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Evernote Will Shut Down Market, Its E-Commerce Effort, On Wednesday
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Ingrid Lunden
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Some more news from Evernote — the note-taking app and startup of the same name — that speaks to the company’s current rough patch: today it announced that as of Wednesday at 6pm Pacific, it will shutter , the e-commerce platform where it sold Evernote swag and Evernote-integrated office products, in an attempt to create another revenue stream around its more dedicated users. Separately, we’ve also learned that there is another senior departure at the company: Ronda Scott, the company’s longtime head of comms, is leaving at the end of this week. The moves come at what has been a pretty for the startup. Developments have included a of , including that of the previous, ; other underperforming products , and the startup — once commanding a tag — whose valuations have more recently been marked down by large fund managers. In a announcing the news today, head of partnerships John Hoye wrote that the move is being made as part of Evernote’s restructuring around its core business as a software — not e-commerce — company. “Evernote is a software company. Building and perfecting the Evernote experience is where we’ll be focusing our future efforts. Instead of selling and fulfilling orders ourselves, on February 3rd, we will transition the Market to promote Evernote-integrated products made and sold by our partners at Adonit, Moleskine, and PFU,” he said. “We plan to continue adding partners and integrations that strongly and elegantly complement Evernote to that list.” Remaining products will be shown off in the form of links, which will redirect users to other sites in order to purchase them, a spokesperson confirmed. Evernote the app has been working for years on building its service around a freemium model — with a basic version of the app available for free on the premise that it would be so useful that enough people would be willing to pay extra for the paid/premium tiers that provided more storage and more functionality. Its former CEO Libin also of touting the company’s longevity: in his view (and the company’s up to now), Evernote was a place to store everything for your lifetime and beyond. The company says it has over 150 million users globally but does not break out how many of them are paying for the service. Putting to one side questions of whether Evernote (or its users) may need to reconsider at some point the infinite nature of the service, just looking at the app itself, the Market was a curious concept. Evernote is a startup based around keeping documents in the cloud — and eliminating the need for paper. So when the Market and its focus on notebooks and other products was , it did feel a little out of left field. Libin at the time justified the move of peddling products like Moleskine notebooks but also post-its as a way of expanding the Evernote experience in a good way (never mind the Evernote themed socks, I guess): “Paperless is not the goal — great experience is not the goal.” Libin said. “We want to eliminate the stupid uses of paper, but we want to extend the great uses.” A year after that the company said it had sold some through the store. And today it updated that with other numbers: over 800,000 Evernote Moleskine notebooks, 300,000 Jot Script styluses and nearly 20,000 ScanSnap Evernote Edition scanners. But at the end of the day, it seems those numbers did not really meet the costs of maintaining the operation. So now that Evernote is calling time on all frivolities; trying to get back to the heart of what made the startup so popular in the first place; and driving more premium users — which are up 40% on a year ago, a spokesperson tells me — the decision to shut the Market was probably an easy sell at the startup.
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NASA’s Super Guppy Gives Mars-Bound Spacecraft A Lift
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Emily Calandrelli
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Today the Orion capsule, NASA’s spacecraft designed to bring humans to Mars, starts its next phase of development at Kennedy Space Center. The remarkable part is that just this morning, that large spacecraft was at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. In order to carry Orion from New Orleans to Cape Canaveral, NASA recruited their Super Guppy aircraft. The Super Guppy has a cargo area that is 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long. The jumbo plane can carry over 26 tons worth of cargo and is often used by NASA to ferry large components around the country that would take too long (or be impossible) to ship by land or by sea. Super Guppy opens to reveal the packaged Orion capsule. — SpaceFlight Insider (@SpaceflightIns) The Super Guppy’s history dates back to the Apollo program. It was used in the 1960’s to carry parts of the Saturn V rocket from California to Florida. The other option NASA had was to rocket stages through the Panama Canal, which would often take weeks or months longer. The large aircraft has also been used to ship NASA’s supersonic jets as well as modules from the International Space Station. Recently, the Super Guppy was used to carry Orion’s heat shield, which was the largest of its kind ever built, to Florida in 2013. The Orion spacecraft, although not yet complete, is already precious cargo. The human-rated spacecraft is a crucial part of NASA’s mission to bring humans to Mars. Eventually, Orion will carry 4 astronauts and launch on top of NASA’s rocket-in-the-making, the Space Launch System (SLS). An earlier version of Orion took its first flight in December of 2014. The mission, known as Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1), brought Orion to an altitude of 3,600 miles above the Earth’s surface – more than 15 times farther than the International Space Station’s orbit. The EFT-1 mission tested basic functions required for a crewed mission to deep space. NASA has said that data from EFT-1 was required to make key Orion design decisions and to validate existing computer models. It was also the first human-rated capsule to travel past Low Earth Orbit in over 40 years. https://youtu.be/u-iFUj7Jro4 At the Michoud Assembly Facility, engineers had recently completed the pressure vessel that makes up Orion’s primary structure. Now that Orion has made it to the Kennedy Space Center, the pressure vessel will undergo a series of tests to analyze its structural integrity. Eventually, Orion will be outfitted with its necessary systems and subsystems. After all of this is done, Orion will take its second flight (and its first flight on SLS), currently scheduled for 2018. Unfortunately this is 4 years after EFT-1, which helped garner a lot of public support for Orion and NASA’s journey to Mars. Public opinion is crucial to any NASA program, especially under changing administrations. Launches are a great way to grab the public’s attention, but of course heavy-lift launches are expensive, so NASA must be selective. Assuming no delays or changes in NASA’s mandate, Orion’s first crewed mission will take place in 2023. NASA hopes to use Orion to send humans to Mars by the mid-2030’s.
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Pager Expands Its On-Demand Doctor Service By Letting Users Chat With Nurses
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Anthony Ha
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isn’t just a doctor-on-demand service anymore. We’ve mentioned the New York City-based company as aiming to bring doctors to patients’ homes, and to be clear, you’ll still be able use the app to set up medical house calls. Now, however, that’s just one part of a broader experience. In the new version of Pager, everything gets managed through an interface where you chat with Pager’s on-staff nurses. Once they have a sense of what you need, they can identify the medical provider and level of service that makes the sense for you, whether it’s a remote “telemedicine” session with a doctor, a house call or a visit to the hospital. As part of the shift, Pager is shutting down in San Francisco, at least temporarily, so that it can focus on refining the model in New York. Walter Jin, founding partner at healthcare firm Three Fields Capital, recently joined Pager as chairman. He said the company has the potential to address “the cost inefficiency that exists in the healthcare system today” by doing a better job of matching patients with the appropriate level of healthcare. Jin noted that in the current system, many people go to the emergency room regardless of what’s wrong with them, which is “the most expensive form of care available.” With Pager, nurses can help you figure out the specific level of care you need — you shouldn’t end up visiting an expensive specialist unless it’s really necessary. Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Oscar Salazar added that Pager decided to focus on chat, because that was already one of the main ways users wanted to connect with medical providers in the previous version of the app. “What we notice is for urgent care, people don’t necessarily stop their lives to get care,” Salazar said. “They do it when they find time in the middle of their busy day” — and chat, of course, is a great format for that. This is probably a good time to mention that Pager is focused on urgent care. The term sounds, um, urgent (sorry), but it’s used in a medical context to . Put another way: If you think you’re having a heart attack, don’t use Pager, dial 911. The standard pricing for Pager includes free chats, $25 for a tele-consultation and $200 for an in-person visit. (The service currently counts as an out-of-network provider for insurance purposes.) Pager is also working with businesses to provide the service to their employees, and it will be expanding its reach through . from New Enterprise Associates and Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures last year.
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WhatsApp Hits One Billion Users, Remains In Search Of Revenue
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Nitish Kulkarni
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You know what’s cooler than a (several hundred) million users? A billion users. Just over a week after , announced today that the product now has 1 billion users. The timing of the WhatsApp news may have been calculated: it comes on the same day that Google . While Google has it’s shown to have a deft hand at growing a communication network in the form of email, making it Google’s most viable competitor against messaging apps at the moment. The milestone was announced on WhatsApp’s today. This means that WhatsApp acquired around 100 million users between now and September 2015, when the company . According to a profile in last week, though, the WhatsApp featured 990 million users at that time. Adding 10 million users between late last month and today – in under two weeks – is indeed impressive, and it will be interesting to see if the company can keep up this pace as their user base grows bigger and bigger. Despite these impressive user numbers, WhatsApp’s capability to generate revenue is once again in question after the company scrapped the $0.99 fee, which at the time of the company’s acquisition by Menlo Park-based Facebook, Inc. totaled $10.2 million annually, . While revenue still remains an open question, it will be interesting to see how this massive user number impacts the playing field in a saturated messaging market. As WhatsApp plans to move into the Business-To-Consumer (B2C) communications market and tries to deploy end-to-end encryption, the product will come head-to-head with competitors like Telegram and own Messenger, which boasts a cool 800 million users independently.
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Gmail Now Has More Than 1B Monthly Active Users
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Frederic Lardinois
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During its earnings call, Google today announced that Gmail now has more than 1 billion monthly active users. That’s up from the company announced during its I/O developer conference last May and up from . With this, Gmail joins six of Google’s other popular projects, including Search, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube and Google Play that all also have more than a billion active users. The last time Google announced updated numbers for Gmail, the company also said that 75 percent of Gmail users now access their accounts on mobile devices. The company didn’t update this number today, though chances are they haven’t changed all that much. With Inbox, Google recently launched a new email experience on top of Gmail, though given that this is still a bit of an experimental product, it’s probably not driving a lot of new users to Gmail. It is, however, Google’s platform for experimenting with what a modern email client could look like, and Google is also using it to bring some of its to its users.
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Alphabet’s “Other Bets” Cost It Almost $3.6B Last Year
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Frederic Lardinois
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Alphabet — the company formerly known as Google — some today. For the first time, the company also broke out its revenue and loss from its “other bets” outside of the core products that still make up its subsidiary. These other bets generated $448 million in revenue in 2015 but Alphabet’s operating loss for those bets was almost $3.6 billion. It’s worth noting that while “other bets” includes projects like the self-driving car pilots, the Calico health initiative, and other speculative projects (or ‘moonshots,’ as Alphabet likes to call them), Alphabet also includes Nest and Google Fiber, as well as its venture capital arms GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Google Capital. As Google announced during its earnings call today, revenue for “other bets” is currently mostly driven by Nest, Google Fiber and — interestingly — , which was previously known as Google Life Sciences. Sadly, because so many different groups fall under “other bets,” we still don’t know how much Alphabet spends on self-driving cars and Project Loon, for example. As Alphabet reported today, both of these numbers are up from 2014 when Google’s total revenue for these bets was $327 million with an operating loss of just under $2 billion. So while Google definitely tried to refocus many of its projects in the last year, the cost for running these programs only increased.
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Alphabet Becomes The Most Valuable Public Company In The World
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Matthew Lynley
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Today was a huge day for Alphabet — the first day it finally broke out its “other bets” in its earnings report — and boy did the company not disappoint. The company smashed expectations on both ends, bringing in $21.3 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.67 per share. Analysts were expecting earnings of $8.09 on $20.8 billion in revenue. And with that, Alphabet became the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world — coming in at a market cap $558 billion after jumping about 8% after the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings, and passing Apple, which sits at a market cap of $535 billion. There weren’t any huge surprises on the earnings call that caused the stock to dip, but its ranking still depends on whether or not the company gives up those gains in extended trading. Either way this is a significant moment for the company and the technology market in general. Alphabet had a huge opportunity to finally pass Apple as the most valuable company in the world. There’s a clear narrative here. Alphabet, a software company with a few extra hardware bets, shares have dramatically outperformed those of Apple, a hardware company with a few extra software bets. “Our very strong revenue growth in Q4 reflects the vibrancy of our business, driven by mobile search as well as YouTube and programmatic advertising, all areas in which we’ve been investing for many years,” CFO Ruth Porat said in a statement with the earnings report. In the past year, Apple’s stock has not performed well. [graphiq id=”9aWSqJNK2Yl” title=”Apple Inc. (AAPL) Stock Price – 1 Year” width=”600″ height=”490″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/9aWSqJNK2Yl” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/8500602/Apple-Inc-in-Cupertino-CA” link_text=”Apple Inc. (AAPL) Stock Price – 1 Year | FindTheCompany”] Meanwhile, Google’s stock was on the rise for the past 12 months. [graphiq id=”7namtlYCqeF” title=”Alphabet (GOOGL) Stock Price – 1 Year” width=”600″ height=”490″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/7namtlYCqeF” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/8520977/Google-Inc-in-Mountain-View-CA” link_text=”Alphabet (GOOGL) Stock Price – 1 Year | FindTheCompany”] So, not surprisingly, the two quickly collided in terms of their market capitalization. [graphiq id=”7VqTwf4vIzj” title=”Apple vs. Alphabet Market Capitalization Over Time” width=”600″ height=”521″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/7VqTwf4vIzj” link=”http://intraday-widgets.findthecompany.com” link_text=”Apple vs. Alphabet Market Capitalization Over Time | FindTheCompany”] Google’s core businesses continue to grow as well — today the . That means it has about half a dozen services that have around 1 billion active users, a number most companies (other than perhaps Facebook, ) will envy. (CEO Sundar Pichai didn’t specify if that was daily actives or monthly actives, so we’ll probably assume the latter.) In terms of Google’s core advertising business, cost-per-click fell 13% year-over-year, while paid clicks increased 31% year-over-year. This has been a trend for Google — as more activity shifts to mobile devices, the value of each advertisement click tends to go down. Google’s core business is still printing money, to be sure. Google’s extraneous operations, like Nest, have never been separate from its core business. So investors have had basically no idea how its other projects are going — and how much they may contribute to the company — other than estimates. Google has gotten into all sorts of other areas, but now we have a rough idea of how those other areas are performing. So far, that bet is growing in revenue at least: other bets accounted for $448 million in revenue in 2015, up from $327 million in revenue in 2014. That being said, — going to a loss of $3.6 billion from $1.9 billion in 2014. Google, too, is still not immune to what’s happening with foreign exchange rates and the general global economy. Revenue was up 18% year-over year, though in constant currency it would have risen $24%. Apple, for example, said there was a difference in $5 billion in revenue if not for foreign exchange rates, and for Google that represents about $1 billion in revenue. Perhaps this is a signal of the challenges hardware businesses are going to face. Apple’s growth engine — one of the strongest in the world for the longest time — has started to stall as it faces economic headwinds globally. There’s also the question of saturation, and how willing people are to upgrade. Meanwhile, people are still searching and using Google’s software relentlessly, and the company is starting to place money on other bets.
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Post-Morin, Path Gets Chatty
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Josh Constine
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Korea’s Kakao is making a big change to Path eight months after acquiring the social app. people can now message each other inside the app, rather than having to open the separate . It could be a move to invigorate users, and streamline the product. While building an entire companion app for chat worked for Facebook, splintering users between Path and Path Talk might have been a harder sell for a less vibrant social network. Perhaps Path will merge the two apps soon. That could bolster the value of Path’s premium subscription to sticker packs and camera filters. The more places its obvious for people to use those inside the Path ecosystem, the more willing some might be to pay. In a Q&A document accompanying a press release, Kakao explained that “this decision was a result of user feedback.” The company confirmed that more advanced messaging features will remain in Path Talk, while the messaging experience will be basic inside the core Path app. The company added that more new features will come soon. Dave Morin, former Path CEO, declined to comment, saying he’s not involved with Path anymore. LinkedIn says he completed his time there in June, once the hand-off to Daum Kakao was complete. The Korean social giant recently with a new one named Ji Hoon “Jimmy” Rim. He’s tasked with making Daum Kakao’s products more relevant abroad. Making Path a one-stop shop for interacting with close friends could give the app a boost in markets where Facebook has become such a core utility to that it’s overloaded with distant acquaintances you wouldn’t want to chat with.
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Safe Harbor Deadline Passes Without A New Deal On Transatlantic Data Flows — Yet
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Natasha Lomas
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A deadline to agree a new deal to govern transatlantic data transfers has passed without agreement on a new, safer ‘Safe Harbor’. But talks are continuing — and Věra Jourová, the EC commissioner heading the negotiations from the European side, said today that a deal “is close”, although she emphasized that “an additional effort is needed”. The original fifteen-year-old Safe Harbor agreement, which had allowed some 4,700 companies to self-certify they would provide adequate protection of European citizens’ data once it was in the U.S. for processing, was by Europe’s top court, the ECJ, in October last year, leaving businesses scrambling to figure out how to operate legal data transfers in the meanwhile, while US and EC officials tried to hammer out a new agreement. The deadline to seal a new deal was set by the EC , giving negotiators three months to set out their stalls, before any European Data Protection Agencies would start enforcement actions against companies suspected of breaching European law. Now that deadline has passed, there’s nothing to stop DPAs starting enforcement actions. Although if a new Safe Harbor deal really is close the current legal limbo may close up soon enough. Or that closeness may turn out to be the deceptive proximity of parallel legal universes. Sticking points for the European negotiators are that it is still looking for further clarification on transparency and effective oversight, according to a spokeswoman for Jourová, who is the Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality. Making a statement in the European Parliament on the current state of play, Jourová fleshed out these sticking points in more detail. The agreement must be “fundamentally different” to the old Safe Harbor, she asserted, and must be able to withstand any future legal challenge — such as the case brought by Max Schrems that led to the ECJ striking down the original agreement last year. “We have tried hard to obtain commitments from the US to ensure that any new arrangement meets the requirement of the court ruling. We are aiming… for a robust new system that unlike Safe Harbor ensures that any individual complaint is resolved, includes guarantees that access by public authorities is limited to what is proportionate and necessary, and third main different from the old Safe Harbor, this new arrangement will be closely monitored and reviewed on a regular basis with the involvement of national security bodies and data protection authorities,” she said. “I will not hide that these talks have not been easy. It is not an easy task to build a strong bridge between two legal systems which have some major differences. But I believe that the close partnership between Europe and the US deserves these special efforts,” she added, throwing a little soft soap over what have evidently been some pretty spiky late night discussions. Jourová said that the US adopting the Judicial Redress Act is a necessary step to achieving a new deal — to provide a path for EU citizens to sue over privacy complaints in the US. A Senate judiciary committee passed the Act late last week. However it also passed a that provides for an exception on national security grounds — thereby undermining the entire point of the measure, from an EC perspective. Not the greatest message to send to negotiations hanging in the balance at the eleventh hour then… On national security agencies’ access to data point, Jourová today reiterated there must be “limitations and safeguards”, as well as independent oversight and redress. She also reiterated there can be “no indiscriminate mass surveillance”. (The key word there being — more on that below…) “The Schrems ruling has made clear that [public authorities’ data] access must be limited to what is strictly necessary,” she said. “The US framework has evolved since the Snowden revelations, there have been important reforms under President Obama introducing stronger oversight and more transparency. “In the context of our negotiations we are obtaining specific written assurances from the US that access by public authorities to personal data transferred from Europe will be limited to what is necessary and proportionate. These assurances must confirm that there is no indiscriminate mass surveillance and that safeguards for individuals also apply to non-US persons.” Specifically, Jourová said it is necessary for the US to create a “functionally independent body” — such as an ombudsman — which could answer complaints by European citizens about the use of their data by public authorities in the US. She also said the negotiators were working on “a last resort mechanism” to ensure all complaints are resolved “through a binding and enforceable decision”. She noted that the FTC is more involved in setting strategy than individual complaint handling. And said it will be necessary for EU DPAs to have “an active role” in handling complaints. No complaints by European citizens about data privacy should go left unanswered, she stressed. “This is essential for a new arrangement. Given that the right to legal remedy is enshrined in our charter of fundamental rights,” she said. Jourová also made it clear that any new agreement would itself be subject to ongoing oversight. So no more deals that run on unchecked for fifteen years. Instead there would be an annual joint review process looking at “all aspects of the arrangement”. “Let me be very clear, we will need to continue to monitor developments in this area also in the future… This will not be one off decision. This means the start of monitoring because what we need now is trust. But we also have a duty to check,” she said. The article 29 Working Group, comprised of representatives of all of the national DPAs, is due to hold a press conference on Wednesday in which they will discuss findings of their own impact assessment of the ECJ ruling on the alternative data transfer methods that must now be used instead of the invalidated Safe Harbor. So it remains to be seen whether they will be champing at the bit to start actions against potential infringers. The DPAs are a varied bunch. Some, such as the UK’s ICO, frequently appear tonally far more pro-business than pro-privacy/pro-consumer. Whereas the reverse is true for France’s CNIL, or German DPAs, such as the Hamburg DPA. So how different DPAs react is going to be interesting to watch. (At the end of last year, European privacy campaigner Max Schrems , in light of the Safe Harbor strikedown, lodging the complaints with three different DPAs. Schrems has also said he intends to file more complaints against other tech companies, who should be braced for others to follow suit. And for DPAs who have more fire in their belly for consumer rights to start showing some teeth.) That said, Jourová said talks would be continuing this evening to try to close the final gaps — so the hint is that a new deal is in fact very close. “Finally we need commitments by the US that are formal and binding. And as this will not be an international agreement but an exchange of letters we need signatures at the highest political level and publication of the commitments in the federal register,” she added. However, for all her tough talk, Jourová was savaged during questioning by MEPs with criticism that any new Safe Harbor should be based just on an exchange of letters, rather than being a fully fledged international agreement. Not surprising. But scathing criticism in for (not yet) deal on . — Omer Tene (@omertene) She also revealed the rather salient detail that the fledgling agreement that’s still being hammered out does in fact allow for “generalized access” to data (i.e. non-targeted, mass surveillance) by the US intelligence agencies in certain circumstances… As they say, the devil really is in the detail. https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/694247648279318528 “Generalized access… may happen in very rare cases. In fact under three circumstances: if the tailored and targeted access is not technically or operationally possible; or if they see some very dangerous trend that needs more than targeted access. But we warn in our negotiations our American partners that this targeted access must be really prior one, it cannot be swallowed by the generalized access,” said Jourová. She added that the EC requires these exceptions to be “very precisely described”, and to be checked via an ongoing oversight process by an independent ombudsman. But she also used the T word: trust. So it looks like the frenzied US lobbying and political pressure being brought to secure a new agreement on data flows might well have borne fruit. All of which roundly failed to impress the man who brought down the last Safe Harbor agreement… https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/694248687187423233 https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/694252591082029060 https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/694253588525223936 https://twitter.com/maxschrems/status/694258411287007236 So, the upshot of the Safe Harbor negotiations as it stands: no legal certainty for businesses wanting to export data from Europe right now, and little legal certainty in future if the EC folds on concessions on mass surveillance — only for the ECJ to unpick that second agreement in future. In a statement responding to developments, the US dubbed it an apparent “capitulation” by the EU to US negotiators. “The Obama Administration appears to have successfully brokered a deal that lets Google, Facebook and the other major US data companies avoid changing their business practices. The EU’s capitulation to the U.S. negotiators puts European citizens in great peril. Forcing them to appeal first to U.S. corporations before going to their own government regulators undermines their fundamental right to privacy,” it writes. “Given the lack of transparency in the operations of these powerful global digital media companies, it will be impossible for individuals in the EU to even know when their data protection rights have been violated. The US does not have the necessary privacy and consumer protection laws for safeguarding its own citizens. Nor does the Federal Trade Commission have sufficient authority to regulate the complex and massive “Big Data” apparatus that poses such unprecedented threats to everyone’s privacy.”
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Verizon’s New “Free View” Lets Consumers Turn On Free Trials Of Premium Channels At Any Time
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Sarah Perez
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Traditional cable TV providers are having to up their game as more of their customers cut the cord in favor of over-the-top options. Verizon, in a move meant to better serve and retain those customers willing to pay for a premium cable TV experience, today a new feature called “Free View” for FiOS TV. This option lets consumers control when they’re able to access a free preview of a paid cable TV channel, like HBO or Showtime – access that used to be offered only by way of special, time-sensitive promotions. Now, explains Verizon*, FiOS customers will be able to switch on free previews of the premium cable channels at any time. The feature will work with HBO, Showtime, Starz, EPIX and Cinemax, and will offer viewers a 48-hour preview window. That’s quite a bit shorter than some of the other promotions, which offer free or discounted channels for a longer period of time – like a whole free month, for example. It’s also much shorter than the free trials available for some of these networks’ over-the-top options. for instance, gives out a free month for those who want to try its cross-platform streaming application. on iOS, Android, Amazon and Roku devices, and a free week when added to another service like Amazon Video, Hulu or PlayStation Vue. However, it makes sense that the TV provider would want to make it easier on those who were interested in premium TV channels to try them out without having to call customer service, or wait for a deal to arrive. Verizon says that the free content is available on live TV, on demand, or via its FiOS Mobile application. Each channel can be previewed for 48 hours once per year. This is the first time free previews have ever been able to be switched on by consumers directly, and it speaks to a company that’s looking to re-establish how its offerings are perceived in the cord cutting era. Already, Verizon had introduced “skinny” pay-TV bundles through its FiOS Custom TV option. This offers a core package of a few dozen basic channels which consumers can customized through niche-targeted add-ons. The package had been criticized by some as giving , when really consumers would end up with the same lineups they already had, by being pushed to add extras on top of their core package. Dish’s Sling TV internet service takes a similar tack – it offers a core bundle for a cheap $20/month, which can then be customized with add-ons. That being said, Verizon’s move toward unbundling is also an indication of how cable TV companies have been re-thinking how channels are sold and marketed to consumers. The same can be said for this new “Free View” option, as it lets consumers decide when they’re ready for free trials – just like those they could access if they were online, opting for the network’s streaming service instead. The move comes at a time when Verizon is struggling to grow its pay TV subscriber base – the company , down from 116,000 in the year-ago period. That was its lowest subscriber growth to date since its launch in 2006. But at the same time, the company touted growing interest in its customizable bundles, noting that Custom TV accounted for one-third of video sales in the quarter. The “Free View” option is live now, accessible from customer’s FiOS remote.
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Harry Stebbings
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Yep, Sesame Street Now Has A Venture Fund
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Matthew Lynley
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is bringing on a pretty big partner for a new seed-stage fund focused on improving children’s lives — and it’s not someone you’d expect to get into the venture capital game. Craig Shapiro’s venture is launching a new $10 million fund that’s tied to , creator of Sesame Street and other children’s programming. The fund is primarily targeted at the seed stage, which the new venture will invest up to $1 million in, Shapiro said. Collaborative Fund will be leading the investments, while Sesame Workshop executives work in the selection process for the startups. “[Our investments are going to be] seed investments in startups that are basically focused on some element of making kids stronger, smarter, kinder,” Shapiro said. “If something is endorsed by Sesame it brings tremendous legitimacy. That’s in part because they’re nonprofit, Sesame is the gold standard for anointing that something is safe for children. If you’re launching a toy or an app or a product or a service for kids, and you have the opportunity to bring Sesame and its brand into the fold, it gives it infinitely greater legitimacy. It’s what ESPN is to a sports fan or what Anthony Bourdain is to the food world.” Some firms have a lot of value-add thanks to their additional staffing beyond just partners, Shapiro said. For a fund like this, Collaborative Fund is able to bring in a Sesame Street executive to help companies figure out how to solve some of their problems, he said. “I think that by bringing a strategic partner in like Sesame, a very focused subset group of companies, it’s likely that they’re a number one if not top three strategic partner out there, and the nice thing about Sesame Street is it’s a nonprofit,” Shapiro said. “It’s non-threatening, it doesn’t limit a company’s options as it relates to exit opportunities.” Collaborative Fund, while investing often in companies that aim for social good, is still a fund looking for a financial return — and that doesn’t necessarily exclude how this fund is going to work. The startups still have to represent some potential financial opportunity to cross the threshold, Shapiro said. Collaborative Fund has already invested in a few companies that might fit the portfolio of companies in which the new fund is looking to invest. He pointed to a few examples in Collaborative Fund’s portfolio, like Revolution Foods — which looks to replace the food in public schools around the country with healthier options. Another, he said, was Hopscotch, a startup that looks to teach children how to code without having to type words. This isn’t the only fund that is necessarily focused on startups that look to improve children’s lives. There are funds like Owl Ventures, which invests in startups looking to change education, and Imagine K-12, an accelerator for education tech startups. But it would seem there hasn’t been something of the form of this new fund — much less one that involves Sesame Street. “I think there’s opportunities for us to be somewhat contrarian and invest in areas that are underserved,” he said. “There are so many funds that are saying, oh, VR is the next hot thing, or drones, let’s create a fund just focused on drones. I just think there [are a lot] of investors chasing those hot areas. But you’ll see us investing in areas that are a bit underserved so that gives us a chance to have a competitive advantage.”
