongoing global semiconductor chip shortage. However, GM sees rosier skies ahead. The company provided updated guidance for 2022: The company expects to generate an operating profit of between $13 billion and $15 billion. Its electric vehicle ramp-up is a key piece of its 2022 and 2023 plans. Last April, GM revealed it would produce an as part of its plan to deliver more than 1 million EVs globally by 2025. The Silverado will be GM’s third electric truck, following the GMC Hummer EV and the Sierra Denali. , in time for first deliveries later that same year. Last month, at CES, the automaker displayed for the first time. The EV truck, which will have a range of 400 miles, will start at $39,900 for the basic work truck (WT) edition. A fully loaded, four-wheel-steering RST First Edition, which we know has now been snapped up by customers, will cost $105,000. Both are supposed to hit production lines in 2023. The work truck will be slightly less powerful, with 510 horsepower and 615 lb-ft of torque compared to the RST’s 664 HP and 780 lb-ft of torque. The WT will also feature a towing capacity of 8,000 pounds, down from RST’s 10,000 pounds. The RST edition will also have a range of technological advancements, such as a 17-inch LCD screen in the center of the vehicle and an additional 11-inch screen for the driver, coupled with a huge heads-up display. Similar to , the Silverado’s biggest competition, both the WT and RST editions can act as a 110v generator, with the Chevy’s max output of 10.2 kW, up from Ford’s 9.6 kW. |
Apple News launches its first daily local newsletter, targeting Bay Area readers | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Apple News is introducing its first daily local newsletter for the Bay Area and is actively exploring expanding the offering to other cities. The Bay Area daily local newsletter, which is reminiscent of a daily local paper, includes top stories across local news, sports, politics, dining and more. The stories are compiled from numerous publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Gate, Eater San Francisco, KQED, The Oaklandside and others. All of the stories included in the newsletter are curated by Apple News editors, as opposed to being selected by algorithms — a decision that should cut down on the recirculation of clickbait and other low-value content. Apple News considers the Bay Area newsletter to be a local’s end-of-day digest that includes notable news and other information about what’s happening around them. The daily local newsletter joins Apple News’ daily newsletter that delivers national news to larger audiences. The launch arrives at a time when a number of tech companies are adding newsletters as part of their offerings, including Twitter with its and , for example. Top newsletter platform Substack was as of its Series B, indicating the sizable market for this more old-school form news media, that’s at least partially arisen due to the of newspapers’ websites. If Apple chooses to roll out more daily local newsletters, it will have several markets to choose from. Today, Apple News offers local news coverage in 11 markets, including San Francisco, the Bay Area, New York, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Miami, Charlotte, San Antonio and Washington, D.C. Apple says it plans to launch its local news feature in more cities in the future. The tech giant’s local news offerings indicate that it’s looking to further compete with other news aggregator services such as and , which offer local news coverage in thousands of U.S. cities. |
Vertical farming firm Kalera eyes SPAC deal | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Another vertical farming operation revealed its This week, Florida-based Kalera to merge with Agrico Acquisition Corp. in a deal that values the agtech firm at $375 million. The move comes as plenty of excitement swirls around the category, though Kalera, which currently lists on the Euronext Growth Oslo exchange, has seen a notable stock price drop over the last year. The company’s falling value is notable, as it has seen its stock fall from a 52-week high of $5.99 per share to just $0.91 as of its most recent close, per Google Finance data. (The company intends to delist from its current exchange as part of the transaction, its release states.) Why pursue a SPAC combination when the company has already listed? The deal would provide the firm with funding as it works to grow its current number of farms from four to 10. According to an from December, 2021, the company said that it was “actively pursuing different financing alternatives to satisfy our financing requirements for 2022.” It’s not hard to see why. Per the company’s , its operations burned $8.7 million in the first nine months of last year, while its investing cash flow was a stiffer -$110.0 million for the same period. Capital raised of $61.5 million helped partially offset those deficits, but Kalera still posted a net cash change of -$57.2 million in the first three quarters of 2021. It closed the September quarter with $56.2 million worth of cash and equivalents — more simply, the company needs more capital to continue expanding, as its operations are deeply in the red and the company is far from reaching cash flow breakeven, let alone positive net income. Agrico, the SPAC that Kalera intends to merge with, has “$146.6 million cash in trust,” it claims. That would give Kalera far more time to improve its operating results than its current cash position will afford the company. The deal will likely be viewed as a bellwether for the health of the burgeoning category. Last year, AeroFarms with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. after the former announced the plan was ultimately, “not in the best interests of our shareholders.” “Kalera is already positioned as a leader in the vertical farming industry with its 10 facilities operating or construction nearly complete and Vindara, its seed business dedicated to controlled environments.,” Agrico CEO Brent De Jong said of the deal. “The proposed merger with Agrico positions Kalera to be the first leafy green vertical farm company to have a national footprint in the U.S. and be able to reliably supply a national off-take contract while still being local.” The “national footprint” qualifier is an interesting one there. Certainly a number of companies, including AeroFarms and Bowery, have found regional success. Given the localized nature of vertical farming, scaling to the continental United States requires building a lot of farms. After all, a major selling point for the category is serving urban areas where building a standard farm isn’t viable. Building indoor farms in — or next to — these spots can sufficiently reduce emissions that come with shipping produce coast to coast. Kalera currently has farms operating in its native Orlando, as well as Atlanta and Houston, with additional locations under construction in Denver, Seattle, Honolulu, Columbus and St. Paul. The latter two, in particular, are interesting, with the company setting up operations in the Midwest, which is home to much of the nation’s traditional farm space. Kalera also operates a pair of international farms in Munich and Kuwait, with a third under construction in Singapore. The firms expect the deal to close in Q2 of this year. Current interim CEO Curtis McWilliams will continue to lead the company. |
Netflix adds more games, including Riot Games’ otherwise paid title ‘Hextech Mayhem’ | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Streaming service Netflix is expanding its gaming lineup once again with the launch of two more titles, which will begin to roll out globally starting today at 5 PM ET. Among the new addition is Riot Games’ “ ,” a League of Legends story, which is also available through other gaming platforms and marketplaces, including Nintendo Switch, Steam, the Epic Games Store, and GOG.com, where it’s offered as a paid download of $9.99. The other new title, “Dungeon Dwarves,” comes from Canadian developer , a company founded by Club Penguin co-founder Lance Priebe in 2012. Both of the titles launching today represent new gaming partnerships for Netflix. Netflix notes that “Hextech Mayhem,” a fast-paced rhythm runner, had already soft-launched in test markets Poland, Italy, Spain and Brazil, but is now launching to global subscribers. Notably, this is a fairly new game that just became available to other gaming platforms in November 2021. It also represents the first major gaming franchise to come to the Netflix games collection. However, it’s not the first Netflix game that’s sold elsewhere. “Arcanium: Rise of Akhan” is also a premium title available on other platforms. The dungeon crawler “Dungeon Dwarves,” meanwhile, is just now becoming available to Netflix members. It’s the first and only idle game to launch on the Netflix service. Netflix Like its other games, Netflix users will be directed to the new titles through the company’s apps on iOS and Android. On Android, users can find games in multiple places, including on a dedicated gaming tab in the app’s main navigation. On iOS, however, games are instead featured in a dedicated row. The games themselves are hosted on the platforms’ respective app stores, not on Netflix’s infrastructure, but they can only be played by Netflix users. After installation, the games will prompt users to authenticate with their Netflix account information to get started. Netflix has been building out its gaming service , when the company debuted its initial lineup which had then included a couple of “Stranger Things”-themed titles and other casual titles. Since then, it has rapidly expanded its available offerings to include puzzle games, , and more. The games themselves aren’t developed in-house at Netflix, but are provided by partners, which have included Frosty Pop, Rogue Games, and BonusXP. Sometimes they use older IP from larger outfits, like Gameloft. To date, Netflix has launched a dozen titles, but it has so far yet to capitalize on its acquisition of Night School Studios, known best for narrative-driven games like Oxenfree. The company explained to investors during its recent Q4 earnings call that these initial gaming launches are more about setting up Netflix to better understand what consumers want from the new service. “It’s tremendously exciting to get to this point because we basically have been building the plumbing and all the technical infrastructure just to get to the point where we can do this, which is consistently launching games globally to all of our members,” said Netflix’s COO and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters during the call. “We’re now really getting to learn from all those games what are the discovery patterns, what are the engagement patterns, how are they performing, what do our members want from games on the service.” The company, however, has yet to detail how well its games are performing, only saying that it has a “growing number” of both daily active and monthly active users on its gaming titles. Netflix also hinted it’s open to licensing larger game IP that people will recognize in the future, noting that “I think you’ll see some of that happen over the year to come.” |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 8 | null |
Fintech outperformed the market in 2021, and it’s set to do even better | Dana Stalder | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | on fintech when we launched the Matrix Fintech Index in 2017, but even we underestimated the magnitude of the growth to come. Fintech tailwinds, strengthened by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, only accelerated in 2021. And despite public markets’ rocky start in early January, we’re confident that 2022 will be another banner year for the sector. In this year’s edition of the Matrix Fintech Index, we’ll look at the performance of public fintech versus the broader market in 2021 and reflect on the private fintech market’s red-hot year. Then, we’ll turn our attention to the year ahead and offer some predictions for fintech in 2022. The Matrix Fintech Index has significantly outperformed major public stock indexes as well as a basket of legacy financial service providers for the fifth year in a row. As a reminder, the Matrix Fintech Index is a market-cap weighted index that tracks a portfolio of 25 leading public fintech companies. Despite a roughly 30% draw-down in the last months of 2021, the Matrix Fintech Index continued to beat the broader market as well as incumbent financial service companies. Fintech’s consistent outperformance signals that the changes brought about by COVID-19 – including shifts toward e-commerce, online payments and digital interactions over physical ones – are here to stay. Matrix Partners Last year was outstanding for fintech IPOs, with notable debuts occurring across several categories. Consumer companies such as Coinbase ($86 billion) and Robinhood ($32 billion), infrastructure players such as dLocal ($6 billion) and Marqeta ($15 billion), and insurtech providers such as Lemonade ($1.6 billion) all entered the public market. There was also increased diversity in the way these companies went public, with some fintechs skipping the traditional IPO process altogether. More companies, such as Coinbase in the U.S. or Wise in the U.K., chose direct listings, while Robinhood earmarked $700 million in shares for its existing customers. Others, including Hippo, Metromile and SoFi, chose to go public via SPAC. While SPACs’ track records have been mixed, even accounting for recent market volatility, the rise of IPO alternatives is a welcome change for the growing ranks of late-stage fintech unicorns. Private markets followed public markets in making 2021 a record-setting year. VC funding into private fintech companies crossed $134 billion in 2021, rising by 177% from a year earlier, according to . |
Whose Your Landlord raises $2.1M for its rental review and data service | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | , or WYL, announced a $2.1 million seed round today led by , better known as BlackOps Ventures. TechCrunch readers will already be aware of BlackOps’ fund, . The goal behind the $13 million capital pool was to invest in Black founders. The WYL round indicates that the fund is living up to its plan. TechCrunch spoke with , founder and CEO of WYL, about his company and its new investment. Per Ezeugwu, WYL was founded back in 2015 and raised $1.1 million over a roughly seven-year period. Launched with a focus on collecting renter notes concerning landlord and building quality, the company has evolved to include a SaaS service for what WYL calls “home providers,” or the folks who own buildings and other rental units. WYL. Ofo Ezeugwu. In simple terms, WYL collects renter feedback, which is easy to find and digest on its website. For rental owners with a good number of units, they can pay for the collected information, allowing landlords to track how they are performing with their customers, how many of their current tenants intend to stay, and so forth. The startup charges building owners $2 per unit, per month for its software, a figure that Ezeugwu said can be discounted for larger contract volumes. The startup has plans to expand its feature set, naturally, allowing it to charge more in time. An example the CEO provided during our chat was using natural language processing (NLP) to find trends in written reviews, which could help companies with hundreds of units better parse incoming feedback. Before it launched its software product, WYL generated revenue through brand partnerships with companies like Allstate and others that sell to folks who rent. Presumably, the company can continue that work to supplement its software incomes, though we anticipate that WYL will become a majority software business in time — if it isn’t already — from a revenue perspective. The idea of underestimated founders is bandied about in startup land pretty often. And yet if we rifled through the latest few hundred funding rounds, you might wind up wondering if anything has changed at all. Black Ops co-founder told TechCrunch about his own fundraising journey for his company, , when explaining the impetus behind his venture group. In Norman’s view, Black founders are underinvested in, which means that his firm may have access to deal flow that competing venture firms are overlooking and that the founders he wanted to invest in are “the biggest arbitrage opportunity to tech.” Now flush with its largest investment to date and a software product in-market — after running pilots for the SaaS offering last year, WYL has onboarded 7,000 units, the CEO said — the startup intends to hire and keep building. Let’s see how quickly it can scale its software incomes. If that goes according to plan, it shouldn’t have to wait another seven years for external investor interest to manifest in the form of a seven-figure check. |
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s 776 closes new $500M venture fund | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | |
Firewalla launches its Purple gigabit home firewall | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Over the course of the last few years, ‘s combined firewall and router devices have made a name for themselves as the go-to hardware security tools for many enthusiasts and small businesses. Today, the company started shipping its newest device, the , a diminutive gigabit firewall and router that is currently retailing for $319. With the Purple, Firewalla, which was founded in 2015, is filling a hole in its lineup, which until now 100 Mbps and 500 Mbps devices for home and small business users with prices ranging from $129 to $199, as well as a $458 3 Gbps+ device for larger businesses. With many homes now having access to gigabit internet connections, though, the Purple slots in nicely in the middle there. Firewalla Like its other devices, the Purple’s core function is as a firewall, but with a device watching over your network, you can obviously do a lot more. In addition to monitoring and controlling your internet usage, the Purple also includes the ability to filter ads and provide parental controls to block access to adult content, for example, or to take the Xbox offline after a specific time. But it also can function as a VPN server and client and, if you want granular control over everything in your network, the Firewalla app allows you to go very deep into managing and shaping your network and traffic. To make that a bit easier, you can manage devices separately or group them in ways that make sense for your network and usage (I have groups for all of my desktops and IoT devices, for example). One nifty feature of the Purple is that it features built-in Wi-Fi, so it can function as a travel router, but in a nifty twist, you can also tether it to your phone and provide internet connectivity to your network when your regular internet connection is down. As Firewalla co-founder and CEO Jerry Chen told me, this Wi-Fi feature was originally something the company’s engineers wanted to play with — and I think that’s a good example of how Firewalla as a whole thinks about building its devices. “It’s all accidental,” Chen said. “The travel thing is purely accidental. We build fault tolerance into [the Purple]. Then, our engineers just go ‘I want to play with this.’ And they got another channel out from the same Wi-Fi chip.” Depending on your network configuration, you can either connect the USB C-powered device in line between your modem and router or simply connect it to your router like any other ethernet-wired device. Firewalla offers a pretty straightforward to doing so, and no matter which route you go, it shouldn’t take more than five minutes to get everything up and running. Firewalla There is one exception: If you use Google Wifi or Google Nest’s mesh routers, which don’t support a number of specific networking modes that Firewalla needs to see and manage all your networking traffic, your setup will be a or you may not be able to see all the details about traffic on the mesh network. As Chen noted, the company has tried to talk to Google. “The problem with Google Wifi is it’s not trying to play nice with people,” he said, and explained how the mesh router simply can’t be put into bridge mode or AP mode, necessitating a relatively hacky workaround. “We’d rather people not use Google Wifi — it’s just a unit trying to be the king of your network and we don’t want that to happen,” the always outspoken Chen said. As Chen noted, the majority of Firewalla users are prosumers — users who want (or think they want) more advanced networking features. Often, these users then take these devices and bring them into small businesses as well. While you could always go for a complex networking setup from vendors like Cisco, Firewalla’s advantage is that it is extremely easy to set up. Firewalla “A lot of our customers are technology people — IT, InfoSec — and what I hear from them is ‘I want to go home. I don’t really want to do the stuff I do at work [at home] because it’s too complex for me. I want something simple — but not stupid’,” said Chen. Stupid, he argues, would be a button that simply says “secure.” That would be nice, but that’s not how security works. Instead, the company’s users want to be able to easily create rules and tune the network to their needs. “The best design is no button, but that’s not possible with security because security is not a no-button game,” said Chen. For the user, that means the app for managing the device, while taking some getting used to, is mostly pretty intuitive — but if you want to delve deeper, you can set up custom routes and dig deep into the internals of your network. It won’t hold your hand, though. You can easily mess up, too. During the first couple of days, you’ll also get a lot of alerts, simply because you still have to teach the router what is normal traffic on your network and what is not. Firewalla As for the hardware, despite the chip and logistics crisis, which is also affecting Firewalla and its product lineup, the company is now able to ship the Purple router. But as Chen noted, where a few years ago, it took three weeks to build a device, 20 days to ship and then a few days to clear customs, it can now take months — and even though the company had locked in and paid deposits for production runs for its chips, manufacturers now often need more time and want to charge higher prices. An Ethernet MAC chip, he noted, used to cost cents, now the price is up to a few dollars. Chen admitted that this put quite a bit of pressure on the company, which found itself in a bit of a cash crunch because of these delays. So while the pandemic helped the company grow a lot — with people at home looking to secure their networks — it also faced a lot of challenges on all fronts because of it. But it was able to weather the storm, in part through some inventive maneuvers. Since it wanted to get a few of the Purple’s out to beta testers early, for example, but couldn’t start a full production run, it wanted to do a micro build of 100 units — something that was expensive but that it was able to do fast because it was able to sneak it in as a sample run. The one thing you won’t see Chen do anytime soon, though, is raise outside funding. Instead, the company was one of the early adopters of crowdfunding for its products. When he went to talk to VCs early on, the ones he talked to didn’t yet understand that consumers would want to bring these security tools to their homes. “[The reason] we’re not VC-funded is because I’m an engineer. I just really can’t sit there and talk to VCs and pretend they know what they’re doing,” said Chen. |
Docker makes comeback with over $50M in ARR two years into restructuring | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | It’s surely been a turbulent couple of years for , the open source containerization company that launched in 2013, but it seems to have found its financial footing again. Today, it announced that over the last fiscal year, annual recurring revenue (ARR) has jumped 4x to over $50 million. That’s quite a comeback for a company that faced great turmoil starting in 2019, when then-CEO Steve Singh and was replaced briefly by Rob Bearden. Shortly thereafter, it , its primary source of revenue, before eventually promoting longtime exec Scott Johnston to CEO. At that time, it also going back almost to square one, actually taking on the investment as a Series A company. It simultaneously implemented a new developer-centered strategy while dropping from 400 employees down to just 60. A few months later, the first wave of the pandemic hit. It was not an easy time, according to Johnston, who had to steer the company through this instability. “November 2019 was a time [fraught] with risk and uncertainty but we believed in the tailwinds of the market, we believed in the developers’ love of our product, and that we could come together as a team, focus on the developer, deliver great products and build a legitimate business,” Johnston told me. Docker had a couple of things going for it, even with that uncertainty. It had widespread brand recognition among developers and was synonymous with containerization, a way to package and deliver software as individual services in the cloud, rather than one monolithic application. It also has a bunch of open source pieces that can act as the top of the funnel for eventual sales activity, with the goal of turning some of the users of the free products into paying customers. That appears to have happened with increasing frequency over the last year, judging from the company’s ARR growth over that period. The goal in the early days of the restructuring was to capture that developer momentum around the brand and deliver them the free open source products, then expand into the paid products over time for a certain percentage of them. This was a very different approach from what they took when they were selling Docker Enterprise and were generally selling to IT, rather than developers or their managers. That product-led growth approach worked from a commercial perspective when the managers began buying related commercial tools. “So when the developer has a great experience using the free product, and as they and their organizations scale their use of the products, then there’s features that managers value that they are willing to pay for.” He added, “What you’re seeing with the financial performance that we described that’s driven purely from those large organizations that realize these productivity benefits … and are willing to pay for the management security tools to enable organization-wide adoption.” Docker was founded in 2013 before restructuring in 2019. At the time it sold its enterprise business to Mirantis, the company took on investment from Benchmark Capital and Insight Partners. They also nabbed last March. At the time of the restructuring, : “Whether this approach can work is still unclear, but Johnston sees this as the way forward. Time will tell if the strategy is successful or not.” With over $50 million in ARR, the jury may still be out, but it’s certainly headed in the right direction with results I reckon most investors would be happy with. Now they have to continue building on this momentum. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: 3 customer experiments, Citrix-Tibco merger, building fundraising momentum | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Stating the obvious: customer discovery is essential for startups that hope to achieve product-market fit. Unfortunately, most of us are not skilled when it comes to talking to strangers. Each member of a startup’s founding team was hired for a specific reason, but customer outreach rarely leads the list. Early-stage startups that hope to refine their value proposition and triangulate target users cannot afford to sit back and wait for customer intelligence to roll in. Instead, founders need to conduct their own product and marketing experiments using robust methodology that produces actionable insights. If that sounds like extra effort, it shouldn’t: it’s an essential aspect of your job. Elise King, program director of Human Ventures’ entrepreneur-in-residence program, interviewed three founders from her company’s portfolio to learn more about the tactics they used to acquire data: “The overarching theme seems to be this: Listen to your demographic, learn from their experiences in order to find a way to truly service them, and don’t be afraid to pivot if needed,” advises King. Product experiments are easy to manage, but they’re most effective when multiple team members are involved. Instead of having one person share their findings with the company, rope as many stakeholders into the process as possible. I managed customer listening sessions at one startup that were so fruitful, our product managers, designers and engineers started attending. The direct interactions they had with early users helped us make smarter choices and fueled growth. Go talk to some strangers: what might you learn from your earliest, most loyal customers? Thanks very much for reading; I hope you have a great week. Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch+
/ Getty Images Most companies find it difficult to adapt to changing environments, but for legacy enterprise giants like Citrix Systems and Tibco, change is a mountain that keeps getting taller. Where some see problems, though, others see opportunity: Vista Equity Partners and Elliot Management are betting that merging Citrix and Tibco to create an enterprise giant with leading products will help open cross-selling opportunities and market share, Ron Miller and Alex Wilhelm report. “Both companies are now on make-it-or-break path, [but at least they are] no longer lingering on the doldrums of slow innovation,” said Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research. / Getty Images Capturing investors’ attention isn’t enough when you’re raising money — often, you have to convince them your funding process is efficient and that you’re talking to other investors. Momentum is key to building this level of interest, writes Nathan Beckord, CEO of Foundersuite.com, and that energy will propel your entire fundraising process. After opening with a “great hack for asking for email introductions,” Beckord shares five hustle tips for maintaining and capitalizing on momentum that will maximize investor interest and appeal. European venture capital had a stellar 2021, recording investments of €102.9 billion, up 120% from 2020. Ample capital, great quality startups, and healthy deal flow are a few factors that will drive the European startup market to even greater heights, Nalin Patel, EMEA VC Analyst at PitchBook, and Christoph Janz, co-founder at Point Nine Capital, told Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm. However, a slow-down is also likely, as changing exit expectations linked to public market declines may trickle down to early-stage venture investment in Europe, Janz said. “There’s institutional momentum in the market via funds that VCs have already raised, and FOMO won’t die out overnight. On the other hand, public markets are jitter-inducing and exits are on hold,” Alex and Anna wrote. Robotics and software may be lumped in together when we talk about tech, but the investment philosophies for each are wildly different. So while China sees a bubble of rapid investments in robotics startups whose valuations are rising even faster, software investors must work to understand the robotics industry, its financial needs, and timelines before they jump in, says He Huang, partner at Northern Light Venture Capital. “Investors and companies need to go back to business basics and resist the industry’s typical impatience for exits on both sides of the negotiation table.” Streaming platforms love exclusive content — at this stage in the industry’s development, these deals are the only things that distinguishes one company from the next. In 2020, Spotify licensed Joe Rogan’s iconoclastic podcast for more than $100 million. But today, hundreds of scientists and doctors say Rogan is using his perch to spread COVID-19 misinformation, and the resulting furor has led several musicians to pull their work from the platform. “This put Spotify in a pickle,” writes Alex Wilhelm in The Exchange. “The company wants to have both a commodity music business and an exclusive podcasting business. But instead, its exclusive podcasting strategy was undercutting its core value proposition and revenue driver, namely offering most recorded music for a regular fee.” |
