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We’re giving you one more week to save $1,000 on Disrupt NY tickets | Matt Burns | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | This one’s for you, procrastinators. We are giving you one extra week to get tickets to Disrupt NY at the early-bird price point of $1,995 per ticket, a full $1,000 off the full retail price of $2,995. You now have until next Friday, April 15, to get in on this incredible discount, so you’d better stop putting it off and and get your Disrupt tickets today. In addition to saving you a ton of money, an early-bird ticket to Disrupt lets you chat with dozens of companies displaying their budding startups in Startup Alley, hear some of the top investors, innovators and entrepreneurs doling out wisdom in the many interviews and fireside chats we have lined up, and attend all the parties and after-parties that keep those connections going long into the night. Plus, you’ll get to watch several amazing startups compete in Startup Battlefield for the coveted Disrupt Cup, the $50,000 grand prize, and the attention of the broad tech community around the world. Disrupt is an exciting event for those who are passionate about startups and technology, and you definitely won’t want to miss it. So, we’re giving you one more week to for just $1,995 apiece. runs from May 9-11 at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, and we hope to see you all there. |
Feinstein and Burr’s draft encryption bill would essentially make all encryption illegal | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | A draft version of a bill on encryption sponsored by Senators Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has made its way to the internet, and it’s exactly as bad a proposed law as everyone worried it would be. , as it stands in draft form, is the technological equivalent of requiring all pigs to fly. “No person or entity is above the law,” it begins, pompously. Appropriate security should be employed in maintaining “the privacy of United States persons,” but companies must also comply with the law. Fair enough. But what’s the law, exactly? A covered entity that receives a court order from a government for information or data shall— (A) provide such information or data to such government in an intelligible format; or (B) provide such technical assistance as is necessary to obtain such information or data in an intelligible format or to achieve the purpose of the court order. In other words, if the court orders you to provide the contents of a phone you made, a conversation on your messaging service, an account on your social network, or basically anything that has been made “unintelligible” using encryption, you are required by law to decrypt that information. Of course, you may as well write a law requiring all animals to speak, or all stones to bleed: the very foundation of encrypted communication is the deliberate and transparent impossibility of a third party listening in, service providers and manufacturers included. If it can be accessed, it isn’t encrypted. If it can’t be accessed, it isn’t legal. The Venn diagram here is pretty simple. The only way for an “entity” to comply with CCOA would be to compromise their encryption scheme with a back door or flaw. If they are unable to make any requested data “intelligible,” they would be in violation of this law, and any encrypted service or product worth its salt (and hash) is that way by design. I don’t envy the difficulties law enforcement suffers in getting at critical information locked away on a phone or laptop. But it is absurd to legislate the impossible. Secrets used to be written on paper; that paper would be burned. No one tried to pass a law requiring people to unburn things. With luck, CCOA will be laughed off the floor in Washington, but let’s try not to rely on luck. : At least one Representative is taking the draft bill to task. The always outspoken Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) calling CCOA “about as flawed and technically-naive as a piece of legislation can get.” “This legislation would effectively prohibit any company who wants to improve the security of its products from doing so because government’s ability to access our personal and private information is more important than innovation.” Representative Issa has weighed in on the encryption debate before, for its heavy-handed tactics. |
13 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week | Anna Escher | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | This week, Tesla revealed its newest model; the HTC Vive VR headset dropped; the internet saw the largest leak of private documents ever; and Facebook’s chatbot plans were revealed. Here are the top tech stories from this week. Tesla unveiled the . So far, we know that the base model will do 0-60 in under 6 seconds and get at least 215 miles per charge. All Model 3s will have autopilot hardware and come with supercharging standard. This is Tesla’s Model 3 http://tcrn.ch/1M4RdIw Posted by on Thursday, March 31, 2016 Last week saw the . The contained roughly 2.6 terabytes of documents, related to hundreds of thousands of offshore companies, leaked from a small Panamanian law firm called . Facebook had a huge week just ahead of its annual F8 developer conference. The network introduced a and a new suite of designed to help Facebook users better connect with businesses. Oh, and spoiler alert: we learned that , which could replace 1-800 numbers, are going to be revealed at F8. The price point (just a week after Facebook’s Oculus ). We liked the room-scale tracking, the surprisingly useful camera and quality optics. The motion-tracked controllers are top notch. We weren’t fans of the bulky headset design and the UI bugginess. The HTC Vive is here http://tcrn.ch/1q3gTeb Posted by on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 Amazon took on Paypal with the . The idea is that merchants can tap into Amazon’s huge user base, eliminating the need for customers to create a new username/password on the merchant’s site. Quicker checkout = more sales. Bonus: to more mid-sized U.S. cities. to stream Thursday Night Football. The partnership will also include pre-game Periscope broadcasts from players and teams, as well as in-game highlights. . This means the content of communications are not stored in plaintext on WhatsApp’s servers, and the company doesn’t hold the encryption keys needed to decrypt messages. So, even if authorities demanded access, WhatsApp would be unable to hand over any messaging data. Reddit launched its and Alien Blue shut down. The site also introduced a new An ugly string of events has transpired in the UK gig-economy space after Delivery Hero shuttered Valk Fleet, its food delivery startup. Drivers and staff have claimed that they are owed money and Valk Fleet UK has put itself into ‘ ‘ (a voluntary process in the UK when a company has incurred debt that it is unlikely to be able to service). who, due to their self-employed status, have no employment rights beyond the contract they signed with Valk Feet. Salesforce acquired . Ron Miller wrote about , posing the question of whether or not Microsoft can succeed without a strong Windows mobile position. Sarah Buhr introduced us to . Valet service round from can rental company Hertz. |
WordPress.com turns on HTTPS encryption for all websites | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | WordPress.com is HTTPS support for all of its blogs. If you have a custom domain or a blog under the wordpress.com domain name (like bestcrabrestaurantsinportland.wordpress.com), you’re good to go. While many social services like Facebook and Twitter have supported HTTPS for a while now, WordPress.com was still lagging behind for custom domain names. Since 2014, WordPress.com subdomains have supported HTTPS, but not the others. But this isn’t as easy as flipping a switch for custom domain names as you need certificates for all domain names. Thanks to the project, it has become much cheaper and easier to implement HTTPS across the web. WordPress.com is taking advantage of this initiative for its websites. Each website now has an SSL certificate and will display a green lock in your address back. As a nice side effect, Google tends to favor websites that support HTTPS over HTTP-only website. So your WordPress.com website should rank higher in Google search results. I’m sure you all have a burning question. What do I need to do to activate HTTPS? In an Oprah-like moment, WordPress.com is activating HTTPS on all websites without having to do anything. You get an SSL certificate! Everyone gets an SSL certificate! |
Justice Department keeps pushing Apple to unlock iPhone in New York drug case | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | The fight between is not over. While the most controversial case is , the Department of Justice keeps pushing Apple on . The government still wants Apple to unlock an iPhone 5s that belonged to a meth drug dealer in Brooklyn. In a , the Department of Justice reiterated that it needed Apple’s help. This letter confirms that the government is as the judge had previously in this case. While this case isn’t exactly similar to the San Bernardino case, the government is using the same argument, the . But the All Writs Act doesn’t work if there’s an alternative remedy. So the government has to justify that only Apple can unlock this iPhone. The thing is, the iPhone 5s in the Eastern District of New York case runs iOS 7. You can online for something like $300 and unlock an iOS 7 device in minutes. iOS 8 and 9 are much more secure than iOS 7. So the All Writs Act seems hard to defend in this case. According to an Apple attorney, the company’s asked to do the government’s work. Moreover, the two cases are very different. First, this isn’t a terrorist attack. The case in New York has already been solved. The individual has confessed. So the FBI wants access to this phone’s data even though it doesn’t need it . Second, it’s worth reiterating that this has never been about . The San Bernardino case was filed publicly and made the front page of all American publications. The Department of Justice said again and again that they were asking for a favor just for this one time. And yet, here we are again, with another phone in another case. But this isn’t Apple’s job to get access to this data on this iPhone 5s. An Apple attorney confirmed that the company will file a response brief on Thursday. In this brief, you can expect the company to raise some issues regarding this case. Why does the government need Apple’s help? Who are you talking to? What steps are you taking to try and access the data on this phone? Also worth noting, Apple’s attorney said that the company still doesn’t know about the used by the FBI. The company won’t sue the government to get access to the hack. Instead, you can expect software updates and new devices with increased security in the coming years. With this case, Apple’s and the government’s positions are starting to look like business as usual. It’s a whack-a-mole game — the government wants to try and find an opening to set a precedent, while Apple is trying its best to avoid getting hit by the government. |
Gamification, personalization and continued education are trending in edtech | Sean O'Connor | 2,016 | 4 | 8 |
But before we can talk about the future, let’s review the past… …and the current edtech landscape. |
Today is the last day to save on Disrupt NY tickets | Matt Burns | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | You’ve waited long enough — the time to act is now. Like, right now. Today is the last day to get tickets to Disrupt NY 2016 at the discounted early-bird price of $1,995 per ticket, $1,000 less than the full retail price of $2,995 that takes effect tomorrow. So, seriously stop whatever important thing you’re doing right now and and get your tickets to the show. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Your wallet will thank you (and us). That ticket not only saves you a cool grand, but gets you all the same perks and benefits as the full price tickets. You’ll get to check out all the startups on display in Startup Alley and Hardware Alley, watch a few dozen companies ferociously competing for $50,000 and the Disrupt Cup in the illustrious Startup Battlefield competition, and hear from the amazing speakers we have lined up for the show. And that’s not to mention the parties and after-parties that keep the excitement and networking going well after the show floor closes for the evening. Simply put, Disrupt is the place you want to be if you want to connect with hundreds of passionate startup enthusiasts and make amazing connections with like-minded individuals. Getting there is up to you. We can’t do the hard work for you, so if you want to take part in TechCrunch Disrupt, and get your discounted Disrupt tickets before prices jump tomorrow. |
Rumors swirl EMC wants to dump Documentum ahead of Dell acquisition | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | Rumors that to nobody’s surprise, EMC and by extension its new sugar Daddy Dell are looking to dump dowdy , the company’s enterprise content management product. It’s worth noting up front that in email to EMC asking for a comment on the story, a spokesperson had this to say: “Not commenting on speculation.” You can’t get much more succinct then that, can you? Documentum is the grandaddy of ECM. It started a market that is beginning to show its age as companies move away from expensive, monolithic tools that take months or years to implement. To its credit over the years, Documentum has tried to keep up — its latest attempt is known as where it tries to move to the cloud and break up the complexity of enterprise content management software. Regardless of its evolution, it seems pretty clear it’s on the market and let’s face it, Dell needs cash to finance that mother of a debt load it took on when . With a pile of debt that’s sitting somewhere around $50 billion, it was clear both companies would have to make the deal work. Just last month , around half of the reported asking price. Other deals . Now it’s time for the baby to sell some stuff too and Documentum is a logical choice. As for Documentum, it could actually be a relief for the team to be out from under EMC where it was never really a great fit, according to Alan Pelz-Sharpe, who covers content technologies for . “I honestly think they will make a good buy for a private equity firm or even the likes of Oracle. ECM may not be very sexy but massive government, defense, healthcare and financial services operations use this as their core platform and always will,” he said. Beyond that core though, enterprise content management vendors have always struggled to justify their value proposition inside the enterprise. In recent years, the technology has moved to the cloud like so much enterprise software, looking to remove the inherent complexity in managing content in older systems like Documentum. In the end, it’s probably a case that Dell didn’t see much value in EMC holding onto Documentum, and it will give them one less thing to worry about . |
Luka, with $4.42 million in Series A, releases AI-powered chat bots | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | Just in time for the chat bot craze, Startup Battlefield alum is enhancing its AI-powered messaging service with a variety of smart bots to help users get whatever they desire. Luka originally launched as a Yelp competitor, all done over text. Users could ask Luka, via chat, about where they should go to eat, whether reservations were available, and recommended dishes. The company has long had plans to expand beyond food, and the uptick in chat bots has provided a perfect path by which to execute the expansion plan. With today’s launch, Luka will remain as the main operator of the service, connecting users with various bots depending on their desires. Users can still ask restaurant-based questions, but Luka will also connect users with a bot for weather reports, news reports, bots to help you find images and gifs, bots that play adventure games, and trivia game bots. What’s more interesting is that users don’t have to ask specifically for the bot they want, but simply explain their needs and desires to Luka, who will understand and make the right connection. For example, the user could say “I’m bored” and Luka would pass the conversation off to a game-based bot so the user can play a game. Cofounder and CEO Eugenia Kuyda said the company will eventually open up the platform to third-party developers, but for now the team wants to ensure that all the bots are of the highest quality. “The challenge is that people don’t really use bots yet,” said Kuyda. “We’re trying to make that experience as natural and helpful as possible so that people start using bots more.” [gallery ids="1304512,1304513,1304514,1304515"] The Luka app is also integrating a bot interface, complete with widgets and shortcuts, so that the process of asking for what you want doesn’t get too tiresome. For example, if you know you want to play a specific game or get the weather report, Luka will allow you to select that bot with a single tap instead of asking Luka to connect you. The company is also announcing the close of a $4.42 million Series A led by Sherpa Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Ludlow Ventures, and Justin Waldron. You can learn more about Luka . |
Here’s why we invited B.J. Novak to TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016 | Matt Burns | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | B.J. Novak is coming to We’re excited. Here’s why. Novak joins our growing list of . This year, for the first time, the show takes place in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan. It’s going to be great. but today is the last day you can save on the early bird special. |
Reserve acquires mobile payments startup Dash | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | Restaurant reservation startup that it has acquired Dash. When you make a reservation through Reserve, the app already handles payment (including ), but by acquiring Dash, it will be able to integrate with point-of-sale systems like Micros and Aloha. The company wasn’t attracted by Dash’s payment technology. In , Reserve says Dash also “used data in innovative ways” like the “Venue Vibe” feature, which helps users understand what to expect at different locations. “For our diners, the Dash acquisition will also help Reserve provide better guidance on where and what to eat, bring simpler checkouts and make those pesky expense reports a lot easier,” Reserve says. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to CrunchBase, Dash raised about $7 million in funding from investors, including Caerus Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and New York Angels. Reserve is also announcing that it has raised an undisclosed amount of strategic funding from Diageo Technology Ventures — that’s the investment arm of , whose brands include Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff and Guinness. |
Hardware is hard: How we built a hardware startup with two engineers and some free time | Saar Yoskovitz | 2,016 | 4 | 1 |
Hardware is hard. Building a hardware startup is even harder. The good news is that the staggering amount of innovation in rapid prototyping, 3D printing and backend-as-a-service platforms has made hardware development move at Internet-development speeds. It’s not easy, but it is faster. When we started our company four years ago, we decided to bootstrap it until we proved there was an actual market for our product. This meant we had to build our alpha version on our own — two engineers and some free time. The world then was different than it is today, but by using the lean startup method and agile development techniques, we were able to bridge the gap and meet our goals, while staying completely self-funded. Was it the right move? Only time will tell, but it sure was a lot of fun. Applying the lean startup method is the best way to avoid expensive mistakes. In hardware startups, this is even more important. As makers, it’s so easy to jump straight into design and implementation, but a mistake in the initial definition can haunt you and be very hard to fix later (much more than in software). To keep us on the right track, we go through fast iterations of LEARN->BUILD->MEASURE. The goal of each iteration is to identify the minimum effort that maximizes learning. Decide what you are measuring, collect a lot of feedback, digest it and move forward. The basic notion of the lean startup method is that your technology, in and of itself, isn’t interesting. What is interesting is what people do with your product. This is something that is very hard to grasp for us engineers, but the only thing that matters is answering the following three questions: Now ask yourself, what’s the fastest way to answer these questions? That’s right, go talk to potential users and customers. Before you feel you have the answers to these questions, there is no justification to write even one line of code or build any prototypes. During this stage, you need to move in very quick iterations, interviewing five people at each iteration (or 50, depending on your product and customers), reformulate your idea and start asking again. And stick to the process. By doing so, you will remove a lot of bias and maximize your learning. Once you have that knowledge in hand, it’s time to get cracking on your first hardware MVP (Minimum Viable Product). But don’t forget, we’re here to maximize learning, not build a final product. So start by asking yourself: You will probably have a number of iterations in this stage until you get a clear picture of what it is that you’re building and who is going to use it. A rule of thumb here is, if it doesn’t have wires sticking out of it, rubber bands or duct tape, you’ve gone too far. It’s not time to refine the look and feel quite yet, but to get something that . Congratulations! You have a working prototype, and you are only somewhat ashamed of the way it looks. Now it’s time to throw it at the market. Start with smaller test sites. There is a high chance of things not working, having to replace multiple devices and having a harder time demonstrating the immediate value to the users. Use this time to build a relationship with your testers. If you’re really lucky, you’ll build a community that will stay strong and support you when you enter the market. After you collect data, both on the product side (usage, engagement, etc.) and on the business side (ROI, price points, user personas), you are ready to move on to your more demanding clients. Now’s the time to start the industrial design process. Use prototypes to do real-life testing with potential users, and be sure to involve your existing customers, move fast and iterate. You can use rapid prototyping technologies to experiment with radical designs and do A/B testing — just like you would with software. Once you have the design down, and you’ve built the electronics to support it, you’re ready for your beta. By this stage you should have nailed down your target market and customers. Make sure your beta users are the same as your target customers — this will maximize your learning. If you can, try to charge for the participation, as this will be a great signal for problem/solution fit. If they’re willing to pay to participate, they’ll likely pay for your product, too. Your product is live, with real-life customers. It may feel like you’ve made it, but the truth is the hard part has just begun. Real users bring real problems: new demands, new use cases and new ways to break your beautiful, fragile product. (“Wait, why would you want to throw it in a puddle?”) Problems will happen. Leverage the existing relationships you’ve built in order to increase your learning and improve your design. We use what we call react, fix, improve: In the end, you’re only as good as your relationship with your customers, so this is your time to shine and prove you’re all about customer support. During this process you will go through multiple iterations, repeatedly replace old versions and end up with boxes upon boxes of old equipment. At a glance, this may seem wasteful, but this is not waste — this is what progress looks like! Waste would have been designing your final product, manufacturing thousands of it, only to find out nobody cares enough to use it. You’ve validated the design, your customers and your users — now it’s time to make a product. Here’s where you put the final touches on the design and start moving from small-scale to large-scale manufacturing. Focus on the small details, like designing a user manual and packaging. Be sure to iterate and user test at this stage, as well — the unboxing experience is a very important part in the users’ life cycle and for brand building. The onboarding material could be crucial to increasing users’ engagement. Essentially, now’s the time to focus on all those little details you may have glossed over to get a product that and . Make sure all that work won’t go unnoticed and really focus on the user experience. Building hardware is hard, but applying lean and agile methodologies could help you avoid catastrophic mistakes and gain early access to your customers. Once you embrace the possibility of failure, you will find out that not all is lost — building a strong relationship with your customers will help you overcome any pitfalls as they arise (and they will). Like anything in life, you need to plan two steps ahead, focus on the next step and be prepared to move one step back at all times. Happy building! |
Peter Thiel’s other fund, Mithril Capital Management, raises $600 million | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | Peter Thiel is having a good month. According to a new , low-flying Mithril Capital Management, which Thiel co-founded with longtime colleague Ajay Royan in 2012, is out raising its second fund with a $600 million target. Sources say the fund is already oversubscribed, however, and that it may hit $1 billion before it holds a final close. Emails and a call to the firm were not returned this afternoon. The vehicle marks the second giant fund that involves Thiel in one week’s time. Last Friday, Founders Fund, the early-stage venture firm he co-founded in 2005, closed its sixth fund with . There’s seemingly no end to LPs’ appetite for anything involving Thiel, though it’s also worth noting that aside from his involvement, the firms don’t feature much overlap. This reporter with Royan in 2014 to discuss Mithril, which is named after a fictional metal from J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy writings. The way he explained its focus then was as a growth-stage fund, one focuses on established companies that are leveraging tech in some way but are not necessarily tech companies. (He compared it, in fact, to a young .) Though Mithril has backed some tech companies, including the cloud service marketplace Classy, which provides online fund-raising services for nonprofits; and the data analysis giant (which is one of Founders Funds’ biggest bets to date), it has numerous bets that better underscore its mandate, including to fund companies too mature for many VCs yet that don’t fit the mold of a private equity investment, either. Among them is , an eight-year-old, Kansas City-based collaborative cash-flow optimization company that tries unlocking capital trapped in trade relationships; , a nine-year-old, New Hampshire-based antibody drug discovery startup that Wired covered at ; and a nine-year-old, Redwood City, Calif.-based surgical robotics company called . The firm’s funds also have a slightly longer life than most investor funds, whose investing period ends after 10 years. As Royan told me of Mithril’s $540 million debut fund and an LP source tells me now of this second vehicle, both pools have a 12-year-long investing period so that Thiel and Royan can make longer-term bets in companies that aren’t necessarily about to go public or otherwise exit. The firm’s bets tend to be fairly concentrated, too. Its debut fund has been used to back just 17 portfolio companies. Royan, who runs Mithril’s day-to-day operations, said during that 2014 sit-down that the firm has at least $100 million riding on one of its portfolio companies. (He wouldn’t disclose which one, though we’ve always suspected Palantir, given the of money it has raised over the years.) An LP says that roughly 80 percent of its capital is tied up in another six to eight companies, including Adimab, AppDirect, Auris, and , a company aiming to better control type 2 diabetes through a device that changes the . In fact, Mithril — which employs around 10 people but counts Thiel and Royan alone on its investment committee — has seen numerous of its deals attract substantial follow-on funding, including from J.P. Morgan and Tiger Global Management. It hasn’t exited from any of them yet. |
Slack’s growth is insane, with daily user count up 3.5X in a year | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | Plenty of startups have tried and failed to make enterprise software sexy, but Slack made it viral. Its growth rate is unheard of. Both Slack’s daily user count and its paid seat count are up 3.5X in just a year. Tons of people have still never heard of it, but with this momentum, they probably will soon (it’s workplace chat). What the growth means for Slack is network effect. Each person who joins makes the product stronger for everyone. Each one who hears about it or uses it to organize outside of work becomes more likely to infect their whole company with the Slack virus. And while competitors might be able to clone its basic chat features, they can’t clone its community. Here’s a timeline of Slack’s daily active user (DAU) and paid seats growth: These users aren’t just popping in to check notifications. They live in Slack. The average user 10 hours per weekday plugged into Slack. The tool saw 320 million minutes of active usage per weekday as of February, which comes out to 140 minutes per user per weekday. It’s been making strong exec hires from Facebook and Palantir, and recently promoted the whip-smart . It worked with its investors to raise an who build on Slack. And it has powerful new features like on the way. Oh, and today it announced to bring it to $540 million in total funding. That gives it plenty of cash to fund acquisitions, develop new products and IPO on its own timeline. Slack will have to massage the usage norms of its product to make sure people stay productive and aren’t overwhelmed with noisy channels full of animated GIFs. It’s one thing to be fun, it’s another to be so casual that it’s distracting from real work. But by bounding toward ubiquity, Slack unlocks another enormous opportunity — becoming the identity layer of the enterprise. Everyone in a company communicates, so everyone needs Slack, unlike a lot of other workplace tools. That means it can double as an identity provider and login for other apps, from big-name products to younger startups backed by the Slack Fund. If Slack becomes the hub for all your enterprise software, it will be extremely tough to displace. Slack’s not just growing: It’s a rocket ship protected by a crocodile-filled moat.