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OpenTrons Aims To Be The ‘PC’ Of Biotech Labs
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Sarah Buhr
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Robotics startup has come up with a way it believes will make wet lab experiments faster and cheaper – automation. Most life science research is still done by hand. This can be a tedious process that OpenTrons hopes to diminish by using robotics and software to complete it. “Basically, if you’re a biologist you spend all of your time moving tiny amounts of liquid around from vial to vial by hand with a little micro-pipette or you have a $100,000 robot that does it for you. We’re a $3,000 robot,” OpenTrons co-founder Will Canine explained to TechCrunch. Canine refers to these more expensive machines as ‘mainframe’ machines – or computers that existed before the PC came about. He believes his machine is more like an actual PC. These older, more expensive machines require engineers to run them on the backend, but Canine says OpenTrons is “democratizing the tools” that allow for sharing protocols. In other words, his $3,000 machine is controlled by your web browser and allows researchers to download protocols from the cloud to run experiments without the need for an engineer to create the code first. Canine rattled off several use cases for OpenTrons, such as a farmer who wants to engineer crops or scientists developing a new super material in their garage. “These are the people we are building a tool for in the future,” he said. It’s a similar idea to another YC startup Transcriptic, which is that tests for experimental drugs using robots. But Canine sees that company as more of a partner than a competitor. “We’re the PC and they’re the cloud,” he said. “One of the biggest bottlenecks for labs, including outsourced labs like Transcriptic, is getting the samples out of the lab into their facility,” Canine said. “So just like you’d deploy your lab software to Amazon Web Services you’d use an OpenTrons to send samples to a Transcriptic cloud lab.” OpenTrons first launched out of Haxclr8tr in China and ran a successful to help build a machine that could insert DNA inside of E. coli. According to Canine, there are more than 50 robots already in operation in private labs and academic institutions since launching.
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3D Touch Opens A New Dimension Of User Interaction
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Craig Tashman
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We spend so much time touching our devices — but what if they could touch us back? Apple’s recent leaps with show that this could soon be a reality. , even play an instrument — the tactile capabilities of future technologies are set to transform our digital experiences. In this article I will explore how developing technology is evolving the digital user experience with increasingly intuitive, expressive interfaces. I’ll also discuss the potential that 3D technology has to transform industries, whether it be in art, data analysis, gaming or e-commerce. The digital representations used in computing interfaces communicate an action through the use of recognizable, real-world concepts. On a basic level, consider the trash icon on your desktop — dragging an object to the icon deletes the information, which is communicated through the concept of a trash bin. For these metaphors to work, you need the right kind of hardware. For example, trying to interact with the desktop without a mouse would be tedious. Hardware dictates which interface allows the metaphors to make sense, and the interface metaphors dictate which tasks are easy or hard to perform. So, as hardware advances, we can adopt new metaphors and, in turn, shift and expand the scope of which tasks are easy to do on a computer. With its introduction of the , which brought the multi-touch screen to the mass-consumer market, Apple has been a leader in this arena. Multi-touch let Apple create and execute new metaphors with the ability to stretch and squeeze with a two-finger pinch action, making navigating websites and maps faster and simpler. Here again, the right hardware enabled new metaphors, which in turn made 2D navigation easier, radically changing what is possible to do on a mobile device. The sensory technology of on Apple’s iPhone 6s is the latest advancement in this sphere to hit the market. This capability allows the device to recognize how hard you are pressing on the screen by detecting the minute bending of the touch surface caused by your finger. This is complemented by the Taptic Engine, which creates feedback through vibrations, described by Forbes as Apple’s Together, the two provide a crucial combination — sensing and feedback — which allows for a new dimension of interaction through tactile pressure. This can be seen in the new iPhone “Peek and Pop” and “Quick Actions” functionalities. Using a light tap, “Peek and Pop” allows users to preview content, such as emails, without having to open them. By applying more pressure, a deeper “Pop” will open content in a new window. Using the same methodology, “Quick Actions” creates shortcuts for regular activities. These actions display the first hints of a truly three-dimensional, layered space, and bring tantalizing new possibilities — some of which are already being tested today. have explored this in 3D modelling through arranging objects by pushing them deeper into a 3D scene by pressing harder on the screen. Haptic feedback alerts the user when two objects bump. Microsoft has even created a 3D MRI, where pressing harder displays a deeper cross-section of the scan. South Korean researchers have additionally used the force of a user’s touch to select the number of . This same technology has the power to let users control mobile devices without the need to . As this technology matures, it could be revolutionary for everything, from automobile interfaces to accessible technology for the visually impaired. All of these new metaphors and gestures let you do more on the screen, using less space and time for improved digital experiences. And it all comes from force sensing and simple tactile feedback. Scientists are already exploring more complex tactile feedback, used to create far richer experiences. One approach is combining haptics with microfluidics (the manipulation of fluid) to change the physical properties and functionality of the touchscreen — presenting users with a sort of 3D interface. already uses this capability to provide pop-up “finger-guides” on a virtual keyboard; however, future possibilities could allow much more. Disney has spent the last few years developing touchscreens that can change their surface friction in real time to create dynamic . The technology is strikingly effective, and the experience it creates could have profound effects for a number of industries. Imagine search results where texture signifies trustworthiness, or the impact on social media when people could feel the textures in their photos. And the future of gaming would be revolutionized through adding a third dimension of touch — not just looking for clues to a puzzle, but feeling for them, as well. Creativity within the mobile device will soon begin to take a very new form. Sculpting clay figures on your iPhone screen, DJing with custom mix decks, testing a new pair of sunglasses before 3D printing them. These start to become possible with the right kind of tactile feedback. Quite a few remarkable projects in this vein have already been prototyped by . The most interesting applications are those we cannot even imagine today. How will mapping apps change when you can of a landscape? How will data analysis change when analysts can gather information through touch as well as vision and sound? How will e-commerce change when you can feel the merchandise? The physicality of touch has always been a fundamental part of how we engage with our world. It is both deeply instinctive, and rife with social meaning. The fact that the virtual, metaphoric worlds where we spend an increasing amount of our mobile time are largely devoid of touch is almost tragic. Restoring it will bring a new dimension to our digital interactions, expand the scope of what is possible on a computer and ultimately let us engage with the digital world in ways that are a little more human.
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Black Girls Code Founder Kimberly Bryant On Racism And Implicit Bias
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Founded in 2011, Black Girls Code is on a mission to change the face of technology by introducing girls from underrepresented communities to coding. Black Girls Code does this through a series of workshops, hackathons and summer camps. “When we look at tech companies, they really at this point in time don’t reflect the demographics of the U.S. or the world in general and the people that are using those products,” Black Girls Code founder Kimberly Bryant said. “So, it would be important to them to continue being successful companies and really meet the needs of their consumers to bring more people inside the company instead of just focusing on utilizing them as consumers.” There are several studies that have shown diverse teams to be more effective. One is McKinsey’s 2015 report, are 35 percent more likely to financially outperform companies that are not diverse. Despite McKinsey’s study and others, many tech companies do not have ethnically diverse companies. Although there seems to be some intentionality around embracing diversity at tech companies, Bryant says, there haven’t been any real results. I asked Bryant if she felt like racism and sexism have any role in this. “Absolutely,” Bryant said. “I think that we’re fighting several things. Two things here. We’re fighting really systemic racism that’s been built into the fabric of not just these companies, but our nation in general. I think even more predominant is this notion of implicit bias that is one of the leading factors in prohibiting the tech industry from becoming more diverse.” In order to combat some of this, tech companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Asana, Square and Pinterest have brought on board and . “I think it will absolutely be helpful,” Bryant said. “I feel that it’s both conscious and unconscious,” Bryant said. “So I don’t think it’s something that we should be ashamed of admitting — that we have these unconscious biases. But I think the trainings will help us to kind of address ‘how do we overcome them?’ and the decisions we make everyday and the perceptions that we have of our coworkers, our peers, etcetera and to allow us to be better at being able to focus on driving diversity in the company.” The other thing with corporate diversity programs, though, is that they often times tend to prioritize one group of people, white women. “I don’t think that the trickle down theory of diversity ever really works. For me, if a company is really committed to diversity, that means everything. That means gender diversity, that means sexual orientation for me, that means race, ethnicity. Everything should have a plan of focus at the same time — not one above the other. I mean, how do you prioritize that? I’m a woman but I’m a woman of color so for me, a company saying ‘we’re only going to focus on raising women in these positions’ is problematic because I also come to the table as a woman who is African-American.”
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Robin And Saul Klein’s Localglobe Backs Online Mortgage Advisor Trussle
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Steve O'Hear
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Localglobe, the new VC fund from father and son duo Robin and Saul Klein, has led a £1.1 million investment in online mortgage advisor . Others joining the round include notable U.K.-based investors Ed Wray, co-founder of Betfair, Dan Cobley, ex-Google U.K. MD, and Ian Hogarth, co-founder and chairman of Songkick. London-based Trussle, which is also backed by and , is seeking to challenge the traditional mortgage broker with a tech-driven solution that advises customers on the best deal available, and helps manage the mortgage process if they choose to proceed. And, of course, the startup claims to do it a lot cheaper. “Today you have to go direct to a bank or via an independent, high-street broker to get a mortgage,” says Trussle co-founder Ishaan Malhi, describing the status quo. “Most seek independent advice rather than be restricted to a single bank’s options, but these traditional brokers follow a laborious, manual and one-size fits all process. Most brokers charge between £300 – £1,000 just to give advice and are rarely available at your convenience.” In contrast, Trussle’s mortgage “matchmaking” service — which is free to the end-customer but makes money via a mostly flat fee from the mortgage provider — promises to make finding the best-value mortgage a “smarter, faster and more transparent process,” says Malhi. “Our proprietary software scours thousands of mortgages to advise customers on the best available deal and manage the end-to-end process for them. Whether you register as a first-time buyer or existing homeowner, we then continually check in throughout the lifetime of your mortgage, using automation to let you know when you can switch to a better deal, which could save you £4,000 per year on average.” Checking in throughout the lifetime of a mortgage is key here — and in some ways is reminiscent of the recent crop of — since it has the potential for Trussle to create an ongoing relationship with each of its users, with recurring revenue to boot. The draw being that a Trussle user could make additional and not insignificant savings by switching mortgages more often when a better deal or lower interest rate becomes available. By some , says the startup, U.K. homeowners are losing £29 billion a year by failing to re-mortgage and switch to lower fixed rate deals.
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Managing Your Startup In 2016: New Rules For A New Environment
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Ajay Agarwal
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It’s a new environment for startups in 2016. Financing will get harder. Valuation inflation will dissipate. Profitability will be in vogue again. And old-fashioned business fundamentals will balance out the disruption frenzy of the past five years. Given the new investment climate, what’s an entrepreneur to do? To answer that, let’s first examine the factors behind Silicon Valley’s climate change. First, public market valuations for relatively young technology companies have been declining of late — especially for those that remain unprofitable. For example, we’ve seen valuation multiples for unprofitable SaaS companies drop by more than 60 percent from 2014 to today (see below). Valuation multiples for profitable SaaS companies, by contrast, have dropped by less than 30 percent. Second, recent IPOs (Atlassian aside) have generated less than stellar returns for late-stage investors. , Box and Etsy are good examples of this trend, where early stage investors were rewarded with strong multiples on their long-term investments, while late-stage investors suffered mixed results. Third, we’ve seen Fidelity and others publicly their valuations of private company investments, from Dropbox and Snapchat to Zenefits and Dataminr. In short, public and private investors aren’t simply discussing bubbles and valuation concerns like they were in early 2015 — they’re taking action. Given that new world order, here’s my advice for early stage and late-stage entrepreneurs to navigate the shifting sands: Build a financial plan that gets the company to profitability on 50 percent as much capital as you may have wanted to raise six months ago. If you were planning to raise $100 million previously, build a plan that gets you to profitability on $50 million. If $50 million, then $25 million and so on. We’re already seeing the profitability premium kick in with public SaaS companies, as outlined above. Over the last two-three years, outside investors did not expect earlier inside investors to participate at any material level in later-stage financings. Early stage investors thus benefited from other firms’ capital in later rounds. In the new environment, I anticipate new investors will expect existing investors to contribute significantly to new rounds, providing up to one-third or one-half of the new funding. Beyond valuations, the risk tolerance of late-stage investors is changing. New investors will want to write smaller checks to mitigate their risk and exposure — and to reserve capital if the company does need a new round (because external capital is not a given). As a result, entrepreneurs should be prepared to bring together multiple investors at the $10-$15 million level as opposed to finding one lead investor willing to put in $25-$50 million. Recognize that a clean deal at a flat valuation should be considered a “win” in this environment. Let’s consider a company that last raised at $200 million valuation on a $10 million run rate two years ago — and has now grown to a $30 million run rate (a super healthy tripling of ARR). Absent the new climate, the company might expect to raise a new round at 10x to 12x multiple for $300-$360 million valuation. However, if you factor in that public SaaS multiples have been cut in half or more, a price of $150-$180 million would more fairly reflect the market. Thus, a flat round at $200 million would be a win despite the company’s fast growth. This may be the hardest challenge, given how actively some startups pursued unicorn status to accelerate recruiting efforts. Now, despite two years of massive progress and growth, you need to tell employees that the next round may be flat — and convince them the company isn’t losing market momentum. Professional investors understand all too well that external financings will fluctuate — two years ago, the price was probably too high; today, it may reflect market reality; in the future, it may be too low. It’s important that your employees understand the cost of capital will go up and down based on market dynamics (not just company performance). The climate change in late-stage private markets will cause some challenges for entrepreneurs and their teams — and result in a higher cost of capital. However, history tells us there is a silver lining for the smart startups that adapt, focus on fundamentals and extend their runway. That silver lining is a “flight to quality” that typically occurs during periods of multiple compression and financing downturns. As a result, the financing arms race will hopefully subside — and the best startups in each category can grow more efficiently knowing it will be tougher for the No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 companies to raise capital.
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3 Ways That The Blockchain Will Change The Real Estate Market
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Don Oparah
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Experts have suggested a number of niche industries that will be made more secure by the untamperable data record provided by blockchain technology — including international — but to date, very little attention has been given to the potential effects on the real estate market. According to , the typical homeowner sells his or her home every five-seven years, and the average individual will move 11.7 times during his or her lifetime. While most normal Americans will not note the differences of the changes to the international art trade, the changes within the real estate market directly affect millions of people every year. Buying a home is the biggest investment that most people will make in their lifetimes, yet, to date, there have been few technological advances to expedite the process and make it more secure for buyers, lenders and homeowners alike. This article will look at three ways that blockchain could disrupt the real estate market: by speeding up the system, providing more transparency and offering safer investments to everyone involved. After a period of “slow” sales in 2014, house prices have risen to the extent that in fall 2015, some the housing market was entering a bubble far worse than seen in the run-up to the Great Recession. Demand for houses is higher than ever, and with less new constructions being built, prices for existing properties are shooting up. Despite slight sales hiccups in August 2015, that prices are going to keep on rising. With a shortage of existing houses for sale, and the jury still out about whether the U.S. real estate market is in a bubble, buyers and sellers alike want to finalize deals and get papers signed as quickly as possible. However, the traditional real estate market is not known for being quick and easy. Real estate transactions have always been cumbersome and complicated. Government bodies around the country slow down the system by placing additional restrictions or costs on the transaction or transfer of real estate. Point of sale mandates, including utility and whole home inspections, and a can cause a house sale to slow to a snail’s pace even though both parties are keen to seal the deal. While the blockchain can do little to influence local legislators’ sales restrictions, it will have a great impact on the financial verification element of the sales process itself. At current, most buyers and sellers make use of escrow and title companies for third-party verification — a safety net to make sure both parties keep their end of the deal, as well as to reduce the risk of fraud. While undoubtedly important, this third-party verification comes at a cost — — and adds extra time to the process. With blockchain, the middleman (in this case the escrow company) could effectively be cut out. By using a blockchain distributed database to prove authenticity, homeowners could legitimately transfer ownership immediately without the need to pay for third-party verification. One of the main reasons that buyers and sellers have traditionally used escrow and third-party verifications is to reduce the chances of either parties getting burned by real estate fraud. Real estate fraud and is aggravated by buyers or sellers who want to make a quick deal and are consequently willing to forego safety measures. The Internet and advances in computer technology have made forgery of documents and advertising of fake properties much easier. “Forgery of documents showing someone is the owner of a property but really is not is one major problem,” Paul Barbagelata, owner of Barbagelata Real Estate in San Francisco told . “It’s been reinvented with technology as the duplicating of notary stamps and grant deeds is much easier with the use of the Internet.” As reported by Morgan Brennan from , one of the most common types of real estate fraud is rental scams, in which a scam-artist will copy details and photos from a real listing, then re-post on another site while posing as the agent responsible for the property. The crook will then ask for money up front from interested parties — as a security deposit or a fee for their “services” — or request that funds be transferred to a third party (who is part of the scam) as proof of available funds to make the purchase. The unwitting buyer is unlikely to see a dime of this money again. By offering a 100 percent incorruptible resource, whereby the sender and recipient of funds was logged, and where “digital ownership certificates” for properties are saved, the blockchain would effectively make forged ownership documents and false listings a thing of the past. The unique “digital ownership certificates” would be almost impossible to replicate, and would be directly linked to one property in the system, making selling or advertising properties you don’t own almost impossible. A very small minority of people buy houses outright, and proving suitability for a mortgage or loan has to date been a nail-biting, slow process that is often lengthened due to red tape and administrative issues. The Internet is awash with tips about but blockchain might have the answer. Using the blockchain, people could create a digital ID for a real estate asset, as well as for themselves as the buyer or seller. In this way, the mortgage process and transfer of ownership would be seamless, and much faster than it is today. For the buyer, their credit history and income would be instantly verifiable as well, avoiding time-consuming trips to banks, lawyers and estate agents. Homeowners would be able to prove ownership of their property backed up with an easily digestible record of their time there. Houses could effectively be given their own digital identities, which would include the chain of ownership, a documented list of repairs and refurbishments and projected costs associated with owning and running the home. The transformation is not going to happen overnight. Blockchain technology is still in its infancy, and it will take the examples of a few innovative and forward-thinking real estate firms to lead the way and convince the masses that blockchain is the correct path to take. But in the future, this new failsafe technology could make buying or selling a house, applying for a mortgage or taking out a property loan a streamlined, safe and transparent process, allowing people to concentrate on the most important factor: creating a new home for themselves and their families.
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‘Appocalypse,’ Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love AI
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Shaunak Khire
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The force has been strong for artificial intelligence over the last few weeks, what with Slack announcing a fund for bots, Elon Musk announcing OpenAI and, of course, the release of Star Wars. This has given all of us new hope — and even more reason to talk about AI and bots controlling every aspect of our lives. Say you are the CEO of Pied Piper, who made millions last year by releasing an on-demand app for cat grooming. The only problem is that you placed uncontrolled agents throughout your company. One of those agents in Investor Relations rebelled, had a meeting with robo advisors from Wealthfront and decided you were no longer needed at the company. As a token of respect, the agent is not sending a drone to kill you, but you have been locked out of your August Smart Lock-enabled house. Access to your fridge and Tesla has also been disabled. You get the picture — more sci-fi stuff and less reality, but it is not that far off, either. All the above platforms exist today, and it is only a matter of time before the aforementioned scenario can go from being plausible to possible. In all seriousness, there is relentless debate around , specifically autonomous agents. Stephen Hawking while Bill Gates thinks we should at least be . Elon Musk has repeatedly voiced similar concerns. He also added OpenAI has several major partners, and a collective pool of $1 billion committed capital to create a “safe playground” for all things . There is good reason to be paranoid in the long run. However, it is important to understand the present scenario, and that ultimately will determine if will “kill” humanity or usher in a golden period where capitalism can exist in its healthiest form for the first time in human history. in itself could be anything — a piece of code, an algorithm that does a specific job and in the process learns how to do that job better (a process otherwise known as machine learning [ML]). Combined, + ML, in its simplest form, is a tracking code that automatically tells an ad server to show a banner ad based on your browsing behavior. In it’s most complex shape, it is a robot that can interpret human commands and execute those commands, all the while becoming smarter and, in the process, more autonomous. Crudely put, however, there are two branches of soft and hard . Soft startups have mushroomed to at least a few hundred, if not more. They combine a nifty mix of conversational interfaces (e.g., messaging), NLP (the branch that identifies natural language) and APIs. Once you mix these ingredients, the output is an automated workflow for one or more tasks. In this particular scenario, there is little, if any machine/deep learning (because NLP comes in the form of third-party APIs, as well) taking place. However, this approach does have a practical use case in our day-to-day lives. Bots are a good example of this, as they are inherently linear in nature with X input giving a user Y output each time. Hard on the other hand, is, for lack of a better word, really hard. The only known successful exit has been that of DeepMind, which was bought by Google and built an atop a convolution neural network that plays games on its own. DeepMind’s architecture uses a reinforcement learning approach, meaning that its agent learns from experience with the environment (in this case, pixels) to generate an optimal action. Neural networks themselves can, of course, be of various types (convolution, recurring) and have supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning approaches. IBM’s Watson, for example, uses supervised learning. Hard is revolutionary, but takes time to become practical, and soft is practical, but not a game changer. The best approach probably lies somewhere in between. The rise of will definitively signal the end of the app era. There is still time, but certainly less than a decade. In the next few years, expect radical changes to the core OS. OS architecture tends to change every decade or so. In 1991, Windows 3.0 was all the rage (it truly was!), but by 2001, XP made 3.0 seem like a toddler. NT and Windows consumer OS lines were fully integrated in XP with a common kernel — and that leap was enormous. We have not seen that happen in the mobile world — yet. Android and iOS versions that were launched years ago are largely the same ones we use today, save for natural performance improvements and cosmetic changes. The next turning point, therefore, will involve some combination of conversational interfaces, soft and hard and VR (virtual reality). We are at the beginning of this change with Cortana, Now and a bunch of other AIs. A combination of these three will make a majority of today’s apps redundant. Apps, like software, will not die, but just as the Internet marked a paradigm shift for desktop computing (in the way services and content was delivered), these three will do the same for mobile computing. There are plenty of opportunities for startups, especially those that pair conversational interfaces and a soft/hard with a focus in sectors where there are plenty of repetitive tasks that an can do on its own (which otherwise would have taken significant chunks of human time), or in sectors where high cost barriers are broken down. The most prominent categories ripe for disruption are PAs, professional services, financial services, healthcare and supply chains. The use case for each is fairly straightforward. In case of PAs for example, ’s Amy allows automated scheduling between two people via email by using NLP. The more conversations she gets to process, the smarter she gets — both for the individual user (getting to know his or her time choices better) and for all users (in conversing when trying to find a common time slot). The final execution piece is the action — in this case, adding a calendar entry, something that is achieved via APIs. In the case of financial services, platforms and robo advisors like Wealthfront are utilizing algorithms that automatically make investments based on risk profiles of investors. Algorithms in the form of of the market. By bringing them to the average investors in the form of robo advisors, these platforms are not only eating into otherwise hefty fees charged by hedge funds and asset managers, but also are doing a better job than them to secure better yields for investors. the assets under management held by such platforms are expected to swell to $1 trillion over the next several years. Hard platforms like Watson, which have supervised learning methods on their neural networks, are . Stateside, Watson is ingesting a patient’s medical history and pairing it with knowledge from journals, textbooks and past research to prescribe personalized treatments for cancer. Using neural networks and for image recognition to diagnose primary diseases will bring extremely affordable healthcare to hundreds of millions of users in the world over the next five years. In professional services, platforms like Watson provide a foundational layer on which customized solutions can be built. Still in stealth, autonomous helps users research data, as well as do lead generation and small design tasks automatically, saving small chunks of time in each use case across multiple industries. On the consumer side, Viv (a startup whose founders also co-founded Siri) enables voice and text requests, giving a single holistic response to a user query by combining multiple data points. In a demo, Viv was able to gather a location and the kind of lunch that two people were having, then suggest wine for that lunch as written on a popular blog and, finally, provide a checkout screen to pick it up from the closest store. This response was presented to the user by combining data from different sources. For years, we have been brainwashed to assume that advertising and SaaS are the only possible billing/monetization models. With , especially autonomous , founders have the ability to change those models dramatically. Whereas previous software only aided the end user, autonomous actually does the work while becoming smarter. The delta between time invested in working and the output derived when using autonomous is far less than traditional software. This has potential for monetization to be based on a “co-working” model based on the number of hours an autonomous agent has saved every month. In other words, a yield-based approach to billing as opposed to a more linear you-buy-Y-for-$X approach. Every year, Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins and a well-known startup personality, releases a “State of the Internet” report. It is a bit like the September issue of Vogue for the startup world. Over the last four-five years, one metric has remained constant in the report: the disparity between advertising spend on digital mediums, especially mobile vis-à-vis TV. Despite mobile having more eyeballs and time spent, ad spends on mobile are anywhere between $25-$40 billion less than on TV. Ironically, the more users you have, the more precipitous fall in CPMs and CPCs. TV ads are inherently more exclusive, as they capture the attention of a wide demographic for X seconds, hoping that the spots lead to some kind of user engagement in the future. To close the gap between mobile time spent and ad spends, startups need to look toward new models that engage the user (e.g., installs) in a time-based approach (e.g., five-second gif ads for installs). In another post, the uber-knowledgeable . Since 2010, productivity increases have crawled to just 0.65 percent on an annualized basis, and this is despite the bevy of automation tools for just about every job in most industry sectors. She further points out, correctly, a similar occurrence back in the 1980s — also a period of massive change at our workplaces. Despite the lack of any co-relation between the two reports, the link in both instances is that of time. Fundamentally, technology was supposed to increase our productivity in a way where we saved time and utilized it to do other things. This has not happened. In fact, we now work more than we did in the 1960s. A primary reason for that is because, until now, technology has been an enabler, not a replacer. With that paradigm changes entirely. This is, of course, where the debate around and jobs comes in — but it is also something more intrinsic in nature. Consider the which predict five million job losses over the next decade. One job loss does not affect that individual alone, it affects the demand curve of at least 15 million consumers (assuming a family of three), which in turn reduces producer output, causing even more job losses. On the other hand, stagnant wages driven by productivity gains eat into consumer wallets, forcing spending cuts for non-essential products and services. Both cases force companies to lower wages or lay off workers in even greater numbers. Out-of-work and lower-income consumers won’t have necessary spending abilities beyond their basic needs, which in turn will shrink consumer demand for discretionary goods. Lack of sustained demand is therefore the single most challenging scenario for unicorns and corporations alike. If you extrapolate the above paradigm to its final conclusion, there will be a capitulation of demand pushing the global economy into a vicious deflationary spiral fuelled by and productivity gains. There is hope, however, and in all likelihood this is something that will happen — we need to eventually move away from the current uber-capitalist economy to a more balanced form of capitalism, whereby a basic income is provided to all individuals. This has already started in countries like Finland. More recently, wages have started to increase through regulations in the U.S., U.K., Japan and elsewhere. While many would view this as counterproductive for small businesses (which it is), there needs to be a tiered approach for raising minimum wages globally, with the inclusion of comprehensive tax reform. The tax reform should favor businesses making actual business investments (e.g., employees, infrastructure, R&D, etc.) versus those that don’t or those that make financial investments (e.g., money market instruments). With Hillary Clinton debating the use of tax credits for offshore cash holdings, this will very likely be an election issue. As a matter of fact, regulation is probably a decade or so away. Just because an platform can do a human job doesn’t mean you literally fire said human. Through , corporations, governments and people will have a shot at making balanced and conscious capitalism a reality for the first time in centuries. has the potential to increase worldwide productivity, vastly reduce corruption and poverty and advance medical research. The reason to fear is the very reason to embrace it. The bottom line for startups, however, is that in the next five years, apps are going to evolve from static interfaces to conversational interfaces augmented by . A key driver of this evolution will be app fatigue and the glut of apps that are focused on “selling” features instead of value. Startups that are focused on “healing” are also likely to benefit enormously, given the inherent disconnect that technology has caused to humans both internally and externally. Experiences (e.g., socially conscious tourism), arts (e.g., digital art creations, music), healing platforms (e.g., Whisper) and alternative lifestyle platforms (e.g., Weedmaps) are just some of the examples. We should be thankful for the impending a , because it is highly unlikely that the age of will destroy humanity. Contrary to that, if all stakeholders come together (and they will), we will have ushered in not just a fourth industrial age with equal opportunity, but also a period of modern renaissance, provided we our .
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A Look Inside How ESPN Gets Ready For Super Bowl 50
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Lucas Matney
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Before it’s made apparent by my remarks, I don’t know jack shit about football. I can watch a game with a Bud Light in hand and unassumingly make my way through a plate of snacks and know when the right time to yell at the ref or give a high five is, but eh it’s not my thing. What I was really interested in when I rolled into ESPN’s Marina Green mobile studio in San Francisco was what actually went into putting on a production like this that would undoubtedly be the go-to analysis for millions of fans. I wondered what went into choosing the location and, in a city like San Francisco, what sort of community interactions took place to get the studio invasion okayed. I also was curious how many people it really took to get the production up-and-running. When I grabbed my security credentials and walked into the open-air studio on the edge of the San Francisco bay, it was clear that this was a huuuge production. Famed football players moseyed through the sets as dozens of fans outside of the barrier gaped at athletes I didn’t recognize. Someone jovially shouted “Hey, who is that guy?” as the all-to-knowing crowd guffawed because this celebrity was really THAT famous. Meanwhile I stood there, phone in hand sending snapchats of the stars (?) to my football-loving buddies who replied with jealous hatred. Beyond the select few “talent” and their interview subjects who were present, there were dozens and dozens and dozens of production crew members. Most of these people were buzzing from set to set while others took their union-required breaks to check out some of the takes being prepped for the more theatrical commercial bumpers. The exciting thing about the pop-up studio is that at any given moment there was something going on that was streaming live to living rooms across the country and everyone there had a piece in how that process took place. Equipment was being misplaced, takes were stretching on for hours and someone’s whereabouts was always being inquired about. But the crazy thing is that even with the uncertainties caused by covering this massive event on foreign turf, the staff rolled through beaming its coverage and made it apparent what a well-oiled machine this production was.