Raleigh’s Pendo acquires UK’s Mind the Product to boost global product manager community | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Last year product analytics and digital adoption platform pulled in $110 million investment from private equity firm Thoma Bravo, and that was not long after a $150 million of funding. So the company — which allows companies like Okta, Salesforce and Zendesk to onboard new customers or get employees to adopt new software, as well as revealing analytics on that uptake — has been in a position to scale up its marketing for a while. It’s now taking that to the next level with the acquisition of — a platform that many outside observers would call the key community of product managers — which dovetails nicely with Pendo’s mission. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Starting in 2010 from London as a global meetup-style community with ProductTank (launched, typically, in a pub), Mind the Product has morphed into a community that provides content, training and conferences that claims to touch more than 300,000 product managers, designers and developers via seminars, newsletters, a Slack community and ProductTank meetups in more than 200 global cities. James Mayes, CEO and co-founder of Mind the Product, said: “This is a tremendous day for our community of product managers around the world. By joining Pendo, we can execute on today’s mission and think even bigger about how we will support, educate and train product teams in the future.” The full-time team of nearly 20 people will now join Pendo but retain its branding to manage its conferences, content, events and meetups, and to continue its vendor-neutral workshops and training. Todd Olson, CEO, and co-founder of Pendo said: “Pendo has always made it part of our mission to elevate the craft of product management and to help product managers be better at what they do. We’re really excited to join forces with some of our earliest influencers, and offer substantially more education and resources to the global product management community for years to come.” Mind the Product is Pendo’s third international acquisition in five years, as it previously acquired Insert, a mobile app engagement solution based in Israel, and, in 2019, Receptive Software, a U.K.-based product demand intelligence platform. In a phone call interview with TechCrunch, Olson said: “We’ve been around since 2013. We have always focused on building product and supporting the product management community. So that’s part of what led us to this arrangement — but we’ve been selling the product and working with product managers since our inception. I was a head of product at SAAS company as well. So I am personally been very passionate about the product community in my professional career.” “Since the very beginning of Pendo, in order for us to really achieve our mission, we needed to help elevate the craft of product management. The more there are great product managers the more that will ultimately benefit Pendo — maybe not immediately, but certainly in the arc of our company. That’s why Mind The Product fits so well with us,” he said. Mayes added: “We’ve known Pendo pretty much since inception, as one of the sponsors that we have worked with over that time. One of the things that was really exciting about this deal was that Pendo was insistent that they wanted Mind the Product, as a conference, to remain open to other vendors. So Pendo will continue to run the ‘Pandemonium’ event, which is essentially a user conference, whereas the Mind the Product will always welcome vendors of all stripes who have an interest in the product craft.” Raleigh-based Pendo now has over 160 people across the U.S., as well as in other markets, including the U.K., Israel, Japan and Australia. |
Can carbon credits for improving forests help save them — and us — from climate change? | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Rising pressure on big business to address the threat of climate change by decarbonizing their ops has, in recent years, led to huge demand for carbon offset schemes — enabling companies to buy carbon credits to ‘offset’ emissions so they can claim to be ‘greening’ their activities, without having to make more substantial changes (like, say, an airline running fewer planes). Unsurprisingly this has created lots of wonky incentives attached to forestry resources and carbon offsetting projects. Which, in turn, is creating lots of knock-on startup opportunities. One example of dubious carbon offsetting involves existing woodlands being repurposed for carbon credits in a way that — such as by claiming a forest was going to be cut down when it wasn’t, meaning there is no net increase in carbon sequestered (and a woodland is essentially just repurposed to help corporates greenwash their pollutive ‘business as usual’). So without robust oversight carbon offsetting projects can clearly be a sink for kicking the climate can down the road towards disaster. Similarly, greenwashing pressures have led to the awful sight of trees being chopped up for biomass and burnt — under a . Here, too, there’s a need for rigorous accountancy — in the form of a full lifecycle analysis of a biomass project — else the risks can even go beyond meaningless greenwashing to actively harmful environmental outcomes (such as a loss of mature woodlands and another net reduction in how much carbon is sequestered). Pressure on companies to quickly get on a path to carbon neutrality is, very evidently, generating huge but often poorly directed demand to stand up glossy marketing pledges that claim to be ‘tackling’ climate change. The overarching question is whether anything of value is being done with this corporate reputation spend when it comes to actually preventing catastrophic climate change? Turns out this too is a burgeoning startup business opportunity. Startups applying technologies to target the accountability/credibility gap around carbon offsetting by proposing schemes to verify the credibility of projects and monitor performance include the likes of and , which are both backed by some major investors — with around $25M and $39M raised respectively to date. There are also startups focused on expanding access to carbon markets so that smaller landowners can get looped into revenue-generating carbon offsets for their woodlands. Such as US-focused (which has rebranded to NCX). The prospect of receiving recurring revenue for conserving forestry may at least held protect woodlands from other forms of development that could see trees felled to make way for different money-generating schemes with less or no carbon sequestering benefits. But — clearly — forestry conservation alone isn’t going to be enough to reduce global carbon emissions. Hence other climate startups are focused on expanding the volume of forested landmass. Such as — which is using a mix of old and new technologies to rapidly reforest wasteland with the goal of increasing the amount of global landmass that’s covered by trees. Again, though, even tree planting has been . In some cases, poor incentives to simply increase forestry volume have led to native tree species being ripped out and replaced with faster growing alternatives — leading to biodiversity loss and a forestry monoculture that’s less resilient to the challenges of a changing climate. Which is also, ultimately, environmentally counterproductive. Climate change increases the risk of drought, storms and forest fire — all of which can decimate forests. So mindless tree planting projects that fail to effectively model risks, don’t selectively and sensitivity plant, and fail to follow through with good forestry management to ensure the long term success of a woodland are also best filed under pointless (and even potentially harmful) greenwashing. The sad truth is that, globally, forests are still being felled at a far faster rate than they’re being replanted — and ultimately that net destruction is fuelled by the unreconstructed demands of industry and the system of growth-focused consumption that powers the modern world. Without systemic restructuring of how we consume and trade towards a reformed, circular economy that revolves around reuse and longevity it’s hard to see how the rapacious global engine of demand can be dialled back to an environmentally sustainable level — in which trees and all the rest of life on Earth (including humans) can survive and thrive far into the future. Given such vast challenges — not to mention the incremental timescales involve in anything attached to forestry ecosystems — startups that are trying to make a meaningful difference in this space certainly have their work cut out. YC-backed is a relative newcomer (founded 2021) that’s trying to tackle some of the problematic incentives around carbon offsetting projects by creating smarter skews that encourage landowners to increase woodland biodiversity and future-proof forests against the hotter, harsher climate that’s fast coming at us. It’s doing this by pitching forest owners on making sustainable improvements to existing woodlands that will enable them to get certification for additional carbon credits — i.e. on top of whatever their woodland may already be bringing in — generating a “recurring income” via selling any extra stored carbon to the scores of companies eager to top up their offsetting. So while some carbon offsetting atop existing woodlands may be accused of bogus greenwashing, here at least the premise is that carbon credits are being attached to — and contingent on — to forestry that will, or well, generate extra carbon, assuming all goes to plan. “With the help of sustainable forestry, your forest can store additional carbon,” runs the pitch to forest owners on Pina Earth’s . “This is done through measures such as planting climate-resilient tree species and increasing biodiversity.” The Munch-based startup — which is backed by Y Combinator — was set up by a trio of founders, CEO Dr. Gesa Biermann; CPO Florian Fincke; and CTO Jonas Kerber who met at the and have a collective background in environmental studies, human-computer interaction, robotics and technology management. Munich startup Pina Earth’s co-founders; L to R: Fincke, Biermann, Kerber. Pina Earth Their idea is to sell landowners on the financial value of good woodland management — linking sustainable forestry to additional carbon credits which mean there’s a financial reward for making the kinds of relatively costly interventions that are likely to be needed to make woodlands more productive (in carbon sequestering terms) and resilient to climate change over the longer term. “Essentially we’re building an online platform where we’re connecting forest owners and carbon credit buyers,” explains Biermann. “Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for forest owners to be rewarded for the ecosystem services they provide.” “In the projects that we do we’re trying to change the species diversity of the forest over time to make it more resilient to climate change,” she adds. “That’s really our goal — to democratize access to this market, to the voluntary carbon market in this case, where I think for one of the first times you’re able to align ecology and economy in a very productive way,” she also tells TechCrunch. “The way that it works in the forest timeline is you actually give out future-looking carbon credits — this is quite common in the forestry carbon credit scene because they’re just slow ecosystems. So you’re trying to overcome this by paying someone now for the carbon that will be sequestered a bit later on. “With the monitoring cycle that we have of about three years this is something that we would then align to these vintages of carbon credits being given out in three year cycles to keep incentivizing the forest owners to keep doing the restructuring project over time.” Albeit she won’t be drawn into predicting exactly how much extra income a landowner might be able to generate through additional carbon credits. (She says the price will “depend” on a variety of per-project factors, such as the existing tree species and how much optimization is possible.) “That’s kind of the challenge we’re trying to address the whole way through is incentivizing someone to do something now that will pay off in let’s say 30 or 40 years because forests are just very slow ecosystems,” she adds. “As a startup I think that’s quite an interesting challenge because us starting into this journey — the effects of this will take place a lot later, so once we are kind of close to the end of our work life, so I think that’s a very interesting perspective on the timeframe, also as a startup founder.” To support its long term environmental mission, Pina Earth is building a platform that helps landowners with the admin side of project certification, especially to make it easier for smaller landowners to access carbon markers — while also taking care of the remote sensing and AI modelling to quantify a project’s carbon outputs and — it hopes — increase the speed and quality of carbon credits derived from the forestry. There are a couple of components to Pina Earth’s product (which is still pre-commercial launch). Firstly process automation: It’s building out a platform to support landowners through what can be a complex certification process vs manually filling in scores of forms. Pina Earth project dashboard. Pina Earth The second, back-end element involves complex data processing and modelling, such as using machine learning to predict how climate change might affect future growth of the forest and impact its ability to sequester carbon. To power this and conduct ongoing She says they considered a range of possible methods for remotely capturing data to monitor the carbon offsetting projects — from drones to satellites — but settled on hobby planes as best suited to capture the level of data needed for it to be able to quantify improvements to forests. “We’re in the middle with this approach of using ultralight aircraft data because the type of project that we’re focusing on — improved forest management — actually requires an improved resolution [vs satellite data] to be able to detect the tree species,” she notes. “Our goal — with these improved forest management projects — is we try to summate into the future what will happen to this particular forest under climate change. Because especially in Germany — but also throughout Europe — we’ve been seeing a lot of forests dying due to droughts, bark beetles, storms. And we’re trying to incentivize forest owners to change the structure of these forests that are mostly monocultures — usually one type of tree species — to a biodiverse mix.” Biermann likens the approach to diversifying a financial portfolio — i.e. in order to make it “less prone to risk in the future”. As well as increasing the mix of of trees in a woodland as a strategy to reduce disease risk, she mentions that having forestry where growth is managed so as not to have all the trees at the same height can help with resilience to storms, for example. She suggests it may also be the case that landowners need to plant different, even non-local tree species that may be more resistant to the hotter temperatures and drought conditions which are associated with climate change. Per Biermann, Pina Earth is planning to do monitoring of projects about every three years — “to have a tighter net on what’s going on on the ground in this forest; is it developing in the way we’d like it to?”, as she puts it. Doing remote monitoring of forests allows for more regular monitoring vs traditional on the ground methods, which — she suggests — helps improve the quality of the carbon credit. She says its method is able to transform the 2D and 3D forestry data it gets as a raw input into “single tree-based carbon storage” validation of projects. “I think what’s also unique in our approach is that we simulate carbon sequestration of every single tree that we detected into the future under changing regional climate conditions,” she adds. “This allows us to optimize for this forest’s survival probability and sequester more carbon. So I think there’s where we have a unique twist to forest carbon projects because we’re very much focused on making those forests climate resilient.” While the startup’s initial business model is focused on charging forest owners for its SaaS, Biermann says ultimately they want to be able to offer the tech for free to maximize access — but would then charge a cut on any extra carbon credits generated. However that could create a potential conflict of interest — since Pina Earth is also involved in assessing the quality and performance of the projects. Asked how it would resolve that conflict Biermann says it’s working with a German non-profit — which has a technical advisory board that spans environmental organizations, forestry science and the carbon credit market — and she envisages such an independent entity being involved in helping to verify the carbon credits as an additional accountability layer. “We’re partnering with this local non-profit that’s developing a domestic German forest carbon standard,” she says, adding. “Since they are also just developing this we’re working very closely to get our data interactions points very aligned so that there won’t be the downside of having larger costs and having a longer process to get certified… In this case working with this non-profit that’s also doing the stakeholder consultation really gives this additional trust and allows us to not have this conflict of interest because there’s another party also looking at the project.” Discussing generally how it stands up the accuracy of its data, she says it’s using terrestrial forest data (which landowners usually already have) at the start of a project to benchmark the accuracy of its models when it’s using remote sensing. “This ground-truthing with terrestrial data’s really important to use to be able to show we can get close to these results,” she says, adding: “The other side of it, I think, is more related to having a stakeholder dialogue — to get everybody on board, all kinds of different organizations, because you have to agree on the way a forest carbon credit is actually generated, and for that we’re partnering with [local] organizations.” Biermann says Pina Earth is also intending to put its method through a public consultation process — and its website notes that its open data approach will include purchased carbon credits being “r Given the rising numbers of carbon offsetting validation startups there are likely to be growing opportunities for other types of partnerships that may further help drive accountability. “I think that’s actually one of the most exciting things of working in this particular segment because at least from our experience everybody is so open to partnering because the bottom line is you’re trying to remove carbon from the atmosphere and you’re trying to create this sustainable impact so if we could achieve this by partnering I think everybody is kind of on board, so there’s usually not a long discussion on this,” adds Biermann. “It’s much more collaborative, I think, than other environments.” What about if forest projects don’t perform as it projected when it handed out the carbon credit? On that, Biermann says it’s built in multiple safeguards — starting with making conservative assumptions on the science side. It is also structuring the credit system with a “risk buffer”, whereby a certain percentage of carbon credits are pooled across all projects, so aren’t given out, “as an internal insurance mechanism”. “We are also doing this frequent monitoring cycle because we want to be able to incorporate new science as it comes out,” she adds. “Thankfully this is a really active science scene and we are quite close to the scientific community un our startup so also with our measurements and monitoring we want to adjust to and adapt to whenever anything new is found out… to really guarantee this high quality carbon credit, also for the carbon credit buyer side.” On the wider critique of carbon offsetting — i.e. that it generates greenwashing by creating a means for companies to pay to avoid making systemic changes that will lead to net reductions in their own carbon emissions — Biermann agrees this can be a problem. “Some carbon credits projects have been questioned on the way they set up their methodology and that’s why we went through all of the forest methodologies that are out there for domestic and international standards for voluntary carbon projects to rethink the criteria and to try to automate the documentation to, again, democratize access to these but also to really think about what does a high credit have to show? What’s important to do in terms of data?” she also says. To try to avoid Pina Earth ending up inadvertently working for greenwashers, Biermann says it’s partnering with organizations that are doing carbon footprinting for corporates. “Partnering with them I think is important because then they’re the part who does the footprint calculation, according to official criteria. They first work on reduction methods and only then do they resort to offset projects. So I see ourselves very much in this chain — and the important of other partners who work on footprinting and reduction,” she suggests. “There are so many startups working on different issues — let’s say of the carbon credit value chain — I can think of a lot of other problem areas where it would be great if other startups started; having a way to really tell the footprint of a company through the scope 1, 2, 3 [emissions]. Being able to make that transparent. Yeah, so a lot of transparency issues along the value chain are being tackled by different startups… And those are the ones we get to partner with, essentially.” On the go to market front, Pina Earth is focused initially on its home turf and forests of Germany — where it is currently operating two projects across 1,200 hectares as it prepares to launch later this year. But Biermann says it believes its approach can scale across Europe — and she The UK is another potential market it’s eyeing expanding into, she adds. “An advantage with these countries is they already have domestic forest carbon standards — in the UK that would be the woodland carbon code for example,” she notes. “And we could then apply to get our methodology approved with them to develop these types of improved forest management projects under a domestic standard in a different country.” Sadly, a published in 2020 found that Europe’s forest biomass has seen a since 2015 — likely as a result of increased demand for timber and to burn wood for biomass. So the trend curve is not bending in the right direction. Albeit that means there’s even greater imperative to nudge regional landowners towards sustainable forestry and caring for — not cutting down — their precious woodlands. What’s Biermann prediction for the future of forestry? Is every woodland going to be end up under some form of high tech surveillance and carbon quantification — with such tech becoming a key conservation tool, given the still rising pressures on natural ecosystems? “It comes back to if you don’t really measure it you can’t really incentivize it and you can’t really value it,” she says. “At least in the way that our economy works. So I think it would be really beneficial for forests to be measured more closely and to then brought to the attention of the public and investors. “I think we can see a shift towards this — I think it goes beyond climate investments being done for the climate’s sake but because it is the next wave of innovation and economic opportunity. So I think in that sense these monitoring systems will become more applicable to also other forest areas.” Currently Pina Earth is in YC’s Winter batch — so is focused on getting ready for demo day. The $500k in funding it’s received via the accelerator is its first external investment, with the founders having bootstrapped early research and development of the product. “We had a couple of grants that helped us bootstrap along the way and this is the first equity funding now that we’ve gotten. We’re looking to use the money to hire key team members… and to launch the product on the market later [this year].” “Right now we’re really focused on product development and getting that off the ground and running,” she adds. “So trying to take also the advice — by YC — to heart to really collaborate with our customers as much as possible.” |
VC-backed DAO startups are racing to define what DAOs actually are | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | in web3, NFTs, DeFi and tokens, institutional investors are also looking at how they can leverage another crypto structure called DAOs to build a new model for community action on the internet. DAOs — or decentralized autonomous organizations — are at a very weird place in 2022. The crypto collectives theoretically are designed around allowing groups to make decisions and operate in a structured capacity governed by smart contracts and blockchain transparency, but DAOs that are popping up recently seem to be indistinguishable from each other, with varying commitments to both decentralization and autonomy. While some camps have focused on how DAOs can be used as autonomous governance mechanisms for technologies like DeFi protocols, others are using them to make collective decisions for NFT project roadmaps, while some see the structure simply as a new way to add a crypto treasury to their Discord or Telegram group chat. The reality is that few people have a tight definition for what DAOs are, leaving room for Founders in the space say that the difficulty in pinning down a catch-all definition for what a “standard” DAO should look like only highlights how broad the opportunities are. “At the end of the day, DAOs are a collective technology as opposed to an individual one,” co-founder Will Papper . “DAOs are kind of the next evolution of the corporation because they encode both voice and exit into their foundations.” This past week, TechCrunch covered the launch of a16z-backed Syndicate’s play to help people build out fully compliant crypto “investment clubs,” with a network of smart contracts designed to help users build a lasting, stable structure to invest alongside their friends. Venture-backed startups are looking to help embolden a new generation of DAOs that have varying degrees of blockchain dependencies, enabling founders to use their platforms to navigate regulatory hurdles while relying on smart contracts that these tooling startups have created. , a dedicated DAO analytics firm, is currently following more than 4,100 DAOs. The groups have evolved considerably since the first-ever DAO, called The DAO, was founded back in 2016. “It was a very specific, narrow use case that inspired the whole concept of The DAO and set up the industry. Now, essentially the second generation of DAOs use the word completely differently — for them it’s an organization that uses blockchain as a system of record for ownership,” founder Yury Lifshits says. “Any organization that defines who owns it on the blockchain is a DAO, so that does not require that the governance is defined by smart contracts and it doesn’t say that the governance is decentralized.” Superdao just closed a $10.5 million funding round led by SignalFire at a $160 million valuation. Venture capitalists are backing startups building blockchain infrastructure for DAOs, but firms like Andreessen Horowitz and “crypto-native” funds like Variant and Paradigm are increasingly backing the DAOs themselves, which often are also looking to productize the backend infrastructure they built to get up and running initially. “The fact that a DAO is just software that can can be spun up with the click of a button… but can catalyze thousands or tens of thousands of people — eventually we expect millions of people or larger numbers — that all put together capital and put together ideas to work together for some common goal… we see that as almost the purest vision of what web3 and crypto are all about,” a16z GP Ali Yahya told TechCrunch in an interview accompanying the firm’s investment in . Syndicate and Superdao are just a couple of the venture-backed players in the DAO infrastructure space. Other startups like , and have nabbed VC funding on the promise they can surface new opportunities — some helping people form DAOs more quickly while others prioritize helping users discover them in the first place. One of the largest areas where tooling startups are focusing attention is in helping DAOs stay compliant with U.S. regulations, incorporating as LLCs or seeking the right structure for what exactly the DAO is aiming to do. Investment DAOs where crypto-rich buyers team together to make investments or back startups as a group have faced challenges stateside, navigating fairly clearcut rules laid out for pooled investment groups among non-accredited investors. “My prediction is that investment DAOs will continue to flourish outside the United States, but in the United States the legal system is pretty robust and there are relatively solid alternatives in terms of SPVs and rolling funds,” Lifshits says. “It’s on the edge whether investment DAOs in the U.S. will win against traditional investment vehicles.” Larger investment groups like , which has more than 1,000 members, are relying on more complicated structures that loosely tie DAO activity to a separate venture fund structured as a more traditional vehicle. While some of the largest DAOs, including BitDAO, Uniswap and Lido, focus on pooled investment opportunities in DeFi, DAO acolytes see endless opportunities for the web3-native structure to reshape everything from how creators and artists monetize their work to how the neighborhood HOA of the future operates. Though compliance presents an ever-evolving suite of challenges, the most persistent landmine for DAO tooling startups has been helping DAOs educate their users on potential threats — something that will only become more important as crypto startups and DAOs look to entice an increasingly mainstream user base. “There have been DAOs that I’ve been a part of that have accidentally sent millions of dollars’ worth of tokens to the wrong address and then they were just lost forever,” Papper says “We have a lot of protections in place to help users, but there’s always a tradeoff between the protection we give them and the flexibility.” |
Framework looks to expand repairability beyond the laptop | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Last November, Apple announced the launch of Self Service Repair — a surprising addition for a company that has notoriously lacked such capabilities. Those changes didn’t happen in a vacuum, of course. The president and Congress have both been pushing to open the so-called right to repair. There are plenty of reasons for this, from consumer choice to sustainability concerns. But even as once-resistant companies are beginning to embrace the change, there’s a difference between opening access to repairability to the user and actually making a product user-repairable. As consumer electronics have grown slimmer, they’ve also become far more difficult for non-professionals to repair. Founded in late-2019 by former Apple and Oculus/Facebook engineer Nirav Patel, is among those burgeoning hardware startups focused on placing repairability as a key feature in product design. Today, the company announced an $18 million Series A, which it’s touting as a vindication of that mission. Framework “The immense and immediate interest from all of you in our mission and in the Framework Laptop made it clear that we’re on the right track,” Patel said in a release announcing the raise. “This industry is long overdue for deeply personal products that are designed to last. This was as obvious to all of you as it was to us, and our partners at Spark have full belief in it too.” The round was led by Spark Capital — which, as Patel notes, also led Oculus’ Series A. The raise finds Spark General Partner Kevin Thau joining Framework’s board. Seed investors Pathbreaker Ventures, Anorak Ventures and Formic Ventures are also returning for the round. Patel is quick to note here that the Bay Area-based firm didn’t “need investor funding to keep the lights on,” but instead is using the capital to grow its product offerings to bring “upgradeability, customization, and repair to more of consumer electronics.” No word on what those categories might be, though the company says it’s already drawn out a roadmap for the next two years. Smartphones seem like a reasonable bet, based on sheer ubiquity, though that market is even more saturated than laptops these days. It’s also one that Amsterdam-based Fairphone has targeted fairly aggressively, releasing the Fairphone 4 last year. Additional funding will go toward increasing Framework’s headcount. There’s still questions about whether the appeal of user-repairability is enough to drive interest beyond a relatively niche audience. Though while larger companies have made some progress toward repairability, it seems unlikely many big names will approach design with the same openness of a Framework or Fairphone. |
