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Uber, Lyft to pay NYC drivers more by end of year | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Uber and Lyft will have to increase the minimum pay rates for drivers in New York City by the end of the year, . The fare increase comes amid a driver shortage post-pandemic, in large part due to rising operational costs. The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) voted to increase the per-minute rates of ride-hail drivers by 7.42% and per-mile rates by 23.93%. Yellow and green cab rates will also increase by 23% by the end of this year. The commission is hoping that increasing the pay rates will attract more taxis and drivers to the roads in order to serve increasing passenger demand. “Raising taxi fare rates and minimum pay for high-volume drivers is the right thing to do for our city,” said TLC commissioner David Do in a statement. “This is the first taxi fare increase in ten years, and these raises will help offset increased operating expenses and the cost of living for TLC-licensed drivers.” Per the new rates, a sample trip of 30 minutes that goes 7.5 miles will require a minimum driver pay of $27.15, which is up $4 from original rates and more than $2.50 from the current rates, according to the TLC. The commission noted that this is still a minimum and companies can pay drivers higher than that amount. Companies will continue to choose how much to charge passengers. It’s not yet clear how this will affect Uber and Lyft customers, and neither company has yet explained if they will offload costs onto passengers. In terms of metered rides, the new drop rate will be $3.00, up from $2.50. Unit rates will go from $0.50 to $0.70. This translates to an increase in passenger fare of about 22.9%, according to the TLC. So a $15.97 ride will now cost $19.62. In February, Uber and Lyft drivers got a in minimum driver pay rate due to inflation and higher operational costs. Today’s fare hike is on top of that. Ride-hail drivers can also expect to receive an additional rate increase in March, which will be based on inflation comparing December 2022 to September 2022. Last month, Uber urged the city to vote against the proposed fare increase, saying it was “ ” because it meant the agency would be locking in this summer’s high gas prices in perpetuity, only allowing expenses to go up moving forward. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) applauded the fare raise, saying it would provide momentum to get driver income to $25 per hour after expenses. “This raise is very important for us. After the $2300 a month I pay in rent, the expensive cost of gas and food, what do I have left at the end of the day?” said Mamadou L Diallo, NYTWA member and Uber and Lyft driver, in a . “Our families, parents, children depend on us but it is not enough. We make New York a 24 hour city. We deserve this raise!” |
Genesis teases its EV future with the Genesis X convertible | Abigail Bassett | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Hyundai luxury arm Genesis unveiled Tuesday evening the Genesis X convertible, the third and final electric vehicle concept of the brand’s EV future. The reveal, held at a splashy event ahead of the 2022 Los Angeles Auto Show, follows the X Concept and the X Speedium Coupe — all of which fall under the Inspired by X lineup. These are all just concepts and few if any details were shared at the event. But the Genesis X convertible, and its concept siblings, aren’t just design exercises. The intent is for the vehicles, and specifically the front fascia of the Genesis X convertible, to showcase the brand’s new EV portfolio. When asked about whether the X Convertible or something like it might soon be in customers’ garages, Luc Donckerwolke, chief creative officer of the Hyundai Motor Group and the Genesis automotive brand, demurred. “Let’s put it this way. I’m putting a huge amount of energy, of my energy, to make it possible,” he told TechCrunch. Abigail Bassett The X Convertible has a hardtop roof with transparent moonroofs to keep the cabin open and spacious feeling for four passengers when the top is closed. The front of the vehicle gets Genesis’ new EV face, which is an abstract of the Genesis Crest Grille. Expect this new “face” to show up on future EVs. The white paint on the concept is called Crane White and incorporates pearl particles, according to the release. The interior is Giwa blue with Dancheong Orange stitching and a driver-oriented cockpit. Abigail Bassett Genesis calls the X Convertible, “a beacon for the brand.” And based on the reaction, perhaps it has that chance. When the vehicle was unveiled to select media and guests at a multimillion-dollar beach home in Malibu, California, the audience audibly gasped — a response that’s uncommon at these kinds of events. “We have to utilize this opportunity to inject more adrenaline in the brand,” Donckerwolke said. “If somebody believes that electric vehicles cannot be sexy, Genesis will demonstrate the exact opposite.” The X convertible shares its architecture and electric powertrain with the X Concept announced in 2021 and X Speedium Coupe concept announced in 2022. Donckerwolke wouldn’t confirm the underpinnings of these concepts. He did tell TechCrunch: “We are working with the right partners to get the right amount of of performance, which will be in my opinion adequate performance to fit this segment.” He continued to say that the X Convertible will “open up a new, uh, let’s say base of platform, a new platform and modular system.” Donckerwolke declined to elaborate. Genesis continues to push the design forward, as Donckerwolke mentioned, “Normally you go to you create something and you have to limit your design to the most common denominator,” he said. “We don’t have this, we, we talk to our internal suppliers and we say, we need those seats. We need those lights. And this is, this is basically allowing us to push the boundaries a lot. And that’s basically what’s allowing us to create cars like this.” Genesis said its aim is to “deliver products for customers to enjoy,” and given the response of the gathered attendees, the Convertible X Concept moves the brand in that direction. |
Daily Crunch: High-precision induction stove startup Impulse powers up with $20M Series A | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Greetings on this fine Tuesday. There was a lot of news today, so I’m not going to waste time and instead will get right to what you came here for. — . , but Vimcal thinks we shouldn’t have to spend that much time creating the actual event. writes that this “nifty calendar app” will have you entering a new event and even providing scheduling options in just a few steps. Oh, and it also has a desktop version. Pucker up, robot enthusiasts! Pickle brought in $26 million in new funding to continue developing its , which writes is one of the “links in the chain that remains one of the least addressed.” And we have five more for you: Getty Images / Ratchapoom Anupongpan / EyeEm For founders interested in building on their own, maintaining control and staying off the fundraising treadmill for as long as possible, investor/entrepreneur Marjorie Radlo-Zandi sets out five basic principles for bootstrapped founders in her latest TC+ article. “Don’t be tempted to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to meet potential customers in glamorous locations or for meetings in far-flung locations,” she writes. “Your bootstrapped business likely will not survive such big, optional financial outlays.” Bootstrapped founders face longer odds, but if they can drive growth and reach product-market fit, “fundraising will be that much easier.” Three more from the TC+ team: Alibaba’s logistics arm, Cainiao, is , which it hopes will fill some of the gap left by a Chinese commerce slowdown, reports. The e-commerce giant started delivering goods in Brazil earlier this year and has plans to boost its presence in the country over the next three years. Netflix wants to help you get someone off of your account, no matter who it is and if they know your password. The streaming company has a new feature that , meaning it will forcibly log a device out of that account, writes. And we have four more for you: |
Boston Dynamics sues Ghost Robotics over robot dog patent infringements | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | If you know anything about Ghost Robotics, it’s likely one of two things: 1) They make robot dogs. 2) Sniper rifles can be mounted to those robots. A majority of the Philadelphia firm’s press coverage has revolved around these facts, along with some coverage of its systems being used to patrol the U.S. border. That last bit was enough to grab the attention of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, : It’s shameful how both parties fight tooth + nail to defend their ability to pump endless public money into militarization. From tanks in police depts to corrupt military contracts, funding this violence is bipartisan + non-controversial, yet healthcare + housing isn’t. It’s BS. Ghost has thus far not demonstrated any manner of ethical qualms when it comes to its work with military and law enforcement — but it’s the company’s product design that could ultimately get it in hot water. Boston Dynamics in the Delaware court system on November 11, alleging Ghost of infringing on multiple patents. “Boston Dynamics’ early success with the Spot robot did not go unnoticed by competitors in the robotics industry, including Ghost Robotics,” the suit notes. It goes on to call out two specific models, Vision 60 and Spirit 40, both “dog”-style quadrupeds. While Boston Dynamics tells TechCrunch it doesn’t comment on pending legislation (understandable), it adds: Innovation is the lifeblood of Boston Dynamics, and our roboticists have successfully filed approximately 500 patents and patent applications worldwide. We welcome competition in the emerging mobile robotics market, but we expect all companies to respect intellectual property rights, and we will take action when those rights are violated. The suit notes that Boston Dynamics sent Ghost a letter on July 20, asking the company to review its patents. This was followed by multiple cease and desist letters. The filing then goes on to offer a fairly comprehensive catalog of alleged infringements. While Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot has been deployed by law enforcement agencies like the NYPD, the company has been vocal in its opposition to weaponizing robots. Last month, it joined Agility, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics and Open Robotics in penning condemning the practice. It noted, in part: We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public, and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues. Weaponized applications of these newly-capable robots will also harm public trust in the technology in ways that damage the tremendous benefits they will bring to society. Contracts with agencies have — of course — played a major role in the growth of robotics firms, including Boston Dynamics, which relied on DARPA as a major source of funding in its early days (though deals were sunset when the company was acquired by Google). Any firm willing to build the machinery for autonomous warfare stands to make a lot of money, assuming they’re not sidelined by ethical misgivings. Ghost gained prominence late last year when images emerged from a trade show featuring one of its robots with a SWORD Defense Systems Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR) mounted to its back. The firm’s then-CEO Jiren Parikh We don’t make the payloads. Are we going to promote and advertise any of these weapon systems? Probably not. That’s a tough one to answer. Because we’re selling to the military, we don’t know what they do with them. We’re not going to dictate to our government customers how they use the robots. We do draw the line on where they’re sold. We only sell to U.S. and allied governments. We don’t even sell our robots to enterprise customers in adversarial markets. We get lots of inquiries about our robots in Russia and China. We don’t ship there, even for our enterprise customers. The suit asks the court to award unspecified damages for the alleged infringements. We’ve reached out to Ghost Robotics about Boston Dynamics’ filing and will update the story accordingly as we hear back. |
Bling Capital has $212M to invest across two new funds — and two coasts | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Ben Ling, a turned venture capitalist, has never put a lot of stock in the need for a new, decentralized internet. It’s why the firm he founded almost exactly four years ago — naming it (a nickname from way back) — doesn’t have the kind of bets that are right now becoming a for a lot of other venture outfits. It might also be why Ling — whose longtime friend and co-investor Kyle Lui joined Bling Capital eight months ago from the cross-border firm DCM — seemingly had little trouble closing on $212 million in capital commitments across two new venture funds: a $109 million seed-stage vehicle, and a $103 million opportunity-type fund that the two will predominantly use to invest in their breakout portfolio companies. Of course, bets on companies like Rippling, a six-year-old software platform now valued at , and Airtable, the cloud-collaboration service that’s also valued at around , didn’t hurt either, presumably. We talked with the pair yesterday to learn more about their mission to back startups focused on fintech, digital health, B2B SaaS and, on rarer occasion, the consumer internet. Our chat, below, has been edited for length and clarity. BL: I’m not qualified to answer that question, because I was out [of town] last week. But what’s actually interesting is that during my time in Miami and meeting a lot of entrepreneurs and investors, FTX actually never came up. For me, the circles that I ran in, probably one out of 10 was a focused crypto investor and the other nine were traditional VCs or entrepreneurs. Our firm has not invested in crypto, it’s not a focus area for us, so that’s also why we don’t spend a ton of time with a lot of the crypto funds and VCs. BL: We’ve never been focused on crypto since the start of Bling Capital. Even when I was at Khosla Ventures [where Ling logged close to six years before hanging out his own shingle], we avoided crypto. Generally, my feeling is that all the currencies will have value if people agree that there’s value. Just like art, just like gold, when people agree on something as a store of value, it becomes [valuable] because there’s a common belief system. For a lot of the applications, we struggled to really understand why they were truly better than the existing incumbents and why they would actually take over. Why were they going to be 10x better, 10x faster, 10x cheaper? We just had standard questions around adoption. We also never really focused on it, so we felt that others were more experienced in the space and much more advanced and that we did not have a comparative advantage. BL: B2B SaaS is an incredible area of focus. There’s a lot of verticalized software that I think will make major inroads because there’s a lot of the standard Salesforce-type SaaS and there’s consumer-type SaaS that has risen, and now the SaaS marketplace movement is really making its way into B2B, as well. And I think that most, if not all, of these problems can be solved by the traditional Web 2 technologies. We question whether you need web3 technologies to succeed in B2B SaaS. Our investing philosophy is that we either have to have a network advantage or an expertise advantage over the other investors in order to invest in something. Otherwise we’re not qualified to [make a particular bet]. Bling Capital KL: Yeah, I mean, [our] product council members are folks who tend to be heads of product, heads of engineering, heads that go-to-market at various top technology companies and it’s important for us to continue to add them because they are not only our largest source of deal flow, but are also very active in advising our startups. BL: All product council members are LPs in the fund, so when the fund is invested in a company, all of them are invested in the company as well. But 80% of the fund is now institutional investors. KL: I would say on the new deal front, on the pre-seed and seed side, we’re seeing timelines that were one to two weeks now [extending into] more like two to four weeks, which is really healthy because it allows for more proper diligence. We are able to do deals in a matter of days if we have strong conviction, but we do like that the market is a bit more sane. Another dynamic that we’re seeing is that entrepreneurs are starting to really wake up to this new world, and that wasn’t the case even six months ago. Back then, we saw growth deals really kind of halt, but that didn’t really impact the way that first-time founders in particular thought about their valuations. Now we’re seeing them come around as well. So [collectively] we’re actually seeing a lot of really interesting deals. BL: We invested out of our opportunities fund in the latest round [of Rippling]. But I also happen to be a personal seed investor in Rippling. I was at Khosla Ventures at the time and Bling Capital didn’t yet exist, but [Rippling founder Parker Conrad] invited all of the original Zenefits investors that stood by him to reinvest, and I invested personally during that seed round. KL: It’s one of Ben’s largest personal checks. BL: I don’t believe so. |
NASA taps SpaceX for second crewed Starship demonstration mission to the moon | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | NASA tapped SpaceX to provide a second crewed demonstration landing on the moon as part of its Artemis lunar exploration program, a huge win for SpaceX and a possible gesture at improving the relative lack of existing competition for such services. The award is a modification to an existing Human Landing System (HLS) contract between the two entities, which established the agreement for the first lunar demonstration landing. That landing, which will use the Starship human landing system, will be the main goal of the Artemis III mission. (Artemis I, the uncrewed demonstration mission, could happen as early as .) This second landing mission is for the following launch, Artemis IV, which is currently on the books for 2027. The additional contract also covers upgrades to the Starship lander. SpaceX’s big win of the original HLS generated a huge amount of controversy and backlash when it was awarded . The controversy was due mainly to the fact that NASA selected a single vendor (SpaceX) for the award. Historically, for these kinds of big budget, ambitious contracts, NASA would select two vendors — to foster competition and to act as a kind of hedge, in case one of them failed. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin took particular umbrage to the decision, going so far as to with the Government Accountability Office over the decision and taking . The company’s protests, however, were summarily quashed. This modification, also known as Option B, will help SpaceX demonstrate a Starship lunar lander for the long-term. “Continuing our collaborative efforts with SpaceX through Option B furthers our resilient plans for regular crewed transportation to the lunar surface and establishing a long-term human presence under Artemis,” Human Landing System program manager Lisa Watson-Morgan said in a statement. “This critical work will help us focus on the development of sustainable, service-based lunar landers anchored to NASA’s requirements for regularly recurring missions to the lunar surface.” The original contract was awarded for $2.9 billion; the Option B increases that by $1.15 billion, for a total of $4.05 billion. |
Third time’s the charm? NASA will attempt to launch its mega moon rocket early tomorrow morning | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | NASA is set to launch the Artemis I mission on November 16, with agency officials Tonight’s attempt, which has a two-hour launch window opening at 1:04 a.m. EST (10:04 PM Pacific), could kick-start NASA’s ambitious Artemis lunar exploration program. It’s under that program that NASA is hoping to send the first woman and person of color to the moon before the end of the decade. NASA’s hyping the launch with the hashtag #wearegoing and one certainly hopes, after technical snafus, two separate hurricane landfalls, cost overruns and a nearly two-decades-long development timeline that this is the case tomorrow. This mission, dubbed Artemis I, is chiefly a test of the Orion spacecraft rather than the 32-story-tall Space Launch System (which is expendable — there is no “testing” it, per se). Orion, which is uncrewed for this launch, will take a 25-day journey around the moon before returning to Earth and splashing down in the ocean. NASA wants to understand how its heat shield fares during the grueling atmospheric reentry process and get valuable data on its flight through lunar orbit. Both the rocket and the spacecraft incurred minor damage after the most recent brush with a hurricane last week. As NASA manager explained in a media briefing on November 14, technicians had to change out a component of an electrical connector and also examined the potential risks related to some material that had stripped away from the Orion spacecraft. Overall, they said the mission management team felt the risks were at an acceptable level. “We want to take as much risk out of the system as we can, but there is risk in there and we need to be prepared for that,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, said in a prelaunch briefing on Monday. NASA has attempted to launch the vehicle on two separate occasions. The first, in August, was scrubbed due to with one of the rocket’s four core stage engines; the second attempt a few days later also called off for the same reason. Should this third launch attempt not take place for whatever reason, the agency will have more opportunities on November 19 and 25. The stakes for a launch are very high, but the stakes for this launch are not very high — which is to say, it’s very, very important to launch the SLS and it’s important it’s successful, but whether that happens tonight, or November 19, is not of huge importance. In some ways, the significance of NASA’s SLS cannot be overstated: A successful mission would vindicate the billions of dollars spent developing and building this rocket, for one thing. It would also give real energy to the agency’s Artemis program and finally, finally mark the beginning of humanity’s return to the moon. But whether that happens tomorrow, or November 19, or an even later date, is relatively immaterial to the success of the program overall. As Free said during a separate media briefing last week, “We’re never going to get to Artemis II if Artemis I isn’t successful.” You can watch the launch live by clicking the video above. The agency will begin coverage of the mission at 7:30 PM pacific time, 10:30 local time in Florida. |
Ring launches pilot program to let local agencies share updates and ‘safety information’ | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Ring today that local government agencies will be able to have an official presence on the company’s Neighbors app. Beginning with the City of North Port and Pinellas County Government in Florida and the City of Fulton in New York, the new program will allow government organizations to provide safety information through Neighbors, the Amazon-owned company’s neighborhood watch feature that alerts users to nearby alleged crimes and events. “Local government agencies, such as county and municipality governments and their departments, play an important role in public safety,” Ring wrote in a blog post published this afternoon. “This pilot program will enable users in select municipalities to receive more safety information, updates and tips from a broader group of local agencies, all in one place.” Participating local government agencies will have public profiles in Neighbors that users can visit to see their activity and posts. Ring notes that the program won’t enable the agencies to make a “Request for Assistance” on Neighbors, a capability that lets law enforcement ask the public for help with an active investigation. For the time being, that’ll remain reserved to the police departments that’ve partnered with Ring. The new Ring program, while helpful on its face, is unlikely win over consumer advocates who’ve argued the company’s devices are a security threat. As TechCrunch previously reported, Ring has a history of Between January and July of this year alone, Amazon shared Ring doorbell footage with U.S. authorities 11 times without informing the device owners. Ring has been for working with thousands of police departments around the U.S., allowing police to request video doorbell camera footage from homeowners through Neighbors. Ring only began disclosing its connections with law enforcement after the U.S. government sent from the company. |
Global venture funding plateaued in October, with valuations likely to blame | Rebecca Szkutak | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | slow summer, the mood in venture capital seemed to change with the season come Labor Day. By the end of September, it felt that maybe the worst had already come in terms of this year’s falling venture funding numbers. Investment volume had stopped declining and was starting to . Investors said that anecdotally it felt like the market was really starting to — especially at the early stages. But October funding data showed that the venture capital market still has a long way to go. |
Unit’s banking-as-a-service platform is getting into the charge card game | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | If the banking-as-a-service fintech does its job right, it will be ubiquitous among businesses and simultaneously have a name unknown to the end user. The company gives companies a way to embed financial services into their product — and after already launching debit cards, Unit is officially breaking into the charge card game. Unit customers can now use the startup’s API to build custom-designed charge cards for their own end users. Customers can offer their customers a charge card, credit card, revolving loan or any other credit products that Unit’s bank partners offer. On the back end, Unit will handle card printing, compliance and, once the card is in use, transaction tracking as well. According to co-founder and CEO , cards are Unit’s fourth and final pillar as a venture-backed company, adding onto its products in the debit, bank accounts and payments space. Just six months ago, Unit announced that it at a $1.2 billion valuation, making its total equity raised since inception to nearly $170 million. Charge cards, which are more popular than credit cards for small businesses, give Unit a way to enable customers to build and offer lending products, even though the startup is not a lender itself. “Once you can store money for people, you can move money for people and you can give people money, this is the full spectrum of banking that all these software products can use to launch within their environments,” Damti said. Unit If Unit’s new card line sounds competitive with the likes of Brex and Ramp, valued at billions of dollars — I had the same thought, and it’s a little more complicated. Instead of selling a card to startups like its well-capitalized competitors, Unit is selling customers on a way to create personalized cards for their own end users. It’s going for a classic B2BC model instead of a B2B model. “If you’re a company that sells to construction companies, instead of your customers finding other solutions in the market, you can just embed [lending] into your software,” Damti said. “We don’t compete with [Brex and Ramp] per se, but we do allow companies to basically offer an equivalent product and do it in a way that is embedded.” Unit’s expansion sits differently during a particularly tough economic run for fintech companies such as , which conducted layoffs over the past few weeks. Unit VP of lending , who recently joined the company after a seven-year stint at Opendoor, explained that the new product could help its customers introduce an entire new line of revenue through interchange fees. “There’s maybe less VC money to spend on Google and Facebook ads, but we’re working with companies that have built differentiated software,” Sinsky said. “And I see Unit [as an] opportunity to better serve those users and improve their unit economics.” Unit claims that a card swipe transaction will yield 0.5% more interchange revenue when done with a credit card compared to a debit card. Damti added that there’s “less of a red ocean in vertical finance … there’s a tremendous opportunity, because they have data, they have a distribution and they can be very effective underwriters who are very effective lenders in their vertical.” |
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LF Europe’s Project Sylva wants to create an open source telco cloud stack | Frederic Lardinois | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | The Linux Foundation Europe (LF Europe) — the recently European offshoot of the open source Linux Foundation — today announced the launch of Project Sylva, which aims to create an open source telco cloud framework for European telcos and vendors. This is the first project hosted by LF Europe and is a good example of what the organization is trying to achieve. The project aims to create a production-grade open source telco cloud stack and a common framework and reference implementation to “reduce fragmentation of the cloud infrastructure layer for telecommunication and edge services.” Currently, five carriers (Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Orange, Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom) and two vendors (Ericsson and Nokia) are working on the project. “There’s a whole bunch of Linux Foundation networking projects already that have taken telecommunications into the open source era,” Arpit Joshipura, the general manager for Networking, Edge and IoT at the All those projects are under what is called the [LF] Networking foundation. […] So whatever that work is that is done by the telcos, Sylva is going to leverage and build on top of it with these European vendors to solve EU specific requirements. Those are security, energy, federated computing, edge and data trust.” At the core of Sylva is a framework for a compute platform that can be agnostic to whether a workload is running on the telco access network, edge or in the core. The project aims to build a reference implementation, leveraging all of the work already being done by LF Networking, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (the home of Kubernetes and other cloud-native infrastructure projects), LF Energy and others. All of this, of course, is done with a focus on the EU’s goals around security, data privacy and energy management, but even though the project has this EU focus, the overall ambition is broader and goes well beyond the European Union. Many of these regulations, after all, will make it to other markets as well. “Linux Foundation, Europe allows us to focus more on specific regional requirements, but without those siloes and fragmentation that foster that techno-nationalism, if you want to call it that, by really being able to foster local collaboration and then, pushing that stuff upstream gives us this amazing conduit to go across borders,” explained Gabriele Columbro, the general manager of the Linux Foundation Europe. The vendors joining the project all argue that they are doing so in order to reduce fragmentation as the industry moves to a cloud-centric model and to enable interoperability between different platforms. “The Telco Cloud ecosystem today is fragmented and slowing down our operational model transformation. Despite a transition to cloud native technologies, a real interoperability between workloads and platforms remains a challenge,” said Laurent Leboucher, group CTO and SVP, Orange Innovation Networks. “Indeed, operators have to deal with a lot of vertical solutions that are different for each vendor, leading to operational complexity, lack of scalability and high costs. Sylva, by providing a homogenous telco cloud framework for the entire industry, should help all the ecosystem to use a common technology, which will be interoperable, flexible and easy to operate.” |
YouTube Shorts begins testing shopping features and affiliate marketing | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | YouTube is adding shopping features to Shorts, its TikTok-like short-form video product, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday. The new shopping features allow users to purchase products as they scroll through Shorts. The news was first reported by the . The company is starting to introduce shopping features on YouTube Shorts with eligible creators in the United States who are currently piloting the ability to tag products from their own stores. Viewers in the United States, India, Brazil, Canada and Australia can see the tags and shop through the Shorts. YouTube says it plans to continue bringing tagging to more creators and countries in the future. In addition to the shopping features, YouTube is experimenting with an affiliate program in the United States that allows creators to earn commissions through purchases of recommended products in their Shorts and regular videos. The company says the test is still in its early days and that it plans to gradually expand the experiment to more creators next year. “We firmly believe YouTube is the best place for creators to build a business and shopping is a piece of that,” a spokesperson for YouTube told TechCrunch in an email. The news comes a few weeks after that creators will take a 45% share of ad revenue starting next year. In early 2023, creators will be able to apply to the company’s Partner Program if they meet a new Shorts-specific threshold of 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over 90 days, after which they will earn 45% of ad revenue from their videos. YouTube’s Shorts has , but despite this success, YouTube’s quarterly ad revenue and missed expectations, per Alphabet’s quarterly earnings report released last month. YouTube likely sees the new shopping features as a way for it to broaden its revenue streams amid a slumping advertising market. Over the past few years, YouTube has been working to transform its platform into more of a shopping destination with product launches like and the ability to hosted by creators. Given these moves, it makes sense for YouTube to bring shopping to Shorts too. YouTube isn’t the only digital giant to bet on the future of shopping, as TikTok and Meta have also invested in the space. Last week, TikTok quietly began testing in the United States. TikTok Shop allows users to buy products directly through the app. Prior to this expansion, the feature was only available in the United Kingdom and parts of Southeast Asia. Earlier this year, the company also began in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada in partnership with Shopify. Meta-owned Instagram allows creators to share products in livestreams and in its shopping tab, which lets users scroll through recommended products and make purchases. Brands are also able to make their profiles shoppable through product catalogs. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Bootstrapping basics, fintech’s future, tech employers gain advantage | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Are you planning to play League of Legends during your next investor pitch? (If so, reading this probably isn’t a good use of your time.) For founders who are interested in building on their own, maintaining control and staying off the fundraising treadmill for as long as possible, investor/entrepreneur Marjorie Radlo-Zandi sets out in her latest TC+ article. It’s not for everyone: Self-funded companies will ask more from their employees than larger operations that offer free lunches and other perks. At one bootstrapped startup where I worked, I was asked to defer part of my salary — after I was hired. Radlo-Zandi covers the basics with regard to hiring, managing expenses and shaping company culture, but she also urges self-funders to tamp down expectations and take a measured approach: “Don’t be tempted to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to meet potential customers in glamorous locations or for meetings in far-flung locations,” she writes. “Your bootstrapped business likely will not survive such big, optional financial outlays.” Bootstrapped founders face longer odds, but if they can drive growth and reach product-market fit, “fundraising will be that much easier.” Thanks very much for reading, Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
/ Getty Images More than 120,000 tech workers have lost jobs so far this year, according to layoffs.fyi. With more than a fifth of those layoffs taking place in November, many from well-capitalized public companies, it’s easy to see why Continuum CEO Nolan Church believes this is the beginning of a wave. “Over the last 12 years, the pendulum between who has power between employees and employers has drastically swung toward employees,” he said last week on the TechCrunch Equity podcast. “Now, we’re in a moment where the pendulum is swinging back.” / Getty Images Sophie Alcorn, an immigration law attorney based in Silicon Valley, estimates that 15% of the people recently laid off from Bay Area startups are immigrants, 90% of whom are H-1B holders. If you’re a visa holder who’s been laid off, your first priority is to “figure out your last day of employment, because that’s when you need to start counting the 60-day grace period,” says Alcorn. “You either get a new job, you leave or you figure out some other way to legally stay in the United States, but you have to take some action within those 60 days.” Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch After the pandemic began, there was a lot of buzz about how venture capital was shifting away from its roots in San Francisco and New York to make inroads into the Midwest. But after an extended slump in public markets led so many investors to sit on the sidelines, data show that “most funds outside of the two largest startup hubs … are feeling the frost from potential LPs,” reports Rebecca Szkutak. “So far this year, 77% of capital has been raised in just California and New York. In 2021, those states raised 68% of the year’s totals.” / Getty Images According to consultant Grant Easterbrook, fintech startups that hope to succeed over the next few years must be prepared to go up against: “Your firm will need a very strong value proposition to compete with all four types of competitors,” writes Easterbrook, who shares his ideas for navigating the next decade of fintech in a TC+ guest post. |
Netflix’s new feature lets subscribers kick devices off their accounts | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Want to kick your ex off your Netflix account without having to change your password? A new Netflix feature will make that possible. Today, Netflix is launching “ ,” which allows account owners to remotely log out of devices they don’t recognize or no longer want signed in. The addition could help Netflix push more freeloaders to become subscribers as they’re kicked off the service, where they may have been logging in without the account holder’s knowledge. The new feature follows other recent launches also , like which arrived amid a broader as Netflix subscriber losses. To remove devices from an account, Netflix subscribers can go to their “Account Settings” and find the “Manage Access and Devices” option that displays the users’ most recent devices, as well as the type of device (Roku Smart TV, Android phone, etc.), the IP address and the exact time and date when the device last access the subscriber’s Netflix account. After a subscriber selects “Sign Out” on an unfamiliar device, Netflix recommends a password change for extra security, but this is not required. Going forward, account owners will receive new login notifications via email. The feature is available, starting today, to all members worldwide on the web, iOS devices and Android devices, Netflix says. Being able to manage who accesses a Netflix account will be especially helpful for those subscribed to Netflix’s cheaper plans, “Basic” and “ ,” which only allow viewers to stream on one supported device at a time. (Standard members can simultaneously watch on two supported devices, and premium members can stream on four supported devices at the same time, for comparison.) Netflix has been cracking down on password sharing in recent months. During its earnings call with investors last month, Netflix how it would monetize password sharing by launching an “ ” feature in early 2023. This feature charges account holders an extra fee for sharing outside their household and was previously tested in Chile, Costa Rica and . The “ ” feature encourages those sharing another subscriber’s account to move to an account of their own while keeping their data intact, including custom recommendations, viewing history and their watchlist. “With the busy holiday season just around the corner, many of our members will be on the move and watching Netflix wherever they are traveling to see family and friends. Logging in to your account while at a hotel or even your friend’s house is easy and intuitive, but lots of people then forget to log out,” wrote Charles Wartemberg, Netflix’s product manager for Product Innovation, on the company’s . |
YouTube Shorts can now include 60 seconds of music or sounds, up from 15 seconds before | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | YouTube today is addressing one of creators’ chief with filming videos for its TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts: to date, the music and sounds added to videos could only be 15 seconds in length, even though Shorts themselves can be as long as 60 seconds. Now, thanks to revised licensing deals, YouTube says the majority of music on Shorts will be available in durations of up to 60 seconds. In addition, creators can up to 60 seconds of sounds from other videos, instead of only 15 seconds, as before. Over the next few weeks, YouTube creators will begin to see the expanded options for adding music to their videos when using the audio picker in the YouTube app for iOS and Android. In some cases, the songs will only be 30 seconds in length, due to continued licensing restrictions, YouTube notes. The company, like TikTok and others, negotiates with songs’ rights holders, including the music label or distributor and publisher, before including the track in YouTube Shorts. While YouTube won’t comment on the state of its deals with its music industry partners, it says that most songs in its audio library will now have a maximum duration of up to 60 seconds. The update aims to make YouTube Shorts more competitive with its rivals, including TikTok and Instagram Reels, at a time when the length of what’s considered a “short-form” video is also changing. For comparison, Instagram Reels supports music . Meanwhile, songs can last up to a minute on TikTok, generally, though it also offers a library of sounds for longer videos. To access the longer music tracks, creators will need to tap the “+” icon to enter the Shorts camera in the mobile app then pick an audio track from the library. When choosing the sound in the audio picker, you’ll be able to see the duration time, which indicates how much audio you can use from the specific track. Creators will also need to change their video recording duration in the Shorts camera in order to use more than 15 seconds of audio, YouTube notes. Similarly, the company is also expanding the length of audio that can be clipped and reused from other videos. In April, that allows Shorts creators to sample clips from existing YouTube videos that have been posted publicly on the platform — unless the video’s owner had opted out. Many creators see this functionality as a way to bring more visitors to their channel or to introduce their content to a younger generation of users who may have only discovered their videos through Shorts. Before, creators could only sample 15-second segments of original audio from eligible Shorts and video-on-demand content. Now, they can sample up to 60 seconds. While the length of music is being expanded, the maximum length of a YouTube Shorts video itself is not — it will remain 60 seconds. The new feature will roll out to YouTube users globally on iOS and Android. Currently, YouTube Shorts are being watched by over 1.5 billion logged-in users every month and garner over 30 billion views per day, the company claims. Unrelated to music expansions, YouTube also today confirmed the launch of Shopping on YouTube Shorts — a new feature being piloted with U.S. creators that lets them tag products from their own stores. The move follows the launch of TikTok’s own e-commerce features. Currently, viewers in the U.S., India, Brazil, Canada and Australia can view and interact with these tags for the time being, and the feature will expand to more creators next year. |