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Kenzen Wins For Best Startup In The Future Athlete Category At The NFL’s 1st And Future
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Sarah Buhr
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Twelve startups campaigned for their chance to win the prize at 1st and Future, the startup pitch hosted jointly by the NFL, Stanford and TechCrunch, but only one could take home the prize in each category. Kenzen, the startup billing itself as a “personal health lab,” was among the chosen few today, winning in the category of Future Athlete. competed against some formidable opponents, including machine learning platform , 3D VR training and playbook determination technology , and , a smart compression suit that tracks full body movement in 3D. Kenzen delivers real-time health insights using patented biosensors, sweat analysis and predictive analytics with the aim of preempting dehydration, cramping, and injuries. The startup offers an “echo smart patch,” which is a wearable biosensor that measures vital signs, fluids and nutrients, motion and environment. Kenzen’s app accompanies the patch and shows hydration and ion levels to the user. It will also send alerts to players whenever they fall into a critical zone such as low hydration levels while on the field, which can help avoid injury and aid recovery. Kenzen’s team has a background in wearable technology and biotech and has mostly floated itself on research grants for the past two years. It has also so far filed for 11 patents for its proprietary technology and is partnering with the 49ers and FC Dallas. One of the judges, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, raised a concern about properly hydrated high school students and suggested the technology could be applied to a wider audience. Kenzen affirmed the initial go-to-market strategy would focus on the pro and elite athletes, but could trickle down to other athletes and the consumer market, as well as seniors and children, according to the startup. The plan is to expand beyond the patch to different form factors. Watch the video above to see the onstage presentation.
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HYP3R’s Location-Based Engagement CRM Wins The “Future Stadium” Category At 1st and Future
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Greg Kumparak
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We’ve reached the end of 1st And Future — a sports-centric startup competition thrown as a joint effort between the NFL, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and TechCrunch. The final of three categories in the competition today was “The Future Stadium”, focusing on technology that would advance the stadium experience of tomorrow. And the winner is… ! HYP3R is a location-based engagement platform. Sports games and events are massive sources of social media updates — but more often than not, these updates go out without hashtags or other identifying marks. HYP3R’s dashboard helps the venue and sponsors identify these posts, allowing them to engage in unique ways (such as sending a “Welcome to the arena!” message the first time it identifies a visitor) Perhaps more interestingly, HYP3R provides a CRM for those it has identified as having posted from a venue — helping them to identify repeat visitors, and notable social media influencers. The judges in this category were Vice Chair of GE Beth Comstock, Benchmark Capital General Partner Bill Gurley, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam ( ), and San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York. As for the competition, Instant purchases via text. Sellers (such as stadiums) can text potential customers with something like “We found two tickets to tonight’s game! Want them? Reply BUY TICKETS and the quantity you want”, and customers can reply to complete the purchase. Social mapping at events. Fans can pin different points of interest — tail gate parties, food spots with short lines, or their current location — onto a map of the arena and the surrounding area for other fans and friends. Lets eventgoers view/purchase merchandise before or during the event from their mobile phone, allowing them to skip the long lines and have the purchase ready to go.
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How To Start Fresh And Stay Safe With A New Device
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Gary Davis
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The New Year signals the kickoff of the great gadget migration, when our once-beloved devices become hand-me-downs. Reusing perfectly good electronics is always better than trashing them, but it is important to take a few sensible, yet crucial precautions passing on that smartphone, tablet or PC. Likewise, if you are the lucky recipient of someone else’s generous donation, there are a couple of steps to take before you truly make it your own. At one point or another, we’ve all lost or deleted an important file, photo or other sensitive information. To keep that from happening to you, before you clear out a device to pass it along, make sure your music, movies, photos, contacts, notes, texts and all other digital detritus are copied and safe. You can do this by conducting a full backup. Many of us have backups for much of our data performed automatically via cloud-based services for our smartphones and tablets — Android, iOS and Windows devices all offer free solutions. It is also important to know what data is backed up, where it is saved, how to recover it and any passwords used to keep prying eyes out. If you have ever configured your device using a computer, hooking it up directly via a cable, then that’s an easy way to do it, as well. For desktops or laptops, you will want to make sure you have a full copy of all your data when transferring anything over to a new device. For Apple devices, you can use a USB hard drive and the included Time Machine software to copy your old data to an external hard drive and to transfer it to a new device. Similarly, Windows PCs have the built-in ability to copy your entire hard drive. There also are several cloud services available to keep your PC and Mac data backed up. While it would seem logical that wiping a hard drive would essentially make it a new gadget, there are a fair number of programs and services lurking deep on your device that may cause hiccups later. Before you pass on a device, make sure you have logged out of every service you use and de-authorize that device to be associated with each account. This includes messaging accounts like Skype and iMessage; storage and backup programs like Dropbox; media and streaming services like iTunes; games, productivity software and especially security software. There are a number of cases where such applications persist on an old device and cause trouble down the line. For instance, if iMessage has continued sending to old devices or applications it could lock you out on your new device because they are copy controlled. There is a misconception among many of us that simply deleting all the folders and files off your desktop does something meaningful. It turns out that deleting user accounts doesn’t clean out your data from your device, and so before giving away a device — or before you load up a hand-me-down device with your data — you need to do a full cleanup of the device. Once backed up, here are some good sources to help clean your devices, prior to gifting them: When you receive a used device, first be thankful for the generous gift — what a score! However, it could potentially be completely riddled with malware, which requires you to take steps to sterilize it. That’s not a judgement of the gift giver, it’s just they may have no idea what’s lurking on their hard drive. And neither do you. For smartphones and tablets, that means taking the steps above and fully wiping a device so that it’s factory fresh. For a laptop or desktop, things are modestly more complicated. The smartest possible course of action is to remove the hard drive and install a new one, as it’s the only way to know with complete confidence that your device will be malware-free. Another recommendation is to reinstall everything prior to your next upgrade. Note that you’ll need to own or purchase a complete install copy of your operating system of choice, along with copies of any software you use. It may be worth consulting a local tech support service to see if they can do everything for an affordable price. If that’s not possible, at the very least, take the steps above to securely wipe a laptop before loading it with all your data. Our gadgets have become an essential part of our daily lives, holding a treasure trove of valuable information that can fall vulnerable if not properly secured. This season, be sure that along with your gadgets, the only thing you gift or get is good cheer.
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Gillmor Gang: Passion Plate
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, February 5, 2016. The Gang’s ears are burning as expletives fly around our heads in augmented reality. Plus, the latest G3 (below) with Rebecca Woodcock, Francine Hardaway, Mary Hodder, and Tina Chase Gillmor. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor [ustream id=82644947 hwaccel=1 version=3 width=480 height=302]
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LiveLike’s VR Spectator App Wins The 1st And Future Bringing Home The Game Category
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Nitish Kulkarni
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Virtual reality, body cameras, and the Internet Of Things are poised to change the way we watch sports. Today we saw how at TechCrunch’s startup competition held at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The home viewing category winner, , lets you watch games in virtual reality from multiple angles. The contest featured twelve finalists competing in three different categories: The Future Stadium, Bringing Home The Game, and Tomorrow’s Athlete. Each company got five minutes to pitch to our panel of judges like all-star investor Mary Meeker and Condoleezza Rice. Winners walked away with $50,000 in cash plus meetings with NFL execs and tickets to the Super Bowl tomorrow. , starting at about the one hour mark. The competitors in Bringing Home The Game made traditional television viewing look boring. is an athlete body camera system that allows for the live broadcast of a player’s point of the view during the game. The camera and transmitter are safely woven into the player’s uniform and are designed not to impede performance. The camera sends the footage to an editing bay at the stadium where it can be integrated into the broadcast. First V1sion has a pilot planned with the Dallas Cowboys, plus hockey, handball, and track teams. Plus, it has soccer star Andres Iniesta and basketball player Serge Ibaka as stakeholders. F1rst Vision’s athlete body camera is a social game-watching dashboard where fans can stream the game, interact with each other, buy merchandise, participate in polls, share snippets and more. Broadcasters can overlay sponsorship graphics and calls to action, highlight top social media posts, and gather data about viewers. Maestro takes a software-as-a-service subscription fee plus a cut of advertising and merch sales in exchange for providing the dashboard. Maestro already works with esports leagues, musicians like Deadmau5, music festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival, and Twitch. Maestro’s social dashboard for watching sports lets teams measure, visualize, and encourage audible cheering by their fans both in the stadium and at home. The volume of fan cheering is recorded by both smartphone apps and a small Internet-connected device that can attach to merchandise. Fanmode gives fans around the world a sense of the stadium, and pushes them to rally friends to watch. Fanmode’s app and connected device But the winner, LiveLike, wowed the judges by showing what sports watching will look like in the future thanks to virtual reality, rather than augmenting the past television LiveLike lets fans sit in a VR box suite and watch the game from multiple viewing angles like behind the goal or the 50-yard line. They can view several angles at once, or dive in to feel like they’re actually sitting on the edge of the field or court. Friends can watch together side by side so they don’t feel lonely in their VR headset. LiveLike’s co-founder watches in VR from the corner of a soccer field LiveLike already has partnerships with several teams and tournaments such as the French Open tennis, and is set to broadcast VR streams of dozens of upcoming events. Thanks to low-cost VR headsets like Google Cardboard and the Samsung Gear VR, virtual reality has seen an explosion in distribution. LiveLike viewers won’t need an expensive wired headset like the Oculus Rift to watch sports. They’ll just strap their phone into a headset, choose their angle, and they’ll feel like they’re at the game.
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Twitter May Introduce An Algorithmic Timeline And People Are Losing Their Minds
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Matthew Lynley
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Remember Twitter? Or, at least, that would seem to be the sentiment from parts of Twitter that are now shocked that the company is considering switching to an algorithmic timeline, . Everyone panic! This changes everything! Twitter will never be the same. . There’s even a top trending hashtag for it. CEO Jack Dorsey said in a Tweetstorm that the company did not plan to re-order timelines . In his Tweetstorm he emphasized that Twitter is still focused on real-time communication. His Tweetstorm follows: Hello Twitter! Regarding : I want you all to know we're always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week. — jack (@jack) Twitter is live. Twitter is real-time. Twitter is about who & what you follow. And Twitter is here to stay! By becoming more Twitter-y. — jack (@jack) Look at "while you were away" at the top of your TL. Tweets you missed from people you follow. Pull to refresh to go back to real-time. — jack (@jack) I *love* real-time. We love the live stream. It's us. And we're going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live! — jack (@jack) Twitter can help make connections in real-time based on dynamic interests and topics, rather than a static social/friend graph. We get it. — jack (@jack) Thank you all for your passion and trust. We will continue to work to earn it, and we will continue to listen, and talk! — jack (@jack) But before jumping to any conclusions, there are a few key elements to this. First, and potentially most importantly, is this is something that we . Will Twitter force this onto users or not? That’s not specified in the report, and then there’s this, from one of Twitter’s head comms people (which is also great): BREAKING: Tech Company may launch something, may or may not do certain things, but we don't really know anything for sure. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ — Jim Prosser 🖖 (@jimprosser) Second, Twitter already has elements of algorithmic suggestions in its feed in the form of While You Were Away. These are generally surfaced when you haven’t logged in to Twitter for a while, and honestly, they’re great. It’s a good way to get a snapshot of what people are talking about, whether that’s newsy elements or silly tweets from other people that you’re following. This is also something Twitter has been grappling with for , and it’s This is certainly an element that Twitter has been trying to reconcile — whether or not to keep its reverse-chronological chaotic firehose or tone it down for something that’s more palatable. Twitter, realistically, has been mucking around with the timeline for some time now. Beyond While You Were Away, the company changed the “fave” button into a “like” button, and there are quoted tweets that can be embedded within other tweets in favor of a pure retweet. Then there’s the . All this seems designed to help Twitter users get a better handle on the service earlier on, meaning they’ll find better use cases and want to come back and log in more often. Finally, this is probably something users — especially new users — want and need. Twitter by itself is a confusing service, especially when getting started. It’s great for getting real-time updates to news events, but it’s hard to sort out the most important tweets from the noise whenever a huge event (like the upcoming Super Bowl) goes down. The result of such a difficult service to grapple, inevitably, is fewer users sign up and log in. [graphiq id=”e5pnwMErRxH” title=”Twitter MAU Over Time” width=”600″ height=”565″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/e5pnwMErRxH” link=”//www.graphiq.com/wlp/e5pnwMErRxH” link_text=”Twitter MAU Over Time | SoftwareInsider”] Twitter is in desperate need of a shift in their product strategy if they’re going to re-ignite user growth. We’ve hammered this point away and . If this experiment was as successful as the report indicates that the company may roll it out to a larger swath of its users, it seems like a pretty clear signal that people want to use something like this. The company needs that logged-in user base to continue growing, because it can do a better job of targeting ads against them based on the interests they follow. Sure, there are a huge number of logged-out users that use the service, but it’s tough building effective advertising and monetization tools for users that have given very few signals to Twitter. For better or worse, all this has fallen on the shoulders of CEO Jack Dorsey, who is also running Square. Under Dorsey, Twitter shares have cratered as the company has struggled to ignite new user growth. That has a lot of damaging effects on a company, with perhaps the biggest one crushing employee morale — whose value at the company is often tied to a share price. Twitter’s history of experimentation even extends to its management team. The company recently saw the departure of (another) top product lead, . This isn’t the first time there’s been a shakeup at the top, and the company even saw its chief operating officer Ali Rowghani leave the company amid stalling user growth. And then, of course, there’s the departure of former CEO Dick Costolo. For Dorsey, it seems like now is the time to try something new — even if it means ripping parts of the guts out of a service in order to give it a go. And of course, there’s always Tweetdeck.
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How Mobile Technology Will Increase Stadium Security
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David Goldberg
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In the months and years following September 11, one of the most noticeable changes was the experience of going through an airport — longer lines, no liquids, taking off your shoes. What used to feel out of the ordinary is now expected. After the tragedies in Paris targeting live entertainment venues, the Stade de France and Bataclan concert hall, the experience of attending a live event in the U.S. changed. The NFL increased police presence and the NBA and NHL both had new guards posted at the entrance to games. The Atlanta Falcons even to fans saying, “You may notice changes as you arrive or depart from the game. The enhanced security measures are not the result of any targeted threats; rather, they are prudent measures under the circumstances and were made in coordination with NFL security recommendations.” And recently, Live Nation detailing new security requirements for all their concerts and events. The new rules said that all venues must install camera systems with a command center to monitor all activity, and they limited what types of bags fans are allowed to bring in an arena. Unfortunately, increased on-site security comes at a high cost to teams and the professional leagues; and the added lines and wait time can hurt the fan experience. Unlike the travel industry, where consumers have to endure the airport experience in order to travel by air, fans could easily choose to just stay home. The live event industry must then rethink its approach to security. The airport solution won’t work well for venues, so what is the answer? Like many issues these days, an answer seems to be mobile technology. Stadiums are beginning to care more about is attending an event, and not just a ticket is sold. The same way you can’t buy or sell a plane ticket in the airport parking lot, it is going to become increasingly difficult to buy event tickets anonymously. When attendees are no longer anonymous, names could quickly be referenced against security lists, as they are when consumers buy plane tickets and travel through airports. The concept of a ticket as a freely transferable document is changing, and to eliminate the anonymity of the event goer, teams are turning to mobile tickets, tied to a specific ID. When looking at personal identifiers, mobile devices in particular make a lot of sense, because they are the most common personal devices we own, and teams can use the native mobile capabilities to enhance the fan experience. For example, a team could push out companion content, such as live replays or links to social channels, and consumers could benefit by connecting their ticket to a mobile wallet, streamlining the process of buying food or merchandise. In fact, mobile presents so many opportunities in the world of live events that last season, nearly half of NFL teams began accepting mobile tickets for admission. For select Major League Baseball teams, season tickets were made available through the MLB Ballpark app, which allows ticket holders to link their accounts to the app and receive all tickets digitally. These digital tickets can be turned in at the gate, sent via text message to other people and taken back electronically if those friends change their mind and can’t go. As the industry shifts toward mobile, teams are also able to use this new ticketing paradigm to solve specific issues they may not have been able to tackle otherwise. As teams worry about rowdy fans, for example, the New York Jets responded by offering paperless, “loaded” tickets, which are essentially wallet-sized smart cards tied to the ticket holders, and fans who show up regularly and behave properly can reap high-end rewards, such as Super Bowl tickets or a trip to a road game on the team plane, in addition to earning credits toward food and merchandise. Another issue is fraud. To counter the proliferation of printed PDFs that are sold to consumers, but are not actually real tickets, the Dallas Cowboys responded by eliminating all PDF tickets. Fans can use mobile or the hard ticket mailed to them by the team, but that’s it — the days of being able to print a PDF are quickly fading. While eliminating fraud, rewarding good behavior and simplifying the process of buying food and drinks are great, security still should prove to be the ultimate benefit. Mobile has the potential to make events safer and provide a solution that both teams and consumers will like more than the standard tactic of “more security guards.” Mobile ticketing is coming, and in many cases is already here. We all know that. But unlike the experience of entering an airport, the increased focus on security may actually improve the live event experience, providing convenience as well as protection against fraud, scalpers and unreliable brokers.
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Repairing Your iPhone Home Button From An Unofficial Repair Shop Can Brick Your Phone
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Romain Dillet
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Going to an unauthorized Apple technician to repair your home button can cost you a lot of money. On Friday, The Guardian that thousands of iPhone users encountered a mysterious “Error 53” error due to a new security feature to protect your data. This error renders your iPhone useless as it bricks it. If you break your home button and you need to replace it, you’ll want to go to an official Apple Store or an authorized repair shop to avoid the error 53. If a third-party repair shop replaces your home button and you’re running iOS 9, Apple automatically bricks your phone. Once your iPhone is bricked, there’s no way to unbrick it. I know what you’re thinking: Apple is an evil company and wants to capture all the repairing revenue. Well, not really. There’s a reason why Apple wants you to pay to replace your home button, and it’s security. When Apple its Touch ID sensor for the iPhone 5s, the company needed to reassure its customers. Your fingerprints don’t get uploaded to Apple’s servers. They’re not even stored on your iPhone’s regular storage space. Similarly, you won’t find them in your iCloud or iTunes backup. Instead, your fingerprints are stored on . The secure enclave is a coprocessor that utilizes a secure boot process to make sure that it’s uncompromized. It has a secret unique ID not accessible by the rest of the phone or Apple — it’s like a private key. The phone generates ephemeral keys (think public keys) to talk with the secure ecnlave. They only work with the unique ID to encrypt and decrypt the data on the coprocessor. And finally, the Touch ID sensor is paired with the secure enclave for increased security — otherwise everything I just described would be useless. A hacker would be able to replace your home button with a faulty Touch ID sensor to access everything that is stored on the secure enclave, including your Apple Pay details. With iOS 9, Apple checks that the Touch ID sensor and secure enclave are still intact. If iOS 9 can’t verify the Touch ID sensor, Apple blocks your iPhone with an error 53. That’s why unauthorized repair shops can’t fix the home button. Comparatively, Apple stores and authorized repair shops pair the new home button with the secure enclave so that you can keep using Touch ID after a home button replacement. And this is where Apple has made some mistakes. The company treats security very seriously but should also take advantage of its own design. The secure enclave works independently from the main processor. If iOS 9 can’t verify the authenticity of the Touch ID sensor, the OS should brick the secure enclave, or disable all Touch ID-related features, such as Apple Pay. The company shouldn’t prevent you from accessing your precious photos, contacts and apps. Today’s implementation of the error 53 is a bad one, and I hope that Apple is going to fix it in the next iOS release. And even more important, Apple should have communicated about this “Error 53” when releasing iOS 9.0 — the is not enough. Customers deserve to know what’s happening and why Apple is preventing them from accessing their phones. Otherwise, people will think that Apple is greedy and wants to kill third-party repair shops, which is not true. According to The Guardian, the issue affects the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. It’s likely that people using an iPhone 5s, iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus are also affected as these devices also have a Touch ID sensor. iPad users could also face the same issue if their devices have a Touch ID sensor. Apple sent TechCrunch the following statement: We take customer security very seriously and Error 53 is the result of security checks designed to protect our customers. iOS checks that the Touch ID sensor in your iPhone or iPad correctly matches your device’s other components. If iOS finds a mismatch, the check fails and Touch ID, including for Apple Pay use, is disabled. This security measure is necessary to protect your device and prevent a fraudulent Touch ID sensor from being used. If a customer encounters Error 53, we encourage them to contact Apple Support.
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Watch 12 Startups Pitch The NFL At 1st And Future Here
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Greg Kumparak
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Tomorrow, the Broncos and Panthers will battle it out for the right to call themselves the champions of Super Bowl 50. Today, just miles away from the stadium, twelve startups are battling it out in front of a room full of NFL executives, team owners, and investors. Hosted in a partnership with the NFL and Stanford, is a startup competition modeled after the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield. At the end of the day, three startups will walk away with $50,000 each (and tickets to the Super Bowl for good measure) from the NFL Strategic Investment fund, having conquered the competition in one of three categories: The competition begins today at 8:30 a.m Pacific, and is scheduled to run until 11:30 a.m.
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How To Fix Tech’s H-1B Problem
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Jon Evans
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I’m a Canadian who has spent a sizable fraction of his adult life working in the USA, so immigration, especially as it relates to the tech industry, is a pretty personal subject. I was at a alumnus event in San Francisco this week (it turns out there are almost 2,000 of us in the Bay Area) and, inevitably, the arc of every conversation bent towards immigration, and how Kafkaesque it can be, even for us . So much worse, then, for those unfortunates who have to rely on the . Even we lucky TN-1 types are tethered to our employer, … say, to join, or found, new startups. I happen to be very happy with , but how many startups go unfounded, how many careers stagnate, because those same talented people who flock to the Valley–and the tech industry writ large–find themselves forced to languish in the the same jobs that brought them, because of the accident of their faraway births? Even those people have to count themselves lucky — because demand for the 65,000 H-1Bs available annually so outstrips supply that, last year, the window to file for them opened on April 1st … and slammed shut only . So how were the lucky winners selected? By the quality of the employers? By the quality of the individuals? Of course not. By . I kid you not. Maybe this would be reasonable if all H-1B jobs were roughly equivalent. The problem is, , they’re anything but. Let’s compare, say, and with those well-known body shops and . Click on the links in the previous sentence to see their H-1B stats for last year. See anything that jumps out at you? That’s right. and brought in 900 and 2,800 H-1B employees, respectively, with salaries of $140,000 and $127,000. ? 3,300 at $72,000. ? A whopping 16,435 for a (relatively) paltry $70,000 – literally what Facebook paid. I personally think Congress (and Canada’s Parliament, and the UK’s Parliament, etc etc etc) should wave their collective legal wands and allow anyone with an accredited STEM degree to come build their future in the land of their choice, and change jobs , rather than giving their corporate masters absolute power over their future(s). But in the absence of that panacea, if you’re going to have a limit on who can come, shouldn’t the powers that be at least to select the people? As chosen by the free market they purport to admire? And/or, if you wanted to especially support startups, one could easily inversely weight salaries by the size of the employers in question. This is . (It was nice to see the taking notice of it .) It would be a trivial regulatory change. But it would be enormously beneficial for companies who are actually trying to do great things; it would obviously be better for the employees in question; and it would be more politically palatable, which in turn would be better for the “freedom of motion of educated labor” long game. Everybody wins. So why aren’t we doing it?
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Tim Cook: A Backdoor Into The iPhone Would Be The ‘Software Equivalent Of Cancer’
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Jay Donovan
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Apple CEO Tim Cook has mounted the fiercest argument explaining why Apple is opposed to used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook.
Cook has already explained Apple’s stance in detail on two occasions (in and which was made public), and numerous tech figures have added their support. However, in the wake of that the ultimate goal is a backdoor, that the majority of Americans believe Apple should follow the order. Despite results like this, Cook continues to make the company’s stance on the matter crystal clear. , Cook described his fear that enabling backdoor access to the iPhone — which he described as “the software equivalent of cancer” — would set a dangerous precedent for the future that risks both the privacy and “public safety” of hundreds of millions of Apple customers worldwide. “We have no sympathy for terrorists,” Cook said. “In my view they left their rights when they decided to do awful things… We’re not protecting their privacy, we’re protecting the rights… and public safety of everyone else. “[Creating software to access data locked on the iPhone] exposes everyone else. Developing that software, it’s so powerful it has the capability to unlock other iPhones. That is the issue.” Cook said he has received thousands of emails in support of Apple’s stance, with the “largest single category” of voices coming from American service men and women who “fight for our freedom.” That, Cook said, is telling of the potential to create a key that could be used to violate public safety by potentially exposing the intimate and private information that people keep on their phone — such as bank details, relationships and the location of children. Public figures including and have come forward to argue that national security and terrorism are the right grounds for Apple to agree to open the iPhone in question, but Cook stressed that it is the future implications of such a move that terrify him and Apple. “[A] master key to turn 100 million locks, even if in the possession of a person you trust, could be stolen,” the Apple CEO explained. “You can imagine the target on that piece. I’m not saying [that] the government would abuse it, but there are lots of bad guys in the world. Millions of people have [already] had their personal information stolen by hackers.” Apple has previously said that it has provided the FBI with all the information in its possession, and Cook reiterated that, adding that the company is working as best it can to add to that pile — without opening the phone. Regarding additional data that might be contained on the iPhone, the Apple CEO pointed out that the FBI could go to telecom operators and others for information about calls made and messages sent across the cellular network. The data ball isn’t just in Apple’s court, so to speak. Cook also took time to voice his concern on the manner in which the FBI has gone about the issue, which included authorities changing the device’s passcode, thereby locking data on the device. Claiming that the first Apple heard of the order was via media reports, he pointed out this order could open the floor for other U.S. states to apply for similar ‘backdoors’ which would not only increase the risk of bad operators accessing such software, but would make the aforementioned data on individuals’ devices effectively available on order for courts and judges. Beyond that, he added, there’s no reason that similar requests couldn’t be made to other phone companies — a situation that he believes would be disastrous for the population. The debate is currently playing out in public and, while Cook acknowledged that there are positives to “having voices heard,” he lamented the current situation. He said he believes that any ruling on the matter should come from Congress where “the people of America [can] get a voice.” Cook is optimistic that the potential violations he outlined would be supported from Washington, but he intends to talk to President Obama about the situation and vowed to push the issue all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. “I’ve faced a lot of challenges [as Apple CEO] but never felt the government apparatus — this is right up there,” Cook reflected. “We are [the ones] advocating for civil liberties, it’s incredibly ironic.” Despite the challenges and public way in which this debate is being hashed out, Cook emphasized his company’s deep appreciation for the U.S. and reiterated that “I believe we are making the right choice” in this complicated situation. “Some things are hard and some things are right and some things are both. This is one of those things,” he added. Ultimately, Cook’s responses echoed with a call for a policy discussion about this very sensitive privacy subject rather than a knee jerk, pressured, in-the-public-spotlight conversation (like is happening now). And while Cook lamented that this is the state of the conversation, his irrepressible optimism declared that they will persevere on behalf of their customers. While there are myriad complexities enveloping this situation, there is no doubt that if Apple were forced to comply, it would sustain considerable damage to the equity of its brand. People would think twice about how they use their phone going forward and that could affect the value proposition of the iPhone as a tool and therefore Apple’s long-terms profits. However, Cook’s repeated focus (at least publicly) on framing the issue from their customer’s standpoint rather than from Apple’s, is a testament to the firm’s singular customer focus and might help explain to those who only see this issue in black and white terms why the smartphone maker is taking the approach that it is are taking. Apple is always, even now, thinking about its customers.