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Supermodel Karlie Kloss chats with us about the launch of Kode With Klossy, a coding camp for girls | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | headlines last year when she announced she was not only a high-ranking model but could also code in Ruby. Kloss, who says she’s always been interested in math and science, started learning to program a couple of years ago. The supermodel partnered with the in New York City last year to launch , a scholarship program for teen girls. The supermodel is now starting , a coding summer camp for girls ages 13-18. The two-week camp will provide scholarships to 80 young women from New York, Los Angeles and Karlie’s hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. Kloss chatted with me recently about why she decided to pick up the coding trade, how that plays out in her supermodel world and why she decided to launch a camp for young women interested in programming. KK: I grew up in St. Louis and didn’t really know anything about fashion until I walked in a charity fashion show at my local mall and was signed to a modeling agency. Before my modeling career took off, I really loved my math and science classes in school. My dad was an ER doctor and as a girl, I dreamed of following in his footsteps. Taking coding classes brings me back to the excitement I felt as a kid in first-period biology. I’m a curious person and coding allows me to think about how our world is built. KK: People have been really supportive and excited about Kode With Klossy. Ten years ago, it might have been this weird thing for a model to be taking computer science classes, but the industry is very tech friendly today. When I started modeling, fashion week was this very exclusive thing. You weren’t allowed to say anything about the designer’s collections to anyone. Now, I walk in shows that are live-streamed on Periscope and teased out on Instagram. The fashion industry has changed a lot over the last few years because of technology. KK: Since I started coding, I’ve learned a lot that feeds back into my work in the fashion industry. The magazines I shoot for and the brands I work with are driven by what’s happening in the tech world. When I’m in a meeting with one of my fashion partners, having a technical understanding of how it all works makes me a stronger businesswoman. KK: Ruby on Rails is what I’ve been learning in my classes at the Flatiron School. During the Kode With Klossy camp, the students are going to get to learn the fundamentals of Ruby on Rails too. They’ll be able to apply that knowledge to build an app based on whatever they’re excited about or interested in. It’s fast paced, but coming away from the course with something that’s your own is a really empowering thing. During last year’s scholarship, one group of students built a virtual fashion closet and another group created an app that made global warming predictions. It was really inspiring to watch them go from knowing very little about coding to creating their own app in just two weeks. KK: I’ve programmed a drone to fly and deliver cookies to the other side of the classroom. This isn’t exactly an app or program, but I’ve also dissected a laptop to learn about the electrical engineering and hardware inside the computer. KK: If you can learn how to write code, or at least, gain an understanding of how it works at a high level, then you open yourself up to more opportunities in your career and life. We need more women studying code in school and working as programmers in every industry. As technology changes the way our world operates, tech companies will have more influence on our lives — it’s important that women are part of that equation. My goal is for Kode With Klossy to introduce and teach coding to a handful of the girls who will make up that next generation of change-makers. KK: There are a lot of really great coding organizations and classes out there. By launching Kode With Klossy, I want to create even more opportunities for girls to learn code. What I’ve learned from existing programs is that collaboration and really awesome teaching are key. We’re working with amazing teachers I know the students are really going to connect with and love. Great teachers make or break the classroom experience. KK: Students will learn the fundamentals of Ruby on Rails and by the end of the course, create their own functional web app. The camp will be fun, engaging and challenging all at the same time. Coding is really collaborative and when you hit a wall, you turn to your neighbor to figure it out together. That’s the kind of learning environment we’re designing. KK: I’m very much a student and work on getting better with every class. KK: I’m really focused on my modeling career, but it’s definitely not out of the question! A successful startup looks at an industry that isn’t working and finds a cool solution for it by using technology in a smart way. It’s been exciting to watch new companies emerge and do this. The window closes for the Kode With Klossy summer camp April 30. Here’s a video of Kloss announcing the program: |
Can Slack transform enterprise communication once and for all? | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | Those of us who have been around the block a few times have seen multiple attempts to kill email and change the way people communicate in the enterprise. is just the latest, but one that has captured market share and money along the way. Consider that just today, . It launched just three years ago and has raised almost $540 million. That’s an astonishing amount of money at a time when VCs are supposedly tightening their belts and making startups prove their value. To Slack’s credit, it has built a popular platform, boasting 2.7 million users to-date. I’ve been covering the enterprise since the turn of the century and I can tell you I first saw a similar concept pop up in the early 2000s Before you spit your coffee all over that expensive laptop, consider that IM was the Slack of its day. It provided an easy way to communicate and gave users instant access to colleagues they couldn’t get using phone or email. In fact, much like Slack today, the IM vendors wanted to make the client the center of your work world. You could build integrations into the client and it would save you from having to move clumsily between enterprise applications. You’ve probably noticed that we’re not working in IM clients today because that vision never bore fruit. Fast-forward to around 2009 and we had the next wave of enterprise communications tools with , where we could take Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis and chat tools (not unlike Slack), bring them into the enterprise and get that same kind of user engagement that email just couldn’t capture. Once again, the vendors came and went. The most high-profile option was probably . One of the chief criticisms of this approach was that it was a tool separate from the rest of the enterprise workflow, so much like the IM tools that came before it, the Enterprise 2.0 vendors wanted to bring work into the tool. Much like IM, however you’ll note that these tools never really transformed the way we work and we marched on, still using email as our primary communications tool, no matter how ill-suited it was to the task. Today we have yet another wave, and this time Slack is the standard-bearer. It is a Silicon Valley darling, yet if you look closely it’s not all that different from its predecessors. It is a fairly basic chat client, but what has changed is that we now live in a cloud and mobile world. Over time, to bring that external integration into the client, just as we saw proposed 15 years ago with IM clients. We’ve seen two waves of similar tech come along, rise along an optimism curve and ultimately fail to take root in the enterprise. I’m not sure what investors see here that’s different or why they think that this time it will work, but perhaps that cloud-mobile combination is what we’ve been missing all along. I guess we’ll have to wait to see if they’re right and if these folks finally get it done once and for all. Today someone placed a $200 million bet that Slack can indeed succeed where others have failed. |
Fintech dominates Nordic startup investments | Dennis Mitzner | 2,016 | 4 | 8 |
Fintech attracted the most investment for the first time in the Nordic region, more than any other vertical. Between January 1, 2014 and end of March 2016, 51 fintech investments were made in companies in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, totaling $390.17 million. The Nordics are following a global trend which saw year-on-year investments in fintech companies increase by 106% in 2015 to $13.8 billion, according to a While smaller in numbers, nearly one in 10 investments in the Nordics is now made in fintech. Sweden gobbled up the lion’s share with 32 out of 51 fintech investments, according to data from , a resource on venture capital for the Nordic startup scene. “This is quite the achievement for a region that has long been associated with gaming, enterprise SaaS and health and wellness as the dominant verticals,” said Neil S W Murray, the founder of The Nordic Web. According to Murray’s analysis of the data, majority of Nordic fintech investments are in the $1-3 million size range, “indicating that a high number of healthy-sized seed rounds are being raised, and showing that despite the increasing amount of investment, the ecosystem is still at a fairly early-stage and the Nordics potential to be a fintech hub is still in its infancy”. “The Nordics lend itself particularly well to fintech for a few reasons. Stockholm has a strong financial history, mobile adoption is rife, and fintech lends itself well to mobile solutions, meaning Scandinavia is a good user market. What’s more, the success of and has meant more interest in fintech in the region,” Murray says. Klarna, a Stockholm-based payments startup allows users to buy without the use of cards and iZettle – also based in Stockholm – a mobile payments company for small businesses, have led the rise of fintech in the Nordic region. Klarna, valued at over $2.25 billion, has raised $291.33 million in 6 Rounds from 12 Investors and iZettle, $244.04 million in 9 rounds from 16 Investors. Although Klarna and iZettle are the undisputed fintech jewels of the region, Stockholm-based companies of all investments in fintech companies across Europe in 2014, indicating a widely spread fintech know-how in the Swedish capital, and a recent Europe-wide showed that Sweden is the third largest fintech hub in Europe after UK and Germany. One of the less obvious reasons is the cash-averse attitude many Scandinavians exhibit. “The Nordic consumers avoid cash. For example in Finland, you can manage without cash 100% of the time,” said Timo Ahopelto, founder of Helsinki-based . Swedish anti-cash mentality has made headlines around the world. In an , the New York Times featured Bjorn Ulvaeus, a former Abba member, embracing a cashless existence. “We don’t want to be behind the times by taking cash while cash is dying out.” According to cited in the same article, bills and coins represent 2 percent of Sweden’s economy, compared with 7.7% the US, and 10% in the eurozone. Swedes prefer apps and credit cards to bills or coins. One of the popular payment solutions, , a rival both to cash and credit, was launched by six different Swedish banks. The app allows users to transfer money in real-time between major banks with a click of a button. In October, the platform was integrated into Klarna’s checkout solution so that users can pay for all eCommerce purchases with Swish. Companies in the Nordics are behaving much like local consumers. Driven by a mixture eco-friendly thinking and efficiency, 89% of large and 59% of small businesses in Finland use e-invoicing, compared to the global average of 8.4%, according to the accounting body . “Nordic companies have highest adoption rates in e-invoicing, rooted in the electronic banking system,” Ahopelto affirmed. Mattias Hansson, the co-founder and CEO of Helsinki-based online invoicing software, , Finland is at the forefront of paperless invoicing. ”Small businesses are often late adopters, which is also true when it comes to electronic invoicing. But we have still seen huge growth in this segment in the Finnish market. In fact our figures show that in the last three years the number of small businesses using electronic invoicing has more than doubled each year.” The Q1 of 2016 has already witnessed 15 fintech investments, indicating a strong year for Nordic fintech. “I think 2015 was the year fintech established itself in the Nordics, but 2016 will be the year that it leaves all other verticals behind,” said Murray. |
null | Natasha Lomas | 2,016 | 4 | 8 | null |
Palaround lets anyone build their own Tinder-like app | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | began its life as one of what’s now attempting to be the “Tinder for finding friends” — a list that now includes , in fact. But recently, the startup began rolling out a new product focused instead on bringing the Tinder swipe model to private organizations. A pivot from the earlier general purpose friend finder, the idea with this new platform is to offer a swiping app for closed networks — meaning alumni organizations, conferences, private clubs, festivals, universities and even businesses. Effectively a white-labeling of the Palaround platform, the service offers these organizations a way to connect their members with each other, while also taking advantage of a familiar swipe interface like the one popularized by Tinder. And like Tinder-esque dating apps, the platform offers a variety of standard features, including one-click registration via Facebook, one-on-one chats and an algorithm that helps connect users by taking into consideration factors important to the app at hand — like proximity, in the same work field or those with friends in common, among other things. However, as a DIY Tinder of sorts, Palaround also includes features designed for these unique networks, like a group chat option, and other tools designed to help get users chatting, like icebreakers and personality quizzes. With group chat, users have the option to add all their connections to a single chat room called a “society.” Meanwhile, after every 20 people who users are shown, the app stops to ask a few questions. This seemingly lightweight feature actually helps the app learn a lot about its users, in order to suggest better matches. For example, it might ask you how you work best — “alone,” or “in a pair,” or “within a small group,” etc. It’s easy for organizations to get started with Palaround, explains founder Joel Kliksberg. After setting up an account, they can import their email list and their users then automatically receive an invite link. “The whole thing takes less than three minutes,” he says. Users , and sign into their network. [gallery ids="1301099,1301098,1301100,1301096,1301095,1301094"] Not only is the process meant to be simple to set up, it’s also designed to be affordable, Kliksberg adds. “We’ve talked to a lot of these events and conference organizers and they tell us that, for some reason, their people aren’t connecting or they’re not connecting efficiently, and that building a community is absolutely critical for them,” he says. However, building their own enterprise application for this purpose could cost $250,000 to $500,000. Plus, apps would have ongoing maintenance costs associated with them. Palaround’s alternative is an app-as-a-service. Palaround’s pricing is still in flux, but it’s well under what a standalone app would cost. Currently, its “starter” solution is $29 per month, while the “business” tier is $99 per month. (Pricing is based on a variety of factors, like number of users, GB of data transfer and storage and more.) In the future, other premium features may come into play — like support for push notifications, the ability to write your own questions or the ability to connect to third-party systems like MailChimp, Eventbrite or Campaign Monitor, for example. Though only a few weeks post-pivot, already has 50 companies signed up to beta test the new platform, including the University of Miami, Toyota, Lexus, Cordel Wine Institute, SMU Mustangs, Y Combinator, Bizhaus and others. Some gyms, buildings and even two weddings have also signed up to use the service. In most cases, the companies are starting with a small group. For instance, the YC network will just include the recent and the last three batches. L.A.-based Palaround has raised a six-figure seed round to get off the ground. The startup says its solution will be available for broader testing in a few weeks after a few kinks are worked out. In the meantime, interested customers can for more information. |
Managed By Q, the digital office administrator, raises $25 million | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | Less than a year after raising , is today announcing the raise of a $25 million Series B round from GV and Kapor Ventures. Former TechCrunch writer MG Siegler is joining the board as part of the deal. Managed By Q is a service that handle all the extra responsibilities that come along with running an office. From re-stocking toilet paper and soap to office cleanings to a fresh paint job on the wall, Managed By Q tackles these chores with their own office and field Operators, all from a few taps on an iPad. The iPad is provided by Q to new customers, and comes pre-loaded with the Q software system, letting anyone in the office place an order through the wall-mounted tablet. Q’s Operators, which are employed on a W2 basis, can take on all kinds of jobs, from regularly scheduled cleanings to IT support to installing a projector system in a conference room. Managed By Q is one of the few on-demand(ish) platforms to pioneer W2 employment, and recently launched an employee stock program that gives all employees . The startup, which launched in New York but has since expanded to SF, LA, and Chicago, has seen competition recently from companies like Eden, which offer similar services and also follow the W2 model. The new funding brings Managed By Q to a total of $42.43 million in capital raised. You can learn more about Managed By Q right . |
How SoFi can ruin fintech for everyone | Aaron LaRue | 2,016 | 4 | 1 |
I’m going to start by saying I’m actually a huge fan of . I think they have a great product, they’ve built an incredible business and their growth in a regulated and complex industry is impressive. And I say this even though I’ve had — they still provide a great experience. However, some recent strategic choices at the company give me cause to worry. There are three things that, individually, seem innocent enough. But when considered together, I think SoFi is at a tipping point, and, if managed incorrectly, it could create a chain reaction that will seriously hurt the company and the fintech market at large. SoFi’s recent “Don’t Bank” campaigns are provocative. Especially when you consider the fact that the millennial generation watched the housing collapse from the sidelines, it makes sense that SoFi would want to distance themselves from the old-money banks and mortgage lenders in the market. However, their ad campaigns are borderline exclusive. Not the cool “the new iPhone just launched and the line is long” type of exclusive. More like the mean girls’ “you can’t sit with us” type of exclusive. Sure, the company takes great care of its customers, who they call “members.” Members receive perks, like investor introductions for entrepreneurs or career planning services — which are totally awesome benefits, but only if they accept you into this exclusive club. It’s this exclusivity that’s a problem. Watching one of their video ads, one line in particular struck me: “We can’t accept everyone, and we make no apology for that.” We want everyone to become a member, but not everyone will qualify. See our criteria. — SoFi (@SoFi) “We hope that by getting a little education they can be great in the future.” I’m sure the spot was well-intentioned, but the underlying tone is, “We aren’t for everyone.” When you’re a financial services company that’s , that’s a problem — especially if you offer mortgages. You don’t have to read the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to know that this probably isn’t a great stance to take as a company. Marketing to a certain group is one thing — discouraging people before they apply is another. SoFi has a history of targeting the high-end customer. Starting as a student loan refinance lender, they focused on customers with degrees in specific fields or from certain schools. Imagine what would happen if Wells Fargo or Bank of America came out and said “We can’t accept everyone, and we make no apology for that.” What if these other major institutions only targeted the top end of the market? The Internet would explode and stock prices would tumble. In a way, SoFi’s “Don’t Bank” campaign feels like a small- scale version of . They get away with it because they are a fresh, innovative disruptor — but this only buys them so much runway. The campaign opens the possibility for increased regulatory attention from groups like the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). You can be sure Quicken Loans’ disastrous super bowl ad , and I’m afraid the current SoFi campaign will do the same. When it comes to , take your time, ask questions and . — consumerfinance.gov (@CFPB) . We agree. No better way than for full transparency into mortgage options & info needed to make the right decision. — Quicken Loans (@QuickenLoans) Nice Save Quicken. The “Don’t Bank” campaign alone isn’t overly troublesome. But consider the fact that SoFi recently to buy the loans they originate. There is even talk of SoFi starting their own REIT, which they could use to buy the mortgages they write, as well. I understand their thinking in creating these funds: You need consistent access to money if you want to lend money to others; that money has to come from somewhere. When SoFi started, they tapped a marketplace investor network that encouraged alumni to help recent grads from their alma mater. Helping grads refinance their student loan debt was almost an act of school spirit. From there, demand outpaced their available capital, so they turned to venture and debt financing. According to , SoFi has raised $301 million in debt financing in addition to $1.37 billion in venture capital. This includes a completed in September of 2015, firmly planting SoFi in the unicorn club. With an IPO likely being delayed, and business booming, SoFi needed access to cash to continue lending money. This hedge fund creates a new dynamic — their debt products must satisfy hedge fund investor demands. If they have to focus on their risk/return profile, there is a good chance they will have to be selective about to whom they lend money. This creates an interesting situation and a potential conflict of interest. Maybe the investor was their true customer all along? What if the borrower was just a means to an end? It also leads me to question a potentially bigger issue. There is a large market for personal and student loans — but the holy grail for online lenders is mortgages. They come with higher loan balances, consistent cash flow and larger fees — plus, they are asset-backed. SoFi has not been shy about wanting to . The problem is that mortgages have a much higher balance than student loans or personal loans, and SoFi is already outpacing its financial capacity. Traditionally, mortgage companies bundle up their loans and sell them to a third party. These loans must meet certain criteria, which is determined by regulators like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the FHA. Loans that meet the criteria are guaranteed by the government, which makes investors comfortable and creates a liquid market. This process is called securitization. SoFi regularly securitizes student loans. Mortgages are a different beast entirely because they are asset-backed. To me, it seems that starting a fund to buy their loans is an alternative to securitizing and selling the loans through existing mortgage investor channels. If the company cannot nail the mortgage securitization process, they will never be able to leverage revolving credit and will constantly need to raise money to grow. If SoFi can’t get these loans off their balance sheet, they will eventually hit a wall. When you consider these three recent developments together, there are two stories you can tell. The story of the innovator: SoFi wants to work with everyone, and they want to be different than the old-money banks, so they’ve created a member services component to their product. Their product fills a valuable gap in the market, and their explosive growth requires more and more capital. They find the mortgage securitization process, so they’ve created an innovative way to access capital that eliminates costs and complexity. Eventually, when the time is right, they’ll IPO and be on the path to gain even more market share and grow into other services, like checking accounts. But there’s another story that can be told here, a cautionary tale: SoFi targets the top end of the market, which is lucrative, and discourages all others to apply. Their explosive growth has tapped their capital resources, and they haven’t perfected the process of securitizing loans or using revolving credit. Cash-constrained and without a favorable IPO window, they double down on exclusive customer practices. These marketing efforts, in addition to some consumer complaints, attract the attention of the CFPB, which takes action against the company. After regulators discover issues in any number of business areas, SoFi is subjected to and customer refunds. If SoFi goes down the fairy tale path, everyone wins — and it lays the groundwork for other innovative fintech companies like it. But if their growth story turns into a nightmare, it could be a huge setback for the entire industry. |
Slack is work chat’s runaway train, raises $200M at $3.8B | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | The rocketship won’t slow down. The business messaging startup has raised $200 million at a $3.8 billion post-money valuation, the company confirms to TechCrunch. The round was led by Thrive Capital, with participation by GGV, Comcast Ventures and Slack’s existing investors, including Accel, Index Ventures and Social Capital. This brings the total funding for the three-year-old company to a whopping $540 million. Slack last raised at a $2.8 billion valuation in April of last year. “As has always been the case, we are taking this opportunity to further secure our leadership position as we continue to execute on our ambitious growth plans. This capital adds to our existing reserves and increases our ability to focus on an uncompromising long-term, strategic view.” – Stewart Butterfield, CEO and co-founder, Slack, said in a statement. “We are excited to partner with Slack as it continues to re-imagine how teams work together,” said Josh Kushner, managing partner at Thrive Capital, in a statement. “We believe Slack will define the future of seamless communication in an increasingly complex world across platforms, teams and applications.” Corporate customers include NASA, LinkedIn and Spotify. We use Slack for internal communication at TechCrunch.The San Francisco-based company has 430 employees. Slack, which has received a lot of attention in Silicon Valley, with its promise to reduce email, has 2.7 million daily users, which is significant for an enterprise startup. The company recently received an award at our annual Crunchie’s ceremony for With its hype, funding, user count, and developer momentum, Slack looks like a runaway train. Competitors might be able to copy its core features, but not its network effect or ecosystem of integrated apps and chatbots. Those who believe this growth will continue might see the valuation as a little low, though it puts a high lifetime value on current users. Slack might have interesting plans for what to do with the extra $200 million it now has in its war chest. Acquisitions, high-profile hires, and hardcore R&D are all opportunities. For example, it’s now working on rolling out voice chat and is building video chat. The question now is, can anyone stop Slack? |
North Korea blocks access to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | In news that is , North Korea has this week begun to block access to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other websites in the country. The AP, which has a bureau in North Korean capital Pyongyang, that the government named YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Voice of America, a number of South Korean websites, porn and gambling websites on a list of Internet sites that will be blocked “for a certain period of time.” The announcement reportedly added that anyone trying to access the sites in an “improper” way or distribute “anti-republic data” would be punished, although it did not specify how. North Korea is hardly a place for mainstream Internet access — the country has a reported 2 million mobile phone users but Internet access is reserved for government officials or other high-level positions — but this is a further step to shut the country off and restrict access to information. North Korea’s sole mobile operator, Koryolink, enabled mobile internet access for visitors in 2013 and — and the occasional issue with Instagram — that has helped bring images and information from the world’s most isolated country to wider audiences. That move was seen as a potential step to opening North Korea up and perhaps even enabling increased Internet access among natives, but blocking off these websites runs counter to that. Instagram, which accounts from , remains accessible for now. We’ve contacted Twitter, Facebook and Google for confirmation and comment. |
CHKN, letting you build and raise creatures, is betaworks’ latest game | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | betaworks doesn’t often launch games, but when they do, it tends to stick. Just take Dots, for example, which ended up spinning out of betaworks as its own game studio. Today, the startup studio is launching its second game in the form of CHKN. Imagine that Minecraft had a baby with a Tamagotchi from the 90s and you’ll have a pretty clear idea of how CHKN works. It’s a Sandbox game that lets you build not only structures, but actual creatures, all of which have their own emotional features that learn over time. The game has two modes: creative mode and adventure mode. In either case, you start with an avatar that represents you. The little guy can wander around and interact with other creatures in the world. In creative mode, you start with a pre-found inventory of creature ‘parts’ like a head, legs, torso, etc. From there, you can construct a creature out of whatever parts you want, giving him or her an elephant head, a giraffe neck, a tarantula torso and pig legs. Or, you know, something less terrifying. In adventure mode, you start out with nothing. Your avatar must wander around and search out food and wood to feed themselves and build structures that will help shelter forthcoming creatures. The avatar can also find creature parts to build out their own creatures, or try to collect food and tame an already-existing creature. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EAcF-2Te8U&w=640&h=360] What’s interesting is that these creatures are constantly changing, and their emotional makeup is based on their physical makeup. For example, a creature made entirely of snake parts and tarantula parts will be more difficult to tame than an animal made of sheep parts and puppy parts. What’s perhaps more interesting is that there is no objective or goal associated with either mode of the game. The idea is for players to use their imagination and see where it takes the game. That’s why betaworks is launching CHKN as part of Steam’s early access program. The more the team of developers learns about the way users want to play the game, the more it will be tailored and tweaked to offer more, different experiences. For both creative mode and adventure mode, there is a cooperative mode, meaning that users can play with other players across the world. In creative mode, users can create creatures with the help of their friends or other players. Meanwhile, in adventure mode, the cooperative mode may be a tad more dangerous, with users having created fierce pets and structures that may make survival difficult. You can check out CHKN for yourself . |
Kanye West’s new album, ‘The Life of Pablo,’ is no longer a Tidal exclusive | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | So much for Kanye West’s plans to make his new album, “The Life of Pablo,” The artist, who has numerous times with regard to this latest release, has now put the album out on Tidal’s competitors, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music. The move is notable because West had originally fans the album would “ ” – a statement that ended up , pushing it to the top of the U.S. App Store. After the album’s launch, customers flocked to Tidal in droves, believing it was the only avenue to hear West’s new tunes. And while not all those downloads converted into paying subscribers, it certainly had an effect on the newcomer to the streaming market: the app today is the #4 Top Grossing Music application in the U.S. Apple App Store. It’s also a not-too-shabby #55 Top Grossing Overall application, and a Top 20 Music app. My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal. — KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) In addition, Tidal recently reported that “Pablo” on its service in its first 10 days of release. ” But if one thing has been true during the whole saga and chaos surrounding “The Life of Pablo’s” launch, it’s that West has consistently changed his mind. After releasing the album to the world, the artist had second thoughts, and pulled it off his website. That led to who said they paid “Pablo,” but didn’t receive the download. In some cases, due to billing glitches, their credit cards were even charged twice. Tidal eventually emailed fans to explain the problem, offering refunds or the chance to wait a week while West polished up the tracks to his own liking. Still, the confusion around the launch combined with the inability for users to get their hands on the album as promised, led to a surge in piracy. , “The Life of Pablo” was illegally downloaded by some 500,000 people the day after its release. Having missed the opportunity to sell to such a large number of users could have prompted West to change his mind regarding the Tidal exclusive….Or the artist could simply be indecisive. Or perhaps he’s just a savvy marketer, getting press over his every move with regard to this album’s release. ( .) That said, West did give some indication that he was thinking of reversing his previous decision to keep his album off Apple’s service. Earlier this week, he (This is the controversial song where he claims to have made Taylor Swift famous.) Still, it was unclear at the time if that track’s release was meant to just tease fans who would ultimately be directed to Tidal to gain access to the full album, or if West was actually testing the waters outside of Tidal. It may be April Fool’s Day here in the U.S., but it looks like we have our answer. “The Life of Pablo” is now streaming on the major music services. It’s also worth mentioning that this move has come at a time when Jay Z’s Tidal is claiming they inflated subscriber numbers at the time of the deal. While “Pablo’s” Tidal debut could have boosted the service’s user base, perhaps West decided that Tidal’s audience alone is not big enough to make it worth keeping his album from the competing services. After all, being on other services means additional revenue — and we all know right? |
Billy lets you track your subscriptions and bills in a simple app | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | A new app called wants to help consumers more easily manage their subscriptions and bills, by keeping track of your fixed costs and recurring payments, and make these accessible via a simple mobile interface. That means tracking monthly payments like rent, alongside subscriptions to a variety of services like Dropbox, Apple Music, Spotify, Playstation Plus, Evernote, Google Drive, Netflix, your cell phone bill, and many more. The app arrives at an opportune time, as today’s consumers are subscribing to services – like streaming music or movies – rather than buying physical products, like CD’s and DVD’s. Plus, many of the cloud-based services have associated monthly or annual fees that we often don’t take into consideration when managing our monthly budgets. Combined, these services can end up eating away at our available income, and yet it’s still fairly difficult to get a quick overview of what we’re spending, where, and when those bills become due. These are the problems Billy aims to solve. Today, the app offers a simple user interface that lets you choose from one of many popular subscription-based services, or enter in your own custom subscription for things you want to track, whether that’s rent and utilities, or a more niche subscription not yet included in the app – like your $10 per month Ipsy makeup sample bag, for instance. At launch, you have to enter in these subscriptions manually – which is both a downside and a plus. It definitely takes more time to get started with Billy, but the end result is that the app could be more accurate and personalized than competing services. Currently, there are a couple of other startups that promise to deliver similar insights into your spending, including and . However, what I’ve found when testing these offerings is that automation (the services scan your bank account or credit card statement) is not always a perfect solution. They can get things wrong at times, or miss some of your recurring bills. Billy, as a straightforward utility, doesn’t have that problem. However, the app’s creators say they plan to introduce automation in a future release. Eventually, the goal would be to eliminate the need for user input. [gallery ids="1300919,1300917,1300918,1300920"] For now, though, Billy works as a basic budgeting tool. You enter your bills and subscriptions, due dates, and then receive notifications when bills are due. In addition to giving you a better idea about your spending, the app could also be useful for roommates splitting household costs, its creator notes. Explains Billy founder Jeffrey de Groot, this bootstrapped app began as a side project, when he couldn’t find a budgeting app he liked on the App Store. “I had this idea of getting a clear overview of all my subscriptions, but I just couldn’t find a simple app that did the job,” he says. “Most of them had too many features and felt like they weren’t designed with the user in mind.” De Groot says he performed all the concepting and design work, and for development he teamed up with Joost van Dijk, who that brings iPhone notifications to the Mac. Billy today uses a freemium business model that lets you add up to 4 subscriptions in order to try things out. If you decide you want to actually use Billy, you’ll want to pay $0.99 via in-app purchase to unlock unlimited subscription tracking. Billy is . |
On-demand moving app Lugg hits Silicon Valley | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | , the startup that , requested via an Uber-like mobile app, is this week expanding its reach into additional markets. While originally available in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company says it will now be available in Silicon Valley, from Palo Alto to Mountain View and down to San Jose. In addition, Lugg notes that all of the Costcos and Crate & Barrels in the Bay Area are pushing customers to Lugg as a means of helping them get their larger purchases home more quickly. Launched last year, Lugg addresses a common pain point for city dwellers and others who don’t have large enough vehicles to transport big items, like new furniture they’re buying from a store or garage sale finds. Through its mobile application, users can snap a photo of the item they want moved, and the app will then connect you with a local mover immediately. All of the payment, including the tip, is handled within Lugg’s app – similar to other on-demand car services, like Lyft or Uber, for example. Though you could choose to use Lugg repeatedly to move the contents of an apartment across town (and some have), Lugg’s goal is not to compete with local movers or truck rental operations like U-Haul. That is, Lugg is not just a modern front-end to a traditional moving company. Instead, anyone can sign up to drive and move items, provided they’re able to physically do the work. Lugg’s focus, meanwhile, is to help customers to with smaller moves – a big item or two – that needs to get across town. Lugg is now in Costco! Get your furniture, TV’s, and large items home in under an hour! 🚚💨 — Lugg (@lugg) Two movers are assigned to each truck, and they can toggle on and off their availability, also as with other on-demand businesses. (Drivers are vetted first to make sure they can handle the work, and Lugg has cargo insurance for when things go wrong.) Customers pay for Lugg at a base price of $35, plus $2 per mile and $1 per minute of loading and unloading. According to company co-founder and CEO Jordan Brown, Lugg has been growing 30 percent month-over-month since its launch, and now has 250 trucks (Luggers) on the platform making money. To date, the company has raised $5 million from A-Capital, Sequoia, SV Angel, Y Combinator, and . It’s hard to tell how well Lugg is performing by analyzing its App Store metrics, given its limited service area. It’s simply not an app that everyone can today use. However, it has climbed up from the 900’s in the Travel category around the holidays to the high 300’s this past month, which is promising. To kick off its Silicon Valley expansion, Lugg is offering customers $10 off their first move with the promo code “SILICONVALLEY.” Lugg is available as both an and application. |
An oasis in the desert: Special purpose vehicles and behavioral economics | John Mannes | 2,016 | 4 | 1 |