Cruise, loaded with another $1.35B from SoftBank, opens up driverless ride-hailing to the public | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Cruise is opening up its driverless robotaxi service to the public in San Francisco as the GM subsidiary creeps toward commercialization with a fresh $1.35 billion investment from SoftBank Vision Fund. SoftBank had previously committed to investing an additional $1.35 billion, on top of its initial $900 million investment, once Cruise was ready for commercial deployment. For now, these rides are free and a public waitlist has been set up Tuesday via . The company Tuesday that members of the public who join the waitlist will not have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before using the service. There were a small group of friends and family who completed rides on January 27 and they were under NDA until this morning, a company spokesperson said. Cruise’s initial driverless service is from 11 pm to 5 am, a company spokesperson confirmed, adding that night driving is part of its strategy to start where it can have the best impact and expand methodically from there. Cruise tests its autonomous Chevy Bolt vehicles throughout San Francisco. However, the driverless service is limited to certain areas and streets within the Haight-Ashbury, Richmond District, Chinatown and Pacific Heights neighborhoods. Cruise has nearly all of the permits required to operate and charge for rides in vehicles that operate without a human driver behind the wheel. It has the three permits required by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test and deploy drivered and driverless vehicles, including one that allows it to carry the public. It also applied for a permit with the California Public Utilities Commission to charge for those rides, though the company has not yet received that permit. Screenshot Over the past several weeks, Cruise employees have posted videos of themselves hailing driverless vehicles that do not have a human safety operator behind the wheel. GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra was the latest to take a ride. The company has allowed employees to nominate members of the public, and some of them have already taken rides, according to the company. Cruise has dubbed this program the Cruise Rider Community program. People who are nominated by employees or sign up on the waitlist will be incorporated into the pipeline to be among the first public riders, according to the company. Cruise’s move to open the service to the public follows the . Kyle Vogt, who co-founded Cruise, is interim CEO, as well as CTO. |
Mozilla rolls out new privacy features to its mobile and desktop VPN | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | Mozilla is rolling out new updates to its mobile and desktop VPN offerings, the company on Tuesday. With the launch of Mozilla VPN 2.7, the company is bringing one of Firefox’s popular add-ons, Multi-Account Containers, to the desktop platform and also introducing a multi-hop feature to the Android and iOS version of the VPN service. Firefox’s Multi-Account Containers allow users to separate different parts of their online activities, such as work, shopping and banking. Instead of having to open a new window or different browser to check your work email, you can isolate that activity in a container tab, which prevents other sites from tracking your activity across the web. The company says combining the add-on with Mozilla’s VPN adds an extra layer of protection to users’ compartmentalized browsing activity and also adds extra protection to their locational information. “For example, you are traveling for work and using your computer to check your work email from Paris, France but want to also check your personal banking accounts in New York City. That’s where you can separate your work and personal finances’ online activity with Multi-Account Containers plus the added privacy of the Mozilla VPN and choosing from over 400 servers in 30 countries,” Mozilla wrote in a about the new launch. Last year, Mozilla launched a multi-hop feature on desktop that allows people to use two VPN servers instead of one VPN service, which is now rolling out on mobile. The feature works by first routing your online activity through an entry VPN server followed by an exit VPN server. Mozilla says bringing this feature to the Android and iOS version of the VPN service gives users a little extra privacy when browsing. The company notes that this feature is also helpful for people who want to be extra careful about their privacy, and could be useful for political activists and journalists writing about sensitive topics. The launch of these new updates comes as Mozilla recently its Total Cooke Protection offering, which is used to combat cross-site tracking, to Firefox Focus on Android. The goal of Total Cookie Protection is to help mitigate the cross-site tracking where companies collect information about you like the sites you visit every day or the products you are searching for. Last year, Mozilla also Firefox Relay, which is a product that hides users’ real email addresses to help protect their identity. |
SiriusXM figures out how to track audiences across its apps, including Pandora and Stitcher | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | The use of tracking cookies , and has mobile apps’ advertising revenues. But these changes have only prompted the adtech industry to get more creative with its solutions. The latest example comes from Pandora parent company SiriusXM, which this week rolled out a new way to identify and track its listening audience across apps, which it’s calling “AudioID.” The new identity solution comes from AdsWizz, the digital audio adtech company Pandora for $145 million back in 2018, gaining access to adtech products like dynamic ad insertion, campaign monitoring tools, and even weirder features — like “Shake Me” that let users shake their phones during an ad to trigger an action. Now, AdsWizz is being put to work in a new way, by powering the AudioID product. To work, AudioID matches the data sets of user information across SiriusXM’s businesses, including its own satellite radio music service, as well as streaming apps Pandora and Stitcher — the podcast app in 2020. The company explains that it looks for signals in the data sets that overlap. So, for example, if a customer signed up with the same email address across both Pandora and Stitcher, SiriusXM can combine those accounts into a single “AudioID.” Consumers won’t likely know this matching is happening behind the scenes. They aren’t being asked by the apps to provide any additional information or consent. There’s no opt-out. That’s because the AudioIDs are meant to be a stand-in for the traditional identifier which, in the past, may have contained or linked to a user’s personal information. SiriusXM, on the other hand, describes its AudioIDs as unique but “anonymized.” But the AudioID can match together all kinds of signals beyond just an email or phone number to inform its creation. The technology can look for matches across device IDs, IP addresses and other user profile data, and then create an identifier that spans streaming apps. That means it can track a user’s listening behavior whether they’re playing music or podcasts in a mobile app, in the browser, in a car or on a smart device in their home. In other words, the company has come up with a way that will continue to allow advertisers to target users with more relevant ads, but in a way that attempts to obfuscate the personal information and identity of the listener and instead focus on the content they listen to. At launch, the solution will support first-party ad targeting, enhanced measurement, reach, forecasting and frequency capping use cases, says SiriusXM. “We are entering a new era of identity — both in culture and in technology — that defines us not by who we are on paper or the cookies we leave behind, but by our interests and passions,” states Chris Record, AdsWizz SVP and head of Ad Product, Technology and Operations. “AudioID is a consumer-first, privacy-conscious infrastructure that will deliver our audiences the best experiences and give marketers access to data-driven capabilities like never before.” Of course, it remains to be seen whether consumers will appreciate the positioning of this type of solution — especially after they receive highly targeted ads after tapping a “do not track” pop-up in their mobile app. The assumption on marketers’ part, of course, is that consumers actually welcome personalized ads because they’re more relevant to their interests. They believe the issue is that consumers don’t want their personal information floating around in advertisers’ dossiers. Arguably, though, consumers who opt-out of tracking understand the trade-off is that the ads they encounter may become less precise. But they tap that button anyway. If anything, that’s because consumers are opting out not only out of a desire for protecting their private, personal information, but because highly . The AudioID solution doesn’t seem to address that aspect of consumers’ complaints with modern-day adtech — especially if it’s collecting and compiling a user’s “interests and passions” for better targeting. SiriusXM notes that the solution is opt-in for its partnered publishers and marketers — they don’t have to use AudioID, in other words. It says that later in 2022, it will extend this first-party targeting to off-platform marketers and advertisers across AdsWizz in the U.S., as well. |
Korean micromobility startup Swing grabs $24M for growth, expands to Japan | Kate Park | 2,022 | 2 | 6 | Apart from its Swing app, the shared micromobility startup recently launched a new app called that enables delivery riders to rent e-mopeds or e-scooters for just one or two days without the hassle of charging. More than 20 e-scooter rental companies are currently operating in South Korea, where there is no limit on the number of fleets or companies that can run the business in the sector. |
Joby Aviation to launch air taxi service in South Korea | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 2 | 6 | California-based electric vertical takeoff and landing startup Joby Aviation plans to offer an air taxi service in South Korea in partnership with SK Telecom (SKT), one of the country’s largest telecommunication companies. The two partners signed a strategic collaboration agreement on Sunday at Joby’s manufacturing facility in Marina, California. To provide better integration between land and air travel, the air taxi service will leverage the T Map Mobility platform — an SKT-spinoff that provides subscription-based mobility-as-a-service consisting of rental cars, parking, ride-hailing and other transportation-related services — and the UT ride-hailing service, a joint venture formed between T Map and Uber last year, . Joby and Uber’s history goes back to 2019 when the two joined forces to boost Uber’s plans to launch an urban air taxi service. In 2020, Uber invest $50 million in Joby’s Series C, plus in a transaction that included the acquisition of Uber Elevate, Uber’s aerial ride-sharing unit, by Joby and an expansion of their partnership. As a result of these partnerships, Joby’s ride-sharing services will be offered to passengers through either the Joby or the Uber app when it launches in U.S. markets — Joby has said it plans to launch a commercial service in the U.S. by 2024. It is therefore likely that South Korean users will see a similar app integration with UT. While SKT and Joby are currently seeking certification from the South Korean government, according to an SKT spokesperson, they do not yet have plans for when or where they plan to launch the air taxi service. However, a statement released by the companies expresses support of the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s Korean Urban Air Mobility (K-UAM) , which sets a goal of commercializing limited UAM services by 2025 in order to reduce traffic congestion in major cities. The plan is to begin with one or two routes in the Seoul metropolitan area and get up to 10 air taxi terminals by the end of the decade, all of which would connect to local buses, subways and other forms of mobility. SKT is a member of “UAM Team Korea,” a government-led consortium of private sector stakeholders, like Hyundai, Korean Air and Incheon International Airport Corporation, to push for the early stabilization of domestic UAM. Even as Joby makes moves in South Korea, the company is targeting opportunities at home. Just last week, to test its second-gen pre-production prototype, the S4, which has a max range of 150 miles and a top speed of 200 miles per hour. The company also claims it has a low noise profile that would allow it to access built-up areas. |
Samsung gets more fine-tuna to sustainability with phones made from fishing nets | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 6 | South Korean electronics giant Samsung has been banging its sustainability drum loudly over the past couple of years, with impacts that echo around its ecosystem. With and a big push for environmentally friendly supply chains, materials and manufacturing, the company has been pushing for a greener world than before. As part of its program, and following on the heels of its , its and a slew of other programs, the company’s latest stunt is repurposing discarded fishing nets to help do its part. The company is announcing new Galaxy devices on Wednesday, but was eager to give us a sneaky glimpse at how these new materials will find a place in its product lineup. The company highlights that it is increasing how ef-fish-ent it is at eliminating single-use plastics, and further puffer up the use of more eco-conscious materials. That includes recycled materials (specifically, post-consumer recycled materials), and recycled paper. To ensure a reel positive impact, the company is setting its sights on every year. The company is pledging to collect and repurpose at least some of these nets in an effort to clean up the oceans a little. In the process, the watery landscapes will become a little more pleasant for marine life that would otherwise often find itself entangled in the discarded nets. It’s unclear what the net ecological effect will be on preventing these things from going to the ocean, but at the very least it will help your trusty correspondent come up with a catchy pun or two. Samsung In its , Samsung points out that it has done a lot of good so far; dropping its use of plastics by 20% by redesigning certain types of packaging, adding power-saving features to its products, collecting almost 5 million tons of e-waste and ensuring 95% of waste from manufacturing is recycled. The company also runs 100% on renewable energy in the U.S., Europe and China. The company has also been working toward certifications (such as the Carbon Trust Standard reduction of CO , water and reliance on non-recyclable materials. The company points out that it is committed to addressing plastic pollution in the oceans in ways that will positively impact the environment and “the lives of all Galaxy users.” Presumably, if you have a non-Galaxy phone, your life can stay very much the same as it was, thank-you-very-much. Joking aside — and as someone who’s spent more than a few days in scuba gear in an attempt to clean up nets and other debris off reefs — I think it’s a positive move from the electronics giant. It remains to be seen whether this will have a measurable impact on the environment. Samsung didn’t specify how many of the 640,000 annual tons of fishing nets they are aiming to remove from the water, but it’s encouraging that the conversation is continuing and that the measures continue. Hopefully Samsung and the other leading manufacturers can continue to out-green each other to continue to play their part in not burning the planet to a crisp before we find more sweeping, comprehensive climate solutions along the way. I’ll raise to the bait: A for a fin-tastic effort, there, Samsung, at keeping your friends close, and our anemones closer. Now if we could also encourage people to update their phones every three years instead of every 18 months, we’d have some real traction on our hands. |
How long can Zuckerberg afford to bankroll the AR/VR market? | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 2 | 6 | Hello friends, and welcome back to ! Last week, we talked about the “de-stonkifying” of the market. This week, we’re looking at a wounded Facebook/Meta that finds itself backed into a corner. If someone forwarded you this message, you can get this in your inbox from the , and follow my tweets Facebook Meta had a bad week — like history-making rough. The Facebook parent company saw its stock price get bludgeoned after a bad earnings report showcased that Apple’s ad-blocking changes are shaving billions off its books and the company’s crown jewel — the Facebook platform — and actually shrank this quarter. The company’s stock tanked by more than 26%, representing a $230 billion reduction in market cap and a $31 billion drop in Zuckerberg’s personal net worth. Plenty of analysts shared that this was the biggest dollar amount single-day drop for a company’s market cap ever. The company’s rough turn of luck couldn’t be happening at a worse time; as Facebook looks to pivot the broader company toward the “metaverse,” they also shared that they spent nearly $10 billion on the effort — and don’t expect to recoup that money any time soon. While Meta is managing to ship more and more Quest headsets, there anecdotally hasn’t seemed to be much interest in the company’s Horizon Worlds platform, and there are few shortcuts toward finding an audience on an unproven hardware platform. The AR/VR world is increasingly proving to be a tough place to do business. Apple has delayed its own headset again and again. This week, reported on the struggles that Microsoft was enduring in its HoloLens division, sharing that the company was scrapping plans for a third-generation headset amid a lack of clarity in its path toward becoming a player in the untapped consumer AR space. Meanwhile, engineers got a look at the next-generation of Magic Leap’s hardware. This from industry analyst Karl Guttag showcases how Magic Leap has turned away from several of the key technologies it raised billions of dollars to develop with its latest hardware, which he nevertheless believes will “blow away” the HoloLens 2 in image quality. The point is, this stuff is hard, and the people who have been building in public are hurting even as they spend billions to develop the tech. There’s no straightforward road for Meta to follow; they have to blaze a trail where others are actively failing and keep the rest of their company together while they do so. VR already a polished platform and could self-sustain I’m sure, would imagine bulk of the $10B is AR which is probably 7-10 years worth of iteration from being a revenue generator which is only an easy investor sell when your position in market is entirely secure. — Lucas Matney (@lucasmtny) TechCrunch
While Meta’s week was downright awful, Snap had a strange reversal of fortunes that saw its stock plummet and then dramatically rebound hours later. The double-digit drop actually came from Meta’s earnings report, which investors feared would be indicative of a broader revenue slump across social media stocks. When Snap actually showcased a healthy bottom line it its earning release, the stock shot back up, gaining nearly 60% Friday.
Apple’s pivot to services has been a mixed bag, and the company is looking to expand the appeal of its Apple News service to a wider swath of free and paid subscribers. This week, the company rolled out a local newsletter in the San Francisco Bay Area, bringing bundled local news curated by the Apple team. “If Apple chooses to roll out more daily local newsletters, it will have several markets to choose from. Today, Apple News offers local news coverage in 11 markets, including San Francisco, the Bay Area, New York, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, Miami, Charlotte, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.,” my colleague Aisha notes. I’ve been writing quite a bit about crypto lately, and this week I dug into a particularly interesting facet of the industry called DAOs. The groups essentially allow a number of anonymous and pseudonymous users to collectively make decisions and function like mini crypto-backed governments. I talked to a handful of stakeholders in the space who see a bright and broad future for the collectives. “The fact that a DAO is just software that can can be spun up with the click of a button… but can catalyze thousands or tens of thousands of people — eventually we expect millions of people or larger numbers — that all put together capital and put together ideas to work together for some common goal… we see that as almost the purest vision of what web3 and crypto are all about,” a16z GP Ali Yahya told TechCrunch in an interview. / Getty Images
“…A startup’s founding team can be the difference between an industry-changing unicorn and just another failed venture, making early recruitment one of the most critical processes in a company’s first year. But the war for tech talent has rarely been so brutal. Large technology companies are growing at amazing rates and startup funding is at an all-time high. Great candidates have more choices than ever, and hiring them is harder than ever before…”
“…The question before us is simple: Can the investing dynamics of the venture capital market slow to the point that startup valuations (expectations, essentially) reach parity with potential exit valuations (forecasts, essentially) before too many young tech companies are priced like early- to mid-2021 exits are still possible?
“…Data from a new venture capital fund and recent funding rounds underscore the pace of deal flow the crypto market has ahead of it, indicating that bets placed on blockchain-related startups will continue despite some wobbly indicators from the decentralized market…” Thanks for reading, and again, if someone forwarded you this message, you can get this in your inbox from the , and follow my tweets |
Fintech Roundup: Corporate spend just can’t be a winner-takes-all space | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 2 | 6 | Ramp co-founders Karim Atiyeh and Eric Glyman Pluto / Pluto co-founders CTO Nayeem Zen, CEO Mo Aziz, CPO Mohammed Ridwan Bold |
Carvana acquires Adesa US auction business for $2.2B to jump-start used car sales | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Carvana, the online used car marketplace, has agreed to buy Kar Global’s Adesa U.S. auction subsidiary for $2.2 billion in cash, an acquisition aimed at adding another revenue stream as well as a network of physical sites that could help bolster operations. The additional revenue and physical footprint that Adesa U.S. offers appear to be far too appetizing and too big of an opportunity for Carvana to ignore. Carvana has yet to reach GAAP profitability. Its losses actually widened year-over-year $182 million in the fourth quarter from from $154 million in the same period last year. However, its total losses for the year narrowed considerably. The company reported net losses of $287 million in 2021, an improvement from $462 million the previous year. Adesa has 56 physical sites, which Carvana will also be able to use to inspect and recondition the vehicles its sells online. Carvana will continue to operate Adesa U.S.’s physical auctions while simultaneously developing the sites to include Carvana’s standard retail inspection, reconditioning and logistics capabilities, the company said in its letter to shareholders. Carvana said Adesa U.S. reconditioning operations could help expand its production capacity from 2 million units to over 3 million units annually. The network of 56 sites coupled with Carvana’s existing infrastructure will put 78% of the U.S. population within 100 miles of inspection and reconditioning centers. Carvana also sees an opportunity to increase its auction capabilities and kickstart or deepen its “relationships with many large and important players in the automotive industry,” the company said in its shareholder letter. Then there’s the revenue possibilities, an important factor for a company that saw sky-high used car sales spurred by the pandemic come back down to earth. facilitated more than one million transactions through those sites, bringing in more than $800 million in revenue in 2021. Of course, this potential reward comes with the risk that Carvana will see its operational expenses grow past its profit potential. Carvana is using a portion of the $3.275 billion in financing it received from JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. and Citi to fund the purchase. It will use the remaining $1 billion for improvements across Adesa U.S.’s 56 sites through a committed debt financing. Adesa U.S.’s wholesale auction business will continue to operate under its existing brand name. John Hammer, president of Adesa U.S., along with other senior-level executives, will move over to Carvana once the deal closes. |
Singapore-based micromobility startup Beam secures $93M Series B, enters new markets | Kate Park | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | , a Singaporean shared micromobility operator, announced today that it has raised $93 million in a Series B round to accelerate growth into new countries in Asia. Beam says its onboard camera with computer vision will be rolling out at scale by Q3 this year. The company initially will be piloting the onboard camera technology, which is developed in collaboration with Drover AI, the computer vision startup working with Spin and Helbiz on similar tech. European operator Voi is doing the same with Luna in the U.K. Beam’s MARS technology. Beam |
SEC opens investigation into Elon Musk over possible insider trading | Jon Fingas | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Elon Musk isn’t about to any time soon. Sources for the SEC is investigating whether Musk and his brother Kimbal violated insider trading regulations with recent share sales. Officials are concerned Elon might have told Kimbal he planned to about selling Tesla stock, leading the brother to sell 88,500 shares just a day before the November 6th tweet. If so, the company chief might have broken rules barring employees from trading on undisclosed information. Kimbal Musk has frequently traded Tesla stock at regular intervals under a plan. He didn’t on November 5th, according to an SEC . We’ve asked the SEC for comment. Tesla isn’t available for comment as it disbanded its communications team sometime in 2020. Musk clearly isn’t on friendly terms with the Commission, however, as a day earlier that he “will finish” a fight he believed the SEC started. If the report is accurate, the investigation will add more tension to a years-long feud. It began in 2018, when the SEC took action against Musk over tweets about taking the company private. While Musk that included approval requirements for any financially relevant social media posts, that wasn’t the end of the fight between the two. The SEC has been over the past few years over concerns production-related tweets weren’t approved, and just days ago for information on the EV maker’s processes for honoring the 2018 settlement. Musk has publicly sparred with the SEC at the same time. This year, he accused the regulator of conducting a “harassment campaign” that unfairly singled him out and excluded the court from monitoring. The SEC . Whatever the truth behind those claims, it’s safe to presume Musk won’t welcome any new investigation with open arms. |
Daily Crunch: Overnight, Russia’s invasion puts Ukrainian tech industry on a war footing | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, February 24, 2022. No peppy intro from me today; I am a little consumed with news outside our orbit. Now, to work. – And there was even more that went on today: Depict.ai for its work to provide e-commerce sites with better recommendation capabilities; a , or $4 for each of its customers; and for its new flagship fund. Which is a sum of money I cannot really fathom. / Getty Images Beware of advisors who demand a share of your equity (and precious cash) in exchange for help with tactical operations like startup recruiting and marketing. “No founder is an expert in every domain, and as they undertake the journey of getting their companies off the ground, they need to have outside support,” says Matt Cohen, founder and managing partner at Ripple Ventures. Even so, entrepreneurs still need accountability measures that protect their companies from “advisor sharks” and “grifters,” he writes. In a guest post for TC+, Cohen shares advice for setting goals and creating equity packages that will create “a more accurate alignment of incentives.” SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
OMG, my Facebook was hacked! Here’s what to do | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Even technically sophisticated friends are currently getting “hacked” on Facebook — here’s how to avoid it, and how to make sure your hacked account is fully recovered. Usually, accounts are “hacked” because someone somehow gets a hold of your password. That’s bad for Facebook in particular, because people often use Facebook to log into other things — so if someone gets into your Facebook account, they have access to a bunch of other things too. Your account being “hacked” can take many shapes. Perhaps someone is sending messages on your behalf, posting as you or doing something else weird. If you can still log in, you’re in luck; here’s what to do: right away — that’s your first step, if you still have the power to do so. If you can’t log in, . If that doesn’t work, it’s possible that someone has changed the email address on the account. . , so they can help stop it happening to others. Go to , and see if you recognize everywhere you are logged in. If you don’t recognize a location or a device, press the three-dot menu, and select “not you?”. This will log you out and will help you further secure your account. Check that you recognize . Same as above; if there’s something you don’t recognize, hit “remove”. In your general settings, . If there’s anything there that isn’t yours, remove it. Change your password one more time, now that you know hackers (in theory) don’t have access to your account anymore. It should be a secure password (with letters, numbers and special characters). Don’t re-use your password from somewhere else. Ideally, to ensure that you can keep track of all your different passwords, and use higher-quality passwords in general. . That means that even if your password was somehow stolen, they can’t log in without also having access to your phone or your authenticator app. And finally, whenever something weird happens to your security and/or social media, change your email password. It’s bad enough to lose access to your social accounts, but your email is the holy grail for hackers, so rotating that password regularly (every 1-3 months) and changing it whenever something strange happens is a very good idea. The most common way that a Facebook account is compromised is by tricking you into giving the hackers your password. You may get a Messenger message from a friend on Facebook, saying something like “OMG did you see who died?” with a link. You click on the link, it looks like Facebook, but suddenly you’re being asked to log in again. You think nothing of it, and you type in your email and password… Uh-oh. Problem: The site that you just gave your password to isn’t actually Facebook, and now have your password. The best way to avoid this is to follow the steps above and turn on two-factor authentication. Then be vigilant: Whenever you log in, are you logging into a site that starts with https://www.facebook.com? If not — if it looks like something like ffacebook.com or facebook.this-is-a-security-notification.com — don’t type in your password. The safest thing, typically, is to manually type in Facebook.com into your URL bar if you’re using a web browser. Remember that the Facebook app has a browser built in. So it’s possible that you are ‘in’ the Facebook app, but it could ask you for a password. It looks legitimate — how could it not be, this is the Facebook app — but use your head; if you’re already in the app, why would it ask you to log in? In short: If it seems weird, it is weird — don’t type in your password! Check the apps that have access to your Facebook account (see above) semi-regularly. If you recognize an app but you haven’t used it in a while and you don’t think you’ll need it — delete it. You can always add it again later. |
Implement differential privacy to power up data sharing and cooperation | Maxime Agostini | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | relied upon data masking, sometimes called de-identification, to protect data privacy. The basic idea is to remove all personally identifiable information (PII) from each record. However, a number of high-profile incidents have shown that even supposedly de-identified data can leak consumer privacy. In 1996, an MIT researcher identified the then-governor of Massachusetts’ health records in a supposedly masked dataset by matching health records with public voter registration data. In 2006, UT Austin researchers re-identifed movies watched by thousands of individuals in a supposedly anonymous dataset that Netflix had made public by combining it with data from IMDB. In a 2022 , researchers used AI to fingerprint and re-identify more than half of the mobile phone records in a supposedly anonymous dataset. These examples all highlight how “side” information can be leveraged by attackers to re-identify supposedly masked data. These failures led to . Instead of sharing data, companies would share data processing results combined with random noise. The noise level is set so that the output does not tell a would-be attacker anything statistically significant about a target: The same output could have come from a database with the target or from the exact same database but without the target. The shared data processing results do not disclose information about anybody, hence preserving privacy for everybody. Operationalizing differential privacy was a significant challenge in the early days. The first applications were primarily the provenance of organizations with large data science and engineering teams like Apple, Google or Microsoft. As the technology becomes more mature and its cost decreases, how can all organizations with modern data infrastructures leverage differential privacy in real-life applications? When the analyst cannot access the data, it is common to use differential privacy to produce differentially private aggregates. The sensitive data is accessible through an API that only outputs privacy-preserving noisy results. This API may perform aggregations on the whole dataset, from simple SQL queries to complex machine learning training tasks. A typical setup for leveraging personal data with differential privacy guarantees. Sarus One of the disadvantages of this setup is that, unlike data masking techniques, analysts no longer see individual records to “get a feel for the data.” One way to mitigate this limitation is to provide differentially private synthetic data where the data owner produces fake data that mimics the statistical properties of the original dataset. |