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Foxconn Pauses Its Proposed $6.2 Billion Acquisition Of Sharp
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Jon Russell
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Foxconn’s proposed acquisition of Sharp has hit a snag, just hours after Japan-based that it had agreed to the buyout, which is estimated at around $6.2 billion. that, despite Sharp’s confirmation, Foxconn has not signed an agreement and has put the deal on hold because it harbors concerns over Sharp’s financial future. The Journal cites sources who claim that Foxconn is evaluating a 100-point list in the hopes that it can revive the deal. “We already notified Sharp on the same day [before Sharp held its board meeting on Thursday] that our side had to clarify the contents,” the company told the Journal in a statement. “We have to postpone the signing before both sides can reach an agreement. We hope to clarify it quickly and to bring this deal to a successful conclusion.” The glitch is an embarrassment for Sharp, which had confirmed a deal — approved unanimously by its board — just hours earlier. The deal — if completed — would be the largest acquisition of a Japanese company from an overseas purchaser. Sharp disclosed that it actually reject a Japan-based bid from state-backed Innovation Network Corp, which had proposed splitting Sharp and its display business, and integrating the latter into Japan Display, an LCD joint venture between Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi. Sharp disclosed that Foxconn had agreed in invest in multiple areas of its business, including its OLED screen segment. Sharp said its plans to increase its production of OLED screens, which are increasingly replacing LEDs thanks to better performance, to 90 million 5.5-inch screens per year by 2019. That output volume is estimated to worth around 260 billion yen, or $2.3 billion. Sharp said it will also create products around the Internet of things, and in particular cloud-based services for its consumer products, and develop new camera modules for smartphones and cars. Sharp has been in various stages of financial trouble over the past few years, but the company still has a visible consumer electronics business — most notable in TVs — and it supplies a range of components for leading tech companies . The latter part is where Foxconn’s interest almost certainly lies, particularly since Sharp is a top producer of display panels, which happens to be one area where Foxconn (also known as Hon Hai Precision) outsources parts from third-parties. Potentially bringing its own parts to the table, should it acquire Sharp, could be beneficial to Foxconn on a number of levels. First, it’s cheaper to source your own parts than pay market rate to third parties who currently supply them. Also, the arrangement could favor Apple — Foxconn’s most important client — because Foxconn’s panels currently come from companies like Samsung and LG, which sell components and run consumer businesses that directly rival Apple’s smartphones and tablets. Thus using display panels from Foxconn-owned Sharp increases Foxconn’s (already significant) margins on each Apple device sold, and helps keep Apple’s money away from its competitors. Beyond that, Foxconn has also branched out into electronics under its own brand, including in its native Taiwan. Clearly there are synergies here with Sharp in the TV business, and potential other consumer segments like smartphones. A closed deal would end years of Foxconn flashing admiring glances at Sharp. Four years ago, it came close to securing , only for the deal to fall through, while Foxconn CEO in a Sharp subsidiary in 2012 in an effort to move potential collaborations forward.
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Indian Online Travel Company Ibibo Lands $250M From Naspers
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Catherine Shu
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, which claims to be India’s largest online travel group, has raised $250 million in new funding from majority stakeholder Naspers Group. In an announcement, Ibibo Group said the new funding will be spent on its hotels vertical and technology. The company recently . Hotel booking is an important area of focus for India’s online travel companies, including Ibibo Group competitors and , as they . Ibibo Group, which is also backed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent, operates hotel and flight booking platform , as well as bus ticketing sites and . Ibibo Group claims it processed 6.5 million transactions from October to December 2015, with 1.6 million hotel rooms booked during that period, a 400 percent year-over-year increase. Ibibo says traffic from mobile devices accounted for 71 percent of bookings in December 2015, up 42 percent from a year earlier. In a statement, Naspers Group chief executive officer Bob van Dijk said “The Indian e-commerce market, and the online travel segment in particular, offers exciting growth prospects for us as a group. With a talented, proven management team and exceptional technology, Ibibo is well positioned to benefit from an increasing number of people using online travel services going forward.”
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Josh Constine
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Drawbridge Is Building A Business Beyond Ad Targeting
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Anthony Ha
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isn’t just an ad-tech company anymore. We’ve written about how the company, which is , has built technology to — so data from one device can be used (in an anonymized way) to target ads another. However, CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan said that in the past year-plus, the company has also launched data licensing and software-as-a-service products for non-advertising customers. In fact, Sivaramakrishnan said that the company reached an annualized run rate of $100 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, split more-or-less evenly between ad- and non-ad revenue. After all, advertisers who aren’t the only ones interacting with consumers across laptops, phones, tablets and more. Unless they can convince most of those users to actually log in, those businesses can’t create a unified experience across those devices. The company says it’s already working with customers including LiveRamp, Foursquare, Kenshoo, MarketShare (acquired by Neustar) and The Trade Desk for things like content optimization, site personalization, risk and fraud detection and marketing automation. “If we can exit the year of 2016 with our targets achieved for data licensing, we can legitimately say at the time that we’ve become the independent currency for identity,” Sivaramakrishnan said. She added that the need for this technology is only going to grow as more devices become connected to the Internet: “I wouldn’t want an ad on my refrigerator, but if I could get a personalized message or a reminder of the Warrior’s score or my favorite team’s update, that’s a consumer-centric application.” She described the expanded business as a “customer-driven” move, but she also acknowledged that “the whole ad-tech ecosystem is going through some time of internal introspection of what is the future of our industry going to look like.” Put more bluntly, it’s probably a good time to be looking beyond ad tech, given skepticism from public markets and .
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Bullish: LGBTQ People In Tech
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Welcome back to another episode of Bullish! This time, I sat down with Lesbians Who Tech founder Leanne Pittsford to talk about LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) inclusivity in the workplace. Although some tech companies have released data around people of color and female representation in their workforce, only one company, Slack, has actually released data around LGBTQ people. “We actually don’t have any of the data about how LGBT people in the workplace are really being impacted because it’s a little bit of an HR issue,” Pittsford says. “It’s been something that’s been private for people, but I think that’s the next frontier, sort of getting the data and then assessing where people are.” For workplaces that would like to become more inclusive, Pittsford suggests listening and asking questions. Another good thing might be to go to a Lesbians Who Tech Summit, which is coming up later this week in San Francisco. Lesbians in attendance will be someone who’s working on getting us to Mars by 2020, Pittsford says, and someone from Genentech working on a cure for cancer.
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The Benefits Of Digital Drawing
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Will Eisley
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According to a 2015 study of more than 4,000 designers conducted by Subtraction.com and Adobe’s Khoi Vinh, 64 percent of designers still That’s not surprising: Paper is virtually always accessible and offers simplicity. Plus, pen on paper has been the traditional medium budding artists are taught from the beginning, making it easy to generate ideas freely and naturally. Despite this, most companies continue to invest in digital drawing. Apple, Wacom, FiftyThree and others continue to design innovative hardware and apps, such as the iPad Pro and Bamboo Paper, to enhance performance and increase speed while on the go. Are the efforts to bring digital deeper into the creative workflow all in vain? The answer, as you might suspect, is no. Digital will never be a paper killer, but hardware and apps leveraging the latest technology advances are closing the gap with undeniable benefits in accessibility, efficiency and artistry. Inspiration doesn’t only happen in front of a computer or canvas. In fact, a 2012 found that distraction is actually a key variable for creativity — meaning, it’s more probable that your genius idea will occur when you’re not in your studio. However, we almost always have our phones with us. No matter where we are, we now have an unlimited toolkit of apps and services to turn raw inspiration into usable assets, such as color themes, shapes, brushes and patterns. For example, apps can enable designers to object into a brush, texture, vector shape or color that they can use in mobile apps or desktop software. It allows designers to capture creative inspiration wherever they are and design with it immediately. While most people , designers sketch as the first step in their creative process. Sketching on paper is free-flowing and easy, but the challenge for designers is then having to quickly turn it into usable work — transferring ideas from paper to digital either by scanning and tracing, or recreating a digital version of what they sketched. The benefit of drawing with mobile apps is you can sketch your mock-up digitally and have that sketch turned into a usable Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign file. Adobe Comp emulates the iterative process of paper, and saves time by eliminating the need to recreate work from scratch on the desktop. Interest in drawing on mobile devices is growing. There were more than 99,000 tweets about Apple Pencil within 24 hours of it being announced, and even the excitement among the design community, calling it the tool to “replace paper sketchbooks.” That excitement is not misplaced. With the rapid development of innovative pens and digital apps and improved hardware, artists are empowered to create a new medium of digital art where natural media can be realistically simulated, including watercolor, pastels and the aesthetic of oils on canvas — all on a single mobile device: Integrating mobile technology and hardware into the concepting and ideation stage of the creative process may sound novel to some designers, but it isn’t new. When Wacom introduced its first pen tablet in 2005, it was initially met with skepticism. Yet today, we take for granted the prevalence and use of Wacom tablets for drawing. As hardware and apps continue to expand capabilities and evolve to better emulate the paper experience, more designers will adopt digital as a larger part of the creative process. As technology advances, digital also will enable new forms of expressive painting, such as the ability to paint different lighting environments or apply 3D textures for paint. Paper will never be obsolete as a medium for ideation, production or publication, but initiating the creative process digitally will emerge as an increasingly faster way to capture ideas, iterate and turn concepts into production-ready designs.
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Forge Looks To Make It Easy To Save Short Clips In Gaming Sessions
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Matthew Lynley
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Jared Kim might not be the best gamer — but he still wants to be able to share highlights from his sessions, and save them to remember them in the future. So much so that he decided to take a second crack at the premise with , a new service entering beta today that helps gamers find short clips of the action and share them on different networks. “With things like YouTube you have long form gaming content; on Twitch you have multi-hour streams — those are really cool, but we’re missing this entire segment of people like me,” Kim said. “I’m not a great gamer; there are some cool things I want to do that I want to save for myself.” Forge has a large list of games that it supports, and Kim says it’s easy to add a new game. The service gives a light editing overlay over a game after a key is pressed, giving users the ability to grab a snippet of their game time that they can then share with their friends. The service is constantly recording the last 60 seconds of a play session — though, to be sure, that can still take up a lot of space. The service generally requires a 10GB cache to operate. The majority of Forge’s clips are around 5 to 10 seconds, like a boss kill or a suave move in a game, that can be shared to other networks. Right now it’s just Twitter and Forge, but the company hopes to integrate with Facebook in the near future. There’s also ways to share content on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but Forge is centered entirely around PC gaming. You might remember something akin to this way back in the day — a tool called Fraps. But that tool often slowed down computers due to the requirements of recording. Forge works by sitting between the graphics card and operating system, and tries to offload as much of the computational requirements to a computer’s GPU as possible to keep performance high. Most of the content shared through Forge (not unexpectedly) is centered around League of Legends, which could put it directly in the crosshairs of Twitch. But Twitch is largely centered around livestreaming and longer sessions, much like YouTube, which can make it difficult to sift through and find highlights, Kim said. There are other potential competitors like Plays.tv, but those startups are going after clips from competitions instead of highlights shared by regular gamers, he said. Forge consists of nine people, largely from Kim’s last company WeGame, which was acquired in 2011. The premise isn’t too different from his last company: find an easy way to share moments in gaming with friends online, without them simply disappearing. That, inevitably, is Forge’s goal as well, Kim said. Everyone at Forge, naturally, is a gamer, too — and interestingly the team is strewn about the world instead of centered in a single place. Kim said.
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Google Fiber Is Coming To Certain Areas Of San Francisco
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Lucas Matney
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Google announced plans today to bring its lightning-fast Google Fiber service to “some apartments, condos and affordable housing properties” in San Francisco, notably utilizing existing fiber instead of building their own fiber-optic network as they have in the past. A detailed that the move was done in an effort to bring the service to residents more quickly. San Francisco is the 22nd metropolitan area Google has . Google also announced a partnership with the Nonprofit Technology Network to bring the Digital Inclusion Fellowship to San Francisco, which will hire fellows to teach people basic technology and internet-usage skills to better their lives. The post went on, “Through these efforts, we hope to make the Internet more affordable and accessible for those most affected by the digital divide.” San Francisco residents ready to ditch the cruel grip of Comcast can on the Google Fiber site with their address to get updates on when Fiber access comes to their area.
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Computer Science Is Now A High School Graduation Requirement In Chicago’s Public School District
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Megan Rose Dickey
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Following a unanimous vote by the Chicago Public School Board of Education, computer science will become a graduation requirement for all high school students in what is the nation’s third largest school district. Starting with next school year’s class of freshmen (class of 2020), students in Chicago Public Schools will be required to complete curriculum around computer science before graduating. This has been a long time coming. Back in December 2013, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a five-year plan to make CS a core subject taught in schools, and partnered with Code.org around providing the curriculum and preparing teachers to make that possible. “Making sure that our students are exposed to STEM and computer science opportunities early on is critical in building a pipeline to both college to career,” Emanuel said in a release today. “Requiring computer science as a core requirement will ensure that our graduates are proficient in the language of the 21st century so that they can compete for the jobs of the future.” Currently, computer science is only offered in 25% of schools across the nation. In Chicago, 107 schools have implemented CS curriculum, 41 of which are high schools, according to the district’s press release. The Chicago Public School district is working with Code.org and other organizations to further develop a CS education curriculum to implement across all its high schools. Of the courses created in partnership with Code.org, 37% of the students are black or Hispanic and 43% are female. Nationwide, computer science education to all K-12 schools across the nation.
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Captain401, A Service For Spinning Up And Managing 401(k) Plans, Raises $3.5M
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Matthew Lynley
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At Roger Lee’s last startup, he wanted to set up a 401(k) plan for his employees. He soon realized how frustrating and outdated the process was; it required stacks of paperwork and even faxing documents. That’s what prompted him to start , a service built for quickly spinning up 401(k) plans for small- to medium-sized businesses that aims to be less complicated. The company said it raised $3.5 million in financing today in a round led by SoftTech VC and SV Angel, among others. Companies use Captain401 to set up a 401(k) plan for their employees online through a couple of simple steps. After that, the ongoing administration pulls data from HR software like Gusto and Intuit, and the service automatically manages investments for employees through index funds like those from Vanguard. It’s important that companies get 401(k) plans up and running as early as possible. For one, it’s a morale thing: employees want to know that their company is helping work through their retirement plans. But it’s also an important incentive for attracting employees to a company. Lee recognized that at his last startup, he says, but found the process difficult to get up and running. “Individuals are increasingly responsible for their own financial futures, now that pensions are going away, social security is uncertain,” Lee said. “People are now responsible for providing for their own retirements and 401(k)s are the primary way of doing that, yet you find these 70 million people work for companies that don’t offer those plans.” The process can also be confusing on the employee end. Many 401(k) plans are a complicated to set up and require intense research about various funds that employees can invest in — not to mention what the risk profile of those funds are. Lee says that Captain401 will look at the profile of an employee, like their age and risk tolerance, and ask a few questions before giving a personalized recommendation of what funds they should invest in. “Normally you’d get a list of like 30 funds and they’d have confusing names — what the heck is ‘SPRTN IDX’ — no one can decipher what these things mean and you’re expecting what employees to choose what percent of money into these funds,” Lee said. “We’re able to make sensible recommendations on what funds people would invest in, present in a way that’s not these jargon-filled fund names.” Going along with that, Lee said he saw that employee participation was also low the process was so complicated. “Typically we found that in a normal 401(k), especially one that doesn’t do any matching, less than half of employees will participate,” he said. “Historically the thinking had gone, you’re never gonna get everyone to participate because some people don’t have the budget to save for the future, but we found consistently that our customers are seeing participation rates upwards of 90 percent even without a match.” Captain401 is certainly not the only company in this space looking to simplify the 401(k) process. There are other startups like that want to not only simplify the overall process, but make it incredibly easy to set up 401(k) plans for companies. And, of course, the company is competing with larger 401(k) providers, but Lee’s pitch is that its ease of use on the employee end will win out employers. Captain401 came out of Y Combinator’s summer 2015 batch.
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In Advance of Next Fund, Andreessen Horowitz Brings Aboard Martin Casado As GP
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Connie Loizos
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Andreessen Horowitz’s team continues to grow and change. Today, the is announcing the appointment of its newest and ninth general partner: Martin Casado, the cofounder and CTO of Nicira and a pioneer of so-called software defined networking; Nicera was among the first companies to decouple software from networking hardware, allowing companies to see greater flexibility in managing their networking needs. The company was an early bet for Andreessen Horowitz and ranks among its biggest exits to date. Indeed, in 2012, VMWare stunned many in the industry when it agreed to buy the young company for $1.05 billion in cash and $210 million in equity awards. (Soon after it was announced, Business Insider published a solid about how Nicira, which had raised roughly $42 million from private investors, came to be valued so highly.) In a , firm cofounder Marc Andreessen recalls meeting Casado in 2009 when he was a “newly minted Stanford Computer Science Ph.D., vigorously pitching us on a networking future where software would run the show.” Adds Andreessen, whose firm became Nicira’s first institutional investor, “He was clearly speaking our language.” (Andreessen’s cofounder, Ben Horowitz, sat on Nicira’s board.) In a phone conversation yesterday, Casado — who joined VMWare as an SVP and general manager and has been leading the company’s networking and security business — said he’s eager to get to work on April 1. While he hasn’t been an active investor until now, Casado has meaningful experience with startups, he notes. Among other things, last summer, he wrote a check alongside Andreessen Horowitz to the encrypted file sharing platform . He’s an advisor to several companies, including and . Casado has also served on VMWare’s M&A committee, helping the company vet potential strategic investments. More, Casado will have the guidance, at least at first, of fellow general partner Peter Levine, a who joined Andreessen Horowitz in 2011 and is heavily focused on enterprise deals. Not that you should extrapolate too much from that, suggested Casado. “One of the things I love about Andreessen Horowitz is that they don’t pigeonhole GPs into [investing in a] certain state of funding or a certain sector.” Indeed, after focusing so narrowly on networking, he said he’s excited to broaden his focus to an array of shifts in software. Casado’s hire comes roughly a month after that longtime GP Scott Weiss will no longer be part of the firm’s next fund. The appointment also follows the hiring of Vijay Pande, who was in November to lead the firm’s charge into biotech investing. Asked if Andreessen Horowitz will be announcing its next fund imminently (the various moves suggest as much), Levine, who we also spoke with yesterday, told us only, “We’ll let you know.” As for adding yet another man (the nearly seven-year-old firm has already seen other male partners come and go, including and ), Levine said Andreessen Horowitz would “love to hire a woman.” The firm has “made offers to great people,” he continued, but, “so far, we haven’t been able to hire anybody. “If you know anyone,” he said, “please send them our way.”
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Microsoft Is Buying Mobile Cross-Platform Development Company Xamarin
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Lucas Matney
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Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Xamarin, a company that allows developers to build fully native apps across several platforms from a single shared code base. Microsoft and Xamarin have worked closely together since a to make it more simple for mobile developers to build native apps on platforms in Visual Studio. A possible Xamarin acquisition has been the topic of rumors since the partnership was detailed, though last year that the company was eyeing an IPO and that there was “no ‘for sale’ sign here.” Well now, following a from “With today’s acquisition announcement we will be taking this work much further to make our world class developer tools and services even better with deeper integration and seamless mobile app dev experiences.” Guthrie wrote. Guthrie disclosed Xamarin currently has over 15,000 customers, including high profile companies like Alaska Airlines, Coca-Cola Bottling, Thermo Fisher, Honeywell and JetBlue. This acquisition will allow Microsoft to greatly improve its own set of a developer tools and help spur development of mobile and Universal apps for Windows 10 devices. “The combination of Xamarin, Visual Studio, Visual Studio Team Services, and Azure provides a complete mobile app dev solution that provides everything you need to develop, test, deliver and instrument mobile apps for every device,” Guthrie Guthrie said in the post he will be detailing more details about “future plans” regarding Xamarin in his keynote for the Microsoft Build developer conference later next month. Xamarin had raised a total of $82 million in funding from investors including according to data from .
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Astro Digital Releases Platform For Anyone To Analyze Satellite Imagery
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Emily Calandrelli
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Astro Digital, a satellite imaging and imagery analysis company, released the of their image processing software today. Anyone can access their software, for free, and retrieve satellite imagery of any area on Earth. The company also offers an API that developers can use to incorporate satellite data into their products. The software itself compiles global satellite imagery and allows users to select specific areas of the Earth to monitor over time. Users are notified each time a new satellite image comes in for their specified area. With this tool, Astro Digital hopes to create a user-friendly platform that enables customers to easily understand and make use of terabytes worth of satellite data. Currently, Astro Digital has leveraged open data initiatives like LandSat to fill their database. Eventually, however, the company plans to use imagery from their own satellites. To date, they’ve tested 2 satellites in space and are scheduled to launch 4 new satellites later this year. “By the end of this year, we will have the ability to monitor all agricultural land in the U.S. every day.”- Bronwyn Agrios, Head of Product at Astro Digital The commercial Earth-observation space is certainly getting crowded. With companies like Planet Labs and Alphabet’s leading the way, there are more private satellites imaging the Earth than ever before. In 2016, 92 commercial Earth-observation satellites are to be placed in orbit, which is 10 times more than the number in 2013. Satellite imagery contributes to weather forecasts, disaster relief, climate modeling, population analysis, and crop monitoring. The images are especially useful when you can watch how specific areas on the globe change over time. For example, with new images of the Earth provided daily or even weekly, the effects of a drought could be kept in check, we could track the spread of wildfires, or farmers could analyze how different agriculture strategies affect their crop yield. This real time picture of the Earth is nearly a reality. As more private satellites come online, the commercial Earth-observation industry starts to encounter a new challenge: How do you package terabytes of Earth imagery in a way that works for paying customers? This is where Astro Digital comes in. The company plans to set itself apart from other satellite imaging companies by offering the best platform for image processing, storage, distribution and access. Essentially, they want to make incorporating space into any business quick and easy. Bronwyn Agrios, the Head of Product at Astro Digital, told TechCrunch that they’ve established themselves in this industry by focusing on the software just as much, if not more, than the hardware. “The pixels are going to be commodified, so we’re going beyond just pretty pictures.” – Bronwyn Agrios, Head of Product at Astro Digital However, Astro Digital isn’t the only imagery analysis player in this space. The company conducts historical analysis of imagery to predict crop yields, has developed machine learning algorithms that are used to track and predict the capacity of parking lots and even construction in China, and satellite operators like Planet Labs offer their own software products for their customers. Agrios, who previously worked at Planet Labs and , said that Astro Digital is unique in that they will provide live monitoring to customers. They’re set up in such a way that allows them to process and deliver imagery to their customers in real time as soon as one of their satellites downlinks new data. They’re also unique in that their software platform is easily accessible right from their and free to anyone. Other companies also offer APIs, but they’re not readily available on their websites without a paid subscription or submitting a request for access. However, the free version only allows users to access a limited volume of content. To monitor larger areas of land over longer periods of time, a paid subscription is required. By using their software, people can select an area of the Earth and retrieve satellite images processed to show any of 4 attributes: true color, vegetation density, urban growth, and land/water borders. When satellites downlink new data for your selected area, you are notified automatically. Astro Digital was co-founded by Agrios in January of 2015. She said the company is working to ensure that as soon as their satellites are launched and commissioned, they’ll already have a fully functioning processing pipeline and customer facing platform. In just over a year, the company has employed 21 engineers and received 6 million in seed funding. They will seek out Series A funding once construction of their first satellites is complete. Astro Digital plans to improve and iterate their software as they get feedback from users. New versions of their software will be released every 2 weeks with major releases every 3 months. As more companies begin to incorporate satellite imagery into their business, the way that data is packaged and delivered will become increasingly important. One can only image the globe in so many different ways. Providing useful analysis on top of that data and creating slick, user-friendly platforms to present that analysis is sure to generate an entirely new wave of competition in the space industry.
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LinkedIn’s First TV Ad Says 3M Members Are Qualified To Become An Astronaut
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Okay, be honest. How many of you dreamed of becoming an astronaut when you were a kid? I certainly did — and in my heart of hearts, I still kind of regret that it didn’t happen. Well, that might not be as unrealistic as you might think, at least according to a new ad from LinkedIn. The company says this is actually its very first TV ad, and it will air during the Academy Awards. The message of the ad has less to do with signing up for LinkedIn and more to do with that dream of becoming an astronaut. In a blog post, Vice President of Marketing Nick Bartle said LinkedIn is “working with NASA to find their next astronaut” (!), and in the process, it discovered that 3 million of the site’s US users are actually :
Our data shows that many of your aspirations, even the ones that seem like unattainable dreams, are actually achievable. LinkedIn exists to help you pursue those careers that fill you with a sense of purpose. We’re endeavoring to redefine what it means to be well connected, so that you can achieve your vision. The ad comes after and 100 million unique visitors each month. (Its stock price took a big dive after the earnings report due to a disappointing outlook and guidance.) [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_cz6Xt-SZM&w=560&h=315]
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500 Startups Launches A Pair Of $25M Funds Focused On India, FinTech
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500 Startups is adding a couple new micro-funds as it looks to further grow its investments in India and FinTech Markets. The $25 million funds, named and (after a popular Indian frozen dairy treat), will continue to focus on early stage investments in those spaces. 500 Startups currently has over 80 FinTech investments that have made over the past six years, including investments in CreditKarma and Flywire. In a post on 500’s blog, Partner Sheel Mohnot, who will be heading up the fund, detailed a few insights learned, including the importance of the proliferation of smartphones to cutting costs associated with financial services and the fact that “traditional” financial institutions are not innovating quickly enough. 500’s tagline for the new FinTech fund, “Financial Services For the Rest of Us,” is pretty representative of where they’re looking to target investments. I chatted with 500’s Dave McClure who had just stepped offstage from the Surge Conference in Bengaluru, India. McClure told me that despite FinTech currently being “oversubscribed in certain areas,” there was still a lot of potential “particularly in regards to institutions serving women, millennials, minorities and emerging markets.” In addition to also promoting FinTech-related investments in India, the new 500 Kulfi fund, headed up by Partner Pankaj Jain, will also be focusing on investments in EdTech, Health & Wellness, Data Analytics, Content and SaaS/SMB in the Indian region, also including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Jain detailed in a all the things that India’s investment environment has going for it, including “private equity investment activity in India was up 67% from 2014 to $21 billion,” expected GDP growth this year of 7.6%, 300 million internet users, smartphone numbers set to reach 700 million by 2020 and a youthful population with a median age of 27.3 years old. “We’re thrilled to announce our plans to do more in India; much, much more,” Jain wrote. 500 Kulfi joins other dedicated 500 micro-funds in the region. This past November, the firm nearly the size of its Southeast Asia fund and a $12 million Thailand fund.
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Apply Now For TechCrunch Include Office Hours With General Catalyst
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Samantha O'Keefe
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The next round of are here! On March 8th, Niko Bonatsos, Deepak Jeevan Kumar, Steve Herrod, and Prateek Alsi of General Catalyst will join TechCrunch editors to provide advice and feedback to startups. Launched in 2014, is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to take their startups to the next level. Office hours are part of that effort. Once monthly, TechCrunch works with its VC partners to ensure that founders of all backgrounds have an opportunity to build connections with top investors. To be considered for a meeting in the General Catalyst session , by Wednesday, March 2 at 6 p.m. PT. Underrepresented groups eligible for office hours include but are not limited to black, Latino, Native American, LGBT and female founders. Office hours will be held at General Catalyst’s offices in Palo Alto. Now, to introduce our co-hosts.
Niko is passionate about finding companies that might be perceived as crazy, funny, and controversial and enjoys investing in consumer products and services that streamline cumbersome business processes. He works closely with ClassDojo, GoButler, Kiwi, Listia, Pushbullet, and Snapchat to name a few.
Having personally designed large-scale distributed systems for some of the world’s fastest supercomputers, Deepak knows how to be the best-in-class cheerleader and the leverage point for entrepreneurs who are looking to change the worlds of cybersecurity, big data, storage and data center. At General Catalyst, he works closely with Altiscale, ContainerX, DataGravity, Illumio, Menlo Security, Minio, OGSystems, RiskRecon, Runscope and ThreatStream.
Steve focuses on companies aspiring to deliver significant advances to developers and to computing infrastructure. The thornier the problems, the better! He is an active board member at Datto, Illumio, Runscope, Menlo Security, Runscope, and Threat Stream.
Prateek enjoys working at the intersection of technology and business, and continually pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. At General Catalyst he works with companies such as Cozy, Flite, Gusto, and Stripe. Additionally, he co-directs the GC Stripe Platform Fund to help start new ventures built using the Stripe Connect platform. We’re thrilled to have General Catalyst join us! If you’re a startup in the pre-seed/seed stage and want to meet GC (and you should), .
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You Can Now Edit And Format Your Google Docs By Voice
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Frederic Lardinois
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About six months ago, Google voice typing for Google Docs on the web to allow you to dictate your text into a document. Today it’s taking this feature a step further by also allowing you to edit and format your text by voice, too. This means you can now say things like “select all,” “align center,” “bold,” “got to end of line,” or “increase font size” and Google Docs will (hopefully) understand and follow your commands. You can find a full list of available commands (and you can also just say “voice commands help” in Docs and it will pop up all of these commands, too). If you’ve ever used desktop software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking then you are probably already familiar with how these commands work. Using voice commands for editing text never struck me as all that convenient (using the keyboard is simply faster for issuing these commands), but if you have an impairment that keeps you from using the keyboard, these new commands may now make using Google Docs an option for you.