Freemium or free trials: Why not both? | Anna Heim | 2,022 | 11 | 12 | TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the where it gets its name. As more SaaS companies adopt (PLG), a sales method in which user conversions are driven by the product itself rather than a sales team, founders are often faced with a pricing model dilemma. If their startup opts for a freemium model, most users will never get a taste of the premium features reserved for paying users. But if the company offers a time-limited free trial, users who don’t become customers at the end of that period might be gone forever. There are many other pros and cons to freemium and free trials. As OpenView partner told me, “freemium models tend to drive more acquisition and more signups to your product, for example, while free trials have fewer signups but have a higher conversion rate from free to paid.” As a result, founders often think they are facing a binary choice, Poyar said. In an , Airtable head of growth told him that these two choices are often thought of as prioritizing user growth (with freemium) or revenue growth (with free trials.) Poyar, however, doesn’t think freemium versus free trials is the only alternative. For companies to “get the best of both worlds,” he and OpenView advocate for the reverse trial model, exemplified by Airtable. But what are reverse trials all about, and are they for everyone? |
After key privacy and security departures last week, Twitter names ‘acting DPO’ | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 11 | 15 | Following a late last week, the social media firm has informed its lead data protection regulator in the European Union that it has appointed an “acting” replacement for one of those positions: The key role of data protection officer (DPO). The abrupt departures of Twitter’s CISO Lea Kissner; chief privacy officer (and DPO) Damien Kieran; and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty immediately raised questions over its ability to meet regulatory requirements under new, norm-trashing broom, Elon Musk — who only completed his at the end of last month. A company that’s processing personal data at the scale Twitter does is obliged, under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), to at least have a DPO — at a bare minimum. Twitter also has a 2011 consent decree with the FTC that requires it to submit regular reports on how it’s living up to ongoing commitments to safeguard user data — so the sudden departure of senior privacy and security staffers immediately set alarm bells ringing. Including at the A meeting between the DPC and Twitter followed hard on the heels of the trio of resignations — arranged last week and taking place yesterday — and at this meeting the DPC said Twitter informed it that it has appointed an existing employee, Renato Monteiro, as its “acting DPO.” Monteiro has been employed at Twitter for two years nine months, per his LinkedIn profile — starting in Match 2020 in São Paulo, Brazil, as a Data Protection Counsel Lead for Latin America, before relocating to Twitter Ireland this summer to take up a role as director for international privacy and data protection lead — managing privacy and data protection teams in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, North and South America and APAC. It is not clear why Monteiro has only been named “acting” DPO — or whether his appointment is intended only as a stop-gap while a full replacement is sought, or not. Since Musk took over Twitter, the company has stopped responding to press enquiries so it is not possible to obtain confirmation via an official channel. But Musk appears to have a penchant for appointing ‘acting’ rather than actual job titles, as well as for playing with absurd job titles (such as initially christening himself “ ” after he fired and took over from the actual CEO; followed by Musk becoming “ ” seemingly as a commentary on users responding negatively to his early product decisions and other changes). One question that’s likely to arise, therefore, is whether Monteiro is being invested with the full responsibilities and duties required by the DPO role under GDPR — and, if not, whether an ‘acting’ framing will pass muster with EU regulators. At the time of writing the DPC had not responded to our question on this point. But we’ll update this report if we get a response. , the Irish regulator told us that in addition to using Monday’s meeting with Twitter to seek information from it about the DPO situation it planned to discuss a wider concern — to ask whether the business is still claiming its main establishment (for GDPR purposes) in Ireland. This structure is important because it enables Twitter to participate in the GDPR’s one-stop-shop (OSS) mechanism — which sets up the DPC as its lead data supervisor for EU data protection issues and means complaints made elsewhere in the bloc are typically funnelled via Ireland — allowing the U.S.-based company to streamline its GDPR compliance and shrink regulatory risk. However, given all the drastic changes accompanying Musk’s takeover of Twitter — including, reportedly, standard privacy and security review processes being dispensed with — doubts are being cast over whether Twitter can still credibly claim main establishment in Ireland, as . The DPC’s deputy commissioner Graham Doyle declined to provide an update on its questioning of Twitter’s main establishment status following yesterday’s meeting — saying only: “We continue to engage with Twitter.” Other EU data protection agencies are likely to be watching developments on this front exceedingly closely. A spokesperson for France’s CNIL told TechCrunch it will be approaching the DPC to discuss the nature and “possible consequences” of changes reported to have taken place at Twitter since Musk took over. Although the regulator also told us that, at present, it does not have “sufficient information” to question the application of the OSS. “Until now, the evidence available to the supervisory authorities has led them to consider that Twitter’s principal place of business in the EU was in Ireland, which made the DPC the lead authority. The CNIL intends to approach the DPC to discuss about the nature and possible consequences that the changes mentioned in the press are likely to have on the role and status of Twitter’s Irish establishment,” the CNIL’s spokesperson said. “At this stage, the CNIL does not have sufficient information to consider that the application of the one-stop shop system is in question.” |
Meta lays off thousands, FTX collapses, and Twitter has a very weird week | Greg Kumparak | 2,022 | 11 | 12 | Hey, friends! Welcome back to , the newsletter where we recap the top TechCrunch headlines from the past seven days. Get it in your inbox every Saturday AM by . Ready? Let’s go. Twitter had a week so strange that it could easily make up this entire newsletter, so we’ll keep to the bullet points: : Once one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, FTX effectively exploded this week. It briefly looked like competitor Binance would step in to acquire FTX, only for Binance to take one look at FTX’s books and back out almost immediately. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has since resigned, and the company has filed for bankruptcy. : Meta — the parent company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp — laid off 13% of its workforce this week. With a worldwide headcount of around 87,000 employees, that works out to over roles cut. : Don’t like the new look that Gmail started rolling out ? Bad news. While users could previously revert to the old design, the Gmail team announced this week that the new design will be the “standard experience” for all within weeks. : “Google says it has evidence that a commercial surveillance vendor was exploiting three zero-day security vulnerabilities found in newer Samsung smartphones,” writes Zack Whittaker. “The chained vulnerabilities allow an attacker to gain kernel read and write privileges as the root user, and ultimately expose a device’s data.” Looking for a new podcast to tune into on your commute? Here’s what’s up in TC podcasts lately: Not a TechCrunch+ member yet? Here’s what members were checking out most behind the paywall: : How did ButcherBox grow from a modest Kickstarter to $600 million in revenue in just a few years? Haje outlines the company’s path so far. : In his increasingly popular daily newsletter, Alex Wilhelm wonders: Has everyone been valuing software companies the wrong way all along? |
This Week in Apps: Twitter’s crazy week drives social apps’ growth, Google expands user choice billing | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 11 | 12 | Welcome back to This Week in Apps, that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the year-end . Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps. This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more. / Getty Images Where to even begin? This week Twitter became one of the most chaotic, most disastrous social networks in history — and arguably, also the most interesting, in a sort of rubbernecking kind of way. There was something new taking place either on the platform directly or within the company itself at nearly every minute. In just a handful of days since Musk’s takeover, Twitter has seen the following: One can argue that Musk was right to take a new approach at Twitter, which was losing money and failing to grow its user base. Coming in with fresh ideas and swapping out the executive team isn’t that unusual in a takeover, nor are widespread layoffs when a company is in financial trouble. New product experimentation is also to be expected. And revamping Twitter Blue, , makes sense too. . Musk clearly had not thought through the impact of his changes and he laid off people who could have offered deeper insight. His move to immediately make deep cuts across Twitter (after , apparently), meant he missed the opportunity to actually listen to current staff who could explain what Twitter has tried, what’s failed and why they’re doing the things they are. Even if Musk disagreed with Twitter’s current direction, those understandings could be used to better inform his future decisions. Instead, he’s approached Twitter as a toy to be played with, even “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.” And it already has. Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Living up to its promise, the first project Twitter landed on saw it reinventing the wheel. Musk, having only perceived the value of a blue Verified badge as a status symbol, believed a wide swath of Twitter users would pay for the privilege of owning one. What he didn’t understand (unlike most of Twitter’s user base), is that Verification is actually a service the platform provides its community, not just an ego-pleasing checkmark. In fact, many of those with the original badge don’t see it as a status symbol, and wouldn’t pay for the “honor” of having one. Instead, the original blue badge was a way to quickly see that someone is who they claim to be or that they’re a trusted source of news and information. Musk, on the other hand, thinks “ ” and everyday folks (or as he likes to call them, “ “) deserve some sort of verification, too. Which is…well, okay, he’s free to have that opinion and test it out as a paid product after spending $44 billion on this thing, I guess. (We don’t have space to talk about his misunderstandings around citizen journalism right now!) But it could have been implemented in a different way — perhaps as a verified badge of a different shade or symbol, or even just as a system that would boost Twitter Blue subscribers’ tweets and replies on the platform above the non-paying users. After all, this is the core value Musk envisions for Twitter Blue, believing this is what would appeal to subscribers. Not to mention, such a system would make sense to test, given that it’s one that’s already been proven to work elsewhere. Paid elevation is a monetization lever other social networks utilize — like and , where products like YouTube’s Super Chat and IG Badges allow people to have their posts highlighted above others. Twitter’s twist could have been that paid elevation like this wouldn’t necessarily be about getting the attention of top creators, per se, but would gain subscribers entry into everyone’s Verified tab or at least bumped to the top of the “All” notifications tab. Or, a secondary filter on the Verified tab could allow people to toggle on or off the visibility of “official” accounts, addressing that the Verified tab is now no longer useful when checkmarks are for sale. What a great thing this would have been to A/B test with a small percentage of the audience before fully diving in! But alas. , from one entrepreneur to another, for when you have your customer service hat on. I just spent too much time muting all the newly purchased checkmark accts in an attempt to make my verified mentions useful again. Hope this helps. — Mark Cuban (@mcuban) Rather than moving forward more thoughtfully, Musk simply trashed the existing Verification program — and without seemingly foreseeing the potential for widespread abuse. He then retroactively realized that identifying “Official” accounts had value for the wider community and for those who wanted a certain type of experience in the Verified tab itself. His haphazard leadership led to new products launching, being shut off, then relaunching in a matter of hours and days. As a result, Twitter became a dumpster fire of sorts — and one that could have been avoided if Musk simply listened and learned before acting. SOPA Images / Contributor / Getty Images Google announced it’s which allows Android app developers to use other payment systems besides Google’s own. The program will now become available to new markets, including the U.S., Brazil and South Africa, and Bumble will now join Spotify as one of the pilot testers. The company first its intention to launch a third-party billing option back in March of this year, with Spotify as the initial tester. Now, Spotify it will begin rolling out its implementation of this program with Google’s blessing. The user choice billing program has steadily expanded over the course of the year. Last month, for example, Google non-game developers to apply for the user choice billing program in select markets, including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area (EEA). The company also a similar policy for developers in the EEA region in July, but the new guidelines raised the commission discount to for developers who opted in. With today’s expansion, user choice billing will be made available to 35 countries worldwide. Google says it’s been working with Spotify to help develop the experience and now the streaming music service will begin to put the new features into action in supported markets. The experience could still change over time, Google warned, as this is still the early days of the pilot test. In addition, Bumble has now joined Google to test user choice billing in its own app, with plans to roll out the options to users in select countries in the coming months. It’s not clear what sort of deal Spotify and Bumble have received as Spotify won’t say beyond noting it meets the company’s standards of fairness. In the meantime, not all developers think the deal is a good one. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who is suing both Apple and Google for alleged monopolistic practices, the new system a sham as Google still takes 26% of the revenue — a reference to for switching to another payment provider. “This is Google’s dishonest attempt to thwart EU and Korean regulators by feigning compliance with their new rules for billing competition, while still collecting their monopoly rent and rendering competing payment services non-viable,” Sweeney . Now Google Play is rolling out its sham “user choice billing” in which developers can use their own payment systems for in-app purchases, with Google taking 26% of the revenue in exchange for doing exactly nothing. — Possibly Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) The drama at Twitter has seen some users looking for an exit. In recent days, alternative social and microblogging platforms have seen strong gains, including, most notably, the open source decentralized Twitter alternative Mastodon. The service’s founder and CEO recently announced Mastodon had , as more than half a million users joined the network since October 27. App intelligence firm Mastodon has seen approximately 322,000 installs from U.S. app stores in the 12 days following the acquisition (October 27 through November 7), which is more than 100 times the 3,000 it saw in the prior 12-day period. Globally, the app grew 657% to 1 million installs during that same October 27-November 7 time frame, up from 15,000 in the 12 days prior. Other third-party Mastodon clients saw a bump, too, with Metatext and Tootle both growing from less than 1,000 installs to 19,000 and 7,000, respectively, between the two periods. But Mastodon isn’t the only network seeing an uptick in installs, as it turns out. Tumblr also saw its U.S. installs grow 96% from 47,000 to 92,000 between the two timeframes and saw global installs grow 77% from 170,000 to 301,000. Sensor Tower Alternative social app CounterSocial also grew 2,300% to 24,000 installs in U.S. app stores in the 12 days following the acquisition, and grew 3,200% globally, with 33,000 installs. Another app intelligence firm, data.ai, sliced the data in a different way. It examined various social apps’ worldwide download growth during a seven-day period following the acquisition (October 27 through November 2), then compared that with the prior seven-day period. Its data also confirmed the sizable gains made by Mastodon and CounterSocial in terms of global install increases between the two timeframes. Mastodon’s installs jumped 2,200% and CounterSocial’s grew 1,200%. Data.ai saw a number of other social apps seeing bumps, as well, beyond direct Twitter alternatives. This included David’s Disposable (up 83%), nFollowers (up 50%), CocoFun (up 46%), Substack Reader (up 24%), Tribel (up 11%), Tumblr (up 7%) and Pinterest (up 2%). . Apple Pinterest Telegram Signal led by Balderton Capital for its app that allows users to quickly remove the background from photos of objects so e-commerce listings look more professional. The app has 7 million MAUs and plans to add generative AI. in funding led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, valuing the startup at $110 million. The app’s workflow revolves around search and a chronological timeline, and lets users attach topic tags, tag other users and add recurring reminders to notes. Mem is available across desktop and mobile, and has raised $29 million to date. led by Trilogy Equity Partners for its app that helps parents track their children’s activity on services like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. bringing the company’s total raise to $740 million. Capital One led Hopper’s Series F and will now work with the company to create new travel products aimed at Capital One customers. . Unity’s stock is down around 75% and ironSource’s stock is down ~50% year-to-date. Both and ironSource were impacted by Apple’s ATT and believed pooling their resources could help them address their declines. Unity earlier an offer by AppLovin. for its platform offering ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery, and payments. The funding was led by Mary Meeker’s Bond. Yassir has raised $193.25 million since its 2017 founding. led by InterAlpen Partners. The company now has access to a few thousand cars across 14 cities and is looking to expand. The startup to date has raised $300 million in both equity and debt. Pineapple that relies on visual stories. The app allows users to create profiles that are a cross between LinkedIn and Instagram and showcase the user’s experience, projects and more using visuals. Users can also join Communities to connect with other members around topics and engage in thread conversations called “Jams.” Pineapple feels TikTok-inspired with a main For You type of page where users keep up with their connections. The app has raised $1.1 million in a pre-seed round, which included investors like F7 Ventures, 500 Global, Bradley Horowitz (VP of product at Google) and Julie Zhou (former VP of design at Facebook). Apple testing out its ability to use multiple media formats — like text, images, videos, notes, docs and more — all in one space and collaborate with others. The app may not replace professional tools like Figma, but could be useful for everyday design tasks, including things like event planning, home redesigns, journaling, making charts and more. |
What the midterm madness means for startups | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 11 | 12 | Hey, folks. It’s , filling in this issue for Natasha, who’s taking a much needed break from the news cycle (and the spectacle that’s become Twitter). While it’s my first Startups Weekly column, you’ve likely seen me on TC here and there, covering chiefly venture, AI and enterprise-related items. It’s a real pleasure to round up this week’s startup news — partially because it doesn’t center around Musk shenanigans. But before we collectively tune out for the weekend, let’s recap the week, which was marked by the midterm elections in the U.S. As loathsome and distressing as the U.S. election cycle has become, the outcome always has major implications for the tech industry. U.S.-based chipmakers are for relief as the U.S. increasingly decouples from China. Crypto businesses are regulations to establish guardrails for so-called stablecoins and settle jurisdictional issues. And the largest tech giants are bracing for a possible last-ditch effort by the White House to pass antitrust legislation — pending, of course, the post-midterm political climate. It goes without saying that the stakes are high. Sanctions, alongside supply chain constraints and inflation, threaten to depress the stateside chipmaking industry — one chip machine firm, Lam Research, has already up to $2.5 billion in revenue next year due to newly imposed trade rules. The antitrust bills, if passed, could the ability of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and other tech incumbents to acquire and punish rivals to boost their own products and services. Unsurprisingly, the industry was out in force for the 2022 midterms, judging by the top donors. Google, Amazon, Meta and their trade groups almost $100 million into lobbying as they sought to derail antitrust legislation — and its supporters. Meanwhile, according to an by the Washington Post, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Larry Ellison and Peter Thiel gave tens of millions of dollars to their preferred campaigns, exerting a stark technologist influence on the acerbic field. Whether the industry succeeded in securing a bright two-year future for itself is up for debate. Excepting those in sectors with bipartisan support, like defense, startups could be the ones to suffer the most in this politically divided stretch — especially those in the chipmaking, green and crypto businesses. At least one study finds that congressional gridlock contributes to income inequality, while implies that political stalemates have a greater negative impact than even hostile government policies on a company’s ability to innovate. Consider how a recession might play out. Assuming Congress is slow to act (as divided branches often are), there could be less federal government spending on social safety net programs, leading to a drawn-out recovery. There’s the prospect of debt ceiling fights, too, which could be damaging in a different aspect. Recall that as result of debt ceiling bickering during President Barack Obama’s first term, the U.S. lost its perfect AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor in August 2011, prompting the stock market to plunge more than 5%. In a note to investors, Morgan Stanley that the current Congressional divide means fiscal expansion will be reactive as opposed to proactive over the next two years, coming only as “a reaction to deteriorating economic conditions or an external shock to the economy.” Of course, partisan gridlock needn’t be entirely a bad thing where it concerns the economy — or startups. According to data from Edelman Financial Engines cited in a piece by CNN Business, the S&P 500 had an annualized return of 16.9% since 1948 during the nine years when a Democrat was in the White House and Republicans had a majority in both chambers of Congress. That compares to 15.1% during periods of full Democratic control and 15.9% in years when there was a unified GOP government. A silver lining, but a relatively weak one, admittedly. In the rest of this newsletter — which is less of a downer, I promise! — we’ll talk about Twitter’s fleeing user base, the rise of generative AI and e-commerce’s enduring VC appeal. For more content along those lines, give me a follow — I’m at on Twitter (Mastodon migration pending). Nary an hour goes by without news of Twitter’s rocky transition under new management. Last weekend, the network began banning certain parody accounts following a Musk-led rule change, including the accounts of high-profile comedians. Then on Tuesday came a from Platformer’s Casey Newton that Musk is considering putting all of Twitter behind a paywall. Yikes. The unpredictable policymaking has begun to spook users, some of whom are leaving for what they see as greener pastures. That’s to the benefit of startups like Mastodon, a Germany-based platform that offers an experience in many ways comparable to Twitter’s. (For a primer on Mastodon’s history, how it works and how to join it, read my colleague Amanda Siberling’s , which does a thorough job of breaking it all down.) Mastodon has experienced rapid growth since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, with nearly joining the network since October 27. While the company is nonprofit, its expansion could fan Twitter rivals’ emergence from the ashes — and VC backing of those rivals. Former Google Area 120 director Gabor Cselle is among the opportunists, on Monday that he’s secured interest (and promises of capital) from investors and an ex-Twitter exec to build a Twitter alternative. Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch Generative AI is the hot new thing in tech. Well, perhaps not new, but it’s recently entered the VC lexicon thanks to high-profile text-to-image AI systems like OpenAI’s and Stability AI’s . Stability AI recently $101 million at a reported valuation over $1 billion, and OpenAI is said to be in talks for capital from Microsoft and other backers at a valuation close to $20 billion. and AI-generated might be dominating the headlines. But investors see massive potential in generative AI built for the enterprise. TechCrunch’s Rita Liao this week covered , a two-year-old startup leveraging generative AI along with other AI frameworks to make videos featuring talking human avatars. A little earlier in the fall, I wrote about , an AI content platform for marketing that landed $125 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. VCs are increasingly bullish on generative AI. In a recent article on its website, VC firm Sequoia that generative AI — referring to any AI that can generate text, photos, audio or video — has the potential to “generate trillions of dollars of economic value.” Trillions might sound optimistic, but what’s certain is LP’s willingness to write checks is fueling an explosion of new ventures in the nascent space. Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch What’s Peloton co-founder John Foley been up to since he left the company in September? Becoming something of a rug salesman, apparently. . My colleague Rebecca Szkutak profiles Foley’s latest venture for TC+, called Ernesta. Aiming to launch in spring 2023, Ernesta — backed by $25 million in venture capital — will sell custom rugs through a direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy. Rugs online might seem random. But the fact that Ernesta secured a large tranche so quickly points to the continued investor enthusiasm around e-commerce — in spite of views on DTC. The pandemic supercharged online shopping, driving the digital sales of goods to $815.4 billion in 2020 up from $671.2 billion in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Retail Trade Survey. Where it concerns DTC, high-profile flops like Casper, Brandless and Outdoor Voices have given some VCs pause to be sure. But as Ernesta’s success shows, the funding hasn’t dried up yet. The rug company joins Rad Power Bikes, Madison Reed and Glossier among the DTC brands that have tens of millions in equity at sizable valuation step-ups. Cavan Images / Getty Images Like Startups Weekly? Natasha and I hope so. If you’d like to support us, please send it to a friend and share it on your social channel of choice. It’d mean a lot. Have a story tip? Feel free to hit up my . These days, I’m especially interested in generative AI, so don’t be a stranger if you’re working on something germane to it. |
GoFreight raises $23M to become the “Shopify of freight forwarding” | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 11 | 13 | Unicorn Flexport is , serving as a freight forwarder with software that enables customers to manage their shipments. But there are still thousands of smaller freight forwarders, many running on outdated ERP software or spreadsheets. A startup called wants to help them compete by providing the “Shopify of freight forwarding,” with backend software that makes their operations run more smoothly, and a frontend that lets them set up a storefront and provide quotes in a few minutes. The Los Angeles and Taipei-based startup has raised $23 million in Series A funding, co-led by Flex Capital and Headline. The round included participation from LFX Venture Partners, Palm Drive Capital and returning investors Mucker Capital, Cornerstone Ventures and Red Building Capital. GoFreight, which currently has about 1,000 customers, helps manage transportation of goods through ocean, air and land routes. It also lets them set up online storefronts with a few clicks. Potential customers can connect to freight forwarders by sending them an inquiry through storefront and getting a quotation within a few minutes, instead of the 24 to 48 hours usually necessary. Once a freight forwarding job is underway, shipments can be tracked with an EDI-integrated, real-time tool, so freight forwarders and customers know exactly where their shipment containers are. Tracking software also integrates with accounting tools on GoFreight’s platform, so users know how the performance of shipments is impacting their earnings. Co-founder and CEO Trenton Chen earned his Masters and PhD in the United States before returning to Taiwan to join TSMC. At that time, AppWorks and other startup programs were getting a lot of attention, and Chen decided he wanted to become an entrepreneur. He left TSMC (“it was a tough decision, because no one agreed with that,” he told TechCrunch), and gave himself six months to find a viable idea. During that time, one of his co-founders was living in Los Angeles, working as an importer for a family business. “When I was in the States, I knew a lot of people in this industry as well. So many of our good friends asked us to go there and see how bad the software is. So in the last month of my six month period, I decided to give it an opportunity, bought a ticket for three months to go to LA and spend time with the first 10 freight forwarders, learning how they do business with software. We founded GoFreight after the first week we were there,” Chen said. Even though Chen says the global freight forwarding market is worth about $280 billion dollars, almost all the software it runs on is outdated. GoFreight’s goal is to empower traditional freight forwarders to stay competitive with the same quality of technology that Flexport has. “A freight forwarding business is about how to ship cargo from point A to point B. Software can really help, but that’s not their main business. The service itself is the main business and software cannot help minimize the shipping costs or get it there faster. But it can certainly help provide additional valuable information to customers, importers and exporters,” Chen said, adding, “We try to empower incumbents to compete with Flexport. That’s an approach to make this entire industry better and faster.” Chen says GoFreight differentiates from other freight forwarding software startups because most of them are trying to create new ERP system, or integrate with existing ones. This is challenging to do because many freight forwarders use ERP systems that are out of date, and it’s a fragmented market. Some don’t even use ERP systems; instead, they work off of spreadsheets or pen-and-paper systems. On the backend, GoFreight’s software has sales, operating and accounting tools, so when customers have an inquiry, freight forwarders can enter it into their system and then come back with a quotation. Once a job is confirmed, GoFreight manages bookings, real-time shipments and any necessary electronic filings. They can also generate and send invoices through GoFreight. “Very importantly, we’re trying to become the Shopify of the space, so in one-click they can open an online store, and their importers can use the online web portal to send an inquiry and it just pops up in the system, automatically with pricing and they can book their tickets online,” said Chen. “So the front end application is so important and we provide visibility solutions as well.” A major challenge that GoFreight wants to solve is the process of generating quotes, which can take a couple days since freight forwarding orders are complex. For example, if a customer wants to ship three containers from Shanghai to Los Angeles, freight forwarders need to check with overseas agents who are also freight forwarders. They also need to arrange trucking and warehouses. Another thing to consider is spot rates versus contract rates, since spot rates can be much lower. Most of this work is done through emails, phone calls and text messages, but a centralized customer-facing app means freight forwarders can complete the entire process, including checking with overseas agents, through GoFreight’s integrations, which Chen says reduces the process from two days to about 10 or 20 seconds. GoFreight is currently working with partners to build a network that connects customers with freight forwarders, and freight forwarders with carriers. GoFreight also provides a digital payment solution, since most payments were done by paper checks. This means freight forwarders can issue a link to customers, and once they click on that they are taken to GoFreight’s website, where they can decide what invoices to pay with credit cards or bank accounts. Then that information goes back into GoFreight’s ERP system. Analytics provided by GoFreight can help freight forwarders make more money, Chen said. For example, if they book a 40-foot container, GoFreight will record how much they paid for it and how much customers were charged. The system analyzes performance for top customers and overseas agents, uncovering hidden fees so freight forwarders have a better understanding of the real cost of a shipment. It also breaks down costs per SKU, so freight forwarders and their customers know exactly how much it cost to ship an item. The new funding will be used to develop more features like smart quotations, rate management and purchase order management. In a statement about the funding, Headline partner Tom Gieselmann said, “GoFreight’s all-in-one software provides greater transparency to freight movement, allowing freight forwarders to better manage their business, which can range anywhere from 0-1500+ users, end-to-end. This versatility makes the product incredibly impactful, and a big reason behind why we’ve identified them as one of the most promising logistics tech companies on the market.” |
Nearly 80% of venture funds raised in just two states as US LPs retreat to the coasts | Rebecca Szkutak | 2,022 | 11 | 12 | in the United States raised more dry powder in the first three quarters of this year than they did in all of 2021, but it’s not equally distributed: The big funds keep getting bigger while fundraising has gotten harder for the majority of other players. And Q3 data shows that where a firm is based appears to be playing an increasing role. Through the third quarter of 2022, U.S. venture firms raised $150.9 billion across 593 funds, according to data compiled by PitchBook. While this represents a boost from the $147.2 billion raised in 2021, it marks a staggering drop from the 1,139 funds closed last year. A lot of these dollars went into legacy or well-established firms, which have the clout to raise mega-funds, though some firms drew in dollars by garnering hype. Consequently, LPs are not as interested in backing firms outside of the established venture hubs this year, marking an unfortunate reversal to the COVID-induced trend of more venture money making its way to emerging ecosystems. |
The power pendulum is swinging back to employers, isn’t it? | Natasha Mascarenhas | 2,022 | 11 | 13 | get worse before they get better — which means that the next few months will be full of companies trying to pivot their way to survival during this extended downturn. At least that’s what entrepreneur , who helped lead Carta’s 2020 layoffs as its chief people officer, thinks. He estimates that another 30,000 to 40,000 tech employees around the world will be laid off in Q1 2023 — a number that follows the more than 100,000 layoffs so far in 2022, according to data. this past week about how his experience in the people operations world, at both Carta and DoorDash, has influenced his perspective on the best playbook for layoffs. He’s also building Continuum, a venture-backed startup that wants to match executive talent with startups for full-time Unsurprisingly, his vision for a more flexible workforce fits well into the fact that tens of thousands of employees are now looking for work after just this week’s layoff stampede alone. My entire conversation with Church lives now wherever you find podcasts, Below, we extracted four key excerpts from the interview, from canned CEO statements to how he’s thinking about Twitter’s workforce reduction. Over the last 12 years, the pendulum between who has power between employees and employers has drastically swung toward employees. Now we’re in a moment where the pendulum is swinging back. If I predict where the next five to 10 years are going, the best talent is ultimately always going to be sought after. And I think employees now will continue to hold more power as they go forward. And they will remember how companies handle this moment. To your point around Jack, very candidly, I thought [his statement] was so weak. He waited to say anything; he sent out like two sentences. As somebody who has followed Jack and has been a fan of Jack for a very long time, I thought that this was the definition of weak leadership. And I would have expected more from him. And if I was an employee thinking about working for Jack in the future, I would think twice about it. |
How Rad Power Bikes stacks up for a boomer and a millennial | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 11 | 12 | , the U.S.-based e-bike manufacturer, has made its mark as a direct-to-consumer business selling fat-tire bikes that helped shape the COVID e-bike boom. In 2021, the company raised two massive rounds — in February 2021 and another just eight months later — that brought its total funding above and beyond what Europe’s e-bike darling secured. I wanted to see why investors seemed so keen on the company and why these bikes were gaining in popularity. The company recently sent me two e-bikes to test out: the RadRunner 2 and the RadExpand 5. They both appealed to me as affordable and stable bikes that could be delivered to your door, but I also wanted to give them a go based on a comment that Rad chief product officer Redwood Stephens made in a recent interview with TechCrunch. Stephens told me that Rad’s main target customers aren’t urban commuters. Rather, Rad’s sturdy frames, fat tires and easy-to-read digital displays are aimed at people over 50 years old who live in suburban or rural areas and want a greener mode of transport that still feels safe. I decided to test that by putting my mom on one of them, and you’ll hear her thoughts on that later (Spoiler: She wants to buy one.) The RadRunner 2, an update on Rad’s very successful RadRunner utility bike with a step-through frame, came out in December 2021 at $1,499 and comes in black or forest green. The RadExpand 5 launched in April as a foldable e-bike at $1,599. It comes in black or white. Both the RadRunner 2 and RadExpand 5 have a simple display to turn the bike on and off, choose a pedal-assist level and turn the lights on. Rad Power Bikes The two bikes have very similar looks, feels and specs. Here’s what they have in common: Here’s what’s the same, but different: [gallery ids="2438837,2438838,2438839,2438840"] Both bikes come with an optional front rack and an integrated rear rack, but their payload capacities differ. For example, the RadExpand’s rear rack max load is 59 pounds, but the RadRunner’s max rear rack load can handle 120 pounds (and then some, as my partner and I proved.) The kickstands are different, too. RadExpand’s is a regular style kickstand, but RadRunner’s is a dual leg, spring-loaded kickstand, which is much harder to push over. Additionally, while both bikes have LED head/tail/brake lights, RadRunner 2’s rear lights not only indicate when braking but also have a flash mode. They both are very easy to turn on by holding down the ON button, but I found that maybe made them easy to steal. Many suburbanites don’t actually lock their bikes up, but rather leave them in the shed. For a smart bike, it would be cool to see an anti-theft locking system. Finally, the RadRunner and the RadExpand both have fat, puncture-resistant tires, but just how fat differs with each bike. The RadRunner has 20 inch by 2.2 inch tires, and the RadExpand’s tires are 20 inch by 4 inch. I found that on both bikes, the fat tires made for a bouncy, rather than bumpy, ride over potholes and other cracks in the road. The RadRunner2 is great for both on-roading and off-roading. Rebecca Bellan “The throttle makes it a game changer. I like how when it accelerates it doesn’t accelerate where you feel like you’re being thrown back. It’s a gentle acceleration, which is especially good for us older folk,” Bellan the senior told me after an hour-long cycle around a suburban neighborhood in Long Island. She noted that despite its 65 pounds of weight, the RadRunner 2 isn’t so heavy as compared to her current e-bike, the Aventon Pace. The Pace, by the way, does indeed feel like you’re about to be thrown off the saddle when you accelerate using the pedal assist. Bellan said the high handlebars kept her from feeling like she was leaning over too much, which helped with the general feelings of stability and avoiding back pain. The model we tried out had a seat for an additional rider on the back. It’s probably meant for a child, but my partner and I defied the advertised 300-pound weight limit on a previous jaunt around the neighborhood. My mother said she’d choose to have a storage rack instead, which is one of the options available to RadRunner 2 purchasers. “I would go shopping in it. Totally, without a doubt,” she said. “With all the months I didn’t have to worry about the weather, this is the way I would travel through town.” An avid suburban biker, Bellan even said she’d be willing to take it offroad. “It would make me feel more confident going on a mountain biking trail knowing that I had the opportunity to use these extra tidbits and develop my legs,” said Bellan; the extra tidbits being the different levels of pedal assist and the throttle. “I like that I can still get a workout but be able to traverse all the hills without killing myself.” The screen, which simply displays battery capacity, pedal-assist power mode and head/tail light status, was also mother-approved. The RadExpand 5 is also great for on-roading and off-roading. Rebecca Bellan When Rad Power dropped off the bikes to me, they told me the RadExpand is geared toward suburbanites who would leave the bike in the trunk of their car and take it on camping and other off-roading adventures. So naturally, I decided to find the nearest mountain biking trail and give the whole thing a go. I’ll first note what the experience of folding and unfolding the bike was like. In a word: Clumsy. But it got easier with time. Folding up the bike is a two-step process. First you drop the handlebars lower and then sort of close the bike like a book as it balances on one tire. No tools required, which is excellent for saving time and sanity. The bike weighs 62.5 pounds, which somehow feels heavier when it’s condensed in a smaller package. I had to give it a good heave to get it into the trunk of my crossover — I also had to put the back seat down to fit it properly, so ample storage space is of the essence. [gallery ids="2438861,2438858,2438860"] I drove the bike over to a nearby trail and decided to choose the “more difficult” track as opposed to the “easy” or “difficult” tracks, just to see how the RadExpand would perform. I forgot to consider how I might perform. I’m a very confident city biker. I can weave in and out of rush hour Second Avenue traffic, throwing up a middle finger to the car that’s double parked in the bike lane without losing momentum. But mountain biking is an entirely different beast, and there were some moments I was truly scared for my life. That might be because Rad doesn’t actually advertise this as a mountain bike, but I’m also confident that someone with more experience off-roading would have found the RadExpand to be a dream on that trail. That said, I generally felt safer on the RadExpand in that rough terrain than I ever have on a normal mountain bike. The fat tires simply make you feel more stable, and the fact that you can rely on the throttle to speed up when needed was vital when braving the gravel, sand, gigantic tree roots and big inclines on the trail. I suppose I’d say the suspension was good, because I never once felt that jolting pain that goes from your tailbone up your spine that I get riding over bumps in my push bike. But that might have been attributable to the bouncy tires, rather than Rad’s suspension system. Unrelated to my mountain biking foray, the ability to switch between low levels of pedal assist and the throttle was something I also appreciated driving in dense urban areas. When you’re at a traffic light, for example, you want to be able to creep past other pedestrians without accidentally lurching into them as you push down on the pedal. But when you’re then trying to cross a busy street and make it around a double-parked car, that throttle really comes in handy for speed. Overall, both bikes were pretty dreamy to ride, and for the price point and convenience of delivery to your door and Rad’s mobile service network to test, buy and service bikes, I’m not left with many bad things to say about the bikes. |