‘I need evidence yesterday’: Gesund raises $2 million to provide algorithm-validating data | Emma Betuel | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | It’s one thing to develop a medical algorithm, quite another to prove that it actually works. To do that, you need one crucial thing that’s hard to come by: medical data. And one startup is ready to provide that in spades, along with the tools to make validation studies easier. Gesund, founded in 2021, emerged from stealth this week with a $2 million seed round led by 500 Global. The company has already come a long way, boasting viable platforms, 30 clients in their sales pipeline and revenue expected this quarter, CEO and founder Enes Hosgor told TechCrunch. Gesund is basically a Contract Research Organization (CRO) for AI companies developing medical algorithms, or academics testing their own models. The same way a CRO might design a clinical trial for a drug or medical device company, Gesund’s platform curates data that allows AI companies to test their own products and creates the IT infrastructure to make that comparison run smoothly. “I like to think of us as a machine learning ops company,” said Hosgor. “We don’t do algorithms.” A medical algorithm is only as good as the data it’s trained on, and there is evidence that getting diverse and usable data sets can be a challenge. For example, published in JAMA in 2020 analyzed 74 scientific papers describing deep learning algorithms across disciplines like radiology, ophthalmology, dermatology, pathology, gastroenterology and pathology; 71% of data used in these studies came from New York, California and Massachusetts. Indeed, 34 U.S. states did not contribute any data to the pipeline that had been used to train these algorithms, calling into question how generalizable they might be to a wider population. The issue also exists across different types of healthcare providers. an algorithm on data collected at a large, esteemed, academic hospital. But if you want to deploy that in a small community hospital there’s no guarantee it will work in that very different setting. Taken together, the data sets used to train algorithms are, in general, smaller than they should be, according to one meta-review of 152 studies published in the . Naturally, there are some , but this is an industry-wide problem. Technology alone can’t solve all these issues; you can’t sort or provide data that isn’t there in the first place. Think genetic studies for people of non-European ancestry, which are . But Gesund is focused narrowly on an issue where tech might help: making existing data easier to access and creating partnerships that open up new avenues for data sharing. A screenshot of Gesund’s validation platform. Gesund’s data pipeline comes from “existing data sharing agreements in place with clinical sites,” said Hosgor. Right now, Gesund is focused on imaging data collected at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Berlin’s Charité. (The company plans to extend beyond radiology in the future.) Aggregating and delivering data for use in machine learning applications is also being done by others, like the , which will freely provide clinical data sets to researchers (not affiliated with Google’s ). But while the data itself is a critical piece of this, it’s really the technology stack that Hosgor sees as the company’s secret weapon. “Everybody does ML on the cloud,” explained Hosgor. “And because your average healthcare provider doesn’t have a cloud, all that goes out the window,” he said. “We have built this technology stack that can reside on premises, inside a hospital firewall. It does not rely on any third-party managed services, which are the bread and butter of machine learning.” From there, the platform includes a “low code” interface. In short, physicians and providers can basically drag and drop the datasets they need and test their own algorithms against that data. “We’re about six months old, but we hit the ground running and we built this first product that allows model owners to run their algorithms against data to produce accuracy metrics on the fly, in high compliance environments where they don’t have access to cloud resources. That’s our secret sauce,” he explained. At the moment, Gesund, somewhat like Nightingale, is providing some of its services for free. The company’s Community Edition allows academics with existing algorithms to test their algorithms for free (but they’ll have to upload their own data sets). Meanwhile it’s the AI companies that will foot the bill for the company’s “premium” version. This, says Hosgor, will give the paying customers access to proprietary data sets. And there’s evidence they’ll pay for the data they need. At the moment, Gesund claims to have a pipeline of 30 potential clients, and expects to generate revenue this quarter. “We were at RSNA in Chicago last November and every single AI company we talked to said ‘yes, I need evidence yesterday.’” The $2 million pre-seed round represents all of Gesund’s funding, but Hosgor expects the company to raise again this year. In the near future the company will focus on R&D and expanding its clinical partnerships in the U.S. and Europe. |
UK wants to squeeze freedom of reach to take on internet trolls | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | The UK government has (yet) more additions to its expansive and controversial plan to regulate online content — aka the . It says the latest package of measures to be added to the draft are intended to protect web users from anonymous trolling. The Bill has far broader aims as a whole, comprising a sweeping content moderation regime targeted at explicitly illegal content but also ‘legal but harmful’ stuff — with a claimed focused of protecting children from a range of online harms, from cyberbullying and pro-suicide content to exposure to pornography. Critics, meanwhile, say the legislation will kill free speech and isolate the UK, creating splinternet Britain, while also piling major legal risk and cost on doing digital business in the UK. (Unless you happen to be part of the club of ‘safety tech’ firms offering to sell services to help platforms with their compliance of course.) In recent months, two parliamentary committees have scrutinized the draft legislation. One called for , while another warned the government’s approach is both and unlikely to be robust enough to address safety concerns — so it’s fair to say that ministers are under pressure to make revisions. Hence the bill continues to the shape-shift or, well, grow in scope. Other recent (substantial) additions to the draft include a ; and a massive expansion of the liability regime, with a wider being added to the face of the bill. The latest changes, which the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) says will only apply to the biggest tech companies, mean platforms will be required to provide users with tools to limit how much (potentially) harmful but technically legal content they could be exposed to. Campaigners on online safety frequently link the spread of targeted abuse like racist hate speech or cyberbullying to account anonymity, although it’s less clear what evidence they’re drawing on — beyond anecdotal reports of individual anonymous accounts being abusive. Yet it’s similarly easy to find examples of abusive content being dished out by named and verified accounts. Not least the sharp-tongued secretary of state for digital herself, Nadine Dorries, whose recently led to this at a parliamentary committee hearing. Point is: Single examples — however high profile — don’t really tell you very much about systemic problems. Meanwhile, a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights — which the UK remains bound by — as a vehicle for “the free flow of opinions, ideas and information”, with the court clearly demonstrating a view that anonymity is a key component of freedom of expression. Very clearly, then, UK legislators need to tread carefully if government claims for the legislation transforming the UK into ‘the safest place to go online’ — while simultaneously protecting free speech — are not to end up shredded. Given internet trolling is a systemic problem which is especially problematic on certain high-reach, mainstream, ad-funded platforms, where really vile stuff can be massively amplified, it might be more instructive for lawmakers to consider the financial incentives linked to which content spreads — expressed through ‘data-driven’ content-ranking/surfacing algorithms (such as Facebook’s use of polarizing “engagement-based ranking”, as ). However the UK’s approach to tackling online trolling takes a different tack. The government is focusing on forcing platforms to provide users with options to limit their own exposure — despite DCMS also recognizing the abusive role of algorithms in amplifying harmful content (its press release points out that “much” content that’s expressly forbidden in social networks’ T&Cs is “too often” allowed to stay up and “actively promoted to people via algorithms”; and Dorries herself slams “rogue algorithms”). Ministers’ chosen fix for problematic algorithmic amplification is not to press for enforcement of the UK’s existing data protection regime — something privacy and digital rights campaigners have been calling for for literally years — which could certainly limit how intrusively (and potentially abusively) individual users could be targeted by data-driven platforms. Rather the government wants people to hand over more of their personal data to these (typically) adtech platform giants in order that they can create new tools to help users protect themselves! (Also relevant: The government is simultaneously as one its ‘Brexit opportunities’… so, er… 😬) DCMS says the latest additions to the Bill will make it a requirement for the largest platforms (so called “category one” companies) to offer ways for users to verify their identities and control who can interact with them — such as by selecting an option to only receive DMs and replies from verified accounts. “The onus will be on the platforms to decide which methods to use to fulfil this identity verification duty but they must give users the option to opt in or out,” it writes in a press release announcing the extra measures. Commenting in a statement, Dorries added: “Tech firms have a responsibility to stop anonymous trolls polluting their platforms. “We have listened to calls for us to strengthen our new online safety laws and are announcing new measures to put greater power in the hands of social media users themselves. “People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms.” Twitter does already offer verified users the ability to see a feed of replies only from other verified users. But the UK’s proposal looks set to go further — requiring all major platforms to add or expand such features, making them available to all users and offering a verification process for those who are willing to prove an ID in exchange for being able to maximize their reach. DCMS said the law itself won’t stipulate specific verification methods — rather the regulator (Ofcom) will offer “guidance”. “When it comes to verifying identities, some platforms may choose to provide users with an option to verify their profile picture to ensure it is a true likeness. Or they could use two-factor authentication where a platform sends a prompt to a user’s mobile number for them to verify. Alternatively, verification could include people using a government-issued ID such as a passport to create or update an account,” the government suggests. Ofcom, the oversight body which will be in charge of enforcing the Online Safety Bill, will set out guidance on how companies can fulfil the new “user verification duty” and the “verification options companies could use”, it adds. “In developing this guidance, Ofcom must ensure that the possible verification measures are accessible to vulnerable users and consult with the Information Commissioner, as well as vulnerable adult users and technical experts,” DCMS also notes, with a tiny nod to the massive topic of privacy. Digital rights groups will at least breathe a sign of relief that the UK isn’t pushing for a complete ban on anonymity, as some online safety campaigners have been urging. When it comes to the tricky topic of online trolling, rather than going after abusive speech itself, the UK’s strategy hinges on putting potential limits on freedom of reach on mainstream platforms. “Banning anonymity online entirely would negatively affect those who have positive online experiences or use it for their personal safety such as domestic abuse victims, activists living in authoritarian countries or young people exploring their sexuality,” DCMS writes, before going on to argue the new duty “will provide a better balance between empowering and protecting adults — particularly the vulnerable — while safeguarding freedom of expression online because it will not require any legal free speech to be removed”. “While this will not prevent anonymous trolls posting abusive content in the first place — providing it is legal and does not contravene the platform’s terms and conditions — it will stop victims being exposed to it and give them more control over their online experience,” it also suggests. Asked for thoughts on the government’s balancing act here, Neil Brown, an internet, telecoms and tech lawyer at , wasn’t convinced on its approach’s consistency with human rights. “I am sceptical that this proposal is consistent with the fundamental right ‘to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority’, as enshrined in Article 10 Human Rights Act 1998,” he told TechCrunch. “Nowhere does it say that one’s right to impart information applies only if one has verified one’s identity to a government-mandated standard. “While it would be lawful for a platform to choose to implement such an approach, compelling platforms to implement these measures seems to me to be of questionable legality.” Under the government’s proposal, those who want to maximize their online visibility/reach would have to hand over an ID, or otherwise prove their identity to major platforms — and Brown also made the point that that could create a ‘two-tier system’ of online expression which might (say) serve the extrovert and/or obnoxious individual, while downgrading the visibility of those more cautious/risk-averse or otherwise vulnerable users who are justifiably wary of self-ID (and, probably, a lot less likely to be trolls anyway). “Although the proposals stop short of requiring all users to hand over more personal details to social media sites, the outcome is that anyone who is unwilling, or unable, to verify themselves will become a second class user,” he suggested. “It appears that sites will be encouraged, or required, to let users block unverified people en masse. “Those who are willing to spread bile or misinformation, or to harass, under their own names are unlikely to be affected, as the additional step of showing ID is unlikely to be a barrier to them.” TechCrunch understands that the government’s proposal would mean that users of in-scope user-generated platforms who do not use their real name as their public-facing account identity (i.e. because they prefer to use a nickname or other moniker) would still be able to share (legal) views without limits on who would see their stuff — they had (privately) verified their identity with the platform in question. Brown was a little more positive about this element of continuing to allow for pseudonymized public sharing. But he also warned that plenty of people may still be too wary to trust their actual ID to platforms’ catch-all databases. (The of all sorts of over the years highlights motivations for shielded identities to leak.) “This is marginally better than a ‘real names’ policy — where your verified name is made public — but only marginally so, because you still need to hand over ‘real’ identity documents to a website,” said Brown, adding: “I suspect that people who remain pseudonymous for their own protection will be rightly wary of the creation of these new, massive, datasets, which are likely to be attractive to hackers and rogue employees alike.” In a second new duty being added to the Bill, DCMS said it will also require category one platforms to provide users with tools that give them greater control over what they’re exposed to on the service. “The bill will already force in-scope companies to remove illegal content such as child sexual abuse imagery, the promotion of suicide, hate crimes and incitement to terrorism. But there is a growing list of toxic content and behaviour on social media which falls below the threshold of a criminal offence but which still causes significant harm,” the government writes. “This includes racist abuse, the promotion of self-harm and eating disorders, and dangerous anti-vaccine disinformation. Much of this is already expressly forbidden in social networks’ terms and conditions but too often it is allowed to stay up and is actively promoted to people via algorithms.” “Under a second new duty, ‘category one’ companies will have to make tools available for their adult users to choose whether they want to be exposed to any legal but harmful content where it is tolerated on a platform,” DCMS adds. “These tools could include new settings and functions which prevent users receiving recommendations about certain topics or place sensitivity screens over that content.” Its press release gives the example of “content on the discussion of self-harm recovery” as something which may be “tolerated on a category one service but which a particular user may not want to see”. Brown was more positive about this plan to require major platforms to offer a user-controlled content filter system — with the caveat that it would need to be user-controlled. He also raised concerns about workability. “I welcome the idea of the content filer system, so that people can have a degree of control over what they see when they access a social media site. However, this only works if users can choose what goes on their own personal blocking lists. And I am unsure how that would work in practice, as I doubt that automated content classification is sufficiently sophisticated,” he told us. “When the government refers to ‘any legal but harmful content’, could I choose to block content with a particular political leaning, for example, that expounds an ideology which I consider harmful? Or is that anti-democratic (even though it is my choice to do so)? “Could I demand to block all content which was in favour of COVID-19 vaccinations, if I consider that to be harmful? (I do not.) “What about abusive or offensive comments from a politician? Or is it going to be a far more basic system, essentially letting users choose to block nudity, profanity, and whatever a platform determines to depict self-harm, or racism.” “If it is to be left to platforms to define what the ‘certain topics’ are — or, worse, the government — it might be easier to achieve, technically. However, I wonder if providers will resort to overblocking, in an attempt to ensure that people do not see things which they have asked to be suppressed.” An ongoing issue with assessing the Online Safety Bill is that huge swathes of specific details are simply not yet clear, given the government intends to push so much detail through via secondary legislation. And, again today, it noted that further details of the new duties will be set out in forthcoming Codes of Practice set out by Ofcom. So, without far more practice specifics, it’s not really possible to properly understand practical impacts, such as how — literally — platforms may be able to or try to implement these mandates. What we’re left with is, mostly, government spin. But spitballing off-of that spin, how might platforms generally approach a mandate to filter “legal but harmful content” topics? One scenario — assuming the platforms themselves get to decide where to draw the ‘harm’ line — is, as Brown predicts, that they seize the opportunity to offer a massively vanilla ‘overblocked’ feed for those who opt in to exclude ‘harmful but legal’ content; in large part to shrink their legal risk and operational cost (NB: automation is super cheap and easy if you don’t have to worry about nuance or quality; just block you’re not 100% sure is 100% non-controversial!). But they could also use overblocking as a manipulative tactic — with the ultimately goal of discouraging people from switching on such a massive level of censorship, and/or nudging them to return, voluntarily, to the non-filtered feed where the platform’s polarizing content algorithms have a fuller content spectrum to grab eyeballs and drive ad revenue… Step 3: Profit. The kicker is platforms would have plausible deniability in this scenario — since they could simply argue the user themselves opted in to seeing harmful stuff! (Or at least didn’t opt out since they turned the filter off or else never used it.) Aka: ‘Can’t blame the AIs gov!’ Any data-driven algorithmically amplified harms would suddenly be off the hook. And online harm would become for not turning on the available high-tech sensitivity screen to shield themselves. Responsibility diverted. Which, frankly, sounds like the sort of regulatory overside an adtech giant like Facebook could cheerfully get behind. Still, platform giants face plenty of risk and burden from the full package of proposal coming at them from Dorries & co. The secretary of state has also of how cheerful to lock up the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg. In addition to being required to proactively remove explicitly illegal content like terrorism and CSAM — under threat of massive fines and/or criminal liability for named execs — the Bill was recently expanded to mandate proactive takedowns of a much wider range of content, related to online drug and weapons dealing; people smuggling; revenge porn; fraud; promoting suicide; and inciting or controlling prostitution for gain. So platforms will need to scan for and remove all that stuff, actively and up front, rather than acting after the fact on user reports as they’ve been used to (or not acting very much, as the case may be). Which really does upend their content business as usual. DCMS also it would add new criminal communications offences to the bill too — saying it wanted to strengthen protections from “harmful online behaviours” such as coercive and controlling behaviour by domestic abusers; threats to rape, kill and inflict physical violence; and deliberately sharing dangerous disinformation about hoax COVID-19 treatments — further expanding the scope of content that platforms must be primed and on the lookout for. So given the ever-expanding scope of the content scanning regime coming down the pipe for platforms — combined with tech giants’ unwillingness to properly resource human content moderation (since that would torch their profits) — it might actually be a whole lot easier for Zuck & co to switch to a single, super vanilla feed. Make it cat pics and baby photos all the way down — and hope the eyeballs don’t roll away and the profits don’t drain away but Ofcom stays away… or something. |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 1 | null |
Clubhouse adds text-based chat rooms for the mic shy | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | The voice-first social network has finally introduced a way for longtime lurkers to get in on the action. Clubhouse announced , adding a text chat feature into its voice rooms that’s akin to what people might see on YouTube or Twitch. In-room chat is an optional feature, so anyone running a conversation on Clubhouse can toggle the option on when they kick off a room. When enabled, the button to access the chat box will live on the bottom left of the app, represented by a speech bubble next to the “clips” and “share” icons. Clubhouse Clubhouse calls the text chat option “another touchpoint” between creators on the platform and audience members. Like the additional of a it’s definitely a move toward expanding the app beyond its laser focus on audio — and also one toward making Clubhouse more accessible for more people. Many other social platforms have a running text chat box that accompanies content, so it’s also something people who consume content on more mature platforms have come to expect. As far as content moderation goes, anyone can long press their username and report or block them them directly from chat. If you’re running a room on Clubhouse, you can appoint moderators to delete messages or kick disruptive participants out. Text chat will live on in archive form alongside the audio content of a room after it’s ended, but users won’t be able to keep participating in the chat after the fact. Clubhouse says that the feature is rolling out now on both iOS and Android, so if you’re keen to take your lurking to the next level you can hop into the apps and try it out. |
Healthcare unicorn Ro parts ways with top execs after fresh round of funding | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | A week after healthcare unicorn , two top executives have parted ways with the company, per an internal email obtained by TechCrunch from multiple employees. In the e-mail, CEO and co-founder Zachariah Reitano said that COO George Koveos and GM of Ro Pharmacy Steve Buck are “moving on from Ro” in the coming weeks. Koveos will be working in a new field, Reitano added, and Buck is returning to a healthcare project, but will remain “as an outside advisor to Ro Pharmacy.” Koveos had been at the company for 3.5 years, while Buck was hired in 2020 to meet pandemic demand. The executive shakeup comes four months after , noting its inability to monetize beyond its core brand and culture issues. Ro’s VP of communications Meghan Pianta did not immediately respond to request for comment on the departures. It is unclear whether the executives chose to part ways with Ro or were laid off, but current employees note that shake-up comes after high churn on the care team, which was overseen by Koveos. Eight people out of Ro’s 11-person customer service operations team have quit due to culture, the majority leaving after only being at the company for five months, employees said in November. In recent weeks, Ro’s co-founders and HR team were conducting interviews with the entire operations team to better understand why so many people were quitting. Some former care team employees tell TechCrunch that Koveos was directly responsible for them deciding to leave the company, citing “poor treatment” and “toxic culture.” After the TechCrunch story was published, Koveos took the blame internally for pushing the narrative that Ro should become the “Amazon of healthcare,” a mission that employees felt added pressure to pursue profit more than efficacy. “We’re going to back away from that vision, we don’t want to be the Amazon of healthcare, we want to be the Ro of healthcare,” one employee told TechCrunch in that October piece. The next month, Ro hired Amazon executive JR Blaszek to be the new GM of Ro. “With every change in leadership comes the opportunity to rethink what’s next, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing here,” Reitano continued in the e-mail. “On a permanent basis, we see an opportunity to better align the teams that play critical roles in delivering a united Ro experience.” The move will lead to a reorganization of the operations team, which ranges from customer support to care and sales roles. It is planning to hire a new operations leader, and Saman Rahmanian will be interim GM of Ro Pharmacy for the next two months, per Reitano’s e-mail. |
Siri gains a new gender-neutral voice option in latest iOS update | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Apple has developed a new Siri voice, now available in the beta versions of its iOS 15.4 software, that doesn’t sound obviously male or female. The decision to introduce a gender-neutral voice is one that sees the tech giant taking yet another step away from the criticism that, historically, digital assistants have . Over the years, industry observers and how the creation of voice assistants with female-sounding names — like Alexa, Siri and Cortana — which also speak with female-sounding voices, implied that women should be the ones to do your bidding at any time and even A additionally called out the female voiced-assistants and their submissive and sometimes even flirty and coy styles. More problematically, the decision to make so many of the virtual assistants female by default was likely driven by a lack of diversity in the teams responsible for building our everyday technology. That issue doesn’t just lead to thoughtless choices with AI voices, it has also delayed the advance of useful tools for women. For example, it took years for Apple to realize that its Health app , considering it’s a health measure relevant to roughly half the human population. Apple, to its credit, did with the Siri voice last year when it issued an update that added more diverse voices and, notably, also made it so Siri’s voice would no longer default to being female. But what if you didn’t have to think about the gender of your AI voice assistant at all? That’s clearly the intention here with the addition of the new and now fifth Siri voice, though Apple hasn’t yet explicitly said that’s the case. However, the iOS software’s code provides some hints toward Apple’s thinking. Developer Steve Mosser found to a gender-neutral Siri voice in earlier versions of the iOS 15.4 beta, and this week the fifth American Siri voice was added to Beta 4 with the filename of “Quinn.” iOS 15.4 Beta 4 changes 🧵: Apple adds a 5th American Siri voice with filename ‘Quinn’ — Steve Moser (@SteveMoser) Quinn, a name , is a well-known gender-neutral name that has been used over the years for both boys and girls. It’s not a coincidence that it happens to also be the name for the new Siri voice. (Apple doesn’t display the voices’ filenames to end users, though — they’re identified in the user interface as just Voice 1, Voice 2, Voice 3 and so on.) You may end up hearing Quinn’s voice and decide it sounds a bit more female or male to your ears. Though if you set your mind to hear it one way or the other, your interpretation may change to reflect your thinking. What’s more, the new voice comes across as gender-neutral without reverting to some sort of more robotic cadence. The voice still sounds human, that is with the heard in the other Siri voices, both new and old. Apple tells TechCrunch the new voice was recorded by a member of the LGBTQ+ community. It leverages Neutral Text to Speech (Neural TTS) technology to offer its natural sounds. All the English-speaking voices use Neural TTS as do the voices in six other languages (French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean). In total, Siri users can choose from 16 languages when setting up their device and choosing their preferred Siri voice. When it comes to inclusion, Apple hasn’t just focused on Siri’s voice but also on what the digital assistant says. Over the past several years, Apple added Siri responses about Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, and introduced strong responses to abusive gender or sexuality-based utterances. Apple also rolled out more accessible voice features like Speak Screen, Dictation and Voice Control. “We’re excited to introduce a new Siri voice for English speakers, giving users more options to choose a voice that speaks to them,” an Apple spokesperson said, in response to our inquires about the new Siri voice. “Last year we introduced two new voices and removed the set voice default as part of Apple’s long-standing commitment to develop products and services that better reflect the diversity of the world we live in. Millions of people around the world rely on Siri every day to help get things done, so we work to make the experience feel as personalized as possible,” they said. The new voice option will roll out English speakers with iOS 15.4, which is expected to arrive sometime in March. |