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RevTwo Brings Real-Time Screen Sharing, Chat, & Voice Calls To Mobile Apps
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What if mobile applications weren’t standalone, isolated experiences, but could actually connect users to each other – or even to the app’s developers – with a push of a button? That’s the vision behind a startup called , exiting from stealth today. Its mobile app SDK for iOS lets developers offer a range of in-app support services for an app’s users which can include chat, phone calls, screen-sharing sessions, and more. But another compelling use case for the software is allowing an app’s users to socialize and interact with each other. For example, mobile gamers could share their screen in real-time with other players in order to show off their own game-playing sessions, or demonstrate how to beat a particular level. Given the in the e-sports market, it’s interesting to think about how watching others game live could be applied to the mobile app space through technology like this from RevTwo. The startup, however, is currently touting its in-app support model, which reaches a potentially broader market beyond just mobile gaming. The concept, at its core, is not entirely unlike Amazon’s Mayday feature – except one where developers aren’t just helping users, but also accessing log file data to help determine what may have triggered a given problem. With Amazon’s offering, a Fire tablet user can push a button to receive help from a real person who can also help walk you through how to perform various functions on your device by either explaining it to you, drawing on your screen, or doing it for you remotely. The startup’s software, on the other hand, lets apps open support sessions, initiate and respond to voice calls, and interact with diagnostic tools including screen sharing, logging, database inspector and file browser, the company says. It uses WebRTC technology in order to create fast peer-to-peer connections with devices. But this core feature set is fairly flexible in terms of use cases. Developers could use the SDK for in-app support – to save users from having to leave the app and scour the web for solutions, for example, or to prevent them from getting so frustrated they leave a one-star review on the App Store. But it could also be used in a helpdesk environment with enterprise applications, or as a tool to help development teams actually see bugs and other issues with pre-release software in real-time, on a remote user’s screen. In consumer-facing apps, it could be used to create a social community in the app where users could interact through chat, voice or screen-sharing sessions. That makes sense in mobile gaming, but could also expand to a variety of consumer apps, including those in the edtech space. In the latter case, teachers or tutors could pop into a mobile application to guide a user through the problem that has them stumped, for example. The company was co-founded by Dale Calder and Jim Hansen, previously founders at the early Internet of Things platform Axeda, which Calder’s daughter, Ashley, is also on board at the new company, serving as Director of User Experience. Hansen explained that the founders started RevTwo because they saw firsthand how hard it was for developers to replicate problems in testing and in production. However, Calder told us that the idea to use the SDK within mobile games was one prompted by watching his 16-year old son in action . He expects the company will have early adopters for its software in around a month’s time. A future release will support gamification elements where players could be rewarded with in-app points or virtual goods in a mobile for helping other users by sharing their own gaming sessions. The company plans to monetize by charging at the enterprise level based on things like active help sessions, and other metrics, but will be a freemium product in order to encourage growth “We want to bring community into the app world,” says Calder. “We want this in every app on the App Store.” An Android version is also planned. In the meantime, interested developers can sign up on . The company claims the SDK can be integrated within 10 minutes’ time.
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Gmail For Android Gets Rich Text Formatting And Instant RSVPs
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Frederic Lardinois
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Google announced two small but useful updates for today: rich text formatting and instant RSVPs. Rich text formatting has long been available for Gmail on the web, but this is the first time Google has brought it to mobile. The formatting options are pretty straightforward: You can bold, italic, underline, color and highlight text. Sadly, you still can’t link text in your messages, but having the option to at least bold text is probably all I need. Instant RSVPs are another feature Google brought over from the web version of Gmail. Now, when you get a Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange invite to a meeting, you can respond with one tap and your schedule will immediately pop up, as well. So instead of having to swap between different apps just to make sure you don’t have a scheduling conflict and to accept an invitation, you can now do all of this right in the Gmail app. It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s mobile version of Outlook long included a very similar feature. Google didn’t say when it plans to bring these features to the Gmail app for iOS, but I actually wouldn’t be surprised if we first saw them appear in Inbox instead. Indeed, given that Inbox is essentially Google’s next-gen email client, it’s surprising the company didn’t launch a feature like rich-text editing for Inbox first.
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Intel Invests $1.3 Million In CODE2040
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As part of Intel’s $300 million commitment to diversity, the company has announced a multi-year partnership and $1.3 million investment in CODE2040, a non-profit organization that helps get black and Latino/a students of color involved in tech. This comes a little over a month after . “With a specific focus on broadening the participation of diverse talent in the tech industry, CODE2040’s mission aligns with Intel’s own priorities and together we can shift from acknowledging the problem to implementing comprehensive solutions that accelerate access to educational, professional and entrepreneurial opportunities in technology,” Intel Corporation Executive Director of Strategy and External Alliances Barbara McAllister . The money will go towards supporting CODE2040’s Fellows program, which places students in career-building workshops and internships at top tech companies and Technical Application Prep programs, a newer CODE2040 initiative aimed to prepare students to get internships and thrive at top tech companies. This year and next, Intel will host 60 student interns from the CODE2040 Fellows program in Santa Clara. Intel will also host students from CODE2040’s TAP program for part of a five-day Tech Trek. “We are very proud of the multi-year partnership with Intel to create access, awareness, and opportunities for Black and Latino/a engineering talent,” . “This transformative partnership allows CODE2040 to expand our work to increase the impact of diversity in the innovation economy. Together with Intel, we are excited to create more experiences like this , described by Anthony Williams, a TAP participant.” Here’s a recent interview I had with Weidman Powers.
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Watch Xiaomi’s MWC 2016 Press Conference Right Here
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5xSfaMbLdc Xiaomi is set to unveil… something at Mobile World Congress 2016 and you can watch all the action right here. If the title of the stream is any indication, there’s a good chance that Xiaomi is taking the Mi 5 global but the Chinese giant could have other things waiting in the wings. The event is supposed to start at 9:00 CET/3:00 EDT.
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Newly Merged MoxyBilna Lands $15M For Female-Focused E-Commerce In Southeast Asia
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Moxy and Bilna, the , now have a new name and $15 million in funding to build out their game. The company, which has close to 400 employees, is now known as Orami, and today it announced that it has closed $15 million led by Indonesia’s SMDV, and with participation from Gobi Partners, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Ardent Capital and Saverin’s firm Velos Partners. The deal propels the company forward in a major way, as it battles to become the go-to destination for women shopping online in Indonesia, a country of over 250 million people, and the wider Southeast Asia region, which has a cumulative population of 620 million. Orami CEO Jérémy Fichet and CMO Shannon Kalayanamitr told TechCrunch that their website sees around three million visits per month, with three-quarters of its customers women. They claim that, on peak days, the service does 12,000 orders and that the average basket size is 25 percent higher than the average for e-commerce in Southeast Asia. There’s plenty of competition for online sales in Indonesia, with Rocket Internet-backed Lazada, which has , and , a service from offline retail giant Lippo, among the larger fish. Kalayanamitr, though, believes that Orami is the only one that is focused on serving women in the country. “I don’t think we have direct competition, but [there are other players] in some verticals. We are really the only one doing it across the board,” she said, suggesting that fast-growing Matarhari could be the biggest rival to Orami. Arguably offline commerce, or lack of awareness of online solutions among consumers, is the main competitor since online represents less than five percent of retail sales across Southeast Asia. But the rise in smartphone sales, which brings millions of people online for the first time, is changing things, and Indonesia, as Southeast Asia’s largest country, has the greatest potential in that respect. Fichet told TechCrunch that the new money raised will be put to work building out Orami’s product selection, increasing its technology team — which currently stands at 40 employees — and improving the end-to-end experience with customers, so investing in better logistics, order management, etc. Beyond that, Kalayanamitr is working to unlock the potential of ‘social commerce’ for Orami. That’s the idea that social media is intertwined with the service — so, for example, customers can easily share new purchases, wishlists, etc with friends. Orami is focused on Indonesia and Thailand, the market where Moxy started out, and it may expand to one more market in Southeast Asia this year. Initially though, the Oram founders said, the company needs to focus on Indonesia and build its position there. “Just Indonesia alone is going to be crazy for us, we’ve tapped a fraction of it so far,” Kalayanamitr told TechCrunch. When Orami does look to expand, it is possible that it might look for an acquisition to hit the ground running. That’s not a huge surprise since Orami is the result of a merger, and Moxy itself acquired Thai startup WhatsNew when it first started out. Indonesia is the focus today, but Orami clearly harbors ambitions to be the e-commerce site of choice for women in Southeast Asia.
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Apple Supporters From All Walks Line Up In Downtown San Francisco To Rally Against FBI Court Order
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A large group lined up outside of the Apple store in downtown San Francisco this evening, but not for the usual reasons. This time, about 60 to 70 protestors swarmed Apple to voice their opposition to an FBI’s court order requiring the tech giant to create a backdoor to iOS encryption. The FBI over an iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooter. Protestors came from all walks of life, many of them chanting, singing, clapping at various points and eagerly sharing with several news crews why they thought the FBI was in the wrong. One even pulled out his Android phone to prove to me he was there to protest against an increasingly invasive government. Rallies in support of Apple aren’t the usual, but many in the pro-Apple group tonight agreed the fight went beyond one device and had to do with our setting a precedent for our freedom. “The thing that really concerns me is that by taking this through the courts it’s going to set a legal precedent no matter what the outcome is,” 47-year-old long-time San Francisco resident and computer programmer Andrea Longo told me at the scene. “And if the FBI gets what it wants everyone else can come along [to Apple] and say ‘you already did it once so why aren’t you doing it for me?'” There were about 50 protests organized in various cities across the country tonight, headed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Boston-based Fight for the Future. Not every city had as strong of a showing as the one in San Francisco – some tweets show in Los Angeles and , but that was to be expected according to the organizers. Silicon Valley has been of Apple’s refusal to bend to the will of the government and many tech leaders, including and . Both have publicly supported Apple in the fight against the Justice Department. We spoke to the EFF’s Shahid Buttar and Fight for the Future’s Charlie Furman about the rally and what message they are hoping this will send to the U.S. government about American privacy. You can get those interviews and more on tonight’s event in the video above.
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Uber Launches A Motorbike Taxi On-Demand Service, Initially In Thailand
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Jon Russell
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Uber is expanding its services from four wheels to two after the U.S. company a motorbike taxi on-demand service in Thailand. ‘UberMoto’ is initially a pilot service in Bangkok, a city where motorbike taxis are already a popular way to beat the city’s dreadful traffic and get from A to B quicker. Uber has offered two wheels for courier services, like , but this is the first time it has ferried passengers around on motorbikes. Available within the existing Uber app as a new service, the base fare is 10THB ($0.30) and 3.5THB ($0.10) per kilometer or 0.85 THB ($0.025) per minute. The company said that the UberMoto service is “specifically developed for cities in emerging markets” where congestion is high, so it seems plausible that UberMoto may be extended to new cities and countries over time. (That said, an auto-rickshaw pilot in India, showing that not all projects become wider launches.) It is easy to see greater demand for motorbikes on-demand outside of Thailand. Grab, Uber’s big rival in Southeast Asia, offers a similar service — ‘GrabBike’ — in Bangkok, . Indonesia is also home to , a fast-growing service backed by Sequoia that has 200,000 drivers and offers passenger, logistics and delivery services. Like Go-Jek, building a fleet of motorbike drivers could unlock logistics and delivery opportunities for Uber in the future, too. For now, though, UberMoto is focused on Bangkok, where Uber said 1,500 new cars come on the road each day and the average daily commute is a staggering two hours. “This kind of congestion undermines everyone’s quality of life,” the U.S. firm said in a statement. Uber is also putting a focus on safety. It has partnered with the Thai police and Head Awareness, a branch of the Don’t Drive Drunk Foundation that promotes wearing helmets on motorbikes. While it is not uncommon to take a motorbike taxi and not be given a helmet to wear, Uber — like Grab — said its drivers will carry one for passengers. Uber’s other experiments in Asia have included , and it recently to Manila in the Philippines. Uber has spent the last year , opening its service up to users who don’t own a credit card, and motorbikes are another obvious localization move in Asia.
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Sony Announces PlayStation VR Press Event For March 15
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Lucas Matney
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With just weeks to go before the first orders of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive find their way into buyers’ living rooms, Sony is sending out press invitations for a special event highlighting the PlayStation VR to be held on March 15 in San Francisco The event is taking place during the 2016 Game Developers Conference and will begin at 2:00 PM PST followed by a few hours of demos. Last year, Sony used the conference event to give updates on its VR platform, which was then called “Project Morpheus.” There’s still a decent amount we don’t know regarding the final release, chief of which are price and release date. Sony has yet to dial in on specifics but the company last referenced the first half of 2016 as a likely timeframe for the release of the headset. In terms of price, quoted Sony exec Andrew House as saying that the device would be priced as a “new gaming platform.” Price may likely be the main headline to jump out from this event (if we hear it). With the Oculus Rift priced at $599 and the HTC Vive just recently revealed to cost $799, there’s plenty of room for Sony to cement itself as a more approachable option. One factor driving that is the fact that many of the necessary peripherals for PSVR have already been on the market for a bit and aren’t all that costly. It’s also worth noting that current versions of the device sit a step below Rift and Vive in terms of resolution but will be driven by the PS4 which could serve as both a major asset and liability. The PS4 is a major advantage to the headset in many ways because there are already 36 million VR-compatible PS4 consoles out in the wild right now. Sony also already has the benefit of controlling an ecosystem that console gamers have been fully invested in for decades. Sony owning both the headset and the brains powering it will be a score for consumers who won’t have to worry whether their specific rig can support the latest particularly demanding VR title. On the other hand, this will also be a limiting factor for developers really wanting to push the limits of the VR platform given the PS4’s lack of upgradability. It will be interesting to see what Sony ends up revealing at the event and what arsenal of features/titles/specs they will call up to shift consumer attention toward their VR headset. TechCrunch will be at the press event typing and tweeting furiously, so stay tuned.
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Where Are They Now? Startup Battlefield Company Boomerang Commerce
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LinkedIn Problems Run Deeper Than Valuation
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Damian Kimmelman
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In little over a month, shares in LinkedIn lost over half their value — because of poor growth forecasts, fears over future income, and even investor concerns over a tech bubble. The issues facing LinkedIn, however, go beyond the company itself. The problem stems from each of the company’s revenue streams, which ultimately diminish the business value of using the service. Whether it’s being paid to promote content, focusing on sales and recruitment over other professions, or interruptive advertising, these streams incentivise poor behaviour by individual users on the site. In other words, LinkedIn’s business model inhibits the growth of the network; and the network growth is ultimately what its business model is reliant upon. The site’s focus on one-directional promotion limits its effectiveness for recruitment, and its reliance on user-generated content prevents it from being a useful sales tool for businesses. LinkedIn is not, in fact, a business network — individuals on LinkedIn represent themselves, not their businesses. And as LinkedIn’s content is mostly user-generated, the incentive is for the users to produce material that promotes themselves. This creates a conflict. Most people aren’t looking to change jobs all the time. Instead, they want to communicate and build relationships. However, because LinkedIn’s revenue streams and design restrict typical business forms of communication and facilitate paid ones, most interactions on the platform are low-frequency and one-directional in nature, such as recruitment offers and sales pitches. As a result, LinkedIn is now, at best, a business card holder. At worst, it’s a delivery service for spam. Indeed, LinkedIn’s weak MAU (monthly active user) figures show this, as only one-quarter of its members use the site every month. This low level of engagement has made the product less and less useful for recruiting. Top performers in some industries, like tech, try to avoid LinkedIn as they get bombarded by recruiters. With both recruiters and top talent not finding what they need on LinkedIn, real business interaction is carried out on other platforms. Spotting the best talent is actually far easier with tools like Talentbin, Stack Overflow, and Github, which aggregate or facilitate positive interactions and allow skilled individuals to display their work — showing why they’re good at what they do. Solutions like these, whose models are predicated on quality interaction, are changing the game for recruiters and top talent. Historically, investors have believed in the potential of LinkedIn – as indicated by its shares trading at 50x its twelve-month forward revenues. However, the recent stock price turmoil shows that much of that confidence has been lost. To reboot investor trust, LinkedIn needs to overhaul its strategy and stop incentivizing the worst behavior on the site. The company needs to simplify its number of revenue streams and make sure that they work in concert with its user engagement and growth strategy, rather than in conflict. It must also provide users with more control over blocking unwanted communications and integrate with workflows better; most specifically, with email, which is universally adopted. Furthermore, if LinkedIn is to be a useful platform for sales organizations, it needs to focus more on the organisation, not just the individual. It must also utilise the vast amount of data that is not user generated and combine it with existing content to create a more complete picture of companies and their characteristics, vastly improving its ability to help sales and marketing teams. Finally, the company should also end its protectionist policy with regard to its API. By not sharing its data with others, LinkedIn safeguards some of its revenues, but also restricts integration with business workflows – relegating the network to continue to be one focused on individuals rather than businesses. It’s not all gloom and doom for LinkedIn. The company still has assets that are the envy of any tech company — a vast user base and a wealth of content to exploit. But it must realign its business model so that it stops damaging its growth prospects and starts to serve companies better. The alternative is a network that is less and less relevant to the audience it needs to engage – and a business that will only suffer as a result.
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The Latest Generation Atlas Humanoid Robot Is Absolutely Incredible
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Greg Kumparak
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Ready to feel bad for a pile of circuit boards? Wait ’til about a minute and twenty seconds into this video. That robot you see being pushed around is the latest generation of Atlas, the insanely advanced humanoid robot as built by the Google-owned Boston Dynamics. (Don’t feel too bad, by the way: they’re hitting stuff out of Atlas’ hands and pushing him around to test its compensation systems. All that pushing and shoving only makes him stronger. He’s like the Karate Kid, except… you know, a computer.) This is the first time we’ve seen this version of Atlas in action — and it’s leaps and bounds above the previous gen stuff. Whereas the previous build came at a bone-crushing 330 lbs, this one is right around 180 lbs — you still don’t want it falling on top of you, but it’s a bit closer to the weight of the average human. An average human made of metal instead of meat, but hey. He’s a few inches shorter at 5’9″ vs 6′, but crams a bevy of sensors (LIDAR, Stereo cameras, and more) into a body that no longer needs tethers for support or power. Watch on in excitement (or fear, if AI stuff keeps you up at night) as Atlas picks up boxes, opens doors, and stomps around in loosely packed snow — something I, as a mostly able-bodied adult human, have fallen on my face doing plenty of times. Oh, and hockey stick guy: I’m pretty sure Atlas will remember your face
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Don’t Dread Data Ethics And Governance
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Andrew Brust
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Data ethics is a subject our industry has largely ignored, avoided and failed to acknowledge as important. This neglect is almost certainly caused by fear — fear that examining the question would expose us as doing wrong; fear that ethics might stifle innovation; fear that the ethical questions are insoluble and intractable. Empathy is important; these fears should not be dismissed. But after some work with big data ethics analyst last year, I came to realize there’s also a good chance these fears are unfounded and overblown. Doing good needn’t contradict doing well. In most cases, data ethics are achievable, as long as standards and procedures can be thoughtfully explored, established and agreed upon. Perhaps more importantly, adherence to those standards and procedures can be made feasible with good technology. In other words, ethical data use can be productionalized and, in large part, automated, through the use of good tooling. Seen this way, data ethics is really a specialized area of data governance and stewardship. We have to be careful not to oversimplify this, of course. Clearly, data ethics is not a problem that can be solved just by “throwing technology at it.” As an industry, and as individual organizations, we need to discuss what should and shouldn’t be done with data. To what level is profiling of individual customers or constituents acceptable, versus doing everything at an aggregated level? What individual information is okay to store in plain text, in encrypted form or not at all? Where is it okay to cross-reference a customer? For example, if an individual is both a customer of cable service and a mobile phone/data plan, both under the same company’s umbrella, is it fair game to correlate their location history with their channel watching history and share that information with advertisers? If doing that at an individual level is too invasive, what about aggregating to the block, neighborhood or ZIP code level? For a great number of such questions (even if not those specific ones), many companies haven’t formulated their policy. And it’s possible that neglecting these questions is as much a cause of fear as it is a reaction to it. If companies could examine these questions rigorously, then devise policies they’re comfortable with and proud to share, that would almost certainly enhance customer relationships and trust. That’s likely to be a revenue-positive outcome. For a while, it would be a competitive advantage, and, soon enough, it would become a competitive requirement. That would be good for the analytics world, overall. But the burden here shouldn’t all be on the customer. Those of us who build analytics software have a role here, as well — a big one, in fact. We should be building tools that make data governance and audit easy, and we should be communicating to our customers why it’s so important. Our tools also should also have policy-driven data ethics checks — including alerts that pop up dynamically as audit information is being recorded, warning users of potential ethics transgressions and asking for confirmation to proceed, or blocking the action entirely. These wouldn’t be “lecturing” features, based on generic rules, either. Instead, the checks would be driven by internal organization policy — enforcing rules that a customer would to follow. Such functionality would make compliance easy, rather than overwhelming. This should be about assisting, not reprimanding. In advance of using such functionality, more mechanical governance features are of utmost importance. Data lineage, role-based access controls, encryption of data at rest, audit logging, version control and integration with external governance systems together make up the essential foundation of an automated data ethics environment. Customers should take advantage of these capabilities. Those of us who build them should help foster a greater awareness of data ethics and greater facilitation of customers to implement ethics policies and assure their own compliance.
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Online Travel Platform KimKim Brings Back The Travel Agent
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Connie Loizos
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Sometimes, there can be a little much disruption. So goes the thesis of Joost Schreve, the former head of mobile for , who left the company last November and started his own startup, , in December. The nascent company — seed-funded with $1 million from investors, including NFX Guild — is catering to the presumably many people who no long want to plan their next vacation by scouring the web. Its simple, secret weapon? Good old-fashioned travel agents, who talk online with customers via a conversational interface. We talked with Schreve earlier this morning to learn more about what he’s developing at his four-person, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length. JS: TripAdvisor and many sites like it have a lot of information, so users have to do a lot of filtering and comparing and it becomes a very painful process, especially for trips that are complex or longer. The average consumer goes to 38 different sites, according to an Expedia study, and they spend more than 10 hours [researching these more involved trips]. The difference between this painful process and a nice process is one person who is unbiased and can help you. JS: People are free to double-check what else is out there and they should. The reason our early users like us is that we handpick experts who we know are good and objective. Like many marketplaces that have gone before us, as we scale, you’ll see user reviews; we’ll also be studying conversion rates and [tracking our score]. JS: Right now, it’s a very manual process. We’re making a lot of magic happen via phone calls and so forth, but automating things is a big part of our road map. A mobile app is also a big part of the game plan. At TripAdvisor, I built our mobile app from scratch to [the point where it was used by 200 million users]. We’ve started on desktop because we wanted to launch quickly, and for big trip planning, desktop is a big part of that. But the mobile app we’re creating will enable people to have conversations [with our online travel agents] and have ongoing support and a lot of information and guidance once they’re on their trip. JS: We’ve taken bookings in the $1,000 to $6,000 range. From that point of view, we’re similar to how many travel companies operate (meaning KimKim takes commissions on hotel bookings and other trip-related events, keeping some for itself and sharing the rest with its agents). But these aren’t necessarily luxury experiences. Though $1,000 isn’t a small amount to pay us, they’re getting a lot of value in return. JS: Right now, our network [of agents are] in Nepal and Croatia, two places where I’ve spent a lot of time, and we’re adding Japan and Iceland shortly. The reason we started that way is that I believe nailing a destination and creating a great experience takes time. We want to figure out our playbook without going global right out of the gate. JS: I think it’s huge. We have four kids, and my wife and I have planned a ton of family vacations and complicated trips, and it’s a lonely process, searching for reviews. We want you to find someone who is on the other side who cares about you and who’s going to help you through it.
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Branded.me Adds Social Features And Blogging To Its Personal Website Builder
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Anthony Ha
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* isn’t just a website builder anymore — it’s adding tools allowing users to connect with other users and publish their own content. CEO Nick Macario said the site’s goal is to be “the creative platform for professionals” — in other words, it’s where professionals can take full control of how they present themselves to the online world. And with the new features, Macario said it’s becoming “a fun, fresh alternative to LinkedIn.” The big question is whether most people even want their own homepages anymore. Don’t our Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn etc. profiles serve the same function? Macario said that with Branded.me’s customization, you can both focus on what’s important to you and do more to differentiate yourself (see, for example, ), which could be increasingly important in a job landscape where “people are changing jobs more frequently and there’s a bigger shift towards freelancing.” And the new features could help you do even more in that vein — Macario said the updated Branded.me is about “reading and writing,” allowing users to start blogging on their pages. Of course, there are countless other blogging platforms out there, including the one I’m using to publish this post. But in the same way that Branded.me is built for people who “never even thought about creating a web page about themselves,” Macario is hoping the new blogging tool will “get other people writing who may have been intimidated or they’ve never even thought about writing.” Part of the way Branded.me tries to accomplish that is by making the editor simple and easy to use. In addition, it helps you avoid the terror of starting out with a blank page with an “ideas” feature, where you can quickly and easily jot down ideas for posts, wherever you area. In addition to blogging, Branded.me is introducing other social features, like the ability to follow and direct message other users. The service is available in both free and paid versions. —
* Yeah, I’m not crazy about the name, since I hate the whole idea of building a “personal brand.” But at this point, I accept that the battle is lost.
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Why NASA Received A Record Number Of Astronaut Applications And What They Can Expect Next
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Emily Calandrelli
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Over 18,300 people have applied to join NASA’s latest astronaut class, breaking the previous record of 8,000 submissions set in 1978. This year’s turnout was also nearly 3 times higher than NASA’s last call for applications in 2012. Each of these hopefuls is competing to be in the newest class of 14 astronauts who will ultimately fly on one of NASA’s next spacecraft. And while that small number may be intimidating, basic qualifications to become an astronaut candidate aren’t as preventive as one may think. There are no age requirements, but you must be a U.S. citizen and have a degree in a Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) field. In addition to a STEM degree, you’ll need to complete 3 years of related work experience. If you’d prefer more school instead, higher degrees can be substituted for work experience: Master’s degrees count as 1 year and doctoral degrees are equivalent to 3 years. Or if flying is your thing, pilots can forego the 3 years of work experience altogether if they have over 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft. You can be as short as 4’8’’ or as tall as 6’3’’ and you must be able to pass a basic flight qualification physical. Nearly perfect vision is required but, as of 2007, corrective surgical procedures like LASIK are allowed. These requirements have more or less been the same for the last few rounds of applications, so why the record number of submissions this year? With more people online than ever before, it’s possible that a higher number of people were made aware of this particular round. It’s also important to consider that there’s not a high barrier to apply since you don’t actually have to meet the eligibility requirements to submit a basic application. Many of the 18,300 submissions will immediately be discarded for not meeting eligibility requirements. Perhaps more importantly, however, there has been a clear rise in popularity of STEM and space exploration in general among the public in recent years. The National Science Foundation that the number of bachelor degrees awarded in engineering and natural sciences (degrees that make one eligible to be an astronaut) grew steadily from 241,000 in 2000 to 355,000 in 2012. The recent call for applications may have greatly benefited from this rise, since many of those recent graduates (during years with the most STEM degrees) weren’t yet eligible for NASA’s 2012 application round. Visibility of NASA and space exploration has also seemed to increase in popularity in recent years. Thanks to highly visible companies like , and , the average person is much more aware of what’s happening in the space industry. NASA’s also made a more concerted effort of publicizing their missions. Social media influencers are frequently to cover launches at private NASA media events. The agency also has one of the most followed on Twitter with nearly 15 million followers worldwide. Hollywood especially has helped make space exploration entertaining and accessible. Blockbuster movies like Interstellar, Gravity, and The Martian have all been released since NASA’s 2012 call for astronaut applications. These factors all likely contributed to the historically high number of citizens who applied to achieve their childhood dream of traveling into space. But for the lucky few who are ultimately selected, where are they going to go and when will it happen? Brandi Dean from the Public Affairs office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center told TechCrunch that the next astronaut class will have a chance to fly on one of 3 vehicles: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, or NASA’s Orion capsule. Dragon or CST-100 would be used to take astronauts on missions to the International Space Station, while Orion would involve a deep space mission to an asteroid, the moon, or Mars. Getting selected to fly on a NASA mission, however, takes several years. First, there’s a couple of years of astronaut candidate training, followed by potentially several more years of waiting to get selected to fly. Unfortunately, some astronauts never get selected to fly on a mission. Dean said that one astronaut in the 2009 astronaut class flew as early as 2013, but many in that same class have yet to be selected to fly. “Astronaut candidate training lasts for about 2 years. At the end of the process the candidates are considered to be astronauts and are eligible to be assigned to a mission. In the meantime they’re given technical duties within the astronaut office. Once they’re assigned to a mission, they will go through another round of training on their specific assignment.” – Brandi Dean, NASA Public Affairs For their service, whether in space or on the ground, astronauts get paid a government salary that can range from $66,000 to $144,500 per year, depending on their academic achievements and experience. Between now and September, the 18,300 applicants will be reviewed by a NASA panel and narrowed down to 400-600 “Highly Qualified” candidates. Dean said that astronauts with flight experience would be highly involved in that selection process. Highly Qualified applications will then be narrowed down to 120 people who will be interviewed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Interviews will take place between February and April of 2017 and will be conducted by the Astronaut Selection Board, which is made up primarily of experienced astronauts. By May 2017, finalists are determined and by June NASA will officially announce the newest Astronaut class to the public. With more applicants than they’ve ever received, NASA’s astronaut selection committee has their work cut out for them. In August of 2017, 14 of those 18,300 candidates will start their astronaut candidate training and begin their journey of – hopefully – ending up on a NASA mission into space.