The dilemma of Chinese startups going global | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 11 | 13 | , I published an article about a Chinese hardware maker which would have otherwise been a typical funding story. Instead, I got a complaint from its PR asking me to remove all mentions of “China” from the piece. The startup wanted to be called “American” on the basis of its having a small office in California. I declined, insisting on our duty to uncover relevant facts for readers. I never heard from the company again. That turned out to be just the beginning of a trend in my interaction with Chinese startups that are expanding abroad. “We don’t want to be seen as Chinese,” many of them tell me. My attitude has over time gone from disappointment at companies’ lack of respect for journalistic independence to a growing concern that my portrayal of them might unfairly prejudice their growth. By putting the Chinese label on them, these firms might lose business partners, get stricter oversight by app stores and receive more scrutiny from local regulators. What used to be a no-brainer geographic categorization of a company — “it is Chinese/based in China” — has become politically charged. Five years ago, a Chinese firm would be boasting its “successful entry into Europe” as a Chinese firm. These days, with rising tensions between China and the West, many globalizing Chinese companies choose to bury their origin. They worry that their links to home — however it is defined — can be viewed as a national security threat to the foreign market they serve. We are going from longing China to longing Chinese, like Eric Yuan. As startups build increasingly distributed teams, it’s also become harder to put a geographic pin on them. The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, which , famously . “If you look at companies such as Tiktok, Binance, Grab…these startups all started from day one with a global market in mind and built with teams located in multiple jurisdictions. It is really difficult to label them as from a certain country” said Ron Cao, who’s an early investor in Pinduoduo and founder of Sky9 Capital, an early-stage VC with a presence in China, Singapore, and the U.S. But Chinese startups aren’t just concealing their origin. Many of them are in effect moving legally and operationally to distance themselves from their homeland to reassure foreign authorities that they aren’t beholden to Beijing. The upside of decoupling is companies end up investing more in localization, which is always conducive to overseas expansion. But in the process, they also risk losing some of the advantages of being Chinese. The journey of becoming less “Chinese” is long and complicated, and the extent to which companies choose to reduce their ties to home is playing out differently across sectors and the stage of their business. U.S.-China relations sharply deteriorated under former President Trump’s reign from 2017 to 2021, and President Biden seems to be staying the course, taking a firm stance on China . Having seen how U.S. sanctions have and the spate of in the West, startups fear that they might be the next to get caught between the two superpowers. Companies play down their Chinese association as a result. In the past, startups might get a pass by simply claiming they are Singapore- or San Francisco-based without actually having a meaningful operation in those places. Shein, for example, used to bill itself as being “founded in L.A.” when in reality it started out in Nanjing and Guangzhou as a typical Chinese e-commerce exporter leveraging the country’s robust supply chains. But scrutiny by foreign politicians and the press are driving Chinese firms to ramp up their overseas footprint, especially when they reach a critical size. Recently, Shein announced plans to . The company has moved most of its assets to Singapore and made the island nation — which is widely regarded as politically neutral — its headquarters. Sky Xu, the founder and CEO of Shein, is also seeking Singaporean citizenship. Several entrepreneurs told me that top VC firms in China now provide passport shopping as part of their post-investment service for founders targeting overseas markets in response to a new rule on offshore IPOs: last December, China’s securities authority that a company, regardless of where it’s incorporated, must go through a filing process with the Chinese government if its main management mostly consists of Chinese nationals or executives who live in China, and whose main business operation is in China. If you look at companies such as Tiktok, Binance, Grab…these startups all started from day one with a global market in mind and built with teams located in multiple jurisdictions. It is really difficult to label them as from a certain country. Getting the overseas legal setup is just the first step. The greater challenge lies in winning the trust of local regulators and customers. The founder of a productivity app that is targeting the U.S. market told me that “everything we use at work is non-Chinese,” so all of its data, internally or those of its end users, are kept offshore. Rather than ByteDance’s Lark and Alibaba’s Dingtalk, the startup uses Notion and Slack for internal communication, AWS for data hosting and Stripe for payments. The company was founded in Shenzhen but is in the process of setting up a Singaporean company to be its holding entity. For enterprise software providers, the need to localize is even more pressing. While consumer app developers might gain traction without having to leave their China office, as they can remotely answer user emails and master search engine optimization to acquire users, building an enterprise business from afar is nearly impossible. For large corporations and even small mom-and-pop shops, business is expected to be done face-to-face. Why would a warehouse in Dallas trust a Shenzhen-based robotics startup to move its parcels? Localization creates interdependence between economies, which can in turn become a bargaining chip for Chinese firms as they navigate geopolitical complications. “Once you have hired enough employees in the U.S., you have vested interests in the local economy, and your staff and local regulators will speak for you,” reckoned Richard Xu, an investor at Grand View Capital, which focuses on helping Chinese startups go global. Decoupling from China has many challenges. Relocating staff and executives often means moving their whole families abroad, and building teams in the West can be expensive. For many globalizing startups, their presence in China is the very advantage they enjoy. Just as China’s cheap, skilled labor allows factories to produce affordable and quality goods for the world, its millions of engineers, who on average earn just a fifth of their American peers , give Chinese tech firms a cost advantage that translates into cheaper gadgets, better app experience and lower SaaS subscription fees. Despite the flurry of skepticism around TikTok’s data practice, the short video powerhouse seems to be keeping its core development force in Beijing for now. If the firm were to set up an engineering army from the ground up in the U.S., its operational costs will no doubt skyrocket. TikTok could in theory implement data anonymization, that is, to create a system so that engineers in China only have access to data of which identifiers connecting to overseas individuals have been erased. According to a former employee of an American internet giant who worked in both the firm’s U.S. and China offices, “data anonymization isn’t impossible, but it’s extremely counter-productive for developers, which is why many companies aren’t willing to do it.” [Chinese startups] are very aggressive with going after market share and have rapid product iterations capabilities. They operate with a highly efficient and results-driven mindset and are comfortable with taking risks because in many ways they come from the world’s most competitive local market. Companies stay in China not just for the country’s cheap talent but also for its brain power. The U.S. might still have a lead in fundamental research around artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and other cutting-edge technologies, but in China, one can find some of the world’s best product managers who obsess over user experiences. While Vine pioneered the idea of short videos, it was TikTok that elevated the medium to a global phenomenon. In their transformation of becoming “less Chinese,” a question that founders keep asking is: How far should one go? While Zoom’s Eric Yuan is hailed as a role model for immigrant founders, his upbringing was thrust into the limelight amid rising U.S.-China tensions. U.S. lawmakers and media raised suspicions that the conferencing giant’s R&D center in China could be used as Beijing’s spying outpost, prompting the founder to issue a saying he had long been an American citizen and had no allegiance to Beijing. Along with pressure from the West, regulatory changes in China are . In the last few years, Beijing’s clampdown on Alibaba, Tencent, and other domestic tech giants has dampened venture capitalists’ confidence in the consumer internet sector. New regulations around data practices and industry monopolies mean tech companies no longer enjoy the kind of unfettered growth experienced by their predecessors in the last two decades. Regulations might also compromise the core of a startup’s service, a particularly salient issue for content-heavy startups. Game developers need to be pundits of Communist ideologies to ensure their works meet the government’s content guidelines. Social networks are required to run speech moderation systems that are costly and undermine user experiences. Many founders operating in these areas are either pivoting to another sector or switching to overseas markets. For businesses that aren’t aligned with the interest of the government, even having a physical footprint in China can be risky. “In China, we operate like a semi-illegal, underground business,” the founder of a web3 startup said, asking for anonymity. Like many other blockchain entrepreneurs, he recently moved to Singapore after China outlawed cryptocurrency transactions, even though his target audience had been global from the get-go. Since rules around the budding industry are ever-changing, “you never know if you’d be the next to be in trouble, especially when it’s an industry flooded with money.” As they march into foreign territory, many Chinese startups are withdrawing themselves from public view — not to hide a nefarious behavior but out of a fear of being misunderstood. They resort to a strategy of “lying low and making money.” The taciturn further widens the gap between them and Western media, meaning American VCs have few ways to learn about them. Despite their international ambitions, many of them feel more comfortable with Chinese media and continue to raise from China-focused VCs, who are happily following the founders abroad. “In more recent years, we are entering a new phase of entrepreneurship as more and more local startups are building businesses for global markets while leveraging the most strategic and relevant resources globally. In order to support this new phase, successful investors need to have a global perspective and value-added,” said Cao of Sky9. “Entrepreneurs from China can be very competitive in many sectors globally. They are very aggressive with going after market share and have rapid product iterations capabilities. They operate with a highly efficient and results-driven mindset and are comfortable with taking risks because in many ways they come from the world’s most competitive local market,” he added. My attitude has over time gone from disappointment at companies’ lack of respect for journalistic independence to a growing concern that my portrayal of them might unfairly prejudice their growth. By putting the Chinese label on them, these firms might lose business partners, get stricter oversight by app stores, and receive more scrutiny from local regulators. As their money traverses borders to follow Chinese talent and ideas, VCs have a new slogan for their investment thesis. “We are going from longing China to longing Chinese, like Eric Yuan,” said Xu. “Chinese founders need to speak up more and accept that being Chinese is a thing to be proud of. But unfortunately, under the current geopolitical environment, it’s not really achievable.” There are more encouraging stories, though. I recently met a neural search engine startup called Jina.ai for lunch in Berlin. The founder, Han Xiao, turned up with 10 of his employees, who chatted in English and sat by a long table while Han, who is originally from China, proudly counted the number of nationalities present — twleve. I was impressed by how globalized the team is, in part thanks to the diverse tech talent in Berlin and Xiao’s experience in Germany. On a daily basis, Jina’s developers in Berlin work closely with the rest of its team in Shenzhen, the Chinese city known for birthing tech powerhouses such as Tencent, Huawei, and DJI. In a way, Xiao has achieved the dream of many Chinese founders — to run a global startup that still gets to play to China’s advantage — without having to cover up their Chinese ties. “In the beginning, people would still ask if we were a Chinese company, but these questions happen less and less now. I’ve been in Germany for years. Most of our staff are international, and they are the people who represent us in meetings with clients and business partners,” said Xiao. |
Indian fintech Lentra raises $60M to expand loans-as-a-service for banks | Jagmeet Singh | 2,022 | 11 | 13 | India initially made its name in the tech world years ago when it staked out reputation as a key hub for business process outsourcing. Now that legacy has taken a very different turn in fintech with outsourcing of a very different kind, with the emergence of embedded finance technology. In the latest development, , an Indian embedded AI-based finance startup, has raised $60 million — a Series B that values the startup at “over $400 million,” D Venkatesh, the founder and CEO of the startup, told TechCrunch in an interview. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Susquehanna International Group (SIG) led the round with strategic participation also from Citi Ventures, a subsidiary of the New York-based investment banking giant Citigroup. This is Citi Ventures’ first investment in a fintech out of India, and this round overall underscores how far the fintech and embedded finance ecosystem have come along in recent years. Lentra, which is profitable, has been growing at a very fast clip. In 2019, its first year of operations, it registered $1 million from its “annual consumption rate” — this term relates to the amount of revenue Lentra makes based on usage of its APIs. As of this year, that figure is up to $10 million, and it is projected to hit $100 million in 2024. The Mumbai-based startup works with commercial banks to power their digital loan services. HDFC Bank, Federal Bank, Standard Chartered and IDFC First Bank are some of its key customers. Overall, Lentra has more than 50 clients and has processed over 13 billion transactions and $21 billion worth of loans since its launch. Venkatesh said the startup achieved all this growth without hiring a single sales executive until April this year. The company’s mission is not unlike that of a number of other fintechs that have thrown their hats into the ring to work with — rather than completely upend and disrupt — legacy financial services providers, which have found themselves unable to keep up with innovation from faster moving, tech-based competitors. “We want to help and empower the banks, who are our clients, to lend better, lend completely on a digital platform and improve on all parameters,” said Venkatesh. Those parameters are the same for banks the world over. Yes, banks want to lend more, and to be more accessible to more potential borrowers — hence moving to digital platforms to help them scale and compete better against digital-first offerings. But banks have had their feet burned many a time already: They don’t want to take on a load of bad debt in the process of scaling, so they need better tech to improve how they vet borrowers, and also to have a better grip on forecasting what they might expect to get in returns (and losses) as a result. The four-year-old fintech helps them do this through a variety of loan tools: Lentra Lending Cloud, which gives ready-to-use third-party API connectors to various data sources, as well as a Loan Management System (LMS) and a no-code Business rules engine (BREx) with modules for clients to use out-of-the-box. The startup also has a platform called GoNoGo in its catalog that helps banks ascertain whether a loan should be given to a customer once they get their application. Venkatesh said that in India, 90% of lending frauds occur by way of ID proof thefts, where bad actors impersonate someone with a better credit record to get a loan quickly. Lentra uses AI to triangulate data to identify potential fraud attempts. “If you solve ID theft fraud, you minimize the approach or the stance that the bank will have towards a non-performing asset or bad loan,” the founder said. He claimed while banks had only been able to whittle down the loan process — applying, processing and approving or denying applications — to between six and seven days, Lentra’s technology has reduced that turnaround to a few seconds. Even though a number of startups are trying to ease lending for banks, interestingly Lentra sees Salesforce as one of its biggest competitors when it comes to loan origination. “Our number one target is anyone who’s using Salesforce for loan origination. We go, latch on to them, and then we convert them,” Venkatesh said. Citi is not just interested in tapping more into India’s tech ecosystem, but to leverage it for its own global growth, too. “Lentra is our first fintech investment in India, and we are very excited about the team’s ability to develop and scale low-friction software solutions for lenders,” said Everett Leonidas, director & APAC Lead Investor for Citi Ventures, in a statement. “As a global bank, we look forward to Lentra scaling their products and platform internationally.” Venkatesh told TechCrunch that Lentra plans to utilize the funding to continue updating its platform, add new features and make it more robust and faster. The startup is also set to expand beyond India and establish its business outside the country, starting with three economies in Asia: Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Post the initial expansion, the startup plans to go beyond Asia and enter the U.S. Offices in the three new Asian countries will become operational starting as early as January, the founder said. Lentra already has its presence in Singapore since it acquired an AI startup TheDataTeam in June this year that had an office in the Lion City. Venkatesh said that the office in Singapore would become the vehicle for the startup to go into the ASEAN economies. Alongside improving the offering and expanding the business, Lentra has plans to acquire complementary businesses. The founder told TechCrunch that its acquisition plans focus on three areas — robotic process automation, payment systems or solutions that are not regulated entities and teams working on statistical modeling or building heuristics models within statistics. “Lentra is empowering lenders to fuel the dreams of millions with effective financial inclusion and credit decisioning,” said Vishal Gupta, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “We were really impressed with the combination of their technology prowess and the commercial advantage that Lentra is delivering to their clients. We look forward to helping them continue to achieve their vision of becoming the most trusted and sought after cloud-native digital lending platform, empowering clients in democratizing credit through accurate decisioning and rapid processing.” Lentra also has HDFC Bank as an investor, though it did not participate in the latest funding round. Venkatesh said that the bank could have invested but it did not this time as it had to follow the Reserve Bank of India’s condition of not holding more than 10% in unrelated businesses due to merging with HDFC Group. “We are excited to support Lentra which was SIG’s first Indian VC investment in 2019. Since SIG’s investment, Lentra has demonstrated superior metrics on revenue retention and grown 20x, while exhibiting strong capital efficiency. SIG is excited for Lentra’s next phase of growth as it embarks on serving global customers,” said Bhavanipratap Rana, investment advisor to SIG. The startup currently has Mumbai as its number one market, followed by Delhi, Chennai and Bengaluru. It has a team of 500 people that is aimed to grow to 800 to support the ongoing plans. |
Volunteer at TC Sessions: Space and get a free pass to TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 | Lauren Simonds | 2,022 | 11 | 13 | It takes a lot of people to bring a tech conference to life, and we’re looking for incredible people to support our events team and help make an amazing experience for our attendees. If you’re incredible (heck, you know you are) or interested in space technology, tech startups, event planning — or all of the above — , which takes place on December 6 in Los Angeles, California. It’s a great way to see what it takes to produce a world-class conference. We expect more than 1,000 people at this event, and volunteers will handle a variety of tasks. At any given time, you might help with registration, wrangle speakers, direct attendees, scan tickets or help with general event setup. What’s in it for you? Fair question. If you’re selected, not only will you get a behind-the-scenes look at how events are produced, but you’ll also earn a free pass to attend in San Francisco on September 19–21. Plus, when you complete your volunteer shift, you can attend the interviews, presentations and breakout sessions. Just some of the speakers gracing our stage include: And, of course, be sure to check out the early-stage startups exhibiting their latest space tech on the show floor. Volunteer spots are limited. If you want to gain valuable event experience, take in all the galactic goodness and earn a free pass to TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, to be considered! |
How the FirstBuild product co-creation studio is changing how new things are made | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 11 | 13 | running R&D at a large appliance manufacturer, you have a challenge. You typically make products in enormous quantities at pretty slim margins. In order to recoup your development, tooling and launch marketing costs, you need to create and sell a huge number of products. To ensure that that’s possible, you’d probably end up doing a bunch of user and market research to ascertain that you have the highest chance of success with your products. That makes sense, but the very business model itself means that it’s hard to do something truly risky, which in turn means that mainstream manufacturers rarely come up with anything genuinely innovative. That’s where FirstBuild comes in. If you’re a small appliances nerd, you may have seen its , the studio’s first big breakthrough; the ; its or . I spoke with André Zdanow, president at FirstBuild, to figure out where these ideas came from and how the studio is working to try to replicate those successes. “The most famous example is probably the Opal nugget ice maker. At first, it wasn’t actually a product at all — it was a technology being worked on in the refrigeration division of GE Appliances,” Zdanow said, explaining that it turned out to be a head-scratcher. They wanted to put the “nugget ice” into a fridge but weren’t able to figure out exactly what the market size would be for such a thing. “It’s actually really complicated to put the technology into a refrigerator. In other words, it was really a great idea that engineers had been toying around with for years, but in the context of the focus and economics of a multibillion-dollar company, it wasn’t something that they could focus on.” The Opal nugget ice maker was FirstBuild’s first commercial success. FirstBuild In a parallel universe, that tech would never have seen the light of day, but instead, the engineers came to FirstBuild and wondered what would happen if they put the tech in a separate appliance, rather than into a full-size refrigerator. “We see lots of people go to the store and buy this type of ice. They call it Sonic ice or hospital ice. We decided to develop a prototype and see if people want it to be just an ice maker,” Zdanow explained. That was the genesis of the FirstBuild lab’s success. “It started with crude concepts that looked like an ice maker but had nugget ice in it. From there, it progressed through industrial design and ultimately to a $2.7 million crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter back in 2015.” |
What goes up must come down | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 11 | 13 | Like many of you, I’m sure, I was caught up last week watching the unfold. It was a startling development in the world of crypto, and while I don’t cover the space directly, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the goings-on — and not in a good way. For more on that debacle, check out our crypto-focused Chain Reaction podcast and our general coverage . I also couldn’t help paying attention to the train wreck of taking over and . For more on those topics, check out our Equity podcast (of which I am a co-host) . But I digress. Last week, I ended the newsletter saying I hoped this week would come with more uplifting news. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Real estate fintech announced on November 9 that it was , or 862 people, in response to the continued slowing of the housing market. This followed , or 18% of its workforce, the week before and in late October. It also follows Redfin’s in June. Notably, Redfin also said it is shuttering RedfinNow, its iBuying division. To that end, CEO Glenn Kelman wrote in an all-hands email: “One problem is that the share gains we could attribute to iBuying have become less certain as we rolled it out more broadly, especially now that our offers are so low…And the second problem is that iBuying is a staggering amount of money and risk for a now-uncertain benefit. We’ve tied up hundreds of millions of dollars in houses that you yourself wouldn’t want to own right now.” Kelman went on to say that the company’s June layoff was in response to Redfin’s expectation that it would sell fewer houses in 2022. The latest layoff “assumes the downturn will last at least through 2023.” Redfin’s, Zillow’s and Opendoor’s layoffs aren’t the only ones in the industry. Digital mortgage lender conducted yet another layoff or two in the past couple of weeks. One source told me 240 employees were let go on November 4. And San Francisco Business Times reporter Alex Barreira on November 11 that dozens more workers were let go, sharing colorful details of the company’s WARN notice, in which Better.com said it was not able to provide notification earlier as the separations were the result of a “dramatic deterioration” in the company’s business. When I reached out to the company about the layoffs, a spokesperson wrote via email: “Better is focused on making prudent decisions that account for current market dynamics.” Okay, back to Redfin. One thing that stood out most to me with regard to that company’s latest round of layoffs was Kelman’s candor as he addressed employees. In his email, he said: “To every departing employee who put your faith in Redfin, thank you. I’m sorry that we don’t have enough sales to keep paying you.” Interestingly, Kelman appears to be putting his own personal bets into real estate markets outside the U.S. In September, he co-invested in a Seattle startup called Far Homes that was founded by Redfin alums and is focused on “buying and selling real estate in foreign markets,” as reported by . CEOs as of late have been particularly publicly remorseful as their companies either deteriorate or lay off staff. Besides Kelman, other examples this week include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitting he would last, saying: “I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.” Also last week, FTX CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried admitted he “fucked up” and “should have done better” right before FTX and he stepped down from his role. This is after the crypto exchange was valued earlier this year. In Early August, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev took responsibility for the company’s , saying: “This is on me.” Even Better.com CEO Vishal Garg admitted at one point that he had not been disciplined over the previous 18 months, telling employees: “We made $250 million last year, and you know what, .” What does this tell us? CEOs are human, yes. Flawed humans just like the rest of us. In some cases, decisions such as over-hiring were made out of genuine (or foolish) belief that the people hired would be needed in years to come. In other cases, decisions were less honorable and more about furthering the executive’s own agenda. Unfortunately, either way, thousands of employees — and many consumers — are paying the price. / Getty Images Months after acquiring gamified finance mobile app startup Long Game, has introduced the Truist Foundry, an innovation division that it says “will function as a startup within the bank.” The goal will be to deliver “game-changing projects” and serve the bank’s lines of business. A spokesperson told me via email that specifically, the Truist Foundry will work on “building software solutions that drive value and market leadership for the bank.” In other words, it looks like one of the United States’ largest banks is getting even more serious about its digital efforts. has tapped Dutch payments giant to serve as “an additional payments processing partner.” As part of the new partnership, the companies said in a press release that Instacart will leverage Adyen functionality, including PINless debit enablement of transactions “to further optimize and improve authorization rates for an even more seamless customer experience.” Pymnts has more . Another example of fintech for good. Banking-as-a-service startup is partnering with , a fintech company that is building “affordable financial services” to support those who were previously incarcerated. One aspect of the link-up is Synctera’s recently announced Smart Charge Card, which does not require a credit review or a company to fund its customers’ balances. Overall, Synctera says it is helping supply Solvent with “a suite of personal finance and banking tools, products and services aimed to empower and build wealth among ex-cons, a group of Americans often underserved and overlooked.” BNPL player last week reported . While its fiscal first quarter revenue of $361.62 million beat analysts’ estimates, its net loss of 86 cents per share was greater than expected. Its stock tanked to a new 52-week low of $11.94 last week before rebounding to $15.88 on Friday morning at the time of writing. The company tried to put a positive spin on the results, sharing via email that active consumers grew 69% year-over-year and total transactions increased to 13.3 million, representing 97% growth year-over-year. It also claimed that delinquencies and net charge-off rates remained at or below pre-pandemic levels during the quarter. From Sarah Perez: “Elon Musk last week detailed his vision for during a live-streamed meeting with advertisers, hosted on Twitter Spaces. The new Twitter owner suggested that, in the future, users would be able to send money to others on the platform, extract their funds to authenticated bank accounts and, later, perhaps, be offered a high-yield money market account to encourage them to move their cash to Twitter.” Also from Sarah Perez: “ announced it’s expanding its user choice billing pilot, which allows Android app developers to use other payment systems besides Google’s own. The program will now become available to new markets, including the U.S., Brazil and South Africa, and Bumble will now join Spotify as one of the pilot testers. Google additionally announced Spotify will now begin rolling out its implementation of the program starting this week. The company first announced its intention to launch a third-party billing option back in March of this year, with Spotify as the initial tester.” More . From Tage Kene-Okafor: , the London-based and Nigerian-operating startup taking on incumbents in the country with a mobile-first and personalized set of banking services, is by offering a remittance product to Nigerians in the diaspora. The digital bank has seen some success since launching in Nigeria in 2019. Kuda claims to have up to 5 million users, more than thrice the number it had last August during its $55 million Series B round, money it raised to enter into other African countries like Ghana and Uganda this year. Expansion into those countries is yet to materialize; instead, Kuda has opted to launch in the U.K., a move the company says is part of a major global expansion drive. Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch : (CEO) and (CTO) founded Savvy after Malhotra came into a windfall of cash after selling his two startups (Streem was acquired by Box in 2014, and Elph was acquired by Brex in 2019). Long story short, he was advised to seek out a financial advisor, and after sampling several different options, he was inspired to start Savvy in 2021 — a national registered investment advisor (RIA) built on what the company describes as “a digital first wealth management firm centered around modernizing human financial advice.” Before I close, just a reminder that we here at TechCrunch love scoops. So if you’ve g That’s it from me for this week. Here’s to more good news than bad next week! Until then, take good care…xoxo, Mary Ann |
Silkhaus gets $7.75M to digitize short-term rentals across emerging markets | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | The Silkhaus team |
Alibaba eyes logistics growth in LatAm as China commerce slows | Rita Liao | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Cainiao, the logistics arm of Alibaba, is traveling far from home to seek expansion for its business. The company recently launched its first parcel distribution center in Brazil, adding to its regional network of sorting centers in Mexico and Chile, it said Monday. Alibaba’s e-commerce business in China by a combination of a cooling economy and aggressive rivals like Pinduoduo. For the first time, the firm for its annual “Singles Day” shopping festival, which fell on November 11 and used to come with a Super Bowl-like gala featuring pop idols and Jack Ma himself. Cainiao has been following AliExpress abroad, helping the Alibaba-owned cross-border marketplace deliver Chinese goods to consumers around the world. But it’s now ramping up domestic services in some countries, hoping to turn local retailers into its clients. Earlier this year, the logistics giant began providing express courier service in Brazil, which now spans more than 1,000 cities. The new facility in Brazil is slated to further boost Cainiao’s presence in the country. The plan is to open nine more distribution centers in seven states and set up 1,000 “smart lockers” across 10 cities over the next three years. Smart lockers, which let customers pick up their e-commerce packages, have become a common sight in China. It saves couriers from running up and down buildings to deliver to people’s doorstep and helps reduce human contact during COVID-19 times. In Brazil, Cainiao aims to use the infrastructure for intra-city and cross-border logistics services as well as food delivery in the future. One of Cainiao’s smart locker clients is Piticas, a retail franchise focused on geek and pop culture products. “Our consumers can shop online and receive their parcels in a few days. In the future, we look forward to cooperating with Cainiao to utilize its smart lockers, which gives our customers more options for pick-up, as well as imports from China to Brazil, further increasing the efficiency of our supply chain,” said Vinicius Rossetti, CEO of Piticas, in a statement. Cainiao also wants to help Brazilian merchants export goods like coffee, nuts and propolis to China, reversing the traditional trade route. The company currently operates eight weekly chartered flights between China and Brazil and plans to add more air and sea routes between the countries. In July, Cainiao its sorting center in Israel, bringing the number of its overseas sorting centers in use to 10 at the time. As of June, Cainiao had more than 7,700 smart lockers in operation in Europe. The logistics unit accounted for roughly 5.6% of Alibaba’s revenues in the . |
Helbiz sees losses in mobility revenue, slight gains in streaming | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Helbiz’s third-quarter earnings show a company that’s burning cash, not making revenue gains and losing riders year over year. However, Helbiz’s burgeoning sports streaming service did realize some small gains. The micromobility SPAC reported its Q3 earnings Monday, the same day as its only public market competitor, Bird. Neither company is performing well operationally or on the stock market. Bird issued a and admitted to for two years. Both companies are trading below $1.00 and risk stock market . Helbiz closed out the quarter with $3.7 million in revenue, which is down from last year’s $4.7 million, and only $3.3 million in cash. Meanwhile, the company is also spending more and losing more on operations. Helbiz’s operating expenses hit $26.5 million, which is up from the $24.4 million Helbiz spent in Q3 last year. Loss from operations are $22.8 million, up from last year’s $19.7 million. The biggest chunk in loss of revenue came from Helbiz’s mobility segment. Shared scooter and bike rides only brought in $2.5 million in revenue this quarter, compared to $3.9 million in Q3 2021. Helbiz’s media division, a sports streaming platform, brought in more revenue this year than last at $1.1 million, up from $760,000 last year. Helbiz reported $129,000 in “other revenues,” which likely refers to the company’s ghost kitchen service, pointing to some growth in that questionable business foray. The company recently in Italy to feature its Helbiz Kitchen restaurants on both food delivery apps. In a regulatory , Helbiz says it believes “increasing the markets for expansion is fundamental to the success of our core business for the foreseeable future.” Yet compared to last year, the number of trips Helbiz riders performed decreased 30.7%. Strangely, between Q2 and Q3, Helbiz’s number of quarterly unique users increased slightly by around 4,820 additional unique users. However, in the same period, the number of trips completed decreased by around 78,000 trips, which suggests that perhaps more users decided to ride a Helbiz and then thought once was maybe enough. In October, , promising to deliver “over $25 million in revenue for the full year of 2022,” by tapping into Wheels’ user base of 5 million riders and expanding into new markets like Los Angeles. For the first nine months of 2022, Helbiz brought in $11.9 million in revenue. The company would need to earn another $13 million in the fourth quarter, which is typically the slowest in the micromobility industry due to colder weather, in order to meet that goal. Helbiz is relying on a lifeline in the form of a Standby Equity Purchase Agreement (SEPA) with YA II PN, a hedge fund operated by Yorkville Advisors Global. Helbiz will try to sell Yorkville up to $13.9 million of its shares at any time in the next 24 months. The company said it may have to seek additional equity or debt financing, as well, but that there’s no guarantee it will be able to raise funds on acceptable terms or at all. Perhaps investors were encouraged by Helbiz’s SEPA or by the gains in streaming, because Helbiz’s stock is up 3.09% today. Shares are trading at $0.22. |
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Max Q: Join us! | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Hello and welcome back to Max Q. Before we get to the news, I have a pretty exciting announcement myself: about the event and get your free ticket by . In this issue: Astra, a rocket startup that went public last year, told investors Tuesday it laid off 16% of its workforce as part of a wider strategy to increase shrinking financial runway and decrease expenses. The company also said it would reduce near-term investments in space services to grow its core businesses: namely, launch and spacecraft engines. This latter segment in particular has become a growing source of revenue for Astra, with the company reporting it had 237 committed orders for its spacecraft engines to entities including Maxar, OneWeb and Astroscale. That represents an increase of 130% from last quarter. The layoffs shine an unflattering light on Astra’s quick growth: CEO Chris Kemp told investors during a call Tuesday that the company tripled in size in the space of a year, swelling to more than 400 people. Given that number, Astra reduced its headcount by at least 64 people. Astra Major space companies, including SpaceX and Relativity, are urging the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to stick to its purview — spectrum usage — as it looks to potentially update its rules for in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing (ISAM) missions. There is plenty that the FCC could — and should do — to support ISAM missions that sit squarely within its regulatory bounds, the companies said. SpaceX and others, as well as startups like Orbit Fab, which wants to build refueling depots in space, and Starfish Space, which is developing a satellite servicing vehicle, submitted recommendations related to spectrum and ISAM. The commission also heard from Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance and other space companies and industry groups. Here’s SpaceX: “The Commission must handle this potentially important but still nascent industry with care, exercising caution not to unintentionally stifle innovation by stepping outside the authority expressly delegated to it by Congress.” Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images |