Equity Live: A short note about the ongoing situation in Ukraine | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Hello friends, and welcome back to Equity, your podcast about the business of startups where we try our best to unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines with you. Today we gathered to do our live show, something that was scheduled a long time ago. Obviously, the world’s condition has changed since. So, we sat down and tore up our notes doc and put most of the show on hold. What we wound up recording was short, and frankly a little bit raw and from the gut. But it just didn’t feel right for us to sit and chit chat about funding rounds and executive shuffles when Russia is busy invading a democracy under false pretenses. TechCrunch has some notes on the situation for the tech world in Ukraine, . That’s it from us. Equity will return in short order when we have our heads on straight. Hugs, and godspeed. a |
Coinbase crushes expectations in Q4 earnings, but stock sinks as it reports slower start to year | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Shares of Coinbase, the American crypto trading giant, initially soared when it but investors quickly sold off the spike bringing the stock price down as much as 9%, hovering just above an all-time low. The company bested investor expectations in the trailing period. However, citing a “decline in crypto asset volatility and crypto asset prices,” Coinbase said that it expects retail monthly transacting users (MTUs, in its parlance) and total trading volume to decline sequentially in the first quarter. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Coinbase generated $2.50 billion in total revenue, up from $585.1 million in the year-ago quarter. The company’s massive growth in top-line led to huge profitability gains, with its net income soaring from $176.8 million in the final three months of 2020 to $840.2 million in Q4 2021. The company also reported GAAP earnings per share of $3.92, on a diluted basis, in the final quarter of last year. Investors had expected Coinbase to report $1.94 billion in revenues, and earnings per share of $1.85. However, we’ll note that estimates for Coinbase’s revenue and profit were rather wide heading into its call, with revenue estimates ranging from $1.19 billion to $2.44 billion, per data . Moving past the numerical nuts and bolts of corporate finance, what can we glean from the Coinbase quarter as it relates to the crypto world? Lots. The following chart is rich in information: Up top we can see that retail trading activity in volume terms remains a fraction of its institutional volume; bear in mind, however, that retail investors generate not only the vast bulk of Coinbase’s trading revenues, but also the preponderance of its total top line. Despite lower volume, retail trades were worth $2.185 billion in revenue in Q4 2021, while institutional trades only generated $90.8 million in revenue. Moving along, Bitcoin’s era of dominance in terms of trading volume and trading revenue generation at Coinbase is clearly over. It merely tied the Ethereum blockchain for trading volume and trading revenue. And, finally from the above, the rise of crypto assets in terms of both trading volumes and incomes is something to chew on; while the crypto world at times appears to revolve around just two blockchains and their related projects, the Coinbase revenue story is a very different picture. Coinbase crushed estimates, posted huge profits and grew massively from its year-ago quarter. So why is the stock down? The answer is simple: The market cares more about what you are going to do than what you’ve done. Guidance, in other words, can trump strong trailing results. Before Coinbase dropped its Q4 report, the market had expected it to generate $1.69 billion in Q1 2022 revenues and earnings per share of $1.55. Did the company’s forecasts indicate that it might not hit those marks? Here’s what Coinbase told investors it is seeing in Q1 2022 thus far: Looking even further ahead, Coinbase says that it expects annual average retail MTUs to land between five million and fifteen million, a massive range. And the company expects “Average Transaction Revenue Per User” to decline to “pre-2021 levels.” Investors don’t love a non-growth story, and Coinbase did not promise one. |
If you give Tumblr $4.99 a month, you won’t have to see ads anymore | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Tumblr today that it’s rolling out an ad-free browsing experience for web and mobile. On a monthly basis, you’ll have to pay $4.99 per month for what Tumblr calls “ ,” but its yearly price of $39.99 gives you four months free. To opt-in, users can navigate to their account settings and press the “go ad-free” button, where they will be prompted to choose between a yearly or monthly subscription. Though ad-free browsing is available on mobile too, it can only be enabled on the web. While the feature hides third-party ads, it doesn’t hide from Tumblr users. This is Tumblr’s latest attempt to monetize the platform, which has over the years. In the last several months alone, Tumblr has unveiled a subscription, as well as , which allows users to send their favorite bloggers cash via Stripe. Tumblr earns a 5% commission on Post+ earnings, but all tips go directly to creators, minus standard credit card fees (2.9% + $0.30). Tumblr’s audience is notorious for against any change to the platform, but an ad-free subscription is a less-intrusive feature than paywalling posts. Tumblr serves (our is the one that suggests you purchase one square foot of land in Scotland to become a Lord), but some users pointed out that they already get an ad-free Tumblr by using browser extensions, so they aren’t incentivized to pay. |
More automatons about buildings and food | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | last year, we’re ramping up to return to Boston this July for our TC Sessions Robotics event. Our March 2020 event on the Berkeley campus was the last major in-person TechCrunch show before everything shut down. For what should probably be self-evident reasons, we decided that robotics is a subject best experienced up close, so we took 2021 off. I’ve been champing at the bit for the past two years or so thinking about the programming for this one, and now that we’ve started the early stages, it’s hard to shut off the firehose. When we’re ready to start announcing guests, I’ll no doubt be devoting some column space to those folks. Meantime, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the industry has evolved since this all started. I feel fairly confident when I say that future historians will point to this as the moment of great acceleration, when — after decades of talking about the future — robotics truly became a part of everyday life. Some verticals are much further along than others, of course. Delivery is making quite a bit of progress — at least from the investment side. Regulation and implementation are a bit slower going. Understandably so. In addition to manufacturing — a longstanding application, especially in automotive — warehouse fulfillment has been white hot of late. Amazon got the ball rolling on that, and now the rest of the industry is trying to catch up. RightHand Robotics And then COVID happened. Then labor shortages. Then supply chain concerns. Decentralized logistics is really the only way to go these days, and those fulfillment centers are increasingly likely to be staffed by robots, like the pick and place machines created by RightHand, which . The company’s funding is currently hovering around $100 million. It’s a healthy — but not wild — sum for a startup that’s got a lot of real-world hours under its belt. Among the long list of notable investors here is Zebra Technologies, which, as I noted yesterday, bought Fetch last year. Ford/Agility Robotics Oh, and while we’re talking both logistics and delivery, allow me to quickly plug my talk next week with Agility Robotics CTO Jonathan Hurst and PlayGround Global founding partner Bruce Leak. That’s Wednesday at 11:30 am PT / 2:30 pm ET. More . Anyway, if you were to ask me which categories are on the cusp of breakthrough, I would give you two answers: agtech and construction. These are both massive industries with so much opportunity for automation. Agriculture, in particular, is an interesting one. It’s ripe for the proverbial picking. If you’ve read this far, you almost certainly understand how tough the category is, and we’ve seen some recent stumbles. John Deere is pumping a lot of money into robotics, both through in-house development and acquisitions of companies like Bear Flag. For reasons of it being John Deere, it’s well-positioned to remain a major player in autonomous tractors. But labor shortages are a very real thing here — and the average age of a farmer in the United States is a few months shy of 60, for what’s often extremely back-breaking work. The next several years are going to be wild for agriculture in general — particularly as climate change continues to be top of mind. It’s a subject that will likely increase interest in alternative approaches to the category, like the vertical farming we discussed last week. But the 10,000-year-old world of agriculture isn’t going to change overnight. In a sense, robotics offers a kind of way to retrofit existing ways of tending the land with new technologies. Verdant Given all of the advancements made to autonomy in recent decades, there’s a lot of opportunity there. And while you obviously need to make the systems safe, you’ve got far fewer points of failure in a field than your average city block. Verdant an $11.5 million raise, bringing its total to $21.5 million. The Hayward, California-based company offers a robotic system that does a combination of laser- and spray-based weeding, coupled with taking scans of fields designed to give farmers more data on their crops. “Farmers told us not to give them more data, but to figure out what to do with the mountains of data they already have, or better yet just go do it,” co-founder and CEO Gabe Sibley said. “They want a complete solution that takes action in real time and keeps farmers in control — all while improving profitability and automating dangerous, back-breaking field work.” Leko Labs Construction is another category that’s ripe for some massive robotic disruption. I say that as a resident of a city that’s seemingly constantly under construction — so if you could build some quiet robots to do some of the work, that would really help me out. Anyway, this week about Leko Labs’ $21 million Series A. The firm is working to bring more sustainable materials to home construction, using an “automotive style, robotics driven” approach. Hyphen I wouldn’t put kitchen automation at the top of the list, but it’s certainly one that has been catalyzed by the pandemic in a major way. Two years in, and restaurants are having as hard a time as ever staying staffed. We wrote about Hyphen in this very newsletter as the startup came out of stealth, and this week a $24 million Series A led by Tiger Global for its modular conveyer belt kitchen system. The system specializes in bowls/salads, which is probably what you want your robot to be cooking if it’s not trying to make pizzas and/or flipping burgers. Also, a quick , which signed $1.6 million contract to bring its cooking arm, Alfred, to U.S. military installations. The Automata Labs enclosure with Eva robotic arm next to it. Automata Automata is something of a dark horse this week. Lab automation isn’t something we’ve covered much in this newsletter, but COVID has really shone a light on the need for rapid lab results. The firm a $50 million Series B aimed at fully automating the laboratory process. “We’ve had to build an entirely new hardware stack that allows for this kind of automation,” co-founder and CEO Mostafa ElSayed told Devin. “The benchtop is really the standard unit of all laboratories, so it’s basically a whole lab bench that’s amenable to automation.” And finally, the real automation we’re all waiting for. Here’s . The expensive home robot recently started shipping out to customers. Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch |
VCs weigh in on Europe’s future in the critical deep tech market | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | is hard today. Russia is invading Ukraine as we write, and global markets are in freefall. This is the continent’s political and military backdrop. Last week, this column took a look at the . Europe’s economic future, in other words. We could have held off a day or two to compile this follow-up piece. But as many of the comments below are positive about Europe’s future, it felt reasonable to continue. The Exchange started its look at European deep tech with a . Its data paint a picture of record-setting capital disbursement into companies on the continent that are working on complicated, hard-to-commercialize, fundamental technologies. Today, we’re discussing responses to the data from a number of European investors, including of the Cottonwood Technology Fund, of Outsized Ventures, and of Amadeus Capital Partners, and of XAnge. We’ll recap the data in question and then dive into differing perspectives on where European deep tech investing is going. The core views are that the pace of investment will slow some in 2022 from record highs set in 2021, that things appear stable thus far, and, finally, that this year could bring an acceleration in European deep tech investment and startup activity. Out of fairness to our sources, it’s worth mentioning that they started drafting their answers before today. But the prospect of war was already looming, so considerations on what it might mean for private markets not immune to stock market dives, cyberattacks and other woes were already part of the conversation On the other hand, it goes without saying that some deep tech projects will lower global – and therefore European – dependence on oil, gas and other similar fuels. There’s politics inside technology, in other words; it may be even clearer to say that technological change impacts politics. Traversone hit on this in an email to TechCrunch, writing that “the current geopolitical situation is fuelling” a lot more interest in “healthcare and cybersecurity deep tech” and so-called “sovereign tech,” with focus sometimes landing on “strategic areas such as semiconductors, telecom equipment, and power technologies.” Our starting point last week was Angular’s report, with an important caveat: It focused on both enterprise and deep tech investments. The pairing of the two groups makes sense in a way, as it helped detail how Europe’s venture capital market is moving its focus away from consumer tech. But for our purposes, we want to be clear about what deep tech is and is not. Jackson argues that deep tech “can mean a lot of things … and because of how nebulous a term it’s become, it means less and less.” We agree. And while we don’t want to narrow our focus too much, especially as new disciplines continue to emerge, we want to make it clear that we too are talking about what Jackson describes as “the ‘deep’ end of the deep tech pool — robotics, semiconductors, energy transfer, medical devices, hardware, all that fun stuff!” In the wake of a record-setting venture capital market in 2021, seeing minor declines in dollar or deal volume in 2022 would hardly be a retreat. At the same time, there are some venture investors who anticipate that the European deep tech market will accelerate further. As we explore our question, please keep in mind that those forecasting a deceleration are hardly pessimists; when we consider deep tech investment on the continent in 2019 and 2020, they are still likely anticipating bullish results. |
How to strategically manage your startup advisor’s compensation | Matt Cohen | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | often attribute their success to a deep bench of mentors and advisors, but how do founders compensate these core parts of their network? I see tons of founders being asked to compensate advisors with hard cash, and I’m immediately shocked to hear they have graciously agreed to do so. Advisor compensation is something founders find very difficult to navigate and I am often asked for my two cents. When it comes to cash compensation, my initial response to founders is that cash at startups should be reserved for services like legal, accounting, marketing and other outsourced contractors. However, when it comes to more qualitative support and advice, the people helping founders need a more accurate alignment of incentives in the form of equity-based compensation. The excess of capital in venture-funded startups has also attracted a litany of coaching services to the space, many of which are great. There are, however, a few operations out there that are angling to get exposure to the growth in tech startups. These coaches often position themselves as advisors to CEOs and either demand significant cash compensation or cash in addition to equity options from the company. In order to create a better sense of alignment, I recommend that founders put in place certain terms that both parties must meet in order to unlock the value of that equity. For instance, founders can implement a vesting structure that requires advisors to meet certain metrics over time in order to unlock the value of their compensation — sometimes over many years. A good example would be a partnership advisor: set goals around the number of partnerships from their network. If the advisor meets these goals, they’re eligible for the compensation. If not, then the founder can be protected from deploying that equity. Again, these coaches, advisors, mentors or whatever title they wish to hold should not be compensated in cash. That’s not because cash is more important than equity, but because it is much harder to tie to outcomes once it has been awarded. In one of the more egregious examples of an external party taking advantage of founders that I’ve seen, an advisor offered to recruit talent for the startup. He purported to offer those founders a deal by taking a 50% reduction in cash relative to his usual rates, and the company paid him in shares to make up the difference. |
As brands clamour to back causes, Good-Loop raises $6M for its view-to-donate ad platform | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | Online advertising is generally terrible and our expectation that “information should be free” has tragically even ended up powering disinformation-filled social networks like Facebook. Many companies have tried and failed to turn advertising into a way to power good causes. What is to be done? When I met Amy Williams back in 2016, it seemed her idea of an “advertising for good” platform would, like the rest, be doomed to fail. But it just goes to show that it’s usually impossible to predict the success of early-stage entrepreneurs. For the company she founded, , has now closed a Series A round of $6.1 million (£4.5 million) for its platform that entices people to views ads in order to “unlock” a donation to charity. And there’s more to this than meets the eye. The funding round was led by New York-based investment fund , with additional backing from Scottish Enterprise, impact investor SIS Ventures, European adtech fund and investment raised on the crowdfunding platform Seedrs. This means Good-Loop has now raised a total of $8.2 million to date. The funding will be used to accelerate the company’s product roadmap, and open offices in New York and Chicago to serve its U.S. market. As well as also being a , Good-Loop says its “view ads to donate” model delivers more meaningful brand engagement, cost-free philanthropy from users and has an ad recall “4.5X higher than the industry standard” says the company. It also says demand for its programmatic solutions has grown 180% in the last 12 months. Charities on the Good-Loop platform get 50% of ad revenue. Clients include Unilever, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Levi’s, adidas, NBC Universal and Nike. Using this model, Good-Loop claims to have now raised more than $5 million for charities around the world, including Save the Children, WaterAid, Feeding America and the WWF. Good-Loop CEO Amy Williams, who founded the company alongside CTO Daniel Winterstein, said: “At the heart of our industry is an inherent value exchange between advertiser and consumer, and I’m on a mission to harness that value as a significant force for good. Through our respectful, positive ad platform, brands can treat people online as partners — rather than targets — united by a desire to have a meaningful social impact. Backing from industry experts like QCM and First Party Capital, social impact investors and, indeed, the general public, will help to supercharge our growth whilst keeping us true to our values at every step along the way.” Austin Davis, CEO at QCM said: “Good-Loop elevates advertising and conscious-minded business to an entirely new level and will become the industry Fairtrade Stamp. The business model solves many longstanding issues in the sector and is the paradigm shift that has been needed to regain consumer trust in transparent and ethical advertising… It is a win-win for all parties.” Good-Loop has also launched solutions for advertisers to measure and offset the carbon cost of their digital ad campaigns. In an interview I asked Williams what she thought had helped power the company to a Series A: “I think that’s a combination of good timing and good traction. Timing wise, brand purpose has been growing for the last 10 years. Unilever led the way when they started building socially-driven brands like Dove soap, when a big study showed their purpose brands had grown faster than the rest of their portfolio. That was a bit of a jumping off point for other businesses to start thinking about it. Meanwhile, consumers now are buying brands that reflect their values. Now, consumers increasingly want to express their social values, such as where they stand on things like the climate crisis and diversity and inclusion. We’ve tapped into that trend.” So what’s changed? “In the last 18 months since the pandemic, there has been a massive catalyst for that, both in terms of brands stepping up and helping reassure and support communities,” she told me. “You’ve got Deliveroo giving food to NHS workers and you’ve got Nike Running exercise classes in your lounge. Every business stepped up and consumers felt this. I think we’ve all had this very deep sense of how quickly the rug can be pulled from under you. All of that means that we’re in the right time, right place. We build technology that makes it easy for brands to do good and easy for brands to connect with consumers about those issues. A third of our revenue now comes from the U.S., especially with regards to CSR and corporate responsibility. So yeah, right time, right place,” she said. I asked her if, with the pandemic seemingly passing, the shift to social good might be a “flash in the pan”? “The genie can’t be put back in the bottle,” she said. “Big businesses have started to make commitment to net zero. Many of them are looking to be carbon neutral by 2025. ESG investments have tripled in size in the last 12 months. So if you want to attract attention from shareholders, you need to take this stuff seriously. And from the consumer side, we’re seeing consumers both be more loyal and spend more money with brands that align to their values, such as the environment. They’re eight times more likely to buy from a brand that takes climate change seriously, for instance.” Williams said there is an expectation amongst consumers than brands have to change their behaviour and report on that change: “So if you don’t do it, you’re going to get left behind, frankly. We’ve built a suite of products that measures the carbon cost of every ad that brands run through their digital advertising. So we’ve built a full infrastructure that tracks the data transfer and the electricity use of their ad campaigns and then carbon offsets it in real time. So, this so this is an example of where yes, we started with a charity function product with broad data product suite and we now have products that corporates can use to address many of the social causes that they’re expected to uphold.” |
Indian neobank Niyo raises $100 million, tops 4 million customers | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | India’s Niyo has raised $100 million in a new financing round as the consumer-facing neobank platform looks to add lending and insurance to its offerings and make deeper inroads in the world’s second largest internet market. Accel and Lightrock India co-led the Bengaluru-headquartered startup’s Series C financing round. Existing investors Prime Venture Partners, JS Capital and Beams Fintech Fund also participated in the round, which brings the six-year-old startup’s all-time raise to about $150 million. Niyo to largely salaried individuals in India. It works with banks to help them deliver a more modern and expansive user experience and features. It also operates a wealth management product to help users invest in mutual funds and domestic equities. Some of its most popular features include zero percent forex markup and something called “invest the change,” which rounds up a customer’s spendings and invests a part of it. co-founder and chief executive Vinay Bagri told TechCrunch in an interview that the startup has amassed over 4 million customers across its banking and wealth management products. Most of these customers are in their 20s and early 30s, he said. A look at neobanks in India and the banks with whom they have partnered to serve customers. (Data: Companies and Jefferies. Jefferies.) The startup said it is adding over 10,000 new users each day and is processing more than $3 billion of transactions on an annualized time frame. Virender Bisht, co-founder and chief technology officer of Niyo, said the startup is seeing “massive tailwinds for digital financial products” since the outbreak of the pandemic. Niyo plans to offer lending to customers starting next month. The size of the loans will be in the range of ₹70,000 ($930). As it broadens its offerings, it is also looking for inorganic growth via acquisition opportunities, said Bagri. Scores of startups are attempting to modernize the banking experience in India. But the challenge they face is that unlike in many countries, banking is very affordable in India, which has made it difficult for them to persuade customers to make what is a considerable switch. As an industry executive described to TechCrunch, the current generation of neobanks are largely only offering an “experience layer” to customers. But many startups are hoping that India will soon give them licence to own and operate their own digital-only banks. “We are excited to back the fastest growing neo-bank in India, Niyo. Vinay, Viren and team have built a fantastic product with a clear value prop for customers which is reflected in their phenomenal growth. We look forward to partnering with Niyo in changing the way India banks,” said Anand Daniel, partner at Accel, in a statement. |
Nikola reports EV truck progress, stiff losses as it closes out turbulent 2021 | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | Nikola Corp., the electric truck startup that went public via a SPAC, is coming closer to commercial activity after a history of , missed deadlines and for lying to investors. In its released Thursday, Nikola ticked off a number of recent milestones and, critically, its plans to begin series production of its electric big rigs. For investors, the developments may be little more than cold comfort after much of Nikola’s value was lost on the public markets since its mid-2020 highs. Still, the public company is very much working toward, as CEO Mark Russell wrote in its Q4 digest, “delivering vehicles and generating revenue.” The beleaguered company, which has suffered from that caused delays and investigations by securities regulators, said it will begin series production of its electric trucks in March. Nikola said it plans to deliver between 300 and 500 of the production-ready Tre battery-electric trucks to customers in the second quarter of 2022. The forecast shows some progress — emphasis on . Importantly, the report finally puts some distance between Nikola and Trevor Milton, the company’s controversial founder and former CEO and chairman who was charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for two counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. Nikola agreed in December to as part of a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is paying installments and is seeking reimbursement from Milton, it said in its investor update. Shares of Nikola are up more than 7% on the earnings report, a notable result on a day in which the stock market is suffering around the world in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, tensions between China and Taiwan, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other issues. The company’s rosy outlook isn’t constrained to its move from prototype to volume production of its electric Nikola Tre trucks. Nikola said it plans to begin construction on its first hydrogen production hub in Arizona and announce two or more dispensing station partners in California sometime this year. Nikola also recapped some of its more notable progress toward commercialization, including pilot testing with customers like Anheuser-Busch and Total Transportation Services Inc., securing a battery deal with Proterra, and working with Corcentric Fleet Funding Solutions to help finance its trucks. The company said it delivered the first two Tre BEVs to TTSI in California as a part of a three-month pilot program. The trucks have hauled multiple loads per day and logged more than 4,500 miles combined and have completed a 204-mile journey on a single charge, the longest range of any BEV TTSI has tested, the company said. (Readers: What non-GAAP result is your favorite? MAU/DAU ratios from social media companies or miles driven by EV concerns?) Nikola also began piloting its fuel cell electric truck, the Tre FCEV, with Anheuser-Busch. The company said that two Nikola Tre FCEV alphas are undergoing a three-month pilot in daily service within the brewer’s Southern California distribution network. But the above positive notes have something in common: None of them generated any income in 2021. As such, Nikola’s Q4 2021 and full-year report is a sea of red ink. Nikola had no revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021, or at any point in the year. So it closed 2021 with zero top line and $162.7 million worth of operating expenses. The company’s full-year operating loss was therefore just that: $162.7 million. That result was greater, and therefore worse, than Nikola’s 2020 operating loss, which came to a slightly more modest $146.8 million. However, that metric included around $14.4 million in impairment costs, so the company’s pace of expense growth is greater than it appears from its face-value operating losses; Nikola’s rising expense base is having a material impact on its profitability (or lack thereof). To be clear, this is what both TechCrunch and the market anticipated. Nikola remains in ramp-up mode, as noted above, which means that its expenses are rising, its revenues are forward expectations, and potential profits far in the future. Those losses may continue to grow in 2022, but with deliveries of its first production trucks beginning, it should also mean actual capital, aka revenue, should begin to flow into the company. Still, there was good news in the company’s earnings report, namely that it lost less money than anticipated in Q4 2021. While Nikola lost $0.39 per share in the quarter when counting all costs (GAAP), its adjusted net loss per share was just $0.23, largely the result of removing share-based compensation expenses and the financial impact of regulatory expenses from its cost mix. The market had on an adjusted basis for the fourth quarter. That, coupled with the company’s commercial progress, could be construed as encouraging. Good news or not, the company has payments related to its settlement with the SEC ahead of it, zero revenues, and rising expenses. Its ability to sell trucks at volume, and with positive unit economics, remains uncertain. Still, investors value Nikola at $3 billion as of the time of writing. That’s a pretty big bet that the company’s trucks will roll, and that when they do, profits will draft in their wake. |
Defy.vc’s Brian Rothenberg explains growth marketing strategies that don’t break the bank at TC Early Stage | Jordan Crook | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | |