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Etsy Shares Spike 13% As It Reports Strong Revenue In Fourth Quarter
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Matthew Lynley
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Etsy didn’t have a good 2015, but it was still able to finish on the stronger side. Today the company reported its fourth-quarter results, coming in at $87.9 million in revenue and a loss of 4 cents per share. Analysts were expecting a loss of 1 cent per share on revenue of $86.5 million. Another important number to track here was the company’s gross merchandise sales (GMS), which rose 21.3% to $741.5 million from $611.5 million in the fourth quarter last year. Shares of Etsy were up as much as 13% in extended trading following the report. Still, it’s partially a recovery from the day where shares ended down around 7% before the company reported earnings. Etsy at the end of the quarter had 1.6 million active sellers, up from 1.5 million active sellers in the previous quarter. So, while the company had 1.5 million active sellers for the past two quarters, it looks like there’s been a slight uptick in that. The company went from 22.6 million active buyers to 24 million quarter-over-quarter, and in the second quarter the company had 21.7 million active buyers. It’s also a strong finish amid the fresh 2015 IPOs, which was . Even with the strong showing, Etsy is still trading well below its IPO price — . The fourth quarter was an important one for Etsy — it had to show investors that it could post a strong holiday quarter and bring in new people who would buy gifts and other products on Etsy. It looks like investors were pleased by its ability to beat on revenue and bring in some new buyers and sellers. It also had to show that it could continue to bring those buyers and sellers in through despite its brand as an artisanal marketplace that is quite different from others like eBay. Etsy is also continuing to navigate a shift to more mobile sales, with mobile visits accounting for 61% of the company’s overall visits, and 44% of gross merchandise sales coming from mobile devices. This is all pretty good news for the company. In general, Etsy has not had a good year. Shortly after its IPO the stock hit around $30, but has since cratered to under $8. Today, obviously, didn’t help. To be sure, a lot of companies haven’t been having a good year due to a few things outside their control — like global economic issues and foreign exchange problems — but Etsy in particular is getting hit hard by investors. [graphiq id=”gbQAINX8T89″ title=”Etsy Inc. (ETSY) Stock Price” width=”600″ height=”619″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/gbQAINX8T89″ link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/16266642/Etsy-Inc-in-Brooklyn-NY” link_text=”Etsy Inc. (ETSY) Stock Price | FindTheCompany”] Now the question is whether Etsy can continue this momentum. The first quarter is generally a weaker one for companies like Etsy following a holiday shopping hangover. Etsy actually provided a 3-year outlook for the company, which had GMS growth between 13% and 17%, and revenue growth continuing at 20% to 25%. All this, of course, is dependent on whether the company can still continue to convince new sellers and buyers to not only join Etsy, but continue coming back for the company’s unique goods that aren’t necessarily gifts or novelty items. We’ll have to see how that continues to evolve as juggernauts like Amazon are expanding and potentially offering better avenues for sales. Etsy is going to have to try to continue to pull in new sellers and buyers on the strength of its brand and overall marketplace.
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Pocket Wants You To Read Ads Later Too
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Josh Constine
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s="dropcap">People love . Its 22 million registered users have saved over 2 billion articles. But there comes a time in every startup’s life when it must ween itself off venture capital and become a sustainable business. Today, after 9 years without ads, with sponsored content in its Recommended feed. But these aren’t the crappy click-bait you see below lots of blog posts. “We’re being very choosy” Pocket founder Nate Weiner tells me. “We don’t want this to become the bottom of the barrel content.” If Pocket can convince users that these articles would be worthy of appearing in its app even if it wasn’t sponsored, it could become the home for the future of content marketing. That should allow Pocket to stay free and independent. Pocket has always remained true to its founding principle of simplicity. Its app focuses on the list of articles you’ve saved from its browser and mobile OS extensions, integrations in services such as Twitter and Flipboard, and pasted links. You can cache these for offline viewing like on airplanes and consume the posts in a clean, stripped-down reader view. Weiner originally built Pocket in 2007 as a pet project. He was constantly emailing himself articles about becoming a better web developer, but then losing or forgetting to read them. When Lifehacker featured his “Read It Later” Firefox extension, it blew up. Soon Weiner was “spending 40 hours a week at my job, and 40 weeks at home working on all these ideas. Read it Later was like idea 37 out of 100.” The iPhone’s launch suddenly meant people were reading clumsy desktop websites on mobile, and Pocket’s reader view was their savior. Finally in 2011, Weiner got serious, raised a $2.5 million seed from Foundation Capital and built out a team. It’s since raised another $12 million. Meanwhile, users sewed Pocket into their lives, with 50% of content saved eventually getting read. Pocket stayed free, but eventually launched the $5 per month Pocket Premium tier with a few extra features like special fonts and a dark mode for night reading. But Pocket Premium was actually designed not for monetization but for distribution. Pocket was negotiating pre-installations with phone makers, and wanted to offer something as a gift to sweeten the deal. So it set up Premium and let phone makers give their customers six months of it free. Pocket Premium now has 170,000 subscribers. Pocket always planned to monetize with ads, but wanted to wait until it could show them in a way that didn’t suck. It started selling sponsorships in its email newsletter, and brands ate it up People were so used to having faith in what Pocket said was trending that they clicked the sponsor boxes too. Now Weiner says these emails bring in as much revenue as Premium. To make the big bucks, though, Pocket would need ads in its app. Thankfully, the death of the banner ad has inspired brands to get good at content marketing. No one wants a hard sell any more. Businesses know they’re better off informing or entertaining potential customers than shoving products down their throat. So they began commissioning How-Tos, punchy videos, long-form thought pieces, and high-design advertorials. Intel turned this content marketing blog post into one of the first Pocket ads The problem is that there are few high quality places to continuously promote this content marketing. That’s because every content app’s feeds move so fast. “On Twitter, great content is there for 10 minutes and it’s gone. On blog home pages, it’s there a few hours and it’s gone” Weiner explains. “But we see no reason why great content can’t live on for days.” Popular articles can see steady traffic for over a month on Pocket. Late last year, the startup launched a second tab in its app for recommendations. After reading an article you saved, you could easily recommend it so it appears in the feed to your friends. But this algorithmically sorted feed also creates a space where it can insert its new sponsored content ads. First up will be marketing blog posts from Slack and , “Student Solar Car Team Shows The Future Is Powered By Sunshine”. On the surface, it’s just an interesting solar car racing story full of photos, graphics, and videos. But the subtle message is that Intel’s server helps the team crunch its data, and Intel could help your business too. Simply sticking this well-produced content on Intel’s little-known corporate blog IQ or letting it get lost in feeds would have been a waste for the company. Trying to force people to read it with ads on websites could feel annoying. But buying sponsored content space in Pocket puts it where people are already in the mood to read high-quality articles. The ads will be sold on a CPM basis for roughly $50 for 1000 impressions. It will be up to the businesses to make content appealing enough that people click, though Pocket will help them craft the optimal headlines or tell them what content wouldn’t fit. “Someone’s Pocket is their content identity” Weiner says, so it has plenty of signals for targeting its ads What Pocket’s ads look like An added benefit is that these sponsored content posts can go viral inside the app. The Recommended feed already sees visits from 1/3 of Pocket’s users, an 8% to 20% click-through rate, and 10% of readers re-share the posts. People trust Pocket. If the startup can accomplish anywhere near those numbers on the sponsored content, it could have uncovered a gold mine. Weiner estimates Pocket’s 2016 revenue run rate could be north of $10 million. Plus, now it has a much better selling point for Pocket Premium since a subscription removes all the ads. Weiner jokes “Our biggest challenge with Premium so far has been that the free product is so damn good.” If you squint, you can see a bit of Netflix’s trajectory in Pocket. Weiner recalls how Netflix started as a place where you queued up DVDs to watch later. That helped it develop a world-leading content recommendation engine. Then Netflix used its insights into what people wanted to watch to create its own original content. Now Pocket is using its understanding of what people read to design and surface ads worth clicking. It’s also similar to BuzzFeed’s strategy. Show content people love to read so they’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and read its sponsored content too. “We have this really conclusive idea of all the articles on the web worth reading” as well as what each individual prefers, Weiner tells me. That means it’s uniquely suited to solve the information overload problem. There’s way too much great content being produced for anyone to read it all. The best we can do is stay glued to our Facebook and Twitter and other feeds. It’s exhausting. But since people save content to Pocket from everywhere, it can filter through everything, show you the best, and sometimes ask the publishers to pay. It make me wonder why Medium and Twitter aren’t dumping trucks of money on top of Mr. Nate Weiner to acquire pocket. An open read-it-later app would be the perfect companion to Medium, and Twitter desperately needs to learn how to algorithmically sort content. Cloning Pocket hasn’t seemed to work for Facebook. The company acquired Pocket competitor Spool, melted it down, and reforged it as Facebook Save. But that siloed product just for storing what you find in the News Feed doesn’t seem to have much traction. Hopefully, Weiner won’t sell. His app is at the intersection of fragmented content consumption, lean mobile apps, and sponsored content — some of the biggest trends in tech. seems like it has plenty of money-making potential up its sleeve.
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Spotify Announces Google Cloud Platform Partnership
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Jay Donovan
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Spotify on their news blog that they have selected as an infrastructure partner for their popular music streaming service. Up until now, it appears Spotify has been managing that hardware burden themselves via multiple providers and data centers (including Amazon Web Services for whom they were an ). However the music company feels the robustness of cloud platform products have now reached a level of maturity and they are comfortable outsourcing. Spotify claims it’s “a big deal” for them to work with a cloud leader like Google, but it’s also a big deal for Google that an industry leader in the streaming category would choose them. Certainly, Spotify could have chosen to expand service with AWS or even picked Microsoft’s Azure cloud offering to be at the foundation of their service. Instead they chose the Google team led by Diane Greene (who became head of Google’s enterprise cloud business when the Mountain View behemoth back in November). And while mostly giving Google a pat on the back with this announcement, I felt like it stopped just short of a resounding endorsement when Spotify noted that “ No doubt, there will be a lot fewer headaches in the infrastructure department at Spotify.
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Here’s What It’s Like To Set Up An On-Demand Geofilter On Snapchat
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Travis Bernard
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Yesterday . The new on-demand geofilters let anyone pay Snapchat to create and distribute a custom filter in a specific area for a set time. We wanted to see how quick and easy it was to launch a custom filter, so we decided to create one at TechCrunch HQ in San Francisco. Here’s what the process was like. Go and click “create now.” You will be prompted to log in using your Snapchat account. Once you are logged into the system, you’ll get the option to download a template or upload your design. If this is your first rodeo, you’ll want to download the templates. The templates look like this. After downloading and unzipping the file, you’ll be presented with a dozen Adobe Photoshop templates. Pick the one that suits your needs and start designing. Here’s what our talented designer Bryce came up with for TechCrunch. Save as a PNG and upload the file on Snapchat’s On Demand Geofilter page. You’ll get a mock up of what it will look like. Here’s ours. We decided to have our filter run for a month, but you can do it for a single day, or even just a few hours. After you pick the dates, you’ll be taken to a map where you pick the location of the geofence. Type in the address. Draw the fence. Get an estimate. One month for our office cost about $200. Checkout. You’ll immediately get an email telling you that your credit card has been charged. Within 5 minutes, our geofilter was approved. We submitted the filter yesterday around 2 pm PT, it was approved at 2:05 pm, and it launched today at 12:05 am. Pretty fast, right? Snapchat also sent another email at 12:05 am letting me know that the geofilter was live. Our filter is now live. Here’s what it looks like in action. You can also follow the TechCrunch (mobile only) to see how we use it over the next month. [gallery ids="1281904,1281907,1281906"] Easy, simple, and fast. From start to finish the whole process took about an hour. , but it’s not immediately available. You have to wait until the next day to get analytics, and they look something like this. We had 35 uses of our filter within the first 24 hours, and the filter was seen by over 2,4000 users. Not bad. Snapchat appears to have a real winner here, and I’m sure you’ll see the new custom on-demand geofilters in action at your next wedding, festival, or party. We might even see some friends trolling one another.
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CloudFlare’s New Domain Registry Protects Site Owners From Domain Hijacking
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Frederic Lardinois
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, the security-focused content delivery network, already protects its customers from DDoS attacks and other attacks, but today, the company is taking another step to ensure its customers remain in control of their sites. CloudFlare is launching a domain registry service — CloudFlare Registrar — that protects high-profile sites from domain hijackings and domain expiration (because they forgot to renew their domains). This service will be available to CloudFlare’s paying customers. As CloudFlare argues, a domain name is only as secure as the security of the registrar that maintains it. Most registrars focus on consumers, though, and not high-profile sites — and hence their focus isn’t necessarily on security or their standards aren’t as high as you would expect from an enterprise-centric site. “By offering registrar services to CloudFlare Enterprise customers, we instantly eliminate the additional risk a third-party registrar may overlook,” said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of CloudFlare, in today’s announcement. “Even in CloudFlare’s own search for a high-security registrar, we didn’t find anything that met our security standard. Rather than waiting for one to come onto the market, we built our own, fundamentally changing the way Registrar security is offered today.” As CloudFlare also notes, domain hijacks aren’t just a problem for high-profile sites, but also for API providers. “While domain hijacks have historically been outright web defacements or theft, an attacker can also choose be more subtle and proxy traffic to the original server, observing every user and tampering with any target,” the company says. “This is a particular risk for API providers (such as mobile application or IoT backends), where the hijacking of a domain can remain undetected while being exploited to compromise many applications.” So how does CloudFlare secure domain names? Instead of using a single password for access to the registrar, CloudFlare Registrar users can opt to secure their domains by setting up a formal approval chain that includes multiple stakeholders who all have to agree to any change. That adds a lot of friction, but in this case, that’s probably exactly what you’d want. In addition, CloudFlare also uses two-factor authentication for accessing all accounts. The company also promises that domains registered with CloudFlare Register will never expire. Domains will automatically renew a full year before they are scheduled to expire. This mitigates the risk of missing an email your registrar sent you a month before the domain expires. In addition, CloudFlare also locks all domains to prevent unauthorized access.
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Fitbit Remains The Worldwide Leader In Wearables, But Xiaomi Is Quickly Gaining
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Matt Burns
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Fitbit has long been the king of wearables and released today says James Park and Co. still wear the crown. But Xiaomi is quickly gaining power. A lot of power. Fitbit managed to ship 21 million devices in 2015, up 93.2% over 2014’s amount of 10.9 million units. That said, even by shipping nearly twice as many units, Fitbit still lost marketshare. Over the same time period were Fitbit grew almost a 100%, Xiaomi managed to exploded by nearly 1,000%. In 2015 Xiaomi shipped 12 million wearable units, according to IDC. That earned the company a 15.4% marketshare, second only to Fitbit with Apple, Garmin and Samsung trailing behind them. The previous year, in 2014, Xiaomi only shipped 1.1 million units and had just 4% of the worldwide marketshare. Fitbit knows its time at the top is numbered. Fitbit’s market dominance has eroded since its launch. The company once held nearly three quarters of the wearables market, but as more devices flooded the market, that slipped away. Just yesterday Fitbit released its saying the company had a banner holiday year, but is wary about the future. This forward looking statement caused Fitbit’s stock to nosedive and it’s now trading at an all-time low. Apple’s gains are nearly as impressive as Xiaomi’s. The Apple Watch hit the market in 2015 and yet the company still managed to gain 14.9% of the worldwide marketshare despite its average selling price being dramatically higher than that of a Fitbit device or Xiaomi band (Xiaomi’s wearables only cost $11 and $15). Samsung’s wearable sales are nearly flat, according to this report, with the consumer electronic giant selling 3.1 million in 2015 over 2.7 million in 2014. The coming year should see new wearables from most vendors. Fitbit just unveiled its 2016 offering in the form of Blaze fitness watch and Alta band. Apple is rumored to be announcing an updated Apple Watch and Samsung’s Gear S2 is looking rather dated next to some from other firms like Motorola. Yet Xiaomi is the big unknown. It clearly has a good thing with its ultra-affordable bands, which it will likely continue selling. But will the Chinese giant release an equally affordable smartwatch that’s cheaper than Blaze and better looking than the Gear S2? Fitbit and Samsung probably hope not.
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With 12 Other Active Cases, The FBI Can’t Claim That It’s Just About One iPhone
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Romain Dillet
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the Department of Justice have used a strong narrative to defend their case in the dispute between the FBI and Apple. The FBI wants Apple to unlock an iPhone 5c belonging to one of the terrorists involved in the San Bernardino shooting. According to the FBI, it’s just about one iPhone. And yet, that argument doesn’t have too much credence given that there are currently 12 other active cases involving iPhones and iPads running iOS 6 to iOS 9. A federal judge in New York has asked Apple to provide a list with other active cases involving password-protected devices. The list was unsealed on Tuesday. The difference between these cases and the San Bernardino one is that these 12 other cases were filed in private. Michael A. Scarcella, editor at The National Law Journal, . Here it is: Let’s look at what the Government has been saying for the past week. “The Order requires Apple to assist the FBI with respect to this single iPhone used by Farook by providing the FBI with the opportunity to determine the passcode,” the Department of Justice . While technically true, the Government has used this narrative that “it’s just a phone” over and over again. During a media briefing, a White House representative emphasized the fact that this was . And yet, Apple has had these requests for a while as we can see in today’s list. The company objected to these All Writs Act orders in order to see if the Department of Justice would follow up with other arguments. According to , these cases are stalling because of the current public conflict between the FBI and Apple. In the San Bernardino, it’s worth noting that Apple initially asked the FBI to . But now it’s clear the FBI wanted to use this opportunity to make this a public debate to force Apple’s hand. The FBI and the Department of Justice have been trying to spin the story in their favor, leveraging a terrorist attack to make Apple comply with . Apple’s filing came with the following letter from an Apple lawyer: Dear Judge Orenstein: I write in response to this Court’s February 16, 2016 order (the “Order”) requesting that Apple provide certain additional details regarding other requests it has received during the pendency of this matter that are of a similar nature to the one at issue in the instant case. As recently as yesterday, Apple was served with an order by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. (See Exhibit A.) The government obtained that order on the basis of an ex parte application pursuant to the All Writs Act (see Exhibit B), regarding which Apple had no prior opportunity to be heard (despite having specifically requested from the government in advance the opportunity to do so). The attached order directs Apple to perform even more burdensome and involved engineering than that sought in the case currently before this Court— i.e., to create and load Apple-signed software onto the subject iPhone device to circumvent the security and anti-tampering features of the device in order to enable the government to hack the passcode to obtain access to the protected data contained therein. (See Exhibit A.) As invited by the California court’s order, Apple intends to promptly seek relief. But, as this recent case makes apparent, the issue remains quite pressing. In addition to the aforementioned order, Apple has received other All Writs Act orders during the pendency of this case, certain details of which are set forth in the table below. In particular, for each such request Apple provides the following categories of information requested in the Order: […] With respect to the other categories of information sought in the Order (specifically, categories 4-6), Apple responds that following its objection or other response to each request there has not been any final disposition thereof to Apple’s knowledge, and Apple has not agreed to perform any services on the devices to which those requests are directed.
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Romain Dillet
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Nova Powers Your Sales Leads With Artificially Intelligent Personalization
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Lucas Matney
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Sometimes generating leads is about finding connections wherever you can. “I went to school at X too!” “X is a great cause, my brother has done some work with them also.” And so on and so forth. The problem for salespeople is braving the firehose of information available online to find these connection points easily and quickly. YC-backed is an email analytics platform that also uses artificial intelligence to scrape through a contact’s online identity and generate a personalized introductory paragraph that salespeople can add to their pitches. The software, which integrates directly into a user’s inbox, tracks the rate of opens, clicks, replies and bounces for sales pitches. A key to boost those numbers, Nova CEO Will Dinkel tells me, is email personalization. You get started with the software by dumping a batch of email addresses in along with the text of your specific pitch. Nova follows up by delving into the contacts and pulling info from public online sources and social media accounts to look for areas of connection. It’s first-and-foremost an analytics platform so Dinkel tells me the platform will learn over time what approach works best with a salesperson’s specific set of customers, whether that’s highlighting connections related to education history, shared hobbies or recent public work. After the introductory couple of sentences is slapped onto the top of the email, the salesperson gets a preview and can edit the intro paragraph accordingly before letting Nova ship out a batch of messages. The idea that software for artificially relating to someone on a personal level exists is both alarming and kind of hilarious, but it’s ultimately a byproduct of how important creating swaths of connections is for salespeople. I must say I’m kind of dreading the day when I open my email and see an endless stream of messages from random people who seem to know a creepy amount about me, but hey, it’s the world we live in. The Nova platform is available to any company with a Gmail account. It integrates cleanly with a little button at the top of your inbox that lets you dive right into the analytics on your recent email blasts of formulaic friendly greetings.
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IBM Launches Quarks Open Source Development Tool To Build Efficient IoT Apps
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Ron Miller
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introduced a new open source development tool today called Quarks, which is supposed to help manufacturers and programmers develop efficient applications based on Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data. Quarks is actually based on the , a proprietary enterprise tool for processing large amounts of live data, but it’s been designed from the ground up to offer programmers and manufacturers an open source tool for building applications on top of connected devices. The idea is to provide a way for them to take advantage of live data coming off the devices in a simple, efficient way. For example, you could track the health of a diabetic using a wearable device or the well-being of an employee working in a mine or on an oil rig wearing a helmet fitted with sensors. Each of these scenarios and many more like them involve monitoring data at the sensor level, then accessing and communicating that data in real time to people (or other devices) who might need information immediately. For instance, when a sensor on a miner’s safety helmet signals an unsafe condition, they need to know about it instantly. There can’t be a lag while the device communicates to a larger enterprise database and compares it with other data. While these programs could facilitate rapid device to device or device to human communication, it doesn’t have to end there. They could also potentially communicate this information to the enterprise for a broader comparison of information across similar devices over time. In a medical device scenario, researchers could see how a group of people react to a treatment regimen over time, or the patient’s doctor could receive data on a regular basis to track a patient’s overall health. This could potentially even link to Watson Health, which could review the corpus of data on the medical condition being measured and offer feedback to the patient or doctor as appropriate about the proper course of treatment. For now, Quarks is just getting started, but IBM hopes to build a community of involved companies and programmers. The company’s goal is that over time this open source community will catch on and that this development tool becomes a standard way of building application for this type of IoT scenario. It’s worth noting that earlier this month, specifically because it was looking for an enterprise level Internet of Things solution in the cloud. This shows that IBM is clearly not alone among large technology companies in recognizing that finding ways to capture, store and process IoT data is going to be big business moving forward. IBM is releasing Quarks as part of a broader strategy to grab a piece of that business. Time will tell whether this particular open source tool will catch on or not, but it’s worth noting that IBM has submitted a proposal to the Apache Foundation for Quarks to be an incubation project as a way of pushing that along.
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Well-Funded Fundrise Fires CFO, Citing Extortion Attempt
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Connie Loizos
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It’s strange days for , a Washington, D.C.-based crowdfunding platform that allows a range of investors to fund commercial real estate projects. Earlier today, The Real Deal, an outlet that covers New York real estate news, an which states that Fundrise has fired its mortgage REIT’s chief financial officer and treasurer Michael McCord, citing an attempt by McCord to extort more than $1 million from the company. “Exhibit one” listed in the filing is a letter to Fundrise’s backers that reads: The letter was presumably authored by Fundrise cofounder and CEO Benjamin Miller, who, according to the same SEC filing, is taking on the role of interim CFO and treasurer in addition to his other responsibilities. Miller did not respond to requests for comment today. Miller’s brother, Daniel Miller, who cofounded Fundrise and formerly served as its president, wrote us on LinkedIn, saying he has “moved on to pursue other independent opportunities, which will be announced shortly. Since my departure in October 2015, I have not been involved in corporate governance or the day-to-day operations that may relate to this matter.” Several investors didn’t respond to requests for comment; another called the development “concerning,” and said his team would be “tracking it more closely.” Asked about the accusation, McCord told us tonight that the “current narrative” is “baseless and a pathetic deflection attempt from the real story by Fundrise.” He declined to comment further. Fundrise has so far raised $41 million from investors, including Renren, the China-based social networking company, and several real estate firms and individuals. Among them are executives from Silverstein Properties; Rising Realty Partners; and the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group. Other backers include former Under Armour executive Scott Plank; former Loopnet CEO Richard Boyle; and the Collaborative Fund. McCord joined Fundrise in 2014 after spending just less than three years as a senior associate with the auditing firm KPMG. The Miller brothers launched Fundrise in August 2012, shortly after the JOBS Act legalized crowdfunding, and they proceeded to connect accredited investors with commercial real estate projects needing funding. They weren’t alone. Numerous other startups that have sprung up around the same concept include , , and . (They’ve raised $45 million, $68 million, and $1.6 million from investors, respectively, according to CrunchBase.) Late last year, Fundrise also The Real Deal was less impressed, at Funrise’s characterization of its new eREIT as “the biggest technological innovation in the history of finance,” and saying the claim was one of many exaggerated assertions the company was using to drum up investor interest.
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Line Is Closing MixRadio, The Streaming Service It Bought From Microsoft
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Jon Russell
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Messaging app firm in December 2014 and now, just over a year later, it is closing the music streaming service after deeming that its business isn’t financially viable. Line has existing music services that are live in its home market of and , one of its largest markets where it has over 30 million users, so it’s fair to say the company is invested in the industry and aware of the possibilities and challenges of streaming. , which was first spotted by , the company explained the closure: After a careful assessment of the subsidiary’s overall performance, the financial challenges posed by the music streaming market, and priorities of LINE Corporation, LINE has determined that future growth would be difficult to ensure and decided to discontinue the MixRadio music streaming service. to prioritize Asia and other markets where it is popular over international ambitions. As part of that, it is developing new services — such as in Indonesia, and The acquisition of MixRadio came from a time when it was exploring global expansion opportunities, which is likely another explanation for this closure. MixRadio had been a worthy option for music lovers, and particularly those who are fans of Microsoft smartphones which were, for a long time, the only platform on which the service was available. The MixRadio app, which finally will close down over “the coming weeks,” Line explained. The company still owns the MixRadio assets and technology, so it could well be that they are repackaged into Line’s existing (and/or future) streaming services. “There is no change in our current strategy in which we strive to provide a variety of content such as games, music and videos on the Line platform,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch in an additional statement. It could have all been very different had Nokia, which owned MixRadio before , . That was one option under consideration back in 2014 before its sale to Line.
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IBM Launches New Mainframe With Focus On Security And Hybrid Cloud
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Frederic Lardinois
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Mainframes aren’t dead yet. is launching a new version of its mainframe for mid-sized enterprises today that introduces a number of new security features. With up to 4 TB of RAM, the z13s also supports 8x as much memory as IBM’s previous single-frame mainframes. IBM also says the z13s offers faster processing speeds than some of its previous mainframes in this price range, but the focus of the z13s is clearly on security. One feature that makes today’s mainframes different from standard servers is that they include numerous specialized processors for features like memory control, I/O, and cryptography. The z13s includes new cryptography hardware that can encrypt and decrypt data twice as fast as its predecessors for example. To speed up the z13s’ cryptography functions, the mainframe now features a faster cryptography co-processor card with more memory than IBM’s previous mid-range machines. “This means clients can process twice as many high-volume, cryptographically-protected transactions as before without compromising performance,” the company says. “This equates to processing twice as many online or mobile device purchases To ensure security, the z13s also supports IBM’s security analytics services and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to ensure only authorized users can gain access to the system. This marks the first time IBM has built MFA right into its . Like everybody else in the cloud and server business, IBM is also now focusing on hybrid deployments. It’s no surprise then that the company is positioning the z13s for this use case. Specifically, IBM’s security features are meant to enable a secure end-to-end hybrid cloud environment that integrates identity management, data protection and monitoring, as well as security analytics and threat monitoring. The company sadly doesn’t break out pricing for the z13s (or any of its mainframes, really), but the price for IBMs standard z13 mainframes can and it only goes up from there.
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Synology Brings Its First Router To The U.S.
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Frederic Lardinois
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isn’t exactly a household name in the U.S. yet, but the Taiwanese company is definitely trying to make more of a name for itself here. The company has long offered its various , but now it’s also bringing its first router (the RT1900ac) to the U.S. market. The Synology router is now available in the U.S. for a suggested retail price of $149.99. That puts it in line with other mid-range 802.11ac routers likes TP-LINK’s popular or the , which feature somewhat similar hardware specs. It’s also cheaper than Google’s current lineup of , which both clock in at over $199. For the longest time, routers weren’t all that interesting. Their hardware did what it was supposed to, but the software was often more than clunky. That has changed over the last few years and with OnHub, Google showed that it’s possible to make a piece of smartly designed hardware that was also easy to use and — for most people — probably resulted in a significant upgrade from their current router (and especially the built-in one in their cable modem). While Google tried to make using its routers as easy as possible by hiding a lot of the complexity, Synology also makes setting the router up extremely easy, but if you want to delve deeper, it doesn’t stop you from fiddling with any of the settings. Getting started with the router is simply a matter of plugging in the power and Ethernet cables, and setting up an admin account and password for your WiFi network on the device. That shouldn’t take more than a minute. After that, you’re online. You can easily create a guest network (either on a 5GHz or 2.4GHz network — or both — and with our without access to your local network), set up to focus your signal toward a certain device and manage bandwidth usage on a per-application basis. In addition, you can install new apps on the router that turn it into a VPN, DNS file and media server with an attached USB drive (there is also an SD card slot), for example. And if the blinking lights on the front of the router annoy you while you try to sleep, you can turn them on and off on a set schedule. All of this is done through Synology’s Router Manager (SRM), which is basically a interface. From there, you manage all of the router’s functions through a basic point-and-click interface. If you’ve used one of Synology’s NAS devices before (which also nicely integrate with the router), that interface will look very familiar. At the end of the day, chances are you just want your router to work. While it doesn’t offer the kind of nifty automatic channel switching that Google’s OnHub introduced, the router’s overall performance is pretty much on par with that from my TP-LINK OnHub. Transferring files between devices is fast, YouTube videos on my Xbox One play without delays and buffering, and all of my Wi-Fi connections have been rock solid. Add all of the extra features that Synology offers on top of that and you have yourself a very solid router.