Bird may not have enough funds to continue shared micromobility business | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Just hours after Bird said it had for more than two years by recognizing unpaid customer rides, Bird dropped a going concern warning. In a regulatory filing, the company said it might “need to scale back or discontinue certain or all of its operations in order to reduce costs or seek bankruptcy protection.” Bird closed out the third quarter with $38.5 million in free cash flow. Without additional funding, the company said it would be unable to meet its obligations over the next year. Bird points to “factors beyond its control” like current market volatility that could impact if and how Bird receives further equity or debt financing. “Accordingly, the Company plans to continue to closely monitor its operating forecast, reduce its operating expenses, and pursue additional sources of outside capital,” reads the filing. “Along with this global footprint realignment, the Company is targeting additional reductions in its operating expenses.” Bird has been battling since going in 2021. The young company’s dramas have only heightened over the past few months. Since May, Bird has its retail business, of staff, from the New York Stock Exchange for trading too low and exited Germany, Sweden, Norway and “ ” markets in the U.S. Additionally, Bird’s CEO Travis VanderZanden , and then as CEO, and was in both roles by Shane Torchiana. Bird isn’t the only SPAC this year to issue a going concern warning. and Arrival both also said they may not have enough funds to get their EVs to market, and Arrival also recently got a from the Nasdaq. Bird’s stock tanked nearly 16% today and is currently trading at $0.36. In the third quarter, Bird said its revenue increased 19% to $72.9 million, compared to $61.1 million in the same quarter last year. Bird shared its revenue increase the same day it disclosed that it overstated revenue in the past and that the last two years’ worth of financial statements “should no longer be relied upon.” Bird recorded revenue on certain trips even when customers lacked sufficient “preloaded wallet balances,” which Ben Lu, Bird’s chief financial officer, attributed to the company’s IT systems not capturing some failed payments after the completion of a ride. Bird is in the process of analyzing pre-loaded wallet balances that it doesn’t expect to be redeemed in the future, which the company expects to complete in Q4 2022, according to Lu. “Upon completion, we expect to record on-going breakage revenue and anticipate booking a true-up that would increase our revenues next quarter,” said Lu in a statement. “As a result of these two accounting adjustments, we are withdrawing our previous fiscal year 2022 revenue guidance of $275 to $325 million.” Lu did not explain how Bird would square up the overstated revenue from the past, nor if Bird would issue new revenue guidance for the full year. Bird closed out the quarter with a $9.8 million net loss, compared to a net loss of $42.1 million in the year prior, which suggests that the company’s many cost cuts had an impact. Indeed Bird’s Q3 operating expenses were $29.4 million, which is down $10.6 million from Q3 2021. Without additional funds, however, Bird may be exiting more than just several dozen markets. |
The Amazonification of Uber | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | It’s been six months since Uber hosted , a global smorgasbord of product reveals and features that covered everything from booking party buses and voice ordering for Uber Eats to linking travel plans to Gmail and skipping the food lines at sports stadiums. The product reveals aren’t just about creating new revenue streams or attracting users — although these are certainly goals. Uber has a bigger end game: create a closed business loop with each product feeding customers back into other Uber channels. And that loop is growing. On Monday, heartened by a strong momentum in user engagement and girded for the upcoming holiday season, Uber released another slew of product updates and new features. This time the products were released under the marketing banner of . Now Uber customers can do things like book with OpenTable and Viator through Uber’s app, search across merchants for the right bottle of booze to be delivered and even schedule Uber gift cards to send on Christmas day. Uber was founded on a strategy of scaling at all costs. As Uber struggled to crack the elusive profitability nut through ride-hailing, it added its food delivery pillar Uber Eats. Now Uber appears to have taken a page out of the Amazon book of customer stickiness to attract new users and get existing customers to spend more money on the platform. Just as Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, drives secondary revenue to Amazon every time a customer says, “Alexa, buy more shampoo and conditioner,” so, too, does Uber increase its ride revenue when a customer books an event via Uber’s partnership with Viator and then books an Uber to get them there. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi touched on this during the company’s third-quarter earnings call held November 1. “We are actively cross-selling food delivery consumers into grocery, grocery consumers into alcohol, and actually back now to mobility,” said Khosrowshahi. “All of the cross-sell that we have across the platform continues to increase, drive new customers and drive retention, as well.” There’s evidence to suggest that, at least in the short-term, there are fruits to these labors. In the third quarter, Uber’s gross bookings reached $29 billion, a 26% increase from the year prior. The company’s monthly active platform consumers (MAPC) grew 14% year-over-year from 109 million quarterly users to 124 million. If gross bookings grew at a rate faster than MAPC, we can infer that each customer is spending more on the platform than they would have. “As far as the consumers go — high frequency, low frequency consumers — it’s absolutely true that if we can move our consumer use from lower frequency to higher frequency, we will see very significant growth,” said Khosrowshahi during Uber’s Q3 earnings call. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Uber will extend beyond the mobility space and into other revenue channels. The company recently launched a that oversees in-app ads during rides. To grow that business out, we might one day see Uber hiring creatives and using its vast amounts of data on riders to provide external marketing services for brands. Who knows? While short-term reports show that Uber’s depth of products might have customer stickiness, the company should be wary of biting off more than it can chew. Uber made revenue gains in the third quarter, yet it still lost $1.2 billion, almost half of which can be attributed to operating losses. Tech giants and hotshot upstarts alike are in the midst of cutting costs — measures that include slashing jobs — as growth becomes more difficult amid the current economy. Even Amazon is not immune. There are that Amazon is planning to lay off 10,000 people this week, and there is speculation that the company’s devices group, which includes Echo, Fire tablets and Kindles, could be on the . At an operating loss of $5 billion a year, it’s not hard to see why. |
Daily Crunch: Nigerian startup that stored its ‘day-to-day operational budget’ on FTX announces staff cuts | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Hello, and welcome to the beginning of another week. As mentioned last Friday, is off scuba diving, leaving the rest of us to pick up the Twitter and FTX pieces. No bother, we are here for you. starts us off by reporting on . And with that, let’s dig in! — At this point, we all expect our data to move pretty quickly, but there is so much of it that it’s still a headache. This is where Quix comes in, writes. in Series A funding, not to do this with ksqlDB, Java-based solutions or any of those fancy schmancy SQL-based analytics solutions. Oh no, is developing event-driven applications with Python. And we have five more for you: / Getty Images According to consultant Grant Easterbrook, fintech startups that hope to succeed over the next few years must be prepared to go up against: “Your firm will need a very strong value proposition to compete with all four types of competitors,” writes Easterbrook, who shares his ideas for navigating the next decade of fintech in a TC+ guest post. Two more from the TC+ team: And just like that, , reports. Nine months ago, the country’s electronics and IT ministry instituted the ban on the popular media playback software, something VLC worked to try to reverse, stating that the ban had been “put into place without any prior notice” and didn’t allow VLC a chance for rebuttal. has more on our favorite social media channel, this time writing that “Twitter is required for it to claim Ireland as its “so-called main establishment under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.” Can’t wait to see where this goes. And we have five more for you: |
Is Elon Musk’s Twitter about to fall out of the GDPR’s one-stop shop? | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | new owner Elon Musk, Twitter is no longer fulfilling key obligations required for it to claim Ireland as its so-called main establishment under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a source familiar with the matter has told TechCrunch. Our source, who is well placed, requested and was granted anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the issue — which could have major ramifications for Twitter and for Musk. Like many major tech firms with customers across the European Union, Twitter currently avails itself of a mechanism in the GDPR known as the one-stop shop (OSS). This is beneficial because it allows the company to streamline regulatory administration by being able to engage exclusively with a lead data supervisor in the EU Member State where it is “main established” (in Twitter’s case, Ireland), rather than having to accept inbound from data protection authorities across the bloc. However, under Musk’s chaotic reign — which has already seen a fast and deep downsizing of Twitter’s headcount, kicking off with layoffs of 50% of staff — questions are being asked over whether its main establishment status in Ireland for the GDPR still holds or not. The resignation late of key senior personnel responsible for ensuring security and privacy compliance looks like a canary in the coal mine when it comes to Twitter’s regulatory situation — with CISO Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran, and chief compliance officer Marianne Fogarty all walking out the door en masse. It’s not clear whether any adequately qualified individuals will be willing to step into these critical compliance roles for privacy and security at Twitter given the current Musk-driven craziness — since anyone signing up for that level of responsibility risks opening themselves up to personal liability should regulatory requirements be breached on their watch. As , Musk’s attorney and now head of legal at Twitter, Alex Spiro — who has been given a key role in the overhaul of the platform — emailing all staff on behalf of “Elon” to claim they face no personal liability will surely sound alarm bells for regulators over Twitter’s direction of travel. Last week, also reported on turmoil inside Twitter’s privacy and security function as standard review procedures were dispensed with and engineers were asked to “self-certify” compliance with FTC rules. Its report also cited an unnamed company lawyer who it said had Slacked employees to warn them that changes to how Twitter operates is piling personal, professional and legal risk onto engineers instructed to implement Musk’s will regardless of consequences. Under the EU’s GDPR, meanwhile, Twitter is obliged — in just one very basic requirement — to have a data protection officer (DPO) to provide a contact point for regulators. Hence the departure of Kieran, its first and only DPO since the role was created at the company in 2018, has not gone unnoticed by its data protection watchdog in Ireland — as we also reported Friday. But the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)’s concerns are already spiraling wider than Twitter’s compliance with notifications about core personnel: , the authority — currently Twitter’s lead EU DPA under the GDPR’s OSS — put the social media firm on watch by signaling public concern when it said it would be putting questions to the company about the status of its main establishment in Ireland at a meeting scheduled for early this week, to discuss all the recent privacy changes since the Musk takeover. Twitter has not commented publicly on the DPC’s warning nor on the departures of senior regulator-facing staffers. Indeed, since Musk took over, its communications department appears to have been dismantled and the company no longer responds to press requests for comment — so it was not possible to obtain an official statement from Twitter about these departures or on the substance of our report. (We’re happy to add a response if Twitter or Musk wants to send us one.) For Twitter’s business itself, there are a number of potential consequences in play if its ability to meet regulatory requirements falls. If the DPC assesses (or is informed by Musk) that it no longer has its main establishment in Ireland, the company will crash out of the OSS — opening it up to being regulated by the data protection authority across the bloc’s 27 Member States, which would become competent to oversee its business. In practice, that means any EU data protection authority would be able to act directly on concerns it has that local users’ data is at risk — with the power to instigate their own investigations and take enforcement actions. So Ireland’s more business-friendly regulator would no longer be leading the handling of any GDPR concerns about Twitter; probes could be simultaneously opened up all over the EU — including in Member States like France and Germany where data protection authorities have a reputation for being quicker to the punch (and/or more aggressive) in responding to complaints compared to Ireland. If Twitter loses its ability to claim main establishment in Ireland, it would therefore drastically amp up the complexity, cost and risk of achieving GDPR compliance. (Reminder: Penalties under the regulation can scale up to 4% of annual global turnover — so these are not rules a CEO would ignore.) The GDPR does not set out specific criteria for assessing main establishment. But, in Twitter’s case — in order for it to be able to fulfill the regulation’s requirement of “effective and real exercise of management activities determining the main decisions as to the purposes and means of processing through stable arrangements” actually taking place locally, in Ireland, despite Twitter product development being led out of the U.S. — we understand that the company devised a careful legal framework that was designed to empower an Irish entity to be the data controller for EU users by ensuring that this Ireland-located Twitter company, which has its own board of directors subject to Irish law, has oversight of and influence on U.S.-led product development. The structure Twitter was relying upon to participate in the GDPR’s OSS includes a system of mandatory privacy and security reviews for new products — to enable the Irish entity to insert its feedback and exert influence over product development. Under this framework, the board of the Irish company was able to raise concerns about planned new features ahead of launch, with input then fed back to U.S. product development teams to be incorporated into products before launch — thereby, assuming the protocol was correctly followed, empowering a local decision-making capacity inside the EU. However, per our source, the situation at Twitter since Musk took over is that no information is being provided about what products are being worked on in the U.S. to the Irish entity’s management — nor is the Irish entity’s management able to provide any input into any product Musk is working on since it is not being kept apprised of what’s being developed. Products in development at Twitter are not even being submitted into review pipelines anymore, much less getting reviews before being shipped, according to our source, who told us the system has essentially stopped operating. “Solving for the OSS is going to be a nightmare because that was already a complicated dance for Twitter’s old management — because it was a situation where you had two employees, effectively, who were lower down the pecking order of the company, the directors of the Irish entity, who are directing the US entity what to do,” this person said, adding: “But in a world where Elon is sole king, dictator, everything, you want some employees based in Dublin to try and give feedback to this guy? Who? That’s never going to work.” Our source’s account of abandoned review processes aligns with ‘s reporting of normal security and privacy reviews being thrown into turmoil on Musk taking over. Its report cites an employee who told us the revamped Blue subscription disregarded the normal review process — with a “red team” only reviewing potential risks the night before launch, meaning they were not provided with enough notice or time to be able to conduct a comprehensive check, plus, in any case, none of their recommendations were implemented prior to the product’s relaunch. So if the Irish entity is no longer in the loop on product decisions, it’s difficult to see how Twitter can credibly continue to participate in the OSS. We understand that the Irish entity has two remaining board members — both of whom are located in Ireland. The board requires a minimum of two board members to be located in Ireland, under Irish law, in order to have a quorum. (The Irish entity previously had a third board member — who was located in the U.S. — but that person appears to have left Twitter last month.) As far as we are aware, the two remaining Irish entity board members are still employed by Twitter (for now) — but our source’s view is that the situation is already untenable, given the board is being cut out of decision-making as Musk overrides the established oversight system for product review (and — seemingly — ignores and/or is unaware of the regulatory requirements it was designed to meet). The system Twitter devised to avail itself of the GDPR’s OSS is known to its Irish regulator — which holds detailed documentation on its structure and is supposed to be kept informed of how it’s functioning on an ongoing basis, such as by receiving minutes of board meetings. So it should not take long for any failure of established essential processes to become obvious to the DPC. We reached out to the DPC for a response to our source’s account of how the OSS is already broken — but at press time we had not been able to reach our contact at the regulator. If Twitter seeks to claim that it remains compliant with the OSS requirement of a main establishment in the EU — in spite of glaring personnel and process gaps and Musk’s very public and cavalier approach to rapidly iterating product development (which has already missed glaringly obvious risks like paid verification leading to a wave of impersonation) — it will be up to the DPC to make an assessment of whether the OSS still stands or not. That said, other EU watchful DPAs may not sit on their hands waiting in the meanwhile. Under the GDPR, all these bodies have powers to make emergency interventions in certain circumstances that lets them derogate from the OSS — such as if they feel there is a pressing risk to local users’ data. So we could see other DPAs reaching for Article 66 powers and implementing their own urgency procedures against Twitter in their own markets. The information coming out of Twitter currently (either unofficially, via media leaks, or via Musk’s cryptic tweets) paints a picture of a drastic rewriting (or tearing up) of how product decisions and development is being done — with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO at the center of decision-making and remaining staffers scrambling to keep up with his mercurial/ridiculous demands. As well as mass sackings, Musk’s chaotic first days at Twitter have featured a flurry of radical yet obviously ill-thought-through product changes and rapid-fire launches — followed by equally erratic revisions, U-turns and product suspensions as obvious problems zoomed into view. This has included the aforementioned bizarre reworking of an existing Twitter subscription product (Twitter Blue), which added the ability for users to pay to receive a blue checkmark the platform had previously applied only to high-profile and other notable accounts to act as a verification and authenticity signal (not a revenue driver) — but without Twitter performing any verification check of these paying customers’ identities at all. Impersonation chaos immediately ensued — as did more chaos: An “official” badge/second gray checkmark was rushed out by certain staff at Twitter, seemingly in a bid to reapply a layer of critical verification to key accounts, yet got killed almost immediately by Musk with little public explanation. By Friday, the platform appeared to have paused the Blue subscription after widespread abuse of the paid verification feature — although Musk also tweeted that it would “probably” return by the end of this week. In recent days, Musk has also tweeted to suggest a raft of other incoming changes — such as mandatory parody disclosures (apparently in a bid to limit abuse of paid verifications) — and touting another feature coming “ ” that he said will involve Twitter enabling “organizations to identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them” (whatever that means). One Twitter staffer — apparently elevated to help implement Musk’s radical rethink of Twitter Blue — recently tweeted that “there are no sacred cows in product at Twitter anymore.” Musk’s take on the new modus operandi was blunter: He tweeted last week that Twitter “will do lots of dumb things in the coming months” — and “keep what works & change what doesn’t.” If that’s not a red rag encouraging a regulatory clamp down, nothing is… It’s anyone’s guess what’s actually going on with Twitter product development. But that’s not just a problem for confused Twitter users (and advertisers) trying to understand how the platform is changing and what it might mean for the quality of the information being surfaced; it’s also a growing nightmare for Twitter — exactly because the company has legal obligations to keep regulators informed. If it fails to do that, it’ll be compliance cost and risk spiraling out of control — with the potential for a total car crash scenario smashing the business (per the internal lawyer’s note to Twitter employees obtained by the Verge last week, an FTC penalty for Twitter breaching the consent order could run into the of dollars) and smashing any remaining staff who are exposed to personal liability (such as those agreeing to work in ways that run counter to the terms of the FTC consent decree). (In a separate example, the former head of security at Uber was — and could face jail time — after a federal jury in San Francisco found he had obstructed justice and concealed knowledge after he sought to hide information about a 2016 data breach at Uber from the public and the Federal Trade Commission, which had been investigating the incident — and, in that case, Uber did not already have an FTC consent decree in place, unlike Twitter.) On the GDPR side, if Twitter gets exposed to decentralized oversight across the EU by falling out of the OSS, it could lead to major headaches as it could be hit with multiple GDPR fines by watchdogs all over the region — each of up to 4% of its annual turnover. So a pipeline of such fines could quickly start to add up for Twitter (which ). On top of that, the administrative drain for Twitter’s business of having to deal with multiple EU regulators would scale the cost and complexity of GDPR compliance, swaddling what is a shrinking (and already creaking) resource in reams of additional red tape — in a way that could tip the platform further over the edge into total business breakdown. Alarm bells should thus be blaring very loudly indeed that Twitter’s new owner appears too spaced out to understand — or care — about maintaining critical structures that exist to ensure the business can operate in a way that’s, up til now, kept regulators at a watchful distance, avoiding a whole world of regulatory pain falling on and crushing the life out of the bird. |
Long live the vibe capitalist! | Dominic-Madori Davis | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | investors were left with egg on their faces after FTX’s valuation went from $32 billion to zero in a New York minute. VCs were left wondering, “What the hell happened?” And they’re still wondering, “Wait — did I do something wrong? Is it me?” Why yes, actually, it is you. People are led to believe that, for the most part, investors are clear-eyed, data-driven people who carefully explore the financial underpinnings of the companies they invest in. There is little room for emotions like jealousy or the fear of missing out (FOMO). Of course not. And these people investing billions of dollars surely have their eye on the ball, right? Well, not exactly. In a surprisingly honest tweet today, former SoftBank COO Marcelo Claure, who stepped down in late January after over pay, I have been reflecting personally on the whole FTX fiasco and it taught me one more time that we should NEVER invest because of FOMO and we should always 100% understand what we are investing in. I totally failed here on both. — Marcelo Claure (@marceloclaure) This is from the same guy whose former firm also invested significant money in WeWork, another spectacular example of poor judgment on the part of investors. Steve Jobs once said, “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.” At the time, Jobs was talking about building products, but evidently, this also applies to the people funding the startup ecosystem. |
The Epic Games-Apple antitrust battle resumes today in appeals court | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Apple’s antitrust battle against Fortnite maker Epic Games is returning to the courtroom after appealed last year’s ruling in a potentially precedent-setting case over Apple’s alleged anti-competitive behavior. Last year, a U.S. District Court judge had largely favored Apple when ruling the tech giant was not acting as a monopolist with regard to its App Store practices. Epic Games was unhappy with that decision, of course, as it had wanted the court to force Apple to support third-party payments which would have allowed Fortnite to maximize its revenues. Meanwhile, Apple didn’t want to agree to the court’s order that said it would have to permit apps that provide links to alternative payments. Oral arguments will kick off this afternoon at the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit, in what will be an even higher-stakes trial for determining Apple’s future in the app market and its ability to set its own rules around payments and commissions. While the original case was already one of the more high-profile examples of Apple’s market power being challenged through the justice system, the appeals case will bring additional scrutiny as now have been granted time to present their own arguments to help explain the proper legal framework for evaluating the antitrust claims against Apple. Although the Justice Department’s arguments won’t technically support either side, it’s in the early stages of filing an antitrust suit against Apple — and the appeals court’s decision on the Epic Games case could ultimately shape its own ability to effectively prosecute Apple further down the road. The DoJ’s filing explained it had concerns over how the lower court had too narrowly interpreted parts of U.S. antitrust law — the Sherman Act — as well as other issues related to the lower court’s misunderstanding of the market and Apple’s monopoly power with regard to pricing, among other things. The appeals court docket is also filled with numerous amicus briefs disputing the original ruling. These include filings by noted Apple critics like Tile, Match, Basecamp and the lobbying group the Coalition for App Fairness, as well as from other tech companies and game store operators, like Roblox and Microsoft, various consumer advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation Consumer Federation of America, and others. In addition, in support of Epic Games. Epic Games had originally sued Apple in 2020 after Apple banned the company’s Fortnite app for its of a new payment mechanism that allowed it to bypass Apple’s in-app purchase framework. This laid the groundwork for the antitrust case — a fight that had been brewing for years. Epic Games had , having wanted a decision that would have allowed the company an alternative means of serving its iOS user base, like a third-party app store, sideloading or third-party payment systems. In the months since, Apple has been crusading against the dangers of sideloading, with top execs and head of software engineering highlighting the security compromises that sideloading entails. (This is not only due to the pressure from Epic Games, however, but also because could mandate the method.) Epic’s lawyer will kick off today’s proceedings with his oral arguments in the appeals case presented before judges Sidney R. Thomas, Milan D. Smith Jr. and Michael J. McShane, beginning at 2 PM PT/5 PM ET. The hearing will |
Google to pay $391.5 million in location tracking settlement with 40 states | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Google has agreed to a with 40 state attorneys general over its location tracking practices. The settlement outlines that Google misled its users into thinking they had turned off location tracking even as the company continued to collect their location information. The investigation, which marks the largest attorney general-led consumer privacy settlement ever, was co-led by Oregon and Washington. “For years Google has prioritized profit over their users’ privacy,” said Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum in a . “They have been crafty and deceptive. Consumers thought they had turned off their location tracking features on Google, but the company continued to secretly record their movements and use that information for advertisers.” Google said in a statement that it has already addressed and corrected some of the location tracking practices detailed in the settlement. “Consistent with improvements we’ve made in recent years, we have settled this investigation which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago,” a spokesperson for Google told TechCrunch in an email. As part of the settlement, Google has agreed to improve its location tracking disclosures and user controls starting next year. The settlement requires Google to show additional information to users whenever they turn a location-related account setting on or off. Key information about location tracking must also not be hidden going forward. In a , Google outlined it will “provide a new control that allows users to easily turn off their Location History and Web & App Activity settings and delete their past data in one simple flow.” The company also plans to add additional disclosures to its and pages. Alongside these changes, Google is going to create a comprehensive information hub that highlights key location settings. In addition, Google plans to give users who are setting up new accounts a more detailed explanation of what Web & App Activity is and what information it includes. The company said it will continue deleting location history data for users who have not recently contributed new location history data to their account. “Until we have comprehensive privacy laws, companies will continue to compile large amounts of our personal data for marketing purposes with few controls,” Rosenblum said in the news release. The attorneys general opened the Google investigation after a found that the company recorded users’ movements even when they explicitly told it not to. The investigation found that Google violated state consumer protection laws by misleading consumers about its location tracking practices since at least 2014. Last month, Google agreed to to settle a separate lawsuit that alleged the search giant deceived users by collecting location data without their consent. Google is also currently from Washington, DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana. The lawsuit alleges that Google deceived users by collecting their location data even when they believed that kind of tracking was disabled. |
Amazon launches ‘Sports Talk’ on Prime Video to give sports fans 12 hours of live daily content | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Today, Amazon Prime Video announced the launch of “ ,” a live daily programming block dedicated to 12 hours of sports-talk content. Broadcasting Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. ET on Prime Video, viewers in the U.S. can access seven new shows on Sports Talk without a Prime membership. It will also be available on Amazon’s free, ad-supported streaming TV service, , and Amazon’s live radio app, . Amazon partnered with production company to bring a programming block that can be an “‘always on’ sports destination for customers,” the company wrote in its announcement. The new shows include “Bonjour Sports Talk,” which is hosted by sports broadcasters Madelyn Burke and Ben Lyons, plus a guest host that rotates weekly; “The Cari Champion Show,” with former ESPN anchor Cari Champion; “Game Breakers,” with writers and comedians Eitan Levine and Drexton Clemons; “From the Desk of Master T,” with Bleacher Report’s Master Tesfatsion; and “The Power Hour,” with commentator and former tennis player Rennae Stubbs. There will also be “The Greatest Hour of All Time,” a re-airing of the best hour of the programming from the day, and “The Backup Plan,” with hosts Hana Ostapchuk and Jason Spells catching viewers up to speed with the highlights. The entire 12-hour programming block will re-air every day from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. ET. Episodes from the previous week will air throughout the weekend. As Amazon tries to position itself as the go-to source for streaming live sports, the new shows will join the thousands of live sports events that air annually on Prime Video, including “ ,” which premiered its first exclusive game in September with . The streaming service also introduced a new interface in July that included a for live sports, replays and highlights. |
Meeting camera startup Owl Labs lands $25M and partnership with HP | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | , a startup developing a linuep of AI-powered meeting hardware, today that it raised $25 million in a Series C round led by HP Tech Ventures (HP’s venture capital arm) with participation from Sourcenext, Matrix Partners, Spark Capital and Playground Global. The closing of the tranche marks the start of a strategic partnership with HP, Owl Labs CEO Frank Weishaupt said, which will see HP invest in Owl Labs’ various product offerings while providing sales coverage and outreach with enterprise customers. HP, notably, recently acquired Poly, which developed a range of video and voice devices and software for virtual conferencing. Weishaupt sees no conflict, arguing that Poly’s products are complementary to Owl Labs’ and show “HP’s commitment to transforming the workplace to a hybrid model.” “The funding will allow Owl Labs to continue its accelerated growth … Owl Labs will use the investment to support product development and increase global adoption of the company’s products, including the [Owl Labs’] product line,” Weishaupt told TechCrunch in an email interview. “The funding will also be used to expand Owl Labs’ global footprint and deepen go-to-market partnerships starting with a commercial agreement between Owl Labs and HP France, where HP will sell Owl Labs’ products through their local sales team.” Owl Labs was founded by Mark Schnittman and Max Makeev in 2014, who sought to develop a better videoconferencing experience than cameras at the time could achieve. (Weishaupt, a former CarGurus exec, joined Owl Labs as CEO in early 2019.) Drawing on their work at iRobot, Schnittman and Makeev created Owl Labs’ first product, the auto-swiveling Meeting Owl Pro, after testing the concept by putting a laptop on a spinning stool. Today, Owl Labs sells several products, including a dedicated whiteboard camera, meeting room control console and its latest-generation meeting camera, the Meeting Owl 3. The Meeting Owl 3 features a mic and speaker array paired with a 360-degree camera, which zooms in on whoever’s speaking. There are countless “intelligent” meeting cameras on the market, including from heavy hitters like and . But Weishaupt makes the case that Owl Labs’ software is a differentiator. Called the Owl Intelligence System, it allows customers to connect up to two Meeting Owls to expand their video and audio range and add facial recognition, including for masked faces. “Meeting Owl 3 is the only 360-degree videoconferencing device on the market that can be connected to others to expand reach in larger spaces,” Weishaupt said. “Owl Labs’ technology learns the space to create a more seamless experience, getting smarter over time.” Owl Labs got caught in a negative press cycle earlier this year when a security firm, Modzero, uncovered in several models of the Meeting Owl and whiteboard camera that attackers could exploit to obtain sensitive data. Owl Labs patched the exploit, which doesn’t appear to have majorly dented sales — Weishaupt says that more than 130,000 organizations are using Owl Labs products, including 84 Fortune 100 companies. “We can share that we’ve had a solid growth trajectory with more than 3x revenue growth year-over-year and 7x revenue growth since the pandemic began,” Weishaupt said, declining to share more precise revenue figures. “Owl Labs became the first company to build AI-powered, 360-degree video conferencing solutions for hybrid organizations. Owl Labs as a company was hybrid pre-pandemic and we are experts at using technology to bridge the gap between remote and in-person work environments.” To date, Boston-based, over-100-employee Owl Labs has raised $47 million in funding. |
Binance’s CEO isn’t sweating the FTX implosion | Jacquelyn Melinek | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | The crypto market is trying to pick up the pieces after it was thrown into massive disarray last week when the previously third-largest crypto exchange, FTX, imploded and . “It’s obvious that people are jittery, interested and somewhat nervous about what’s happening in the industry,” Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance. the largest crypto exchange, said during a Twitter Space on Monday. “I want to say, short term it is painful. But, I think this is good for the industry long term.” Zhao acknowledged that a lot of people lost money recently and many still have money stuck with FTX, so “there will be pain.” But he hinted that market conditions should improve down the line. “The industry is not going away and the other strong industry players are now even stronger,” he said. Last week, a number of crypto exchanges, including Binance, Crypto.com, KuCoin and OKX said they would in an effort to reassure customers and investors that their funds are safe in the wake of the FTX debacle. Last week, Zhao emphasized the importance of transparency, , “All crypto exchanges should do merkle-tree proof-of-reserves.” Proof of reserves ( ) are independent audits by third parties that aim to provide transparency and evidence that a custodian holds the assets it claims to own on behalf of its clients. These exchanges join other crypto businesses like Gemini, BitGo and Paxos, to name a few, which have used PoR for many years to prove billions of dollars in value, Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, told TechCrunch on Friday. “Now we’re increasing transparency in the industry, we’re increasing security in the industry, and we’re increasing communications with regulators all around the world,” Zhao said today. “I think five years later, when we look back at this, the industry will be stronger.” |
The startup and venture markets are coming back to square one | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | come down” is a cliche that is also a bastardization of Newton’s . It’s also a good reminder that when it looks like the business market has changed fundamentally, we’re often really just seeing a temporary aberration. This idiom rings true when we consider the cycle of tech valuations (up and then down), venture capital (up and then down) and the pace at which new unicorns are being minted (also up and then down). These three trends are linked, obviously, but what gave us pause recently was the realization that we haven’t merely seen declines in recent quarters: Instead, there’s been a whole-cloth return to pre-COVID norms. Take tech valuations, for example: It struck us this morning while drafting the that the value of tech stocks — measured through our favorite software-company tracking index — is today trading around the value it had in early 2020, just before and after the massive COVID-induced sell-off hit American stocks: Please excuse our annotation method — it’s Monday. It’s clear that the 2020-2021 boom in software valuations was more of an anomaly than a new normal. Besides, the fact that the companies in the index grew over the last few years but are worth less today implies that they might have been overvalued even pre-COVID. If today’s prices hold up, they will indict not only the excess of the recent past but the overvaluations of the 2010s as well. |
SoftBank writes down nearly $100 million investment in FTX | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | emerge regarding the events that led to FTX’s and stunning collapse, the cryptocurrency exchange’s investors are also being scrutinized. TechCrunch has reached out to SoftBank for comment on its investment in FTX. Notably, former Twitter On November 12, Nikkei Asia reported that SoftBank Group had “ it had made through its Vision Fund business as global rate rises and a weakening economic outlook hammered the valuations of portfolio companies.” The publication went on to add that the “Vision Funds’ unrealized gains since the start of investment in 2017 fell to negative $1.46 billion in the July-September period, down from positive $8.49 billion three months ago, according to its quarterly earnings presentation.” |
Apple faces new lawsuit over its data collection practices in first-party apps, like the App Store | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | A new lawsuit is taking on Apple’s data collection practices in the wake of a recent report by independent researchers who found Apple was continuing to track consumers in its mobile apps, even when they had explicitly configured their iPhone privacy settings to turn tracking off. In a proposed class action lawsuit, plaintiff Elliot Libman is suing on behalf of himself and other impacted consumers, alleging that Apple’s privacy assurances are in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act. As , app developers and independent researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry discovered that Apple was still collecting data about its users across a number of first-party apps even when users had turned off an iPhone Analytics setting that promises to “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether.” In their tests, the researchers examined Apple’s own apps including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Books and Stocks and found that disabling this setting as well as other privacy controls didn’t impact Apple’s data collection. The App Store, for example, was continuing to track information like what app users tapped on, what they searched, what ads they saw, how long they looked at a given app’s page and how the app was discovered, among other things. The app also then sent details that included ID numbers, type of phone, screen resolution, keyboard languages and more — information that could be used in device fingerprinting. According to Apple’s device settings, if a user turns off either iPhone or iPad Analytics, a message informs the user that Apple will “disable [the sharing of] Device Analytics altogether.” In addition, users are left to believe that Apple would stop collecting their data if they turn off other settings, like “Allow Apps to Request to Track” or “Share [Device] Analtyics.” Despite configuring these privacy controls, the lawsuit states that Apple “continues to record consumers’ app usage, app browsing communications, and personal information in its proprietary Apple apps,” specifically the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Books and Stocks. The complaint goes on to detail the researchers’ findings, specifying what data was being collected. Stocks, for instance, was tracking users’ watchlists, the names of stocks they viewed and searched for and news articles they saw in the app and more. And most of the apps shared consistent ID numbers, the suit states, which would allow Apple to track users across its apps. In light of these new findings, the lawsuit alleges that Apple’s assurances and promises regarding privacy are “utterly false.” It also pointed out that this level of data collection was out of line with standard industry practices as both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browser could not collect the same sort of data if their own analytics settings were turned off. “The data Apple surreptitiously collects is precisely the type of private, personal information consumers wish and expect to protect when they take the steps Apple sets out for users to control the private information Apple collects,” the complaint states. “… The plaintiff is looking to have the lawsuit certified as a class action and is seeking compensatory, statutory, and punitive damages in addition to other equitable monetary relief. Apple has not responded to a request for comment. If accurate, this sort of data collection would raise questions about Apple’s implementation of Apple Tracking Transparency (ATT) which Apple said would give users more control over how their app data was used in personalized advertising. As critics have noted, ATT hurt the advertising businesses of major tech companies, like Meta and Snapchat, while Apple’s own advertising market share increased. A by InMobi’s Appsumer found that Apple’s advertising business had benefitted from the launch of ATT, allowing the Cupertino tech giant to join the Facebook (now Meta)-Google advertising duopoly by growing its adoption by 4 percentage points to reach 94.8% year-over-year, while Facebook’s adoption dropped 3% to 82.8%. Meta, of course, has long argued that Apple’s ATT would cut into its ad revenues, forecasting it would have . In addition, Apple to capitalize on its improved stance in the ad industry. Soon, many developers became distressed to find that those ad and others they felt unsuitable to be marketed alongside their own. Apple has also been facing increased scrutiny over its practices, following the launch of ATT and the growth of its App Store business, which has given Apple significant power in the app market overall. The company is currently battling Epic Games in a lawsuit over App Store fees and Apple’s alleged antitrust behavior, which has Plus, the U.S. Department of Justice is said to be an antitrust lawsuit against Apple. This latest lawsuit, though currently smaller in scope than others, has the potential for larger implications if the researchers’ findings turn out to be correct and are held up in court. by on Scribd |