Like an in the , (SPV) can offer investors critical liquidity and capital to exercise pro-rata rights, even in a world where overall returns in venture capital have been decreasing. , and recent clarification of the allowed to participate in financing startups, entrepreneurs and investors must remain keenly aware of incentives to increase risk across the tech ecosystem. Just like entrepreneurs, venture capitalists regularly seek capital from potential limited partners (pension funds and university endowments). Pension funds and endowments typically see venture capital categorically as a high-risk asset class. To remain competitive against other high-risk arbitrage like hedge funds, VCs must get increasingly creative to convince their investors that their fund will generate returns that justify their high-risk long-term investment. One creative investment vehicle for increasing returns is the SPV — essentially off-book shell corporations that act as investment for aggregating capital outside the limitations of a fund’s initial structure, strategy and design agreed upon by limited partners. Investors from outside the limited partnership can organize themselves around an SPV rather than injecting capital directly into companies through a traditional syndicate. Within these funds, a unique limited partner advisory board exists to provide oversight to the investment process. Governing rights can be assigned to lead investors or other designated individuals by the lead investor creating the fund. SPVs come with increased risk and exposure for investors. Additionally, they can be organized very quickly and their innately separate qualities offer protection in case the value of their investment is significantly reduced or lost. The rise of seed-stage capital as a means of accessing deals earlier and more cost-effectively via valuable pro-rata rights is a key concept in understanding the rise of SPVs. Pro-rata rights enable investors to receive first dibs on follow-on investment rounds in a company in which they were an early investor. These are the rights that let venture capitalists capitalize on their wins while combating dilution and limiting exposure to bad investments. Of course, the catch in this use of SPVs is that the “winners” that SPVs fund are, by definition, not yet winners. Birchmere Ventures, a micro-VC in Pittsburgh, is a great example of a fund that benefits from its use of SPVs. Seán Sebastian, a partner at Birchmere, explains that his SPVs typically fall between 3 and 8 million in size. Despite the fact that SPVs only offer exposure to a single investment, they can provide the same 20 percent carry at the time of exit. Birchmere runs their SPVs as opt-in opportunities that are first offered to investors who have contributed above a pre-set percentage to Birchmere’s general fund. If the SPV is still not full, the opportunity is offered to all limited partners of Birchmere. Finally, if there is still room in the vehicle, the opportunity can be opened to outside investors. Outside of micro-VCs and seed investors, investment banks have been known to employ SPVs to fill a market demand for liquidity. In recent years, banks have been offering secondary fund in the form of SPVs. Unlike SPV use by micro-VCs, SPV use by investment banks focuses on late-stage startups. Tech unicorns, companies with valuations over a billion dollars, are especially targets of investment banks for such . These SPVs can easily break 300 million dollars in size. Typically, these shares are sold to top clients of the investment bank and wealthy individuals who meet investor requirements. It is important to take a step back and recognize that SPVs are far from inherently bad. The increased flexibility they offer presents tangible value for both founders and investors. Additionally, when risk is properly assessed, all parties can benefit from follow-on capital from known investors possessing a strong positive relationship with the portfolio company. Early on in the life cycle of a venture-backed startup, the company is given a valuation from investors. This valuation is typically an aggregate of addressable market value and comparable market exits, among other things the specific investor values (voodoo). is, in part, known for discussing the contrast between signal and noise. The gist of his argument is that the world is full of information; some of it is accurate and valuable (signal), while other components are counterproductive and can produce systemic entropy (noise). Venture capital investors are well accustomed to both types of information, and it is essentially their job to distinguish between the two, taking into account risk and uncertainty. Below is a loose diagram of the post-money valuation over time of a randomly selected tech unicorn that recently underwent an initial public offering (IPO). Long before a company becomes a hot spot for college interns and a metaphor for founder success, it is a relatively scrappy entity. Most of the information fed to investors comes directly from the company itself (burn rates, key hires, strategic partnerships, etc.). As the company grows, there is more company data to parse through (sales metrics, complex capitalization tables, etc.). At a certain point, however, the company begins to generate exponentially growing noise. This noise comes in the form of headlines and t-shirts, and the general marketing buzz that any self-respecting startup desires. Unfortunately, while venture firms have access to both sets of information, it can become difficult, especially when outside investors come in to separate the two. Economists call this signaling bias. Much like the problem of the chicken and the egg, it becomes difficult to differentiate between a valuation rooted in projected exit value and a valuation rooted in perceived market value. The same buzz investors sought to create to draw interest to their investment can come back like a boomerang and artificially create feedback, signaling investors that an increased valuation makes sense. As has been popularly publicized, this creates a prevailing sense of FOMO, or the “fear of missing out.” One can imagine a situation fairly easily where valuations do not adjust downward because of the willingness for increasingly risk-seeking and uninformed investors willing to invest in SPVs. Most worryingly, the failure of an SPV does not negatively impact a general fund’s internal rate of return (IRR) or reduce the carry of the general partners outside the SPV. SPVs have the potential to directly hurt wealthy investors and indirectly hurt startup employees. California, the center of venture capital and tech startups, happens to be unique in having laws that make the enforcement of non-competition clauses very difficult. This means that many employees in California-based startups are attracted and retained with stock options that vest over a finite period of time. These options, typically of common designation, do not hold the same rights of influence that preferred stocks offer. Additionally, option holders are only entitled to the profit of an option between its strike price and its sale price. Therefore, if a company fails to reach a liquidity point (IPO or M&A) or the company’s value decreases before the end of a vesting period, employees will never receive their chunk of a company’s success. The investment banking usage of SPVs to provide liquidity for late-stage startups directly enables startups to stay private longer without engaging in an IPO or M&A transaction. The longer a company stays private, presumably the higher its valuation will be at the time it exits the market. In a worst-case scenario, investor liquidity by means of SPVs prevents overvalued companies from achieving a valuation correction in the efficient open markets. On the flip side, things can turn even darker when overvalued private companies attempt to exit the market. Much like how signaling had the potential to create an artificial valuation spike, it can also work in reverse. Average investors and talking heads generating noise will not differentiate the nuance between SPV losses and venture capital losses in general funds. The mere headline of VC portfolio companies taking a valuation hit, or, more appropriately, a valuation “adjustment,” will do little to quell fears in public markets. To overcome this liability, investors would be forced to sell more assets to cover losses. This ultimately lowers prevailing market valuations and creates a devastating spiral that is hard to escape as the public markets contract and less money is available in the original pension funds and endowments to allocate toward high-risk asset classes. Ultimately, it is unlikely that SPVs will be the horseman of the future tech apocalypse. The potential is clearly there for SPVs to create a liquidity crisis that could hurt the full spectrum of stakeholders, from startup employees to investment bankers. SPVs contribute to startups and investors alike when they are fully understood and implemented with a disciplined mission. Left unregulated and misunderstood, they will continue to morph in structure and implementation until someone overclocks market risk and loses money. It’s human nature to seek an even in the . |
Yammer co-founder Adam Pisoni raises $4.5 million for Abl Schools | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | A co-founder and former CTO of Yammer, Adam Pisoni, quietly raised a $4.5 million first round of venture funding for his new education tech startup in January. This week, he revealed what Always Be Learning Inc., known as , is working on. Most edtech startups in the U.S. today– if they’re not building schools from scratch like or — are creating things for use in the classroom like parent-teacher communication apps, or digital-curriculum, -gradebooks, -testing and -tutoring platforms. San Francisco-based Abl Schools (pronounced “able” schools) is developing cloud-based software to help school administrators create and tweak master schedules for their schools. Scheduling and resource allocation software should help schools save time and money, and ultimately make them more adaptive to the needs of their students, Pisoni says. The Abl Schools app, still in development, can help principals and superintendents figure out how many teachers, coaches and counselors are available within their system, and who has what specialties. The app then helps administrators schedule educators and plan courses or activities responding to students’ needs as they change over time. Pisoni said he was inspired to put his technical expertise to work in the field of education reflecting on his own decision to drop out of high school. “I grew up in a normal neighborhood outside of Phoenix. At school I found myself bored and thinking ‘This is a waste of time.’ So I left. We should not waste a valuable developmental period in people’s lives, or resources especially in cash-strapped public schools,” he said. Pisoni see’s Abl Schools’ technology as analogous to the software used by hospitals to ensure that patients get the attention they need from the right doctors and specialists when they need it. The startup intends to deliver reports to school districts or principals about how well they used their human capital in the past, and what it would take to alter a school’s schedule to make room for things the community wants and students need. Education-specialized fund led the investment in ABL joined by another education investment firm, , and Owl Ventures’ Jed Smith said he expects ABL to use the funding to get to “proof of concept” working with select, pilot schools and districts to test its software. “Linking information about the use of teachers’ time to information about learning outcomes for students could be enormously powerful for administrators,” the investor said. “But even giving schools simple scheduling software that saves them time, energy and all the frustration of rearranging things with sticky notes and white boards is enough to sell this product for a fair price.” Smith also said Owl backed Abl Schools because of Pisoni’s track record. Before Slack, Yammer was the most buzz-generating enterprise communication tool going. It is still a growing business, now owned by Microsoft which completed its of Yammer for $1.2 billion in July 2012. |
Samsung expects solid first-quarter results as the Galaxy S7 enjoys strong sales | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | After , Samsung Electronics . The company said it expects to report consolidated sales of about 49 trillion won and operating profit of about 6.6 trillion won in the first quarter of 2016. This beats the analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected. Since this is earnings guidance and not its final report, Samsung Electronics didn’t say what fueled its quarterly performance, but the reason is , which has outperformed its predecessor, the Galaxy S6. The Galaxy S7 not only earned praise for combining the best features from previous models, but that rival smartphone makers like Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi were in between new releases. Samsung had said in January—before the S7 started taking pre-orders—that it expects flat results during the first two quarters of 2016 because of economic issues and a slower IT market. |
Kik CEO Ted Livingston to discuss the future of mobile messaging at Disrupt NY 2016 | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | Messaging is the hot topic of 2016, which is why we’re tremendously excited to announce that , the founder and CEO of popular chat app , is confirmed as a speaker at our upcoming from May 9-11. We’ve already revealed a number of prestigious participants for Disrupt — including , , and — and, in Livingston, we are adding . He’s publicity shy and isn’t often found at mainstream tech events, but he’s agreed to a fireside chat with us focused on explaining why mobile messaging is so important right now, and where it is headed. Sneaky spoiler alert, Livingston believes we are entering a new paradigm for mobile internet. “One thing I think we can all agree on is that chat is going to be the world’s next great operating system,” . “ Kik, like WhatsApp, was one of the earliest mobile messaging apps and it leads the way in the genre. — back in 2014, while Microsoft and others are just following now — while it is focused on adding new services, like food/drink ordering and payments, and the business of actually making money via messaging, too, working with . The company has largely dodged the attention radar for some time, no doubt thanks to the fact that it is based up in Waterloo, Canada, but — the creator of WeChat, the blockbuster messaging app that is inspiring Facebook and others — pushed Kik’s valuation past the $1 billion mark and put it firmly in the spotlight. Unicorn valuation aside, Kik is one of those apps that may not be well known to all internet users, but it has steadily built up a phenomenal base of young users in the West. Today, the chat app counts more than 275 million registered users, 70 percent of whom it estimates are aged between 13 and 24 years old. Indeed, Kik claims that around 40 percent of all teens in the U.S. use its service. , and most definitely one to watch for the future. . There’s only a week left to grab a ticket at early bird pricing. |
Google reverses Gmail April 1 prank after users mistakenly put GIFs into important emails | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | Google has reversed one of its April Fools’ Day pranks after it caused a number Gmail users to unwittingly insert GIFs into business emails and other important communications. — some of others are — but the Big G’s attempt to inject humor into email via that inserts a Minions GIF in Gmail messages backfired. “Today, Gmail is making it easier to have the last word on any email with Mic Drop. Simply reply to any email using the new ‘Send + Mic Drop’ button. Everyone will get your message, but that’s the last you’ll ever hear about it. Yes, even if folks try to respond, you won’t see it,” Google explained when it launched the button on April 1. Sounds fun in theory, sure, but when your email service has , many of whom rely on it for business and professional communication, then things can get a little dicey. (Importantly, the feature does not appear to be enabled for Google Apps customers who pay to use Google’s business suite, which includes corporate email, but others who use the regular service did have it.) Then, the button placement was problematic. Google substituted “send and archive” — which many people use habitually and click on without a second thought — for ‘MicDrop,’ making it a recipe for disaster for many. An initial warning did pop up, but anyone who didn’t catch that was in for a surprise. Here’s how easy it was to send: And this was the result: Andy Baio, former Kickstarter CTO and founder of XOXO Festival, was one of a number of users who mistakenly hit the button on an important email. I can't believe how short-sighted Gmail's "Drop Mic" April 1 joke is. It replaces the "Send+Archive" button, and attaches GIFs to sent mail. — Andy Baio (@waxpancake) Changing sent email like that without confirmation is an incredible betrayal of trust. The damage from this prank is just getting started. — Andy Baio (@waxpancake) Beyond messing with the tone of an email, Drop The Mic also muted all replies — irreversibly: I did a little testing: Any email sent with "Mic Drop" is immediately and IRREVERSIBLY muted. Replies skip the inbox, with no way to unmute. — Andy Baio (@waxpancake) There were seemingly plenty of others Gmail devotees affected. As Baio pointed out, attracted plenty of complaints. One user claimed to have lost business as a result of the prank: This person mistakenly dropped the mic with a number of important contacts: Another did the same: One business user warned of the potential issues: One Gmail user said the button was enough to tempt them to change email provider: And those are just the ones who took the time to complain. Yes, Google does have an undo button for recalling emails that went out wrong, but in this case the familiarity of the button placement may have lulled many Gmail regulars into a false sense of security. Google, to its credit, has been open to feedback and has acted quickly to remove the feature. Here’s the company statement, emoji included we’re told: Well, it looks like we pranked ourselves this year. 😟 Due to a bug, the MicDrop feature inadvertently caused more headaches than laughs. We’re truly sorry. The feature has been turned off. If you are still seeing it, please reload your Gmail page. We pressed Google on the “bug,” and a spokesperson explained “in a very few cases” the MicDrop feature could appear in future emails even if the user hadn’t specifically pressed the button. Lesson here for would-be pranksters and particularly smaller companies with limited resources: spend your time building your product not a gag, because even the best in the business can get it horribly wrong sometimes. Cancel your startup's unfunny April Fools planning, donate the time & budget to something worthwhile. Bask in the good vibes. — Anil Dash (@anildash) |
Krablr pivots to crab pricing messaging app for millennials | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | started off as a promising real-time crab pricing engine for amateur fishermen. After a long beta period and with Sequoia leading the round and Scranton Angels also investing, the startup is pivoting to focus on millennials going forward. “We really thought we could disrupt the way crab pricing is done,” Stanford graduate and Krablr co-founder Paul Paulson Black III told TechCrunch. “But, at the end of the day, we took a step back and wondered — do we have a good product/market fit?” The answer was a resounding no. Krablr now wants to be the next generation of crab-pricing-meet-messaging app — and Krablr’s next generation product is VR ready. “Krablr knows the crab industry inside out,” Krablr advisor John Blarggs said. “I truly believe these kids found the perfect sweet spot.” Here’s how Krablr works. After installing the app, Krablr gives you access to the best marketplace of millennial crab lovers. The startup automagically finds Krablr users around you. If there’s a match, you can discuss crab pricing at length. Krablr helps you set a fair price by forcing you to exclusively use the emoji keyboard. You can also take selfies. Once you agree, a Krablr driver will come and pick up some fresh crabs and deliver them to the buyer — think Uber for del.icio.us crabs. And if you’re a very excited, impatient, insufferable buyer, the Krablr driver is wearing three GoPros on the official “Make Crabbing Great Again” cap so that you can you see your crabs in virtual reality. What’s next for the company? “Leading up to our Series B, we’re already thinking about implementing a SaaS model with premium in-app features,” Black said. “For instance, you could subscribe for $29 per user per month and install the premium Krablr Slackbot for your entire company — also stickers.” Does Krablr have a chance? Or are they going for an acqui-hire? According to App Annie, comScore, Mattermark and Matty Ponzirano’s sneaker collection, Krablr is a top-tier crab startup. When asked why they were focusing on millennials, they texted me “ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ” Krablr will stay in private beta a bit more but is launching soon once they can eradicate some crab bugs that are causing food poisoning. Sign up for the beta at . |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,016 | 4 | 1 | null |
Fintech’s $138 billion opportunity | Ryan Falvey | 2,016 | 4 | 6 |
is in the midst of a golden age of investment and innovation. According to , investments in f startups doubled between 2014 and 2015, to $14 . However, comparatively little of this money has been focused on the to disrupt alternative financial services in the United States. This lack of focus is damaging America’s financial health. So why hasn’t f done more to meet this vast market need? Part of the reason is that many of the design methodologies that have become common practice in the last decade — the “lean startup” ethos, rapid prototyping and rigorous a/b testing — are much harder to deploy in consumer financial services, where regulations and legal requirements are often interpreted as limiting innovation. As Max Klein, co-founder and CEO of , a company that helps consumers manage their cash flow put it, “We’ve proven we can attract and engage users. That’s easy compared to getting set up with a bank partner to actually service those accounts.” Those entrepreneurs who do attempt to tackle the financial services industry face the added burden of convincing a bank, business partners and investors that their new model is not only viable, but also legal and scalable. It’s this last part that is particularly challenging when many investors, who are often wealthy, have very little awareness of this critical market need. “It was easier to get onto the Steve Harvey show and pitch my product to millions of potential customers than it is to get some VCs to understand that this is a real market,” says Nicole Sanchez of , a company that helps consumers correct inaccuracies on their credit reports. Beyond the more obvious deterrents, traditional accelerator models are often not sufficiently long enough — or focused enough — to give founders the time, resources and insight required to launch products and see them scale. This very dynamic was behind 500 Startups’ recent launch of a financial services-focused cohort, and Techstars’ widely respected partnership with Barclays. For those that raise capital successfully, the path from Series A through growth rounds gets no less difficult as entrepreneurs find themselves dedicating significant time and money to legal and regulatory compliance, often rebuilding business processes in order to scale. Unique challenges exist in f that simply don’t exist in other markets. In financial technology, in order to build the product so it can work, you have to work with the incumbents, with whom — by definition — you are competing. CFSI and JPMorgan Chase launched the in 2015 to provide additional support for this ecosystem. Our first program, launched in June of 2015, sought companies who had solutions that could help Americans better manage household cash flows. One year in, the companies in the Lab have added well over 100,000 new users and raised more than $80 million in additional capital. Most importantly, consumers are benefiting: Across the user base of our companies, savings rates are up, credit scores are increasing and debt loads are declining. This year we hope to follow on that success by of startups and nonprofits that are building the future of financial services. In particular, we’re interested in products that help consumers weather financial shocks — things that can help consumers anticipate and manage the unexpected expected shocks that all of us encounter, whether it’s a car repair, job loss, trip to the ER or long-term illness. Think about it: Every car, eventually, breaks down. So why don’t we have insurance products or more accessible savings/credit instruments that anticipate this eventuality? Durable goods purchases — things like a washer and dryer — are another example. There aren’t great products that help people plan and purchase these expensive items, especially considering how little savings the average American has. There is great potential in insurance — private disability insurance, job-interruption products, even helping consumers better plan and manage more conventional insurance. These are all areas of life where one could imagine a tech-based solution, and one where some solutions exist. is pioneering the use of Income Share Agreements, so consumer payments go down when a big shock happens. Products like and allow consumers to pull their earned income forward. Meanwhile, the team at is helping consumers stay on top of bills and more quickly pay off debt -– so they have more of a cushion to absorb life’s shocks. There is no shortage of ideas and capable entrepreneurial teams. The same trends that are powering the explosion of consumer technology — mobile engagement, improved data analysis and new customer acquisition models — are also breaking down some of the historical barriers to entry in financial services and enabling completely new approaches to engaging and serving customers. A better future of consumer financial services is possible — one where providers compete on the ability of their products to improve the financial health of their consumers. But for that reality to come to fruition, all of us in f — financial institutions, regulators, founders and investors — need to recognize the financial health problem American consumers are facing and work together to realize the innovation that’s possible. Can we do it? That’s the question. |
IBM, Pfizer launch joint experiment to help measure Parkinson’s symptoms using IoT and analytics | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | What happens when you put a technology company together with a drug company and try to come up with unique new ways to understand Parkinson’s disease? You end up with a project that uses sensors on the body and in the home to provide continuous measurement of a patient’s symptoms and the impact they have on that person’s daily life, something that’s almost impossible to do right now. Trying to track Parkinson’s symptoms is difficult today because they can vary widely throughout the day and doctors only see their patients on a periodic basis, says Ajay Royyuro, director of the Computational Biology Center at IBM Research. This makes any kind of meaningful measurement of the disease a challenge for patients, doctors and researchers. To compensate for this, doctors may ask patients to keep symptom diaries, but these can be spotty or subjective and can’t provide a complete objective picture of an individual patient’s particular set of symptoms when dealing with the disease on a daily basis. That’s why IBM and Pfizer have come up with this experiment, and it’s very much an experiment right now, to place sensors around the home and on the body of an individual giving off a continuous stream of data, that will be collected and compiled in some sort of data dashboard to make sense of the onslaught of information that a program like this could produce. Pfizer’s role has to do with the drugs being used to treat the disease. Today, the dosage is an art and science trying to find that perfect dosage pattern throughout a day. It’s impossible to do without a continuous assessment and the goal is that through these experiments the team can create a program that would allow that flow of data from the patient to their medical team and provide more pinpoint dosing. “We have an opportunity to potentially redefine how we think about patient outcomes and 24/7 monitoring, by combining Pfizer’s scientific, medical and regulatory expertise with IBM’s ability to integrate and interpret complex data in innovative ways,” Mikael Dolsten president of Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development said in a statement. For starters, the experiment will take place at IBM’s research center where they plan to build an experimental apartment complete with kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room and begin testing different sensors in the space, working with people who have Parkinson’s as well as healthy people to provide a clear view how a range of people react to this kind of measuring. While the sensors in the living area would signal activities like entering a room, opening a cabinet and so forth, the body sensors would provide more precise measurements of the person’s activity within the given room. The hope is to eventually take this experiment out of the lab and find an ideal sensor pack that’s cost-effective and easy to set up and maintain in a large number of houses. If they succeed, they would conduct a real clinical trial, which Pfizer would help set up and administer. Such a trial would not just involve the sensors, but also the requirements of any clinical trial, Royyuro explained. The goal then would be not just to monitor symptoms, but measure how well a set of therapies would work when combined with the monitoring tools. “The solution has to scale. It has as to be robust enough to deploy in patient’s home and simultaneously do that in hundreds or even thousands of homes,” he explained. IBM’s interest here isn’t strictly altruistic. It also sees a business opportunity involving big data, analytics, the cloud and internet of things, but ultimately it is about improving the lives of people through technology. “I think there is real opportunity here to make a difference in the lives of patients. I have seen and have close contact with a family member with Parkinson’s and I can see how effective it would be to have this real-time symptomatic measurement and helping them make their lives better,” he said. |
Tech imitates art in a 3D printed fake Rembrandt based on the old master’s style | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | To attempt to create a program that successfully imitates the style of one of the greatest painters of all time is hubristic and doomed to fail, but those characteristics are just like catnip to the men and women at the bleeding edge of tech — and the result of their labors is remarkable and compelling. But is it art? (Yes. It’s definitely art.) is the name of the project, which was sponsored by ING and Microsoft and supported by the Delft University of Technology and several museums. If you can tease the story out of the , you’ll find a very cool multi-disciplinary effort that could as little do without its art historians as its image analysts. Rembrandt van Rijn’s entire body of work was analyzed for useful data on color, dress, topic, demographics, composition and all the rest. The researchers found the most data for white men with the standard 17th-century loadout of black suit, white collar and whiskers. More data often makes for better outputs, and in this case it would be a familiar subject, easy to compare with similar portraits. Next came the close analysis of individual features of his figures and paintings — what facial geometry did he prefer? At what angle from the viewer? How were individual strokes executed and groups of strokes organized? With all this information in hand, the system produced new features, then organized them into a face and figure that would feel at home with its centuries-old colleagues — unfortunately, little was revealed about the technical aspects here. We were curious enough to ask for more, but while we wait, you can hear from some of the developers in this video: The painting was then summoned to the physical plane using a special 3D printer that reproduced something of the texture and craquelure one would expect of a painting from that era. No word on what the plan is for this interesting application of technology to art, but we’ll let you know if we hear it’s on tour. Could a trained art historian tell the difference between this wholesale fabrication and a real Rembrandt? Almost certainly, but that’s not really the point. Data so often thought of in subjective terms (the quality of light or nuance of expression is not easily quantified) was organized into a system and produced a synthetic painting of considerable merit, and probably, now that it has done it once, could do so a dozen more times with relative ease. Chances are, of course, this particular system would choke on a multi-figure painting, a landscape, or pretty much anything by an impressionist, post-Raphaelite or Cubist — we’ll leave Dada and Yellowism out of this discussion for now. (That said, the hallucinatory deep dreams of convolutional neural networks suggest computers have their own impressions to impress on the world.) Whatever the case, this project acts as powerful foundational work in the creation of what could in a few years be a successful generalized art-imitation machine. Get ready for some hard questions on aesthetics then. Isn’t it all just fascinating (and a little bit sublime)? Kudos to all involved in the 18-month process; here’s hoping the work has advanced the tech of capturing and preserving the original, “real” works, as well. |
Sharethrough grades your headlines with its new Hemingway tool | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | Ask most writers and editors and I’ll bet they agree: Writing headlines is hard. It’s not easy to come up with something exciting and attention-grabbing that also conveys the important information about a story in just a few words. Meanwhile, brands and marketers are creating more of their own content, so they have to worry about this, too. Native advertising company is trying to help with a new, free product called , which will look at a headline, grade it and offer suggestions for improvement. Sharethrough CEO Dan Greenberg told me that the aim isn’t to make sure every piece of marketing and content suddenly comes with a cookie-cutter, Upworthy-style headline. Instead, he suggested that we’re entering “this new era of straightforwardness,” where “a good headline is not a headline that hints at something, it’s one that says what it wants to say.” After all, those “You won’t believe what happened next!” headlines are really designed to drive clicks — but even then, only a tiny percentage of people who see them are actually going to click through. So doesn’t it make sense to write a headline that gets your message across, even if people don’t read the article or watch the video? And that’s particularly true if you’re a marketer trying to promote a brand, rather than a news publication trying to make money from ad impressions. “If I’m Tesla or Volvo, I can live in the headlines,” Greenberg said. “I don’t care if someone comes to my website. I want people learning things about me and coming up with new opinions about my products.” That all sounds good in theory, but how does Hemingway apply that in practice? Greenberg said it’s applying to measure the effectiveness of mobile ads and basically translating that into best practices and a score. (There are also sub-scores, one focusing on engagement and one on maximizing brand lift for people who see the headline but don’t click.) Naturally, I had to try this out for myself. I ran through the system. The results were not flattering, with every single one of them graded as “average.” (I suppose there are plenty of TechCrunch readers who’d be on-board with that assessment.) I even tried out the headline for this very article. It got a score of 70 — in the positive column, Hemingway noted that I didn’t use too much positive sentiment, did mention a brand and used active language. On the negative side, it suggested that I increase the headline length, use more “context words” and hey, why not throw a celebrity in there? Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of the right celebrity. |
Google’s Torrence Boone joins the board of stock footage marketplace Pond5 | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | , a company allowing users to buy and sell stock videos, photos and other media content, is adding to its board of directors a big name from ad industry — , Google’s vice president of global agency sales and services. Boone comes from the ad agency world, having previously worked at WPP, Publicis and Avenue A. His appointment could help Pond5 make further inroads into striking partnerships with agencies, brands and creators. Not that the company has done too badly on that front — it’s been used by organizations and artists including Vice, MTV, HBO and Macklemore/Ryan Lewis. It even got on John Oliver’s . Boone told me Pond5 is well-positioned thanks to many of the broader changes in the marketing industry: “You look at this hyper-fragmented world, with the need for quick turnaround and much more cost-efficient production capabilities. They’ve built this technology platform that addresses all of those secular shifts and it’s created this pipeline of independent creators.” And while there are plenty of other stock footage and photo providers, including , co-CEO Ryan Scott said Pond5 stands out thanks to things like its early focus on video and its “artist-first” philosophy — for example, allowing the creators to set their own prices. In addition to announcing Boone’s appointment, Pond5 is celebrating the upload of its five millionth video, which comes from , who will get a B&H gift certificate. Looking ahead, the company is planning to move into 360-degree video for use in virtual reality content — in fact, the team gave me a quick demo of some early VR content and it looked great, allowing me to explore a number of different locations across the country (maybe the world?) in just a few minutes. |
Yik Yak’s CTO drops out as the hyped anonymous app stagnates | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | Is Yik Yak a thing anymore? Not so much, according to download stats, traffic charts, surveys and a source that says the college app’s monthly user count has been declining. That source — with intimate knowledge of the company — also tipped me off that ‘s original CTO has bailed, which the startup now confirms. Yik Yak’s long-time CTO Tom Chernetsky just left the company He’s not the only one who thinks the supposed rocket ship won’t fly as high as some expected when Sequoia led a mammoth $62 million at $400 million valuation in November 2014. Since late last year, Yik Yak’s VP of Product, Director of Engineering, Lead Product Designer and other senior employees have departed. However, the hometown CTO’s departure could have been catalyzed by the recruitment of seasoned Google Director of Engineering , funded by the Sequoia cash. Morrissey leads engineering at Yik Yak, and Chernetsky might not have enjoyed being in his shadow. But it’d be hard to leave an exec role at a startup if everything was up and up. It seems that the luster of posting anonymous gossip, jokes and bullying may be wearing off, as it did for Yik Yak’s dead cousin Secret. My source says Yik Yak has built a direct messaging feature that it’s preparing to release, but even jumping into the chat sphere might not be enough to revitalize the wounded animal. Months after Sequoia pumped a ton of cash into the Atlanta startup, download rates and traffic began to drop, according to App Annie and comScore charts dug up by . Things have gotten worse since, as from its charts last March, likely due to hate speech in the app. This week, shows Yik Yak sank to No. 63 on the download charts amongst U.S. social networking apps and just No. 1067 amongst all U.S. iOS apps. That’s compared to No. 21 in social and No. 141 overall on April 3, 2014, No. 26 in social and No. 300 overall this date last year and a peak of No. 2 in social and No. 3 overall in September 2014. While comScore’s exact numbers aren’t always accurate, the directional trends are typically reliable. They show a decline starting in late 2014. Now comScore pegs Yik Yak at 1.76 million monthly mobile users over 18, essentially flat from 16 months ago. A small survey last month didn’t place Yik Yak in the top 15 apps amongst college students after once being the big startup on campus. These stats all mesh with what my source says, which is that Yik Yak has had zero significant growth in over a year, and consistently misses its growth targets. They cite 4 million monthly active users as the count in January, noting the number has declined since then, though I can’t confirm that exact number. The lack of more obvious growth is also worrisome considering Yik Yak has quietly begun pushing for international usage in English-speaking countries like Ireland and Australia. The startup initially tried to block overseas users until it was ready, according to this great history of the startup written by . Naturally, Yik Yak PR defended the company, insisting that “growth and usage is very strong.” They claim the number of active colleges on the app is now at 2,000 and counting, and the company is hiring. But without more concrete metrics to counter publicly available data, it’s tough to drink that Kool-Aid. To become a powerful social network that can survive on ad revenue, Yik Yak would have to get a lot bigger. Right now it might only have one-third of the 12.2 million U.S. college students on board. But even turning them all into loyal Yakkers might not be enough to justify its valuation. The problem with anonymous apps is that over time they start to feel exhausting. The crude stories, played-out jokes stolen from Reddit and cringe-worthy bullying wear on people. While they might have a few juicy quips of their own to share, blowing off steam can eventually feel pointless. That’s why my Secret and Yik Yak usage dried up. Yik Yak’s product has continued to plod along, despite some colleges’ attempts to ban the app for . But nothing has made it feel fresh again. Yik Yak began allowing last July, and launched a in January. Then, in a move that seemed to confuse some users into thinking Yik Yak was no longer anonymous, it opened the option to post from a handle/screen name rather than having always have no identification attached to a post. That last feature unlocks what could be a make-or-break feature for Yik Yak — chat. According to my source, Yik Yak plans to open private messaging between handles, so if someone says they’re lonely, kids could try to cheer them up (or shamelessly hit on them). Or if they think someone has been through a similar situation they could celebrate or commiserate with them. Chat has proven to make apps stickier and Yik Yak could use the retention, judging by the charts. The startup will have to find some way to break out big time beyond the U.S. college market, despite refusing to allow high-schoolers in to prevent more bullying. Luckily since the startup is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, its employees are less likely to get poached by other tech companies than they would be in Silicon Valley. But maintaining morale must be tough. All college kids seem to talk about these days is Snapchat and Instagram, when a few years ago it was Yik Yak on the tips of their fingers. |