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Chat App Company Tango, Valued At Over $1 Billion, Makes More Layoffs
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Jon Russell
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Messaging app Tango has made further layoffs as new CEO Eric Setton continues to orchestrate changes in a bid to transform the struggling company’s fortunes. Setton, who , — a back-to-basics messaging service and a social networking app — earlier this month. On Friday, that 20 percent of Tango’s team would exit the company as part of a “new phase” for the U.S. company, which was values at over $1 billion following led by Alibaba in March 2014. “Today we’re taking additional steps to set up Tango for long-term success by making the tough, but necessary decision to restructure the team. A recent review of our operations and finances made it clear to me that we need to align better our expenses with our revenue,” Setton said in a statement. This restructuring is in line with planned layoffs that , but with one change. Tango was initially planning to shutter its office in Beijing, China, but instead it made these latest reductions from its HQ in Mountain View, including staff working on its mobile games division. that 50 of Tango’s 250 staff will exit, but one source told TechCrunch that the number is actually 70 and there will be reductions from the China office, too, but not right now. “The layoffs today were in Mountain View. I don’t have anything to share about our other offices at this time,” Setton told TechCrunch when we asked whether the Beijing office would be closed. that Tango quietly let nearly 9 percent of its workforce go after it closed down its e-commerce service, which was barely six months earlier. Tango’s company culture — that was one factor that led to then CEO Uri Raz being replaced by Setton, alongside mismanagement and question marks around previous funding rounds — and there’s concern that these layoffs could trigger problems again. A long-time TechCrunch source inside Tango told us that, with Monday a national holiday, many of the staff affected by the layoffs took a long holiday and weren’t present in the office to hear the announcement first-hand. , Setton acknowledged that Tango needs to be “nimble” to take on its much larger rivals, and with the messaging industry now dominated by a handful of powerful players, he has his work cut out re-establishing Tango and its service, which enjoyed a meteoric rise when it burst on the scene as one of the first cross-platform video calling apps. Tango claims 350 million registered users, of which 48.5 million were active each month as of October 2015, . That’s compared to , , , , to name but a few competing apps. There’s also Apple’s iMessage and the humble SMS, which compete with all chat apps. that Tango still has half of the money from its Series D in the bank, so, with these new cost reductions, it seems like Tango isn’t about to go out of business any time soon. Setton and his team will no doubt be back to the drawing board for new ideas to spur a turnaround.
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The Savioke Robot Is Headed To A Hotel Near You
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John Biggs
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When I’m in a hotel room I like absolute privacy. After all, calling upon Baphomet and/or playing Firewatch takes absolute concentration and I don’t want humans intruding on my reverie. That’s why the folks at are building the Relay. The creators of the Relay all took part in the robotics incubator Willow Garage and their robot – an R2-D2-looking guy with a hole in his head – is now rolling around hotels delivering food and snacks to guests. Think of it as a droid delivery boy who doesn’t want a tip and can’t carry hot food, a limitation the team is quick to point out. “It’s not a question of job risk, but the particular task of room delivery is being taken away from humans,” said Cousins. “Relay doesn’t do room service. It’s not designed for hot food or stuff like that.” The founders of the project, Steve Cousins, Tessa Lau, Adrian Canoso, and Izumi Yaskawa wanted to create a robot that would actually do something useful for normal human beings. “The Relay fleet made over 11,000 guest deliveries in 2015,” said Cousins. “Those deliveries added up to more than 3,000 kms, or more than 70 marathons.” “The most common item delivered was toothpaste,” he said. The robots also deliver coffee to guests from the lobby Starbucks at the Marriott Los Angeles LAX.
The Relay was born when the team was working at Willow Garage to figure out how robots could help humans. Robots like the Relay work best in “semi-structured” spaces that rarely change. The costs of building a smart robot went down thanks to the open source Robot Operating System and, in short, it got much easier to build a helper bot without breaking the bank. The team is rolling out the robots to various hotels around the world now and they intend to eventually create an army of helper bots that will deliver toothpaste and coffee to sleepy people in millions of hotel rooms. Then, when telepresence robots begin staying in hotels, we can imagine a Relay delivering items to a Relay, thereby creating infinite loop that will destroy the fabric of space, time, and society.
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Palantir Acquires Kimono Labs For Its Web-Scraping Service
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Frederic Lardinois
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, a Y Combinator-backed that helps developers without having to write their own scrapers, has been acquired by . The company made the announcement on its website today, and Kimono co-founder confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch. Neither Palantir nor Kimono disclosed any financial details of the transaction, but Kimono previously raised about $5 million in 2014. Kimono Labs says it currently has 125,000 developers on its platform (though it’s unclear if these are active users or simply total sign-ups). They will only have two weeks to migrate to a different service because the team will shut down the Kimono service on February 29, 2016. “Because of our new roles at Palantir, it will not be possible for us to continue providing the publicly available cloud hosted kimono product,” the team explains. I asked Ranade for more details about why the team decided on shutting the service down on such a short notice, but he declined to comment (“We care deeply about our users, but unfortunately I’m not at liberty to discuss the details.”) Kimono will still offer users access to a of the service for OS X and Windows, though. The company says that this pretty much offers as the hosted version and that it will integrate the desktop app with Firebase to offer cloud-hosted API endpoints. Users of the desktop version have until March 31 to import their APIs from the service’s hosted service. With Scrapy, Feedity and others, there are already a couple of alternative frameworks and services on the market. Palantir often shuts down the companies it acquires, so today’s move doesn’t come as a surprise, but this is obviously for developers who integrated Kimono’s services into their applications.
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For $499, You Can Buy Your Kids A Little Tesla Model S From Radio Flyer
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Frederic Lardinois
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and — yep, the company best known for the little red that parents all over the U.S. use to drag their kids around their neighborhoods — are about to launch a little electric Model S for kids.
The $499 Model S for Kids is now and is scheduled to ship in May. Like any good Tesla, the Model S for Kids is obviously powered by batteries. The standard model comes with a 140 Wh lithium-ion battery pack and if you want to splurge, you can also pay an extra $50 for a 190 Wh battery pack that promises “50 percent more playtime.” The maximum speed is set to 6 mph, but parents can limit it to 3 mph, too. Radio Flyer promises the Model S will have working headlights, a sound system and a “spacious interior” (assuming you are between 3-8 and weigh under 81 lb). It wouldn’t be a Tesla if you didn’t have a few options to personalize the car, too. Your choice of colors includes “Midnight Silver Metallic,” “Deep Blue Metallic,” and “Red Multi-Coat,” for example. You can upgrade to “Silver Turbine Wheels” for an extra $15, too. Radio Flyer is also selling $15 Tesla-branded license plates and a $25 parking sign, as well as a $50 indoor . Add all of that together and you quickly end up paying about $800.
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Astonishment, Expectations And Reality In User Experience
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Benjamin Brandall
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After my recent article about , I was lucky enough to get an interview request from , a (UX) designer with serious credentials including TEDx, Apple and Google. During the interview, I went into terrified rambling mode. Holly is putting together a kind of primer for those involved in UX design called . The idea of the project is to clearly define UX, which she says is such a young field it’s wide open to interpretation. I’m not often put on the spot and asked in real-time what I think. After all, I’m a writer. I spend hours formulating my points and even longer subconsciously developing an idea. Anyway, inevitably I was asked what compelling UX is. “Compelling UX is designed in a way that does not cause a disconnect between expectation and I said. How pretentious, I thought. Now I’m alone and thinking straight, let me try to clear it up in writing. Have you ever come across an app that seemed ideal? The copy on the landing page is crystal clear and promises to fix your problems in the exact way you’d like. The screenshots show a simple and powerful UI, with intuitive navigation and a clear connection between trigger and action. A minute later, you’re signing up for a free trial of the pro plan and soon you’re inside the app. “Bloody hell. I thought it’d be decent but it’s terrible. Right, well. Off to their competitors.” I’ve certainly done that before. I bet you have, too. That’s because the environment of a landing page is perfect for sucking you in, drawing you further down the page and exciting you before hitting you with a call-to-action. The format is good for getting new users. It’s not good for honesty, or setting users up to stick around for long. This article is about the disconnect between expectation and , and how a misalignment between your design, writing and development can ruin everyone’s hard work. are created by: The is: I’ll look at the ways you may be misleading your users and increasing the likelihood that they will before giving your app a chance. In the next part of the article, I’m going to look at the reasons why this disconnect causes so many problems, and what you can do to fix it. After I got off the phone with Holly, I started looking around for the real term for what I’d been talking about. As it turns out, there’s a theory known as (POLA). Much of the material I found about POLA was from years back, some as old as 1999. It’s crazy to think that this topic hasn’t been addressed in the open for that long, especially when it still applies today. What it means is that design should behave in the way the expects it to behave. For example, you wouldn’t expect to have to use your finger to draw numbers into a calculator or for a blue underlined piece of text to be anything other than a hyperlink, so it’s better to be traditional than to . An interesting way of reframing UX is to think about it as a journey starting from before the ever gets inside the app. That makes marketing a big part of it and puts the responsibility on designers, developers and writers in equal measure. Because if the designers, developers and writers aren’t aligned in their vision, there will be somewhere down the line — and not the good kind. Once users are in your app, they are in a self-contained environment which is much more controllable. Now the issue isn’t their external as much as it is their interactions. As wrote for IBM : “Navigating pages is all about identifying the objects that have functions, figuring out what those functions are, and then hitting the button as hard and as often as you can in the hope that it’ll do something.” Even 15 years later, and in apps instead of web pages, this statement makes sense and doesn’t feel dated. Designers still face the same challenges as they did when there wasn’t much variation to astonish users with — to quickly communicate the “where” and “what” of a UI. Since the brain loves familiarity (until it gets outright sick of it), connecting UI elements to universal actions is a solid way to quickly . Unfortunately, you don’t always have control over what kind of influences your will bring with them. Maybe a calculator that only accepts input from you drawing on the screen seems like a great idea to you, but because this madness isn’t common practice, the has from the outset that aren’t in your control. As says in his 1999 essay : “People don’t like to learn things. If they take the time to learn something, they expect to be able to apply that knowledge in many places. It follows that good designers conserve the number of things users need to learn to get stuff done.” An example of this in practice from my own : After buying a smartphone recently for the first time ever (don’t laugh), I was excited to install . It was the only mobile mail app I’d ever used, and since it needs activation on mobile first, I switched from Gmail to Inbox on desktop and mobile. Because I was used to the swiping right and left to process emails in Inbox, when I decided to try out Gmail for iOS, it seemed ridiculous to me. In Inbox, swiping archives an email or a group of emails, whereas in Gmail it only brings up archive. This might not have been a problem if I weren’t already used to Inbox, but Gmail feels clunky and counterintuitive because of that. Consider, from a UX perspective, which competing apps your users could be switching from. Are gestures in those apps smoother, with fewer steps and less friction to get the same job done? Now we’ve worked out the nature of the problem, let’s look at some ways to fix it. There are two main factors to the marketing material surrounding your software that will influence users before they interact with the app itself: copywriting and visuals. “When copywriting isn’t paid proper attention, products can fall into the trap of being all style and no substance,” says Art over at . I’ve worked on projects in the past I didn’t care about, and when you’re tasked with something like that, it’s just easier to oversell it and not bother about the of the product. After all, if you’re not convinced yourself, you won’t convince others so easily. While copywriting, , is “often used to persuade a person or group,” from a UX perspective it should first focus on pure honesty. After all, if we’re going by the POLA, if it’s your copy, your landing page and your “social proof” that’s astonishing, your app can only be disappointing. That means you might get more sign-ups but your drop-off will be bigger. Going back to the hilarious idea of a landing page for Microsoft Notepad, if that’s the first thing an unwitting future Notepad sees, they’d be in for a terrible shock. What’s the most common first point of contact for your users? For most companies, it’s their landing page, so that’s where the demystification should take place. Even if there are false representations in other places such as social media, with an honest landing page you can prove the rumors untrue in a snap, for better or for worse. When a finds out you exist, you’ve got to consider what impression you’re giving them. Even a modern, website for a dated app can make the difference between creating the wrong . Another example from my own : I have been using a markdown text editor, iA Writer, on my phone. In my quest to , I was seeing if I could find a Windows alternative to it and saw on : “Is there a good, minimalistic, markdown-enabled writing application for Windows? I use a Windows PC, and envy certain Mac apps, such as iA Writer and Byword. Are there any alternatives for Windows? I especially like the instant Markdown support and focus features of these apps.” The first answer had suggested . I expected that it will look like iA Writer, but I saw that it looked like this: Who’s fault is this? Not the developer’s — just my own (and partially Microsoft’s). Even though the developer has me prepared for how MarkdownPad will look by hiding nothing on the landing page, I’d foolishly expected things to be different. (After coming to terms with the fact that it’s just how Windows apps look, I went back and downloaded it anyway.) You can’t control every expectation a might have, and, as we’ve seen, there are some ways to stop damaging . With this said, could the POLA be dangerous for progression? The idea that design shouldn’t astonish is controversial. After all, it’s an art form and a kind of communication, and if you were to have told Marcel Duchamp not to sign a urinal because it will astonish, he would have told you to fuck off. With that said, it’s useful to take a look back at Scott Berkun’s essay on foolish consistency which defends the need for a change sometimes — something I’d agree with because otherwise we’d still be on the command line or cutting magnetic tape to edit videos. He says that in rare cases, going along with the POLA is pointless conformity. For similar, yet functionally different UIs, stretching them to feel the same for the sake of consistency would be ridiculous. Berkun gives the example of the UI of Pac-Man and of a driving game, which both games but need to be operated in different ways. Even though an abandoned WordPress blog is truly one of the saddest things I can think of, the great thing about researching these fringe topics is coming across blogs you never knew existed. It was on an abandoned blog I found this nugget of a quote from : “We name him/her the because we think he/she “Uses” our software. And just build the system the way we think it’s nice. The should just accept that. We don’t like to ask him or her because that only might introduce “complaints” and “delay” to our work … bury the word , because it’s not users we want to interface with, but Humans!” The fact is that humans open themselves up to “pain” and “discomfort” (if you can say that about using software). We don’t care that and are determined to be disappointed by pretty much anything. It seems strange to say that you shouldn’t surprise your users, but design has more in common with communication and facilitation than a signed urinal.
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Combatant Gentlemen, A Runaway Startup Hit For Men’s Clothing, Launches App
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Jonathan Shieber
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, of a new generation of startup consumer clothing brands, has . The men’s clothing e-tailer and content creator has been a favorite of millennial men who’re looking to upgrade their wardrobe beyond , and , and now those fellas have yet another way to buy the company’s traditionally inspired Italian wool suits (which start at $160). The new app, which features a Netflix-inspired recommendation algorithm, uses data to serve up specific looks for customers based on past purchases. The app also gives users the ability to curate entire outfits, with pieces suggested based on previous shopping behaviors and contextual information like the occasion, the color preferences, and a location-based weather forecast. “For us, mobile isn’t only about selling product,” said Scott Raio, CTO and Co-Founder at Combat Gent in a statement. “We believe it is one of the most crucial ways to progress this company and technology altogether, and we wanted to leverage the knowledge of our design team with the data we already have from our current database to create a seamless native experience that provides the utmost value to our end customer.” When users download the app they’ll have access to special deals like free shipping, exclusive products and early access to new items, as well as geo-targeted news from the company. There’s also the outfit builder, and a tool that generates sizing recommendations based on height, weight, and pants size. In addition, the app is integrated with Apple Pay so users can check out faster. It’s yet another way that the company, which last year was generating $10 million in annual revenue, is separating men from their money. [gallery ids="1277444,1277445,1277446,1277447,1277448"]
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These Are Almost Certainly Samsung’s Next Galaxy Phones: Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge Leak All Over
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Greg Kumparak
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We’re about a week out from Mobile World Congress, the big trade show where just about everyone-but-Apple traditionally shows off their new flagship phones for the next year. More often than not, the biggest MWC announcements leak out a bit earlier than intended… and sure enough, it looks like Samsung’s stuff has leaked pretty exhaustively. Many of the leaks come by way of Evan Blass, or, as he’s perhaps better known, . His first photo dump came on Saturday, showing off what seems to be the S7 Edge (complete with the Edge serie’s signature wrap around screen) in silver, black and gold: Eye candy. — Evan Blass (@evleaks) Later that evening, he followed up with shots of the non-Edge S7, with its more standard display: Eye candy, pt. 2. — Evan Blass (@evleaks) And now, by way of a user on , we have what looks to be a glimpse (albeit a rather blurry one) at an actual, booting S7 Edge: If you’re saying “Hey, that… looks just like the existing S6,” you’re not wrong — on its face, the S6 and S7 seem to look pretty darn similar. If rumors are to be believed, though, the S7 should bring plenty of new stuff under the hood: a 3D Touch-esque , a USB C port, and the rumored return of the sorely missed microSD slot (which Samsung dropped in the S6/S6 Edge to the dismay of many)
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Multicast, Big Phones And The Appification Of The Web And TV
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Simon Khalaf
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Last year was another groundbreaking period of the mobile revolution. Overall app usage grew by 58 percent, driven largely by personalization, media and productivity apps. What’s interesting is the majority of this growth came from existing users, providing that mobile addicts — users that launch apps more than 60 times a day — are here to stay. With America in the full throes of app addiction, we’ll see some interesting trends take hold in the year ahead. Below are five mobile trends to watch in 2016. Research shows that hours spent watching traditional television per month has declined significantly, especially for those ages 18-24 (-46 hours) and 25-34 (-42 hours). Not to mention, media consumption in apps grew 108 percent from Q2 of 2014 to Q2 of 2015. It’s no surprise then that we’re already seeing an appification on TV, with services like Roku and Apple TV consolidating digital video apps into a single platform for easy viewing. But as media consumption in apps continues to accelerate, we’ll also begin to see this transformation on the web. Apps will replace browsers, and desktop destinations will begin to emulate app experiences to make it easier for consumers to access the content and services most important to them. We’re already seeing this on websites like LinkedIn, that now offer more personalized, social-centric experiences that mimic a user’s behavior within apps. Small-screen smartphones are giving way to larger form factors. Global time spent in apps on phablets versus all other devices was almost 3 to 1 in 2015, and over 50 percent of 2015 Android holiday activations were phablets. This is due to the fact that now more than ever, consumers are turning to their phones to consume content, and they want it on bigger screens. That’s why phablets have become the most popular form factor for media consumption. In 2015, we saw significant YOY growth rates for news and magazine (5.34x), sports (5.16x) and entertainment apps (4.19x) on phablets versus all other mobile devices. As a result, small smartphones are quickly becoming endangered and are on their way to extinction, while phablets are rising to become the dominant form factor. With the on-demand nature of mobile and TV, primetime has become a thing of the past. More and more, users are turning to their phones and tablets to view content where and when they want it. And with 90 percent of time on mobile being spent in apps, and more time now spent in apps than watching TV, content has taken on a new meaning. Through apps, users now have the ability to create rich content that is shareable and discoverable within social communities across screens, and that’s what’s capturing consumer eyeballs. The mobile industry is headed in a direction where content and communities collide, and as a result, new methods of consuming and distributing content through apps will emerge. Proliferation among messaging and chat platforms is nothing new. According to our research, social and messaging apps increased by 50 percent from Q2 of 2014 to Q2 of 2015. This comes as no surprise when we look at the rise in mobile addicts in 2015. As messaging and chat grow to become the dominant form of communication, we’ll begin to see a shift in customer service models. We’re already seeing this trend unfold on e-commerce websites, where consumers can chat with a customer service representative any time of the day. This year will see a decline in call centers and an upsurge in messaging and chat centers. AI concierge services will begin to emerge, giving way to more sophisticated and automated customer service platforms. The on-demand economy is here to stay. Companies like Uber, Minibar, Instacart, Postmates, Thumbtack and Amazon saw massive success in 2015, offering users the luxury of convenience for everyday chores and activities at affordable prices. This accelerated growth rate of new on-demand services will ultimately lead to a Battle Royale to fulfill the local logistics of these apps. How and who is fulfilling the on-demand app services? Companies must work increasingly hard to stand out in the crowd and retain their talent to continue serving this high-demand market. As mobile continues to dominate our lives and the way in which we engage on our tablets and smartphones becomes increasingly social, there will be several pivotal shifts in the way we consume content and interact with others. To stay ahead in this ever-changing ecosystem, it’s imperative for app companies and service providers to keep these trends in mind when planning the future of their business.
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John Biggs
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Arielle Zuckerberg On Her First Six Months In VC At KPCB
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Harry Stebbings
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Following reporting on Arielle Zuckerberg’s entrance into the world of venture with , we thought it would be fascinating to check in with her to see how her first 6 months in venture has been. In what turned out to be a refreshingly honest interview we discussed the hardest elements of the transition in venture; what skills Arielle successfully took from her angel investing and product management background to KPCB; how she evaluates product and her learning process for developing new skills. Our wide-ranging discussion also touched on how Zuckerberg believes AI will be embedded into all products; what makes a great founder; and how individuals wishing to enter the venture industry can position themselves well. She even chatted about her infamous acapella moon walk at KPCB’s morning meeting!
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The Serious Business Of Play
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Doug Renert
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“The next big thing will start out looking like a toy.” At least according to A16Z partner Chris Dixon. He the phrase to explain why incumbents often confuse new, disruptive threats to their businesses with trivial gimmicks. But what if the next big thing doesn’t just look like a toy, but actually is one? Last year was the first year where consumers showed sustained interest in connected toys outside of just the holiday season. We’re witnessing a sea change in demand for toy connectivity — what once was a cool novelty is now a fundamental feature of play. This development is allowing tech startups to infiltrate the $90 billion toy industry. Over the past several months, Tandem has dived headfirst into the space, analyzing its key segments and examining where to expect the largest future opportunity for disruptive growth. Here are our learnings. At a high level, the demand for connectivity in toys has led to an almost predictable swell of well-funded startups emerging to challenge toy incumbents. These startups see a chance to topple even the largest incumbent, using their digital prowess to create better connected-toy experiences than slower corporate giants. And VCs apparently agree. In the past five years, investors have poured over $300 million into connected toy startups, with more than one-third of that money coming in 2015 alone. Three segments stand out, receiving the majority of startup and investor interest: Smartphone-controlled robots have raised nearly $200 million in funding to date, by far the most of any connected toy segment. The group includes two of the best-known connected toy startups: , which has raised $118 million from firms like Andreessen Horowitz, and , which recently designed the new for the upcoming film. True to Dixon’s assessment, the ‘toy’ moniker here hides some serious technological innovation — both incorporate impressive AI. Anki’s racecars are able to learn novel, custom-built tracks while also remaining constantly aware of other cars and adjusting their trajectory accordingly. Sphero’s robots, on the other hand, understand their location in three-dimensional space and can react to voice commands. This impressive underlying technology could even position Anki, Sphero, and others as the next Roomba or Dyson. But in terms of early-stage opportunities, there aren’t many left to snatch up. The two leaders already have a five-year head start, in addition to plenty of capital, highly competent executives, and enough stellar partnership deals to make lean-funded competition unlikely to be effective at this point. If you’re on the hunt for the next big seed-stage opportunity in connected toys, look elsewhere. So far, programmable educational toys have received $89 million in funding since 2011. However, almost all this amount went to just two companies. has raised $77 million to sell boxes full of “gizmos” and “gadgets” that inspire kids to build remote-controlled toys or connect household appliances to the Internet. has raised $7 million and develops Cubelets, interchangeable blocks that connect in various ways to build unique machines. So far however, a sustainable market for educational toy products has proven elusive. There’s a well-known problem with edtech across the board — signups and purchases are high up front, but completion rates and repeat buyer stats are more sobering. In the educational toy space specifically, the engagement conundrum manifests itself in the friction between parents that want their kids to learn and kids that just want to have fun. Delivering on both fronts simultaneously has proven to be the white stag of the space: either an educational toy is didactic enough for the parent but too boring for the child, or fun enough for the child but not educational enough for the parent. On its surface, toys-to-life seems the least attractive of the three main connected toy segments. It has received much less funding than robotic toys and educational toys, while also experiencing more investment volatility. Toys-to-life has raised a total of only $17 million across 11 companies, and 53 percent of this funding came all the way back in 2010. Looking at the chart above, it is clear that venture investors have been slow to back toys-to-life. Large incumbents like Activision, Disney, and Nintendo (“the big three”) all already have skin in the game, launching very successful products in 2011, 2013 and 2014, respectively, and command close to 100 percent of the market. Accordingly, there is a common belief in Silicon Valley that the toys-to-life ship has sailed, so to speak. But we take a more contrarian view. In our view, toys-to-life will produce the first, new billion-dollar revenue company in the connected toy category. And the big three should be thanked for proving out the market. Their toys-to-life products generated in revenues in 2015, and the overall market is expected to treble to an approximate by 2018 — or ~11% of each of the total toys and games markets. Loyalty in the space is astounding: a of toys-to-life customers will purchase additional games or figurines within a year. Our own data shows that a toys-to-life product sees 8x the LTV of a typical game or toy alone, an increase from $50 to a whopping $400. Add the to start hardware companies, and the huge opportunity for connected toy startups becomes even clearer. Of course there will be challenges. Namely, how can startups effectively compete with the likes of Disney for toys-to-life market share? The most successful startups will get there by leveraging the following trends: With over smartphones and over tablets having been sold since 2008, mobile has outgrown traditional by nearly 4x. This incredible scale available only through mobile has even enticed the big three toys-to-life companies to design tablet versions of their games to accompany home console versions. Unfortunately for them, mobile has proved to be the Great Leveler, so to speak. App store siloes, near frictionless distribution, and falling software and hardware costs all working in startups’ favor. As in many industries, mobile will be a key lever for startups to bite off a chunk of the growing toys-to-life pie. The big three, especially Disney and Nintendo, are using toys-to-life to further expand their existing content franchises. This narrow focus on enhancing existing IP could lead them to ignore broader opportunities to incorporate other popular content into their offerings. Coupled with the rise of YouTube, Netflix and Amazon as user-generated or original content producers, startups have been gifted a number of potential heavy hitting partners from which to source popular content. Counterintuitively, startups could even end up with larger content portfolios than the big three. Videos tell stories. As such, they have become a key ingredient for startup brand building. But perhaps even more importantly here, storytelling through video invents and develops the rich worlds where toys-to-life characters live. If leveraged correctly, video can drive deeper and broader engagement with toys-to-life figurines and games, providing material for children to imagine their own storylines while extending the franchise with new content. Thankfully, YouTube and Facebook have helped democratize video distribution and access, lowering cost barriers to creators and viewers alike. You no longer need to make a feature-length, $12-a-ticket blockbuster to drive massive adoption and lasting engagement. This isn’t all talk, mind you. Taking full advantage of these trends, Tandem and NEA-backed has leveraged the hugely popular Indian epic the Ramayana for its toys-to-life mobile game targeting the global Indian market. It expects to do nearly in its first year. That kind of extraordinary out-of-the-gate performance quickly fortified our confidence in toys-to-life. To be clear, we fully expect the entire connected toys category to continue to expand in coming years. But toys-to-life will be the segment to provide the kind of huge returns early-stage VCs are looking for. In terms of competition, engagement, and longevity, it presents the most attractive opportunity and is the only segment capable of birthing full-fledged media franchises. Accordingly, when the first connected toy startup hits $1 billion in revenues, don’t be surprised to find it offers a captivating toys-to-life experience.