Disney+ has a new adorable short film for ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘Spirited Away’ fans | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Disney+’s adorable new short film, “Zen – Grogu and Dust Bunnies,” on Saturday, November 12. From Lucasfilm and Japanese animation house , the hand-drawn short film will excite many fans as it features Grogu — a.k.a Baby Yoda or The Child — from the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian” and the coal dust bunnies from “Spirited Away.” The streamer released the three-minute movie to celebrate the streaming service’s third birthday and the debut of “ ” in 2019. When “The Mandalorian” premiered, it quickly became a signature series for Disney+ — mostly because viewers were entranced by the cuteness of Grogu. Its drew in 14.5 billion minutes of viewership for the year 2020, . The third season of “The Mandalorian” has a February 2023 release date. In addition to the success of “The Mandalorian,” Miyazaki’s award-winning “Spirited Away” continues to resonate with audiences worldwide. “Zen – Grogu and Dust Bunnies” is a delightful blend of two titles that many viewers will enjoy. Zen – Grogu and Dust Bunnies, an Original short, is now streaming on . — Disney+ (@DisneyPlus) Last week, Disney+ a total of 164.2 million global subscribers in Q4, an increase of 12 million subscribers from 152.1 million in The company’s large subscriber base is in part due to its many “Star Wars” series like “ ,” “ ” and “The Book of Boba Fett,” among others. Disney+ recently became the exclusive international home for new episodes of the popular British show “ ” in 150+ markets, including the U.S. |
A simple Android lock screen bypass bug landed a researcher $70,000 | Zack Whittaker | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Google has paid out $70,000 to a security researcher for privately reporting an “accidental” security bug that allowed anyone to unlock Google Pixel phones without knowing its passcode. The lock screen bypass bug, tracked as , is described as a local escalation of privilege bug because it allows someone, with the device in their hand, to access the device’s data without having to enter the lock screen’s passcode. Hungary-based researcher said the bug was remarkably simple to exploit but took Google about five months to fix. Schütz discovered anyone with physical access to a Google Pixel phone could swap in their own SIM card and enter its preset recovery code to bypass the Android’s operating system’s lock screen protections. In about the bug, published now that the bug is fixed, Schütz described how he found the bug accidentally, and reported it to Google’s Android team. Android lock screens let users set a numerical passcode, password or a pattern to protect their phone’s data, or these days a fingerprint or face print. Your phone’s SIM card might also have a separate PIN code set to block a thief from ejecting and physically stealing your phone number. But SIM cards have an additional personal unlocking code, or PUK, to reset the SIM card if the user incorrectly enters the PIN code more than three times. PUK codes are fairly easy for device owners to obtain, often printed on the SIM card packaging or directly from the cell carrier’s customer service. Schütz found that the bug meant that entering a SIM card’s PUK code was enough to trick his fully patched Pixel 6 phone, and his older Pixel 5, into unlocking his phone and data, without ever visually displaying the lock screen. He warned that other Android devices might also be vulnerable. Since a malicious actor could bring their own SIM card and its corresponding PUK code, only physical access to the phone is required, he said. “The attacker could just swap the SIM in the victim’s device, and perform the exploit with a SIM card that had a PIN lock and for which the attacker knew the correct PUK code,” said Schütz. Google can pay security researchers that could allow someone to bypass the lock screen, since a successful exploit would allow access to a device’s data. The bug bounty rewards are high in part to compete with efforts by companies like and , which rely on software exploits to build and sell phone cracking technology to law enforcement agencies. In this case, Google paid Schütz because while his bug was marked as a duplicate, Google was unable to reproduce — or fix — the bug reported before him. Google fixed the Android bug in a released on November 5, 2022 for devices running Android 10 through Android 13. You can see Schütz exploiting the bug in his video below. |
Google’s Health Connect app is now available in beta | Aisha Malik | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | Google today that its Health Connect app is now on the Play Store. Health Connect is designed to centralize access to health and fitness data from various eligible apps. Today, more than 10 health and fitness apps are launching integrations with Health Connect, including MyFitnessPal, Oura and Peloton. The app syncs health and fitness data from eligible platforms and allows other apps to gain access to this data with their consent, while providing centralized privacy controls for users. Developers have previously had to establish multiple API connections to share data between different apps, which limited developers’ data sharing capabilities and made it hard for users to unlock this data for use in different apps. With Health Connect, developers no longer have to build a whole new integration. Google says building an integration with a new app is as simple as reading in new data from Health Connect. “For example, Android users will now be able to sync and get credit for their Peloton workouts in apps like Oura, MyFitnessPal, WeightWatchers and Lifesum,” Google said in . “Now, through a single integration with Health Connect, Peloton Members will have the option to share their workout stats across the ecosystem of apps they use to support their overall wellness.” Google Google says Health Connect provides a standardized data schema that supports 40+ data types across six categories. The schema covers a wide range of use cases, from exercises to sleep tracking to vital signs. The app not only simplifies app connectivity, but also give users more privacy controls by allowing them to monitor which apps have access to data. In the past, users have had to navigate to multiple apps to manage data permissions and developers had to build out permissions management UIs themselves. Health Connect allows users to manage permissions in a single place. As for developers, Health Connect provides the permissions management hub and granular permissions UIs out of the box. Google collaborated with Samsung to build Health Connect with the goal of simplifying the connectivity between health and fitness apps. The company earlier this year at its I/O developer conference. Health Connect is as a public beta via the Google Play Store starting today. Google hasn’t detailed its plans regarding a full public release. At launch, the app has integrations with Fitbit, Samsung Health, Google Fit, MyFitnessPal, Peloton, Oura, WeightWatchers, Flo, Lifesum, Signos, Tonal, Outdooractive and Proov Insight. |
Ukio, a premium apartment rental platform for Europe’s ‘flexible workforce,’ raises $28M | Paul Sawers | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | , a short-term furnished apartment rental platform aimed at the “flexible workforce,” has raised €27 million ($28 million) in a Series A round of funding. The cash injection constitutes €17 million in equity and €10 million in debt, and follows some 14 months after the Spanish company of funding. Founded out of Barcelona in 2020, Ukio is targeting a very specific subset of society — one that doesn’t like to be tied to a fixed location, either in their personal or professional lives. With the continuing apace, Ukio wants to give professionals the comforts of home with the added perks and flexibilities of a hotel, with each apartment including a concierge and reception area, while some properties also include a weekly cleaning service and linen/towel replacement. On top of that, each property’s price includes all utilities (e.g., broadband and electricity), taxes and everything you would normally get with a nightly rate in a hotel. All the tenant has to worry about is a single monthly recurring payment they make direct to Ukio, which handles all the maintenance and management behind the scenes. The company says that the average length of stay in a Ukio-sourced apartment is four to five months, though it supports stays from between one and 11 months. It’s worth noting that guests book initially for a set period of time, but they can extend their stay through Ukio’s online platform. In terms of how Ukio sources its apartments, co-founder Stanley Fourteau says that they adopt a “multipronged supply strategy” targeting individual property owners, real estate developers and family offices. Ukio typically only accepts seven- to 10-year lease agreements with the property owners, meaning that they are obliged to stay on the platform for that duration — but to protect itself from underperforming properties, Ukio only has a one-year obligation, meaning it only has to give 45 days’ notice after the first year. However, it says that it rarely ever has to do this. “Ukio uses proprietary tools to source high-quality off-market apartments, based on strict criteria in prime locations in each city,” Fourteau told TechCrunch. “This data-driven supply-acquisition strategy, combined with local real estate knowledge on the ground, ensures that the moment Ukio launches in a new city, we are able to quickly and efficiently acquire a pipeline of high-quality apartments.” While Ukio’s strategy begins with more of an outbound approach, over time its existing multiproperty landlords often increase their presence on the Ukio platform, according to Fourteau. “As the brand becomes more familiar and trusted in our markets, we’re seeing a steady increase of existing landlords providing more and more supply, as well as new landlords wanting to partner with us,” he said. “In cities where we’ve been live for more than a year, the number of inbound leads Ukio has averages around 60% compared to 40% for outbound.” Ukio co-founders Jeremy and Stanley Fourteau. Ukio It seems that Ukio could fulfill two core use cases. A young professional, for example, who can work from wherever they like might want to sample a new city before committing to a longer-term rental — Ukio would serve that purpose reasonably well. Alternatively, anyone who has landed a new job at a fixed brick-and-mortar office could use Ukio as a stop-gap until they find a more suitable long-term abode. A fully furnished pad with all the trimmings is a lot more appealing than a hotel, or even an AirBnb property, which are usually not well suited for longer-term dwellings. “Finding and renting an apartment for a month or more is still incredibly complex and time-intensive for modern consumers who are used to doing everything and anything digitally,” Ukio co-founder Jeremy Fourteau said. “Ukio was created to overcome this challenge.” The main appeal for tenants is that Ukio essentially shields them from the hassles and restrictions of traditional rental models. But that, of course, comes at a premium, with the cheapest property starting at around €1,750 per month and ranging all the way up to €5,000. Since the start of the year, Ukio said that it has seen seven-fold revenue growth year on year, with a 96% occupancy rate across the 400-plus properties it currently has listed. The Ukio platform. Ukio For now, Ukio is most active in its native Barcelona and Madrid, where it claims 210 and 125 apartment rentals respectively. But it has also expanded into Lisbon (Portugal) and Berlin (Germany), with Paris and Milan on the horizon for the coming months, followed by London and Dublin, among others. This expansion is what Ukio’s fresh Series A investment will essentially fund, while it said that it’s also working on a B2B offering for businesses growing their international footprint. Ukio’s raise comes as several similar platforms have raised sizable rounds of funding. Birmingham, Alabama-based Landing recently secured $125 million in a , while San Francisco’s Zumper raised $30 million as it . Last year, New York-based . Ukio, for its part, is all about Europe and it will remain so “for the foreseeable future,” Fourteau said. The company’s Series A round was led by Felix Capital, with participation from Kreos Capital, Breega, Partech, Heartcore, Bynd and a host of angel investors. |
Sequoia India’s Surge backs health tech startup RedBrick AI in $4.6M funding | Jagmeet Singh | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | Health tech startup has raised $4.6 million in a funding round led by Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s Surge as it plans to expand the market for its medical imagery annotations solution. Artificial intelligence has become ubiquitous in clinical diagnosis. But researchers need much of their initial time preparing data for training AI systems. The training process also requires hundreds of annotated medical images and thousands of hours of annotation by clinicians. The Delaware-headquartered SaaS startup, which has an Indian subsidiary in Pune, is solving that problem with its automated and semi-automated annotation tools. RedBrick AI co-founder and CEO Shivam Sharma said the startup helps make annotations up to 60% faster using its configurable workflow system that works with medical imagery such as CT scans, X-rays, MRIs and ultrasound. “We see ourselves building the foundational layer of artificial intelligence in healthcare. In the future, we want to help teams with everything from the data preparation to FDA clearance of the algorithms,” Sharma said in an interview with TechCrunch. Founded in 2021 by former SpaceX Hyperloop engineers Sharma and Derek Lukacs (who serves as CTO), RedBrick AI offers specialized annotation tools that can be accessed through a web browser and integrated within customers’ existing data storage system, such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Azure. For annotating complex 3D medical images, it also has semi-automated tools. Redbrick AI RedBrick AI additionally provides APIs that machine learning engineers can integrate with their cloud solutions and clinical data stores, including hospital enterprise PACS servers. “Clinicians just need to log into their browser, and the workflow aspect of it is all automated,” Sharma said. Once correctly annotated, imagery can be used for faster and more detailed diagnosis. The annotated imagery can also be used by surgical robots and to automate detection of cancers. RedBrick AI has a seven-member team that is mostly based in India, though the startup focuses primarily on the U.S. and Europe for marketing its tools. The startup also sees 99% of competition coming from open source tools, followed by the in-house ones developed by companies to address their specific requirements. The early customer base of RedBrick AI includes Germany’s biotech startup Orbem, Canada’s cancer and disease screening platform Prenuvo, Boston-based nonprofit hospital and physician network Mass General Brigham and Maharashtra’s radiology AI platform Deeptek. The all-equity seed round also saw participation from Y Combinator and angel investors. Before this round, the startup was named among that was dominated by 32 Indian startups. Sharma said RedBrick AI plans to utilize the fund to go beyond its current customer base and reach enterprises. It also plans to hire new engineers to expand the specialized toolset. |
Daily Crunch: No-code fintech services startup Taktile closes $20M Series A round | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | Soooo you may have received the, erm, , where we mentioned a certain conference, placing it in the wrong country. Whoops — we updated the headline. Sorry, Finland, we love you, honestly. That was yesterday. Today, there’s a wall of new exciting things to look at…including, among other things, an opportunity has for you if you’re running a space startup: Apply to ! Okay, with that, let’s get started with the TC Top 3. — and Aura, a startup founded by early Twitter employees that makes digital frames and photo-sharing apps that can also be used to update those frames, has pulled in some funding to expand its business as it closes in on 3 million users of its app and 1 million frames sold, reports. — money that the company is using to boost manufacturing this quarter and to invest in 2023 plans. All eyes are currently on the collapse of FTX in the crypto industry. That’s why today’s news from Bitpanda is an important signal for the Austrian unicorn company, which from Germany’s financial regulator, Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), reports . Here’s a handful of additional VC and startup stories for ya: / Getty Images Pitching a startup to investors without a personal recommendation isn’t a terrible idea — as long as you’ve done your research first. Tetra Insights co-founders Michael Bamberger and Panos Rigopoulos raised a $5 million Series A last year, and the duo said cold outreach was a key part of their strategy. “When I changed my criteria to finding people who were a fit, the process was really quick,” says Bamberger, who initially raised a $500,000 friends and family round in 2019 followed by a $1.5 million seed round a year later. Three more from the TC+ team: Elon Musk taking over Twitter has resulted in similar social media companies being highlighted. writes that Indian social network Koo is one such platform gaining popularity in Brazil, but that is turning into a number of challenges, including . Meanwhile, with holiday shopping here again, reports that Temu, Pinduoduo’s sister shopping app, has gained some notoriety after . And we have five more for you: |
Ronna learn some new metric prefixes? They’re quetta upgrade | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | We may still be a ways from worrying how many yottabytes your computer can hold, but the international standards community has for even bigger numbers than that — ronna for 10 and quetta for 10 . , representatives from numerous governments got together to vote on the official names for these enormous magnitude indicators. The last time they did this was in 1991, when the now-familiar zetta and yotta were added, as well as zepto and yocto for their respective negative powers of 10. As you may have guessed, we also now have terms for 10 and 10 : ronto and quecto. While there are few things that can’t adequately be described in terms of the existing prefixes, it’s kind of nice to have single units for some familiar scales. For instance, , Earth’s mass is about a ronnagram, and the mass of an electron is about a quectogram. Convenient when you’re weighing them in the kitchen. More importantly, though, this provides a little room to grow for data science, in which we are already talking about “exascale” computing and zettabytes of data — in fact, as a planet we’re expected to produce a yottabyte per year in the 2030s, unless some blessed intervention takes place. What comes next? If you asked a week ago, the answer might be “hellabytes” and then “brontobytes,” which are actually great terms but, as Richard Brown, the British Metrologist who proposed the prefixes, warned Nature, “completely unofficial.” Sadly, the prefixes also conflict with existing abbreviations, and probably no one in Southern California would countenance having to use “hella” in any official context. “It’s not especially that I wanted to be a killjoy, although that comes into it as well,” Brown said — to the victor the spoils and all that, but no need to rub it in, Richard. At any rate, the conference cited “the importance of timely action to prevent unofficial prefix names being de facto adopted in other communities” as one of the reasons for adopting the new ones. Ronna and quetta were arrived at after years of discussion and elimination of alternatives. It is perhaps odd that the new term should be so close to “rona,” something we would prefer not to be reminded of, but we may be comforted by the fact that we are unlikely to need the term for years to come and hopefully the pandemic will be a distant memory by then (and, let us hope, not because it was eclipsed by a worse one). |
HyperloopTT’s SPAC public debut may be going nowhere fast | Rebecca Bellan | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | (HyperloopTT) has entered into a definitive with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Forest Road Acquisition Corp. II, which is led by former Disney executives Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer. The combined company will list shares at a pre-money valuation of $600 million. In theory, hyperloop technology is a vacuum tube-based system that moves people and goods by levitating capsules at airplane speeds on the ground. The speeds are supposed to be achieved “by using passive magnetic levitation technology and a linear electric motor in a tube with minimal pressure, reducing resistance,” according to HyperloopTT. The goal is to provide a clean, safe, efficient form of transport. Despite plenty of hype, money and many dazzling CGI renders, hyperloop technology still appears to be a pipe dream. The technology has never been proven at scale and even if it were, the services would probably be so expensive that they’d be loss-making for the company. Elon Musk’s The Boring Company is probably the most well-known advocate for hyperloop technology, but so far, all that TBC has to show for it is a tunnel in Las Vegas that . So it’s quite surprising to see a SPAC deal on the horizon to bring a company with no near-term or probably even medium-term profitability to the public markets. In fact, given the specifics of the deal, the company will likely need to raise funds again immediately just to operate. Right now, the deal is expected to provide the combined company with $330 million in net proceeds. That’s as long as the SPAC shareholders don’t withdraw their money before the deal closes. With , it’s more likely that in the best-case scenario, HyperloopTT will make out with around $70 million from the merger — that’s based on the $350 million cash in trust the SPAC has at the moment. Yet even that projection might be rosy. Michael Ohlrogge, an assistant professor of law at New York University and co-author of the report, said HyperloopTT can also expect to pay about $20 million in transaction fees that would go to the banks working on the deal, not to mention the free shares going to the sponsor. What that would mean: The combined company would come away with less than $70 million, which is not nearly enough money to have a meaningful impact on scaling hyperloop technology. “I see from the deal there is no PIPE. So, no sophisticated investors were willing to make any firm commitments to fund this deal,” said Ohlrogge. “My best guess is that they are just hoping that they’ll be able to find some unsophisticated investors who will fail to redeem their shares, thus handing over $10 per share for equity worth very little.” HyperloopTT can still choose to cancel the merger if the SPAC has less than $40 million cash in trust, according to Ohlrogge, who noted the ability to cancel prevents the target from giving away millions of shares to the sponsor and millions to the banks if the SPAC ends up delivering essentially no money on the deal. A decision would need to be made quickly, as “Given that it takes time for deals to come together, this is getting close to about as late as they could announce and possibly hope to close by then,” said Ohlrogge. Some experts say that Forest Road Acquisition Corp. II is scrambling to close a deal, any deal, before its deadline. If it doesn’t, it’ll be forced to liquidate and give money back to investors. Note that last year Forest Road brought The Beachbody Company public, which ended up being a for long-term shareholders. In the third quarter, Beachbody revenue of $166 million, which is down 20% from Q3 last year, and a net loss of $33.9 million. The company’s stock is trading at $0.78, which is down nearly 69% year to date. Skepticism aside, HyperloopTT says it has developed a full scale test track in Toulouse, France, a hyperloop insurance framework model and safety and certification guidelines. The company is working with the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Transportation on hyperloop system projects. For example, HyperloopTT is working on a in the Great Lakes region in the U.S. and is working with Hamburger Hafen and Logistik AG to develop cargo hyperloop technology in Germany. The company is also trying to find a site in Canada to explore a commercial prototype including a three-mile passenger system and an R&D and experience center, the company says. HyperloopTT is pursuing an “asset-light technology licensing business model” or “hyperloop-as-a-service” model, that can lead to three revenue streams, including a one-time license fee during system construction, annual license fees throughout the life of a system and annual take rate of sales. |
The best Black Friday 2022 tech deals | Greg Kumparak | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | You blinked and it is, inexplicably, almost again. Should you buy a bunch of stuff just because it’s discounted? Probably not! Can you use it as an opportunity to save some money on stuff you already wanted anyway? Absolutely. We don’t aim to be exhaustive with our Black Friday tech roundup. Instead, we just try to highlight some deals on the gadgets and gear we’d recommend even at full price. Emmanuel Dunand / AFP / Getty Images If you want to buy from Apple directly, the company is offering with hardware purchases — up to $75 when you buy AirPods, $50 with an iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch or $250 with a Mac. Amazon has the (the latest model) down to $349 (normally $399) and the new down to $739 (normally $799). Walmart has the latest down to $150 (normally $170), and Amazon has the latest down to $199 (normally $250). Target has the down to $270 (normally $330), while Amazon has the latest down to $1,000 (normally $1,100). Amazon has a down to $80 (normally $99.) David Ryder / Getty Images If you’re looking to pick up an Amazon device like a Kindle or an Echo speaker, Black Friday tends to be the best time to do it. They’ve got the waterproof (and quite outstanding) down to $255 (normally $350), or $185 (normally $280) for the version The latest is down to $25 (normally $50) and comes with a free Philips Hue bulb OR six months of Amazon Music Unlimited. If you want one of the Echos with a display built in, they’re all . The very solid is down to $25, normally $50. Google Like Amazon, Google also tends to do deep discounts on its own hardware for Black Friday. The latest is down to $40 (normally $50). If you don’t need 4K, the HD-only model is down to $20 (normally $30). The is down to $500 (normally $600), while the is down to $750 (normally $900). The is down to $179 (normally $249). If you don’t want all the automated “learning” features though (which, honestly, are hit or miss), the more manual (but still Wi-Fi-connected) is down to a super cheap price of $90 (normally $130). All Nest , meanwhile, are about half off right now. Image Credits: Roku If Google/Amazon/Apple’s streaming devices aren’t doing it for you, Roku’s gear is all discounted right now as well: Backbone The very solid for iPhone is down to $75 (normally $100). Alas, the deal is only for the iPhone model and seemingly does not include . Sonos Sonos sometimes sits Black Friday out, but this year they’ve brought out some deals. The speaker is down to $175 (normally $220); they’ve offering a two-pack, as well, but the price/savings per speaker stays the same. If you’re looking for one of their soundbars, the smaller option, , is down to $360 (normally $450), while the big higher-end is down to $719 (normally $900). Nintendo We haven’t seen any particularly mind-blowing deals for the Nintendo Switch yet this year. This is particularly true if you’re looking for a deal on the recently released OLED model, which seems to be going for its regular $350 price everywhere we look. The best deal this year seems to be — it still costs the regular $300, but they’re including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (usually $60) and three months of Switch online (usually $8). Where you find some Switch deals, though, is on really good games. Walmart has , and all down to $30 (normally $60). Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch Finding a PlayStation 5 in stock is still hit-or-miss, so there isn’t much in terms of deals on the console itself this Black Friday. If you’re looking for another controller, though, Gamestop has Microsoft There are two versions of the latest gen Xbox console — the Xbox Series S and the Xbox Series X. You can read about the , but the gist of it is that the Series X has a disc drive and is more powerful across the board. We’re only seeing deals for the Series S (read: the less powerful) model this year, with Amazon bumping (normally $300). Gamestop has down to $50 (normally $60), and Microsoft itself is offering upward of 30%-50% off on games like We’re not seeing any deals from Spotify or Netflix this year, but the competition has some offers: |
Apple TV+ series ‘Severance’ gets exclusive ‘innie’ and ‘outie’ vinyl records | Lauren Forristal | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | Fans of Apple TV+’s popular sci-fi workplace drama, “Severance,” can have their very own Lumon music-dance experience — maracas not included. Starting Wednesday, November 23, online store Mondo will have on sale, which contain the official soundtrack, artwork, themed packaging and other bonus merch. Like in the show, Mondo created two variations of the vinyl — an “innie” version and an “outie” version. Tomorrow, fans of the show can purchase “Severance” vinyl on . The first version, the “Innie Edition,” is $60 and includes the season one soundtrack by Theodore Shapiro and artwork by Greg Ruth. Notably, there are only 5,000 copies available of the “Innie Edition,” and it’s pressed on classic black vinyl. The limited item comes with a record inside a blue concertina folder that features the Lumon logo. As a nod to the series, fans will also get a Music Dance Experience card, an Eagan bingo sheet, four character cards, a hidden map of the severed floor, a record safety card and a Lumon disco bag. The second version, the “Outie Edition,” is priced at $35 and comes with the season one soundtrack and artwork. It doesn’t come with all the additional merch that is included in the other version. The “Outie Edition” is pressed on white vinyl, and the packaging is a brown office folder labeled “Severance.” There’s also a 3/4 reverse board slipcase featuring art of three characters from the show — Irving (played by John Turturro), Helly (Britt Lower) and the main protagonist Mark S. (Adam Scott). Mondo It’s not often that Apple TV+ has collectible merchandise for its original shows. The hit series “Severance,” starring “Parks and Rec” actor Adam Scott, has done well for the streamer. The show received this year. is also set to release a , which is currently in production. “Severance” takes place at a fictional company, Lumon, where employees have two personalities — an innie and an outie. The innie only makes an appearance in their office and has no recollection of who they are outside the workplace. The outie, on the other hand, gets to enjoy their personal life with family and friends. Apple also based on the series. |
Food delivery company JOKR confirms closing of Santiago, Medellin operations | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | confirmed Tuesday that it has withdrawn its on-demand food delivery operations in both Santiago, Chile and Medellin, Colombia, letting go of 22 employees and 19 employees, respectively, in those markets. The company said via email that the move will “further tighten our geographical footprint to those markets that have achieved the highest scale and hence, strengthen our path to profitability. As difficult as these changes are, they will help us become a more successful, sustainable and enduring company.” are not new. Companies have struggled to come up with a business model that could generate meaningful revenue even as customers just ordered a bunch of bananas or a gallon of milk. Co-founder and CEO Ralf Wenzel revealed in April that , but that high didn’t last long. He was back in the news a few months later saying that to focus on Latin America, where it was operating in countries including Mexico, Colombia and Peru. The closing of the Santiago and Medellin markets isn’t a complete surprise. In September, that JOKR was talking to investors with a goal of raising up to $50 million that would value the company at $1.3 billion. This would be a slight bump from the company’s $1.2 billion valuation from its announced last November. The Information’s article also noted that the company was losing nearly $10 million a month and that even if it raised the whole $50 million, the capital would not give the company much runway. Excluding that fundraising effort, JOKR has raised a total of $430 million, including debt. Meanwhile, the company said it “remains focused on the large opportunity in our current markets and are confident about our unique value proposition in this region.” “JOKR is deeply grateful to its team as well as our customers and local communities for their unwavering support and is committed to assisting employees in their transition,” it added. |
Almond launches full-service OB-GYN care to rebuild patient experience | Andrew Mendez | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | is aiming to modernize obstetrical-gynecological (OB-GYN) care for birthing people who want something more “modern,” full service and comprehensive than the standard provider offers. Fresh out of Y Combinator, the company just announced a $7 million seed round. “The patient experience today is slow, it’s incomplete, and ultimately it’s delivering not great outcomes,” said co-founder Tara Raffi, in an interview with TechCrunch. “We are under-delivering as a country. [Almond] is coming in and modernizing the OB-GYN office.” According to a 2020 published in the Commonwealth Fund, 75% of women in the country are dissatisfied with their OB-GYN care. The specialty is the second-largest specialty by spend, right after primary care. Current offerings include pregnancy planning, birth control counseling, infections, general wellness, period management and sexual health services. Prior to a patient’s appointment, they will fill out a health questionnaire and go over reasons for the visit so that when they are being seen it involves comprehensive conversations around the patient’s health instead of a general assessment. Patients also have the possibility of scheduling next-day telehealth appointments if they cannot make it into the office. Almond charges users a $250 annual subscription fee and will bill insurance for the visit and labs. The subscription will provide patients access to the company’s platform, care team and personalized plans. Though the company did say individuals without insurance can seek treatment for an out-of-pocket cost. [gallery columns="1" ids="2447024,2447009,2447010,2447011,2447012"] The company kept alluding to the fact it is trying to change the OB-GYN sector as OneMedical did for primary care by providing a direct-to-consumer membership model. Through a OneMedical subscription, individuals have access to 24/7 virtual care, software, personalized plans and what it considers “consistent, quality care.” Almond appears to be taking that approach through its subscription-based model. Almond’s co-founders told TechCrunch they hope to have as large of a reach, as OneMedical does, to patients. The average cost for a general OB-GYN visit in the United States can range anywhere from $90 to $500, according to . At Almond, the cost of a general in-person visit, without insurance, is $300. Additionally, Almond said it is making it a priority to provide abortion services and reproductive care, given the current political climate. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade and with the midterm election results finalized, some states are expected to start making policy decisions restricting abortion services. “The overturning of Roe is a reminder that women still aren’t given the right to be decision-makers of their own bodies. That is infuriating,” said Raffi. According to the , around half of abortions performed in a clinical setting were medical abortions, and as of 2017, there were only 1,587 facilities that provide abortion services nationally. Abortion restrictions have disproportionately affected BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) populations. Even before Roe was overturned BIPOC communities already faced high barriers to reproductive care. According to a published in the National Library of Medicine, Black and Latin women experience higher rates of unintended pregnancy compared to their white counterparts. In addition to Almond, companies like Tia, a comprehensive women’s healthcare provider, and Stix, a women’s health product company, have been working to provide more full-service options in women’s health. Almond originally made its debut as part of and has since been able to garner support with an influx of capital in the form of a $7 million seed round led by True Ventures. This round of funds will be used to grow the practices’ staff, further develop its platform and look into expansion. |
FTX’s bankruptcy hearing details prior control by ‘inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals’ | Jacquelyn Melinek | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | determine the fate of FTX, once one of the largest crypto exchanges globally, began Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. “We are here on an unprecedented matter and I don’t say those words lightly,” James Bromley, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and co-head of the firm’s global restructuring practice, said during the hearing. “This is a first-day hearing well over a week after they were filed; that in itself is uncommon. But what we have here [ … ] is a different sort of animal.” Prior to the bankruptcy filing, FTX was “in the control of a small group of inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals,” Bromley said. “Unfortunately, the evidence seems to indicate some or all of them were compromised.” The crypto exchange fell from grace earlier this month and on November 11. At the time, FTX CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried from his role, and Enron turnaround veteran John J. Ray III was appointed as the new CEO. Ray attended the hearing on Tuesday, along with more than 1,100 people who joined the hearing through a Zoom meeting link and YouTube streaming. |
FCC 86es first carrier for flouting robocall rules | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | When it comes to robocalls, the FCC means business, though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise as its various efforts over the last few years have crept rather than leapt forward. But the agency has just that has failed to comply with new anti-robocalling rules — perhaps the first of many. , a U.S.-based (but suspiciously generic) company that seems to provide automated and long-distance calling capabilities (as opposed to ordinary cell service), received a warning long ago that it would need to implement the anti-robocalling STIR/SHAKEN framework on its networks or be prepared to justify itself if it didn’t. When the FCC came calling in October with a final deadline, Global UC said it had STIR/SHAKEN in place but that part of its network would not be covered by it. The FCC asked why; some carriers have legitimate reasons for exempting some traffic and must say so. Global UC provided no details, saying only “We are not needing this certification.” Oh … okay. After a few follow-ups, the FCC called the company’s bluff, or rather bluster. The order issued today requires that “All intermediate providers and terminating voice service providers must cease accepting traffic from Global UC within two (2) business days of this Order.” In other words, Global UC is blacklisted — the first company to receive this punishment under the FCC’s robocall rules. It may be that this company was just one of many shells set up to funnel mass calling operations into the U.S., in which case its shutdown is probably not too consequential for the ones pulling the strings. It’s difficult to say, since as the FCC notes in its order, Global UC wasn’t very forthcoming about its operations. I’ve asked the FCC for a bit more detail on the company’s customers and will update if I hear back. At any rate it’s good to see another bad actor hammered after years of slow-rolling by the FCC — the agency first started pushing STIR/SHAKEN and only now has whacked its first carrier (though it has fined a few). With any luck this will scare a few more into compliance and we can all stop looking at our phones and saying “ugh … robocall” every few hours. |
null | Jaclyn Trop | 2,022 | 11 | 14 | null |
Startup founders need to be data-informed, not just ‘data-driven’ | Ann Lai | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | buzzwords startups use when pitching investors and in their marketing, “data-driven” is nearly at the top of the pile. But what does being data-driven really mean? Investments are slowing down and VCs are tightening their purse strings. Previously trending tech startups in fields like BNPL, crypto and the delivery market are struggling to show the growth and returns they promised in their initial funding rounds. Smaller startups with more modest goals can entice VCs looking for safer, smaller deals, but approaching an early-stage venture with a data-driven strategy is a one-sided approach — one that often disadvantages startups. Simple but necessary shifts in mindsets can change the way startups and investors look at data when making major investment decisions. Here are a few tips: Using raw, unfiltered data is common at startups that donʼt know how to properly filter their information, and they often end up offloading data irrelevant to their company and mission. For example, donʼt show investors the total visits to your webpage without also showing the average duration of those visits — veteran investors will pick up on this. Unfiltered data can skew toward biases and cause more harm than good. Many fast-evolving AI programs have unintentionally developed racial or gender biases based on the unfiltered data fed to them. Understanding how to filter data to properly tell a companyʼs story is critical to understanding where a company shines and where thereʼs room for improvement. To avoid this, segment your data and use outliers to your advantage. Filtering data to accurately depict operations and performance ensures that you’re comparing apples to apples. Unfiltered data creates a series of inaccurate comparisons, highlights the wrong aspects of the business and muddles critical outliers that VCs look for. |