Hear from these amazing investors and founders on TechCrunch Live this March | Matt Burns | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | has an exciting slate of episodes scheduled for March. The speakers come from a variety of disciplines, backgrounds and locations. Like always, each episode features an entrepreneur presenting their early pitch deck along with the investor who funded the company. We want to know how the founder hooked the VC, what makes their partnership work and how other founders can improve their storytelling and pitching. We have Agility Robotics’ co-founder and CTO, followed by Snorkel AI presenting an early pitch deck, which laid the groundwork to raise $135 million in two years. DoubleVerify and early investor Blumberg Capital is speaking on how they’ve worked together since 2008. TechCrunch Live helps founders build better venture-backed businesses. We do this by bringing together startup founders and the investors who back them to talk about what, precisely, helped close the deal. What metrics are the investors looking at? What questions did the founders answer that made the VCs want to learn more? How did the founders communicate their grand vision, and what was the step-by-step plan to get there? We cover all this — complete with looking at these companies’ early pitch decks and more — on TechCrunch Live. TechCrunch Live is also home to the TCL Pitch-off, where founders in the audience can get on our virtual stage to pitch their startup to our esteemed guests and get their live feedback. As with any TechCrunch event, this weekly series also features networking so you can meet and greet other attendees. The event goes down every Wednesday at 11:30 am PT / 2:30 pm ET and is free to attend. Networking and the pitch-off submissions start at 11:30 am PT, followed by the interview at 12 pm PT and the live pitch feedback session at 12:30 pm PT. Only TechCrunch+ members get access to the complete library of on-demand content, so if you haven’t yet, And without any further ado, here is a look at the outstanding guests joining us on TechCrunch Live in March. Agility Robotics co-founder and CTO Jonathan Hurst will join Playground Global founding partner Bruce Leak to discuss the firm’s unique approach to warehouse logistics. Founded in 2015 using technology developed by the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory at Oregon State University, Agility has become a major force in robotics. Hieu Tran / Agility Robotics Greylock / Snorkel AI Rachel McFarlin Photography / DoubleVerify |
NayaPay secures $13 million, largest seed funding in South Asia for its messaging and payment app | Annie Njanja | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | Pakistan-based fintech platform has raised $13 million in a seed round to roll out its multi-service messaging and payment app, and to build payment acceptance and financial management tools for businesses in the South Asian country. NayaPay CEO and founder told TechCrunch that the super-app allows people residing in Pakistan to send and receive money, split bills and make payments conveniently from smartphones. They have also issued virtual and physical Visa cards linked to the NayaPay wallet, further allowing its users to make POS payments and businesses to accept payments. Lakhani said that NayaPay is leading a digital , a cash-heavy economy, where only 1% of $4 trillion payments are done electronically. This is in a country of 220 million people. But NayaPay’s goal is even bigger: to bank millions of adults that remain unbanked, with women affected the most — only one in three women holds a bank account. The youth and freelance communities in Pakistan are also majorly locked out by traditional banks. About 100 million people are unbanked in Pakistan, according to World Bank report. “Students and freelancers are among the most underbanked population, and they are our first target market. They find it very difficult to open bank accounts because they don’t have a source of income. Bank compliance departments consider them very high risk, but we see them as a group with the highest lifetime value,” said Lakhani. The round was led by Zayn Capital; London-based investment firm MSA Novo; global fund manager Graph Ventures; and an early-stage VC from Silicon Valley. It had the participation of Singapore-based Saison Capital, Waleed Saigol’s Maple Leaf Capital and Warren Hogarth, CEO Empower Finance and sponsors of the Lakson Group (a Pakistani conglomerate). The seed round is the largest seed financing round in the South Asian market, leapfrogging that raised $12 million last year. “We are very bullish on fintech in Pakistan. While just beginning to emerge, Pakistani fintechs have the advantage of learning from peers and placing better informed strategic bets. We were impressed by the completeness of the vision of the founding team at NayaPay, and their differentiated platform-based strategy– first focused on servicing the needs of underbanked consumers and SMBs with specific use cases and building out from there,” said Zayn Capital Fronteir co-founder and managing partner, Faisal Aftab. NayaPay “With a proven ability to execute on the ground, the founder has an impressive track record of building and scaling businesses in Pakistan, including the country’s largest fiber broadband service (StormFiber a subsidiary of Cybernet),” said Aftab. The idea to launch NayaPay was born during Lakhani’s visits to China, where social messaging and payments apps like WeChat Pay and AliPay are commonly used. He was at the time leading Cybernet, a broadband company he helped build from scratch, and which has grown to be the largest internet and data communication network service provider. He says he was inspired by the ease in use of the Chinese super apps and decided to replicate the model with NayaPay, which he says is going to revolutionize the payments landscape in Pakistan. Lakhani, who grew up in Pakistan, returned to build Cybernet after his undergraduate and graduate studies in the U.S., where he pursued a degree in applied mathematics – computer science at Brown University, a graduate degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. NayaPay has already acquired the requisite authorizations, including the E-Money Institution license from the State Bank of Pakistan. It targets to have 5 million users over the next five years and grow the number of digital payments, which he says will impact other sectors like e-commerce as more people use the NayaPay wallet to make online transactions. “Online shopping accounts for only 2% of retail in Pakistan and is growing at a 51% CAGR, so there’s a massive demand which has been accelerated because of COVID. For example, restaurants that used to depend mostly on a POS terminal for acceptance, are now requiring payment gateway for their online sales,” he said. They also plan to introduce other digital financial services like lending and investment, in the future. “We will grow this platform to give them the ability to invest in money market funds, stock trading and buying other digital assets.” |
QuantrolOx uses machine learning to control qubits | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | , a new startup that was spun out of Oxford University last year, wants to use machine learning to control qubits inside of quantum computers. The company, which was co-founded by Oxford professor , tech entrepreneur , the company’s chief scientist and head of quantum technologies , today announced that it has raised a £1.4 million (or about $1.9 million) seed funding round led by Nielsen Ventures and Hoxton Ventures. Voima Ventures, Remus Capital, Dr. Hermann Hauser and Laurent Caraffa also invested in the round. The company’s technology is technology-agnostic, and could be applied to all of the standard quantum computing technologies. The idea here is that instead of going through a slow manual tuning process, QuantrolOx’s system will be able to tune, stabilize and optimize qubits significantly faster. Current methods, QuantrolOx CEO Chatrath argues, aren’t scalable, especially as these machines continue to improve. “I was talking to one U.S. investor. He said that we are like the picks and shovels of the quantum industry, in that we don’t have to wait to get revenues for a quantum computer to be useful,” Chatrath said. “As you get from five qubits to — hopefully — millions of qubits, you need our software every single day to be able to do the device characterization and tune the qubits.” For the time being, though, the company’s focus is on solid-state qubits. In part that’s because those are systems the company has access to, including through a close partnership with a lab in Finland that the company wasn’t quite ready to disclose yet. As with all machine learning problems, QuantrolOx needs to gather enough data to build effective machine learning models. As Chatrath also noted, we’re still in the very early stages of quantum computing, but if tools like QuantrolOx can help researchers speed up the process of testing their devices, that’s a boon for the entire industry. He noted that a lot of companies in the industry are already approaching the company to use its control software. The company currently has seven full-time employees and plans to hire about 10 more people in the near future. But as Chatrath noted, he doesn’t expect that number to grow much more in the next two years. “We don’t need a huge team, because we are focusing on our specific niche,” he said. “We don’t want to full-stack. We don’t want to go higher in the stack — and we can’t go lower in the stack because that’s the hardware. So we are very much focused.” Currently, QuantrolOx is focused on building more partnerships with the builders of quantum computers. These are rather deep partnerships because the team essentially needs access to the physical machines but also the source code that controls them so it can integrate with these systems. One problem in the industry right now, of course, is that there are very few standards, something Chatrash is keenly aware of. “For the quantum industry to succeed, we need lots of startups like ourselves who are hyper-specialized in one particular area, because without companies who are hyper-specializing, we will not get economies of scale,” he said. “I think this whole full-stack story has to stop sooner or later. People need to start building an ecosystem of companies.” |
VC Brendan Wallace of Fifth Wall isn’t quite ready to invest in the metaverse | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | Almost exactly two years ago, we talked with Brendan Wallace, the co-founder of the property- and real estate tech-focused venture firm , about a trip from which he’d just returned. His visit had been to Singapore, where he described scenes of masks and social distancing and explained that, out of an abundance of caution, he was planning to stay inside his home in Venice, California for 14 days before returning to the office. Of course, Wallace didn’t know then that he wouldn’t be returning to his office for a very long time. Nevertheless, the firm, founded in 2016, has more than survived through a pandemic that shut down much of the world. It seems to be thriving, including closing last week on a Europe-focused venture fund that brings its total assets under management to $3 billion. It helps to have more than 90 strategic limited partners that are desperate for a look around the corner, including Cushman & Wakefield, Koch Real Estate Investments, British Land and CBRE. To learn how Wallace fared through it, and what technologies Fifth Wall’s LPs are most interested in adopting right now (and whether they want land in the metaverse), we caught up with Wallace late last week in a wide-ranging chat. Excerpts from that conversation follow, edited for length. You can hear our longer conversation . BW: The way that we were talking about COVID back then sounds so absurd. I was offering the insight I’d gleaned from being in Singapore, and you were like, ‘Oh, that’s so interesting.’ And it just was this forbearer of what was about to come. Some major employers have talked about downsizing their physical real estate footprint . . . What I haven’t seen clearly is a consistent, uniform direction from employers on whether there’s a date on which they expect people to be back in the office. I also think the expectation has changed of what being in an office means, and I think it is probably forever changed. The real estate industry is this fascinating industry. It’s one of the few industries that never had R&D. It’s really only been in the last four or five years that it has become quite innovative, and it just so happens that during this age of enlightenment, we had a macro shock that changed a lot of things and, in particular, changed how people think about physical space. The thinking has changed about the safety of physical space, the necessity of being in certain physical spaces and the demand for different spaces. So a lot of things have hit the real estate industry in a very short period of time and I think the net of it is that real estate owners are looking at how they can truly space. They’re wondering, How do we make it more tech enabled? How do we make our space “omni channel?” How do we make the space inclusive of all the technological progress that our employees have enjoyed over the last 10 years? The nice thing is that the technology is there, so it has created this voracious demand from large institutional owners for real estate tech to solve parts of that. I don’t think most companies, when they were signing a lease in 2019, we’re asking a lot about indoor air quality or filtration, and now they are. Monitoring that, reporting on that, tracking that has become quite standard. Alongside that is just knowing who’s in your building. Most buildings don’t really know who’s inside, and there are more reasons now to know that information and to make buildings and assets and physical spaces more sensorially aware of how they’re being used, including public health reasons [tied to] contact tracing. So I think spaces are going to get more tech enabled and “smart” the same way that our devices and TVs and other small things are now smart things. Buildings are just comprised of a bunch of small things that are going to become smart, from turnstiles to elevators to doors to even tables and chairs that make the tenant and landlord more aware of how people are functionally using space. Not as much as you’d think [though] we’re still not out of [the pandemic entirely]. So we actually don’t know what the other side of this looks like. We don’t know the steady state of how humans are going to consume space differently. You’ve also had historically low interest rates and high levels of collaboration between tenants and their real estate owners around how to work through this. So we probably haven’t seen the full effect of what COVID will reap. Retail has been a challenged sector of real estate for the last decade. E-commerce as a percent of total U.S. commerce is still actually relatively small. It’s still less than 20%, [but] there’s a lot of change that is still yet to come. So the local stores, local dry cleaners and how those small local businesses will be affected by many of these larger logistics spaces and tech-enabled service companies and on-demand delivery companies is [still in play]. I think because of COVID, we jumped from inning one to inning three, but we still have a lot of innings left to play. I’ll give you two examples. One company [whose proposition] is simple is . Most homes in the U.S. don’t have heat pumps or the proper insulation, and from an energy savings perspective, that can have a very profound impact. Because people just don’t know the actual metrics behind the savings — like actually how much money they do save — Sealed has built a direct-to-consumer business where they’re able to install heat pumps and the proper insulation for homes based on where they are located. It’s pairing consumer education with a consumer business and also a financing business, and I think it’s really exciting. On the more kind of tech forward side, we invested in a company called that makes very efficient small electric motors. You wouldn’t necessarily think of a building as having a lot of motors in it, but if you think about it, you have to move a lot of stuff around a building: water, air, people. These motors are 30% more efficient than your traditional motor. It matters because buildings account for 40% of the country’s electricity consumption, which is staggering because real estate is only 13% of the U.S. GDP. So real estate is this massive, outsized energy consumer, and most of the hardware inside our buildings is inefficient, and with these very efficient motors that you can install on your HVAC system, you can achieve very simple savings with the exact same infrastructure. I think we’re excited about it in the sense that there’s a lot of real innovation that can happen in the metaverse, and a lot of it is real-estate related. I don’t think we’ve seen anything super exciting. Our focus has very much been on real-world technology — tech for physical spaces, actual space. It’s real atoms, right? So most of our innovation is focused there. That’s where it started. So we’re excited by the metaverse like everyone else. It’s enticing. It’s new. It’s cool. But I would not say that we have fully leaned into investing in it yet, because there are so many more pressing and, we think, more interesting real world problems that we have yet to solve. |
USPS snubs EVs, Biden with next-gen delivery fleet deal | Kirsten Korosec | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | The U.S. Postal Service is sticking with its original plan to replace up to 90% of its mail delivery fleet with gasoline-powered vehicles from Oshkosh Corp. The decision Under the approved program, USPS will buy between 50,000 to 165,000 mail trucks from the Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Corp. About 10% of those would have to be electric. The vast majority, and up to 90%, of the fleet would be gas-powered vehicles. “As we have reiterated throughout this process, our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition. As our financial position improves with the ongoing implementation of our 10-year plan, Delivering for America, we will continue to pursue the acquisition of additional BEV as additional funding — from either internal or congressional sources — becomes available,” Postmaster General and USPS Chief Executive Officer Louis DeJoy said in a statement. “But the process needs to keep moving forward. The men and women of the U.S. Postal Service have waited long enough for safer, cleaner vehicles to fulfill on our universal service obligation to deliver to 161 million addresses in all climates and topographies six days per-week.” The USPS said it determined that its preferred alternative vehicle from Oshkosh “is the most achievable” because a battery electric vehicle has a significantly higher total cost of ownership than the gas-powered one. The USPS said this is why the agency will not commit to having more than 10% EV vehicles in its fleet. The decision was rebuked by the Biden administration and various pro-EV groups, including the Electrification Coalition. “It’s beyond disappointing that the USPS has ignored the justified criticisms of its opaque and flawed environmental impact analysis and committed to an overwhelmingly gas-fueled new fleet,” Electrification Coalition Executive Director Ben Prochazka said in a statement. The USPS began searching for replacement vehicles in 2015. This next-gen vehicle would need to have improved ergonomics, be equipped with air conditioning and heating, and have advanced vehicle and safety technology such as 360-degree cameras, advanced braking and traction control, air bags and a front- and rear-collision avoidance system that includes visual, audio warning and automatic braking. The vehicles also had to have increased cargo capacity. Last year, USPS announced it had awarded Oshkosh Defense the contract. Lordstown Motors, the EV startup turned troubled publicly traded company, . |
Daily Crunch: Sources say creator platform Fireside will cozy up to a $125M Series A | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Wednesday, February 23, 2022! There is so much to get to today I won’t slow us down apart from saying that our . To work! – Before we jump into our daily download of startup doings, a few call-outs from today’s coverage. First, Varos is collecting data from customers to provide SaaS and e-commerce firms . So, if you are worried that your conversion rates just dipped, you can see if others are having related issues. Neat. And . Vendr’s SaaS buying service scaled rapidly last year. Blissfully brings SaaS management to Vendr’s world, perhaps helping the acquiring entity create a start-to-finish method for buying and managing software. Now, to dive into funding rounds, let’s start with a coven of data-related events: And, as always, there are even more rounds and deals and announcements to read up on: But don’t think that we are all work and no play: We have a , plus a podcast episode about how startups . Enjoy! / Getty Images Oil and gas production generates so much excess methane that it’s cheaper to set it on fire in a process called flaring than it is to capture it for sale. Just in the U.S., producers flare so much gas that astronauts aboard the International Space Station can identify oil fields 254 miles below. Presumably, they can also see Antarctica’s Thwaite Glacier — it’s about the size of Florida, but it’s shrinking because greenhouse gases like methane trap heat in the atmosphere that warms our oceans. For our latest investor survey, we contacted 14 people who are using their dollars to address the climate emergency. Beyond sharing their investment thesis, they also let us know what they’re looking for and how they measure success. We spoke with: I doubt that Apple really has beef with the Netherlands, but its squabble with the nation over in-app purchase techniques is . The EU is saying that “the company is deliberately choosing to pay fines to avoid compliance with a Dutch antitrust order,” we report. If Apple isn’t mad at the Utrecth squad, what’s it doing? Likely trying to avoid setting a precedent in Europe that other nations might follow. Oh, and apparently LinkedIn is . Which makes sense. Because I always expect a platform cloud company with an enterprise software empire that also makes consumer hardware, owns gaming companies, a search engine, social networks, and various digital services, to also, yes, do a lot of podcasting stuff. SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
Tesla’s Kimbal Musk says company was ‘very ignorant’ of environmental impact of its Bitcoin purchase | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | In an interview with TechCrunch onstage at the Ethereum Denver conference, Tesla board member Kimbal Musk, brother of CEO Elon Musk, said that the company had been “very ignorant” of the environmental impact of Bitcoin when it announced last year that it would purchase $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency and would plan to allow owners to purchase the company’s vehicles with the currency. “When we invested in Bitcoin, we were very ignorant. We had no idea of the environmental impact, we literally didn’t know, we were like this seems like a good store of value and a good way to diversify assets. And of course, it didn’t take very long to get a million — I’m not kidding probably a million — messages telling us what we were doing to the environment,” said Kimbal Musk, in an interview with this reporter. “And of course, our company is about creating alternative energy futures so we really were not informed enough when we made that decision.” Kimbal Musk says that while Tesla “didn’t necessarily regret” its Bitcoin purchase, he hopes that the broader blockchain industry can move to more environmentally friendly infrastructure, noting that his own philanthropic organization Big Green had embraced a crypto-native DAO governance structure operating on a less energy-intensive blockchain. Jesse Morgan / ETH Denver. Tesla board member Kimbal Musk discusses the future of philanthropic giving in an interview with TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney at the Ethereum Denver 2022 conference. “I really do not agree with the environmental impact of crypto, but I love what it does.” Kimbal Musk said onstage. “So we’ve just got to figure out how to do it without the environmental impact…. it’s simply not an option to have this environmental impact.” Tesla’s decision to buy Bitcoin last year prompted a major bull run for the cryptocurrency, though that surge was famously reversed months later by the company’s announcement that while it did not immediately plan to sell its Bitcoin, it would no longer be accepting Bitcoin as payment for vehicle purchases. “Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at a great cost to the environment,” Elon Musk wrote, partially, in a last May. “Tesla will not be selling any bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.” While there is still plenty of missing data around how heavily the Bitcoin mining network relies on renewable energy sources, it is clear just how significant the network’s energy usage is. Estimates from ‘s energy tracker suggest that the total annualized energy footprint of Bitcoin’s mining operations has nearly doubled since Musk’s tweet last May. The Bitcoin network contributes as much carbon to the atmosphere as the country of Kuwait does on an annual basis according to the site’s estimates. Kimbal Musk has served on Tesla’s board since 2004. |
Inclusive live commerce: Engaging live agents to move beyond captioning | Dragorad Knezi | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | The inclusive shopping market may just be the largest untapped opportunity in the e-commerce world today. , it totals a staggering $8 trillion. It’s also not as fragmented as you might think. For example, experience vision impairments, while nearly . As a result, brands need to start looking at this as an opportunity, rather than a box to check on their way to social responsibility. The problem is that the various organizations that set the standards for accessibility, such as the , may be well-meaning, but their guidelines are minimal and often unimaginative. For example, most of them call for tags to describe images. But no tag is going to tell a blind shopper if a scarf would look good on them. Brands can solve this problem — and I’ll get to that — but not through any metadata strategy. Inclusive design, the kind that meets people where they are, requires innovation, not standards. It has been the unheralded impetus for some of the most widely used inventions in the world, including email, touchscreens and even typewriters. Innovation and inclusive designs have long outstripped the imaginations of regulators and delivered benefits to people far beyond the intended audience. Today, we can see something similar developing with live commerce, though it has yet to be fully tapped for this purpose. Like many powerful ideas, live commerce is simple at its core: an interface that quickly connects a digital shopper with a live agent. Brands are using it today on a limited basis to demonstrate products, answer questions and provide alternative options, much like a shop assistant might do in a physical store. While not necessarily an inclusive solution itself, if live commerce is combined with other off-the-shelf technologies, it can become a very powerful platform for innovation. To understand why, let me run through a number of scenarios that take it well beyond current accessibility standards. In doing so, I’ll show why solving for the widest possible range of abilities tends to create unintended benefits for all. Most people today are familiar with live captioning thanks to YouTube, which automatically translates any voice into text. Coupled with a live agent, it can create an experience in which anyone, regardless of hearing ability, can easily communicate with a knowledgeable agent. Interestingly, when my company piloted this technology in Moscow, a much broader use case evolved. It turned out that subways and other environments tend to be quite noisy, and voice communication becomes difficult. People found they could use captioning during their commutes to overcome this. The broader applications of such a technology are clear: Whether shopping or not, having the option for captioning can certainly ease communication in plenty of noisy situations, or ones in which people do not want to be overheard. One of the challenges in addressing the inclusive community is that it’s quite diverse. For example, my company currently works with 16 different advocacy organizations, each representing people with specific challenges. While live commerce cannot solve all of these issues by itself, human beings are much more flexible and adaptable than any technological solution we have yet devised. For example, some people may need larger images to see better. Others may need the agent to talk louder, slow down when speaking or give them advice specific to their abilities. Unlike digital agents, human beings can strategize with other humans, allowing them to put their heads together on what solutions might work for them. This is a unique advantage of live agents that applies really to anyone, including those with different abilities. Live commerce also gives us the ability to bring others into the shopping experience. To show how this can work, I want to return to the earlier example of the blind shopper and a scarf. In Eastern Europe, there are free services that connect visually impaired shoppers with stylists who help them select clothing and accessories. Of course, e-commerce would be much more convenient for both, so live services have the potential to connect the two with an e-commerce agent as needed. In this scenario, the agent demonstrates products, while the stylist consults with the shopper to make selections. Live connections are not only, of course, for the visually impaired. They are also valuable for anyone who needs outside input on their shopping. If you trust friends and family to help you make decisions, you can invite them along on a virtual shopping trip. Currently, e-commerce sites do a good job of categorizing and surfacing products according to particular criteria. They can help you find five-star products, ones within certain price ranges and even ones from particular brands. But none of them can sort according to abilities. Such a capability is not too far off, especially if we use live commerce to jump-start the process. Inclusive sorting could begin with a rough idea of what might work or not. Then, the data collected during live interactions could also refine the criteria moving forward. And given that inclusive solutions tend to make things easier for everyone, it’s likely that these criteria could improve the experience for all, not just the intended audience. Inclusive shopping was never going to be an easy challenge, but it’s surprising that such a large opportunity remains untapped. Until now, companies have too often seen accessibility standards as bars to jump over. It’s time for innovative approaches instead, and most often this means not inventing anything new but rather creatively combining existing capabilities into new solutions. Today, the technology to bring live humans in contact with shoppers on a one-to-one basis exists. Brands can build on this to greatly expand the possibilities of the shopping experience and bring them not merely to those who need them but to everyone who could benefit from them. Which, history proves, is very likely all of us. |
Mark Zuckerberg demos a tool for building virtual worlds using voice commands | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | Meta, formerly known as Facebook, today showed off a prototype of an AI system that enables people to generate or import things into a virtual world just by using voice commands. The company sees the tool, which is called “Builder Bot,” as an “exploratory concept” that shows AI’s potential for creating new worlds in the metaverse. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off the prototype at the on Wednesday in a . In the video, Zuckerberg explained the process of building parts of a virtual world by describing them. He begins with the prompt, “let’s go to a park.” The bot then creates a 3D landscape of a park with green grass and trees. Zuckerberg then says “actually, let’s go to the beach,” after which the bot replaces the current landscape with a new one of sand and water. He then says he wants to add clouds and notes that everything is AI-generated. Zuckerberg then changes up the landscape by saying he’d rather have altocumulus clouds, which is meant to demonstrate how specific the voice commands can be. He then points to a specific area of the water and says “let’s add an island over there,” and then the bot creates one. Zuckerberg then issues several other voice commands, such as adding trees and a picnic blanket. He also adds the sound of seagulls and whales. At one point, he even adds a hydrofoil — a nod to one of his favorite hobbies, which Throughout the video, the Builder Bot appears to be using voice commands to create 3D objects and placing them onto the landscape. In the that announced the prototype, Meta said the tool will “fuel creativity in the metaverse,” but didn’t offer technical details. Meta The technology, if successful, could have implications for other VR worlds and platforms. For instance, game platform Roblox has and it offers its own . It’s interesting to imagine how a company like this could one day adopt the type of technology displayed in Meta’s prototype for a similar world-building experience. However, in its present form, the world that Builder Bot created is fairly simple in terms of its looks and functionality. And while it may be fun at first to speak commands to have objects appear, it’s not a scalable way to build more complex 3D environments. If anything, it could be a fun kids’ playground for an entry-level experience in virtual world creation. (Unfortunately, though, Meta is already proving that its virtual environment .) Meta’s unveiling of its prototype comes as the company is spending billions on the metaverse. Earlier this month, Meta released division for the first time and revealed that it lost more than $10 billion last year. The company said it expects the losses will only get bigger this year, which indicates that Meta has seemingly endless money to spend on building out the metaverse and likely has quite a bit of time to pull it off ahead of other smaller companies. The company’s deep investments into the metaverse also suggest we’ll see more prototypes that are designed to advance the metaverse. Although a true “metaverse” may not yet exist, the buzzword is being used by Zuckerberg and Meta a lot over the past year and even fueled its change. Zuckerberg described the metaverse to investors as a “virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces. You can kind of think of this as an embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at.” Meta made a few other announcements at its event today, including its plans for , and a . The company says the latter could provide instantaneous speech-to-speech translation across all languages, including those that are mostly spoken, which would be a leap over existing translation systems. Meta noted that 20% of the world’s population does not speak languages covered by current translation tools and that it plans to overcome this by deploying new machine learning techniques. |