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Eight Lessons From The Hoverboard Craze
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Benjamin Joffe
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Who hasn’t seen someone ride one yet, or heard of their ? As active investors in hardware startups and at the forefront of the craze in Shenzhen where most of the world’s hoverboards are born, here is our take on the phenomenon. Hoverboard? Smart scooter? Self-balancing board? Mini-Segway? These devices boomed even before we could agree on a name. There are now a variety of electric personal mobility devices that are getting mixed up: – Hoverboard (e.g. )
– Segway-style (e.g. , now owned by )
– Segway-style with knee steering (e.g. )
– One-wheeled platform (e.g. )
– One-wheeled skateboard (e.g. )
– Electric skateboard (e.g. ) PS: If you are looking for real hoverboards, check and . The Lexus tends to require superconductors, a magnetic track, and liquid nitrogen and their products are not quite ready for consumers. But hey, they do hover for real! The bar to avoid commoditization is getting higher and higher. It is a strong warning sign for hardware startups. Due to this, over half of HAX investments in 2015 were in startups with significant IP in (e.g. with its quick custom-fit earphones. They raised over $2.5M on Kickstarter), (e.g. Simbe robotics with its retail inventory robot ), or (like CHIP, the which gathered 40,000 backers in a month on Kickstarter). and inventions is just as hard. The first known hoverboard device was called the “ ”. It was invented by Chinese-American Chen and sold via his company . Unfortunately, Chen acknowledges he is . His product inspired the “Chinese versions” with modified internals and much lower prices. Chen was inspired by the decade-old Segway, which itself built upon the research by Prof. Kazuo Yamafuji who . It took 30 years from the lab to consumers. Getting to market alone is not enough: you have to do it , and at a to prevent fast followers from beating you. The market is really taking off now because many components have dropped in price and you can now get a self-balancing thingy for $200-$300 instead of the $6,000 or so a Segway used to cost. To respond to this challenge with our own hardware startups, we launched a in San Francisco focused on global sales and distribution. No clear inventor and no enforceable patent could be found for the Shenzhen versions so far. As a result, they seem to be . This situation allows fast iterations by involving many different people and factories. The renowned pro maker calls this the “ “. Interestingly, this runs opposite to “Xiaomization” (the approach by smartphone giant Xiaomi of commoditizing some product categories by investing in a “winner” and offering it close to cost). This aggressive approach brings innovation to a crawl as instead of several players competing and generating profit to improve products further, only Xiaomi can stay in the game. There are now in Shenzhen. Factory owners need to be extremely reactive to trends as a matter of survival. They are able to modify their production lines on a dime to churn out new products. Hoverboards showed how fast, nimble and high-tech the Shenzhen supply chain is. Were the hoverboards factories making tablets or selfie sticks last year? What will be next year’s hot product? When TechCrunch editor Josh Constine tried his first hoverboard in January 2015, was category.” – that model was about $1,000. While this was already much cheaper than its Segway cousin, who at that time could say “it’s going to be huge”? Sometimes what you need for a hit is just a massive price drop. Interestingly, some key use cases had already been identified: . Despite the fires and blame game going on, we have to remember that factories tend to give you what you pay for: from Apple quality to the cheapest and most unreliable junk. Fire! Walk with me. Most problems come from low-quality batteries or damage inflicted to them. Importers and brands who bought faulty devices either were tricked, did not bother to check, directly asked factories to cut corners, or simply told factories to “do what they need to do to deliver”. Factories then resorted to using cheaper or even fake parts, and expedited testing. Yet, even the latter “plausible deniability” approach won’t protect brands from judges. Even with certified parts, the for the complete device also contributed to the situation. Let’s note however that electrical compliance (fires) is distinct from usage safety (whether you can fall, etc.). So far only Amazon announced a for hoverboards. Short term gains have been made by factories, importers and retailers. Due to the intense competition, it is likely factories had the lowest margins. As the dust is settling it is possible that many factories and some retailers will end up with unsold inventory due to consumer wariness, and finish their run with a loss as only the reliable brands keep selling. One winner though not yet firmly on US shores seems to be the company , the new owners of Segway. Their device has been performing well and their pursuit of quality has helped establish a solid reputation in China already. Time will tell which will become the hoverboard you are looking for! [slideshare id=57656348&doc=8lessonsfromhoverboards-160129173125] from
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Extra Early-Bird Prices For Disrupt NY 2016 Are Ending Soon
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Matt Burns
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Extra early-bird tickets to the show are available now through Friday, February 19, so if you want to save a few hundred bucks on tickets you’re already going to buy anyway, now is the time to act. Tickets cost $1,795 per person, a full $1,200 off the final ticket price and $200 off the normal early-bird pricing of $1,995 that takes effect next week. Plus, you’ll be able to chat with the dozens of companies on display in Startup Alley, and you get to attend all of the parties and after-parties to keep the conversation and networking going long into the night.
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Thousands Bought Kanye West’s New Album, But Never Received Their Download
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Sarah Perez
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Digital music service , thanks to scoring the exclusive rights to Kanye West’s new album, “The Life of Pablo” – but that release hasn’t exactly been going as planned. Twitter today is filled with complaints from consumers who claimed they paid for the album, but never received the download. TechCrunch staff has experienced the same problem, in fact. To catch you up, and was originally made available for streaming through TIDAL’s music service, as well as for download from the web through a link on Kanye West’s website. However, soon after launch, the artist tweeted that he decided not to sell his album for another week, and pulled down the download page. A link, , now redirects to kanyewest.com. According to those complaining to TIDAL, however, the company charged their credit cards for the album’s purchase, but they never received an email from TIDAL or a download link. In some cases, . In addition to double-billing for the album’s purchase itself (at $20 a pop), they were also double-billed a $1.00 fee which wasn’t explained, either. This appears to be a pre-authorization fee to ensure the credit card submitted is valid, but typically a company explains this in advance – not after the fact, as TIDAL is doing. (The will be reversed quickly, but that could take “up to a few weeks” to process) 1 hour later… Still no download link — Bigg P From 68th (@BiggPMusic) Tidal took folks $$ for the Kanye album but no download link? KSNAGAUSJSNHSB — Blk Mixed With Blk (@MysticHue) After waking up to no email download of I went back to bed. Now the purchase link for Tidal isn’t working either? — Mark Davis (@themizarkshow) please don’t release new music to buy not with tidal, no one receives the download link after paying — fscherer (@floryanscherer) The end result of the glitches users are experiencing is that some have now paid up to $42 for an album that has yet to arrive. Others, including TechCrunch editor Matthew Panzarino, report that they were charged only for the album itself, along with a couple of $1.00 (pre-auth) fees, without receiving a download. What’s worse is that TIDAL doesn’t seem to be responding to the flood of complaints hitting its Twitter, with account information and support ticket numbers – as if the situation were a one-off that needed to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I bought TLOP on and I never got the download link. I was charged the $42 on my card. Requested a ticket — mountaineer (@Trap_Meech) Other users seem to be ignored entirely by TIDAL’s Twitter – which, in all fairness, could be overwhelmed by the volume of requests. That said, given that many are experiencing the same problem, it’s time for the company to make a statement. Tidal is garbage, charged my credit card and still no link to download album — Yo!Hozay (@YoHozay) Still waiting for a response… — Emmet Purcell (@EmmetPurcell) In addition to the Twitter complaints, some who have entered formal support tickets say their requests are going unanswered, too. Conspiracy theorists this is all a bit of marketing buzz meant to generate headlines regarding the new album. That seems less likely. : TechCrunch has been informed by people familiar with the matter than “less than 4,000” consumers who purchased the album have not received their download. This group includes two factions – those whose credit card transactions processed, but went through around the time Kanye actually stopped fulfilling downloads. The other group’s transactions didn’t fully process due to Kanye’s website crashing, but they are seeing “pending” credit card charges on their bank statements. These charges will be automatically reversed, we’re told. Meanwhile, for those whose transactions actually did go through, TIDAL will be emailing them today with the option to wait a week for the album’s official release (which Kanye is controlling) or they can request a refund. To muddy the waters further, there’s also a third group of around 20,000 consumers who bought tickets to Madison Square Garden to see the Yeezy Season 3 premiere, or who bought tickets to see the show live in one of over 700 theaters around the world. Those consumers were also told at the time of purchase they would receive an album download. Now, they’re seeing the download has been released, and are complaining they don’t have it. In this case, TIDAL is not involved. Universal is handling those transactions, and Kanye has decided not to fulfill those orders until he can fix the album to his liking. Unfortunately for TIDAL, the situation is just one of what’s now many examples of serious concerns over its ability to operate a trustworthy music service. Even if the company was not involved with Kanye’s decision to pull downloads, his website’s crashing, and the subsequent fulfillment issues, its brand is associated with this release and its name is appearing on consumers’ bank statements, due to it serving as Kanye’s credit card processor for album downloads. The damage, as they say, is done. The company already accidentally leaked Rihanna’s album, attributing the problem to a “system error.” However, in that case, TIDAL , indicating the error was not on its side, but rather on Universal’s. That may or may not be true, but the company has had problems of its own as well, before this latest issue. For example, TIDAL’s live video stream of and concert also suffered numerous glitches. The live stream went down, seemingly unable to handle the load of viewers. Representatives for TIDAL have been asked for comment. We’ll update if one is provided. An email from TIDAL is now arriving in users’ inboxes. It reads as follows: Hello, Our records indicate you purchased Kanye West’s ‘THE LIFE OF PABLO’, and did not receive the album. A partial version of the album is available for streaming on TIDAL.com, but the download is currently not available. The final version of the album will be released in the next several days. Upon the new release, we will send you a download of ‘THE LIFE OF PABLO’ to this email address. However, if you would like a refund, please respond directly to this email and our customer support team will assist you. Thank you. TIDAL Support
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Infinite Sunset Is A Beautiful Instagram Hack For Sunsetholics
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Romain Dillet
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It’s true, I’m addicted to sunsets. At this point, my entire Instagram account is just . But it looks like I’m not the only one. is a neat little Instagram hack that pulls sunset pictures from Instagram to put together an ever-changing, infinite sunset. Behind the scene, and have built a tiny algorithm that searches for public Instagram photos with the #sunset hashtag. They keep the most relevant ones to display them in your browser. Every ten or fifteen seconds, you get a new picture with the city, timestamp and author. For instance, I saw a picture with two lines of text that say “Oslo, Norway, shot 4 minutes ago by @paweljjj.” It gives a sense of instantaneity and lets you travel around the world from your web browser. There’s one little button at the bottom of the page. And sure enough, it features the perfect quote from The Little Prince. “But on your tiny planet, my little prince, all you need to do is move your chair a few steps. You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like,” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote. Infinite Sunset isn’t a technical achievement. It isn’t even something you’re going to use every day. And yet, I’ve been mesmerized by this page for a few minutes now. It’s the kind of that . Sometimes, tech can convey feelings.
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Slaask Creates A Customer Contact Widget That Connects To Slaack
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John Biggs
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You like customers. You like Slack. You like talking on Slack. You like to talk to customers on Slack. You like sandwiches. How do you connect all of these things (except the sandwiches.) . Slaask, we can only assume, means Slack-as-a-service. It was created by Alexis Lewalle and “ex-professional horse rider” Remi Delhaye. They are gently funded by some East Coast angels although the product is quite new. They are seeing over 7,000 visitors per day. “We are making a new space. Our key differentiator is to make our service exclusively on Slack with Slack,” said Lewalle. The team began by using tools like Intercom and Zopim to communicate with their customers but realized that they would prefer to access customer chats within Slack simply because that’s where they were idling anyway. What are the key differentiators between you and other players? = Not so many “other players”. Slaask is free for now and the team is working on making the integration as simple as possible. I tried it on a website I was managing and found it just that – a single line of code adds some definitely interesting tools to your website and to Slack. Now if they could just do something about those sandwiches we’d all be in business.
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Earnings Review: Groupon Spikes, Pandora Mixed and Twitter’s Flat User Growth
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Matthew Lynley
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It’s over! (Nearly.) This week was the last set of big earnings reports, barring a few happening early March — Square and Box, to be exact. It was a wild week, to be sure. Groupon (surprise!) beat expectations, sending the stock soaring. Pandora was reportedly in buyout talks, and had a mixed quarter, giving the company a bouncy ride during the day. And then there’s Twitter. Of course, this was the big one: Twitter had a mixed quarter, but more importantly its user growth was completely flat. Even so, if you exclude SMS fast followers, Twitter’s user base was slightly down. Twitter’s had a wild couple of days, though it’s up about 11% today — because Twitter, of course. We sat down to talk a little bit about the earnings reports for the wild ride in one of the final weeks of this quarter’s earning season. It’s been a fun one, to be sure, and is setting us up for a really interesting Q2. See you all in March!
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Apple Music Tops 11 Million Subscribers; iCloud Reaches 782 Million
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Sarah Perez
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At the beginning of this year, Apple Music had , according to a report from the Financial Times. Now, Apple SVP Eddy Cue has confirmed this figure. In fact, he gave a more precise number – the company has just passed over 11 million subscribers, he says. This tidbit and more were revealed on John Gruber’s “The Talk Show” where Cue and SVP Craig Federighi joined to dish about features in upcoming OS releases, Apple’s intentions around its public beta, and more. The Apple Music subscriber count is especially interesting because of how quickly the service has been growing. Apple’s debut in the streaming music space launched last June, offering users free, three-month trials on iOS. The app then arrived on Android in November. Those who didn’t choose to cancel began paying the $9.99 per month fee to remain subscribed. Apple also recently closed off some of the features on its free tier in order to boost subscriptions. Specifically, it , and instead made Beats 1 radio the only free station for those who aren’t subscribers. To what extent that has impacted growth still remains to be seen, however. During the interview, the execs were dropping mini-scoops left and right. For example, the two revealed that Apple is working on . In fact, this will also allow multiple users to operate Apple TV at the same time – one on the Remote app, the other using the Apple TV remote. Other numbers surrounding Apple’s products and services were unveiled, as well. While , thanks to figures reported in Apple’s Q1 ’16 “Earnings Supplemental Material” documentation, there were a number of surprises, too. It was revealed that Apple’s iCloud service now reaches 782 million users; Apple’s iMessage users send 200,000 messages per second; Apple Pay has processed billions of dollars in payments; the App Store and iTunes see 750 million transactions every week; and Siri handles billions of requests per week. Plus, there was one number that’s worth noting, if not something to necessarily brag about: Apple Maps’ team has corrected 2.5 million issues based on customer feedback. (It’s not just your gut, I guess – Apple Maps been getting better.) The whole episode is worth listening to in its entirety, and .
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Apple Will Update The iPhone’s Remote App To Do Everything Apple TV’s Own Remote Can
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Greg Kumparak
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Back in October of 2015, Apple released a long awaited hardware update to the Apple TV — and with it, a shiny new Apple TV remote. You could speak to the remote to issue voice commands (“Siri, play Pitch Perfect 2. Yes, again. Don’t judge me, Siri. You don’t know me.”) and flick around a built-in trackpad for quick navigation. But long-time Apple TV users noticed something quick: Apple’s Remote app for the iPhone, which allowed you to control the Apple TV with your iPhone when the dedicated remote wasn’t handy, wasn’t keeping up with the new feature set. Basic functionality (like using the iPhone as a keyboard) worked — but all of the nifty new stuff was missing. It sounds like that’ll be changing shortly. In an interview with John Gruber, Apple’s Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi laid out some details of a coming Remote app update: Eddy Cue: We have a new remote app.. if you have an iphone, you can use the keyboard on the iPhone. Craig: And more than that, really… there’s full Siri, from your phone, communicating to your TV. That’s a great upgrade to that app. Gruber: Well, there’s a remote app [already] for the iPhone now that you can connect to AppleTV. Eddy: There is. As Craig said, it only does the keyboard… the new remote app will have all the capabilities of the new Apple TV remote does, like Siri. Craig: And obviously, you have the trackpad function of the remote — you’ll be able to do that with the phone. It’s really a full replacement. Gruber: Will it work with some of the games? So if there’s a 2 player game, someone can use their phone, someone else can use the remote? Eddy: Yep – that’s exactly it. Remote for one person, phone for one person. It’s actually quite surprising to hear Cue and Federighi talk so openly about new stuff in the pipeline; traditionally, Apple aimed to keep even the smallest of details under lock and key. Between this and opening up iOS betas to the public, it’s as if someone at Apple said “Maybe… maybe we don’t have to be so secretive…” Want to hear it for yourself? The relevant bit begins at 22:10 or so in
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How Tech Can Shut Down Patent Trolls
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Ken Seddon
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The trolls of mythology can be conquered with lightning, church bells or heroic cunning, but shutting down today’s patent trolls requires a more comprehensive approach. Patent trolls, more formally known as Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs), pose a major threat to American businesses. A study revealed that more than patent lawsuits are filed today as in 1980. More than at least once by a PAE, and litigation by PAEs using acquired patents is increasing at an alarming rate — PAEs are now responsible for more than 84 percent of patent litigation in the U.S. Scared yet? Businesses in all sectors are vulnerable, but today, high-tech companies face a particularly high risk. Why? Because patent trolls are lazy. They want to do the least amount of work and spend the least amount of money to generate as much profit as possible from the settlements. Taking a suit to trial is extremely expensive, with the to upwards of $5 million. To avoid these costs, more than , even if the infringement claim has no merit, and despite the fact that less than 1 percent of all defendants in PAE suits are found guilty. Five years ago, trolls favored fluffy business method patents that were granted during the dot-com boom, when companies eagerly filed patents for basic things you could do with the Internet, like sell books, hyperlink content or publish online press releases. Then the , a patent reform bill, passed in 2014 and introduced which means that if a company gets sued by a vague business method patent, they can initiate a review with the Patent Office to see if that patent should exist at all. Many of these business method patents re-examined by the Patent Office , and, as a result, going after them is no longer as lucrative. This led trolls to go on a high-tech patent-buying binge, because these patents have a better chance of surviving review. Last year, PAEs scooped up more than 6,000 high-tech patents, most of which involved software. The combination of increasing PAE litigation and high-tech patent targeting means every tech company is at risk and needs to take meaningful steps to protect their business. Here are three easy steps businesses can take to shut down patent trolls. Step one is to not sell to patent trolls. More than 80 percent of patents litigated by PAEs are acquired from operating companies, and nearly 1,000 companies have transferred patents directly to PAEs in recent years. In the hands of trolls, these patents become weapons that they can use to wage an attack. Decreasing the number of patents that trolls can get their hands on weakens them by drying up their feed lines. Companies relinquish patents to trolls for a number of reasons, but it usually boils down to money. Patent portfolios are extremely expensive to maintain, so when a company needs money, selling patents to a PAE can seem like a quick and easy way to boost cash flow and cut down on expenses. However, patents are not worth today what they were five years ago. There was a period of time when companies could get $500,000 to a million dollars per patent, but that was the high watermark, and the average selling price of a patent has dropped to around $40,000. The benefits of selling a patent no longer justify the cost, because there can be serious consequences. To start, offloading patents on the open market can damage a company’s reputation, as well as its relationships with customers, partners, vendors and suppliers who are now at greater risk of getting sued. Selling a patent is essentially releasing a weapon into the wild, and any money gained from the sale can quickly be lost in mistrust and ill-will. The smarter, more responsible and, ultimately, more lucrative approach is to find other monetization models, like licensing. As mentioned above, patents are extremely expensive animals to keep, and a large corporation with a large stable of patents can spend tens of millions of dollars a year on maintenance fees and taxes. If a company needs to shed some patents, it is important to shed them in a responsible way by selling to legitimate companies, rather than putting them on the open market and/or selling to a troll. There are a number of nonprofit community-based organizations out there that help keep patents away from trolls, including my own. In the war against patent trolls, the many are stronger than the few. PAEs look for the highest return on the least amount of work, and they won’t waste their time going after companies that are part of an anti-troll community and thus backed by a proactive network of supporters. Moreover, PAEs will never be defeated if battles are fought individually, on a reactive case-by-case basis. Victory requires private sector businesses to cooperate and collaborate toward the common goal of vanquishing trolls. Patent trolls would not be able to do what they do if companies fought back, because their survival is predicated on settlements. Remember: 99 times out of a hundred, PAEs do not succeed at trial, in which case, they neither win money nor keep the patent. If trolls perceive a company as weak and vulnerable, and see that it does not or will not fight back, that company is more likely to become a target for lawsuits — a prime piece of prey. Conversely, patent trolls will not want to waste their resources going head-to-head with a warrior. , a lawyer who has earned a fierce reputation for fighting patent assertion claims to the death in court, and who is willing to do just about anything to win. Trolls do not want to mess with him and his company. When faced with a patent assertion, tech companies can shut trolls down instead of coughing up the money in a settlement by challenging the validity of a patent in a process called IPR. IPR can be expensive, but there are organizations out there to help. partners large companies, SMEs and startups to proactively deter PAE activity by attacking the patents that trolls own through IPR. Joining a community is also a way to gather assistance when fighting back, because they facilitate the sharing of expertise and resources when a member is faced with a suit. Fellow community members may have experts who have dealt with PAE assertions and can assist board members and senior management at other companies, informing them about the risks patent trolls present, as well as the means of managing them. Again, we see that private sector cooperation is a highly impactful way to reduce the threat of PAEs, and an essential part of a multi-pronged, offensive approach. Simply put, patent trolls are hurting innovation. For far too long, PAEs have been allowed to run roughshod over legitimate businesses, which have had few options for recourse or defense. While legislation (and lobbying for it) is necessary for curbing PAE activity, companies can’t sit on their laurels and wait for Congressional bills to get passed. There are steps every business can take to protect themselves and the tech/innovation ecosystem as a whole. It’s time to break out those bolts of lightning.
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Soylent, The Easiest Thing To Tear Open Since CDs
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Jordan Crook
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I’m a believer. If you know me personally, this may be hard for you to understand, given that my favorite foods are bread and cheese and that I feel Seamless should always win Best Overall Startup at the every year until eternity. My love for Soylent — credited to both the taste and to the overall effect it has on my mental and physical energy — should be a testament to just how revolutionary this ‘new food’ is. If can substitute one bottle of Soylent 2.0 for one meal each day, can. But it was neither taste nor health benefits that originally got me interested in Soylent. In fact, it was convenience. Convenience is one of the major selling points for Soylent. Instead of taking time and energy to shop for food, cook food, go to a restaurant, or eat the food, you can simply sip on a Soylent as you handle life’s daily tasks. I find that I like it best for breakfast or lunch, while I’m working. It gets my metabolism going, fills me up without making me sleepy with food baby, and gets the old noggin’ firing on all cylinders. Yet, it isn’t anymore distracting than a cup of coffee at my desk. Plus, just buying Soylent is about as convenient as you can get: order online, receive shipment, open box. So, with such a focus on efficiency and convenience, you’d think that popping open a bottle of Soylent would be just as efficient and convenient. But, absurdly, you would be wrong. The plastic on the top of the bottle, over the lid, is reminiscent of the plastic on the top of a bottle of Nesquik milk, though not nearly as well-designed. These plastic wrappers do not tear on the perforated lines. You must rip off the plastic bit by bit until your hands would rather spend time clicking out an order on Seamless. I did recently discover that if you twist the whole top, while the plastic wrapper is still in place, you can remove the lid and the wrapper in one piece. However, if you’re even remotely as anal about this stuff as I am, you’ll still find yourself painstakingly pulling the plastic off of the lid once it’s unscrewed. But wait! There’s more! Once you get the lid unwrapped and unscrewed, there’s fun layer of plastic to remove. I’m all about keeping things fresh and ensuring my edible product hasn’t been tampered with, which are probably but a few reasons why these things are more difficult to unwrap than an old CD. But it’s also clear that design is important to Soylent. Just look at that bottle. So simple. So elegant. So why is the user experience on these bottles so difficult? Can’t we get a properly perforated piece of plastic wrapper for the lid? Can’t the inner piece of plastic come with an easy-pop tab? I’m sure I sound nitpicky, but this brave new world of convenience technology and re-engineered food has left me expectedly infantilized and spoiled. I am what you made me, Soylent. So please, on behalf of all of your customers and myself, please make opening a bottle of Soylent as easy as purchasing, drinking and digesting one is.
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Survios’ First-Person Shooter Shows How Addictive VR Will Be
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Josh Constine
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I want to play again. My arms are sore from shooting a virtual bow-and-arrow and slashing robots with a lightsaber. My heart is racing from dodging drone missiles and defending my teammate. And my mind is spinning from the possibilities. I want to play again. And I won’t be the only one. The game is called Raw Data by . It’s perhaps the most advanced first person shooter in VR. Built by a team that’s been together for five years and a company for three, it’s the culmination of all Survios’ research into how people want to play. Unlike most VR experiences today, it doesn’t feel like a demo. It’s something worth coming back to tonight, tomorrow, and next week, like great console and computer games. Survios isn’t so overwhelmed with the novelty of VR that it forgets what’s actually fun. Team up to fight robots using guns and swords in Raw Data “Good game design includes progression and retention mechanics that” Survios’ co-founder and Chief Creative Officer James Iliff tells me. “It users to genuinely want to come back and continuing to level up, unlock classes, get new weapons, and open up new levels.” So that’s how Survios built Raw Data. The story is that an evil corporation is secretly stealing human brains, putting them into cyborgs, and selling them for profit. Your goal is to infiltrate their headquarters, extract the Raw Data about their sinister scheme, and escape so you can expose them to the world. But while you download the evidence, you’re attacked by wave after wave of robots. Dual-wield weapons in Raw Data Thanks to the HTC Vive VR headset and its motion cameras you place in the corners of a room, you can actually run around a 15-foot by 15-foot space inside Raw Data. You’re able to duck and dodge, find cover behind computer terminals, and charge at your enemies. You start with a pistol on your hip and a lightsaber on your back. By squeezing the grips on the Vive’s hand-held motion controllers, you can grab and dual wield them. Pull the trigger and the gun fires or the sword extends, and tap the extra button to slow things down to bullet time so pinpoint some head shots. But what makes Raw Data feel addictive is that it’s constantly changing. After each wave get new weapons, like a pump-action shotgun where you actually line up your hands to aim down the iron sights, and a bow and arrow you nock, pull back, and release to fire. The enemies get smarter and stronger, advancing from lemming machines s to gun-toting soldierborgs to nimble ninjabots. You actually stretch out your arms to nock, draw, and fire your bow and arrow And you’re not alone in Raw Data. You can fight alongside a friend in their own HTC Vive playspace, and talk over the headset to coordinate strategy or call for help. Iliff believes this all contributes to what he calls an “active VR experience” rather than one where you just sit and watch. By thrusting games into the action, he says “we can activate their primal instincts — where they don’t need to be trained to play, where you take advantage of people’s natural intuition.” There’s no pop-up that teaches you to shoot the bow and arrow, you just feel like you need to figure it out to survive as if it was real life. Ready player 1? Survios wowed me a few years ago with its game . The guys built it after working in the University of Southern California Mixed Reality Lab alongside Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey. Though robots are cool, there’s something much scarier about the walking dead coming to eat your brains. Hopefully Survios will give the cyborgs saw-blade hands or something to make defeating them more urgent. Survios’ old game Zombies On The Holodeck But what the startup learned from that Zombies game was how to build for any hardware. Way back in 2014 (VR moves fast), there weren’t any professionally-made systems available for doing full-motion virtual reality where you can walk around. Survios knew motion would make things much more fun, so it hacked together its own janky system. You had to strap on a massive backpack full of magnets for tracking location and a camera that hung above your head. Fast-forward to today, and n led by Shasta Ventures and grown its team to 35. Meanwhile, Oculus, Sony VR, and HTC have all built polished VR systems that are almost ready for sale. So rather than betting the company on one platform, Survios is using its hardware skills to bring Raw Data to all three of these headsets. That’s no easy task when the headset launch dates keep getting pushed back. It’s hard to know how many people will buy them or how much they’ll be willing to pay for games. Survios expects to price Raw Data in the $10 to $25 range, and closely monitor reactions. Iliff believes that if VR games are about 10X shorter than traditional console games that cost $60, but is several times more immersive, around $20 will feel right. People without VR headsets will be able to spectate Raw Data games on their computers from cinematic camera angles Knowing that not everyone will be able to afford a premium wired VR headset, Survios has other plans to get people involved. It’s built the mechanics necessary so people will be able to spectate Raw Data games from their computer on Twitch, YouTube Gaming, and other streaming platforms. They’ll be able to watch from first-person or more cinematic angles. “We trying to figure out ways to showing compelling VR experiences that don’t require a VR headset” Iliff explains. The theory is that once people watch someone else slice a robot’s head off with a lightsaber, they’ll be convinced its worth paying to hold the sword themselves. And they won’t want to put it down.
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Apple’s First Original TV Series Could Star Dr. Dre
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Jay Donovan
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According to , Beats co-founder and Apple executive Dr. Dre will be starring in and producing his own six-show original series called . The semi-autobiographical storyline is rumored to be distributed via Apple Music, includes other celebrities like Sam Rockwell and Mo McCrae, and contains “an orgy scene”. Last year, that Apple was looking at bankrolling its own original content. This effort is being led by Eddy Cue, who heads up Music and iTunes. Cue recently had developer relations duties shifted off of him and onto SVP Phil Schiller, so presumably he now has time to muck around making TV shows. I have to admit, that the idea of an explicit TV show being bankrolled by Apple had me chuckling for a moment as I considered Steve Jobs’ stance on . However, upon serious contemplation of this, it makes sense. Apple is arguably behind when it comes to original content. It makes some sense they’d try original programming from one of their own artists first.Netflix and Amazon are both driving hard to bolster their positions. Providers are moving to their own silos to offer programming — this is why Netflix is making their own stuff, because eventually everyone big enough (like Disney) will pull out and have their own channel. Apple is likely planning for when it has a streaming service that needs original content to drive subscriptions And let’s not forget that Dre has an exceedingly good track record of mentoring and working with the best in the business and creating top notch trends and content. So I would have to see this myself before writing it off prematurely. Regardless, Apple has enough cash on hand to take a risk here and attempt to break into this other market.
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