Hackers are locking out Mars Stealer operators from their own servers | Zack Whittaker | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | A security research and hacking startup says it has found a coding flaw that allows it to lock out operators of the Mars Stealer malware from their own servers and release their victims. Mars Stealer is data-stealing malware as a service, allowing cybercriminals to rent access to the infrastructure to launch their own attacks. The malware itself is often distributed as email attachments, malicious ads and bundled with torrented files on file-sharing sites. Once infected, the malware steals a victim’s passwords and two-factor codes from their browser extensions, as well as the contents of . The malware can also be used to deliver other malicious payloads, like ransomware. Earlier this year, a cracked copy of the Mars Stealer malware leaked online, allowing anyone to build their own Mars Stealer command and control server, but its documentation , and guided would-be bad actors to configure their servers in a way that would inadvertently expose the log files packed with user data stolen from victims’ computers. In some cases, the operator would inadvertently infect themselves with malware and expose their own private data. Mars Stealer gained traction in March after , another popular data-stealing malware. That led to an uptick in new Mars Stealer campaigns, including the in the weeks following Russia’s invasion, and a large-scale effort to infect victims by . By April, security researchers said they found hosting Mars Stealer. Now, Buguard, a penetration testing startup, said the vulnerability it discovered in the leaked malware lets it remotely break in and “defeat” Mars Stealer command and control servers that are used to steal data from victim’s infected computers. Youssef Mohamed, the company’s chief technology officer, told TechCrunch that the vulnerability, once exploited, deletes the logs from the targeted Mars Stealer server, terminates all the active sessions that cuts ties with the victims’ computers, then scrambles the dashboard’s password so that the operators can’t log back in. Mohamed said this means the operator loses access to all of their stolen data and would have to target and reinfect its victims all over again. Actively targeting the servers of bad actors and cybercriminals, known as is unorthodox and hotly debated both for its merits and its drawbacks, and why the practice in the U.S. is solely reserved for government agencies. A generally accepted principle in good-faith security research is to look but don’t touch something found online if it does not belong to you; only document and report it. But while a common tactic is to request that web hosts and domain registrars shut down malicious domains, some bad actors set up shop in countries and on networks where they can operate their malware operations largely with legal impunity and without fear of prosecution. Mohamed said his company has discovered and neutralized five Mars Stealer servers so far, four of which subsequently went offline. The company is not publishing the vulnerability as to not tip off operators but said it would share details of the flaw with authorities with the aim of helping take down more Mars Stealer operators. The vulnerability also exists in Erbium, another data-stealing malware with a similar malware-as-a-service model to Mars Stealer, Mohamed said. |
TechCrunch+ roundup: Attention metrics, growth through retention, cold-calling advice | Walter Thompson | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | Pitching a startup to investors without a personal recommendation isn’t a terrible idea — as long as you’ve done your research first. Tetra Insights co-founders Michael Bamberger and Panos Rigopoulos raised a $5 million Series A last year, and the duo said . “When I changed my criteria to finding people who were a fit, the process was really quick,” says Bamberger, who initially raised a $500,000 friends and family round in 2019 followed by a $1.5 million seed round a year later. Rigopoulos and Bamberger shared their cold-calling advice with TC+, along with the full text of one of their winning emails and a detailed breakdown of the three-step process they used. “Once you get investors, the story doesn’t matter; it’s all about the metrics, the numbers and the performance,” Bamberger said. “Before the investment, the numbers are just part of the story, so you really have to understand how you’re telling the story.” Due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., we are skipping this Friday’s newsletter, but we’ll be back in a week with another TC+ roundup. Thanks very much for reading, and have a great week. Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, TechCrunch+
/ Getty Images Once upon a time, metrics like time on site and pages per visit were sufficient for growth marketing, but that’s no longer true. To track engagement and performance, brands need to know exactly where their ads appear and whether consumers are viewing them actively or passively. “Viewability is no longer enough, and ‘attention metrics’ are becoming increasingly popular in the industry,” according to Sylvain Le Borgne, MediaMath’s head of data and analytics. “As attention metrics and measurement continue to mature, brands can learn more, develop a plan aligned with key business outcomes, start optimizing for attention, and kick-off their targeting and measurement tactics to capture consumer attention.” / Getty Images You don’t need to move the needle far to optimize customer success. SaaS startups that incrementally improve will stack small wins that have the potential to alter the company’s trajectory. Instead of using a traditional siloed approach, founders should consider rolling their product and CX teams into a single unit to promote cohesion, writes Bryan House, SVP of product and customer success at Elastic Path. “Regardless of what you call the role, product management, UX and customer success should report to the same person,” he advises. “This leader should create a structure that shares incentives and common goals aligned to your customers’ measures of success.” Getty Images Venture capital funds can reach into the billions, but smaller pools that max out at $50 million or less “are truly the funds that power the future of the industry,” reports Rebecca Szkutak. Last year, PitchBook recorded $147.2 billion in general venture fundraising inside the United States, with micro funds raising nearly $17 billion of that amount. “[They are] often the first investment in a company, which creates more opportunity in the lifecycle,” said PitchBook senior venture analyst Kyle Stanford. “Especially when we talk about how much capital has gone into the venture market, it wouldn’t have been possible without the high number of micro funds.” / Getty Images Finding ways to reduce customer churn is the heart of any growth-through-retention strategy, but centralizing first-party data is step one, according to Vijay Sundaram, chief strategy officer at Zoho. Weaving together different signals like social media, website behavior and CRM data will help identify high-value customers and drive engagement, but “first-party data is likely stored across multiple departments and systems, including marketing, customer advocacy, sales and support,” he writes. “Building rich customer profiles and establishing a culture of information sharing need to be core functions of customer-facing teams.” |
Pipe’s founding team stepping down as hunt for ‘veteran’ CEO begins | Mary Ann Azevedo | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | of alternative financing startup are stepping down from their roles as executives of the company in one of the most dramatic management shake-ups seen in the fintech startup world in some time. Miami-based said today it is on the hunt for a “veteran” CEO as Harry Hurst, who has been the face of the company since its 2019 inception, transitions from his role as co-CEO to vice chairman. Fellow founder and co-CEO Josh Mangel will temporarily assume the role of chief executive while Hurst leads the search and subsequent transition in leadership with the help of a global executive recruitment firm. Once a new CEO has been named, Mangel will become executive chairman of Pipe, focusing on product and strategy. CTO and co-founder Zain Allarakhia will remain on the board and serve as a senior advisor to the company. Usman Masood, currently the EVP of engineering, will take over as chief technology officer. “We are looking for someone who has significant operational experience scaling businesses, from product market fit to market leadership all the way through to rapid growth on a global scale,” Hurst said. The news — shared with TechCrunch exclusively — is a bit startling considering that at its height just 18 months ago, Pipe was among the buzziest of fintechs with Hurst serving as its very public frontman. In May of 2021, the company had at a $2 billion valuation in a round that Hurst had described as “massively oversubscribed.” Certainly, it’s not the first time the founder of a company has stepped down to allow for fresh leadership. But it is highly unusual for all three co-founders to do so at once. And at this stage in a business. In an email interview, Hurst told TechCrunch that the trio has “always known that the next phase of Pipe’s growth would include a veteran operational leader.” He said they initially started a search for a COO in the second quarter and during that process, realized that the role they were defining was actually that of a CEO who could help the company reach its “true long-term potential.” He added: “We’re 0-1 builders, not at-scale operators.” The co-founders remain the three largest shareholders in Pipe, according to Hurst. When asked what percentage of their shares the founders have sold or how many employees took loans from the company to fund the purchase of their own shares, he responded, “As a private company, we do not share information about anyone’s personal compensation or holdings.” Since its founding, the startup says that 22,000 companies have signed up for Pipe and $7 billion of ARR (annual recurring revenue) has been connected to the . Hurst insists that traction is not the issue here, telling TechCrunch that Pipe is on track to “3x” its revenue this year compared to last year. When Pipe first started three years ago, its goal was to provide SaaS companies a funding alternative outside of equity or venture debt. It promoted itself as the “Nasdaq for revenue,” touting that its mission was to give SaaS companies a way to collect their future revenues up front by pairing them with investors on a marketplace that paid a discounted rate for the annual value of those contracts. The goal of the platform was to offer companies with recurring revenue streams access to capital so they didn’t dilute their ownership by accepting external capital or get forced to take out loans. Armed with from the likes of HubSpot, Okta, Slack and Shopify, Pipe announced in March 2021 that it would begin to expand beyond strictly serving SaaS companies to “any company with a recurring revenue stream. That could include, Hurst had said, D2C subscription companies, ISP, streaming services or telecommunications companies. Even VC fund admin and management fees were being piped on its platform, for example, according to Hurst. In February, Pipe announced it was financing with the acquisition of London-based Purely Capital. With that buy — its first — Pipe created a new media and entertainment division called Pipe Entertainment with the aim of giving independent distributors the opportunity to trade their revenue streams in the same way a SaaS company could. Expanding into so many new verticals felt like a bit of a gamble to some observers. Working with SaaS companies with their boring, predictable recurring revenues felt very different than working with independent movie production companies that, as Hurst himself pointed out, sometimes had to wait “three to five years to get their money back and go on to their next projects.” Hurst appeared to have so much confidence in Pipe’s “capital markets engine” that he believed it could support “the entire revenue-as-an-asset class” globally. At the time, he told TechCrunch, “Eventually, anyone should be able to originate onto our platform.” He remains optimistic. Currently, over 50% of the trading volume — the buying and selling of future revenues — on the platform comes from non-SaaS vertical markets. And surprisingly, Pipe Entertainment is one of the fastest growing verticals on its platform, according to Hurst. “In general, diversifying across verticals has been positive, and we plan to continue driving additional vertical expansion,” he told TechCrunch. Clearly, much has changed since February as the markets took a dramatic shift. Since then valuations have been challenged, over 100,000 tech workers have been laid off and inflation has surged. Presently, Pipe has 108 employees. It has not conducted any layoffs, Hurst said. The company’s latest move has nothing to do with the company’s current financial situation, according to Hurst, who says that Pipe “is well positioned.” He added: “Unlike many companies in this challenging environment, we have the resources and half a decade of runway to make long-term, strategic decisions from a position of strength to ensure we are continuing to drive further value to our customers and investors.” Pipe has raised over $300 million in its lifetime from investors such as Greenspring Associates, Craft Ventures, Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global, CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund, Fin VC, 3L, and Japan’s SBI Investment. Existing backers such as Next47, Marc Benioff, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, MaC Ventures and Republic. While revenue-based financing has been around for decades, it has become more of a pervasive way to fuel SaaS startups in recent years. Y Combinator alum Arc in January with $150 million in debt financing and $11 million in seed funding to build what it describes as “a community of premium software companies” that gives SaaS startups a way “to convert future revenue into upfront capital,” among other things. In August, Arc — which now describes itself as a digital bank for SaaS companies — landed in a Series A round led by Left Lane. Spanish-American outfit Capchase — which says it turns “SaaS recurring revenue into flexible growth financing” — in July of 2021 in new debt and equity funding and has since raised $80 million in equity and taken on another $400 million in debt. Austin-based in August announced it had secured $145 million in its own debt and equity financing to help B2B SaaS founders grow their businesses without diluting ownership. Specifically, the company claims that it allows founders to take up to 50% of their annual recurring revenue (ARR) in upfront cash. Crowdz, which in capital co-led by Citi and Dutch growth equity firm Global Cleantech Capital, said this year it expanded from providing invoice-based financing to SaaS-focused SMEs to also providing them with recurring revenue access to upfront capital they need without having to dilute their equity. Unlike Pipe, these companies remain focused on serving SaaS businesses. “After our public launch in 2020, we saw a lot of follow-on players enter the space, and we understand some of them may be facing challenges,” Hurst said. “While the market has changed significantly since we started Pipe, we’ve never been in a stronger position for this next phase of growth.” |
Are tech valuations artificially low, or are we simply returning to reality? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | detailing an evolving venture capital market. We argued that the collected information showed the existence of a Series C “crunch,” or a bottleneck in the capital ladder that startups climb. Because there have been “crunches” at various stages before, the fact that Series Cs are particularly stubborn today might not ruffle your feathers. But because C rounds could be considered the gateway to late-stage startup status, many upstart tech companies are staring down a widening chasm from their Series A and B rounds and their hoped-for future. There’s good news and bad news for early-stage tech companies. GGV’s Jeff Richards, a venture capitalist with a penchant for tweeting investment banking research (which never bothers us), in response to our reporting that while Series C and D rounds do look pretty nasty today, there’s reason to believe that a good number of early late-stage companies are going to have enough cash to self-power for some quarters to come: |
Researchers are building robots that can build themselves | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | Researchers at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms are working on , designing robots that effectively self-assemble. The team admits that the goal of an autonomous self-building robot is still “years away,” but the work has thus far demonstrated positive results. At the system’s center are voxels (a term borrowed from computer graphics), which carry power and data that can be shared between pieces. The pieces form the foundation of the robot, grabbing and attaching additional voxels before moving across the grid for further assembly. The researchers note in an associated paper , “Our approach challenges the convention that larger constructions need larger machines to build them, and could be applied in areas that today either require substantial capital investments for fixed infrastructure or are altogether unfeasible.” MIT Developing the proper level of intelligence for these systems is a big hurdle. Among other things, the robots need to determine how and where to build, when to begin building a new robot and just generally how to avoid bumping into each other in the process. “When we’re building these structures, you have to build in intelligence,” the paper’s co-author, Neil Gershenfeld, says in a release. “[W]hat emerged was the idea of structural electronics — of making voxels that transmit power and data as well as force.” Hardware issues remain, as well. The team is currently working on building stronger connectors to keep the voxels together. Ultimately, the desire for such a system — when completed — is clear. The team suggests that using the robots to determine the optimal build could save on a lot of time spent prototyping. MIT notes: While there has been increasing interest in 3-D-printed houses, today those require printing machinery as large or larger than the house being built. Again, the potential for such structures to instead be assembled by swarms of tiny robots could provide benefits. And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also interested in the work for the possibility of building structures for coastal protection against erosion and sea level rise. NASA and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory have participated in funding the project. |
Venmo adds in-app charitable donations, redesigned ‘send money’ screen | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | PayPal-owned Venmo is today rolling out two changes to its peer-to-peer payments app, including the ability to donate to charities through Venmo as well as a redesigned money-sending experience. The latter aims to make it easier to see how much you’re sending and who you’re sending to, while also improving the ability to either pay or request multiple payments at once. The updates will begin to become available to all Venmo users today across both iOS and Android, the company says, though the donations feature will expand to include new capabilities over time. Initially, Venmo users will be able to browse through verified charities in their local community or browse by charity categories, including things like animals and pets, disaster relief or education, for example. Users can choose to make a donation to their charity of choice using their Venmo balance, debit or credit card, or a linked bank account. In the weeks ahead, Venmo users will also be able to share a donation they made with their friends to encourage others to give, too, the company notes. Venmo parent company PayPal has offered a similar charitable giving feature , which connects its users to the tens of thousands of certified charities available . The fund collects donations on behalf of users, provides receipts to donors, then distributes the funds directly to the charities’ PayPal accounts. Venmo, meanwhile, has been focused on peer-to-peer payments and, in more recent years, and other small sellers. However, PayPal announced that charities would be able to create a profile on Venmo to reach beyond the PayPal community to also tap into Venmo’s user base of some 90 million customers through an upcoming in-app feature. At the time, the company noted that 61% of donors are most likely to hear about causes through word-of-mouth with friends and family, which is why the more social Venmo app would make sense. To use the newly added feature, Venmo users can tap on the search bar at the top of the app and select the new option, “Make a donation.” They can then browse the “Find a Charity” page where they can select a PayPal-confirmed charity and learn more about the cause. If ready to donate, they’ll tap the “Donate” button, enter an amount and a note. Later, they’ll be able to share the donation to inspire friends. Transaction fees are set at 1.9% + $0.10 for the charity profiles on Venmo and don’t include other setup or monthly charges. Venmo The other change coming to Venmo is not necessarily a new feature, but rather involves a user interface redesign. Now, Venmo users will be shown a new “send money” experience with added profile pictures and a larger font size for the dollar amount. Before, users could see the profile picture if they were on a friend’s page, but the actual “Pay or Request” screen would only include their name and a small box to enter the amount. In addition, Venmo says customers will be able to tap on the plus “+” button next to the first recipient’s profile picture to scroll through a list and add more recipients to the same transaction. Here, Venmo will display the total amount being sent as well as the amount for each transaction. This provides a simple way to quickly send money to a group of people which could be a handy way to gift friends or family some cash during the holiday season. The new charitable donation experience will reach all users today while the “send money” redesign is rolling out today but will reach all users over the next couple of weeks. |
This manta ray-inspired soft robot flies through the water | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | Biologically inspired soft robots make a lot of sense in a lot of different scenarios, but as with any class of technology, they have their limitations. Among other things, these compliant structures can struggle to move at the same speed as their more rigid counterparts. To help speed up swimming, a team of researchers at North Carolina State University : the manta ray. Looking toward the fish makes sense. These cousins of sharks effectively fly through water courtesy of massive, wing-like pectoral fins. Ultimately, however, the researchers named them after a different animal altogether. The “butterfly bots” are so deemed for their resemblance to the arms of humans performing the butterfly stroke [see: the above image]. Two versions of the robot were built. The first was designed specifically for speed, with the ability to move 3.74 body lengths per second — a big increase over soft robots that struggle to move a single body length in that time. A second, designed for more control, moves around 1.7 body lengths a second. In the first case, the design makes turning an issue. With the second, the team added a second drivetrain to turn the robot by flapping a single wing at a time. “To date, swimming soft robots have not been able to swim faster than one body length per second, but marine animals — such as manta rays — are able to swim much faster, and much more efficiently,” the paper’s co-author, Jie Yin, says in a release. “We wanted to draw on the biomechanics of these animals to see if we could develop faster, more energy-efficient soft robots. The prototypes we’ve developed work exceptionally well.” The body is bent up and down using a pneumatic air tube system, which in turn bends the wings/fins, propelling the system forward. Yin adds, “Most previous attempts to develop flapping robots have focused on using motors to provide power directly to the wings. Our approach uses bistable wings that are passively driven by moving the central body. This is an important distinction, because it allows for a simplified design, which lowers the weight.” The team says it’s working on an autonomous, untethered version of the soft-swimming butterfly robot. |
Aerospace Corp discusses Space Workforce 2030 at TC Sessions: Space | Lauren Simonds | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | Are you ready — and as excited as we are — to hear and learn from the brightest minds envisioning, building, investing and committing to forging and securing humanity’s future in space? Spend December 6 with us and the world’s leading space aces at in Los Angeles. — before prices increase on — and pay just $199. It takes a universal village to pull off a world-class space conference, and we’re fortunate to have partners who not only provide resources, but who also show up to educate and help guide the next generation of entrepreneurs and visionaries. They’ve also been known to connect and collaborate with up-and-coming startups. Today we’re excited to highlight the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit, federally funded research and development center focused on all aspects of the space enterprise — civil, commercial and defense. Don’t miss Steve Isakowitz, the Aerospace Corporation’s president and CEO, as he leads a session called “ .” The dawning space age offers enormous opportunities to explore new frontiers, grow the economy in orbit and strengthen our security. Making the most of this momentous time calls for an innovative workforce that can leverage diverse experiences and perspectives to solve the hard problems we’ll encounter. The Space Workforce 2030 pledge — a first-of-its-kind effort launched earlier this year — brings together more than 30 of the country’s leading space companies to work collaboratively to increase diversity across our industry to build a vibrant workforce for the future. Isakowitz will discuss the work that the Aerospace Corporation and other space leaders are doing to inspire, prepare and employ the next generation of scientists and engineers — and how you can play a part in supporting this vital mission. Steve Isakowitz, a recognized leader across the government, commercial, space and technology sectors, has worked throughout his career on behalf of the public good in space. As president and CEO of the Aerospace Corporation, a leading architect for the nation’s space programs, he heads up efforts to outpace threats to the country’s national security while nurturing innovative technologies to further a new era of space commercialization and exploration. With his guidance, Aerospace’s more than 4,600 employees provide objective technical expertise and thought leadership to solve the hardest problems in space and ensure mission success for space systems and space vehicles. Isakowitz has made contributions across a number of prominent roles, including at Virgin Galactic, NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the White House Office of Management and Budget. takes place on December 6 in Los Angeles. , and then join us — and our partners — to learn about the latest space tech, network for opportunities and build a stronger startup to the stars.
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Meet 5 startups working to harness the Earth’s heat to save the planet | Tim De Chant | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | sources of power that are “free” here on Earth, namely wind, solar, hydro and geothermal. Humans have been tapping hydro and wind for millennia, and we’re getting pretty good at harnessing the power of the sun. But with geothermal, we’re still not expertly exploiting the heat that’s generated deep within the planet. Most commercial-scale geothermal installations are in geologic hotspots like Northern California and Iceland. At a smaller scale, many homeowners have drilled shallow wells or buried loops in their yards for heating and cooling. But to truly unlock geothermal’s potential around the globe, and do so profitably, we’ll need new ways to drill deep down and draw the Earth’s heat up. As the world lurches through an energy transition, plenty of energy wonks talk at great lengths about dispatchable baseload power. That’s a lot of jargon. “Dispatchable” means that grid operators can ask for a plant to produce power on a moment’s notice and it’ll deliver. And “baseload” means power that can always be on, no matter the weather. Renewables like solar and wind are, on their own, not baseload power. It’s a different story if they’re paired with batteries to store power for use when the wind is calm or the sun isn’t shining. The renewables-plus-batteries combo is happening with increasing frequency, but batteries remain expensive, and why not have more options than just that? Geothermal is often pitched as a carbon-free source of dispatchable baseload power, which is why energy wonks are warming to it. In a geothermal plant, a working fluid, frequently water, is injected underground, where it’s heated before being pulled up again to run through a heat exchanger or drive a turbine. The source of heat is nearly limitless. The Earth continuously generates about half of which comes from naturally occurring radioactivity. That’s about 385,000 terawatt-hours of energy released every year, far more than global energy use, which in 2019 was . If we could tap into a fraction of the Earth’s heat, well, we’d have a lot of energy at our disposal. Geothermal’s potential is coinciding with the looming decline of the fossil fuel industry, which has many engineers rethinking their careers. It just so happens that many of the drilling techniques developed for the oil and gas industry dovetail nicely with what’s required to bring geothermal mainstream. There are a number of startups attempting to transform geothermal from a niche power source to one that could be widely deployed. Here are five that I’ve been watching. If there was an award for the sexiest geothermal technology, would probably be the winner. |
Pitch Deck Teardown: Juro’s $23M Series B deck | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | , covered which added $23 million to its coffers. Juro aims to put an end to contract negotiation madness, moving the workflows out of Microsoft Word and a handful of other subpar tools to an all-in-one, web-based platform for contract negotiation-to-signature workflow. It seems like a very good idea. The deck worked; it helped raise a fine stack of dollars. But is its deck any good? Let’s take a closer look. The company used a 15-slide deck, which it shared with TechCrunch, making only some light redactions. All the slides are there, but the company blurred out part of its future road map and the actual numbers for the financials. There are a lot of really good things about the Juro deck, but the clarity of its story is a particular highlight. [Slide 2] Excellent problem description. Juro For startups, this shows up in due diligence from time to time. You both need to have contracts with all your customers and suppliers and be able to locate and show the signed versions of them in the due diligence process if prompted. If your contracts live in your email or (maybe) in a shared folder (somewhere, hopefully), this can turn into a stressful nightmare. The extra-cool quirk here is that most VC deals fall into this category; the term sheets are often pretty standard, but by the time the investment documents are complete, there’s a bunch of custom language that can sneak into each contract, varying from deal to deal. The upshot is that this company would probably have been a pretty easy sell to a lot of VCs that are looking at this deck: While the company isn’t specifically for the startup and VC ecosystem, Juro is, at least partially, solving a problem every VC has experienced at one time or another. If your company does something that VCs are very likely to be familiar with, you can use that to your advantage. It speeds up the “this is why this is useful” narrative significantly. What a great perk! [Slide 4] Yessss. This is how we do a product slide. Juro In this slide, Juro shares just enough detail so investors can get a high-level overview of what the product is and what the benefits are. Very well done, and it keeps things at a high enough level to make it all pretty easy to understand. Well done! As a startup, what you can learn from this slide is to not get bogged down in the details. Keep it as simple as you can. With my pitch coaching clients, I sometimes challenge them to tell the entire story without mentioning the product once. A little extreme, of course, but it helps strengthen every other part of the story sufficiently to the point that once you add product back in, it takes on the appropriate amount of time and energy in a pitch. [Side 5] If you could use a single slide to raise capital, it would look like this. Juro Traction is . If you have it, lead with it as early as you can. Well, we’ve made it to slide five in Juro’s pitch deck and we’ve already talked about the slides that preceded it. Realistically, this is the earliest the company could talk about how well it is doing. And goodness, is it ever — that’s as exponential a graph as you will see for any startup, and if Juro has “number of contracts signed” as its most important KPI, this graph is exceptional. You’ll have noticed the “if” in the above sentence. As an investor, I like this graph. I like that the company is expanding rapidly. But there’s a quirk here: , the company doesn’t directly make more money if it deals with more contracts. Of course, the two will be strongly related, but I’d have loved to see a more direct traction metric here. ARR, perhaps. Number of paying customers. Leading with a beautiful graph for a secondary KPI always comes across as a little suspect. I’m letting them get away with it here because slides 6 and 7 cover the company’s ARR growth, which is the metric numbers-driven VCs will care about. The lesson? Be careful which metrics you lead with. Some are important internally but less important to investors. Some will be valuable to certain aspects of the business (time to customer support ticket closure and system uptime, for example, are crucial to customer service and technical operations teams), but it seems curious to see them show up in pitch decks. In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Juro could have improved or done differently, along with its full pitch deck! |
Has the FTX mess iced venture interest in crypto? | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | a kind year for blockchain-based startup activity. In addition to an during a general venture capital slowdown, web3-focused tech upstarts have also had to deal with a series of intra-industry crises that have, at times, dominated technology headlines. The comes to mind. As does the . That’s not to mention the . Amid all of the above, many folks building or investing in blockchain-based assets and protocols have kept their chins up. Evidence of that abounds — startups are still being and . Business as usual then, right? Perhaps. It’s worth recalling that in 2022, the pace at which venture capital dollars were disbursed into web3-focused companies — a broad term; I am not trying to weigh in on the argument — has declined this year. Crunchbase data noted recently, for example, that after a Q4 2021 peak, capital raised by companies dealing with cryptocurrency or blockchains fell in each successive quarter through Q3 2022. |
Binance launches proof-of-reserves system for BTC holdings | Romain Dillet | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | Cryptocurrency exchange company has released a that explains its proof-of-reserves system. The company is starting with BTC reserves. Right now, Binance has a reserve ratio of 101%. It means that the company has enough bitcoins to cover all users’ balances. This move comes a couple of weeks after the , another popular crypto exchange. In FTX’s case, the company faced a liquidity crisis. It stopped processing withdrawals because it couldn’t meet demand from investors and end users. Crypto companies — and crypto exchanges in particular — have been trying to be more transparent about user funds since then. It means sharing more information about hot and cold wallets. But there’s still a lot of work ahead before you can completely trust crypto exchanges and how they handle funds. A few weeks ago, Binance started by sharing with billions of dollars worth of crypto assets. With this move, the company proved that it does indeed hold a lot of assets and it can process a ton of withdrawals. But the company didn’t state clearly whether those are user assets, Binance’s own balance sheet or a mix of both. With today’s new proof-of-reserves site, Binance clarified that point by saying that BTC wallets included in the proof-of-reserves system don’t include Binance’s own funds. “It is important to note that this does not include Binance’s corporate holdings, which are kept on a completely separate ledger,” the company says. You will have to trust Binance’s word as you can’t verify that with a blockchain explorer. Binance is starting with BTC holdings. Adding up the amounts in each of Binance’s wallet is easy. When it comes to user assets, the company is using a Merkle tree to include all individual user accounts and generate a cryptographic seal. As of November 22 at 23:59 UTC, Binance users collectively held 575742.4228 BTC — that’s around $9.5 billion at today’s exchange rate. And Binance had enough bitcoins in its own wallets to cover 101% of these funds. In other words, if everybody withdraws their BTC at the same time, Binance would have enough BTC to process all withdrawals. Thanks to the Merkle tree, individual users can use the root hash to check whether their accounts are included in the snapshot of user balances. Binance says it includes user balances across various products — Spot, Funding, Margin, Futures, Earn and Options Wallet. The company also provides a short Python script so that you can check yourself. “Given recent events, it is understandable that the community will demand more from crypto exchanges, far more than what is currently required of traditional financial institutions. That’s why we’re pleased to provide this latest feature for our users to verify their funds,” Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao ‘CZ’ said in a statement. “As Binance’s user community is exponentially larger than the next largest exchange, this is a massive under-taking and will take a few weeks to develop the data for the majority of our assets in custody. We are working to get the next update out as quickly as possible to meet the community’s expectations.” The company already plans to release similar proof-of-reserves information for ETH, USDT, USDC, BUSD and BNB in the future. Binance offers hundreds of different crypto assets so let’s hope that they can also cover withdrawals for lesser known cryptocurrencies. Similarly, the company should work with independent financial and security auditing firms so that you don’t just have to blindly trust the company. There is still a long way to go, but at least today’s new proof-of-reserves system is a step in the right direction. |
Amazon to shut down food delivery business in India | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | Amazon will shut down its food delivery business in India by the end of the year, the retailer said Friday, retreating from a $20 billion vertical it entered . The retailer will shut down the food delivery business, called Amazon Food, on December 29 in India. It launched Food in India in May 2020 in parts of Bengaluru. The company later expanded the service across the city, tying up with additional restaurants, but it never heavily promoted or marketed the platform. “Customers have been telling us for some time that they would like to order prepared meals on Amazon in addition to shopping for all other essentials. This is particularly relevant in present times as they stay home safe,” the company said at the time of Food launch. India’s food delivery market is estimated to be worth $20 billion in three years, according to Sanford C. Bernstein. Zomato, publicly listed, currently maintains a small lead in the market against rival Swiggy, backed by SoftBank, Prosus Ventures and Invesco. Amazon said Friday: “We don’t take these decisions lightly. We are discontinuing these programs in a phased manner to take care of current customers and partners and we are supporting our affected employees during this transition. Amazon remains focused on providing our growing customer base the best online shopping experience with the largest selection of products at great value and convenience.” The announcement is part of Amazon’s broader restructuring in India. It announced earlier this week that it will be in the country next year. India is a key overseas market for Amazon, which has in its local business in the country. But the company is lagging Walmart’s Flipkart and and towns, according to a recent report by Sanford C. Bernstein. Amazon’s 2021 gross merchandise value in the country stood between $18 billion to $20 billion, lagging Flipkart’s $23 billion, the analysts said in a report to clients. |
Black Friday 2022 e-commerce reaches record $9.12B, Thanksgiving $5.3B; BNPL and mobile are big hits | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | and have been predicting a muted online holiday shopping season this year, with sales in the first three weeks of November essentially flat over a year ago due to a weaker economy, inflation and more people returning to shopping in stores again in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But on the face of it, the Thanksgiving long weekend appears to be more buoyant than expected — albeit growth has definitely slowed down this year after the pandemic-period boom. Black Friday broke $9 billion in sales for the first time yesterday, with online sales of $9.12 billion, according to figures from . This is a record figure for the day, and up 2.3% on sales figures a year ago, and slightly higher than Adobe had estimated leading up to the day. Adobe doesn’t break out volumes in its report, so it’s hard to know if those figures are due to items simply costing more this year because of inflation, or if the higher numbers are a result of more buying. Salesforce publishes its own figures based on , and it noted that online sales reached $8 billion in the U.S. and $40 billion globally at 5 p.m. ET on Black Friday with the most discounted items in the U.S. appearing in home appliances, apparel, health and beauty, and … luxury handbags. “Our data shows such a strong correlation between discount rates and online sales as consumers held on for the biggest and best deals,” said Rob Garf, VP and GM of retail at Consumers with stretched wallets are seeking value and price. And retailers responded on Black Friday with the steepest discount rates of the holiday season.” Adobe said that toys, gaming and consumer electronics were the most popular categories for people seeking out deals and discounts on Black Friday. The day before, Thanksgiving, also had stronger than expected numbers: Shoppers spent $5.29 billion online on Thursday. That is up 2.9% on last year and ahead of the $5.1 billion Adobe initially said it was expecting for the day. Salesforce noted that online sales grew 1% on Thanksgiving day to $31 billion, while in the U.S. specifically they were up 9% to $7.5 billion. Salesforce also said that 78% of sales traffic came from mobile devices. Average order values, it said, were The shape of “holiday shopping” has changed massively with the rise of e-commerce. Not only has shopping online extended the days and hours that people shop, but it’s extended and blurred the whole concept of seasonality in “holiday” shopping. The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, used to mark the “first day” of holiday shopping; that with sales starting on Thanksgiving Day. It has of course also impacted people shop. Mobile devices are playing an ever bigger role in that. A record 48% of all e-commerce sales on Black Friday were made on smartphones (versus 44% in 2021). Note: Thanksgiving is still a stronger day for mobile sales, in part because people are not at their computers — they’re with friends and family not at their desks! — and they are not in stores. On Thursday, some 55% of online sales were on mobile devices, up 8.3% over a year ago. “Mobile shopping had struggled to grow for many years, as consumers found the experience lacking compared to desktop,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst, Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “Thanksgiving this year has become an inflection point, where smartphones drove real growth and highlights how much these experiences have improved.” The use of buy now, pay later services is up, a sign of both the growing ubiquity of this as an alternative to credit, but also of the need for consumers to take this route. Black Friday saw BNPL orders shoot up 78%, and they are up 81% by sales figures, compared to the same day a week ago. Notably, this is a big spike compared also the the day prior. On Thanksgiving, buy now, pay later was up 1.3% in terms of sales and 0.7% in terms of orders (indicating more of it being used for bigger-ticket items). All fine and well, as long as this doesn’t translate into untenable debts longer term. Adobe says that it analyzes some 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, tracking sales for some 100 million SKUs and 18 product categories. Its analytics will include anonymized data from some of its customers: it says it is used by some 85% of the biggest online retailers in the U.S. Salesforce and Adobe may have different figures and measurement parameters, but both are seeing growth, so the bigger question may actually be whether the bump in activity seen on Thanksgiving will be sustained through the rest of Cyber Week — which includes today’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the weekend in between — and indeed the rest of the days and weeks leading up to the New Year. Overall, Adobe has predicted that Cyber Week will generate $34.8 billion in online spend this year, up 2.8% on last year when the week brought in . 2021’s Cyber Week was actually down 1.4% compared to 2020, so this represents a turnaround. As a point of comparison on those figures, the is predicting holiday sales growth of 6% to 8%, while another analysis group, , is predicting growth of 6.1% for the period. Be that as it may, sales may not be totally sustained or even in the coming days. Adobe predicted that sales for today — the famous Black Friday — are expected to hit $9 billion, which is up only 1% on 2021 figures. The holiday shopping season is an important period to track for a couple of reasons. First, it is traditionally a retailer’s most lucrative selling period, one that can make or break its whole year. (That is the reason why Amazon’s , where it provided reduced sales guidance and warned of lower-than-expected holiday spending, sent its stock tumbling nearly 20%.) Because of that outsized importance, collectively, e-commerce holiday figures can serve as a bellwether for the e-commerce market as a whole. But if growth is what we’re after, there are some indicators of stormy waters ahead. Adobe found that the first three weeks of November saw flat online sales of $64.59 billion, up just 0.1% over 2021. That’s against a backdrop of physical retailers getting increasingly aggressive in capturing back their audience. The National Retail Federation in the U.S. said it expects to shop during the long weekend. “While there is much speculation about inflation’s impact on consumer behavior, our data tells us that this Thanksgiving holiday weekend will see robust store traffic with a record number of shoppers taking advantage of value pricing,” NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said in a statement. “We are optimistic that retail sales will remain strong in the weeks ahead, and retailers are ready to meet consumers however they want to shop with great products at prices they want to pay.” We’ll be posting more updates on sales figures as they come in. |