Twitter reinstates accounts sharing open source info on Russian military threat | Taylor Hatmaker | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | Twitter disclosed that it mistakenly removed a number of accounts sharing details about Russian military activity Wednesday, as the nation’s aggressive posture toward neighboring Ukraine threatens to tip into a full-scale invasion. researcher Aric Toler called attention to the mistaken account suspensions early Wednesday after Twitter user @667_mancer was taken offline. An open source intelligence or “OSINT” account that recently debunked the Russian government’s claims of an attack by Ukraine was also suspended around the same time, as was sharing images and other data out of the region. The best aggregator out there of user-generated content from the Donbas over the last 8 years is getting suspended/locked out of his account, so if someone from Twitter is reading this, wave your magic wand or whatever to let him back in. — Aric Toler (@AricToler) I am back again after having been locked out twice in 24 hours. First time for a post debunking the "foiled sabotage / gas attack" and second time for a post debunking the "Ukrainian attack into Russia". needs to do something against these locks now. — Oliver Alexander (@OAlexanderDK) While some Twitter users claimed that the handful of OSINT account suspensions in rapid succession was a result of mass reporting, the company weighed in Wednesday to admit fault. “We’ve been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error,” the company explained in a statement provided to TechCrunch, “We’re expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts.” The company added that reports suggesting that the accounts had been suspended due to “a coordinated bot campaign” or “mass reporting” were not accurate. In a tweet, Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth explained that Twitter’s human moderation team made the mistake in its efforts to proactively detect and remove misleadingly altered photos and videos — a common and potentially dangerous form of misinformation known as “ .” We’re closely investigating — but mass reporting is not a factor here. A small number of human errors as part of our work to proactively address manipulated media resulted in these incorrect enforcements. We’re fixing the issue and reaching out directly to the affected folks. — Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) OSINT analysts and other misinformation researchers often share altered photos and videos in the course of debunking them and the prevalence of Russian propaganda misrepresenting the situation in Ukraine has presented many such opportunities, from an exploded car with to Putin’s . OSINT emerged in the last decade as a critical tool for documenting conflict and debunking misinformation in real-time. While that kind of data collection previously would have required high-level resources, the proliferation of social media and readily available satellite imagery makes it possible for online OSINT groups to track what governments are doing around the world in real-time. Bellingcat, the best-known organization doing OSINT work, has investigated everything from the assassination attempt against Russian anti-corruption figure Alexei Navalny to the attack on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. |
Jumia reports record orders and revenue but investors remain unconvinced | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | null |
RightHand cashes in on the white-hot warehouse robotics space with a $66M raise | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | COVID, supply chain issues, labor shortages, Amazon. Take your pick. The reasons for getting excited about logistics robotics are numerous and growing. had already amassed its share of buzz well before this whole pandemic thing really accelerated things, raising a fair amount from investors like GV, Menlo and Playground Global over a series of rounds. And unlike a lot of newcomers, the Boston-based firm has already logged a lot of real-world hours for its pick and place systems. Most recent of the bunch is the RightPick 3, which counts Japanese wholesaler Paltac and European pharmacy apo.com Group among its international clients. This week, the company announced a $66 million Series C. Led by Safar Partners, Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. and the SoftBank Vision Fund, the new round puts the company’s funding to date around $100 million. GV and Menlo are returning for the round, as well, joined by Zebra Technologies, Epson, Global Brain F-Prime Capital, Matrix Partners and Future Shape (Tony Fadell’s firm). Zebra’s an interesting partner here. In addition to its own in-house robotic inventory offerings, the company for $290 million halfway through last year. “Zebra Technologies has been an active investor and solution provider to help businesses globally digitize and automate their supply chains and augment front-line workers,” says Tony Palcheck, managing director of the enterprise company’s Zebra Ventures wing. “For customers across the consumer-packaged goods, retail, logistics and other industries, fulfilling orders with higher speed, accuracy, safety and cost savings is key, and RightHand Robotics helps achieve those efficiencies.” Funding will go toward the usual things: hiring, getting more office space and further scaling globally. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 2 | 24 | null |
This mechanical keyboard is something else | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | The market for mechanical keyboards has boomed in recent years and the pandemic only added fuel to it as people looked to improve their home setups (and spend their stimulus checks). Today, you can find anything from a $20 AliExpress special to a $600 Keycult board — before keycaps and switches, if you can even get one. And then there is ‘s , a wireless ortholinear split ergo keyboard with an aluminum body that sold for $1,600 (but with switches and keycaps). It can charge wirelessly and if you opt for the company’s Cybermat, you’ll never have to think about charging it. That’ll set you back another $380, though. So, for $2,000, you get a whole new typing experience and a heck of a learning curve, but you’re going to have a hard time finding one. Angry Miao tells me it doesn’t currently have plans for another Am Hatsu production run, so chances are the prices on the secondary market will be quite a bit more than the original retail price. Now, let’s just get this out of the way at the outset: Whether any of this is worth the money is a decision you can only make for yourself. At this price, it’s either something you dismiss at the outset or an impulse buy to reward yourself for your smart crypto investments. I’m not sure there’s a lot of room in the middle. TechCrunch If you’re new to mechanical keyboards and want to be able to customize your experience, a , (or the upcoming Q3) or a will all give you a great experience for less than $250, all in. Or if you don’t even want a custom experience, just get a Leopold or a Ducky and call it a day. But if you are in the market for a split ergo, you don’t have a ton of choices. Still, an or will get very close for a fraction of the price — and may have some advantages, too. And there’s always the Kinesis Advantage 2, with its single-piece design but a similar concave kind of ortholinear layout. Or if you just want to dip your toes into ortholinear keyboards, a or would make for a good entry point. While you may not have heard of them before, Angry Miao isn’t completely new to the mechanical keyboard market. With the Cyberboard, which features a large LED panel at the back of the board, the company had a bit of a that has now sold out of three production runs after plenty of positive reviews. The company tells me a new, Matrix-themed Cyberboard should launch next month. Angry Miao’s Cyberboard Am Hastu plays in a different market than the Cyberboard, though, and definitely isn’t for everyone. Just learning to use this new layout is a challenge. With keys that are in a straight line instead of the staggered layout of traditional keyboards split between two sides, you do get the benefits of being able to relax your shoulder muscles and barely having to move your wrist. But just think about relearning to use your right thumb for pushing space and CTRL or your left thumb for backspace and enter. And that’s before you learned the layering system for typing numbers because, like many similar boards, the Am Hatsu doesn’t have a number row, let alone F-keys or arrow keys. There’s a reason 65% boards are so popular in the mechanical keyboard community. They give you all of those (minus the F-keys) in a nice compact format that even has space for page-up and page-down buttons. I’ve spent a week with the Am Hatsu now and am typing this story on it, but it isn’t for the faint of heart. My regular typing speed is nothing special, at somewhere between 80 to 90 words per minute. It went down to closer to 15 words starting out and slowly moved back to 30 after a week. That’s not great, but it is also not an indictment of the Am Hatsu. It’s simply a layout you have to get used to. TechCrunch If you take the plunge, though, the hardware itself is absolutely beautiful. Angry Miao talks a lot about how the Am Hatsu’s distinct aluminum body was machined with a five-axis CNC machine. That’s not a cheap process, but it shows. The build quality here is something else. I don’t think you’ll be able to find any split ergo keyboard that comes anywhere close. Angry Miao says the design was inspired by HBO’s Westworld. I guess I can see that, with its black and white color scheme and overall design language, but it’s not all that important. The less said about Angry Miao’s NFT scheme, the better (I find that holds true for all NFTs), but to get a board, you basically have to buy an NFT on OpenSea, which you can then trade in for a physical board. The design is rounded out by small LED strips on the inner side of each half that show that the individual sides are on, and their respective charging state. They are pretty unobtrusive and mostly just add a nice touch of color to the board. The battery is supposed to last about two weeks of daily use on a full charge. With the Cybermat, it won’t matter since it’ll just draw power from that, but otherwise, there’s a USB-C port underneath each half. That’s not a great place for it. It’s either a way to sell more Cybermats or just a matter of design over function, since the design team clearly tried to hide any ports and screws, leaving only the underside for the charging port. You’d think designers had learned from Apple’s infamous Magic Mouse 2. TechCrunch The Bluetooth connection works very well, though, and I didn’t notice any lag. Unsurprisingly, you can’t use the keyboard when it’s wired to your computer. It’s Bluetooth or bust. Another design choice I can understand better but don’t like is that for $1,600, you’re stuck with one kind of switch, Angry Miao’s Icy Silver switches. These are linear switches (so there’s no tactile bump like you might know from a Cherry Brown switch; you can insert your own joke here how Cherry Browns are and barely semi-tactile anyway). I like linear switches, so this works for me, but this is not what’s called a “hotswap” board, so you can’t change the switch for something closer to your personal preference. For what it’s worth, the TTC-made “Icy Silver” switches feature long dual-stage springs that take an initial force of 45 grams to activate. That’s a bit lighter than the popular Gateron Yellow switches with an actuation force of 50 grams, and slightly heavier than the TTC Icy Speed switches on which Angry Miao’s switch is based. Most importantly for keyboard geeks, though, these are really smooth switches and I have yet to feel any scratchiness or ping noise (and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, just know that that’s a good thing). The keycaps, I’m not too fond of. These are a variation of and they are a bit too thin and smooth for my taste. They look great, but I’d likely replace them with a PBT set, though finding a set with all the right keycaps for this unusual layout may prove to be tough. TechCrunch If you’re really into mechanical keyboards, you’ll now ask: but ? Thocc is all about the sound the keyboard makes, with a lot of people preferring a kind of deeper sound, but in reality, nobody really knows. The Am Hatsu doesn’t have that deep sound. It’s more of a higher-pitched one, but not unpleasant by any means. With most enthusiast keyboards, you can easily change the sound profile. High-end boards typically come as DIY kits that allow you to make changes to the design. The Am Hatsu does not. This isn’t meant to be a keyboard for tinkerers. Indeed, you’re not going to easily find a screw to even open up the board. Sadly, that also goes for the software. You can modify what every key does, but you only get the two default layers to work with. As of now, you can’t add additional layers, something that’s pretty standard, especially in the world of small and ortholinear keyboards that. But let’s talk about the Cybermat, too. It’s a heavy piece of hardware, weighing in at just over nine pounds, made out of a single 900x340mm piece of aluminum, making it a bit thinner than the standard 900x400mm size that’s typical for deskmats. The version I tested is the company’s second iteration and, like the Am Hatsu, it’s something else. We’re basically talking about a giant wireless charging station, powered by a 90W GaN charger that features a total of 12 charging coils, two at the sides, mostly for charging your phones and the rest in the middle for charging the two keyboard halves — or you could use those for phones and other devices, too. TechCrunch It comes with a deskmat to put over it that shows you exactly where the coils are. Angry Miao says the mat was inspired by Tesla’s Cybertruck and that inspiration isn’t hard to see, with its hard edges around the corners and at the bottom of the mat. There is a small cutout in the back-left corner with charging indicators for the four charging zones and the USB-C plug. The company says the mat offers all kinds of security features, including overcurrent protection, overvoltage protection, undervoltage protection, overheating protection and short circuit protection, as well as foreign object detection. I admit I still felt a bit uneasy putting a cup of coffee on it since I don’t have the best track record of keeping coffee off my keyboards. It’s a solid piece of hardware (I mistakenly stepped on it once while I was setting it up and it didn’t budge). The price is hard to swallow, but the same goes for the keyboard. It’s not a gadget you just buy to give it a whirl and see if it works for you. For both the Am Hatsu and the Cybermat, Angry Miao is pretty clear that you only have 72 hours after receiving it to make a return — and only if it’s unused. Essentially, sales are final, which may be a hard pill to swallow, given the price. This kit isn’t something that makes for an easy buying recommendation. If it’s exactly what you’re looking for and money isn’t an issue, go for it. If you’re on the fence, maybe try one of the more affordable options first. You won’t be able to find the build quality and eye-catching design of the Am Hatsu anywhere else — but that goes for the eye-watering price as well. |
Inside the pitch deck that won Heartbeat Health’s first investment check | Jordan Crook | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | leading cause of death in the U.S., but the healthcare industry spends more money helping patients after they get sick, instead of keeping them healthy. To fill this gap, , founded by Dr. Jeff Wessler, has raised , developing a digital data layer that uses telemedicine, remote diagnostics and digital heart health programs to give patients and clinicians a more proactive way to stay healthy. On our last episode of TechCrunch Live, we spoke with Wessler and to learn how its first fundraising deal came together and how Heartbeat’s pitch deck helped convince Kindred to invest. “We look for founders who have a combination of domain insight and domain experience,” said Maqubela. “A lot of people who are very experienced in a domain are not totally insightful about it. They know all the reasons why you can never do something in that area. It takes a beginner’s mind, almost a little naivety, to have real insight in some areas.” Though it’s often seen as an advantage to have experience in the industry you’re trying to solve for, or sell to, that experience must be paired with the insight to see a solution. Maqubela said Wessler’s optimism about addressing cardiovascular health in a new way, paired with his deep understanding of the existing landscape, was attractive: “What I liked about Jeff was that he was from that world, but he was not of that world,” said Maqubela. He added that Kindred is more than willing to invest in founders before they have a product or even a prototype, but that there is certain criteria involved. Alongside domain insight, Kindred also looks for personality that people want to partner with. As part of the firm’s investment due diligence in Wessler, Kindred helped recruit technical co-founding partners. “The theory was that if one of them was ready to quit their ‘insert great job X’ to go work with this cardiologist, that’s actually a really important input that he is CEO material as well as a clinician,” said Maqubela. As we dove into the pitch deck, Wessler and Maqubela both highlighted an early slide (pictured below). We often hear that heart disease is the number-one killer, but the extra context around the problem of heart disease itself was critical in telling the Heartbeat Health story. The slide described cardiovascular disease as a bigger threat than all cancers combined, is 80% preventable. “It’s the biggest health issue facing America and has humongous impact,” said Maqubela. “Everyone I’ve spoken to since day one of Heartbeat Health, either in a pitch capacity or a recruitment capacity or from our team, has experience with heart disease, with friends or family or loved ones in one way or another. It’s a problem that gripped you.” |
Is it time to worry about fintech valuations? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | company of Nubank, , and in response to rapid revenue growth and improving economics, the company saw its value drop 9% in regular trading today after falling sharply in recent sessions. Now worth just $8 per share, Nu is underwater from its IPO price and down about a third from its all-time highs. It’s hardly alone in its struggles. Fintech valuations have taken a whacking in recent months, even more perhaps than the ; SaaS and cloud shares have , but declines in fintech stocks may take the cake when it comes to negative returns of late. Why do we care? Because fintech may be the best-funded startup sector. TechCrunch that fintech startups collected around a fifth of venture capital dollars last year. A full one in five bucks from an all-time record venture capital year, we should add. It’s not an exaggeration to say that as fintech goes, so too goes the startup market, and therefore the profile for venture capital returns. So how are we to balance falling public-market valuations for fintech companies and simply bonkers-level private-market investment? That’s our question for today. To get our heads around the issue, if not the solution, let’s start with a refresh of fintech venture capital results, the fintech liquidity crunch and what has happened to fintech stocks. Unless you own many shares of financial technology startups, this will be fun. The amount of capital afforded to financial technology startups is hard to fathom. In 2021, from a total of $621 billion of invested private-market capital generally under the venture aegis, some $131.5 billion across 4,969 deals went to fintech startups. That data, from , also indicated that dollar volume for the sector was rising more quickly than deal volume. Which, if you run the numbers, allows for greater deal size over time. This is from a sector that raised $49 billion in 3,491 deals back in 2020. That’s a 168% gain in a single year. You know the names: Brex and Ramp and Airbase raised in 2021, just as Stripe did. And FTX and OpenSea. The list is replete with huge companies that help consumers and companies alike manage, invest and move money around. Chime raised a massive $750 million Series G last August, a deal that pushed its valuation to around $25 billion. Which, you think, naturally makes the company an IPO candidate for 2022, right? Only maybe, it turns out. Forbes the company’s IPO has been pushed back to late 2022, perhaps even the fourth quarter. That was Nu reported lots of growth and its first full-year adjusted profitability and got a tenth of its value decapitated after suffering declines in prior recent trading sessions. Does Chime want to go public in that market? Probably not, with investors casting aspersions on one of its best-known global cognates. Nearly $400 billion has gone into fintech startups from the start of 2018 through the end of 2021. That’s an amount of money that is hard to grok, but we can better understand it as a rising pressure. The more money that goes into any particular sector’s startups, and the longer that money sits illiquid, the more that investors have anticipations for exits — which means liquidity, naturally, from things like IPOs. |
Climate investment is heating up with more than $40B invested across 600+ deals in 2021 | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | 2021 was a hell of a year for startups operating in the climate space. Globally, around 1,400 investors are looking at the next generation of companies that are tackling climate change. They deployed more than $40 billion across more than 600 deals — that’s more than twice as much capital deployed than the year before. Mobility and energy startups are consistently raising the most capital, with great food & water tech in a distant third place, according to a new report from . I recently on what they are observing in their portfolios and across the industry. They welcome the additional influx of capital, and suggest that this is a right-sizing of this market segment, rather than a bubble: “As we invest in the climate and circular economy space, we continue to prove our theses and are thrilled to see new investors joining the space,” Georgia Sherwin, senior director of Strategic Initiatives & Partnerships at told me in an opinion that is largely shared across the industry. “We have always considered catalyzing more investment in the circular economy and climate tech generally, and we welcome new investors who joined the space this year.” One reason for the growth is that upstream capital is becoming more conscious of where they deploy their investment dollars. Limited partners (i.e. the folks who invest in venture capital funds) are becoming more aware of their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) impact, and are tipping the scales in the planet’s favor in the process. In the first half of the year, there were some truly enormous rounds across mobility, with large rounds of investments going to and , and at the tail-end of last year the energy slice of the pie got a huge boost with multibillion-dollar investments into fusion energy companies like and . We’ll likely see this year as well. Climate tech investment was $40bn last year — more than twice as much as the year before. In particular, early-stage deals skyrocketed over the past year, with more than 60% of all deal activity. Seed-stage deals represented less than 2% of cash deployed, but around 30% of the number of deals. This means a couple of things; in 2022 there’s going to be a lot of companies raising a tremendous amount of later-stage capital. Per definition, these will be lower-risk deals for the investors, attracting larger dollar amounts, and further whetting the appetite for these types of companies. Best of all, for those of us who are cheering on hopes for continued existence on this pale blue dot of ours, that means the amount of attention going to climate change solutions is about to get a sharp increase as well. It’s going to be exciting to see how climate tech evolves this year; even in the first few weeks of the year, we have seen investors come hard out of the gate with a flurry of new funds raised, some huge investments deployed and a horde of smaller companies attacking the climate challenge we’re collectively facing from all angles. |
Dear Sophie: Startup visa news, H-1B and STEM OPT queries | Sophie Alcorn | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | 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 Distressed, I’m so sorry to hear that your employer won’t register you in the upcoming in March, which is the last chance your employer has to enter you in the lottery. We’re often seeing that most tech companies will take every chance to register all OPT employees every year until they get selected. Given that your expires in February 2023, you should start looking at other visa or green card options now with an experienced immigration attorney who can make suggestions based on your unique situation, experience and goals. It is likely too late to find an employer willing to register you for this year’s lottery. However, you could look for a company that would be willing to pursue a , which does not involve a lottery and can be applied for at any time during the year. Joanna Buniak / Work visas like the H-1B require a company to sponsor you, so you should look for other positions at companies that have a culture of diversity and inclusion and are willing to sponsor you. The current high demand for STEM talent means you should have several job options available to you. Moreover, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently made several policy changes designed to retain international STEM students in the United States, such as recognizing some doctoral dissertation awards and Ph.D. scholarships as meeting the criteria for a national or internationally recognized award for excellence for the extraordinary ability visa. Stay the course — where there’s a will, there’s a way! —Sophie |
TikTok star Charli D’Amelio and family back Facetune maker Lightricks | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | Charli D’Amelio is the creator on TikTok, but the 17-year-old superstar and her family are now looking beyond their short-term riches from short-form video. Today, the D’Amelio family announced a partnership with , the company that makes photo and video-editing apps like , and other tools, which have over 500 million downloads combined. The D’Amelios — , her fellow TikTok star sister , and parents and — are taking an equity stake in the company and joining as strategic advisors. Lightricks declined to share how much the family invested, but confirmed that the D’Amelio family’s investment was separate from the company’s recent . In addition to their financial contribution, the family will write exclusive content on an editorial offering called . Alongside the announcement of their partnership with the D’Amelio family, Lightricks is unveiling its service to compete with other “link in bio” platforms like , , and more. Lightricks’ LinkInBio is free to use and customizable, allowing creators to add links to social profiles, other websites and, importantly, a tip jar powered by Stripe. Still, competitor “link in bio” platforms offer more sophisticated monetization options — Snipfeed, for example, supports selling digital goods, like personalized, asynchronous tarot readings. But the trade-off is that these more elevated platforms often charge a subscription fee, or take a cut from sales. “The [D’Amelio] family are trailblazing the creator economy and continue to inspire up-and-coming creators worldwide.” said Zeev Farbman, co-founder and CEO of Lightricks, in a press release. “It will be a pleasure to have the family so involved in every step of the development process.” Per data from Crunchbase, this is the D’Amelio family’s first startup investment as a collective. But Charli D’Amelio herself invested in , a teen banking service, as part of their $100 million Series C raise last year. It’s not uncommon for celebrities to try to grow their wealth through startup investments (think about , , …), but the D’Amelios are charting new territory as influencers-turned-investors. “We are passionate about the start-up space and love meeting entrepreneurs and new companies. We plan on making several investments in the future and supporting companies we believe make great products and services,” the D’Amelio family told TechCrunch in an emailed statement. TikTok creators might have more concerns about the longevity of their stardom than a star athlete like , or a Hollywood actor like . With support from father Marc D’Amelio, a former Republican candidate for the Connecticut state senate, and mother Heidi D’Amelio, a former model, Charli and Dixie have already grown their profile by launching a variety of business ventures, like a , a and even a . But like “ ,” which also chronicles the struggles (yes, struggles) of teen millionaires, “The D’Amelio Show” emphasizes how the sisters try to navigate the adverse mental health affects of constant online attention. This partnership with Lightricks may seem like a questionable choice, given how the company’s flagship app Facetune has been thought to contribute to , since it’s often used as a retouching tool. The negative influence of social media on teen mental health has been a lately, but beyond Facetune, Lightricks tools are often used to simply make video editing easier. Just yesterday, Charli D’Amelio posted that blatantly show her (very normal!) teenage acne, so hey. Retouching tools will always exist, and they’re not inherently nefarious, but it’s how (and when) we use them that matters. |