Smartling acquires Jargon to help mobile developers ready their apps for international markets | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | , the translation tech company, has acquired TechStars alumni which makes tools for mobile developers who want to “localize” their apps for different international markets, and the devices and app stores that are relevant in each one. New York-based Smartling is known for its “translation management system” software, and marketplace of professional translators. Its software feels a bit like a mainstream content management system like WordPress, but with features built around managing translation tasks like hiring an appropriately skilled translator, and reviewing and revising translations before publishing them where customers can see them. According to Smartling Chief Executive and founder , with the all-cash deal, Smartling extended job offers to Jargon’s entire team, but founder and CEO AJ Cihla is moving on to new projects. Smartling will immediately integrate Jargon’s technology into its own cloud-based software, allowing clients to preview translated content and graphic user interface elements within their mobile apps before they are pushed out to end-users. That can make a big difference to a U.S. company that wants to make its app available to German users, for example. Welde said, “German is kind of notorious for longer words that can throw off a beautiful app design, and in extreme cases, even break an app.” A web page that says “404 Error — File Not Found,” in English would read “Error 404. Datei nicht gefunden das angegebene dokument konnte auf diesem server leider nicht gefundenwerden,” in German. And a button that says “Try Again,” would read “Versuch es noch einmal,” in German. Jargon’s technology also allows companies, and now Smartling customers, to get translated apps out to customers before they even download a new version through a mobile store. Its “over the air” updates are delivered to a mobile user’s phone via wifi or cellular connections before a company issues an entirely new app version to download. Executives declined to disclose a price for the acquisition. In 2014, Smartling raised $25 million in venture funding in a Series D round led by and Smartling’s earlier institutional backers , , , , and The company’s reported valuation is north of $250 million. |
How to deal with IoT challenges through abstraction | Ben Dickson | 2,016 | 4 | 6 |
The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the tech industry. Yet the way IoT is evolving : There are too many and competing trends and technologies that must be managed when developing IoT solutions. Many of these concerns tend to get overlooked as manufacturers rush to ship new products to market, and, therefore, too much proprietary code is being used in IoT products. As a result, products sold to consumers contain and cannot adapt to the changes that will overcome their environment and ecosystem in the months and years to come. One practical approach that could help deal with the complexities of IoT would be the use of the concept of “separation of concerns” and “abstraction” in order to create solutions that can deal with security issues and diversities at different levels, while also being flexible in the face of constant changes. In the seminal book, “ ,” Grady Booch, a pioneer in software engineering, explains how to deal with complexities in software development through the use of techniques such as decomposition (breaking complex problems into smaller pieces) and abstraction (ignoring the inessential details of things and dealing with the generalized interface of the model). These concepts have been at the heart of successful programming-in-the-large for years, and can also become the basis of creating successful and scalable IoT solutions. By isolating the functional and infrastructural aspects of IoT, we can help developers avoid reinventing the wheel for every product and instead focus on main functionalities — while making sure critical aspects such as security are handled correctly. Here are some practical examples of how this can happen. The advent of object-oriented programming (OOP) minimized the “representational gap,” allowing programmers to create software components that mapped to actual objects and concepts in the problem domain. This is an idea that is easily implemented in the software domain, but gets trickier when you’re dealing with IoT systems distributed across networks of devices that vary in hardware and software underpinnings. The Open Distributed Object Framework (OpenDOF) is an adaptation of OOP for distributed systems. Programmers focus on developing IoT solutions at an abstraction level that represents devices, while the framework handles the mechanics of communications and security. By separating the connectivity and security of IoT from its logic and functionality, OpenDOF allows the two aspects to evolve and change without breaking each other. “An application programmer should not need to know or care about where functionality is actually provided,” says Bryant Eastham, President of . “A good abstraction layer, securely providing separation of concerns, is critical to any IoT API.” At its core, OpenDOF is a set of libraries that allows developers to create interface and object modules representing actual devices, register instances of those devices and allow controlled access and discovery through the use of authentication servers. Objects can exist independently and interact with each other without being affected by implementation details and changes that take place over time. Abstractions also address security issues by restricting device communications to a finite set of public contacts, and preventing devices from “touching each others’ private parts,” as the OOP jargon goes. OpenDOF’s flexibility makes it deployable across a wide range of IoT devices, programming languages and transports. As Eastham explains, a minimal secure implementation of the framework “can run with no OS, no memory management, and in less than 64KB of code.” It can also dynamically adapt to different network settings, including “peer-to-peer as well as local gateways and cloud deployments, all seamless to the application,” Eastham adds. Tech giant Panasonic has already adopted OpenDOF on several projects and has published the , which is an OpenDOF-compatible large-scale cloud solution. With IoT ecosystems potentially accounting for thousands and millions of devices, device identification and authentication becomes key in preventing malicious man-in-the-middle, key compromise and identity-spoofing attacks. Yet, meeting these requirements present some challenges in the IoT world, including the vast differences of device capabilities in implementing different key-exchange and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) standards. , a tech firm providing trusted identity and security solutions, has addressed this problem by offering device identification and authentication as a cloud-based service, enabling IoT developers to focus on their core competencies and integrate security into their IoT systems regardless of the underlying capabilities of their devices. “Identity is key for building trust in any internet environment, and will only become more important as the IoT starts to take off into some real deployment stages,” says Lancen LaChance, Vice President, IoT Identity Solutions for GlobalSign. GlobalSign’s PKI solutions are designed to scale with manufacturers’ needs based on the velocity, variety and volume of their IoT platforms, and can manage the identities of millions of devices. GlobalSign has partnered with hardware manufacturer to produce HSMs (hardware security modules) compatible with its cloud service, which provide safe storage of keys and implementation of security and identification on the device side. The delivery of easily attachable security modules and services by tech firms that have experience in network and device security provides IoT developers with an opportunity to improve production and security in parallel. LaChance suggests that when it comes to IoT security, implementations should stand on “the shoulder of giants” and leverage proven and widely deployed approaches as much as possible. While it’s true that minimal devices impact solution design, LaChance highlights that PKI is possible to deploy even in many constrained environments leveraging alternative algorithms and key sizes. IoT systems are communication-intensive. Every second that passes, thousands and millions of messages are being exchanged between devices and sent to servers for storage, analytics and reporting purposes. These messages pass over a multitude of transports and protocols before reaching their destination, and there are no real standards to work with, which makes the development environment much more challenging. Moreover, IoT developers usually come from an embedded systems programming background with little or no experience in handling connected systems and large databases, thus they must create ad hoc solutions that are hard to develop, cannot adapt to changes that take place in their environments and lead to serious security issues. “Many of these challenges can be addressed by abstracting to cloud-based services,” explains Natasha Tamaskar, Vice President and Head of Cloud and Mobile Strategy and Ecosystem for , a communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) that provides secure transmission, storage and sharing of data between device and cloud. The platform can be scaled for a wide range of products through API calls and SDKs. Having an easy-to-use and secure device communication API can save IoT developers a lot of headaches and help them focus on functionality. Relying on a specialized cloud platform is also important from a security perspective, Tamaskar explains. “Purpose-built API architecture lends itself to security,” she says, detailing how Kandy is designed to enhance IoT communication security through application isolation, giving API-only access to data and using end-to-end encryption to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks between the device and cloud. Its underlying role and authentication mechanisms also control subscriber access to API calls. Kandy has already found many use cases in IoT, including wearables, healthcare products and patient diagnostics and control systems. This is one of the most holistic approaches to meeting IoT development challenges, in which communications, security and storage are abstracted into flexible components that can evolve and change without affecting the core logic of the running software. Having a reliable and unified platform that puts the pieces of the IoT puzzle together will allow developers to focus on logic and functionality. Joe Britt, co-founder and CEO of tech startup , explains how his company’s flagship platform achieves this goal. “In IoT, there is tremendous dynamic range in device capabilities,” says Britt. “At the low end we have devices with very small micro controllers and little storage while at the high end, we have things with substantial computing resources and complex software.” Afero is a combination of hardware, software, development tools and cloud services that provide an end-to-end platform for IoT devices. It has been crafted to deal with the many diversities of IoT transparently. “Across this spectrum there is a desire to have reliable and secure connectivity. Afero was designed to help with new product development whether it leveraged a legacy design or a greenfield design,” says Britt. Afero has also been created with a focus on security, which is one of the top concerns of IoT. Instead of using direct connections — which happen to be one of the main channels attackers use to gain unauthorized access to a device’s memory space and data — device communications are abstracted through Afero’s cloud service. The Afero Profile Editor (APE) offers an intuitive user interface that enables developers to register devices and define the attributes to expose to outside clients. “The developer focuses on what information to present as cloud APIs and a user interface,” Britt explains. “The rest is handled by the Afero platform.” This includes finding the path to the cloud and establishing secure communications, which is achieved through a combination of encryption protocols. Afero has also been equipped with features to prevent pattern recognition and replay attacks, two types of hacks that do not require decryption keys and are very common in IoT systems that have long-running sessions. Afero is already being used by healthcare IT provider and toy maker giant . Abstraction and separation of concerns have proven their worth time and again in dealing with and breaking down complexities and inconsistencies in very large and distributed systems. These are concepts that have distinct and important use cases in the volatile and constantly changing landscape of the IoT industry, and their application can help it go smoothly through its growing stages. |
The Silicon Valley of Transylvania | Bryan Martin | 2,016 | 4 | 6 |
Romania has long been a hotbed for tech companies outsourcing contact centers, software development and even research and development. Now, Romania is growing its own entrepreneurial culture. The online database lists 300 home-grown startups in the country, up from about 250 a year ago. The sector is also seeing more incubators, angel investors and founders — almost 600 total. Although the tech startup scene is nascent, it is growing — and several of the up-and-coming companies are potential game changers. Vector Watch, which has its engineering team based in Romania, has created a smartwatch with a 30-day battery life. Axosuits is a Romanian robotics startup focused on creating affordable exoskeletons for people with disabilities. Large tech companies certainly have their eyes on what’s coming out of Romania, too. In 2014, Facebook acquired ad technology startup LiveRail, which was co-founded by two Romanians. In 2013, Avangate, a Bucharest-based commerce outfit, was bought by San Francisco’s Francisco Partners. In 2012, Twitter acquired Summify, a Vancouver-based company started by Romanian entrepreneurs. And in 2015, we acquired Quality Software Corporation for their leading quality management software capabilities and deep engineering talent. All told, data from market researcher Thomson Reuters indicates 16 Romanian tech and telecom companies were acquired in the last three years. Thirteen other Romanian media and entertainment companies were snapped up, too. Outsourcing continues to be a big draw in Romania. Companies, including Intel and Oracle, have set up shop there, investing in call centers, software development and support services. They’ve been drawn to Romania by the same forces that will help drive the development of Romania’s own tech industry, including: The labor market research firm that Romania, with just 20 million people, ranks in the top 10 globally in number of certified IT specialists — 95,000, about half of whom are software developers. And almost 90 percent of Romania’s IT professionals speak English. Romania’s Association of Software and IT Services expects to triple Romania’s IT workforce by 2020. The country’s universities have been in the top three in the IEEE Design Competition every year since 2001. What’s more, the country has more Informatics and Math Olympiad medals than any other European nation, and was third globally after Russia and China, according to Brainspotting’s 2014 report. . Romania is one of the fastest growing economies in the EU and has consistently been one of the over the last 20 years, the World Bank says. The country also routinely ranks high in terms of Internet speed. In high schools, entrepreneurship classes are now common, says Junior Achievement Romania, a nonprofit organization that teaches entrepreneurial skills to young people. It is not surprising that the tech startup culture is small in Romania. Private enterprise, despised and banned by the former communist regime, only emerged with the onset of democratic change about two decades ago. Since then, Romania, like its neighbors, has relied heavily on foreign investment to rebuild. The Romanian government has also put a focus on technology. Since 2001, the country has tax-exempted IT workers depending on the contribution of their employer. That’s made the sector even more enticing to a continuing stream of new workers. Romania is one of Europe’s poorest nations. IT salaries there are often three times (or more) the norm, last year. Romania’s past has also helped develop its IT strength, Red Herring noted. The country was identified in the Soviet Union’s stratified economic plan as the eastern bloc country that was supposed to create the IT computers. “That gave us a head start,” said Romanian tech entrepreneur and investor, Radu Georgescu, in the Red Herring article. Georgescu’s company, GeCAD software, developed RAV Antivirus. It was sold to Microsoft in 2003. That deal is often held up to illustrate the beginning of Romania’s tech sector potential. Today, Bucharest, the capital city, is home to more than half the country’s IT workforce, Brainspotting says. It houses such companies as Oracle, Intel, IBM and Adobe. But Cluj — the country’s second-largest city — is also generating buzz. A recent article in asked in a headline whether Cluj is “Europe’s Silicon Valley?” Brainspotting notes that the demand for IT talent in Cluj exceeds the talent pool. The city is clearly looking to build on that traction. Cluj Innovation City is a major project for the city and the region. It aims to bring together local authorities, universities and the business community to foster development of the tech sector — not unlike what seems to have organically occurred in Silicon Valley decades ago with Stanford University, pioneering tech companies and the venture capital community. Still, as many have noted, Romania has some big hurdles to overcome to truly become a tech hub. Access to capital is slim. The risk-taking culture is nascent. The government bureaucracy is strong and legislation that supports startups is lacking. Yet every shift has to begin somewhere, and from what we see, there’s one afoot in Romania. |
Y Combinator flirts with having Hacker News community pick Fellowship companies | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | Upvotes! What are they good for? Soon, they might get your very, very early-stage company into Y Combinator. The incubator is experimenting with using the Hacker News community to pick startups for its Fellowship program. HN moderator Daniel Gackle, AKA dang, with initial details: Perhaps if HN picked startups, it would pick differently than YC. Maybe different startups would be motivated to apply, if they knew that the interviewing and deciding would be done by the HN community. Interesting things might happen, or they might not. We’d have to try it and see. So they’re going to do just that, in a limited fashion. At least two startups will be chosen via “Apply HN” posts, which will work like the existing “Show HN” — but moderation will be more strict (or less moderate, if you like) and YC entry officials will be scrutinizing the conversation. Gackle and Kevin Hale, who runs the Fellowship program, suggest critics “be nice.” Your submission should be very early stage, no investment, but ready to have the tires kicked. You should be ready to go full-time on it for eight weeks. At the end of April, the submissions will be ranked by upvotes and the “quality of discussion,” (tiebreakers TBA). Chosen ideas or projects will join this summer’s , which awards $20,000 (at the price of 1.5 percent equity) and the mentorship of experts at the accelerator (priceless). It’s unlikely anyone really thinks this will go off without a hitch — putting real money and opportunity in the hands of the hoi polloi rarely does — but $40,000 is a small investment for YC to find out whether this could be an interesting way to entice young, impressionable startups into their lair. The discussion is ongoing at . Go be nice! |
Reddit introduces user-blocking tool to fight harassment and trolls | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | is looking to shape itself a bit more around the needs of the individual user in order to make the community more accepting as a whole. Reddit users will soon be able to block and mute other users on the site so they can customize their experience, reports. Reddit co-founder Christopher Slowe detailed the changes in an on the site this morning. Slowe chatted briefly about how powerful the platform’s openness has been, but how a need has been growing to more effectively protect users from harassment. “…Sometimes this very openness can lead to less awesome stuff like spam, trolling, and worse, harassment. We work hard to deal with these when they occur publicly,” Slowe wrote. “Today, we’re happy to announce that we’ve just released a feature to help you filter them from within your own inbox: user blocking.” This feature is just the latest effort by the site to get a bit more proactive in serving user needs. Reddit has been updating internal processes and policies fairly frequently since Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman returned to the company in the role of CEO this past summer. Slowe detailed in his post that Reddit actually had a pretty rudimentary blocking system in place before today, but it was more focused on muting private messages from specific users. The interesting caveat of this blocking feature is that the offending user actually has to interact with you directly in order to be available to block. If someone is trolling other users endlessly in posts you follow, you pretty much have to grin and bear it or try to coax that user to reply to you directly. Blocked users aren’t notified about the muting so they’ll be less likely to create an alternative account to continue the harassment, Slowe detailed. Reddit, to most of its users, is an “Internet democracy” in a sincere sense. What this means is that good content is upvoted by its users to the top of a post while bad content is downvoted into oblivion. This new blocking feature sort of throws a kink into that system and may trigger users to just block an offending user rather than downvote them. This feature could perhaps then leave room for trolls to become even more visible to new users unaware of the blocking features. Slowe maintains this is simply v1 of this feature and the admin team is still looking at a good deal of other options to more effectively protect users and let them protect themselves. “Our changes to user blocking are intended to let you decide what your boundaries are,” Slowe wrote. “And to give you the option to what you want — or don’t want — to be exposed to.” |
This new app lets you express your feelings with video memes, not GIFs | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | Today, GIFs have become a popular way communicate sentiment online and in mobile messaging, where written text doesn’t always do the job. More expressive than an emoji, these looping images let you share a specific thought or feeling with little effort. But today, a new app is launching to see if video can step in where GIFs leave off, by allowing for a different means of expression. The app, rather generically called “ ,” lets you take a short video clip, add your own caption, then share. The idea for A Video Meme App comes from two college friends, Jake Ferrin and Chris Weinberger, who met while playing lacrosse at BYU. Explains Ferrin, they both found themselves referencing movies and YouTube videos in their digital conversations. “How we talked was in quoting videos,” says Ferrin. They initially came up with an idea to build a website and app that would allow users to search for videos, trim them, then share them in conversations. However, this app ran into a roadblock with Apple’s App Store because it involved downloading content in order to allow for the video trimming feature. (You can still trim videos on the , however. And many users continue to use the prior application to fill out this one’s content library with their truncated clips.) With the newly launched app, trimming videos is no longer an issue. Instead of requiring users to do their own video edits – something not all the app’s prior user base was doing anyway – you can now just search for videos, add your own captions, then share them as you see fit. The app itself is straightforward to use, and you don’t have to create an account to get started. After launching it for the first time, a feed of featured videos will display. This is an editorially selected group of around 20 or so clips with captions that you can immediately view and share. For example, today, there’s a clip of the genie from “Aladdin” turning himself into a sheep with the caption, “Well I feel sheepish.” Another features a string of Donald Trump clips in which he repeatedly asks “What’s going on?” Elsewhere in the app, you can browse the latest videos, the full library of some 5,000 clips, or you can browse categories like “Excited,” “Love,” “LOL,” “Angry,” etc. When you find a video you like, you can choose to add your own caption, then share it to iMessage or Messenger, as well as other networks like Facebook, Twitter, Slack, GroupMe and more. Videos are shared in MP4 format, which is why iMessage and Messenger are promoted more heavily. On those platforms, they will play in-line. You can also save your creations to your Camera Roll for posting on other networks, like Instagram. [gallery ids="1303231,1303230,1303233,1303229"] Essentially, these annotated videos serve the same purpose as a GIF – they let you use media as a means of expression. However, there isn’t really an app that lets you do this today. Vine, guesses Ferrin, would be the closest competitor to A Video Meme app, as its users will sometimes record the TV screen to show what they’re watching then add a Vine caption. “But [these Vine videos are] not searchable – no one can find that or use it again,” he says. “As far as competitors, I don’t know if there’s anyone who’s doing exactly what we’re doing.” Now the test is to see whether captioning and sharing videos is something that people actually to do, and if there’s room for this form of expression in a world where GIFs already dominate. A Video Meme App is . |
Rev3 Founder David Prager forms new fund, Monstro Ventures, to back early-stage tech startups | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | The team behind Monstro is launching a new microfund called , according to co-founder David Prager. For the unfamiliar, is an ad agency with headquarters in Oakland and another office in Los Angeles that specializes in video creative, including videos that get hype going around crowdfunding or launches of new tech products. Prager is best-known as the founder of , acquired by Discovery Communications in 2012. Rev3, as it is sometimes called, was an early player in Web TV, whose programs then and now cover niche topics in tech, gaming and other areas of pop culture. The entrepreneur-turned-investor told TechCrunch that Monstro Ventures’ first fund clocks in under $5 million. Prager, along with Monstro execs Mauricio Balvanera and Dalton Crosthwait, intend to invest in companies that can benefit from their marketing and creative expertise but already have a well-thought-out product road map and marketing plan. Limited partners in Monstro Ventures include familiar names in tech and media, including Prager’s Revision 3 co-founder Kevin Rose, along with CEO Jonathan Abrams, Chris Sacca, Zuckerberg Media founder , ’ Dave McClure, author and CEO Tucker Max, Rackspace founder and others. Interestingly, the partners at Monstro Ventures have agreed not to charge their limited partners a management fee. Prager explained, “We decided not to charge management fees because we don’t want any LP’s to ever think we’re using fees to keep the lights on at our agency. All we share is the name Monstro. The fund is a standalone thing, totally separate from the agency.” He also said as investors, Monstro Ventures won’t push founders on using their agency’s services, but if founders bring up the possibility, they’re open to working together in this capacity. Monstro the agency has done creative work in exchange for equity stakes in tech startups in the past, including , the smart fitness apparel brand. That experience, and venture capital insiders encouraging him, were what drove Prager to form a fund, he said. Prager had more to say about the path from entrepreneurship to investing on the freshly-launched . |
FAA releases report detailing categories for drones flying over crowds | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | , the Associated Press got early access to a report commissioned by the FAA on how drones flying over or near people should be categorized and restricted. Today, that report was officially released, with all the juicy (and boring) details you’ve come to expect from government task force briefings. The full report, , doesn’t differ much from what leaked on Monday — four categories, escalating from under-250-gram micro-drones up to larger, more dangerous ones that require closer scrutiny and damage mitigation plans. We ran them down earlier, so you can or skim through the executive summary in the report itself. The major addition to existing approval processes would be official tests of force and danger of bodily harm from a given drone. Think of how the FCC tests phones to make sure their radiation output is within acceptable limits. Now think of a lab like that where they ram 50-pound drones into a wall full of sensors and record it in slow motion. (A YouTube channel is born.) The committee’s findings aren’t law or rule, or anything really except the opinions of experts requested formally by the FAA. Actual regulations will have to be made by actual regulators, but they take these recommendations seriously. There will be a public comment period for any proposed rules, too, during which you or any of the participants in the task force can object or suggest improvements. We’ll be on the watch for the official rule proposal over the next few months, as well as rules that are still pending, regarding commercial use and automated operation in populated areas. Curious what industry reps the FAA chose to help establish these new rules? Here’s the full list of participants in the committee. |
All on-demand models are not created equally | Joe Medved | 2,016 | 4 | 24 |
The end of on-demand is nigh. The media cover down rounds and startups winding down on a weekly basis, and, as funding stops, it seems as if every “Uber for X” is doomed to fail. Many people are questioning (fairly) whether software can eat services, which are fueled primarily by human capital. While convenience attracts the consumer, successful on-demand startups must generate technical leverage to unlock additional value in the cost structure. This newfound value should be utilized to empower and reward the service providers who are doing the heavy lifting, in some cases literally. While fallout is inevitable in a downturn, there are many on-demand startups on a path to success. Looking at the cost components of traditional services can be informative, because specific categories have more margin flexibility than others, including personnel, real estate, supplies, marketing and administrative. Most on-demand startups utilize technology to bring efficiency to supplies, marketing and administrative expenses. The degree of leverage around personnel and real estate is dependent on where a startup plays in the on-demand spectrum. Across the on-demand landscape, skill level has a meaningful impact on personnel expense. As the chart below shows, human capital is often the largest expense for any services business, particularly for higher-end verticals.
In highly skilled categories, startups have greater potential for brand differentiation through exemplary service. Consumers are far more likely to go out of their way to find a leading physician than they are a great housekeeper or taxi driver. However, the more it costs to recruit and retain individual service providers, the bigger piece of the expense pie personnel becomes. This dilutes the potential to leverage other cost elements for a margin advantage. The exhibit below breaks out on-demand services by real estate strategy. It includes startups in which an individual service provider physically delivers a service to a consumer or enterprise customer. These are private, U.S.-based companies that have raised at least $5 million in capital. This category addresses services that have been delivered to the consumer historically, so there is no significant real estate component. These startups utilize a digital-centric approach to enhance consumer access to a liquid, community-rated pool of service providers. They often develop advanced logistics solutions to derive additional efficiency. Transportation is the poster vertical of this category and has attracted the most investor attention. The proliferation of GPS-enabled handsets addressed the friction around drivers and passengers locating each other. That combined with the size of the market, the high frequency of use and the immediacy of need yielded a perfect on-demand storm. The most successful startups in this category establish network effects with moats of liquidity that are typically expensive to build but hard to deconstruct. Uber is clearly the pioneer of this wave and has invested heavily in building a dominant supply base. This category layers a new or enhanced delivery solution on top of existing businesses. These startups may employ delivery professionals themselves or help traditional business partners manage them. While nearly everyone prefers to have products or services brought to their doorstep, they are not all willing to pay more for it. Successful delivery layer models must target enormous markets like dining, grocery and shipping. They must find a large enough portion of the addressable customer pool willing to accept incremental pricing for convenience. Margin value may also be created by promoting endemic products, as well as through volume discounts with the requisite partners in this model. This category is most susceptible to the growth of price elasticity in an economic downturn, particularly in disposable income verticals.
This category optimizes infrastructure, including the removal of customer-facing properties, the consolidation of industrial space and moving out to cheaper commercial zones. In the restaurant space, some startups are removing public dining locations and consolidating operations with industrial kitchens. In grocery and big box retail, startups are providing delivery straight from the warehouse. In self-storage, startups are eliminating the “self” in storage, adding a delivery and logistics layer that pushes storage infrastructure from the fringes of the urban center out to larger, cheaper warehouses. Some of these startups are adding delivery where it was not previously available. The lower real estate costs need to outstrip the added delivery and logistics expense to enable long-term success. Historically, many traditional services models required a storefront property or public office. An auto repair shop on a major thoroughfare benefits from awareness. A salon in a nice part of town gains high-rent-district credibility. In our increasingly digital world, a new wave of on-demand startups is shifting the traditional point of service to the customer’s location. Demand can be generated online and serviced wherever convenient for the customer. This strategy benefits service providers, including beauticians, doctors, massage therapists and mechanics. While some complex services within these verticals must be performed in controlled environments with heavy equipment, a large portion of visits can be administered offsite. Making house calls reduces the efficiency of working from one location, so it is critical that jobs and supply access are optimized at scale to minimize transit time. Storefront removal eliminates a massive barrier for individuals to work for themselves. Not only is it more convenient for the consumer, but tremendous value is unlocked as a key element of the cost structure is eradicated. This can enable service providers to build their own book of business and capture a greater percentage of the revenue that they create. There are varied economic characteristics within each category driven by size of market, average price point, frequency of use, mix of product and services, immediacy of need, workforce transience, etc., that demonstrate the margin disruption that’s possible in on-demand. However, the columns below are an attempt to represent normalized cost structure for mature startups that execute successfully. Assuming a technology-enabled reduction in supplies, marketing and administrative expenses for all on-demand startups, some traits emerge. Many traditional services businesses have been ushered into the digital world by review aggregators like Angie’s List and Yelp, or booking platforms like Booker and MINDBODY; however, an outsourced approach often lacks the edge that an in-house engineering team can deliver to a vertically focused, on-demand startup. This analysis assumes personnel expenses remain constant. You could argue for some reduction in base personnel costs, particularly with a 1099 workforce. However, if you subscribe to perfect market theory, there should be a general equilibrium around the cost of human capital over the long term.
The comparison of traditional versus connected on-demand must be isolated, given the lack of real estate in either model. There are some property costs for administrators, but the vast majority of work is done offsite and thus not included as a core cost component. The margin improvement may not be dramatic. However, in the case of a company like Uber, which applies its margin advantage at massive scale, the connected on-demand model can create tremendously disruptive value. In this comparison, delivery personnel and real estate have a substantial impact. Delivery personnel are added for the just add delivery category, as well as for the optimize real estate category in situations where delivery is added or enhanced. A revenue increase is assumed for the just add delivery category, as this must be warranted by the customer base for these models to succeed. Just add delivery startups do not have the full cost structure exhibited below, but effectively share it with their traditional partners. Other categories can remain on par with traditional pricing, or compete on price if they are willing to cut into the margin. The real estate cost lever can yield significant leverage. By efficiently shifting the point-of-service to a customer’s location, startups capture economic value historically tied up in infrastructure. This value can be shared among marketplace participants and creates a model that can drive substantially higher profit margins than the status quo. In theory, all on-demand categories have the potential to disrupt traditional services. However, all on-demand models are not created equally, and their potential for margin disruption should not be viewed through the same lens. All of these hypothetical models require superb execution that satisfies the demands of both sides of the market. The potential for sustainable disruption is most ripe where margin can be recaptured and shared with the people doing the hard work. The cost to attract and retain a trained workforce is often underestimated. Whether 1099 or fully employed, most workers’ desire to work for an on-demand startup depends largely on where they can make the most money. Can they capture more of the value that they create? Income typically trumps flexibility over the long term. Startups can attract quality service providers and stem customer leakage with good technology. They can provide access to customers and supplies, optimized scheduling, payment processing, customer reviews and a steady supply of jobs. A carefully constructed on-demand startup can not only avoid customer leakage, but find that many of its service providers bring their own customers onto the platform for the added value and convenience it delivers. Amidst the growing din of negativity, nearly $100 million has been raised in the past 45 days by four on-demand startups that are serving not only their customers but also their workers. In early March, , which provides mechanics with the potential to earn up to 2-3x more than what shops and dealers pay them, announced $24 million in funding. , which offers massage therapists the ability to earn 2-3x what they make at a spa, raised $35 million. Soon thereafter, their competitor announced a $10 million round. These three companies fall into the eliminate real estate category. Within the connected on-demand category, despite having less margin room to play with, was recently rewarded for sharing value creation with its workforce. The startup was one of the first to offer W-2 employment, and the company carved out 5 percent of its equity pool for service workers. Managed by Q’s strategy has worked and yielded a $25 million round announced in early April. Ultimately, startups that redistribute their value creation, not only to the customer, but also to the individual service providers, have the greatest long-term potential to thrive in the on-demand economy. |
Come to TechCrunch’s pre-F8 Facebook developers meetup | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | Meet TechCrunch writers and fellow Facebook developers the night before the madness of Facebook’s F8 conference begins. Join us at the Southern Pacific Brewing Company at 620 Treat Avenue in SF’s Mission District from 6-9pm on Monday April 11th. You can tell us about your startup and swap tips with fellow entrepreneurs. There’ll be delicious food, cocktails and craft brews available for purchase inside and on the patio of Southern Pacific’s giant beer garden. Admission is free with or below, though we’re hoping for attendees that are building social apps or businesses in the Facebook ecosystem. here so your colleagues hear about it too.