How to run data on Kubernetes: 6 starting principles | Sylvain Kalache | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | becoming an industry standard, with up to of organizations deploying their services and applications on the container orchestration platform, per a survey. One of the key reasons companies deploy on Kubernetes is standardization, which lets advanced users double productivity gains. Standardizing on Kubernetes gives organizations the ability to deploy any workload, anywhere. But there was a missing piece: The technology assumed that workloads were ephemeral, meaning that only stateless workloads could be safely deployed on Kubernetes. However, the community recently changed the paradigm and brought features such as StatefulSets and Storage Classes, which make using data on Kubernetes possible. While running stateful workloads on Kubernetes is possible, it is still challenging. In this article, I provide ways to make it happen and why it is worth it. Kubernetes is on its way to being as popular as Linux and the de facto way of running any application, anywhere, in a distributed fashion. Using Kubernetes involves learning a lot of technical concepts and vocabulary. For instance, newcomers might struggle with the many Kubernetes logical units such as containers, pods, nodes and clusters. If you are not running Kubernetes in production yet, don’t jump directly into data workloads. Instead, start with moving stateless applications to avoid losing data when things go sideways. Once you are familiar with general Kubernetes concepts, dive into the specifics for stateful concepts. For example, because applications may have different storage needs, such as performance or capacity requirements, you must provide the correct underlying storage system. What the industry generally calls storage “profiles” is termed Storage Classes in Kubernetes. They provide a way to describe the different types of classes a Kubernetes cluster can access. Storage classes can have different quality-of-service levels, such as I/O operations per second per GiB, backup policies or arbitrary policies such as binding modes and allowed topologies. Another critical component to understand is StatefulSet. It is the Kubernetes API object used to manage stateful applications and offers key features such as: While StatefulSet has been a successful replacement for the infamous PetSet (now deprecated), it is still imperfect and has limitations. For example, the StatefulSet controller has — which is a major challenge if the size of your application dataset is about to grow above the current allocated storage capacity. There are , but such limitations must be understood well ahead of time so that the engineering team knows how to handle them. |
Be like Gmail: Proton Mail will soon offer email categorization, message scheduling and more | Paul Sawers | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | , the Swiss company behind a suite of including email, has a fairly substantial upgrade for its flagship and services. Although Proton has expanded into and through the years, remains Proton’s bread and butter — and that is arguably the most interesting facet of its latest reveal. Indeed, while Proton often positions itself as , from a privacy perspective at least, the company has revealed a busy roadmap for the coming months that will usher in a swathe of new features that are just a little reminiscent of Gmail. That’s not a bad thing. Google has gone to great lengths to make its ecosystem of products as sticky as possible, and for the most part it has worked, with Gmail among the most widely used email services on Earth. From a consumer perspective, Gmail offers great utility, that automatically groups inbound emails by type under separate tabs, helping users find specific kinds of emails (e.g., “social” or “promotions”). While this system may not be to everyone’s liking, and users can opt-out, it represents one of the many promises that Google makes to keep users coming back: “We’ll make your life easier,” is the general idea. With that in mind, Proton Mail in the future will offer similar categorization functionality. This may raise some questions over how Proton will achieve this without compromising users’ data privacy, in that categorization is surely dependent on scanning content, but the company said that it’s working to implement this in a “fully private way” using the sender category. Taking this at Proton’s word, this could prove to be a popular feature, one that may help smooth the path for those looking to jump ship from Gmail. Elsewhere, Gmail for a few years already, allowing users to configure emails to send at a specific time and date, quite possibly when they’re fast asleep. Again, this is something that Proton is also now working on, bringing it closer to feature parity with Gmail. Proton Mail: Schedule send. Proton Other new features coming up include email reminders, whereby users can set an alert to remind themselves to respond at a later time, while they will also be able to “snooze” emails, which serves a similar purpose. This is similar to a feature that . And something more in line with Proton’s focus on privacy, the company said that it will be adding new features to block email tracking, so that companies or bad actors can’t know when an email was opened, thus rendering the data unusable. Proton Mail: Email-tracking protection. Proton As it stands, searching through emails in Proton Mail has its limitations. For those on the web, message content search is reserved for premium paid users, but on mobile it’s not really an option at all beyond metadata such as the subject line. In the future, Proton said that it’s expanding full message search to is mobile apps, with emails downloaded to a user’s device so they can use keywords to search message content via a locally stored index. Upcoming changes aren’t limited to Proton Mail though. The company is gearing up to launch a native Calendar app for iPhone in the next few weeks, nearly a year after it . On top of that, it will also be rolling out a new three-day and 7-day view (similar to Google Calendar) within the Proton Calendar app, while there will also be a “full-agenda” view that displays a day’s planned activities in a chronological list replete with infinite scrolling. Finally, Proton will also allow users to create to-do lists and transform tasks into reminders that pop-up inside the Calendar app. Proton Calendar: Views. Proton As Proton continues to expand its product lineup, with its Proton Drive cloud storage service recently existing beta on the web, the company is now planning to roll out deeper integrations across its product suite. For example, email attachments that exceed Proton Mail’s 25 MB limit will be automatically uploaded to Proton Drive, with the recipient able to access the file through a secure link — again, this is something that since 2013. In April this year, Proton , a platform that allows users to shield their real email address when signing up for online services. Proton said that it plans to build tighter integrations between SimpleLogin’s email aliases and Proton Mail. Finally, Proton also revealed that it’s brining single sign-on (SSO) to mobile, meaning that users of Proton’s various apps will only have to sign in once to access each individual service — this is currently available but only through a web browser. In terms of timescales, Proton isn’t divulging any specific dates for anything yet, though it did say that Proton Mail’s email scheduling and email-tracking blocker will be arriving within the next month, as will the new iPhone Calendar app and the three-day and 7-day Calendar views. Everything else will be landing at various intervals throughout 2023. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 11 | 22 | null |
UK to criminalize deepfake porn sharing without consent | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | Brace for yet another expansion to the U.K.’s : The Ministry of Justice has changes to the law that are aimed at protecting victims of revenge porn, pornographic deepfakes and other abuses related to the taking and sharing of intimate imagery without consent — in a crackdown on a type of abuse that disproportionately affects women and girls. The government says the latest amendment to the Bill will broaden the scope of current intimate image offences — “so that more perpetrators will face prosecution and potentially time in jail.” Other abusive behaviors that will become explicitly illegal include “downblousing” (where photographs are taken down a women’s top without consent); and the installation of equipment, such as hidden cameras, to take or record images of someone without their consent. The government describes the planned changes as a comprehensive package of measure to modernize laws in this area. It’s also notable as it’s the first time it has criminalized the sharing of deepfakes. Increasingly accessible and powerful image- and video-generating AIs have led to a rise in deepfake porn generation and abuse, driving concern about harms linked to this type of AI-enabled technology. Just this week, the reported that the maker of the open source AI text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion had tweaked the software to make it harder for users to generate nude and pornographic imagery — apparently responding to the risk of the generative AI tech being used to create pornographic images of child abuse material. But that’s just one example. Many more tools for generating pornographic deepfakes remain available. While the U.K. passed a law against revenge porn victims and campaigners have been that the regime isn’t working and applying pressure for a rethink. This has led to some targeted changes over the years. For example, the government made ‘upskirting’ illegal via a change to the law that came into force . While, in , it said ‘cyberflashing’ would be added as an offence to the incoming online safety legislation. However it has now decided further amendments are needed to expand and clarify offences related to intimate images in order to make it easier for police and prosecutors to pursue cases and to ensure legislation keeps pace with technology. It’s acting on several Law Commission recommendations in its of intimate image abuse. This includes repealing and replacing current legislation with new offences the government believes will lower the bar for successful prosecutions, including a new base offence of sharing an intimate image without consent (so in this case there won’t be a requirement to prove intent to cause distress); along with two more serious offences based on intent to cause humiliation, alarm or distress and for obtaining sexual gratification. The planned changes will also create two specific offences for threatening to share and installing equipment to enable images to be taken; and criminalize the non-consensual sharing of manufactured intimate images (aka deepfakes). The government says around one in 14 adults in England and Wales have experienced a threat to share intimate images, with more than 28,000 reports of disclosing private sexual images without consent recorded by police between April 2015 and December 2021. It also points to the rise in abusive deepfake porn — noting one example of a website that virtually strips women naked receiving 38 million hits in the first eight months of 2021. A growing number of U.K. lawmakers and campaign groups have been calling for a ban on the use of AI to nudify women since abusive use of the tech emerged — as this into one such site, called DeepSukebe, reported last year. Commenting on the planned changes in a statement, deputy prime minister and justice secretary, Dominic Raab, said: We must do more to protect women and girls, from people who take or manipulate intimate photos in order to hound or humiliate them. Our changes will give police and prosecutors the powers they need to bring these cowards to justice and safeguard women and girls from such vile abuse. Under the government’s plan, the new deepfake porn offences will put a legal duty on platforms and services that fall under incoming online safety legislation to remove this type of material if it’s been shared on their platforms without consent — with the risk of serious penalties, under the Online Safety Bill, if they fail to remove illegal content. Victims of revenge porn and other intimate imagery abuse have complained for years over the difficulty and disproportionate effort required on their part to track down and report images that have been shared online without their consent. Ministers argue the proposed changes to U.K. law will improve protections for victims in this area. Commenting in another supporting statement, DCMS secretary of state, Michelle Donelan, said: Through the Online Safety Bill, I am ensuring that tech firms will have to stop illegal content and protect children on their platforms but we will also upgrade criminal law to prevent appalling offences like cyberflashing. With these latest additions to the Bill, our laws will go even further to shield women and children, who are disproportionately affected, from this horrendous abuse once and for all. One point to note is that the Online Safety Bill remains on pause while the government works on drafting amendments related to . Yesterday the leader of the House of Commons, Penny Mordaunt, confirmed that the bill will return to parliament on Monday December 5. The government has through parliament — but there’s no doubt parliamentary time is tight. So it’s unclear when (or even whether) the bill will actually become U.K. law, given there’s only around two years left before a General Election must be called. Additionally, parliamentary time must also be found to make the necessary changes to U.K. law on intimate imagery abuse. The government has offered no timetable for that component as yet — saying only that it will bring forward this package of changes “as soon as parliamentary time allows,” and adding that it will announce further details “in due course.” |
Elon Musk says Twitter’s new multicoloured verification will launch next week | Ivan Mehta | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | After the first launch of Twitter’s “power to the people” verification system, Elon Musk said that the social network will tentatively roll out a new multicolored verification system next week. The owner of Twitter said that, under this scheme, companies will get a gold checkmark, government officials will get a grey checkmark — probably similar to it’s currently trying out with some prominent accounts — and the blue checkmark will be dedicated to individuals even if they are not celebrities. That would mean that the blue checkmark will be used with legacy verified accounts and folks who buy Twitter’s new . Musk added that the company aims to manually authenticate all verifications before the new verification system goes live. It’s not clear what he means by that as Twitter Blue subscribers will get a blue checkmark. Not only that, but Twitter’s will be under pressure to check every verification manually to avoid any impersonation or spam. Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week. Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates. Painful, but necessary. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Musk further explained that individuals can have a second tiny logo to note if they are part of a certain organization. That organization also has to verify that the individual represents them or works with them in some way. He added that decision to apply blue checkmarks to all individual accounts was taken as notability of a person is a subjective matter. All verified individual humans will have same blue check, as boundary of what constitutes “notable” is otherwise too subjective. Individuals can have secondary tiny logo showing they belong to an org if verified as such by that org. Longer explanation next week. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Earlier this month, Musk paused the and said it would resume on . However, this week, the Tesla CEO put this plan on hold until Notably, this was the first time he talked about using multiple colors for verification. He didn’t specify if this new verification scheme will occur at the same time as the rollout of the relaunch of Twitter Blue. It’s likely that this verification relaunch is for existing verified accounts, companies and government officials — and not paid subscribers — at the moment. Twitter took another step to stop spam and fake accounts when Twitter Blue is finally relaunched. Last week, the company so that newly created accounts have to wait 90 days from the date of account creation before they can buy a Twitter Blue subscription. When Musk-led Twitter first rolled out the new verification program on November 9, many accounts began . That caused Twitter to halt the project immediately. Now, he is taking all measures possible to avoid that kind of chaos again. Earlier today, Musk said that Twitter will offer starting next week based on the result of the poll he ran a few days ago. |
A new wave of solo GP VCs is coming to Europe and Hypernova hopes to power it | Mike Butcher | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | The U.S. has had solo VC fund managers for many years but the trend is only just starting to catch on in Europe. One of the newest is , started this year by in Romania. His career trajectory toward being a solo GP fits the profile: a former entrepreneur, a key player in the Eastern European tech scene, a founder of the How to Web conference and a former VC in a multiple partner team. Above all, what Europe needs more of is these “funds of funds” that are specialized in working with this new wave of European Solo GPs. , a $25 million fund that soft-launched in June has been founded by experienced investor . She plans to not only invest in other funds but also directly into startups. Ergul was formerly with Angel Labs, an “investor accelerator,” which spread across 44 countries. Speaking to TechCrunch, Ergel said: “There’s a new wave of funds coming up. We’re talking about successful founders that are now starting their own funds to invest in new entrepreneurs. There are partners leaving their former funds starting their own funds, because now it’s easier and cheaper than ever to start a fund. And there’s more support for solo capitalists.” So how does it work? Hypernova puts 40% of its fund into Solo GP funds, and the rest directly into startups, with 50% in the U.S. and 50% in Europe. Ticket sizes will be $500,000-750,000 into these solo GPs who are raising their first fund, and Hypernova will aim not just for financiers but potentially journalists, angel investors, former entrepreneurs, or associates/partners spinning out of their previous VC fund. Hypernova offers new GPs support on the fund management side, the tech needed, LP introductions, branding support and co-investment opportunities. Ergel added that in the past no LP would give solo VCs any money: “Now there’s a new world out there [where] you can find LP money if you’re just one person and a solo GP. Starting funds has become cheaper. You can set up a fund for $10,000 and your fund admin costs are really low. So it’s just making the access much more easy for these fund managers. So we want to back those fund managers. Then that’s where the hybrid play comes into place because the other half of the fund is a direct investment vehicle. And we will either co-invest with these funds that we invest in, or we’re going to invest in the follow on rounds into the winners of these fund managers.” For its direct investments, Hypernova plans to focus on automation, retail, finance, logistics, transportation and shipping, with $250,000-$500,000 ticket sizes, and it won’t take board seats. Hypernova is claiming to be the first female-led solo GP fund in Europe and the first female-led solo GP fund-of-funds in the U.S. Since its soft launch in June Hypernova says it has: It now plans to open an office in London and hire a London-based partner as of January 2023. And it’s launching an LP diversity and inclusion program to get new investors into the fund-investing game where they could co-invest with very small amounts. “I’m a solo venture capitalist myself,” Ergel added. “And that’s also one of the new things for the markets. I started this because I experienced so many difficulties and issues myself being a solo GP. If I had started this in the U.S. as a pure U.S.-focused American fund, I would have closed it in six months. But because I wanted to do something that’s bridging U.S. and Europe it took a lot longer.” |
Bessemer backs SaaS platform that automates billing workflows | Jagmeet Singh | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | , a startup that is aiming to help SaaS companies automate their billing workflows, has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round. Headquartered in New York and Bengaluru, Zenskar is building a platform for SaaS companies to generate bills for their complex pricing plans — whether they are based on usage-based pricing, subscriptions, nuanced discounts, credits, custom currencies, prepaid or ramp deals. Apurv Bansal, co-founder of Zenskar, said in an interview that 10% to 15% of SaaS companies today have moved toward a consumption-based pricing model on customers’ demand because of macro tailwinds such as product-led growth, automation and AI. Simple subscriptions will only be about 30% of the market, while complex subscription and consumption-based billing will cover the rest in the next decade, he predicted. “We fundamentally believe that going forward, engineering bandwidth in companies will continue to decline, and software solutions that need to be adopted will need to be adopted by non-technical users,” said Bansal, who formerly worked as a product manager at Google and Indian e-commerce company Snapdeal. Bansal co-founded Zenskar along with Saurabh Agrawal in March — after surveying more than 120 customers to understand their challenges related to billing. “Generally, tools are built in a linear fashion,” said Agrawal. “We thought about Zenskar like ground up — try to make the best tool from scratch after talking to so many people.” Bansal and Agrawal are second-time entrepreneurs who sold their previous startups to Snapdeal and music-streaming app Gaana, respectively. Zenskar’s proof of concept is already live with one client, and about 12 customers are on its waitlist, Bansal said. The startup targets the U.S. as its market, though its small engineering team of two people works remotely from India. Bansal said that they plan to open a physical office in Bengaluru. The seed funding round was led by Bessemer Ventures Partners and saw participation from Shine Capital, Basecamp Fund and Converge. “We are excited to partner with Zenskar on their journey to fundamentally disrupt the quote-to-cash tooling for SaaS companies. We were impressed with their deep understanding of customer pain points, and their DNA of first principles innovation to provide a radically unique and flexible billing software,” said Anant Vidur Puri, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners, in a prepared statement. Zenskar plans to use its fund to expand the team of its engineers. It also aims to go beyond SaaS billing and bring solutions to automate accounting, facilitate payments and provide analytics to companies in sectors such as telecom, transportation, IoT and media. |
South Africa’s Revio allows businesses to connect to multiple payment methods and reduce failures | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 11 | 25 | Three out of every 10 payments in Africa fail, according to reports. Factors behind this range from a fragmented payments landscape and invalid cards to dormant accounts and higher dispute rates; they surface yearly leading to a $14 billion loss in recurring revenue for digital businesses across the continent. These problems are bound to increase as digital payments in Africa continue to grow, 20% year on year, per some reports. While gateways and aggregators have made it easier for businesses to accept multiple payment methods, few solutions exist to aggregate them for necessity’s sake and deal with payment failures that arise from each platform. That’s where , a South African API payment and collections company, comes in. The fintech, which makes it easier for businesses across Africa to connect to multiple payment methods and manage payment failures, is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding. Fintech investor Speedinvest led the round, with participation from Ralicap Ventures, The Fund and Two Culture Capital. Several angel investors also participated including payment and revenue recovery experts from Sequoia, Quona Capital and Circle Payments, according to a statement shared by the startup. Revio was founded by in 2020. As a professional who has worked in South Africa’s banking and insurance industries for over a decade, Botha decided to launch Revio after seeing how much time and manual effort businesses spend in engaging customers on outstanding and failed payments. It was clear that very few companies had invested meaningfully in revenue recovery. When asking over 25 clients where they would invest $1 if they had to fix their payment systems, most of them said they’d spend at least 90% of that money on managing payment failures and customer churn. “We have the debit order as the largest recurring payment method in South Africa. But the moment businesses want to start adding other different payment methods to deal with customer demand, it was super hard for them to do so,” Botha told TechCrunch in an interview. “And it was just because of the disconnect between banks, new fintechs and payment aggregators which also made it difficult for businesses to collect recurring revenue on an ongoing basis. So with Revio, we wanted to make it super simple for businesses to connect any payment methods that they need, not only in South Africa but the rest of Africa and globally as well.” Botha is joined by three executives who run the company affairs: Chief commercial officer , an ex-country lead at Flutterwave; chief technology officer , who has experience working with fintechs and a venture studio; chief product officer and chief operating officer , a venture builder and operator that has worked with multiple African startups. Dunn, on a call with TechCrunch alongside Botha, said Revio aggregates and orchestrates over multiple different payment methods in Africa including card, bank transfer, debit order, mobile money, vouchers and QR code. The platform collects and settles payments in more than 40 markets through payment providers like , , and . Some of its features, in addition to multiple payment methods, include smart payment routing, automated billing processes, auto-retires, and real-time analytics and reporting. CEO Ruaan Botha. Revio In over a year of operations, Revio has onboarded over 50 clients and processes thousands of transactions monthly. They range from large-scale enterprises to midmarket corporates, and fast-growing scale-ups that are involved with recurring revenue businesses and high transactional volumes, typically needing multiple payment methods in multiple markets. These are often insurers, telcos, retailers, subscription software or media, asset leasing or financing businesses, and alternative lenders. “We’ve also then built out orchestration capability where we can reduce payment failures through things like smart transaction routing, smart retries to make sure a customer doesn’t go into arrears, specifically on recurring payments,” said Dunn. “And then where we differentiate ourselves is that we serve businesses with recurring revenue instead of the typical e-commerce platforms.” She adds that Revio has over 100 clients in the pipeline waiting to be onboarded. Payment orchestration is becoming increasingly important in today’s world where businesses operate in multiple countries and need an array of payment methods to get by. While a handful of such platforms have existed in the U.S. and Europe to handle this heavy lifting via unified payments API such as Primer, and , businesses in developing markets are starting to see identical platforms such as Revio and Egypt-based take center stage across various regions. On the subject of competition and how it stands out, Revio claims that it’s the first African payments platform focused on payment failures and revenue recovery. “We also have more functionality and coverage in the sub-Saharan African context, Sub-Saharan compared to other platforms in the market,” Dunn added. Anyway, the global payments orchestration market, per reports, is growing at a fast pace (per a study, the is expected to reach $6.52 billion by 2030, advancing at a CAGR of 24.5% from 2022 to 2030) and there’s more than enough space for newer platforms to grab market share — and incumbents like Revio to deepen its reach. It’s one reason why the two-year-old fintech raised this capital: move into new markets within and outside Africa, expand its team in the process and launch new products for its increasing clientele. “I’d say the use investment is twofold,” Botha said. “One is to get access to more strategic skills around machine learning and data to help us grow and drive better engagement with customers, understand why they fail and how to get a better response rate. With the data from that, we can start our experimentation into some of the core markets in Africa. We want to operate in about 13 African countries in the next 18 months, but focusing on three or four large markets. And then, get enough traction that we can take on to other emerging markets like Latin America.” |
Activision Blizzard illegally withheld raises from unionizing workers, labor board finds | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Gaming giant Activision Blizzard unlawfully retaliated against workers at Raven Software who formed a union, the National Labor Relations Board found. The quality assurance (QA) department at subsidiary Raven Software, who mostly work on “Call of Duty,” announced that they would in January. Activision Blizzard sought to block the union, reasoning that the union only comprises the 28-employee QA department, while as a whole, Raven Software has around 230 employees. Regardless, the Raven Software QA testers, who operate under the name Game Workers Alliance (GWA), made history in May when their 19-3. Now, the GWA is the first officially recognized union at a major U.S. gaming company. While the GWA was in the process of unionizing, Activision Blizzard about 1,100 QA contractors to full-time staffers and increased the minimum wage to $20 per hour. But workers at Raven Software, who are among the in the studio, were denied these wage increases. Activision Blizzard claimed that, due to laws under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the company wasn’t allowed to change the pay rate of its employees in the midst of a union effort. The Communication Workers of America, which represents the union, said that this was a disingenuous attempt at union busting. Now, the NLRB has officially found merit in the union’s complaint, declaring that it was illegal for Activision Blizzard to withhold wages. The consequences of this finding will weigh into negotiations over a collective bargaining agreement between the GWA and Activision Blizzard. Despite formally winning union recognition, it can often take new unions before coming to a contractual agreement with management. “Despite their best efforts, Activision’s constant attempts to undermine its workers’ and impede our union election have failed. We’re glad the NLRB recognized that Activision acted illegally when they unequally enforced policies by withholding company-wide benefits and wage increases from Raven workers for organizing,” the GWA said in an emailed statement. An Activision Blizzard spokesperson emailed a statement to TechCrunch: “Due to legal obligations under the NLRA requiring employers not to grant wage increases while an election was pending, we could not institute new pay initiatives at Raven because they would be brand new kinds of compensation changes, which had not been planned beforehand. This rule that employers should not grant these kinds of wage increases has been the law for many years.” Activision Blizzard is also facing scrutiny from the NLRB for the solicitation of grievances. Prior to the union vote, COO Daniel Alegre offered to fly to Wisconsin, where Raven Software is based, to speak with workers about their complaints. But this practice is barred by the NLRA, since it can lead to coercion. “This is not an accurate portrayal of events,” the company spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Although Raven QA was offered a non-mandatory opportunity to meet with Activision Blizzard leadership during an on-site visit, because some of the QA testers had previously requested a discussion with management, at no point was this framed as an opportunity to specifically address grievances. Furthermore, the offer was never taken, and no meeting ever occurred.” It’s been a rough few years for Activision Blizzard, even though Microsoft plans to buy the company for a whopping . Following a two-year investigation, the state of California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing against Activision Blizzard last summer, alleging that the company fostered a “‘frat boy’ workplace culture” and is “a breeding ground for harassment and discrimination against women.” Also, CEO Bobby Kotick reportedly about sexual misconduct and rape allegations at his company, but he did not act on that knowledge. Kotick has been amid ongoing and in his company, but that may not happen until after the Microsoft acquisition , if at all. |
Egyptian venture capital firm Algebra Ventures hits first close of second fund at $100M | Tage Kene-Okafor | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | null |
GIC backs Indian EV startup Euler Motors in $60 million funding | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Euler Motors, an Indian startup that designs and builds commercial electric vehicles, has raised $60 million in a new funding round as it works to ramp up its production capacity and broaden its offerings. Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC led the New Delhi-headquartered startup’s Series C funding. Blume Ventures, Athera Venture Partners, QRG, ADB Ventures and Moglix also participated in the funding, which values Euler Motors at $200 million. Long before the Olas of the world ventured into building an electric bike, which occasionally catches fire, Euler Motors tested hundreds of prototypes and clocked millions of miles to see if they can weather the conditions of India’s roads and extreme temperature range. The result is an electric cargo three-wheeler called that features several industry record-breaking features including a payload capacity of 688 kg (1,516 pounds). It is powered by a 12.4 KWh liquid-cooled battery pack that takes up to four hours to charge, but supports fast-charging to deliver 50 kilometers for just 15 minutes of work. The startup, which currently produces about 100 vehicles a day, has a back-order of 9,000 vehicles that it is currently sifting through. Prior to starting Euler, Saurav Kumar founded IoT startup Cube26, which was eventually acquired by financial services giant Paytm. After getting the exit, Kumar spent some time thinking about the environment and the growing pollution in the country — and how for India to achieve its high targets of cutting emissions, New Delhi would need to do something about all the two- and three-wheeler gasoline guzzling vehicles on the road. “It takes about 10 years to make a dent into anything in India,” he said in an interview. “When we started Euler, it was clear that when people buy a three-wheeler, they are not looking for a luxury product, they are looking for a necessity product that feeds their family.” “On an electric vehicle, it can only work if you have a great battery. We spent three years researching our battery before starting to use it. Our competition isn’t an electric vehicle, it’s most diesel and petrol-powered vehicles,” he said. Euler Motors founder and chief executive Saurav Kumar with the startup’s three-wheeler vehicle HiLoad. Euler Motors The world’s second most populous nation has undertaken an ambitious push to kickstart an electric vehicle movement in recent years. And much of this movement is riding on two and three-wheelers. Indian automakers sold nearly 430,000 electric vehicles in the 12 months that ended in March this year, up from 134,821 a year before. Most of these were two- and three-wheeled vehicles, according to government data. New Delhi, as well as state governments, are offering considerable subsidies to those looking to purchase an electric vehicle in part to cut carbon emissions in the nation. A $6,140 electric vehicle, after state and federal waivers, cost customers about $4,300. Before state subsidy, HiLoad EV sells for around $4,900. Its gasoline rivals sell for around $3,700, underscoring a further need of collaboration from governments, venture capitalists and early-adopters. “Our vision is to not only develop industry-leading products but also the ecosystem to support the EV transition,” said Kumar. “This investment will fuel our ambition to establish Euler Motors as a frontrunner to drive electrification of commercial mobility in India by scaling our manufacturing capacity, expanding distribution footprint and strengthening the team to deliver delightful experiences to our customers.” Euler Motors says it has set up a charging station of over 500 points, and is the only player to provide four types of different charging to customers. The startup, which is currently largely operational in the capital region, plans to expand to 12 regions within the country by the end of the financial year. Also during this time frame, Euler is hoping to ramp up its monthly production to 1,000, Kumar said. It is also looking at several other categories of vehicles, Kumar said, but the focus remains on scaling the existing model for now, he said. Euler eventually wants to expand outside of India and bring its India-made vehicles to the world, he said. The startup aims to be the “Tesla of commercial vehicle,” it said. |
Drowning in trash: Google opens applications for circular-economy accelerator | Harri Weber | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Google is spinning up a new, online-only startup centered around the elusive circular economy. The effort is Google’s latest to help environmentally focused In the broadest of strokes, the circular economy represents a colossal shift in how humanity makes and uses stuff. Instead of primarily harvesting raw materials to produce goods that wind up incinerated, or in oceans or landfills, the circular economy offers an alternative where stuff is deliberately reused, repaired and recycled over and over again. On the whole, this is not how the world works, but the concept has gained ground among experts, as well as some corporations and lawmakers, in response to humanity’s runaway and crises. “Every year, humanity consumes far more than what the planet can naturally replenish,” wrote Google circular economy lead Mike Werner on the company’s . “We need to rebuild our relationship with physical resources and how we make, process, use and recycle them,” he added, citing fashion and food among the industries that applicants might focus on. for the accelerator opened today, October 3, and will close on November 14 ahead of a February 2023 start. The 10-week program targets startups and non-profit groups in the Asia-Pacific region and North America, offering mentorship and technical support “through a mix of 1-to-1 and 1-to-many learning sessions,” per Google. Google has announced so many and -focused to that it’s difficult to keep tabs on them all, yet the nearly $1.3 trillion company has also been called out for its , which indirectly finance fossil fuel development. The problems don’t end there: Google data centers gulp down water to stay cool, in communities where water is scarce. Google is also a major player in the smartphone industry, which has an alarming of its own, regarding both and . |