14 climate tech investors share their H1 2022 strategies | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 2 | 23 | size as Florida, global warming has made Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier increasingly unstable. This month, researchers are attempting to reach the “Doomsday Glacier” for study, but icebergs are slowing their progress. The climate emergency is becoming more apparent, and investors are taking notice. Last year, round sizes for climate tech startups quadrupled, with more than 600 investments totaling over $40 billion. Nearly a third of these were pre-seed and seed, with 182 deals closing just in in Q4 2021. The start of 2022 shows no signs of slowing, with more startups jumping into the fray to tackle one of humanity’s biggest challenges. To examine the market forces and psychology driving climate tech, we surveyed an international group of investors to learn about how they evaluate new opportunities and what they’re looking for from the entrepreneurs who approach them. We spoke with: We’re fundamentally very bullish on the space. I think this is something that is a present-day issue for us to solve. We’re food and agriculture investors, so we definitely have that kind of lens as we think about it. We’re constructive around things like voluntary carbon markets. We think those are standing up. You’re already seeing quite a bit of flow in there. We have a different view wherein we see an inflection point around less of the corporate involvement and more on the consumer side. We’re investigating how the consumer engages with these markets to solve some of these issues rather than just relying on the Microsofts of the world to buy a bunch of carbon credits. If anything, I think all it does is validate the fact that it is a large opportunity. In some ways, it’s probably the largest opportunity in VC given its existential nature. I see it as a net positive that I don’t think there’s enough capital that we could put towards this to really find the underlying true issues here. Given where we have invested recently, we definitely saw health opportunities on the agtech side. One company is going after bettering soil health so that we can sequester more carbon through better ag practices. I think something similar can be done on the forestry side as well. As we think about carbon sinks, instead of going after these highly technical solutions, such as direct air capture, there are natural proven ways of doing it. So if we can accelerate that, I think that makes a lot of sense to me from a carbon removal standpoint. This is where we can integrate some of these carbon markets with the consumer. For example, what Moss is doing in terms of making these credits very easily available for just general applications, whether it’s loyalty programs or purchases that the consumers are making. I think it makes it much more tangible in terms of engaging with some of these environmental solutions and digitizing those environmental assets. Those downstream applications are something new and there could be quite a willing audience to engage with than just simply relying on the corporate consumer. A lot of this is bringing trust and credibility into the space. I think those tools allow for preventing things like double counting and tracking the provenance of these credits. That is where we see a lot of the benefits. It’s also a way to create a more frictionless pipeline between the projects themselves, and then some of these applications and things like instant offsets make a lot of sense, especially in some of these consumer applications. We definitely think through that when we do our diligence. It is an important component. You want to make sure that things you’re investing in are a net positive. There are always some indirect consequences at times, some of which you don’t realize until much later. You have to be in business to make these investments. So there’s a component of making sure that you’re keeping your LPs happy and you’re providing the kinds of returns they’re seeking. That being said, I think a lot of this is also like a stage process. So some of the technologies that have been invested in could be foundational for other things that come in later. |
Appboxo raises $7M to turn any app into a super app | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | Mini-apps are lightweight programs that run within a larger app and serve as additional sources of user engagement and revenue. They became popularized by “super apps” like WeChat, Alibaba and Grab. But not all developers have these tech giants’ resources. Based in Singapore, Appboxo wants to level the playing field. The startup’s platform lets developers turn their apps into super apps, either by building their own mini-apps or accessing them through Appboxo Showroom, a marketplace for third-party developers. Appboxo, whose clients include GCash, Paytm and VodaPay, announced today that it has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by RTP Global. Other participants included its first investors, Antler and 500 Southeast Asia, plus new backers like SciFi VC, Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI-focused venture fund) and angel investors Huey Lin and Kayvon Deldar. Appboxo was founded in 2019 by Kaniyet Rayev, its CEO and CTO Nursultan Keneshbekov. TechCrunch first . The company is now used by 10 super apps across Southeast Asia, India and South Africa, and powers more than 400 mini-app integrations, the majority of which are built by third-party developers. The company has two main products. The first is Miniapp, a SaaS platform with SDKs and APIs for building and launching mini-apps. For example, mobile wallets can integrate mini-apps for food delivery, shopping or restaurant reservations. The second, launched about a year ago, is Shopboxo, which lets businesses set up customizable online stores through mobile devices in less than 30 seconds. Then mini-apps created with Shopboxo can be integrated into super apps through Appboxo, and Rayev expects that being able to reach a broader merchant base of SMEs will scale the number of mini-apps into the thousands this year, especially since Appboxo’s clients already use its platform mainly for e-commerce. “Financial super apps want to diversify into new verticals, and in the current landscape, e-commerce looks like the most obvious opportunity and the easiest to execute.” Rayev tells TechCrunch that AppBoxo’s new funding will be used to further develop Shopboxo, while also expanding its merchant ecosystem and building out its international presence. At first, the startup will focus on the Asia-Pacific region, where super apps are the most dominant, he says, but it also wants to enter Europe and the United States. |
SME lender Funding Societies raises $144M led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, plus $150M in debt lines | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | Small businesses are the backbone of Southeast Asia’s economy, but many struggle to secure working capital loans because they don’t have traditional credit records or collateral, say the founders of . The fintech, which claims to be the region’s largest SME digital financing platform, uses alternative forms of credit scoring and has disbursed more than $2 billion in financing to MSMEs since it launched in 2015. Today, Funding Societies announced it has raised $144 million in an oversubscribed Series C+ equity round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from new investors like VNG Corporation, Rapyd Ventures, EDBI, Indies Capital, K3 Ventures and Ascend Vietnam. It also received $150 million in debt lines from institutional investors, some of which have been drawn down since last year. TechCrunch first covered Funding Societies . The company’s previous round was a $45 million Series C raised between 2020 and 2021. Part of its newest funding, or $16 million, will be distributed to former and existing employees through its stock option plan in the form of share buybacks. The company was founded in 2015 by Kelvin Teo and Reynold Wijaya after they met in Harvard Business School. It is now licensed and registered in Singapore, Indonesia (where it is known as Modalku), Malaysia and Thailand. It recently began operating in Vietnam and will use part of its Series C+ to enter the Philippines. The platform disburses online loans ranging in size from $500 to $1.5 million. Since its launch, it has disbursed more than $2 billion in business financing to MSMEs through more than 4.9 million loan transactions. Funding Societies’ customers range in size from neighborhood stores and e-commerce vendors to medium-sized enterprises, like fast-growth startups and established corporations that want access to faster revenue-based financing than bank loans, which usually take about two to three months to disburse, Teo tells TechCrunch. A recent impact study calculated using methodology by the Asian Development Bank showed that Funding Societies-backed MSMEs contributed $3.6 billion in GDP, and 350,000 jobs. By covering a wide range of businesses, Teo says Funding Societies has better customer acquisition costs and loan-to-value ratios. It also accumulates data faster to train its data-scoring models, which draw from traditional and alternative sources of data. Traditional sources include bank statements and credit bureau information if available, while alternatives ones can include transaction information, online reviews and supply chain data flow. One of Funding Societies’ advantages is that some of its data sources are proprietary, while they have exclusive rights to others through partnerships. This gives the startup an edge over newer players, Teo says, as well as the amount of loan repayment data that Funding Societies has collected since its launch. He added Funding Societies’ loan default rate is between 1% to 2%, even through the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why it was able to receive debt lines from so many institutions. Funding Societies’ interest rates are generally higher than banks, but lower or equal to credit cards — in fact, it offers a credit card with a debit line to serve as a substitute for corporate cards. It also partners with businesses, including e-commerce platforms like Shopee and Bukalapak, bookkeeping app , fintech Alterra and agritech platform that offer access to working capital loans to their SME customers. Teo and Wijaya say Funding Societies’ main competitors are not banks. Instead, Teo says many of its customers were relying on loans from friends or families, their savings and personal credit cards to finance their businesses. “The opportunity is huge because it’s a $300 billion U.S. dollar quality financing gap,” he says. In a prepared statement, SoftBank Investment Advisers managing partner Greg Moon said, “SMEs across Southeast Asia have historically struggled to access institutional finance and instead been forced to mainly rely on personal funding to support growth. Funding Societies is establishing a bridge for these companies to access more sustainable and cheaper financing by building unique data sets on their performance and using AI-led technology to assess their creditworthiness more effectively than traditional models.” |
Inside the Uber and Google settlement with Anthony Levandowski | Mark Harris | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | Valley’s most infamous characters has narrowly avoided — yet again — the worst consequences of his actions. Anthony Levandowski reached a last week that resolves a number of disputes with his two former employers Uber and Google and puts to rest one of the most dramatic and complicated storylines in the autonomous vehicle industry. Levandowski, an early pioneer in the AV industry left Google and started his own company Otto, which was quickly . That acquisition would lead to a trade secrets theft lawsuit that pitted Waymo (the former Google self-driving project) against Uber. Levandowski would ultimately lose his position at Uber and face criminal charges and a civil lawsuit. The final piece of this multi-year legal drama appears to finally be resolved. Under the agreement, Uber will pay Google a “substantial portion” of the it was awarded in arbitration in 2019, and which prompted Levandowski to file for bankruptcy. Uber will also pay Levandowski $2 million. A notes that Levandowski’s financial advisor believes the settlement agreement will give him enough cash to pay all the claims against him. The settlement avoids a potentially embarrassing trial for Uber, and could also mark the beginning of the end for Levandowski’s bankruptcy proceedings. In keeping with Levadowski’s dramatic path through the self-driving world, his legal cases have had many twists and turns of their own. If the agreement is approved by the court, it would be a triumph for Levandowski, who had been facing financial ruin, and an 18-month federal prison sentence after to a single count of trade secret theft from Google. Levandowski was in January 2021 at the 11th-hour by out-going President Trump. Uber is not paying Google the full $179 million amount of the award; the exact figure was redacted in filings and is protected by a confidentiality clause. However, the physical size of the redacted figure suggests that it is less than $100 million. Screenshot/court document Whatever the exact amount is, other creditors in Levandowski’s bankruptcy can either take the same proportion of their claim as Uber is paying of Google’s, plus some extra payments if there is money left over. Or they can take 50% as a single, final payment. That would only be a rational choice if the initial Uber payment is less than half what Google was due. “Peace among these critical constituencies assures that continued litigation concerning these disputes, and the risk and expense associated with it, will cease,” wrote all three parties in a filing. Remarkably, Levandowski even seems to have managed to get Uber and Google to help pay for the agreement that freed him. One clause in it notes: “The parties hereto will stipulate to allowance of an administrative claim of Levandowski, in his personal capacity, for payment of counsel fees in the negotiation of this Term Sheet in an amount not to exceed $30,000 (which amount is exclusive of the $25,000 previously advanced).” Uber was potentially on the hook for the Google award because it had signed an indemnification agreement with Levandowski when the ride-sharing giant acquired his self-driving truck startup Otto in 2016. The agreement provided legal cover for Levandowski for his actions during and after his employment on Google’s autonomous vehicle program Chauffeur, which later spun out as Waymo. These were later discovered to have included starting up a while at Google, removing technical data from the company, and wooing a number of engineers at Google to defect with him. Uber paid much of Levandowski’s legal costs during his criminal trial, but drew the line at footing the arbitration award, which clawed back the approximately $120 million Levandowski had earned while at Google, plus interest and lawyer’s fees. Uber alleged that Levandowski had not shared all of his “bad acts” before joining the company, which could have invalidated the agreement. Levandowski, for his part, claimed that Uber knew he had retained copious amounts of technical information and solicited Googlers to leave with him, and indemnified him anyway. A trial to decide Uber’s liability was due to begin in San Francisco today, with Levandowski planning to call high-profile witnesses including Uber founder Travis Kalanick and its former self-driving chief, now CEO of Carnegie Robotics, John Bares. The bankruptcy case has not been without its own revelations. Court documents show that in the run up to filing for bankruptcy, Levandowski bought his fiancee a $25,000 engagement ring, invested $250,000 in her business, gave her a $130,000 Tesla, and made payments to her of over $300,000. He also sank more than $8.5 million into his newest self-driving truck startup, Pronto.ai. The filings detail Levandowski’s extensive holdings in real estate, investment funds, and businesses with family members. At several points, Google’s lawyers were effectively working with Levandowski’s, as his success in holding Uber liable for the arbitration award seemed to represent the company’s best hope of getting paid. The settlement agreement now calls for Levandowski’s estate to make its own payments to Google, amounting to at least $25 million, and up to $30 million if there are enough funds. Levandowski must also “represent and warrant” that he has not provided any more Google secrets or confidential information to anyone else, and in particular, to “Pronto.ai or any Pronto.ai-related entity.” Pronto.ai recently launched a powered by cryptocurrency, called Pollen. shows that its initial release of devices was sold out, with Levandowski’s brother Max (who has worked with him at Otto, Uber and Pronto.ai) saying on LinkedIn that a new release of the hardware is planned. Uber did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the settlement agreement. Google spokesperson José Castañeda wrote: “We can confirm that this matter has been resolved.” Levandowski did not reply to messages either, but it is difficult to see the agreement as anything other than a victory for the engineer, who could soon be free to move ahead with his Pollen network unencumbered by costly, time-consuming lawsuits and outstanding debts. |
Why startups may want to rent hardware instead of buying it | Anna Heim | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | all sorts of things is a logical step in the evolution of a , but renting hardware wasn’t necessarily top-of-mind for startups until COVID-19 hit. Pre-pandemic, a common step in the onboarding process at many VC-funded startups in the Bay Area called for new employees to visit the closest Apple Store with a company credit card so they could pick up a new laptop. That practice stopped when offices closed, and as buildings sat empty, all those unused laptops, desktops, widescreen monitors and Aeron chairs began to look like a poor use of precious cash. At the same time, it became clear that remote work was here to stay – and that shipping devices to another country was expensive. Working from home during the pandemic created tailwinds for hardware rental companies. But even with the perspective of a hybrid return to offices, there’s a case to be made for renting not just software, but also laptops, phones, or even furniture. What should your early-stage startup do? “Don’t buy, rent,” reads the flyer of , a startup whose founders I recently met at an event. But with SaaS now being mainstream, why does this need to be said? Because Emendu doesn’t sell software subscriptions; it leases hardware to a range of clients, including startups. From a financial standpoint, there’s a key difference between buying and renting: The former is a capital expense; the latter an operating expense. In some places, this makes a huge difference when it comes to the amount of value-added taxes a startup can deduct. Emendu’s home country, Spain, is one of the locations where renting hardware is fiscally advantageous for startups. This aspect is less relevant in the U.S, certified public accountant told TechCrunch. “I haven’t seen the conversation come up from a tax standpoint here,” he said. Bianco is the CEO of , which provides startups with outsourced accounting and CFO support. But most of its clients “owe little to no tax” because “VC-backed startups [are] in growth mode [and] they are not yet profitable,” he said. If renting hardware makes sense for them, it’s not for the tax deductions. If there are financial reasons for a startup not to buy its hardware, “it would be more about cash flow management,” Bianco said. But decapitalization is only a major concern “for very early-stage companies where cash is a scarce resource” or “if the amount of hardware being purchased is material to the company.” Add in options like credit and BNPL, and it appears that the main advantage of renting hardware may not be financial. “For companies that have raised money, it’s definitely more about [saving] time,” Bianco said Efficiency is a key success factor for startups, and it’s also the framework through which they can examine hardware rental. According to Emendu’s head of digital, Francisco Chaves, hardware rental starts becoming relevant around the 10-employee mark. Under that threshold, startups might find it easier to buy hardware. Things change once the team grows, especially if it’s distributed, Chaves said, adding that Emendu is shipping devices all across Europe. |
Airbnb’s pandemic slingshot nears completion | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | bell, home rental giant Airbnb its Q4 2021 performance. Its numbers detail a company that endured an awful start to the COVID-19 era, survived, and has come out the other end of demand disruption in perhaps better health than it entered. The company’s profitability and improved revenues when compared to 2019 are a somewhat stark contrast to . Hopin, a company that provides software that supports virtual or hybrid events, saw at the same time when Airbnb was . And this week Hopin cut a double-digit percentage of its staff. The pandemic giveth, and then pandemic taketh away. Or perhaps it taketh away, and then re-giveth. You get the idea. Let’s chat through Airbnb’s quarterly results’ highlights and our occasional quibble as we digest a world for technology companies that appears increasingly like the pre-pandemic days. In the fourth quarter, Airbnb saw $11.3 billion worth of total platform activity (GMV), which led to revenues of $1.53 billion, and net income of $55 million. For the full 2021 period, Airbnb recorded $46.9 billion worth of platform activity, $6.0 billion in total top line and a net loss of $352 million. Analysts had Airbnb to report $1.46 billion in top-line for the fourth quarter, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.03 — the company’s adjusted EPS at $0.08 for the quarter, so Airbnb racked up a top-and-bottom beat in the fourth quarter. The company also beat GMV expectations by around $200 million. That all looks good, yeah? Well, there are reasons to be modestly critical of the company’s financial performance. Let’s chat lesser results and then consider how far Airbnb has come from its own pandemic low and took on expensive capital to ensure its survival. Some might find it in poor taste to dig up the less salubrious bits of an earnings report that was generally positive, especially when the company in question’s stock is up in after-hours trading. To which we say, Shares of Airbnb rose 6% during regular hours, and another 4% after its earnings dropped. The street is happy. The other side of the sunny Airbnb coin includes the following: |
New DocuSign-Zoom integration lets you sign docs in a Zoom meeting | Ron Miller | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | Anyone who had to get documents signed early in the pandemic knows how harrowing and dangerous the situation was. Nobody wanted to meet face-to-face, but we still had to conduct business. Today, in an effort to simplify online document signing, and announced a new integration that lets you review and sign a document right within a Zoom meeting, greatly simplifying the legal requirements and eliminating the need to get in a car and go to an office. “DocuSign eSignature for Zoom enables organizations to reimagine agreement processes with virtual, face-to-face signing experiences that accelerate time to agreement – while building trust and loyalty,” the company wrote announcing the new feature. Jerome Levadoux, SVP, head of eSignature Products at DocuSign, Chances are in most situations, the person signing has had a chance to review the document and the meeting is simply to display and sign the documents. The way it works is you add DocuSign from the Zoom marketplace. This adds DocuSign to the Zoom interface. You start a meeting, click the DocuSign button to start the workflow and select the documents to be signed. You then pass control to the first signer, complete any final discussions and have the first person sign. If there are multiple signers you would pass control to the next person to sign. After the meeting all attendees will receive a PDF of the signed contract, sent to the emails associated with the Zoom invite. Throughout the pandemic, we have seen in businesses operating online. We have also seen other SaaS tools allow us to continue doing business, even when we couldn’t be together. Even as we return to the office, business can continue to be conducted this way without having to travel to meet face-to-face, saving not only time, but the environmental impact of multiple parties coming to a central location. |
Daily Crunch: India’s Central Bank says cryptocurrency ‘may even be worse’ than Ponzi schemes | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, February 15, 2022! We have a busy slate for you today, including news sure to annoy the blockchain faithful, new funds, Facebook’s latest rebrand and more. But first, in an essay on TechCrunch, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff .” It is an interesting argument against Windows and the larger Web (we kid), but does raise notable points regarding mobile security and consumer expectations. It’s worth reading regardless of your priors. – Data from PitchBook indicates that 2021 turbocharged the pace at which startups raised capital, yes, but also pushed the prices paid for startup shares to the stratosphere. The result? Oddly enough, more value creation between rounds than before, which means great markups for venture capitalists, despite their having to pay more, earlier. We chewed on the data and wondered: If venture investors are willing to pay so much more for startup equity today now that there is more competition, were the same investors undervaluing companies for years? Today in mega-rounds: and . The pace at which huge rounds – and especially those in the nine-figure range – are put together continues to impress in 2022. Today TechCrunch has notes on Veho ($170 million, a few months after it raised $125 million) and Swappie ($124 million in its latest), investments that underscore just how much capital there is in the market for yet-private tech companies today, despite the public market selloff, inflation concerns and central-bank tightening. And so much more: , for the Middle East and Africa, and for a new fintech fund. Basically, it is out there, so make sure you are following TechCrunch and TechCrunch+ . / Getty Images By this point, most startup employees have worked remotely. Even so, few managers have any meaningful experience when it comes to overseeing distributed teams. With that in mind, SaaS startup Wingback made a fractional head of remote its first hire, “and it was the best decision we made,” said Yann Leretaille, co-founder and CTO. “A head of remote is not just a glorified HR manager. They make sure that the right processes are set up and that the right tools are selected and used to make remote work successful.” And to close out, I am in the market for a friend with $450,000 they want to gift me, . SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know here. |
Transform your startup investors into growth marketers without them noticing | Miles Jennings | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | If you’re successful at raising capital, investors have jumped into the passenger seat with you, ready to be taken on a journey. It’s likely a long trip, with the average time to a liquidity event being about . Due to later IPOs, this road is getting longer. During this long trip, investors want much more than to generate a return at the end of the journey. Investors want to benefit themselves their own personal and professional networks along the entire journey. They desire a halo effect. When they bring people together on a deal, they want the deal to make money. When they recommend a product, they want the product to be fantastic. Investors typically deeply understand the value of relationships, so they want to create positivity for themselves and others throughout the long journey. Design your shareholder relationships and communications around benefiting investors’ extended personal networks. Investors will gladly be your advocates and serve as an essential extension of your growth marketing team. Here’s how to help investors market your company. First-time founders typically rush to send shareholder updates when times are good and are filled with dread when times are tough. Shareholder updates should inform about traction, wins, losses, worries and risks, but their most important function is Remember, investors want to be part of the journey and tell others about it. A great shareholder update gives people something to talk about. Before sending your next monthly email, look for ways to insert shareable moments into your update. Let’s say you make software for a new kind of smart home gym. Will your investors share that you hit 500 users? It’s excellent for you, but not very interesting or beneficial to anyone else. But maybe you have data that shows that only 20% of adults can do one pull-up – that’s a fun fact that people might share with their networks. Maybe you have a unique discount code or gift that they can give to a family member or colleague — that’s even better. Include a shareable fact or exclusive offer and you’ll see them spread the story. Good often experiment, tweaking their content and even products according to demand. Experiments are typically segmented by channel; for example, you might change the pace of social media updates to determine the optimal frequency and time. Good experiments can also be done with an intentionally small but representative sample size – consider walking up to the 15 people you share a WeWork space with and asking each one if they would buy your new product. |
Cannabis beverage startup Cann raises $27M as it expands to Canada | Lucas Matney | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | , a THC beverage company marketing itself as a fun alternative to alcohol, is bulking up on funding as it brings the product into Canada — its first international market expansion. The startup announced Tuesday that it has raised $27 million in Series A funding from some new and unnamed institutional investors, past investor Imaginary Ventures and a host of celebrity influencers including stars like Nina Dobrev, Adam Devine, Zoey Deutch and Rosario Dawson, among others. The company closed a $5 million seed round back in 2020. Cann’s schtick is low-THC drinks that consumers can drink a few of without getting way too stoned. Their standard offering is an 8 ounce can that packs 2mg of THC and 4mg of CBD. For the time being, Cann is perhaps a bit pricey to directly compete with the full market of beer or spiked seltzer drinkers. A 6-pack of the 8 ounce beverages goes for $20 (in the California market at least) but is substantially pricier with steep state Cannabis taxes. The company has a fairly wide variety of product offerings — with different availability in different markets — including THC-infused syrups which can by mixed with tonic or as an ingredient in a Cannabis cocktails. Somewhat bewilderingly they are also selling 12-packs of 8 ounce Cannabis-free tonic waters for $25, thought it’s clear the company is throwing a lot at the wall to see what sticks with their audience. Cann is, of course, limited by broader Cannabis regulation in terms of what markets in can move into. The startup currently sells products in California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Nevada and Illinois. Their expansion into Canada is starting with an entry into the Ontario market. |
Akamai acquires Linode for $900M | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 2 | 15 | , the company you probably mostly think of as a content delivery network but that also offers security and edge computing services, today that it has Linode. The price of the acquisition is $900 million, with Akamai expecting Linode to add about $100 million in revenue for its fiscal year 2022. , which launched back in 2003, quickly made a name for itself as an affordable place to rent virtual private servers. That was shortly before AWS turned cloud computing into a buzzword and, at the time, VPSes were the way to host your own websites or basic web apps. Since then, the company continued to expand its offerings as both the hyper clouds and competitors like DigitalOcean started to emerge. Unlike some of its competitors, Linode boostrapped and never took any outside funding. Today, Linode offers all the core cloud services that developers expect (as do most of the early VPS providers). That includes compute, but also block and object storage, managed database, load balancers and, most recently, a for running containerized applications. Linode Akamai says it is buying Linode to help it “become the world’s most distributed compute platform, from cloud to edge.” “The opportunity to combine Linode’s developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamai’s market-leading edge platform and security services is transformational for Akamai,” said Akamai CEO and co-founder Dr. Tom Leighton in today’s announcement. “Akamai has been a pioneer in the edge computing business for over 20 years, and today we are excited to begin a new chapter in our evolution by creating a unique cloud platform to build, run and secure applications from the cloud to the edge. This a big win [sic!] for developers who will now be able to build the next generation of applications on a platform that delivers unprecedented scale, reach, performance, reliability and security.” Linode will continue to operate as usual for the time being and the company says that Akamai has “no intention of changing what has made us successful.” “There is natural synergy between Akamai and Linode, not only in our missions and cultures, but in the potent combination of strengths we each bring to the table,” writes Linode founder Christopher Aker. “The marriage of Linode’s compute and storage products with Akamai’s serverless, CDN, and security solutions, will give customers a broader range of services to build, modernize, and scale the next generation of applications.” Unlike Linode, Akamai never offered much of a self-serve SaaS product for developers, something that’s now pretty much expected in the market. With this, it is getting a foothold in this space and acquiring a company that, despite some security missteps in the past, is still spoken of highly by many developers who have used it for both professional and side projects over the years. |
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