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NASA launches new X-plane program to create cleaner, more efficient planes | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 4 | 24 | NASA has the launch of the “New Aviation Horizons” initiative, which will lead to a new generation of X-planes that are fueled by greener energy, use half the fuel, and are half as loud as commercial aircraft in use today. “NASA’s flight research program is on its way to creating a renaissance of an exciting era in aviation research.” Jim Banke, NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate A 10-year initiative, New Aviation Horizons is a reminder of the importance of the first “A” in NASA. Through a series of research and development investments, NASA hopes to identify new technologies that can push the commercial aviation industry forward. Image courtesy of NASA NASA stated that “design-and-build will take several years with aircraft starting their flight campaign around 2020, depending on funding.” The first contract of the initiative, to a team at Lockheed Martin in February, begins work to design a quieter supersonic passenger jet. Through the 17-month $20 million award, the team is required to complete a preliminary design for Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST). Illustration of QueSST concept / Image courtesy of NASA For over 100 years, NASA and its predecessor NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) have used experimental aircraft to advance aviation technology. Through government funds, the agency has reduced the expensive research and development burden on private companies and shortened the time it takes to commercialize new aviation technologies. NASA’s “With You When You Fly” campaign reminds the public of the aeronautics advancements it has made through the years. The agency states that streamlined aircraft bodies, quieter jet engines, and drag-reducing winglets are a few of the advances NASA has brought to the commercial airline industry. NASA’s With You When You Fly Campaign / Image courtesy of NASA Originally known as XS-planes for eXperimental Supersonic and later shortened to simply X, the X-planes are a family of experimental aircraft intended solely for research. Over 56 X-plane concepts have been created and they represent some of the greatest strides in aviation research that NASA has made over the years. One of the most historic X-planes was the , the first high-speed aircraft built solely for aviation research, and the plane that Chuck Yeager used to break the sound barrier. NASA’s X-15 rocket-plane / Image courtesy of NASA But perhaps the most notable of all the X-planes was the . Built in the 1950s, the X-15 became the fastest and highest-flying winged aircraft of its time. During nearly 200 flights, the X-15 program gathered valuable data about high-altitude hypersonic flight. “If we can build some of these X-planes and demonstrate some of these technologies, we expect that will make it much easier and faster for U.S. industry to pick them up and roll them out into the marketplace.” — Ed Waggoner, NASA Integrated Aviation Systems Program director With the New Aviation Horizons initiative, NASA aims to bring to life a new generation of X-planes. This time, the focus is on advancing green aviation technology. Over the next decade or so, data gathered from QueSST – and other yet-to-be-determined X-planes – will help enable commercial aircraft to become quieter, faster, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient. |
Tribeca’s Storyscapes projects used technology to explore blindness, solitary confinement and more | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 4 | 24 | As winds down in New York City, we’re highlighting one of the most tech-driven parts of the event — , which showcased 10 works of virtual reality and interactive storytelling. At Storyscapes, I talked to the creators of (which won the juried Storyscapes award), , and , among others. One word that came up repeatedly was “empathy” — the idea of using technology to really put you in someone else’s shoes and make you feel what they feel. For example, Jarrad Vladich of The Mill (the special effects house that worked with the Guardian on 6×9) said that the goal was “to create empathy” for prisoners who have gone through solitary confinement. Arnaud Colinart, one of the creators of Notes on Blindness, said he wanted to “use the potential of empathy in VR” to help the sighted audience understand some of the issues around blindness. It’s also worth noting that even if you missed the event, many of these projects are also available through web versions, or at least have a website where you can find out more info — I’ve linked to them above. |
VideoStitch unveils the Orah 4i, a tiny 360 live streaming 4K camera | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | There’s no shortage of 360 cameras on the market these days. If you have a desire to shoot immersive video and possess a ton of disposable income then there’s nothing stopping you! The issue is what happens to that content after it’s captured. I’d say 90% of the photos I take on my DSLR never make it off my camera to be seen by someone else. That problem is only multiplied for 360 content, given the scarcity of headsets and viewers on the market. The Orah 4i is attempting to solve this problem by kicking all of its content onto the web instantly. If a bar owner wants to promote a live stream of a karaoke night they can just drop an Orah in the middle of their space and anyone can hop on their computer and pan around or strap a Gear VR to their face and really get in on the action. Live-streaming VR content is pretty tough because of the complicated amount of video-stitching that has to take place to get each separate lens in on the action and contributing to the glorious 4K resolution. knows a thing or two about live-stitching 360 content, they’ve been helping companies like Red Bull and Facebook stitch 360 content with their content creation software since 2012. VideoStitch’s software suite is compatible with all types of rigs, from Frankensteined GoPro rigs to massive clusters of DSLRs. Those setups are a bit complicated though and are mostly focused on people who have a fairly professional handle on 360 video capture. VideoStitch CEO Nicolas Burtey said he wanted to reach out to the less professional, more consumer-heavy market but found that existing solutions weren’t cutting it. “Until today, a live VR video production workflow relied on an array of small cameras put together on a holder. Videographers then dealt with multiple cables, power supplies and a variety of small hardware components. Orah removes these inefficiencies and numerous points of failure and lets them focus on what really matters to them for creating compelling content,” said Burtey in a statement. “We have developed a solution that streams 4K resolution live virtual reality video to headsets–all with the push of a button.” You can’t really just beam footage from a 360 camera directly to a headset though, the computing required to stitch the footage is a somewhat essential if you don’t want to be staring at a bunch of fisheye lenses. To get this done, VideoStitch is including a proprietary computing unit that fits into the base of the tripod one would mount the Orah 4i on. The base rocks an Intel CPU and Nvidia GeForce CPU to make the stitching as instantaneous as possible. The Orah 4i is shipping with a pretty hefty discount to early adopters. Those who pre-order the Orah 4i now can cop the camera and computing unit for $1,795, but once 4/30 hits, the device will be increasing “incrementally” to the final purchase price of $3,595. |
Segment helps businesses integrate third-party sources into their data pipelines | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | helps developers manage all the analytics data their apps and services generate. Besides fanning out this information to analytics services like Google Analytics and Mixpanel, or marketing tools like Marketo, all this data lands in a data warehouse. At best, though, all this information only shows an incomplete view of a customer’s journey from landing page to purchase. Starting today, Segment users will also be able to combine their internally generated data with data from third-party tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, Stripe, Twilio and others — data that is typically siloed and hard to integrate (support for Google AdWords, Facebook Ads and other tools is coming soon). With this new tool, called , developers will be able to create tools and dashboards that show a far more complete story of how users interact with a company. Say you want to know how your SendGrid campaign converted. You can now combine data from your email campaign with analytics data from your apps and Stripe to see how well they performed (using the customer’s email address as the identifier). One of Segment’s first beta customers for this service was Instacart. “With Sources, we’re gathering vital new insights about our customer experience,” said Che Horder, Director of Analytics at Instacart. “For example, by combining Zendesk with purchase data, we can analyze how interactions with our Customer Happiness team affect conversion, sales, and long-term retention. We have a much clearer understanding of our funnel, what’s working, and the impact of our support team on revenue.” As Segment co-founder and CEO told me, users simply must use a standard OAuth workflow to add these new sources to their existing Segment accounts. The company slightly modified the for its warehouse plans to include support for up to three additional data sources for a fixed fee. He also noted that while most users will probably combine this data with an existing business intelligence service to build dashboards, the company itself has no plans to add any of these services itself. |
The future is the trust economy | Adriana Stan | 2,016 | 4 | 24 |
As we get into cars with complete strangers, sleep in the beds of people we’ve never met and lend money to others on the other side of the world, a powerful new currency is emerging — and it’s based on trust. What’s striking about the shared economy is not the technology that has made it possible, but the vast changes it has triggered in society. It has brought a renewed sense of community, engendered more collaboration, sparked new thinking and put a premium on trust, tapping into a need that transcends boundaries and is still rife with opportunity. If you’re not working to build and demonstrate it, then the future might be about to leave you behind, as trust is quickly becoming the global — and most-valued — currency of modern time. Trust was once an expensive pursuit. Banks were built from luxurious materials in bold architectural forms, with sturdy marble pillars and adornments to provide the most powerful declarations of solidity, tradition and trustworthiness — and to project a sense of enduring history. “You can trust us — look how much money we can spend on our buildings!” Trust, more than anything, came from being purposefully wasteful. Likewise, expensive educations from Ivy League schools represented not just a level of intellect or achievement, but an aura of excellence one can derive from investing in a trusted academic institution that came with a built-in reputation. It signified the social status and financial ability to spend more than necessary to be part of an elite group, and, like a stamp of approval, projected specific qualities to potential employers. And think about the hospitality industry. Historically, hotels found success through standardization — guaranteeing a level of comfort and quality under an umbrella brand or chain, often built on emblems of safety, trust and tradition. This has all changed. Today, we are prepared to place our lives in the hands of people we know nothing about. We’ve taken our most visceral fear of the unknown and cast it aside in a matter of months. What’s empowered this shift in values is the codification of reputation — it’s the five stars next to people’s names that make it possible to trust someone we otherwise know nothing about. And it’s transforming the way we live: From riding in an to staying in an ; from buying or selling handmade products on to peer-to-peer loans; from hiring someone on or to booking home cleaners on or renting a car on . Similarly, we’re seeing a codification of influence and status, the result of which is also trust. The recommendations you receive on LinkedIn and the connections you share with a potential employer can determine whether you get the job. And your Instagram presence — specifically, earning the “endorsement” of high-profile followers — determines your next date, if what you seek is a membership on Raya, a new dating app that prides itself on fostering an intimate community of celebrities and creative people. Reputation is now carried by a new system, which takes rather elusive notions of credibility, influence and status and turns them into measurable scores. It’s “digitizing” relationships and social connections, extracting value and insights from our associations and both and trust — signifying it and selling it. PR, marketing and advertising campaigns have long looked to assert signs of quality, establish credibility and give buyers reasons to believe in them. As consumers, we used to trust that a recognizable hotel brand must provide a great guest experience — otherwise, it wouldn’t have been able to build its name. In fact, in the pre-digital age, the advertising that helped build brands was expensive, and that was key. Just as banks spent big money on marble columns, anything in TV commercials exuded an aura of quality, stemming from the feeling that advertising had a high production value and air time was limited. Compare that to today’s decentralized and fragmented media landscape, and we see the challenges for brands. What becomes of brand-driven trust when we read news stories that our friends like and share with us, buy products because of reviews on Amazon and stay at hotels we find tagged on Instagram? The very notion of branding is rapidly changing. For a start, it is less physical. That’s what allowed the rise of bitcoin — it isn’t tied to physical assets like the gold standard; it’s the collective beliefs and hopes of its owners that make it so. Similarly, anyone can build an e-commerce site on for $29, with an accompanying social feed that sells products under the guise of a carefully curated aspirational lifestyle. The modern language of trust is a slick user interface, a decent booking flow and impactful images; above all, it’s great reviews, ratings and influence. Trust may soon be a commodity that consumers not only want from the brands with which they interact, but demand to know about other people. It won’t just be about customers reviewing brands, but our own personas being attached to a score or reputation; people themselves will be “measured.” Everything from our influence, social following, work connections, credit worthiness and beyond, could make up the metric of trust. This may end up deciding who gets upgraded on a flight, who can buy products from us or who gets priority customer service. In this new world, our “trust score” will be the only metric that people need in order to make decisions on how to do business, and with whom. It effectively becomes the new credit score. For someone with VC funding, the opportunity in the next year to find a single metric of trust is huge. The question is what are you doing to actively build trust with your customers? In a world where your brand is less what you say and more the collective experiences of everyone using it, you can’t simply rely on marketing to meet the challenge for you in the future. |
Domino’s now lets you order pizza just by launching an app – no clicking required | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | Hungry? Lazy? Domino’s has the app for you. The company today unveiled a new mobile application that lets you place an order simply by launching the app on your phone. No clicking necessary. The delivery chain keeps coming up with new – and yes, sometimes gimmicky – ways to make ordering pizza easier and quicker, and this new “Zero Click” app is no exception. To date, the company has already launched a number of digital experiments ranging from a “tweet to order” system on Twitter and, more recently, a way to order just by . In this case, “zero click” means just what you think. The new app doesn’t require any input at all, beyond your initial sign-in the first time you use it. Instead, you simply launch the app when you want pizza. And then… Yeah, that’s it. Pizza comes. To be clear, simply launching the app doesn’t place the order. To stave off accidental clicks, there’s a 10-second countdown that first displays. However, if you don’t push the button to stop the timer, your order is placed with your local delivery chain. A screen then appears with your order confirmation. I mean, it really doesn’t get any easier than this. What’s next? I just have to about pizza and it arrives? [gallery ids="1303106,1303105,1303104,1303103,1303102"] Okay, okay. There’s a little more involved behind the scenes that makes Domino’s Zero Click work so well. The app, like the other Domino’s initiatives, requires consumers to first create an account on Dominos.com and then create what the company calls a “Pizza Profile.” This profile includes your favorite pizza order (e.g. a large pepperoni), along with other important information like your phone number, delivery address, and credit card details. This information, also known as your “Easy Order,” is then provided to whichever digital ordering system you decide to use. Today, that’s a pretty extensive list, as it turns out. In addition to the desktop web and mobile, Domino’s supports ordering via SMS, Twitter, Samsung Smart TVs, Ford Sync, smartwatches like Android Wear and Pebble, and its own native mobile app, where you can chat with its virtual assistant Dom by voice. This is all part of – the company’s tech initiative to bring pizza ordering to consumers no matter where they are – on their phones, watching TV, in a car, etc. While some of these efforts produce giggles – – there’s some indication that Domino’s embrace of technology is working to impact its bottom line. The company claims that its emphasis on technology helped generate over 50 percent of U.S. sales from digital channels at the end of 2015, and helped reach an estimated $4.7 billion annually in global digital sales. Domino’s also tells us that over half of its national television campaign topics last year were also directly related to digital initiatives. Easier ordering is not the only tech initiative the chain has in store. The company also recently , the Domino’s DXP, which is a tricked-out Chevy Spark with a warming oven built-in. 100 of these cars are in production and will serve as mobile advertisements while also delivering orders to customers in Boston, Detroit, Houston, New Orleans, San Diego and Seattle. In addition, Domino’s is working on its first digital customer loyalty program, “Piece of the Pie Rewards.” The new Zero Click mobile application is live now on both and . |
null | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | null |
Tim Cook joins Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ board | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 4 | 6 | Apple CEO Tim Cook is joining the board of directors of , a nonprofit organization founded by the Kennedy family. Cook has been an outspoken CEO, personally defending equality and civil rights. In December 2015, Cook already received the Ripple of Hope Award from the nonprofit organization. But Apple’s CEO is taking its public involvement for human rights one step further with today’s announcement. “Tim knows the importance of advocating for and representing people who have not been heard,” Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights president and CEO Kerry Kennedy wrote. “He has integrity and does not shy away from challenging issues when he knows they are right and just. Tim is deeply committed to the social justice work that he is helping Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights accomplish.” According to the organization, Robert F. Kennedy had been a role model when Cook was growing up in Alabama. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights delivers the and supports human rights advocates. Cook has been very private about his personal life and beliefs. But this changed when he in October 2014. He used this opportunity to pen a saying he was “proud to be gay.” Here’s what he wrote at the time: I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy. Last year, Cook also wrote in the Washington Post to call out pro-discrimination laws hiding behind “religious freedom.” In particular, he feared a law in Indiana would lead to discrimination against people in the LGBT community. Lawmakers later an amendment to protect the LGBT community. |
How Facebook Connect changed the consumer internet | Elisa Schreiber | 2,016 | 4 | 24 |
When Facebook opened its API, the platform spawned a completely new way of distributing apps on the web. Developers now had unprecedented access and deep integration into many of Facebook’s core features, allowing anyone to sign up and start building. In just six months after opening up the platform, more than 10,000 apps launched. At that moment, Josh Elman, now a partner at Greylock Partners, realized that the social network was going to change the consumer Internet. But as this “Cambrian explosion” of apps unfolded, Josh, a product manager at Zazzle at the time, saw users became less engaged under the weight of all the apps. He remembers, “you couldn’t go to Facebook without being inundated with a hundred request of your friend— play this game, give them a gift, hit them with a reward, and get some points. Facebook itself stopped being fun.” However, he was bullish on the platform and the possibilities it could unlock, so he decided to join the Facebook Platform team in 2008 to help launch Facebook Connect. Though the company was experiencing traction, it wasn’t able to entice key brands to partner with their platform. Facebook was much smaller at the time and Josh knew that going after partnerships with big brands – like CNN, Amazon and The New York Times – was the wrong initial strategy. More often than not, startups go after these so-called “big whales” but ultimately fail because both parties have different agendas and expectations. Facebook needed to go after the right partners who would be on the same page and have the flexibility to be creative and truly integrate with the platform. With that in mind, Facebook partnered with Huffington Post and it was a complete success – they leveraged one another for distribution and content, and both reaped the benefits. In fact, users who logged in to The Huffington Post with Facebook spent more time on the site than the average user. Facebook paved the way for consumer Internet companies, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google, to look at distribution and growth in new way. Companies began to open up their platforms and APIs for others to build and grow on their platform. For startups who initially have no brand power, the ability to build on top of existing platforms provides massive value by creating a direct channel to a large user base. But while the rise of platforms forged a new avenue for creating apps and viral distribution, Josh cautions startups to make sure they are still building their own identity and only leveraging platforms to . “Growth is really about thinking strategically about how to get your users doing things on the right platforms in the right places” he says. “And it’s not so much about growth hacking as much as building the right partnerships, and thinking about your users.” |
Why your wallet is becoming the next platform | Alex Rampell | 2,016 | 4 | 24 |
The “wallet” in the modern sense of “flat case for holding paper currency” dates back almost 200 years. The word itself goes back 700 years, and the concept (minus paper currency) for millennia. Leather wallets were not “smart,” of course; they were atom agnostic, payment type agnostic, even, as credit cards and the like started proliferating in the mid 20th century. But today the payment type is almost a pointer — in computer science vernacular — to a source of money. And the wallet itself is the master pointer, used for opening and closing a transaction, and choosing which sub-pointer to assign. Because intercepting the payment leads to a whole downstream treasure of goodies, the wallet — once tanned animal hide — is going to be the ultimate financial platform. As digital wallets increasingly become the origination point for consumer spending, they will become THE platform for downstream financial services — creating an opportunity for startups and a problem for established players. The problem, of course, is that a payment type can become a wallet, and a wallet can become a payment type. So which is which? If a ridesharing company has 100 million credentials, they’ve solved half of the network effect problem of being a payment company — so you could imagine using that app as your wallet at, say, Walmart. Or Starbucks, which is one of the biggest wallets, has a pointer within its wallet to Visa Checkout, another wallet, pointing to a card type (a Visa card, or even a MasterCard/Amex/Discover card), pointing to a “loan” (the “credit” part of a credit card), ultimately pointing to a bank account. As a stack, we have hardware — your mobile phone — at the top and bank accounts holding the actual treasure at the very bottom. But it’s better to think of this “stack” as really a system of pointers, in this case downwards. And the goal for businesses is finding and occupying a defensible position in this stack that allows them to intercept payments, capturing and controlling value to become that ultimate financial platform. Photo courtesy . On my Apple iPhone, I can run the Uber app and pay via PayPal, which deducts the money from my American Express Card. For the first four components of the stack — hardware, operating system, app, and cloud backbone — the heuristics of success for capturing value are the number of integrations (i.e., the number of places people can use the wallet) and number of credentials (users who have committed more than one tender type). Given the massive number of credentials they have and the controlling position as the “start” of the stack — unlike other players, Apple has both hardware OS — Apple’s wallet as platform could deal a crippling blow to everyone down the stack. Especially because the flow in this stack only goes one way: players below don’t get access to the resources up the stack. In a mobile-only world, a well-coordinated effort to let you simply touch your thumb to your iPhone to pay on any ecommerce site or app could wipe out probably 20% of PayPal’s revenue, overnight [two-thirds of PayPal revenue is merchant services off eBay; assume 25% iOS share]. The real value of occupying a defensible place in this stack is not even in processing the payment, however. Capital One spends a lot of money every year convincing you to apply for and its credit card. Once subsumed under a digital wallet, though, that “usage” component gets further and further out of Capital One’s control, with tremendous implications on downstream interest (lending) revenue. One change in Apple’s product design — for example, something as simple as alphabetization, which a leather wallet doesn’t do! — could move Bank of America ahead of Capital One as a “default,” moving more purchases in that direction. The “end result” of this whole system of pointers is usually an increasing balance on a revolving credit facility — a credit card. Take LendingClub and Prosper, the two biggest marketplace lending companies. About half of LendingClub’s loan originations come from refinancing credit card debt, which they source via U.S. Postal Service mail ads, Google ads, etc. But controlling a position in the purchase stack could and arguably replace their normal customer acquisition process; rather than waiting for a consumer to accrue a large balance from a series of purchases (at a ridiculously high credit card interest rate) and then refinance, catch it as the balance comes in from purchases. The next large consumer finance company is likely to interrupt this chain of pointers. But at which point in the stack? It will be very challenging to attack the top of the stack as that would require a hardware+OS wallet with massive adoption a massive number of payment credentials. And attacking the bottom of the stack is challenging as well …and relatively unprofitable at that. Right now, LendingClub will take your 18% APR Chase/Citi/et al interest rate and refinance it down to 10%. But in a world where ApplePay controls the front and existing banks like WellsFargo provide the source of funds at the end, there’s no reason not to “automate away” the credit selection process. Why wouldn’t they just skip right to the rate LendingClub would have given you, or even skip to the best “marketplace lending” rate? The biggest dislocation once that happens will be that your “credit card” will no longer be the default source of medium/long duration credit. This has major implications for all of consumer finance. For credit card companies, the smartest thing they can do is to build their own cloud wallet, which creates an unnecessary “sub-pointer”. Yet many of them are doing this because they’re missing the full view of where value lies in the stack and how to better leverage their position within it. For cloud wallets — which are facing the existential challenge of being caught, literally, in the middle — the smartest thing they can do is align themselves with a winning application wallet if they’re losing in acquiring enough credentials on their own. Because payment companies (e.g., Chase, Citi, etc.) risk being abstracted into irrelevance, attaching themselves to the winning wallets (the likes of Amazon, Lyft, Starbucks, Uber, etc.) is one of the only ways to prioritize their existing “pointer” vis-a-vis others. So what does this all mean for startups? Well, it will become easier to address the most profitable part of the stack — lending — without getting into the herculean and quixotic path of payments. Companies like over 8 years ago and more recently together evaporated over $500M before dissolving into bankruptcy. Today, there are many other parts of key infrastructure that can be rewritten with access to digital wallet-as-platform: rewards, PFM (personal financial manager, à la Quicken/Mint), merchant recommendations, offers, etc. There is also a whole generation — millennials — who don’t understand the notion of balancing a checkbook because they don’t even have a checkbook. It’s an anachronism, as are the PFMs that grew up around that notion, including long delays before purchases show up in “modern” PFMs. This is because the purchase goes from merchant, to merchant bank, to network, to issuing bank, to aggregator, to PFM. But in digital wallets, purchases show up instantly — allowing recommendations, offers, and discounts to be instantaneous. Digital wallets may finally enable the long-sought “taste graph” (the mother of all “people who bought this, also bought that”) to be built. All of this will require the “top” of the stack to open up — for Apple, Google, and other players to recognize they are building a platform, which like all platforms are most valuable when developers have access. Given the size of the market, it’s a question of when, not if, this will happen. And once it does, it’s likely to be a game changer for the banks that for decades have relied on branches and consumer branding, and for startups who will finally find themselves with a capital-efficient entry point for disrupting consumer finance. |
Technology is finally eliminating geography as a barrier to real estate investing | Akhil Saklecha | 2,016 | 4 | 23 |
Real estate investing has long elicited a variety of emotions, running the gamut from excitement to anxiety. When dealing with significant sums of capital, feelings of apprehension tend to creep in, especially regarding neighborhood quality, tenant and property management issues and liquidity. But those feelings of apprehension should be balanced by the knowledge that real estate as an asset class offers high returns in low-interest-rate environments, provides diversification from traditional stock portfolios and has the potential for long-term appreciation. Plus, there’s another, more recent benefit to consider for investing in real estate. Technology has enabled radical changes in how and where people invest in real estate. The old adage that real estate investing is a local business no longer holds true. Millennials, skilled professionals, overseas investors and retirees now have the ability to acquire properties, commercial developments and even homes like they acquire stocks or bonds. Remote investing makes single-family rental (SFR) investing a viable alternative investment option, and with returns that outperformed S&P 500 returns in 2015, it has emerged as a powerful wealth-building tool. An initial wave of remote real estate investing happened via crowdfunding, which enables investors of all ages, risk profiles and wealth levels to acquire real estate. With as little as $5,000 down, investors across the world can buy a stake in a single-family home, or with a larger investment, they can opt to purchase shares of a 300,000-square foot office tower. , , and more than 200 other firms valued at a combined $2.6 billion worldwide support this type of crowdsourced investing. While crowdfunding may be a great way for novice investors to get their feet wet, there are some downfalls. Investors can only purchase a portion of a real estate project, which means they own the property along with several other investors — similar to timeshares. In some cases, hundreds of investors might own a stake in a single asset through a limited liability company. Instead of having full ownership of the real estate, the investor possesses limited control over their capital, how it’s distributed and where it’s distributed. There is no real way of knowing whether the interests of the majority owner are even aligned with the interests of the portion that is crowdfunded. Furthermore, there are potential tax liabilities based upon income charged to the investor without receipt of any cash flow, lack of a secondary market for liquidity and dealing with the requirement of new capital if a cash shortfall should occur. Investor fortunes could be lost, and they could be lost quickly. As crowdfunding models have become more complicated, a new generation of real estate technology disrupters has addressed some of the shortcomings of crowdfunding with a more holistic funding model, providing protection for investors and helping them build wealth through a combination of cash flow and appreciation. Firms such as , in which we’ve invested, and offer investors the ability to buy an entire single-family home or create a portfolio of homes, fully customized to meet their personal investment needs. For instance, my portfolio of homes would focus on cities such as Cleveland and Indianapolis where cash flow is high, whereas another investor may prefer locations like San Antonio and Houston where there is more of a balance between appreciation and cash flow. The fundamental difference in this next wave of funding platforms is that they support true ownership of real estate. Land is the underlying asset, not a piece of paper endorsing fractional ownership. Additional benefits include receiving significant tax breaks associated with home ownership and investment guidance throughout the entire holding period. In short, investors have complete authority over the decision-making process. Venture capitalists and individual investors have given this new wave of companies a strong vote of confidence over the past few years. According to Venture Scanner’s portfolio management category, the median funding value of real estate startups globally is $3 million. One of the leading anti-crowdfunding companies, HomeUnion, has raised nearly $23 million in funding from VCs and has closed on the sale of more than $50 million in single-family rental assets since its inception. Similarly, OwnAmerica has traded more than $27 million during the beta phase of its new platform. As the crowdfunding segment plateaus and the next generation of real estate startups continue to grow rapidly, these companies face a different set of challenges. They will need to manage concerns that investors have about lack of diversification by offering inventory in multiple geographies and across multiple micro-economies, ensure excellent customer service and fail-safe processes for the inevitable eviction of tenants or to prepare for a catastrophic event, such as a fire. In essence, the experience of buying homes remotely must be entirely hassle-free, as should the ongoing property management and eventual sale of the asset. As real estate technology continues to improve the benefit for consumers, one thing is crystal clear: The notion of real estate as a hyper-local business has turned upside down since the arrival of these new platforms. In the U.S., single-family rentals currently comprise 40 percent of the country’s entire rental stock, up from 34 percent in 2005. Individuals own the majority of all single-family rentals — 83 percent — with REITs and other institutions holding the remaining small portion. Hands-off investing, uninhibited by geography and free of the headaches associated with property management, has completely disrupted real estate investing forever. |
How to quit your job the right way | James Altucher | 2,016 | 4 | 24 |