Elon Musk steps in it — ‘F#ck off is my very diplomatic reply to you’ | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Elon Musk today waded into the Ukraine-Russia war with a peace plan that was … not very well received. It may have been a tactic to distract industry watchers from Tesla’s third-quarter vehicle production and delivery numbers for 2022, which of analysts’ expectations. But it was a knuckle-headed tactic if so, and one of a growing series of missteps that must have many in Musk’s sphere wondering what to do. The problem most immediately was a four-part proposal that Musk tweeted out to his 107 million followers on the platform, one that involved recognizing Russia’s claims to the Crimean peninsula — which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014 — and a commitment from Ukraine to remain neutral and not join NATO. (Ukraine applied for accelerated accession to NATO late last week.) Musk also suggested redoing the sham referendums on the annexation of occupied territories of Ukraine by Russia, referendums held last month by Russian-installed officials in Ukraine (he proposed letting “the people” decide); and ensuring Crimea’s access to water. (Ukraine had built a dam to cut off Crimea’s primary water supply in retaliation to Russia seizing the Crimean Peninsula eight years ago; that dam was blown up back in February, two days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.) Musk included a poll in this proposal, asking if people agreed or disagreed with his peace plan. Reader, they did not. Citing “Russia vibes,” followers accused Musk of fundamentally misunderstanding what is at stake in the war and of pushing Russia propaganda. Ukrainian diplomat Andrij Melnyk summed up widespread sentiment when he to Musk, “Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk.” Even Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weighed in, publishing his own poll, asking his far fewer 6.6 million followers which @elonmusk they like more, the one who is pro-Ukraine or the one who is pro-Russia. Which do you like more? — Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) In the span of roughly a few hours, Musk lost much of the goodwill he generated this spring by sending SpaceX’s Starlink terminals to Ukraine to boost internet access in the country. (Starlink appears to have been by the U.S. government.) In the meantime, Musk’s employees and company shareholders must be shaking their heads as, once again, Musk dives somewhat casually into a knotty issue beyond his expertise. (It was obvious from the moment Musk announced plans to buy Twitter in late April that he didn’t have a very good understanding of the sundry challenges facing the company or an actual game plan to fix it.) Musk is glaringly brilliant about a lot of things, including his use of Twitter, which keeps him , despite Tesla long ago doing away with any kind of traditional PR function. He may have good intentions. (It’s not always clear.) Yet he undermines himself when he spouts off on Twitter about things on which he is not an authority. Some argue it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t impact sales; Tesla owners who disapprove of Musk still But someday in the not-too-distant future, with no shortage of companies nipping at Tesla’s heels and a growing stack of reasons for people to look at other manufacturers’ cars, that could change. We’d surprised if recruiting efforts aren’t already being impacted by some of the headlines that Musk has generated this year. While engineers might have rushed to work for Tesla or SpaceX in the past because of its visionary leader, Musk’s various pronouncements are likely giving more of them pause. ( ) It can’t help that Musk, whose management style has been described as ruthless, has shown zero concern for the engineering talent inside Twitter, treating the company like a bauble that he wanted, then unabashedly , before to go through with the deal (possibly because he has no choice). Becoming a business icon has been very good for business, and Musk’s addiction to fame has helped fuel his rise to the top of the corporate world, but there is always a tipping point. What goes up must come down eventually, and by needlessly alienating wide swaths of people — in Ukraine, inside Twitter, within his own customer and employee bases and beyond these — he’s assuredly speeding this process along. For his own reasons, maybe that’s as he intends it. If not, Musk might take a lesson from Tesla’s own well-meaning, if flawed, self-driving software and stay in his lane. As tweeted the account for the newspaper Kyiv Post earlier today, referencing Musk’s native South Africa: “Elon, you’re a cool guy and thanks for the Starlink but it’d be so very wonderful if you were to carry out votes on . We don’t carry out votes on apartheid and Nelson Mandela.” |
UK pauses data reform bill to rethink how to replace GDPR | Natasha Lomas | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | The U.K. government has confirmed another pause to draft digital legislation under new prime minister Liz Truss’ reshuffled cabinet — saying the data reform bill it had introduced in is on hold while ministers take another look. The paused bill contained a package of amendments to the U.K.’s data protection regime, which remains based on a pan-European Union framework — tweaking rules for personal data processing in areas like consent for online tracking; data for scientific research; public sector data use and sharing; and easing certain regulations for small businesses, as well as mooting changes to the data regulator itself — with the government projecting it would yield savings for businesses of over £1BN over ten years. However that reform is now on pause as the Truss-led government rethinks. The fresh-in-post secretary of state for digital, Michelle Donelan, gave over the first chunk of her Conservative Party conference speech Monday to a headline-grabbing (but under-explained) announcement that it would be “replacing” the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — a law the U.K. had (in her words) “inherited” from the European Union. In its place the government would install what she framed as “our own business- and consumer-friendly British data protection system”. This rebooted reform approach entails the government taking aim at bureaucratic EU “red tape” that Donelan claimed is responsible for current U.K. rules being a disproportionate burden for small businesses as a result of a “one-size-fits-all” approach in the GDPR. (So much like the claims the government previously made for the now paused data reform package.) She also suggested that “simplification” of the U.K.’s data protection regime would help unlock economic growth by boosting businesses’ profits. This new plan for the U.K. to create its own “truly bespoke” privacy rules rather than keeping the current set — which grease trade with the EU by enabling people’s data to flow freely from the bloc into the U.K. — would not itself result in increased bureaucracy, she further claimed. “Consumer privacy” and “data privacy” (whatever that means) would also be protected and consumer data kept safe, was her conference pledge. “Our plan will protect consumer privacy and keep their data safe while retaining our data adequacy so that businesses can of course trade freely,” she said. “I can promise to you here today… that it will be simpler, it will be clearer for businesses to navigate — no longer will our businesses be shackled by lots of unnecessary red tape.” How exactly the government plans to simplify data protection rules under this new iteration of a post-Brexit data reform isn’t yet clear. But to back up her claim that reduced red tape can unlock economic growth Donelan cited a penned by researchers based at Oxford University — suggesting they found the GDPR “caps” businesses profits by 8%. “Our new data protection plan will focus on growth and common sense, helping to prevent losses from cyber attacks and data breaches, while protecting data privacy,” she went on. “This will allow us to reduce the needless regulations and business stifling elements, while taking the best bits from others around the world to form a truly bespoke, British system of data protection.” The January 2022 research paper her speech referenced describes the 8% reduction in profits as an estimate; caveats itself as a “work in progress”; and advises caution in interpreting its findings — positing, for example, that negative effects on business performance which the paper links to the GDPR “may partly reflect temporary adjustment costs, meaning that its effects might taper-off in the future”. But Donelan didn’t dwell on such details — choosing instead to point to a survey of businesses conducted by her Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) which she said had found half the respondents reported “excessive caution” amongst staff when handling people’s data. She also regurgitated complaints about churches being concerned they can’t send newsletters without falling foul of the law — pronouncing the situation “mad”. Conservative Party conference attendees lapped it all up, offering plenty of applause to podium talk of GDPR being replaced. Top-line talk of the government ‘replacing GDPR’ certainly sounds calculated to seem radical — yet Donelan’s talk of slashing EU red tape just recirculates the same tired clichés that were being attached to the last data reform plan that this rehashed iteration of the government has decided to put on pause in order to whip up its supporters into a new deregulatory frenzy. The U.K. government has been flirting with reworking domestic data protection for years — ever since the 2016 EU referendum vote which resulted in a narrow win for leave (ohhai Brexit) — triggering talk of a deregulatory “bonus” for the U.K. to tap. But years later they’re still talking about tapping this ‘Brexit bonus’ so finding it is certainly proving a sweating toil. Readers with a long memory may remember an early period in the post-referendum years when described the GDPR as “a decent piece of legislation”. Scroll on through several years of increasingly fervent Brexiters being empowered inside the Conservative Party (thanks to former leader Boris Johnson) and there was a sharp tacking away from talk of decent EU rules — and toward deregulation. The (paused) data reform bill was the culmination of the Brexiter government’s thinking on data protection under Johnson. (The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, as it was known, was introduced by yet another Donelan predecessor at DCMS for anyone trying to keep count.) The current secretary of state for digital’s speech did not even name-check this bill in her speech — a bill Truss’ government inherited from Johnson’s government — but a departmental source confirmed the bill has been paused to allow ministers time to consider (or, well, reconsider) the legislation. , changes to another piece of draft digital policy that Truss also inherited from Johnson were confirmed by Donelan — who said the government would be tweaking the content moderation focused Online Safety Bill to address free speech concerns. That bill had reached the report stage and was due to have its third reading. But there are now concerns the delay caused by the Truss-triggered rethink could see it running out of parliamentary time altogether once it’s brought back to parliament (and so crashing out entirely). Given there is only around two years left (tops) before a general election must be called, the government’s pause to rethink the data reform bill could also trip from rethink delay to permanent freeze — if, for example, the Conservative Party fails to win another term in office (as current opinion polls suggest). Or if the reworking is complex and requires more parliamentary scrutiny time than they end up having. The data reform bill was only set out in the Queen’s speech — with certain planned measures, such as a switch to an opt-out model for most online tracking, further fleshed out by Johnson’s government ahead of the bill being presented (and before he was deposed as party leader by his own MPs and replaced by Truss). Right up to becoming the U.K.’s new prime minister last month, Truss had been serving in the cabinet where these draft bills were being discussed. So she had been giving all this stuff her backing until she got empowered to press the pause button. Despite her previous (tacit) backing for the ‘Johnsonian’ data reform, it’s unclear how much of the paused bill — which had only had a first parliamentary reading — will survive the Truss-Donelan red pen. In her speech today, Donelan said the government will work with businesses to “co-design” legislation, suggesting the rethink is more sweeping than a few minor tweaks. “I will be involving them [businesses] right from the very beginning, starting in the design so that together we can create a tailored, business friendly system — one that protects the consumer, protects data adequacy, increases the trade and that also is a good data protection system that enables us to create an increased productivity and enables us to avoid the pitfalls of a one-size fits all system,” she said, before segueing into a fittingly stuttering autocue read-out of the eternal Brexiter rallying cry: “It is truly time that we seize this post-Brexit opportunity — that we unleash the future growth potential of our British business.” One major concern for U.K. businesses will be whether a ‘growth’ focused reform of domestic data protection rules — one that’s “co-designed” by business — risks the country’s so-called adequacy status with the EU. Adequacy in this context refers to the by the Commission which keeps data flowing smoothly from the EU to the U.K. (despite Brexit) — without the need for each and every business to have bespoke legal arrangements for each and every data flow. Adequacy is critical for ‘business as usual’ for U.K. services businesses with customers in the EU. (The bill to U.K. businesses for loss of the coveted status is — purely on compliance costs, so not stuff like loss of business itself.) This means that any move by the U.K. government which jeopardizes adequacy risks wiping out any claimed upside from deregulating privacy, before you even factor in the cost to U.K. business of a loss of domestic consumer trust if data protections are ripped up… In her speech, Donelan claimed the reforms the government will shape will ensure the U.K.’s adequacy status is protected — saying ministers would look to draw inspiration from other countries with data protection regimes that have managed to achieve EU adequacy (naming Israel, Japan, South Korea, Canada and New Zealand specifically), while simultaneously claiming the end result would not be a foreign cut-and-paste job but a “truly bespoke” set of “British” rules. However she also talked about the government’s vision for the U.K. as being “the bridge across the Atlantic” — and operating as “the world’s data hub”. And if that was a reference to sharing data with the U.S. it’s worth noting that American does not have EU adequacy — so any moves to ‘unleash’ U.K. economic growth by passing data on EU citizens that’s flowed to the U.K. onward to the U.S. it would look risky indeed for adequacy. The U.K.’s adequacy status is not fixed — and is up for full review by the EU in 2025. But the Commission has also it won’t hesitate to pull the plug at any time if the governments bends domestic data protection away from ‘essential equivalence’ with the GDPR — which is the standard required to achieve EU adequacy. So the bottom line is there is little room for deregulatory manoeuver here. Not if you want to maintain adequacy. And especially, therefore, for a government that claims to be so laser focused on “growth” — since the loss of adequacy would absolutely be bad for growth. The U.K.’s information commissioner, John Edwards — who heads up the ICO (but was previously New Zealand’s privacy commissioner) — followed Donelan’s conference speech by having his office put out that could be read as welcoming or a warning. “We are pleased to hear the government’s commitment to protecting people’s privacy, preserving adequacy and simplifying data protection law,” it read, studiously avoiding Donelan’s watering down to “consumer privacy”. “We look forward to seeing further details, and stand ready to provide our advice and insight,” the ICO added. Edwards has previously suggested there isn’t a need for a radical replacement of the U.K.’s GDPR-based regime — telling U.K. lawmakers only at a parliamentary hearing ahead of his confirmation as information commissioner that there is plenty of scope to make improvements under the current regime — including if you want to achieve economic gains — without indulging in risky regulatory divergence. “I don’t believe that policymakers and businesses and governments are faced with a choice of share [data] or keep faith with data protection,” he also told the committee hearing. “Data protection laws and privacy laws would not be necessary if it wasn’t necessary to share information. These are two sides of the same coin.” Whether the government will heed the privacy advice of its own information commissioner remains to be seen. Truly we live in mad times. Under the earlier (shelved) data reform plan, the government had said it planned to “modernize” the ICO — and some of the proposed changes tacked closer to ‘wreck’ as they looked set to politicize the regulator (and undermine its independence) by having the secretary of state approve its statutory codes and guidance — a proposal that digital rights group the ORG slammed as set to “codify cronyism into law”. Donelan’s talk of replacing the GDPR with a regime of “consumer privacy” and data protection co-designed by business — yet one that somehow maintains EU adequacy — smacks of magical thinking by design and default. Or else this is pure charade: A cynical effort to spin whatever minor changes can be eked out while still cleaving to the EU’s standard as some sort of major Brexit boon to tout to voters (and toss to the deregulatory radicals consuming the Tory party from the inside). As ever, the devil will be in the details of any legislation it drafts. Details which — like much of the U.K. government’s policy since Brexit — have reverted to an unsteady state of flux as ideological obsession throws up endless barriers to actually getting stuff done. |
Naver agrees to acquire fashion marketplace Poshmark for $1.2B | Kyle Wiggers | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Naver, the South Korean search giant, today it plans to acquire secondhand apparel marketplace for $1.2 billion in cash. The deal values publicly traded Poshmark’s shares at $17.90 — a 15% premium over today’s closing price — and the companies expect it to close by Q1 2023, subject to approval by Poshmark stockholders and “the satisfaction of certain other customary closing conditions.” Assuming the transaction goes through, Poshmark will become a standalone subsidiary of Naver led by CEO Manish Chandra and Poshmark’s current management team. It’ll continue to operate under its existing brand, Naver says, and maintain its staff, user base and headquarters in Redwood City, California. In a press release, Naver and Poshmark lay out several arguments as to why the deal makes sense for both parties. By acquiring Poshmark, Naver plans to combine the service’s growing social shopping platform, where users buy and sell used apparel, with its “technological prowess” and existing communities, like the online forum Naver Café. As for Poshmark, it stands to benefit from Naver’s image recognition and search technologies, which Naver says will allow the shopping platform to offer new discovery and recommendation experiences that let users find apparel by searching colors, designs and materials and identify where to find products by scanning clothes using their smartphone cameras (a la ). Naver also touts its robust ad-serving and payments infrastructure, affirming that Poshmark will be able to leverage it to better analyze sales statistics and serve international customers. The long-term plan is to, with Naver’s backing, grow Poshmark’s business into additional developed markets in Asia and elsewhere where Naver has significant holdings — in part by integrating some of Naver’s live shopping services with the Poshmark platform. At the same time, Poshmark will help Naver establish a stronger U.S. foothold inclusive of the stateside properties the tech giant already owns, like digital comics portal Webtoon Entertainment and online story platform Wattpad. Naver optimistically predicts the acquisition could grow Poshmark’s annual revenue “beyond” 20% and save the company $30 million in annual run rate within two years. That’s doubtless taking into account expansion in the market for online “re-commerce,” which is estimated at $80 billion in the U.S. alone and is expected to grow by 20% annually to $130 billion by 2025, according to Activate Consulting data cited by Naver. Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra said in a press release: The opportunity to join forces with Naver — one of the world’s leading and most innovative and successful internet companies — is a testament to the strength of our brand, operating model and what we’ve built over the last decade with our talented team and amazing community. Our industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and we are excited to continue to lead the future of shopping by providing our community with an unparalleled experience that is simple, social, fun and sustainable. This is a highly compelling opportunity for our employees, who will benefit from being part of a larger, global organization with shared values and complementary strengths. This transaction also delivers significant and immediate value to our shareholders. Longer term, as part of Naver, we will benefit from their financial resources, significant technology capabilities and leading presence across Asia to expand our platform, elevate our product and user experiences and enter new and large markets. I look forward to partnering with Naver as we take our company into its next phase of growth. Naver CEO Choi Soo-Yeon said in the same release: The combination will create the strongest platform for powering communities and re-fashioning commerce. Poshmark is the definitive brand for fashion in the U.S. that provides a social network for buying and selling apparel. Naver’s leading technology in search, AI recommendation and e-commerce tools will help power the next phase of Poshmark’s global growth. Poshmark is a natural fit for our business — our two companies share a common set of values and vision around content, community and empowerment. Bringing Naver and Poshmark together will immediately put us at the forefront of creating a new, socially responsible and sustainable shopping experience designed around sellers of all sizes and interests — from individual and influencer sellers to professional sellers, brands and specialty boutiques — and a large, loyal and highly engaged social community. We are excited to work closely with Manish and his talented team to create lasting value for all our stakeholders. Poshmark’s exit comes over a decade after its founding in 2011. Chandra — alongside Tracy Sun, Gautam Golwala and Chetan Pungaliya — started the company in Chandra’s garage, funding it partially with the proceeds from the sales of Chandra’s previous company, social shopping startup Kaboodle, to Hearst. They settled on a simple business model: Akin to eBay, users pay Poshmark a fee when they make a sale. Prior to its listing on the Nasdaq at a valuation of over $3 billion (and reaching as high as $7 billion), Poshmark raised more than $160 million in venture capital from VC firms including Temasek, Menlo Ventures, GGV Capital and Mayfield. Poshmark claims to have over 80 million registered users. But despite that large potential customer base, the company has performed unpredictably in recent years, a loss of $44.4 million for 2021 after raking in a $25.2 million profit in 2020. CNBC and Bloomberg in their of the acquisition that it adds to recent consolidation and turbulence in the secondhand clothing space. Etsy acquired fashion resale app Depop for $1.62 billion last year, a startup which competed with Poshmark. Meanwhile, shares of The RealReal are down 93% from its IPO in 2019, while ThredUp, which went public two months after Poshmark, has fallen 87%. |
John Curtius is leaving Tiger Global to start his own venture fund | Ingrid Lunden | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | John Curtius, the prolific Tiger Global senior partner who has been at the center of some of the firm’s biggest deals in the last several years, is leaving the firm, TechCrunch has learned. He will be leaving to start his own firm, which will concentrate investments from Series A to Series C. Curtius will stay with Tiger until June, sources say. The Tiger Global quarterly investor letter that it sent out earlier today also confirms the news. “We are grateful for all his contributions to Tiger Global and have appreciated his work ethic and intellect,” it said. “We look forward to staying close and finding ways to collaborate.” He will be working with the investment team to transition responsibilities, although as he was also personally invested in a number of the portfolio companies, Curtius will also continue to work with these, we understand. Investments for Curtius’s new firm will focus on B2B software as a service, apps, infrastructure, AI and machine learning, we understand. No crypto. Why the decision to leave? From what we understand, Curtius, who, in the past worked at Silver Lake and Elliott Management, has long wanted to start his own firm and now felt like it was the right time in the market to do so. The new firm has yet to start raising funds, but Curtius has a big, strong network through his prolific work at Tiger, which has included hundreds of investments from companies like Databricks and more recently CleverTap and Lattice, as well as UiPath, Snowflake, Asana and many more; we understand that he may be tapping founders from that network to join him in investing (several have expressed interest already). It’s not clear if Tiger itself will back the fund. The last year has seen a big shift in the world of startups: economic shifts have led to massive declines in publicly-traded tech stocks, which has trickled down to put pressure on privately backed companies, which have seen their valuations get slashed and, in many cases, funding dry up. That’s also put huge pressure on big investment firms. Tiger, which has big investments in public tech firms, saw nearly $17 billion in losses by the middle of this year has appeared to be in its venture business. “Globally, high inflation has persisted, interest rates are continuing to rise, and a recession seems increasingly likely,” Tiger notes in its investor letter. “Investor sentiment measures are hovering at lows last seen during the Global Financial Crisis.” But lower valuations and less investing activity overall, of course, often also opportunity for investors who are willing to take leaps, since there are still a number of interesting companies being hatched and solid startups needing to raise their next rounds. Tiger is not the only big firm to be losing a key partner: today, news broke that Matt Mazzeo is leaving Coatue to start his own fund as well according to . (The timing of the two announcements, we understand, is pure coincidence and the two investors are not teaming up.) Many are referring to the period in the market right now as a “funding winter”, and indeed Tiger itself is not immune to that. Its investor letter points out that public funds generated losses, that public longs underpeformed led by positions in China, and that its private portfolio was also down in the quarter. “This continues to be a challenging market for our strategy, and we have tried to position the portfolio accordingly.” But given this new activity, could it perhaps just as aptly be called “funding spring”? : , which also got wind of this story, notes that Curtius’s new fund will be called Cedar Investment Management. No idea if that’s word/wood play on another big-name VC firm named after a tree. |
Daily Crunch: Vice Society hackers post 500GB of data stolen from LA school district to dark web | Christine Hall | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Oc-flippin-tober? You’ve got to be mock-tobering us. It’s a sobering experience, though, to see the who-ber year fly by like that! Ahem. Forgive the incoherence, we are entering TechCrunch Disrupt silly season over here. We are psyyyyched. Also, there’s just a few hours left to apply to , if you want to get your application in for next week! — and Look, we know we usually focus on content from TC.com here, but this week, two stories from our subscription site, TechCrunch+, caught our eye. and observed that at the beginning of 2022, it looked like it was going to be a bumper year for SaaS M&A. That seems to have not really happened. With much head scratching and some theories, they ask Meanwhile, notes that venture capital has been on a roller coaster this year. The theme is similar; 2022 started riding the strongest wave of venture deployment on record, just before the stock market plummeted and dragged venture down with it. She reaches for her crystal ball and admits that while it is . If you don’t have a TC+ subscription, we have a special deal for you DC subscribers; Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription! Across the rest of the site, we have these nuggets for you: / Getty Images Cloud financial management, or more simply, “FinOps,” uses cross-functional teamwork between finance, engineering and product teams to help organizations make better use of their resources. “Knowing your cloud unit economics is key to building an explainable, transparent model of your cloud costs,” writes Liran Grinberg, co-founder of Team8. “Dev teams need to face the music and start being financially accountable for the infrastructure and services they use. Meanwhile, CFOs and CTOs need to get ready to answer some tough questions at board meetings.” Three more from the TC+ team: with its $4.7 billion acquisition of BillDesk, reports. Just a month after receiving the green light from India’s antitrust organization, the company is citing “certain conditions” that were not fulfilled as to the reason the deal is not proceeding. Meanwhile, TikTok is looking for a few good partners to help in the U.S., writes. And we have five more for you: |
Max Q: Hubble hubble, toil and trouble | Aria Alamalhodaei | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Hello and welcome back to Max Q. I hope all of our Florida readers stayed safe during Hurricane Ian — thinking of you guys. In this issue: …We are just a few weeks away from , which is returning live and in-person to San Francisco on October 18-20. (excluding online and expo). Florida’s Space Coast battened down the hatches in preparation for the arrival of the extremely powerful and slow-moving Hurricane Ian, with officials rolling rockets back to the safety of hangars and delaying launches until the storm passes. By Wednesday afternoon, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center (KSC) entered HURCON I, indicating that 50-knot sustained winds are likely within 12 hours. In light of these impending conditions, all non-essential facilities closed and the majority of staff were sent home. NASA also made the critical decision to roll back the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft from the launch pad to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) on Monday, giving employees enough time to safely move the massive launch system ahead of the storm. The rollback, while indisputably necessary, will affect possible launch opportunities for the Artemis I moon mission. It’s looking likely that the next possible launch window will be no earlier than sometime in November. Private companies with facilities on the Space Coast, including Relativity Space, United Launch Alliance and SpaceX, also secured their assets in hangars prior to the storm’s arrival. Two launches — NASA’s Crew-5, which was to launch on board a SpaceX Falcon 9, and United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V launch of two SES telecommunications satellites — were also postponed. In an update, a NASA spokesperson writing on the KSC Twitter page tweeted that across most operational facilities. Hurricane Ian as viewed from the International Space Station. NASA In a big win for humanity, NASA successfully smashed a vending machine-sized satellite into a small asteroid, part of what the agency was calling the “Double Asteroid Redirection Test” (DART). The target asteroid, Dimorphos, is part of a two-asteroid system; while neither were in any risk of hitting Earth, the space agency saw them as an opportunity to test whether us humans could redirect an asteroid that targeting Earth. After all, it’s happened before — just ask the dinosaurs. , using a SpaceX Falcon 9 to send the satellite on its collision course with Dimorphos. The DART spacecraft smashed into the asteroid moon at a speed of roughly 6.5 km per second on Monday evening at 7:14 p.m. ET, with confirmation of impact coming in a series of images from its onboard camera. NASA The Hubble Space Telescope, as seen from the Space Shuttle Discovery during Hubble’s second servicing mission in 1997. NASA via Getty Images. |
The Supreme Court takes on Section 230 | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Section 230 of the Communications Act, which prevents online platforms from being liable for the content posted by their users, will be evaluated by the Supreme Court in the coming season. It’s anyone’s guess how it may be affected, but we can be sure that the regulatory landscape for tech will look rather different this time next year. We’ve many times on TechCrunch, and legal definitions and precedents can be found elsewhere, so we need not delve into the particulars for now. It suffices to say that this section of the law essentially says that as long as reasonable measures are taken to address illegal and objectionable material on their platforms, companies like Alphabet and Meta cannot be held accountable for that material. There are limitations and exceptions to how this protection works, but the law functions as a “safe harbor” in which companies can operate without worrying that they’ll be sued for defamation over something posted by a user. The question that has dogged these companies for years now, however, is the exact extent of those limitations and exceptions, and whether perhaps platforms are given too much leeway in how they handle content like COVID-19 misinformation, livestreamed crimes and hate speech. However wise or unwise Section 230 may have been when it was written, the last decade has seen the industry and world evolve to the point where it may be time to, at the very least, make a few judicious additions and revisions to it. The case that the Supreme Court announced it intended to take on, Gonzalez v. Google, alleges that the latter is criminally responsible for allowing certain content from the Islamic State terrorist group to persist on its platform, leading in part to the 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. So, not that it matters for the purposes of the Supreme Court taking it on exactly, but the claim here has real gravity, about the law. Amicus briefs are already starting to pour in, because the worst case scenario — Section 230 basically being entirely nullified — would be devastating to countless online platforms and companies. As many have pointed out, this liability limitation is complex and important to all kinds of free expression online, and to remove it would open the door to abuse from every direction. At the very least such an outcome would prompt panic across industries, with tech companies scrambling to protect themselves, investors withdrawing and tanking stocks, and users flailing as the services they rely on are changed in fundamental ways. It’s not that the Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion saying “platforms are fully liable for everything on them, immediately and irrevocably” or something like that. Little changes make a big difference, and if the court simply ruled that Section 230 did not protect Google in this case, every lawyer in the country would be rushing to apply that new definition of the law to policies, behaviors, features, everything. Perhaps it will even (though it isn’t likely) pass the ball to the FCC, which has been the agency of record for most of the Communications Act for the better part of a century. To speculate on the likely outcome at this earliest stage is probably fruitless, but that very unpredictability makes it almost certain that the to revise and replace Section 230 will multiply and intensify. Given the present political divide generally, and then specifically how divided Congress has been on this issue, the likelihood of a new law getting bipartisan support in short order is low. And with midterm elections looming, much depends on a new House and Senate as well. The decision made by the court will be pivotal however it turns out, with any outcome prompting legislators to take action around it, perhaps even preemptively. And in public discussion it will, as with Net Neutrality, be a frenzy of opportunism, FUD and technically misleading material. Nothing in Section 230 prevents every industry with skin in the game from doing their damnedest to influence the discourse. |
Prosus cancels $4.7 billion acquisition of India’s BillDesk | Manish Singh | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Prosus has scrapped the it announced last year, once stated to be the European technology giant’s largest, saying “certain conditions” were unfulfilled in a surprising move a month after the proposed acquisition . “Certain conditions precedent were not fulfilled by the 30 September 2022 long stop date, and the agreement has terminated automatically in accordance with its terms and, accordingly, the proposed transaction will not be implemented,” Amsterdam-listed Prosus said in a statement Monday without identifying those conditions. The all-cash acquisition, announced at the peak of the bull cycle last year, was slated to be the second largest M&A deal in the South Asian market’s consumer internet space. In recent quarters, as the market has turned, many promised deals have fallen apart globally. The investment arm of Naspers — which has invested close to $6 billion in India, thanks to large bets on edtech Byju’s and — has lost more than half of its market cap since early last year. It has been selling stakes in many firms, including Tencent and JD.com, in recent months. Prosus shares remained largely unchanged on the announcement Monday, indicating that investors don’t think not having BillDesk will materially hurt Prosus. The deal would have allowed Prosus, which already owns fast-growing PayU, to dominate the market of payments processing in India. BillDesk powers payments for most of Indian government departments. At the time of the acquisition, Prosus said the high price tag was justified because of the scalability of the combined businesses. Prosus indeed now believes the payments market in India has shown cracks in recent quarters and did not wish to go forward with honoring last year’s arrangement, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Why is the $4.7 billion PayU-Billdesk getting called off massive? Because it was a CASH deal, which is rare in India internet It would have meant a $1.4 billion payday for founders and over $3 billion for investors Details here 👇 — Madhav Chanchani (@madhavchanchani) Prosus said there is no termination fee associated with the deal, meaning it believes it will walk away unscathed from the scene. BillDesk could not be reached for comment. The move to terminate the deal has come as a surprise to many direct stakeholders, including BillDesk founders and many of its investors, people familiar with the situation said, who requested anonymity commenting on the failure of India’s biggest payments deal. Several fintech founders were also shocked with the development, wondering what aspect broke the deal. Prosus said it “remains committed to the Indian market and growing its existing business within the region.” Founded by three consultants, BillDesk founders stood to make $500 million each from the acquisition deal. BillDesk — which counts Visa, Temasek, General Atlantic and a number of Indian banks among its backers — has raised $245 million to date. It was valued at $1.59 billion after January 2019 funding round, according to research firm Tracxn. Prior to doing the deal with Prosus, BillDesk was internally planning to file for an initial public offering. PayU and 20-year-old BillDesk process a significant number of payments transactions in India. If combined, they would have commanded over 40% of the Indian market, more than that of their closest rival (Razorpay), according to industry estimates. “Together, PayU India and BillDesk will be able to meet the changing payments needs of digital consumers, merchants and Government enterprises in India and offer state-of-the-art technology to even more of the excluded sections of society, while adhering to the regulatory environment in India and delivering robust consumer protection,” Prosus said at the time when it proposed the acquisition. |
Twitter expands access to its experimental Status feature…but not to its paid subscribers | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Twitter’s throwback feature, Twitter Status, is today expanding its list of potential status updates to choose from, in a continuation of tests that . The feature, which is something of a cross between Myspace moods and a Facebook status, allows users to tag posts with an additional expression beyond the tweet itself — like “shower thoughts,” “spoiler alert” or “picture of the day.” Now, the company is adding common Twitter slang to its list, allowing users to tag their tweets with things like “Don’t @ me,” “Tweeting it into existence” or “That’s it, that’s the Tweet,” and more. The expansion was Jane Manchun Wong, and Twitter confirmed the addition began rolling out to Twitter Status testers on Monday. Other new status options now available include “Breaking news,” “Gaming,” “Pet of the day,” “So wholesome,” “Then and now,” “To whom it may concern,” “Touching grass,” “Twitter do your thing,” “Watching cricket,” “Watching football,” “Watching rugby” and “Winning.” The experiment, however, is not one of the “early access” features provided to Twitter’s paying customers as part of their Twitter Blue subscription. Twitter got a new set of Statuses with more Twitter-y slangs like “Don’t @ me”, “Tweeting it into existence”, “That’s it, that’s the Tweet”, etc The icons also look more 3D than the typical Twemojis — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) Instead, the option to add a status to a tweet has only been available to a select group of users in the U.S. With the update, Twitter says it’s now bringing on users in Australia, as well. “As part of this expansion, those with access to the status feature will see a new set of potential statuses to choose from. Additionally, more people in Australia will also receive access to the experiment today,” a Twitter spokesperson told TechCrunch. They added that, with today’s update, the “majority of people in Australia” will now be able to use the feature. One group that doesn’t necessarily have the ability to use the Twitter Status feature is the group of power users who pay for a Twitter Blue subscription. Though Twitter marketed Blue to those who wanted an expanded range of features — like a better news reading experience, personalization options and early access to experiments — it hasn’t made all its new product tests available to its paid subscribers. For instance, when to its revamped “Audio” tab, Twitter Blue users weren’t the first group to gain access to the feature. Instead, Twitter made podcasts visible to a random group within its English-speaking mobile audience in August before the following month. Similarly, Twitter Status isn’t listed among the experiments offered to Twitter Blue subscribers at this time. Asked why Twitter isn’t prioritizing its paid subscriber base when it comes to trialing its new products first, as promised, a spokesperson clarified that it will only offer some of its experiments to subscribers while others will be tested with the broader public. This seems to be a poor strategic decision on Twitter’s part, as those who are actually for Twitter have to stand by and watch other users get to play around with new features first — a perk they were promised. Though it’s understandable that some features may need to be tested among a larger group, at the very least, paid customers should be within that group. The spokesperson clarified that Twitter Blue subscribers will have access to what the company considers “higher-impact” features first — like NFT profile pictures and, notably, the new Edit Tweet option. The latter also today after Twitter last week. But the launch does not yet include Twitter Blue’s largest market, the U.S., which Twitter said would be “coming soon.” Again, this strategy seems to be off the mark. While it’s one thing to test a small experiment within select geographies, it’s disheartening to see Twitter prioritize select markets and non-subscribers over its paying customers when it comes to some of its most fun and in-demand features. |
Rivian made 7,363 of its EV pickups and SUVs in Q3 | Darrell Etherington | 2,022 | 10 | 3 | Electric vehicle maker on Monday, revealing it made 7,363 of its R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV during the three-month period that ended on September 30. Rivian also said it delivered 6,584 vehicles during the same span. The automaker is still backing its target of delivering 25,000 vehicles over the course of 2022, a goal which it set early in the year and which it reiterated again last quarter, after , which ended on June 30. In total across the first three quarters of 2022, Rivian has now produced 14,317 EVs, meaning it’ll have to make more than 10,000 during the final three months of the year to make its target. It has been ramping production significantly quarter-over-quarter, however, increasing production over 67% from Q2 to Q3 and 72% between the first two quarters. Attaining that 25,000 number by year’s end will require just under a 75% bump from where they’re at now, which is a stretch versus past performance, but not a huge one. The company reports its full Q3 earnings sometime this month, though it hasn’t provided a specific date for those just yet. In Q2, it reported a loss of $1.71 billion and updated guidance to project a $5.45 billion total loss for the year as it continues to spend cash on production capacity. Rivian founder and , so be sure to . |
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