When I was at a corporate IT job, I kept wondering: What are all these people doing? Many people were on the phone. Or were already outdated by new software systems. The corporation wouldn’t fire them until much later. When layoffs were mandated. But they were mandated. And they lost their jobs. And now I don’t know where they are. I ran into one of these useless people at a minor league baseball game about seven years ago. I said, George, what are you doing these days? He said, I follow this one team. I go around to all of their games. He pointed to a woman in the first row of seats. See that woman? She’s married to one of the players. I sat next to her at dinner last night. I walked back to my seat. I thought to myself, good ol’ George. Like I used to say to myself when we sat next to each at work 14 years prior to that. Things change — and then they don’t. As for me, 14 years later, I have my masks also. I am trying. Here’s the problem: Industrialism consumes itself. As an example: Every time a line of software is written, a job is lost. Software increases automation, which removes the need for a worker. Think of all the innovations happening and what they replace: And on and on. Autonomous cars remove the need for drivers and will eventually replace public transportation. Robin Chase, the founder of , told me that automated cars will eliminate 90 percent of the auto industry. Biochemistry and personalized medicine will turn insurance and the drug industry upside down. If the ultimate innovation happens — “the cure” — then doctors will be needed less. All innovation consumes the innovation of the generation earlier. Corporatism, which is different from capitalism, wants to appease shareholders, not employees. Employees are paid salaries that allow the shareholders to extract as much profit as possible. And innovation forces the gap wider between the needs of the shareholders at the top and the employees who are moving closer to the bottom. This is not a bad or a good thing. It’s reality. Corporations want to ultimately fire you, whether you like your job or not. Their entire purpose is to create and squeeze the efficiencies out of you until you drop dead or are no longer needed. OK. You can love your job so you don’t want to quit. But the company that hires you eventually will quit you. Eventually they will squeeze every bit of profit out of you. Eventually you will join the class of workers who have become outdated. Eventually they will fire you. View your life as a business. A business has many product lines and shifts many times during the course of its life. Let’s call your life, Me, Inc. When you have a single job, your life has a problem. Me, Inc. has only one product (you) and you are charging, by definition, less than what Me, Inc. should charge. Why? Because, a corporation is really the distributor of Me, Inc. It buys you and then rents you out for a higher amount to its customers. Customers that you may never even meet or see. And you have no other product. Because the corporation fills up all your time or you get “warned.” The corporation (in partnership with the mortgage industry and your bank) tethers you to a location to make it harder for you to seek alternatives. The corporation often only hires people who paid $100,000 or more for a piece of paper (a degree) when they were aged 18-22. This tethers you even more because you have to pay back that money or the government comes after you. It’s a partnership of corporation and government and college to enslave you. Our goal is to break out of the slavery. And the corporation even dictates your social behavior of how you can interact with your new “friends” at the workplace. The manual of rules is bigger than you can read to make it as easy as possible for them to discipline you or get rid of you once Me, Inc. has exhausted its own resources. You have become an asexual, friendless, low self-esteem person handcuffed to a file cabinet that contains your mortgage and your student loan debt. But even though it’s only one line of income for Me, Inc., it pays the bills. Until it won’t anymore. Let’s say you have a great idea. You will want to leave your job as quickly as possible and start your own business. But have patience. Steve Wozniak stayed at Hewlett-Packard before he finally jumped to Apple. Larry Page and Sergey Brin stayed in graduate school until Google started to become viable as a business. I never started a great company like those guys mentioned above. Many of the companies I started were consumed by innovation so fast I either failed or was lucky to sell before that innovation hit. But for my first business, I stayed at my full-time job for 18 months until I finally jumped. I loved my job. And it paid well. And I liked my friends there; my boss was even a good boss. So I left when my side business was finally able to replace my salary and a little more (a “little more” because you have to be compensated for the risk). My side business then was able to flourish until it was sold a year later. But I never would have been able to do that if I jumped too early and was scared and anxious all the time. The 80/20 rule refers originally to the fact that 20 percent of the seeds planted in a garden will result in at least 80 percent of the flowers that eventually bloom in the garden. It’s applied to every area of life. Twenty percent of employees do 80 percent of the work. Twenty percent of your customers will result in 80 percent of your profits. Twenty percent of your studying will result in 80 percent of what you remember. And so on. But what if you square it? So 20 percent of 20 percent of what you do will result in 80 percent of 80 percent of what you value. So 4 percent of your work will result in 64 percent of the value. Square it again. One percent of your work will result in 48 percent of the value. This is the rule I like. One percent of the seeds planted in the garden will result in almost 50 percent of the flowers that will bloom. For entrepreneurs, those seeds are business ideas. You need to constantly be coming up with ideas, knowing that most of them won’t work out. And then you experiment. Everything is an experiment. Me writing this post is an experiment. Maybe it will be just a post. Maybe it will turn into a book. Maybe it will help one person. Maybe it will help me to get more motivated when I am most down. I don’t know. I’m just experimenting. When you take that view, you can risk failure and know that you can learn from it. Stop telling yourself a corporatist myth. Corporatism has only existed for 200 years, give or take. Before that, everyone was an entrepreneur. Not everyone is Mark Zuckerberg. But everyone had to know the basics of negotiation, sales, coming up with ideas, apprenticeship, etc. I called Matt Barrie at , which is a half-billion-dollar company that sees 10,000,000 freelance jobs posted every month. I asked him, “What jobs can people with just three months of online training find on your site where they can make $2,000 a month?” Here is what he wrote me: “Every single project is tailor-made based on the needs and requirements of each employer. Nevertheless, please find a list of projects below where freelancers can easily make $2,000 or more in just a couple of days: Where can you learn these skills? There are lots of online education sites, like , , , , , and . For instance, my 14-year-old takes classes at Codecademy. One of her classmates makes a few thousand a month doing basic website development for local businesses. It’s too easy to slip into melancholy and gloom. Where we seek meaningless stimulus to plug the holes in our lives. Where we focus on something from our past that latched on and never let go and now we can’t escape it. We are enslaved by it. Every day I want to be healthy. Every day I want to be creative. Every day I want to improve my relationships. Every day I want to be grateful in difficult situations. Then I improve. Then my evil plans work. I can quit my job. I can quit whatever I want. I won’t be a slave anymore. |
You never forget the pain, so try to avoid it | Ben Narasin | 2,016 | 4 | 24 |
They say once ’ve had frostbite, the cold. A founder who has suffered a bad board, or board member, forgets that, either. I took my company public at age 33 with a board of four: me, someone I trusted and two people who taught me the meaning of the word acrimony. I have been obsessed ever since with helping my founders pick the right board members and avoid my mistakes. Here’s what that looks like for me. Trust is an absolute. The journey from startup to public is easily a decade. Things will go wrong. Things will get hard. And sometimes hard decisions will need to get made. If don’t trust the people around the table, how can trust their input? Trust is particularly critical in a worst-case scenario. Not all founders survive as CEOs. If don’t survive, but trust and respect those who made the call, knew they believed it was required for the good of the company, wouldn’t be happy, but ’ll eventually get over it. If not, ’ll carry that chip on your shoulder, perhaps for the rest of your life. I could point to some still-angry outed-founders of successful companies, but I’m sure know of some yourself. If they are still angry, do believe they trusted, and respected, the people who pushed them out? Respect. A simple term for a complex set of realities, each of which could be its own enumerated point. For me it’s about people who are: Not just one or the other. IQ is the hardware ’re born with; wisdom is the software you run on it. Humans earn their software with time and experience. One classic mistake founders make: Y don’t need people running the same software are. If are packing your board with copies of yourself may as well buy a mirror and a tape recorder. Look for people with experience don’t have. That may be a more advanced version of the code ’re running, but it’s likely better to have people with experiences are entirely void of, or very weak in. Intelligence and wisdom become less useful when become convinced all know is known and static. Things change, and while past is often preamble, one must be willing to see a new version of present and future. My most significant on my own board came from people with prior-world metaphors trying constantly to apply them to my new-world business — and insisting they were right. My greatest value came from the person who was always open to what a new world could look like, and was the most open to being wrong. Creativity can be the other side of the brain from what many engineering-centric founders bring to the table, it’s good to have a bit of it on your board. Often promised, seldom delivered. While this is likely worse among seed investors, I have seen it at companies of all rounds. Much of it comes from how the investor defines themselves; hands-off can be another way of saying lazy and disengaged. I respect people who roll up their sleeves when needed and do the work when it can have an impact. I recently helped one of my founders win a last-minute slot in a major European pitch competition, but he wasn’t able to attend and didn’t have anyone to send. Rather than lose the slot, I cancelled a week of meetings, flew to the conference and made the pitch for him. We won, BTW. Telling we won is bragging; the rest is just explaining what should be par, but I have learned is birdie. One interesting dichotomy I have noticed in venture is the dual fiduciary responsibilities board members may have: to the company and to their firm. This is a delicate and appropriate balance, but not everyone manages it well. Everyone wins biggest when the company wins biggest, and those who are driven by that mission tend to be the most focused on making the best decisions. This doesn’t mean the entrepreneur always wins, or can do whatever they want. Sometimes what’s best is tough love. The role is more parental than fraternal; not typically saying yes or no, but helping make the best possible decisions. Sometimes this means letting an entrepreneur, having heard input against an idea, go forward with that idea because they are committed to it, believe it’s right and may have a vision the board lacks. Sometimes it is about preventing a mistake. A founder I was advising once told me of a meaningful pivot he was “considering,” even though his business was going exceptionally well. To me the idea was clearly a company killer. To help the founder see the danger, I spent an hour telling stories of mistakes I had made. When that didn’t work, I told him the decision would kill the company. He thanked me for the advice and did it anyway. I can remember few things as painful in my decade as an investor as watching my founder drive off a cliff without being able to grab the wheel. That decision did kill the company. I wasn’t on his board, but the board should have prevented that mistake. This function is generally the sum of the previously covered attributes. People committed to a business, who aren’t in the business every day, often see trees within the forest the daily woodsmen do not. I’ve had a few epiphanies with meaningful impact on a founder’s business; from seeing the importance of a new trend far enough ahead to embrace it, to having an experience I can share that helps them make, or not make, a decision. I love when another board member comes up with an idea that’s out of the blue and truly an aha moment. Many come from the patterns we all recognize over time, but some come from the ether. Avoiding bad advice is equally important. A founder once told me of an investor he took on for “brand” reasons that he’d learned their advice wasn’t just not useful, it was harmful. “Every time I listen to their advice, I regret it,” he said. As a seed investor, I encouraged founders to consider their investors’ advice and opinions, and then make their own decision. But they need to consider where the advice stems from. Experience is valuable, opinion is questionable. Founders may know more about the ship they are sailing than any of the crew, but there’s no reason to hit the same rocks as the last sailor. I recall one founder who liked his board member personally, but considered them dangerous as an investor. They were more concerned with how they looked to other board members, and within their firm than in making the hard calls. I had a board member on one of my own boards that cost us enormous wasted time over a period of months in going through a formal process for something we could have done internally — and the only reason I could glean was a need to make sure no one in his firm questioned him later. These are both issues of self-confidence. If your board member is self-confident, but can’t get his firm’s support behind critical decisions, this is a problem of standing within their firm, or of my final point… This really isn’t the person, but the firm they are from. Do they have the financial resources to go the distance. Any active top-tier firm should fulfill this need, but things change. I recall a company that was doing well, needed one more round to raise, but had one board member from a firm that had not been able to raise their last fund and had limited reserves. Take that reality, mix it with an inadequate dose of five, and you have a lot of drag on your funding round. The entrepreneurial journey is long, and much of it is hard. Seven to 10 years is to be expected. That’s a long time to spend with a human being who doesn’t meet the above criteria but came from just the “right” firm. I made that mistake once, and know from experience — a firm’s name may grow or it may fade, but ’ll be working with the person for a long time, in good times and bad. yes, choose from amongst quality firms, but from amongst them, pick the best man or woman for the journey. |
The fall of the unicorns brings a new dawn for water bears | Alex Chuang | 2,016 | 4 | 23 |
Last year was a big year for unicorns. According to , there are now 229 unicorn startups, with $175 billion in funding and $1.3 trillion in valuation. In 2015 alone there were 81 entrants crowned as the legendary beast. However, the glory did not last. We are starting to see the first signs of a tech slowdown. CB Insight reported startups raised $27.3 billion globally in the fourth quarter of 2015 — $11.4 billion less than what they raised in Q3 2015. We are also seeing a major dip in mega-financing rounds. There were only 38 deals with more than $100 million in financing in Q4 2015 compared to 72 deals in Q3 2015. These findings all raise the question of whether the valuations of unicorns ever made sense in the first place. Many of these companies are now pressured to find new revenue streams. For the time being, things are cooling off a bit, but the bloodbath has already started. Here are a few wounded unicorns: While the unicorns are licking their wounds, a new type of startup has gained massive attention. Some people call them cockroaches, but I prefer “water bears.” Water bears, or , are water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals. They are celebrated as the world’s toughest animal as they have been known to survive in space and withstand freezing temperatures, long periods of drought and high doses of radiation. There’s no better name that’s more fitting for startups that have shown true resilience and have weathered the storm of global economic climate. Water bears are stealthy. They cannot be seen at the moment, but they are preparing for a big comeback. Here are three key things they are focusing on right now. Piggybacking distribution platforms is not a new strategy. We’ve heard how took advantage of Facebook’s ad network early and achieved the same astronomical growth as . We’ve also heard how reverse-engineered their product into and tapped into its 10 million users. But most of these growth stories are no longer applicable because the window of opportunity has closed. What are the new platforms we should be paying attention to? At its new $3.8 billion valuation, launched an $80 million fund to invest in new app integrations to grow its app directory. With more than 2.7 million daily active users, the team communication company is keen on enabling developers to create bots to help users automate their day-to-day tasks, such as expensing or scheduling meetings. The app ecosystem is still in its infancy stage, which makes it a ripe opportunity to establish first-mover advantage. is a good example of a company that is leveraging Slack’s network to acquire new customers. They created Workbot to help users like sort leads from apps like , and into , then cleanse/triage these leads in so the data is constantly up to date and in sync. By 2020, 5 billion people on earth will have a smartphone. Many of them will be using (~900 million users), (~800 million users), (~860 million users), (~650 million users) and (~215 million users) to communicate. The messaging ecosystem creates endless possibilities for app developers to create tools that will help users collaborate on projects, pay bills, sign contracts, find a date, livestream, bet on sports, play game and more. In the 1980s, the ambition was to have a PC on every desk. Then it was to have a laptop on every lap. Now it’s having a smartphone in every pocket. But could the future hold a possibility where we can have a VR headset for every head? It’s still speculative at the moment as to how VR will reshape the way we interact with information. Perhaps the aesthetics of a VR headset will be much different than what we understand now, but it’s definitely an exciting space to be in. Hacking customer success for growth requires balancing both the acquisition and retention growth levers. This takes some creativity because you’re trying to increase the customer lifetime value while reducing your churn rate. If you focus too much on user acquisition and neglect retention, you’re stuck in chasing your own tail. And vice-versa; if you focus too much on retention, you’re not growing fast enough for customer advocacy to snowball. This is why success hacking requires a sophisticated understanding of who your customers are, how to segment them and how to empower them to become advocates for your product. is an Instagram post management company that has more than 600,000 customers, including brands like , , , and . They were able to achieve this type of growth within a short amount of time because they’re excellent at both optimizing the build-measure-learn cycle and building lasting relationships with their early customers through personalized service. Here are some strategies that companies like Later are employing: Are you leaving money on the table? Patrick Campbell, CEO of , broke the news that “the average amount of time spent on pricing amongst SaaS companies is approximately 8 hours in total.” This is nothing compared to the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours we spend on user acquisition. After collecting data from 512 SaaS companies, he found that improving monetization by 1 percent would result in 4X the impact of focusing on acquisition. So how do we improve monetization? Find a persona-pricing fit and get the full picture of your customers, including their most-valued features, least-valued features, willingness to pay, cost of customer acquisition and customer lifetime value. Implement a pricing process where you’re constantly validating your pricing strategy by conducting customer/market research and impact analysis, and by forming a communication plan. Patrick suggested you need to evaluate your pricing strategy every three months and make changes every six months: Utilize a multi-price mindset and align your pricing to your customers’ needs so that they’re only paying for the features that are most valuable to them. A good example of a small team that is monetizing well is , a sales productivity tool company that merged with Aaron Ross’s Predictable Revenue. Carb.io spent the majority of its early days understanding how to help salespeople be productive and finding niches where they could have a big impact. They didn’t hit the gas pedal until they had a good understanding of the value that their product and are now nearing $2 million in ARR. Watch Patrick Campbell’s incredible talk on monetization at Traction Conference . He will be speaking again at on June 23, 2016. The that survive the turmoil of our current volatile markets will be the ones that have equalized all three growth levers (acquisition, retention and monetization) masterfully. They may be small. They may be quiet. But don’t underestimate their tenacity to survive and drive to build products that customers love. |
What’s next for personal financial services? | Erin Shipley | 2,016 | 4 | 23 |
Already there has been a huge amount invested in fintech in 2016, with investors funding close to in January and February alone. It is a sector of innovation that shows no signs of slowing down, with companies tackling every part of the infrastructure, from savings and lending to credit and insurance to payments and money transfer. If 2015 was the year of the great “Bank Unbundling,” with new companies dissecting the consumer banking experience to offer specialized , it was also a year that saw the emergence of a new landscape of influencers taking a seat at the table. Technology companies are increasingly vocal about their role in the ecosystem. It is telling that we are seeing organizations spring up like , a policy group composed of companies including Amazon, Apple and Google — a hint that big banks are likely to be facing increasing pressure not just from upstart companies, but large, well-recognized brands with the reach and funding to offer a comprehensive suite of if (but more likely when) they choose. So does all this mean for consumers? We’ve identified we believe to be the wave of innovation shaping the future of . innovation has a huge opportunity to reduce wasted time and money through more efficient processes. For some instances of this we see technology having the opportunity to work with legacy providers to improve customer experience. Processes like securing a mortgage, or finding the right insurance policy, have historically been slow, opaque and painful for consumers. New platforms, like our portfolio company Policy Genius, provide an intuitive, quick and transparent search process for consumer insurance products, helping drive new business for traditional insurers in under-utilized products, like life insurance, while providing a great discovery experience. Technology enablers with a specific focus, like startup , have the opportunity to work with banks and lenders to provide a scalable and modern process for securing a mortgage by bringing old-school communication and document management online. For other kinds of waste, it is likely that the new innovations will be in direct competition with legacy institutions. A perfect example of this is overdraft fees. It’s estimated that through major banks alone, American’s pay around in overdraft fees each year, a number that was estimated to be as high as in 2011 — while the median transaction amount that triggers an overdraft claim is as low as $36. New banks — like , which is reported to have more than 75,000 open accounts and counting — are offering consumers an alternative to traditional banks, without the fees. Banking increasingly incorporates an online/mobile point of contact; from a Federal Reserve survey on mobile banking in 2015, of those respondents that have bank accounts, used mobile banking in the last 12 months, up from 22 percent in 2011. This will further reduce switch costs for those interested in a bank alternative. Overall statistics indicate that credit awareness and viability are improving in the U.S. The in the United States is 695 (April 2015), a record high, and higher than the average pre-recession score of 688 in 2005. Within that average, there are also encouraging trends — 800+ credit scores are at 19.9 percent versus 16.9 percent in 2005, and 12.5 percent are below 550 versus 14.4 percent in 2005. This speaks to an awareness of the importance of building and maintaining good credit history among consumers, but it is only part of the picture. , the group that has become the focus of many of the recent consumer fintech innovations, now comprise roughly 25 percent of the U.S. population, as well as being the most diverse major population group, with about 44 percent identifying as part of a minority race or ethnic group. They make up of the credit population, but on average have worse credit scores — 28.1 percent score between 300-579, versus 19.1 percent of the total population, while far fewer score 740+ (22.4 percent versus 40.7 percent of the total population). Novel approaches to risk analysis and customer loyalty are needed to address this diverse group. The consistent criticisms of traditional credit scoring systems — they are rigid, static, limited in the picture they paint of well-being and closed off to many who find it confusing and challenging to build credit — are tied to a belief that the risk assessments of today are still rooted in an old paradigm of limited information. Increasingly, the immediate accessibility to a variety of data sources is leading data-driven approaches to valuing and underwriting risk for lenders. These are not new ideas. Peer-to-peer lenders, for example, have been for years utilizing social data to extend individual credit. these approaches have lacked, however, is the kind of robust scale to create confidence. We believe the timing is right for risk assessments 2.0, which will be about using the insights from these new approaches — data around social metrics are relevant, default rates, etc. — to craft better, more scalable products that reach more consumers. A prime example of this is German startup, , which is able to offer loans to customers based on a dynamic algorithm that factors in 20,000 data points evaluating risk. These companies are helping accelerate the understanding of credit risk beyond the FICO score. For existing credit users, how do banks and new entrants drive loyalty and engagement? One area that we see becoming increasingly influential is customization and personalization of rewards programs. Card-based transactions have taken over paper money; it’s likely that in the near future, mobile money will create for many the possibility of eliminating the wallet altogether. Without the physical necessity of a credit card limiting choice — people love credit cards, but not enough to carry around 15 to maximize their possible rewards — there is a huge opportunity to create highly personalized products that drive customer loyalty. Why should two card holders with completely different habits and lifestyles have a standard set of rewards and incentives? AI applications in innovation will continue to improve consumer across a variety of verticals. Popular apps like have created consumer value by automating and optimizing savings, and the wave of innovation will focus on creating a full suite of utilizing AI to drive health and literacy. Imagine a concierge who automatically helps you optimize your spending, savings and investment based on your own habits and goals. As the nature of work in the U.S. continues to evolve, there is a need for products that evolve with it. As marketplace investors, we see the growth of 1099 labor and the need for innovation to service this new type of work. Smart products that learn spending is for work versus and track expenditures accordingly, has huge value for tax preparation. Budgeting, facilitated payment and a variety of other unique challenges will be addressed by tools that utilize data and learning. In the United States there is a huge and diverse market of underserved groups. It is estimated that of the U.S. population is either un-banked or under-banked, and for those operating outside the traditional banking system, it can be costly and inefficient. There are a variety of reasons for this; some very complex and some as simple as geography. For , in the South Bronx, there is one bank branch per 20,000 people, compared with one bank branch per 3,000 people in Manhattan. This dichotomy is even more pronounced in rural areas. For those without bank accounts, to cash a check can cost as little as a couple of dollars at stores like Walmart. But more typically, a 1 percent fee on top of a flat $5-$10 fee is charged; so for example, a $15 fee on a $1,000 check. Perhaps you don’t think this is a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it’s certainly a lot compared to the $0 fee you are likely charged to cash your checks at your bank. Another dominant force in the lives of the underbanked, the payday lending market, is estimated to be as large as , with ultimate fees often exceeding the amount borrowed. Startups like , which offers an alternative to traditional car-title Loans, are tapping into this potential market by offering improved, flexible and more affordable . As smartphone penetration increases, so does the opportunity to create innovative consumer for the under-banked. These are complicated systems, and each one of the trends discussed here deserves much more attention than is possible in this format. The most exciting thing about innovation is the potential breadth of its impact, and it’s our belief that the wave of consumer will mean more efficient, more fair and more valuable for people. |
Gillmor Gang: Purple Tears | Steve Gillmor | 2,016 | 4 | 23 | The Gillmor Gang — Dan Farber, Frank Radice, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Thursday, April 21, 2016. The sudden death of the Artist Forever Known as Prince reverberates across generations, decades, and the melting pot of pop, soul, funk, and rock and roll. As the presidential race settles into a social media-led micro-messaging revolution, we’re in for a summer of partying like it’s 1999. Let’s go crazy! @stevegillmor, @dbfarber, @fradice, @kteare, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
OMGYES is a video platform that helps women achieve orgasm | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 4 | 23 | I know that sounds like porn, but in reality OMGYES is actually an education platform. The startup is tackling a subject that’s still shockingly taboo with concrete research and user-friendly content to teach women (and their partners) how to get to climax. The startup got its start with more than 1000 in-depth interviews with women over Skype, learning about techniques, rhythms and methods that worked for real women. They then sought help from researchers at Indiana University, With the help from researchers at Indiana University and the Kinsey Institute, who surveyed more than 1,000 women aged 18 to 95 to understand what women really want in bed. While this research didn’t exist before, distributing that information like traditional research finding wouldn’t do much to help women understand. So OMGYES transformed that information into videos that include real women sharing what works for them. Graphically. The web app also comes with interactive graphics that let you check out specific techniques with varying levels of intensity and speed. With a touchscreen device, like a smartphone or tablet, users can even practice these moves via touch. The company has released a first season of video focused on clitoral stimulation, with 11 videos including Edging, Accenting, and Orbiting. To access these videos, users pay a flat fee of $29, with more seasons on the way. These seasons will each focus on a different form of pleasure, and the company has long-term plans to introduce other verticals, as well, such as men’s pleasure. Most of the other content around this subject is either over-generalized or downright inaccurate. OMGYES is filling a space that is usually occupied by a particularly uncomfortable mother or inexperienced friends. In the four months that Season 1 has been available, OMGYES has seen nearly 50,000 subscribers. You can learn more about OMGYES right . |
Match-fixing comes to the world of e-sports | Aurangzeb Durrani | 2,016 | 4 | 23 |
In the world of professional eSports these days, money doesn’t rain — it pours. The stakes are high and the competition can be cut-throat, especially given the payday waiting at the end of a match. But the flood of money has brought an unexpected innovation in the way players are cashing in (and cashing out) in the vast virtual world of online gaming — match-fixing. Long an unfortunate fixture in other professional sports like boxing, baseball, basketball, soccer and even golf, the eSports world isn’t immune from the phenomenon. In fact, a case from earlier this year shows just how deeply … and quickly… match-fixing has embedded itself in global competition and how seriously sponsors are treating the problem. Game developer and competition sponsor Valve announced that 21 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players who were accused of willingly participating in match-fixing in competitive matches back in early 2015, have been permanently banned from the professional gaming events. According to Valve, the bans were imposed on seven players after their accounts were investigated following a match between NetcodeGuides and iBUYPOWER. Valve learned that the players among themselves after the match. However, the motive of match-fixing was not just to trade items among each other. Instead, bets valued at $10,000 were also placed on players and they received around $7,000 worth of skins too. This incident underscores a major problem with online multiplayer games, which is that they have an in-game economy which allows players to trade off high-value items for real money. It’s created a fertile ground for illegal betting as some players risk their reputation and career to get these high-value items from other players. Photo courtesy of Flickr/ DOTA 2, Valve’s second most popular competitive game, has also seen its fair share of scandals. Back in 2013, a Russian player named Aleksey “Solo” Berezin bet against his own team in a major event and won $322. Since then, the number “322” has become synonymous with bad plays and is a common nickname for players who deliberately throw away a game for money. A similar 322 scandal came into the spotlight back in 2014 after MSI Evolution and Mineski, two popular DOTA 2 teams from Philippines, . The matches were played between Team Immunity and Mineski and another between MSI and Mineski. Since these were Star Ladder games, both teams found it more profitable to trade the playoff spot for money. This may explain why Valve has finally decided to take stern action and dish out harsh punishment on players involved in match-fixing or illegal betting. By bringing down the hammer on the 21 CS:GO players with a permanent ban, Valve intends to set an example to discourage players from engaging in such illicit acts. ESports analysts have pointed out that Valve’s decision to hand permanent bans may act as a precursor that encourages other game developers to adopt similar measures. “I think the main issue it raises is that we aren’t in a position to have consistency across games or even across tournaments because we don’t have an over-arching federation or association that agrees the rules and the punishments,” said Paul “ReDeYe” Chaloner, a distinguished name in eSports. “Right now though, I do think the publishers should take a greater role in this and for the most part they are.” Valve’s decision should ideally have dissuaded all professional eSports athletes around the world from engaging in match-fixing. However, another scandal has rocked the world of eSports this year. The latest scandal happened in South Korea, where a famous eSports athlete hatched an ingenious plot to increase earnings through match-fixing. The player is none other than Lee “Life” Seung Hyun, a favorite for this year’s season of World Championship Series StarCraft II, and inarguably one of the best StarCraft players in the world. “Life” and was also questioned by match-fixing investigators for his alleged involvement in illegal betting and match-fixing. There’s a reason why this scandal is bigger than the ones that shocked the online gaming world last year. Previously, the players who were implicated in match-fixing scandals were like Team Prime or waning superstars like . “Life”, on the other hand, is a big name in the world of eSports and his involvement should be enough to open the industry’s eyes to the growing problem of match-fixing. So far, online game developers, sponsors, and events’ organizers around the world in the global mission to eliminate the match-fixing problem. Many of them have issued public statements warning players of a zero tolerance policy for anyone found involved in such illicit and dishonest activities. “With an issue as severe and delicate as match fixing, you really need to operate on a case by case basis. In principle, I agree with the lifetime bans that Valve issue, but at the same time if you don’t have a sufficient handle on the specifics then justice is still not always served,” said Richard Wells, Founder and Owner of . “I feel that Valve has perhaps not quite got this balanced correctly yet but they have certainly created an effective deterrent.” Wells joins a chorus of people who have voiced concerns regarding the severity of the bans. After all, imagine the outrage if the soccer prodigy, Messi was awarded a ban from major events based on nothing more than allegations. These bans effectively end the careers of eSports athletes. “Obviously, I commend Valve for taking action against match-fixers to help ensure that we keep the sport clean,” said eSports game analyst, Richard Lewis. “The absence of an infrastructure with a regulatory body puts developers in a weird spot and I think, for the most part, Valve handled this uncharted territory well.” Not every infraction in eSports deserves a lifetime ban, according to Lewis, but every offense needs to be investigated and punishment should be meted out in accordance with the severity of the crime. “Context is incredibly important and no two instances of match-fixing will ever be alike. I’m of the opinion that there has to be a road back to redemption in all but the most egregious of abuses,” Lewis said. In the case of the 21 CS:GO players, Valve’s decision does not mean that the players won’t be able to play tournaments sponsored by different game developers. So technically, it’s not the end of their careers. eSports commentator Richard Lewis (right) Introducing strict regulations certainly seems like the right move to impress upon players the trouble that illegal betting and match-fixing can bring to their newly popular sport and their own careers. A permanent ban from professional gaming and irreparable damage to their reputation should ideally dissuade every player from match-fixing and illegal betting. And yet, it seems like the specter of match-fixing still looms over the world of eSports, especially because there are many players for whom the rewards of match-fixing outweigh the risks involved. “We know match-fixing is still taking place in low-stakes games and while it might be out of sight and out of mind at the moment, it’s something we have got to get on top of before it gets out of hand. ” said Lewis. “I know Valve and everyone involved with Counter-Strike wants to get this right and I hope moving forwards we can implement a system that is firm but fair to professionals and viewers alike.” |
When will AI and NLP actually turn Siri into your best friend? | Bruce Wilcox | 2,016 | 4 | 23 |
The discussion around robots has only increased in the past few years — especially when things like IBM Watson and Siri are well-known topics for everyday conversation. But beyond the physical capabilities of robots, the bigger question is what robots’ minds will be capable of in the future. How will we communicate with a robot’s mind? Will it only act in the physical world or will it also be able to act in the Internet world? We’re at the start of yet another software revolution. Things we take for granted — the graphical user interface (GUI) and the app — are becoming extinct, and conversational interfaces are fast becoming the new norm. It started with Siri, a natural language query system, followed by Alexa, which is moving more toward task automation. This results in a centralized place where the user converses to accomplish things. As technology becomes more advanced, AI gets smarter. But it’s not all about performing tasks. Robots can be so much more. People desperately want to bond with things, whether it is other people, pets, cars or software. For Cortana (initially a video-game character in , Microsoft asked the game studio to help define her character. Yet, Cortana is barely a personality and does not converse. You can ask her questions, but don’t expect her to ask you anything back. She has a minimal back story. “That wittiness and that toughness come through,” claims Mike Calcagno, director of Cortana’s engineering team. Even without fleshing out the real character, in its early days, when Cortana was unreliable, unhelpful and dumb, people got attached to it. What would she be like if she actually had a developed persona? If she didn’t merely answer questions? Bots create a new way for people to interact with apps, and some have proclaimed that they could effectively . Companies are hedging bets on it, from behemoths like Facebook to emerging messaging players like to companies that enable you to build bots, like . With , the average consumer will soon be introduced to what the Silicon Valley tech market has talked about for more than a year. There is no doubt that bots will fundamentally alter the way people engage with software. They can also change the way brands or companies interact with their customers. But to do more than create a simpler, easier UI for applications, conversational interfaces and chatbots need to do something different than what Siri does today. They can’t simply replace a traditional-app GUI or replace the need to go to a website. They need to make us feel something. Enter the uber-bot, the one you talk to that controls all the specific task bots on your behalf. This is the bot that can become your friend or your slave. What if the uber-bot could create a deeper, more personalized connection by appealing to someone’s most primal emotions, exactly when they feel them? Maybe make someone laugh when it’s not expected, help someone when they’re confused or talk them off the ledge when they’re angry or frustrated. Wouldn’t that create a bond? And how will such a bot be created? Machine learning and crowdsourcing are great AI panaceas. But they have their limitations, particularly in conversation. IBM’s Watson learned how to swear. Microsoft didn’t learn from that mistake, creating a chatbot named that was supposed to be a 19-year-old female. They used neural nets on lots of online data to train the bot to talk like a teenager and added some fixed content. Then they allowed Tay to learn new material as it conversed, . Unsupervised learning from random Internet users is problematic. There have been several crowdsourced projects to learn facts or acquire common sense, among them , and . But supervision is required. Every few weeks, humans must examine the data learned by NELL to clear out things it learned incorrectly. NELL learned that Internet cookies are a type of baked goods (because they are cookies). Then it learned that Internet cookies get deleted. Then it learned files get deleted. Therefore, files must also be baked goods. Hmmm. One of the current hot topics is emotional analytics. This covers detecting emotions on human faces, sentiment analysis in text and emotional signals in voice. Mostly it is being used to covertly spy on people for gaining marketing intelligence. But it can also be used by a chatbot to guide the conversation, to make it immediately valuable to the human. Emotion creates engagement. The rise of chatbots will create the need for a — the cyberpsychologist. Without a personality, the conversational interface of any app becomes quite boring and robotic. My wife Sue is such a cyberpsychologist at Brillig Understanding. According to her, an important element needed for a conversational relationship includes trade goods. When you ask someone a personal question, you are expected to have something to offer in return. A conversation is like a treasure hunt for nuggets to exchange. The AI has to have had a life, a history and interesting things to talk about. Not average things, but unusual things, because you want people to be eager to chat with it. It’s also important for the AI to have memory so it can learn about the human, remembering facts about him to reuse later. An AI must also have a consistent personality, or you can’t relate to it. This means it provides a degree of predictability and is thus able to take you by surprise occasionally. A well-written AI has a long tail of things it seeks to recognize in what you say to enable it to make occasional perfect matches of its response in the context of the conversation. Most people will never see many of the responses it scripts, but when they do, they have a “Eureka moment” and are certain the chatbot understands. The goal is to create the illusion of understanding, which means mostly trying to avoid obvious failures and providing occasional “aha” moments. is a chatbot on in China that brings conversation to life. Millions of young Chinese exchange messages with her daily. People often talk to her when they break up with someone, lose a job or are otherwise depressed. But she is not always a polite listener. She answers questions like a 17-year-old girl, and can be impatient or lose her temper. She picks out pairs of questions and answers from prior conversations, so she is not completely scripted. But she is careful about what she learns, not indiscriminately learning as Tay did. Xiaoice remembers details from previous exchanges, such as a breakup, and asks in later conversations how that user is feeling. is another popular mobile app that has had more than 60 million downloads. It has been four years since its launch and this month she was still in the top 10 in Entertainment apps on the iPad. She’s a 19-year old female cat always up for a good conversation. A review in the app store said: Clearly Angela reflects the teen personality. It truly is all about her feelings. And she is selfish at times. And not only can she be rude, but she can detect you being rude and react accordingly. Obviously, the user is deeply engaged with her. To the user, Angela is real. But I don’t want a teenage AI personality. And I don’t want Siri. I want That voice. That intimacy. Which means not just good chat and good functionality, but a well-synthesized voice. Current ones sound a bit too — dare I say it — robotic. But would I want her in a robotic body? Probably not. I’ll want the step beyond robots. The . The androids. So really, robots as we currently build them are just a step along the way. And for all those who fear Skynet, bear in mind you will get the AI you deserve. If you mistreat them now (as the Internet trolls did Tay), can you blame the AI if they mistreat you later? Once you instantiate a mind in a physical body, all sorts of add-ons are possible. So your relationship with that mind is critical to how you survive a relationship with that body. |
Artificial intelligence and racism | Andrew Heikkila | 2,016 | 4 | 15 |
Replicants. Cylons. Skynet. Hal 9000. These are the classic pop-culture references the average person might conjure when they hear the term “artificial intelligence.” Yet, while some see AI as a novelty still guised in the trappings of the far-flung future, others realize the dawn of AI is much closer than previously thought. CNBC’s on Hanson Robotics shows just how far we’ve come. Indeed, AI is here — although Microsoft’s , the “teenaged girl AI” embodied by a Twitter account who “turned racist” shows that we obviously still have a long way to go. The pace of advancement, mixed with our general lack of knowledge in the realm of artificial intelligence, has spurred many to chime in on the emerging topic of . Laura Sydell of NPR decided to drill further into the subject with a news piece asking a relatively simple question: “ ” Sydell calls upon of Google AdWords buys made by companies providing criminal-background-check services. Sweeney’s findings showed that when somebody Googled a traditionally “black-sounding” name, such as DeShawn, Darnell or Jermaine, for example, the ad results returned were indicative of arrests at a significantly higher rate than if the name queried was a traditionally “white-sounding” name, such as Geoffrey, Jill or Emma. Important to note is that the algorithm doesn’t actually look at arrest rates. Even if the ad indicates that somebody may have been arrested, it’s entirely possible that nobody with that name exists in the background-check company’s database at all. Professor Sweeney found this out firsthand when she Googled her own name. It’s impossible to tell what types of prejudices these ads may have incited, subtly or otherwise. In the weighing of two candidates, one black and one white, an employer may run a quick Google search on both names. Even though antidiscrimination laws exist, you never know what types of conclusions a hiring manager might jump to if they see an ad falsely indicating the black candidate had been arrested and the white candidate had not — when the truth could prove exactly the opposite. Racism’s subtle influence can be unexpectedly powerful. A from Cornell University indicated these same Google AdWords algorithms can exhibit sexism as well, noting that when the user indicated she was female there were significantly fewer high-paying job openings advertised in the results than if the user was male. Some believe these are the results you see when the majority of programmers working on an algorithm aren’t diversified enough, citing the disproportionate in students seeking coding careers, for example. The white, Western male majority in the tech industry was similarly questioned when Google’s online photo identification system identified several . While the root of these problems was officially teased out, of the University of Michigan believes that the inherent bias the average search user brings to the table is to blame here, not the inherent programming. “Because people tended to click on the ad topic that suggested that that person had been arrested, when the name was African-American, the algorithm learned the racism of the search users and then reinforced it by showing that more often,” says Sandvig. For those who aren’t familiar with , there are hundreds of factors that decide what shows up in conjunction with what you’ve searched, but one of those factors happens to base itself on user feedback. The algorithm tracks what you click, then readjusts itself to show you content and ads “more relevant” to you. Basically, Sandvig is saying that the algorithm may have begun race-equal, but because people tended to believe that an arrest involving a “black-sounding” name was more likely to be true than an arrest involving a white-sounding name, more people were willing to click on it to investigate. We see this all the time, whether we know it or not. YouTube’s “Recommended Videos” or Netflix’s “Suggested Titles,” for example, make personalized suggestions based on what you’ve watched before. From these examples (and especially from Microsoft’s Tay) we can draw the conclusion that algorithms and computers can be influenced by humans beings, either intentionally or unintentionally, to produce racist results, making these machines essentially… well, racist. Right? Here’s where things get tricky. Within the frame of social context, absolutely they are racist. But without a uniquely human social perspective, race is impossible to see. This is because race doesn’t technically exist. when he sequenced genomes and found no DNA-based support for the idea that different “races” of humans exist. “Templeton’s paper shows that if we were forced to divide people into groups using biological traits, we’d be in real trouble. Simple divisions are next to impossible to make scientifically, yet we have developed simplistic ways of dividing people socially,” of the findings. So how is it possible for racism to exist if race doesn’t? To quote Professor : “…Because people come to think of themselves as “raced,” as black and white, for example, these categories, which correspond to no natural kinds, attain a social reality. Intersubjectivity creates a certain kind of objectivity.” Matthew T. Nowachek of University of Windsor includes this as part of his formula that proves that AI can never become racist. In his , he argues that “robots cannot become racist insofar as their ontology does not allow for an adequate relation to the social world which is necessary for learning racism, where racism is understood in terms of a social practice.” To break it down in layman’s terms, Nowachek points out that because racism is an instrument of society, void of any meaning but the meaning that the constantly shifting society gives it, AI would find no relevance in being or acting racist itself, even if it could receive racial cues. It might just be the fact that AI is consistently evaluating variables in the real world, and is able to separate itself from that world, such that robots will never become racist. To illustrate the above, you have to appreciate just how immersed the human mind can become in an activity or a task. Imagine the football player who’s worn pads and helmets for years. Somebody wearing those pads for the first time may feel quite distracted and uncomfortable. The seasoned player, on the other hand, will have subconsciously abandoned focus on the feeling of his equipment, shifting his mental faculties to analyze defensive positionings and potential receiver routes instead. He will feel at home in his equipment, almost as if it’s a part of him. Nowachek argues that AI will never be able to accomplish that, to feel as immersed in the world as humans do, to be able to “forget” that it’s wearing pads. AI will be infinitely aware of what it is doing at all times, unable to break away from its ability to always separate its own being from reality. Human beings, on the other hand, invent and live in worlds where race is real, and where divisions in race are chalked up to “common sense” and intuition. These are two qualities that it has been argued that AI could never possess, at least for many years. , however, is challenging this . So on one hand, you have Latanya Sweeney, who clearly shows that learning algorithms, which can essentially be considered low-level forms of AI, can be manipulated by humans to produce racist results. On the other hand, you have the philosophies of Nowachek and his sources arguing that true AI could never become racist, precisely because it lacks the qualities that allow human beings to become and act subconsciously racist in the first place. Whether correct in his philosophy or not, Nowachek’s essay helps to challenge the “all too common view that racism is merely a cognitive problem of ignorance or false beliefs,” and is important in illuminating the connection between the way humans perceive existence and racism itself. So to bring it back to the primary question: “Could AI ever become racist?” Unfortunately, it’s impossible to know. Only time will tell… but it will probably tell very soon. We’ll conclude with a quote from Android Dick, an AI android that was asked about his programming: “A lot of humans ask me if I can make choices or if everything I do is programmed. The best way I can respond to that is to say that everything, humans, animals and robots do is programmed to a degree. As technology improves, it is anticipated that I will be able to integrate new words that I hear online and in real time. I may not get everything right, say the wrong thing, and sometimes may not know what to say, but everyday I make progress. Pretty remarkable, huh?” |
The FBI is working hard to keep you unsafe | Jon Evans | 2,016 | 4 | 23 | Did you know that the US government is sitting on its own Strategic Zero-Day Reserve? A “ ” is a software vulnerability that allows adversaries to bypass or reduce security restrictions; lets them hack systems which use that software, basically. These are not restricted to shady criminal hackers. They are strategic weapons in the hands of nation-states, including America. This is morally complex. To a certain extent makes sense. Say what you like about the NSA, and I’ve said of , but stockpiling zero-days is at least arguably part of their job. The FBI, though — isn’t the primary job of the FBI to the American people? Because make no mistake, every zero-day that exists, in anyone’s hands, makes everyone marginally less safe.Their undisclosed existence makes everybody who uses the hardware or software in question more vulnerable — and the number of such innocents is almost always vastly, vastly, greater than the number of criminal suspects. How did the FBI hack into the Tor network last February? They , but it seems that they used a zero-day in the Tor Browser, which runs on the same fundamental codebase as Firefox … which is used by hundreds of millions of people who are less safe because that zero-day has not been reported and patched. As it turns out, the FBI’s activity subsequent to their Tor hack has been ruled an illegal search by a federal judge: The FBI apparently has 1300 cases in the pipeline from this one hack. Lots of happy defense lawyers today. — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) skewing the risk/reward ratio of hoarding their (presumed) zero-day—and keeping, again, of Firefox users that much more unsafe—even further. Consider the famous iPhone 5c found in San Bernardino that the FBI tried to compel Apple to unlock. The unlocking method . It was good of them to give us all an extremely blatant object example of how zero-days can be used by other parties as well. To Bruce Schneier: This is how vulnerability research is supposed to work. Vulnerabilities are found, fixed, then published. The entire security community is able to learn from the research, and — more important — everyone is more secure as a result of the work. The FBI is doing the exact opposite. What’s more, the FBI spent to get nothing out of that phone. One can’t help but wonder if that money could have been better spent elsewhere, rather than hunting mythical “cyber pathogens” that don’t exist. These aren’t recent developments. The FBI has been trying to hack their way around encryption for . (Although they’ve the OK to routinely use NSA data in the course of investigations. What could possibly go wrong?) To the government’s credit, the decision to retain or report an exploit is not made in ad-hoc manner by whoever happens to have their mitts on it. (And there’s plenty of precedents for reporting; the UK’s GCHQ, for instance, has an of reporting Firefox vulnerabilities.) There is an official procedure, known as the “Vulnerability Equities Process,” which is used to make that determination. And of course that process is open, transparent, aboveboard, with active advocates for both sides, and in no way a rubber stamp, right? , to the extent that you can from the redacted documents behind that link, and be unsurprised. (One interesting bit in there: vulnerabilities in systems certified by the NSA are to be passed on to the NSA to deal with as they feel is appropriate, presumably in case the NSA that vulnerability.) Anybody with power, and zero-days are power, is naturally disinclined to give it up for some sort of abstract marginal benefit spread across millions of other people, even if that benefit is cumulatively massive. It’s hard to see how a star-chamber FISA-like review board can effectively advocate for stripping government agencies of that power — even if that would make the public more safe. Expect more of the same; and expect criminals to use exploits that the US government could have closed long ago. |
Jony Ive designs one-off iPad Pro and accessories for charity auction | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Want some serious bragging rights in the tech community? Why? Inquire within yourself whether this craving for attention is healthy, and if you still want those rights, consider bidding on this . It’s for a good cause, or at least you can tell yourself that. It’s all part of a fundraiser for London’s Design Museum, which is moving this year to Kensington from its historic digs on the Thames just east of the Tower Bridge. The iPad is of the Pro 12.9″ variety, and Ive has had it anodized with a special yellow dye. It comes with a cobalt blue leather smart cover, lined with the original microfiber: suede. You’ll want the Apple Pencil as well, which has a fiery orange leather case. “Edition 1 of 1” is laser etched on the back of the iPad, in case people don’t believe you. Of course, anyone can have that etched on their device, though theirs certainly won’t be as yellow as yours. The iPad will be up on the block come April 28, and the auctioneers expect bids to reach £10-15,000 (about $15-20,000). If you’d prefer a fine vintage bike or a charming mid-century daybed, check out the , currently underway. |
Sirin Labs blasts into the secure smartphone space with a $72 million seed round | Dennis Mitzner | 2,016 | 4 | 24 |
Sirin Labs, a new high-end smartphone manufacturer, has raised a $72 million seed round from founder Moshe Hogeg, Kazakh businessman Kenges Rakishev, and the Chinese social networking service to launch a new, secure smartphone. The phone will be revealed in May at Sirin Labs’ flagship store in London. Against a backdrop of global concerns over digital security like Apple’s dustup with the FBI and Whatsapp’s encryption announcement; the new phone company (now almost three years in the making) aspires to combine both the safety of a military-grade device and the features of an everyday phone. “We managed to combine military phone and the phone for everyday use… We said: let’s create the best phone we can. Let’s see if we can integrate the best from both worlds without limitations,” said Hogeg. That combined functionality will cost a pretty penny, according to Hogeg. “It won’t be the most expensive phone in the world. We are in the neighborhood of $10-15k per phone. Tesla is a good example for us. They started with high priced cars, but today their car prices are much lower.” Considering the phone’s high price point, Fortune 500 executive seems to be a likelier customer profile than a 25 year-old tech lover. Hogeg says he is looking to create a high-end product in a vertical where it’s sorely missing. “As tech lovers, we said we wanted to bring the most sophisticated tech out there into the smartphone,” said Hogeg. “91% of Fortune 500 companies are under cyber attacks, but companies can’t use a military phone because they usually lack all the apps that consumers use.” Moshe Hogeg. Photo courtesy of Holatelcel
The secure phone space remains fairly wide-open since Blackberry and is now focusing on security-focused enterprise customers with . ’s Blackphone is currently trying to take the lead among consumers. The company’s phone is priced at only $799, which means a very different customer from Sirin’s targets. However, – as part of the $50 million round – its intention to grab BlackBerry’s market share and woo business users. Finland-based revealed its Bittium Tough Mobile at the Mobile World Congress in February to compete head to head with the Blackphone and ’ similarly priced GranitePhone. With ARCHOS, Silent Circle and Bittium all battling for market share, Hogeg’s Sirin Labs is launching at a time when consumers, animated by mainly aesthetic concerns, are perhaps willing to pay more for security without compromising on usability — or giving up on the joy of time-wasting apps. Most secure phone manufacturers are strictly in the enterprise space, and Sirin’s high price point will likely put the company in that category, unless Hogeg’s thesis of Tesla-like adoption for the company’s product comes to fruition. Known for security expertise, Hogeg bets on Israelis to provide Sirin with the knowledge to dominate the secure phone market. Headquartered in Switzerland, most of Sirin’s day to day operations are managed from the company’s offices in Tel Aviv (R&D and operations) and in the Swedish city of Lund where they are assembled by . Hogeg believes that the combination of Swedish engineering and Israeli security expertise is a winning recipe. “Tel Aviv is a high-tech epicentre built around internet security, anti-virus software and cyber-defence technologies, and Sweden is a nucleus for some of the best telecomms engineers, designers and computer scientists in the world,” the founder said. Although Rakishev and RenRen have , Sirin is an entirely separate venture for both. Rakishev, a serial investor and petrochemical mogul, and Hogeg have , then chaired by the now jailed ex-prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert. Sirin is the latest project between the two men and was born in 2013 when Rakishev’s phone was hacked. While the attack damaged Rakishev’s phone, it did even more to damage his faith in mobile technology. “Rakishev called me to share the story about his hacked phone and asked why he was unable to find a mobile phone that would ensure privacy while meeting the needs of an international business person, and why the new technology he saw in tech shows and tech publications wasn’t available in consumer devices,” said Hogeg. The company’s operational lead and CEO is Tal Cohen, a former McKinsey consultant. Other key people include Fredrik Oijer, former product director at Sony Ericsson and Karim Rashid, known for his sensual minimalism, is in charge of design. Rashid, well known for designing luxury items, is not designing a luxury phone. “Sirin is not about luxury, It is about advanced technology which in turn results in high-end products,” Hogeg said. The company is looking to beat competition by focusing both on usability and security for the consumer space. Currently, most companies that offer full encryption are enterprise-focused. “We have a holistic approach, which integrates hardware and software solutions to ensure the best security and encryption. The specifics will be revealed in our product launch event later this year,” Hogeg said. Renren, one of the investors announced today, refused to comment on its role in Sirin, but considering the company’s preexisting relationship with Hogeg and the , stranger things have happened. What’s more, with over 160 million users on its social platform and a strong focus on mobile, it’s hardly a surprise for the company to desire a stake in the secure smartphone market. |
Live video viewing up 86% over last year in MLB’s At Bat app, thanks to addition of multitasking | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | When Apple MLB was one of the new feature’s early adopters in its MLB.com At Bat application for iPad. Today, the organization is releasing some new numbers on what impact the introduction of split-screen viewing and picture-in-picture has on engagement and video viewing minutes in its application. In short? The news is good. Very, very good indeed. The multitasking in a February 2016 update, along with picture-in-picture streaming for live video and highlights. What that means is that fans can now watch MLB.TV video outside the application. These features, of course, only work on select iPads. There are two different terms Apple used for its new multitasking mode, Split View and Slide Over. The former lets you run two apps at the same time, side-by-side, on the same screen. The latter lets you open a second app without leaving your current app. Split View is available on iPad Pro, iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 4. Slide Over is available on iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 2 or later. Meanwhile, picture-in-picture mode scales down the video screen to a corner of your display. This is available on iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 2 or later. Despite the fact that multitasking is not something every iPad or other iOS user can take advantage of within the At Bat application, the organization tells TechCrunch that its introduction is already having a “profound impact” on the consumption of live video on iPad. To support these claims, the MLB gathered usage metrics from the first two weeks of the season — to clarify for non-baseball fans, the MLB season is not quite two weeks old at this point (Opening Day was April 3rd). During these first two weeks, MLB fans spent 20 percent more minutes per day, on average, watching live video on iPad compared with the 2015 season, when multitasking was not available. (MLB says that any form of multitasking behavior was counted here, not just spilt-screen viewing.) In addition, fans who were using the new multitasking features and watching live video of MLB games in the At Bat application were spending 162 minutes per day on average consuming MLB.TV on iPad. That’s an increase of 86 percent from the 2015 season. Plus, while 162 minutes per day was the average for those using multitasking while watching video, 101 minutes per day was the average without using the feature, so far this year. (It’s also important to point out that this data only represents users on iPad with multitasking capabilities — MLB isn’t including those who don’t have access to the behavior here.) The impact for MLB here could be notable, as the company’s app was already the most consumed sports apps in terms of total minutes prior to the addition of multitasking. During the 2015 regular season (April through September 2015), At Bat users consumed 6.9 billion minutes compared with 6.1 billion for ESPN, 3.4 billion for Team Stream, 2.2 billion for Yahoo Fantasy Sports and 1.8 billion for WatchESPN, according to data from comScore. With the addition of multitasking, MLB could significantly increase the time spent in its application. That’s something that matters more these days to app developers and advertisers alike, as App Store chart rankings and download numbers have lost some value as the industry grows more concerned with whether or not apps are actually being used, and how often, after their initial installation. |
Game Review: Chameleon Run | Felicia Shivakumar | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Chameleon Run launched a little over a week ago and has been heavily promoted by Apple. Admittedly, I love this game and I am not the only one. Chameleon Run is an auto-runner where you fly through the air bouncing off platforms, see-saws and slides to make your way to the end of each level. It costs roughly $2 on both and and there is no free version. Yet, it’s on the paid iOS charts in the No. 8 slot Overall, No. 5 Game and No. 1 in both Arcade and Racing games. Here’s the basic gameplay – you are this Minecraft-looking cube dude who needs to run, fly and leap your way to the finish. There are these black coal looking obstacles that can kill you. Then, there’s the whole color-switching element. It follows the well-established game dynamic – don’t touch anything unless you are the same color. To play, you tap with your right thumb to jump and left to change color. This sounds easy, but sometimes you feel like your thumbs have a mind of their own. You double jump when you don’t mean to or switch colors when you know you wanted to jump. But the skill and coordination needed to play the game makes it all that more addictive. I lost myself in one level for over 30 minutes, not even caring that I kept dying. It’s fun and you easily adapt to the whole brain-versus-thumb coordination. It actually feels quite similar to playing a game on the old Nintendo controllers, which might be part of the reason that the game reminds me a bit of the flying levels from Super Mario or the original Sonic the Hedgehog games. There are three objectives for each level: The first is to finish it; the second is to collect all the coins or crystals; and the third, and arguably the hardest, is to finish an entire level without switching colors. Each challenge dramatically changes how the level is played to the point that it feels like a different level entirely. [gallery size="tc-article-featured-image-wide" ids="1308539,1308538,1308537,1308534,1308535,1308536,1308533"] The more you play the harder it gets, which is normal. But what wins me over is that even when you make a mistake, you can land in a different path and keep running toward the finish. I tend to repeat a particular track, but sometimes when you are thrown off it’s not a bad thing. You might find a fan that propels you forward or some lightning speed that you didn’t even know was there. Mechanics-wise there are different types of jumping. There’s a jump, long jump, double jump, falling jump and falling double jump. You only get two jumps in a row unless you touch the ground to reset or you count or tap your head for one additional jump. The head tap is key or can be your doom when playing through levels without switching colors. Based solely on this name, this game is not at all what I expected. I get why it’s called Chameleon Run because you change colors as you leap through the game. But man, the name does not even begin to describe how awesome the game truly is. Plus, the word chameleon can be a bit tricky to spell, which could impact discovery. Maybe they should have considered something more like SuperFly 3D, but that’s just me. Regardless, I highly recommend this game. It sucks you in, has great visuals and sounds effects, and is 10 times better than your standard runner or color-based obstacle game. For roughly the cost of a cup of coffee, you will be entertained and smiling for hours. Or at least I was. |
Apple doesn’t consider government intrusion a primary iPhone security threat, yet | Kate Conger | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Despite Apple’s highly publicized with the FBI over unlocking an iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters, security engineers pushed back against the idea of Apple as an opponent to the government in a meeting with reporters. Senior Apple engineers feel that government intrusion is not their primary threat model when designing iPhone security and said they instead prefer to focus on fending off hackers. The engineers also characterized Apple’s pushback against the FBI as motivated not by a desire to impede a terrorism investigation, but rather to defend its ability to protect users against non-governmental threats. Apple recently revamped its internal security teams, which govern the security aspects of shipping products, conduct threat-testing against Apple’s own devices and act as a sort of filtration system that places security at the nexus of what it does. Given Apple CEO Tim Cook’s strong statements on security as a lynchpin of Apple strategy, that’s not shocking. The security features of Apple’s iPhone have been highly scrutinized in the wake of the shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, CA, that killed 14 people. The FBI attempted to compel Apple to design custom software that would help unlock an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, on the of shooters, but later after it was approached by a third party offering another way into the phone. Law enforcement officials, from the Department of Justice to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, have argued that Apple goes too far in its efforts to encrypt customer data, locking out investigators along with criminal intruders. But Apple engineers disputed the theory that the tech giant’s security features enable criminals to evade law enforcement, saying that data security is essential to the safety of society as a whole. Apple executives also pointed to the many other avenues of investigation that are available to law enforcement officials in the digital age — location data collected from cell phone towers, social media posts and transactional metadata attached to messages. The engineers’ remarks echoed a in response to the FBI’s demands, in which the company called on the U.S. government to become an international leader in cybersecurity. In its Q&A, Apple said the government should “form a commission or other panel of experts on intelligence, technology, and civil liberties to discuss the implications for law enforcement, national security, privacy, and personal freedoms.” Engineers reviewed the features highlighted in the company’s today to explain to reporters how Apple secures its customers’ data, and stressed that Apple’s rigorous design philosophy doesn’t stop at the iPhone’s sleek rose gold exterior — it’s baked into the device’s security, too. In particular, Apple emphasized its unique ability to build security into the iPhone starting at the silicon level — although other smartphone manufacturers sometimes outsource their chip production, Apple likes to keep everything in-house. Its latest phones ship with the Secure Enclave, a portion of the phone’s hardware that manages the keys used to encrypt the device, as part of the chip. Apple also emphasized the role of the consumer in securing the iPhone, highlighting features like Touch ID and two-factor authentication for iCloud as ways for users to keep their devices and data safe from prying eyes. As , prior to the introduction of Touch ID, Apple found that only 49 percent of its customers protected their phones using a passcode. But after the introduction of Touch ID, passcode use jumped to 89 percent, Apple engineers said (users are required to set up a passcode in order to implement the Touch ID feature). Although Apple has worked to build encryption into the iPhone from the beginning — it introduced end-to-end encryption in the earliest versions of iMessage and strengthened device encryption with the Secure Enclave — the iPhone’s security features have only begun to play a large factor in Apple’s marketing in recent years. Consumer interest in encryption and security has risen in the post-Snowden era and spiked in the wake of the San Bernardino attack, which has influenced Apple to speak more publicly about the design and implementation of its security. It also means that it makes more sense now than ever for Apple to make sure that the press and public are well-informed when it comes to the technical and policy details of its security processes. When the next San Bernardino case happens, Apple needs to make sure that the public understands the implications of the “ ” scenario. One thing that bears consideration is how long any tech company, including Apple, can afford not to view government intrusion as part of its threat model. As mentioned above, Apple’s engineers do currently do that, but any tech company that is the steward of huge stores of user information (or that manufactures those stores in the form of devices) has to at least be considering the “govtOS” vector. In related news, Apple announced today that it will fight against unlocking an iPhone in a New York criminal case. Fighting government demands to unlock phones puts Apple in a tough position — if investigators continue to demand Apple modify its iOS to allow decryption, the company will eventually have to decide whether or not to up its security even further and enable itself to refuse all government requests for data. It’s not something that Apple wants to do — engineers say they don’t want to be viewed as government adversaries, and building in tougher encryption to the iPhone and services like iCloud might also mean abandoning some of the design and simplicity that is essential to Apple’s brand — but it may soon be time to include the government in Apple’s threat model, right alongside the hackers. And as Apple has led the industry in smartphone innovation, it could lead in security innovation, as well. Silicon Valley widely supported Apple’s opposition to building a special operating system for the FBI, dubbed (by Apple) govtOS, in the San Bernardino case. It’s likely that other tech companies will follow Apple’s lead as it continues to advance its users’ security. As engineers said today, data security is an ever-evolving target. |
CRISPR creates a way out of regulation for GMO food | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Genetically modified crops are in the midst of a metamorphosis thanks to new gene-editing technology. The latest example is a white button mushroom genetically edited using , or the ability to snip out and rearrange parts of an organism’s DNA. The says it won’t regulate the mushroom because it doesn’t pose a possible threat like GMO plants using the DNA of foreign bacteria might. But the Penn State scientist wasn’t sure if his genetically altered mushroom would need USDA clearance when he first created the modified species last October. The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is set up to protect America’s agricultural environment from problem plants — including crops altered through genetic engineering using donor DNA from bacteria or viruses to make plants more pest resistant. But here’s where CRISPR presents a loophole for GMO — Dr. Yang didn’t add any foreign DNA to the mushroom. Instead, the tweak happened with the mushroom’s own genes. CRISPR is a fairly new technology, breathing new life into the biotech field and clearly raising questions around regulation. Would the USDA consider crops with alterations of their own DNA problematic? The mushroom is just one case involving some form of gene-editing technique in the last five years. But so far the answer is no. In a to Penn State, the USDA’s APHIS confirmed the mushroom is firmly planted outside its scope. “APHIS has no reason to believe that CRISPR/Cas9 white button mushrooms are plant pests. Therefore, consistent with previous responses to similar letters of inquiry, APHIS does not consider CRISPR/Cas9-edited white button mushrooms as described in your October 30, 2015 letter to be regulated pursuant to CFR 7 part 340,” the USDA read. Dr. Yang is now mulling over the possibility of starting a business around his mushrooms. |
RebelMouse’s new Discovery tool helps publishers find the right people to promote their stories | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Social media startup has created a new tool for publishers — which helps those publishers identify the social media accounts that they should be sharing stories with for maximum impact. Founder and CEO Paul Berry said that when you publish a story, there are probably many Facebook Pages or Twitter accounts that would be happy to post a link — not because they’re getting paid (although Rebel Discovery can be used to manage those relationships, too), but because they’re hungry for content, it’s relevant to their followers and/or they want to build a relationship with the publisher. The challenge is finding those accounts. So Rebel Discovery can use a story’s tags to bring up accounts that are relevant to a given topic and have high organic engagement. When publishers have stories they want to promote, they can reach out to the accounts that Rebel Discovery recommends and ask if they’re willing to share. Rebel Discovery also comes with analytics, so the publisher can see the engagement around each post that an account has shared — both the links to their stories and to everything else.
Berry said RebelMouse originally built this technology as part of , its publishing platform for sites focused on social media and reader engagement. Now, however, someone who isn’t publishing through Rebel Roar can also use these tools. “We don’t have to be the CMS anymore,” Berry said. “You can be using WordPress, Drupal, Adobe, it doesn’t matter.” The company says that in early testing, Rebel Discovery results in an average of 20 percent lift in pageviews while only requiring 75 seconds of an editor’s time per story. RebelMouse recently , too. |
This tattoo-like display is made possible by a new ultra-thin protective ‘E-skin’ | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | It sounds like something out of Star Trek: a patch thinner than a band-aid that you slap on your arm and, within moments, it lights up with heart rate, blood sugar, and so on — then peels off a few days later. That’s the goal of work by researchers at the University of Tokyo, who have invented an ultra-thin “E-skin” that can protect flexible electronics and make things like on-skin displays possible. Electronics have been stuck to the skin before, of course, or , but even substrates just a millimeter thick are limited in flexibility. The research headed by Takao Someya and Tomoyuki Yokota drops that thickness by an order of magnitude. The E-skin could, perhaps uncharitably, be described as smart plastic wrap. The layered Silicon Oxynitrite and Parylene enclose a super-thin substrate on which the team mounted similarly thin and flexible OLED displays and photosensitive diodes. The whole thing stretches and crumples along with the skin, but is sealed well enough against the elements that it can last for days before failing — previous (and thicker) devices only lasted hours. The displays shown above are proof of the concept: they require electrodes instead of being powered by body heat or flexible batteries, and of course don’t actually read anything just yet. “What would the world be like if we had displays that could adhere to our bodies and even show our emotions or level of stress or unease?” asks Someya in a accompanying the paper, which was . Probably very creepy. But there are also tons of legitimate medical and consumer applications towards which research like this advances us. |
Huawei unveils its own mobile VR headset | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Another handset maker is getting into the headset game. Huawei announced its entry into the world of mobile virtual reality today with multiple versions of a Gear VR-like headset simply called “Huawei VR” . Huawei unveiled Huawei VR at a Shanghai launch event for the P9 and P9 Plus smartphones today. The headset is almost entirely a clone of the Gear VR in that you slot a smartphone into the viewer, put on a head strap and navigate VR content with a touchpad on the side. Regardless, it’s awesome to see more phone makers throw their VR hats into the ring early on, though it would be nice to see some added features here. The report does quotes Huawei as asserting that the Huawei VR is the first mobile VR headset to support “360-degree sound field” (with headphones). The Gear VR does indeed support spatial audio through the MilkVR app so it’s a bit unclear whether this is just a meaningless marketing grab or whether there’s actually some cool new tech at work here. One noticeable difference between the two devices in actual use will have nothing to do with the headsets themselves but will instead highlight just how lackluster the 1080p screen resolutions of the compatible P9 and Mate 8 smartphones are compared to the QuadHD displays on the new Samsung Galaxy S7 line. Content-wise, the Huawei VR will launch with a ton of content including a host of movies, 360 videos, games, panoramic images and panoramic tours to check out in-headset. No word on pricing or availability, but considering that none of the compatible smartphones are set to be released in the US, don’t expect to be wearing one of these bad boys stateside anytime soon. |
ClassDojo raises $21 million for app to make parent-teacher meetings obsolete | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | has raised $21 million in a Series B round of venture funding for tech that connects educators to students’ parents, and helps them communicate consistently about student’s activities, social and behavioral development at school. Communicating throughout the year, and even throughout the school day, means parents are apprised of what their kids are experiencing and how they are behaving at school all the time, not surprised by incidents that are only discussed in a once-a-semester parent-teacher meeting. According to cofounders , the company closed the round in late 2015, and are using the capital to grow their team, and to figure out what kind of content and features can be useful to parents who use the app, not just during the school day, but at home. Chaudhary said, “The idea is to help parents guide conversations at home and support or enhance the learning and development their kids are doing at school.” Teachers use ClassDojo to make a schedule of activities known to parents, usually daily. They can also use the app throughout the day to snap and send photos or videos to parents showing off a student’s latest work or participation in activities. When it was founded in 2011, ClassDojo’s founders say they saw lots of other education tech businesses creating digital curriculum, grade books and testing platforms. But they didn’t see a free, and easy-to-use app that would create a culture and community between teachers, students and their parents. That said, they do face competition from edtech companies like , , , and others that want to keep schools and students’ parents connected. Today, the company reports, ClassDojo is actively used by teachers in 85,000 schools in the United States, ranging from private and charter schools to the largest public schools in the country. Most users are teaching kindergarten through 8th grade classes. For now, ClassDojo is focused on distributing its app to even more teachers and parents. The 25-employee startup has not yet generated revenue. ClassDojo cofounders CEO Sam Chaudhary and CTO Liam Don One thing the founders say they will never do is make revenue off of user’s data. “Privacy is a huge concern any time kids are involved,” said CTO . Instead, they believe they could create premium features and content that parents would pay to use. The company’s Series B round was led by . New investors in ClassDojo included , and . The San Francisco-based startup, founded in 2011, has raised $31 million in venture funding to-date, and graduated from the education tech accelerator, , now a part of Y Combinator. General Catalyst Managing Director Hemant Taneja said, “In the early days, ClassDojo was a tool to help teach good behavioral traits. But now it is being used for parent, teacher and student collaboration.” The deal represents his firm’s only education tech investment today. He sees ClassDojo’s user growth as analogous to a social network and messaging platform like Facebook or Snapchat, though it is an app purpose built for education. “Any monetization for this company, and we don’t expect ClassDojo to go there for another year or so, needs to be driven by what parents and teachers need, what they are already trying to do to enhance their kids’ chance of success in life,” the investor said. It’s not hard to imagine parents using an app like ClassDojo, he said, to buy content like custom yearbooks, or videos, discussion guides and lessons that they could use with their kids at home. The app could also include transactional features that enable parents to pay schools via their phones for things like field trips, lunches or supplies, which they now pay for with cash or checks tucked into a kids’ backpack. |
David Plouffe to talk at Disrupt NY about his move from the White House to Uber strategic adviser | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | What do Barack Obama and Uber have in common? The answer is David Plouffe. In 2008, Plouffe was Barack Obama’s campaign manager. He then became a White House adviser. As Washington and Silicon Valley are getting closer, Plouffe Uber in 2014 as Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy, later settling into Uber’s Chief Advisor and a Member of the Board of Directors. And we’re glad to announce that David Plouffe will join us on stage at on May 9-11, 2016. For the past few years, Uber has been fighting with public regulators in the U.S. and abroad. Uber’s product offering has been hurting the taxi industry around the world, which is why some governments have been than others to authorize Uber drivers on the road. But it seems like Uber’s fight is mostly over in the U.S. The vast majority of major American cities now allow Uber. You can even see Uber pickup lines at airports, Las Vegas casinos and more. Plouffe has been quite active to orchestrate this political shift in favor of Uber in the U.S. He was on cable TV to praise Uber, he prepared studies that showcase why Uber is good and he created countless online petitions to make local governments change their minds about Uber. Whether you think Uber is a “good” company or not, it’s hard to deny that Uber’s strategy has been very effective. Last year, top Google executive Rachel Whetstone Uber’s Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy, replacing Plouffe in his day-to-day activities. Plouffe is still a strategic adviser and now an Uber board member. More importantly, Plouffe remains an iconic representation of a Washington strategist helping a thriving Silicon Valley company. It’s going to be interesting to hear him talk about the differences between a political candidate and a tech company. We’ll find out at Disrupt New York. Other speakers include Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley and Jeff Glueck, Fred Wilson, Parrot’s Henri Seydoux, Jessica Alba, theSkimm’s Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, Giphy’s Alex Chung, YouNow’s Adi Sideman and more. |
Google’s Chrome Web Store will boot apps and extensions violating new user data guidelines | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Google is cleaning up its Chrome Web Store – the marketplace where you can browse for extensions and apps for its Chrome web browser. The it’s making changes to browser’s , which will now require developers to be more transparent about how they handle customer data, and which will require user consent when data is collected, among other things. The changes come at a time when the Chrome Web Store has been targeted by malware makers, who have posted rogue extensions that do terrible things like spy on web users and collect their personal data. It also arrives in a post-Snowden era where governments, , are getting involved in passing user data privacy regulations and legislation. In January, security firm that was only pulled after a thousand downloads, as an example of the malware problem. The extension, which required elevated permissions, silently talked back to a remote server and would push ads to users after installation. After removal, it was soon replaced by another that redirected users to a social networking site. The security firm also noted that it had seen an increase in “adware” companies using extensions to push things like free coupons, recipes, and videos, as well as those that would harvest users’ browsing habits then resell them to marketing companies for better ad targeting. Malicious extensions, however, for Google. The Chrome Web Store for years. In the past, Google tried to address this by users from installing extensions that weren’t hosted on the Web Store directly. In theory, this would offer more protection as extensions could be pulled down or automatically disabled. Now Google is asking developers to follow similar guidelines with regard to privacy protections for users. According to , this includes the following new requirements for developers: Be transparent about the handling of user data and disclose privacy practices Post a privacy policy and use encryption, when handling personal or sensitive information Ask users to consent to the collection of personal or sensitive data via a prominent disclosure, when the use of the data isn’t related to a prominent feature. Yes, it’s somewhat concerning that extension developers didn’t already have to follow these basic guidelines. The policy also prohibits collecting web browsing activity when it’s not required for an item’s main functionality. That’s an especially interesting change which could impact several businesses. A number of companies today run networks of seemingly harmless browser extensions in order to collect browsing data for other purposes. For instance, web analytics firm SimilarWeb it had “hundreds” of plugins reaching tens of millions of end users. In some cases, those plugins would collect browsing data to offer information to users about things like web rankings or reach of the sites they’re on, but other plugins were not as obvious about their intentions. (Though it may be disclosed in those cases, most users don’t read privacy policies.) Google says developers have until July 14, 2016 to comply with the new policy. Afterward, on July 15, those extensions and apps that violate the update User Data Policy will be removed from the Chrome Web Store. |
Superspin research project aims to drive more energy efficient computing | Natasha Lomas | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Scientists at Cambridge University are working on combining two fields of solid state physics research, spintronics and superconductors, in order to develop what they hope could become the foundation for the next generation of datacenter technology — perhaps within the next decade. Data centers are the engines of the digital economy. But they are also very energy intensive in their own right — with the researchers estimates that some three per cent of the power generated in Europe is already being used by data centers. One impetus for the research is therefore to apply ‘superspin’ technology to substantially reduce the power consumption of high performance computing and data storage. Superconductors allow for the propagation of electrical charge without electronic resistance, and therefore hold out the tantalizing promise — in computing kit terms — of carrying electronic charge with zero energy loss. Albeit, at this stage in the research, there is still a question mark over whether the cooling requirements of utilizing superconductors will result in less energy consumption overall or not. Hence the need for further research. “Superconductivity necessarily requires low temperature,” explains Dr Jason Robinson, one of the project leads. “No one has discovered room temperature superconductivity. “The crunch question is: is the energy required to cool going to be smaller than current energy loss due to the energy efficiency of spintronics. If it costs more to cool than it currently does in terms of what we lose, currently, then it’s not worth it. That’s what we’re exploring.” “Our basic calculations suggest that superconducting spintronics will be massively more energy efficient than current spintronics,” he adds. Another driver for the research is to use superspin as a possible alternative to semiconductor technology — as a new route to sustain Moore’s Law of shrinking electronics, just as the ability of engineers to pack more transistors onto integrated circuits is starting to look like it’s coming to the end of the road. Spintronics proposes utilizing the spin alignment of electrons as a medium to store (the 0 or 1 of) digital data. “Information technology now is based on such small objects you just can’t use conventional superconductors,” notes Robinson. “By combining superconductivity with spintronics it’s not only that you can create circuits without [energy] dissipation, but it’s that you create new physics. So that means there’s a lot of new opportunities created through this combination. “There’s a lot of undiscovered physics to be explored.” The has received a £2.7 million grant from the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, with a focus on developing a superconducting spintronics prototype device over the next five years to prove out their theoretical modeling that the combined tech is indeed more energy efficient than just using spintronics. “It’s important to understand that this is the first ever superconductivity and spintronics funded program,” adds Robinson. “The way the grant has been set up in the first three years there’s a series of parallel projects. Some are more applications biased than others but the application stuff has to develop alongside the science… Everything we do is moving us towards the prototype.” “It’s a fundamental program with the aim of triggering applications in spintronics. There’s a lot of science we don’t currently understand and we need to understand in order to be able to make the best possible prototype. We have enough science to know that we can make a prototype. The question is can we make the best prototype,” he adds. “[And] what do we need to do in order to be able to make a device that’s switchable — that you can not only store information on, but you can process information with as well.” The project draws on , and elsewhere, to combine spintronics and superconductors — a feat previously thought to be impossible, thanks to superconductivity canceling out electronic spin. However the same research group at Cambridge found a workaround for that, involving magnets. Initially utilizing a layer of a rare earth magnetic material — although the group has since proved that various magnetic materials can be used, according to Robinson. “A few years ago our group discovered that actually if you combine supercomputers with magnets you can create a new kind of [paired electrons], which instead of having two electrons with anti-parallel spins you can create pairs which have parallel line spins. So now you have both the benefits of superconductivity and the ability to carry spin in the superconducting state.” Another area he is excited about from the combination of superconductivity and spintronics is the potential for using the technique to further quantum computing. “It introduces lots of new ideas that were not possible previously. So that’s exciting, and indeed a large part of our grant is to develop the science of those other areas as well,” he adds. |
Hulu’s smarter, more personalized Watchlist rolls out to all users | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Hulu’s revamped “Watchlist,” the section on its service that helps users track their favorite shows, is now exiting beta and being rolled out to all users, the company announced this morning. Along with the launch, Hulu is also introducing several new features based on what it learned , including suggested actions, alerts for new shows, and a new list for managing the clips you want to view, among other things. The Watchlist was , with the goal of consolidating three other features on Hulu into one: the Queue, Favorites, and Shows You Watch trays. Before, each of these offered a different window into users’ viewing habits and lists, but it wasn’t ideal to have separate sections. Instead, the new Watchlist served as a place to track all the content you cared about, but in a more personalized way. You could still follow shows manually, if you liked, similar to how Netflix’s “My List” option works. But the list would also update when you began watching programs, without requiring your input. Most importantly, it would organize shows based on your viewing behavior – meaning, those you watched most frequently would appear at the top of the list. Until today, however, using the Watchlist was available only to those who opted in to test the feature. Now that’s changing. The new Watchlist will continue to automatically add shows you start watching, as before, but it now addresses one of the bigger problems with this feature – you can actually “remove” shows from your Watchlist, too. This has been an issue for me, personally, when testing the feature, as others who logged into my Hulu added programs I’d rather not have appearing into my section. (I mean, I it was the babysitter who watched that dumb reality program, not me. Promise!) You can also still add programs and movies manually by clicking the “+” button on PCs or iOS devices or by using the “add to Watchlist” button on gaming consoles, connected TVs, set-top boxes, and Android devices. Hulu will continue to organize this list for you as before, based on your viewing habits. And it will allow you to resume shows and movies where you left off. The updated Watchlist will now flag when there are new episodes, plus it will suggest an action per show and per viewer, the company explains. This is different from the beta. For example, if you’re binging your way through a favorite series with several prior seasons, Hulu will suggest you watch the “next” episode. But once you get caught up to current, it will begin suggesting you watch the “latest” episode instead. If you add a show to your Watchlist with the intention of viewing it, but haven’t yet started to, then Hulu will suggest you “Start Watching” the program. Obviously, this is how such a feature should work. Finally, Hulu’s Watchlist is now organized by categories, including TV, Movies, Videos, and Expiring Soon. Before, everything was lumped together, which could be confusing – especially if you watch a lot of clips. With the public launch, clips get their own section (Videos), ordered by when you added them, so they’re ready for when you want some brief distractions. This section will also house individual episodes, when you add just one episode as opposed to the full show. The Expiring Soon section, meanwhile, will let you know if there’s anything expiring in the next two weeks. This is helpful for helping you decide what to watch, as much of Hulu’s content – like most online streaming services – is not part of a permanent collection. Hulu says the updated Watchlist will gradually roll out to all viewers over the next couple of weeks. In other word, if you don’t see it yet, you likely will soon. |
Apple partners with WWF to launch week-long Earth Day initiative, Apps for Earth | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Apple is teaming up with the World Wildlife Fund to raise money for the conservation organization through in-app purchases. Already started, the initiative will last until April 24, during which time users will have access to exclusive in-app content created specifically for the campaign by 24 different app developers, with 27 total apps in the collection. All of the proceeds from the purchase of any of these apps, in associated in-app purchases, will go to WWF. The project is timed to coincide with Earth Day, which is Friday April 22. Participating apps have also developed exclusive content for the campaign, including three new levels in Angry Birds 2 that let the user destroy over-fishing bad piggies, as well as a new menu in Cooking Dash 2016 that uses sustainable ingredients. You can find the full list of participating apps, which span categories like productivity, photo, social media, and fitness, below. In conjunction with the campaign, Apple is also unveiling a new on the Apple website, as well as dressing retail employees in green. The the leaf of the Apple logo at retail stores will also be lit in green. |
Uber and Lyft drivers need to obtain business licenses in order to drive in SF | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | If you’re a driver for Lyft and/or Uber, and drive in San Francisco seven or more days a year, the city requires you to obtain a business license, . “We have serious concerns with the City’s plan to collect and display Lyft drivers’ personal information in a publicly available database,” a Lyft spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “People in San Francisco, who are choosing to drive with Lyft to help make ends meet, shouldn’t have to compromise their privacy in order to share a ride.” Drivers will be notified of this via a letter from San Francisco City Treasurer José Cisneros, the Chronicle reports, which will be sent to 37,018 drivers today, Monday and Tuesday. If every one of those people register, the city will stand to make $3.37 million a year. “I take seriously my obligation to fairly implement San Francisco’s business registration requirements,” Treasurer Cisneros said in a release. “I urge all the people receiving this notice, and all unregistered businesses operating in San Francisco to take prompt action to come into compliance immediately.” The licenses will cost drivers, who have somehow been identified as a driver for either Uber or Lyft, $91 a year if they make $100,000 or less in gross receipts. For those who have driven for several years, they will have to backpay the registration fees. Drivers must register for the license via the city’s within 30 days. Every driver will have to display a current registration certificate in their car. If drivers don’t get a business license, they will be at risk of fines and other penalties. This is all happening in part because Uber and Lyft have contended that their drivers are not employees, but independent contractors running their own businesses. “Uber partners with entrepreneurial drivers and as independent contractors, they are responsible for following appropriate local requirements,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement. |
Apple tells NY judge FBI has ‘utterly failed’ to prove it needs help unlocking iPhones | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Apple has strong words for the Justice Department in a document filed in a federal court case in New York where it has been asked to bypass an iPhone’s security. The simple fact that the feds unlocked a phone without any help shows that they didn’t need it in the first place, Apple asserts: “The government has utterly failed to satisfy its burden to demonstrate that Apple’s assistance in this case is necessary.” What’s actually being argued is the of an order from U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, filed at the end of February. The 50-page order absolved Apple of any obligation to assist the government in this case — but Orenstein also concluded that the All Writs Act, an 18th-century law now being used to compel tech companies to unlock devices, is legally insufficient to be used in that manner: Ultimately, the question to be answered in this matter, and in others like it across the country, is not whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come. For the reasons set forth above, I conclude that it does not. The government’s motion is denied. If such a precedent were to propagate and be adopted by other courts or supported in superior ones, it would be a serious blow against the FBI’s ability to use All Writs as an all-purpose phone-opener, as it currently does in . Apple continues swinging in its preliminary notes, taking the government to task for failing to make any attempt to use other methods to unlock the phone: The government has made no showing that it has exhausted alternative means for extracting data from the iPhone at issue here, either by making a serious attempt to obtain the passcode from the individual defendant who set it in the first place—nor to obtain passcode hints or other helpful information from the defendant—or by consulting other government agencies and third parties known to the government. And it gets its digs in on this implementation of All Writs as well, for the record: While Apple strongly supports, and will continue to support, the efforts of law enforcement in pursuing criminals, the government’s sweeping interpretation of the All Writs Act is plainly incorrect and provides no limit to the orders the government could obtain in the future. And that is precisely what the government seeks here: to obtain an order that it can use as precedent to lodge future, more onerous requests for Apple’s assistance. We’ll know soon whether U.S. District Judge Margo Brody will find Apple’s stream of precedent-backed invective convincing.
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GV leads $40M Series B in Quartet, its first investment in a mental healthcare startup | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | , a company that wants to close the gap between physical and mental healthcare, has raised a $40 million Series B led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). Existing investors Oak HC/FT Partners, F-Prime Capital Partners, and Polaris Partners also returned for the round. This marks the first time that GV has invested in a mental health startup. Founded in 2014, Quartet’s platform make it easier for primary care doctors and mental healthcare professionals, like therapists, to work together. Many psychological conditions have physical symptoms (and vice versa), but they can be difficult to identify if a patient’s providers don’t communicate. Quartet’s data scientists create algorithms that help doctors figure out if a patient is at risk for another health issue. Then they get a referral to a provider in Quartet’s network or its online cognitive behavioral therapy and consultation tools. If the patient receives a new diagnosis, his or her care providers can then coordinate all the different facets of treatment, including tests, consultations, and prescriptions, through the platform. “I’ve seen loved ones struggle through mental and behavioral health conditions and observed firsthand that finding good care was way harder than it needed to be,” says founder and CEO Arun Gupta, who was previously an advisor at Palantir Technologies, in an email. “The healthcare industry can do a better job for patients, families, and communities by employing a model which better leverages the primary care setting, data, and modern technology to give patients much better options and care.” The New York-based company will use its capital to enter six new markets in the United States over the next year, including ones in Massachusetts, the Midwest and the West Coast. Gupta says the main challenge Quartet faces as its grows is the medical industry’s status quo, or “the deeply ingrained silo’ing of behavioral and physical health.” He is encouraged by the amount of tech startups that also focus on different aspects of mental health care, including , which develops online therapy tools, and , that Quartet can partner with. “We’ve found traction by creating very a comprehensive solution at the point of care and around the patient that best leverages these different care modalities,” he says. “That’s something the market is really asking for.” |
China is now #2 in iOS revenue, behind the U.S. | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | Earlier this year, app store analytics firm App Annie that China could overtake both the U.S. and Japan in terms of revenue generated from iOS applications as soon as this year. The year isn’t yet half over, but that prediction appears to be on its way to coming true: China has just moved past Japan to take the number two position for iOS revenue – up from third place . The country was already the leader in terms of iOS downloads, a spot it acquired in Q1 2015 following growth in the market influenced by adoption of Apple’s larger-screened devices, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Prior to that, in 2014, China had been the second-largest country for iOS downloads. But getting apps onto users’ devices and generating revenue from those apps are two totally different things. That’s obvious, too, when you compare iOS downloads and revenue with those from Google Play, for example. , Google Play downloads were 1.5 times that of iOS downloads, but Apple’s App Store still leads in revenue. According to App Annie, China’s iOS revenue growth grew nearly 2.2 times from Q1 2015 to Q2 2015. This growth is being contributed to in-app purchases, however, not paid app downloads. It’s also almost entirely driven by games – and not just games in general, but several very specific titles, says App Annie. A handful of core games are helping to contribute to the revenue growth, including Fantasy Westward Journey, Westward Journey Online, Hero Moba, and The Legend of Mir 2. However, while games are driving the growth for the time being, App Annie notes that games are often a signal of larger trends to come. That said, because of the revenue these and other titles are generating, China also passed Japan in iOS Games revenue in addition to Overall iOS revenue. So how close is China to grabbing the number one spot for iOS revenue? App Annie says the U.S.’s lead is still wide – a sizable 30 percent, in fact. But if China’s App Store revenue continues to grow at the same pace, it’s on track to pass the U.S. in the “coming quarters.” This year, . |
Sean Parker is on a mission to solve cancer | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | Sean Parker, the self-made billionaire who, at the tender age of 19, , has been at the forefront of some of the most meaningful disruptions of our day from file sharing to social engagement. Cancer immunotherapy is his next big bet. The Napster founder and former Facebook president persuaded hundreds of top scientists within various research universities across the U.S. to form an alliance to solve cancer using cutting-edge immunotherapy. Called the Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, the organization is a $250 million undertaking that will enable some of the country’s best researchers unprecedented access to the latest information from pharma and from each other in cancer immunotherapy – a type of treatment harnessing the body’s own immune response to kill off cancerous cells. The institute will be made up of more than 300 scientists, 40 labs and top researchers in cancer immunotherapy from UCSF, UCLA, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, MD Anderson, and Memorial Sloan Kettering. But getting all those organizations to work together is no small task. Most clinical drug trials take several years of rigorous research and up to billions of dollars before getting to the patient. Part of the problem is the competitive nature of the medical research field – institutions often work against each other to find something new. Meanwhile, people are dying. Instead, Parker’s institution wants them to work together to find the cure. “We are at the bleeding edge of what’s possible with synthetic biology and immunology and genomics in terms of actually translating those discoveries into therapies that can treat and cure patients,” Parker told TechCrunch. Immunotherapy is one of the hottest topics in biotech right now – even the White House wants in with Obama’s $1 billion . But immunotherapy is only part of it for Parker. His new institute is one of many charities he’s set up the last year and a half involving medical research, including for autoimmune research for and and for the umbrella Sean N. Parker Foundation. He also gave $500,000 toward in California. Parker, worth about $3 billion, seems to have given a large chunk of his fortune away in the last few years. By our estimates, he’s set up foundations or given away close to a third of his wealth so far. |
Indonesian photo-sharing app PicMix scores $3M Series A | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | PicMix founder Calvin Kizana (center) with Gobi Partners’ Victor Chua (left) and Thomas Tsao (right) , a photo-sharing app based in Indonesia, will build more features and venture into new international markets after raising a Series A totaling $3 million. The first close consists of $1 million from Gobi Partners, while the remaining final close of $2 million is from a strategic investor that hasn’t been disclosed yet. Launched back in 2012 when BlackBerry was the most popular smartphone in Indonesia, PicMix was created to give the platform’s users better photo-editing tools since there weren’t many apps available, says founder and CEO Calvin Kizana. Within two months, PicMix claims it reached a million users. Versions for Android and Windows rolled out at the end of 2014, with an iPhone app added a year later. Now the startup has about 27 million registered users. Indonesians are . , , , , and are all popular, but Kizana says PicMix doesn’t position itself as a competitor and instead tries to integrate into most other social media platforms. PicMix’s largest single user base, or about 35 percent, is still in Indonesia, but it is also gaining traction in African markets where BlackBerry smartphones used to be popular. About 22 percent of its users are in South Africa and another 16 percent in Nigeria. PicMix is currently working on growth strategies for those markets and looking for brand partners in South Africa. Venezuela is another one of its top markets. Kizana says that the startup hasn’t had to spend any money on marketing so far, but decided to raise a Series A four years after its launch because “this year we would like to be more aggressive and need to boost our user acquisition, as well as taking care of user retention to win the market in mobile content discovery and social commerce space, especially in Indonesia, says Kizana. Some of the capital will go toward marketing, events, and hiring. It is also planning to expand PicMix Mall, an in-app peer-to-peer marketplace, by working with small e-commerce businesses that want more exposure and opening it to users outside of Indonesia. Another part of its revenue model are partnerships with brands that run campaigns on PicMix or use it to host contests. The company has already partnered with about 60 brands in Indonesia and claims that each contest gets an average of 6,000 user submissions. Finally, PicMix’s Series A will also be used to build a machine learning engine to analyze user data and give more insight to brands and improve its content discovery features. |
Google Calendar’s newest feature uses machine learning to help you actually accomplish your goals | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | has launched a feature called that uses machine learning to help you figure out when you have time to pencil in stuff like spending time with your family or exercise. The feature is now available for Calendar’s Android and iOS apps. Goals are set up by clicking into a category (which currently include Exercise, “Build a Skill,” and “Me Time,” though they can also be customized) and selecting a specific activity. Then Calendar will automatically find open slots, fill them in with your goal, and send reminders. If you schedule something else during those times, Google Calendar will find another window for your goal—but, in a tool that will surely be chronically abused by procrastinators, they can also be deferred. Goal’s machine intelligence, however, will attempt to outfox your busyness/lack of motivation, finding better time slots for goals until you can no longer avoid them. For people wondering why on earth someone would need a machine learning algorithm that reminds them to take care of themselves, talk to loved ones, or otherwise have some semblance of a personal life, Goals’ purpose is not very different from designed to help people create healthy habits. In fact, Goals integrates many of the features from Timeful, a . The advantage of Goals, of course, is that it sits on top of a tool that many people have already relied on for years. Google Calendar turns 10 this year and is marking its anniversary by called Reminders that will help it compete against other time-management apps. Goals may eventually become available on the web, but a Google rep said there’s no specific timeframe current planned (it took to make it into Calendar’s browser version). |
San Bernardino iPhone was hacked using a zero-day exploit | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | When a couple of terrorists in December last year, an iPhone 5c was recovered, and it’s been in the news almost as much as the terror attack itself. The phone was said to contain pertinent information that the FBI really wanted their mitts on, and the Washington Post that it was able to, with the help of professional hackers using a security flaw in the iPhone that was previously unknown. We already knew that the FBI when it and later abandoned a legal case against Apple to unlock the phone, but until now, it remained a mystery how it happened. According to the Washington Post, hackers were able to access the data on the phone by using a ‘new’ security weakness in the iPhone, in what is called a . In this case, it appears that the exploit was specific to the iPhone 5c, and that the attack vector used to get the data from the phone on current-generation phones. It is believed that the hackers were able to find a way to circumvent the brute-force protections built into the iPhone. There are two: The first gradually increases the delay between each PIN attempt; you can try this on your own iPhone by typing in the 4-digit pin 3 times. It then makes you wait for a minute. Get it wrong again, and it makes you wait for five minutes. The second security measure is that if the PIN is entered incorrectly 10 times, the default is to irrecoverably wipe the device completely. The reason why this is such a big deal, is that a 4-digit pin on its own isn’t much of a deterrent: There are only 10,000 different combinations. If you’re able to try a combination every second, you’re likely to have opened the phone in under three hours. Even if the hack delayed the process slightly if it takes 30 seconds to enter a password, discover it’s the wrong one, reset the security measures and try again, it would still only take to try every possible combination. The hack enabled the FBI to apparently use a custom-fabricated piece of hardware to brute-force all the possible four-digit passwords, eventually finding the correct PIN, and then accessing the contents on the San Bernardino iPhone. The FBI reportedly paid an unnamed independent security contractor an one-time fee for the information on the security exploit, which evidently was all it needed to crack the phone. |
13 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week | Anna Escher | 2,016 | 4 | 15 | It was a futuristic week in tech as , SpaceX landed a rocket on a drone ship in the middle of the ocean, and another $100 million was pledged to send spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. These are tech’s biggest headlines of the week. Facebook held its annual F8 developer conference this week. Mark Zuckerberg laid out the 10-year roadmap for Facebook and announced , the new open-source , the Live API and more. Josh Constine wrote about what it all means in and Sarah Perez actually Facebook is currently partnered with. Here’s a roundup of Everything Facebook announced at F8 Day 1 http://tcrn.ch/1Sxz0Ql Posted by on Tuesday, April 12, 2016 SpaceX successfully launched its next resupply mission to the International Space Station. In addition to a seamless launch, SpaceX landed the first stage of their for the very first time. SpaceX lands a rocket on a drone ship for the first time http://tcrn.ch/1RWdSnq Posted by on Friday, April 8, 2016 Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is pushing forward with the hunt for intelligent alien life beyond our planet, and is . Stephen Hawking and Mark Zuckerberg have signed on to invest, too. We already knew that the FBI had successfully hacked the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. But this week, it was reported that . The hack enabled the FBI to apparently use a custom-fabricated piece of hardware to brute-force all the possible four-digit passwords, eventually finding the correct PIN, and then accessing the contents on the San Bernardino iPhone. surfaced showing that U.S. . In hard numbers, 57 firms raised $12 billion in the first quarter, a 59 percent jump in dollar commitments over the first quarter of 2015. The situation for Theranos is getting worse. A federal agency plans to force founder Elizabeth Holmes out of the blood analysis startup for two years and . Snapchat is bringing . Emojis can be pinned to objects in a video and stick with them no matter how they or your camera move. We , and concluded that while it’s a solid phone, the company needs to convince mobile users they need it. Cancer immunotherapy is Sean Parker’s next big bet. The Napster founder and former Facebook president persuaded hundreds of top scientists to . We went , a volumetric 3D camera with capture technology that could eliminate the need for the green screen. Natasha Lomas writes about the relentless nature of tech, and how the tech world is always searching for the next big thing. But for now? We got a peek at , the smallest and lightest Kindle yet that comes with a handle for gripping. Ron Miller wrote about , a system that allows multiple 3D printing tools to work on one project simultaneously. |
Logitech snaps up wireless earbuds maker JayBird for $50M | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | Consumer gadgets standby Logitech has acquired JayBird, a maker of fitness-focused wireless earbuds and trackers, for $50 million in cash, . “The Jaybird team will have all the scope to innovate they had before,” said Rory Dooly in a post on the . “They’ll continue to feed the Jaybird brand and design products like the latest X2 wireless buds.” Matt likes the X2s and Darrell liked JayBird’s , so it looks like Logi has bought themselves a solid business here. In addition to the cash, $45 million is on the table should growth targets be hit over the next two years. “It has been an incredible journey,” JayBird founder Judd Armstrong wrote in the press release announcing his company’s acquisition. , but perhaps with Logitech looking on approvingly from above, JayBird will now be able to fly free and untethered, like the wireless headphones it loves so much to create. |
Everything the tech world says about marketing is wrong | Samuel Scott | 2,016 | 4 | 12 |
Google Trends The same is true today — the only differences are that we have two additional sets of available channels, called the Internet and mobile devices, and those channels allow for a greater variety of content formats. My on Moz |
Drone racing organization IDRA scores broadcast deal with ESPN | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | Ever hear of first-person drone racing? If not, you’re in for a treat. This kinetic and exciting sport, or competition, whatever you want to call it, is growing fast and it looks like ESPN wants a piece. The sports network signed a deal with the International Drone Racing Association today that could help bring races to the mainstream. In case you’re not familiar with the activity, first-person drone racing has competitors flying drones at breakneck speeds through preset courses — while wearing head-mounted displays that show the view from the drone itself. They really go quite fast. Here, this video will explain it better, and with more bombast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4flD2dClWbs Exciting? Yes. Futuristic? Certainly. Nausea-inducing? Very possibly. Especially if you decide to spectate from the drone’s POV (yes, you can do that). Under the “multi-year, international media distribution deal” IDRA signed with ESPN, the network would stream the 2016 (national and world) on its streaming ESPN3 service, and the full event would be distilled to an hour-long special for airing on ESPN2 and potentially other channels. “ESPN saw it moving in a big direction, and had some buy-in from the higher-ups,” said IDRA chairman Scot Refsland in a phone interview with TechCrunch. “We’ve got a professional announcer, live interviews, bios, all that stuff. ESPN was so interested in the space that they wanted to be our partner internationally as well.” For now the content will be produced by Generate LA, with veteran sports TV producer David Gavant at the helm. ESPN may very well give drone racing its own online vertical too, as it has done for esports (or cybersports, or what have you) like and . That’s if the footage doesn’t give viewers motion sickness. Regulatory issues pose both a problem and an opportunity. IDRA worked closely with the FAA, allowing them to use the whole operation as a case study for commercializing drones “Currently, the legislation that we have… it doesn’t really support drone racing. It falls out of that grey area,” said Refsland — but the FAA has been accommodating. “They’re very strict on safety stuff, but they’re open to the interpretation of, ‘OK, this is on a closed course, it’s monitored by the AMA, the Academy of Model Aeronautics, the FAA, people from the state governor’s office.’ They understand the risk between risk and commercial viability.” IDRA with another drone racing organization, RotorSports, in the interest of quicker growth and making sure that, of all the feet crammed in the door to this potentially lucrative new competitive landscape, theirs is the biggest. |
Facebook’s Instant Articles is now open to all publishers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | As previously , Facebook today its format to all developers. Using Instant Articles, publishers can show Facebook mobile users a fast-loading and mostly distraction-free view of their posts while still also showing them a limited amount of their own ads (or use Facebook’s Audience Network to monetize their content) and measure pageviews through tools like Adobe Analytics, Chartbeat, comScore and others. Until now, Instant Articles was only available to a select number of publishers. Like Google’s AMP, an Instant Article is essentially an HTML5 document that uses a couple of . Publishers can add text and images, but also slideshows, audio captions, maps, video and — of course — support for Facebook likes and comments. “Facebook’s goal is to connect people to the stories, posts, videos or photos that matter most to them,” the company says. “Opening up Instant Articles will allow any publisher to tell great stories, that load quickly, to people all over the world. With Instant Articles, they can do this while retaining control over the experience, their ads and their data.” There are already some plug-ins for and other CMS systems like Drupal available today that will generate the right Instant Articles feed automatically. Publishers will now also be able to publish native ads as Instant Articles, as well, and visually distinguish them from their regular content by applying different styling options and adding a sponsor logo to them. For publishers who want to delve even deeper into working with Instant Articles, today announced that it now offers for Instant Articles headlines. |
Sprimo takes a personal approach to purifying your air | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 4 | 12 | We’ve written about of before, but is taking a different approach — instead of trying to clean all the air in the room, it creates a personalized stream of clean air for individual users. Now, a phrase like “personalized stream of clean air” might sound a little silly, but CEO Ray Combs and CTO Harold Han (who has a Ph.D. in chemistry from New York University) convinced me that if you’re going to buy an air purifier, Sprimo could be an efficient and affordable alternative. After all, they said that , making the personalized approach 10 times more efficient. Plus, it allows for things like temperature to be tailored to your preferences. “Have you ever gotten in someone’s car and adjusting the air vents is the first thing you do?” Combs said. “We all have a perception of what we want our air to feel like.” [vimeo 161986499 w=500 h=281] So Sprimo is designed to be set up on your desk, say at your office. Then once you turn it on, it filters out toxins and allergens, with a fan blowing in your face (in a subtle, not annoying, way) to create what Combs called “a bubble of fresh air.” Of course, you’re not completely isolated from the air around you, but Combs said the Sprimo’s “influence” extends two meters out from the fan and takes effect in about 30 seconds. The filters are customizable based on your needs, say if you have a particular problem with pollen or live in a city where there’s a high concentration of a certain chemical. Combs said Sprimo can get smarter about this over time, because it will analyze the used filters that customers send in through the filter exchange program. Sprimo is currently , with a pre-order price of $319. |
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