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Last Updated: 2022-04-29 11:00:01 AM
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 13:30:54 +0000
Much of the grocery focus over the past three years has been around online adoption, but as long as 90% of U.S. grocery sales still happen in stores, companies like Clerk want to bring some digitization to the brick-and-mortar grocery experience.
CEO Marlow Nickell co-founded Austin-based Clerk with Don Oelke and Edward Cates in 2016, and while Nickell saw Amazon and Walmart plowing ahead in the marketing and product merchandising spaces, he saw a need from the rest of the space that didn’t have the capacity to innovate there.
The company created a digital advertising network called Grocery TV and provides screens, initially in the checkout aisle, for brands and retailers to leverage with the aim of improving the shopping experience.
Clerk took in $5 million in Series A funding two years ago, led by Silverton Partners, and since that time, grew its network size by 350%, going from 750 stores to now 2,700 stores. Next month, the company is planning for its largest install to date that will push it to over 3,000, Nickell told TechCrunch.
The company is now in all 50 states and has over 14,000 displays in retailers like ShopRite, Bashas’ and Cub Foods. It has partnerships with programmatic networks, including The Trade Desk and Yahoo DSP, to make it easier for agencies and brands like Chase and Anheuser-Busch to reach an audience of over 30 million grocery shoppers.
Cooler Screens raises $80M to bring interactive screens into cooler aisles
In addition, the company launched a SaaS merchandising product that uses machine learning to make sure products are in-stock and shelved correctly. One of its partnerships there is with Dotdash Meredith, announced in 2021, which uses Clerk’s technology to manage its publications in over 15,000 stores per quarter.
Clerk’s digital screens are not a new concept, in fact there have been a handful of companies over the past decade or so bringing digital signage into grocery aisles, mainly for in-store advertising. Those include NoviSign, ScreenCloud, Cooler Screens, EasyScreen and In-Store Broadcasting Network. You also might remember Premier Retail Networks as one of the pioneers in this space with its Checkout TV product that was in U.S. Walmart stores.
Nickell noted that technology costs and an engineering focus — which is his background — was needed to keep technology costs down.
“We saw companies raise more, but struggle to get hardware out there,” he added. “Hardware is hard and if you don’t do it right, it can be expensive.”
Clerk’s team. Image Credits: Clerk
Where he believes Clerk is getting it right is by having a “First Principles approach,” which enables the company to offer a cheaper cost structure. The rise of social media is also making in-store retail advertising easier because more people are used to absorbing a lot of content.
However, there remains a delicate balance between throwing up screens and interfering with the customer experience. “You have to be thoughtful there because things will struggle to take off if it does, and grocery stores don’t want to mess with what they already have,” Nickell added.
Meanwhile, in addition to growth of stores and screens, Clerk also tripled its revenue in the past two years and became profitable last year. With an efficient business going, the company decided to invest in growth, raising $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Sageview Capital.
As part of the investment, Sageview partner Dean Nelson will join Clerk’s board of directors, while Sageview principal Roberto Avila will join as a board observer.
Whereas the Series A was scaling the market and team, the Series B is a pure growth round. Clerk has 30 employees and will be growing both the team, partnerships and store count over the next two to three years. In addition, the funding will go toward technology and product development, including new merchandising analytics.
“When we have the opportunity for growth, we want to take it,” Nickell said. “We will use this round to catapult us into the market. Something that is unique about this space is that grocery stores want to know you are going to stick around, so to be a successful technology company in the space, you have to be building a lasting company and one that will be a tech partner for the future.”
11 ways to make personalized shopping more effective and profitable
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 12:45:06 +0000
Are you slouching at your desk again? There’s an app for that… Zen uses posture mirroring software to help information workers stop hunching over their desks — sending alerts when it detects you’re not sitting up straight so you can correct your posture and, hopefully, avoid a lifetime of back problems.
The catch? It uses your webcam to check on your posture. So, er, you have to be comfortable with Zen’s software ‘watching’ through the lens as you work.
Given how many people routinely tape over their webcam just to be sure — y’know, that the NSA isn’t watching — that’s quite the ask. So we asked Zen’s co-founder and CEO, Daniel James, how the San Francisco-based startup works around that privacy concern.
As well as offering the tool direct to consumers (it currently has 1,000+ users of its subscription service), the startup sells a version of Zen to employers and has signed up around 30 companies (including over a dozen enterprises) since it launched the offering back in October 2020. And given rocketing growth in worker surveillance tools since the pandemic-triggered boom in remote working there’s plenty of reason for privacy concerns.
For example, could an employer that’s signed up to Zen use the tool, if not literally to spy on staff sitting at their desks (which would probably be pretty boring tbh), then to log how many hours they are physically sat in front of the screen, say — and use those data-points to pressure employees to shorten any desk breaks they might wish to take?
Dystopian uses of webcam-based tools aren’t hard to imagine because such stuff, sadly, isn’t science fiction. Take Amazon’s launch in the US last year of AI-powered cameras in its Prime delivery vans, which it said would be used to assess driver “safety” — but which critics instantly dubbed Orwellian surveillance…
In short, ‘AIs with eyes’ can just feel, er, function creepy.
Zen says it’s taken a “privacy centric” approach to building this webcam-based posture correcting tech — meaning its taken some specific steps to try to reassure users they’re not being watched by it or anyone else as the AI watches them.
Firstly, its posture correction software is open source (the code is here on Github). “We use open source software for the entire app, except our exercise and educational content, which we custom make,” notes James when as asked about that.
The AI also processes data locally, on device — which means it does not require an internet connection to function — so he says users can verify for themselves that it’s not uploading/streaming any data to the cloud by testing it with their wi-fi/internet connection disabled.
“The posture correction software feature runs offline, without internet, without recording or storing visuals,” he emphasizes. “Since data, like photos or videos, can’t be passed to the cloud without internet connection, which is the only way that employers could spy on employees, it’s technically impossible for us (Zen) or employers to record or store any visuals and ultimately spy on people.”
He also confirms that employers who use Zen’s software only receive “aggregated” (entire company) and “anonymous” (no individual names) information on how many employees sign up to the app and how many use it on a weekly basis.
“With these two data points they can see if employees are engaged with Zen or not, which is usually the determining factor for them when deciding to extend their contract with us,” he adds.
So — to be clear — Zen’s claim is that neither employers who pay it for the software (or Zen itself) can access the camera feed of users to record or store any visuals.
“The posture correction feature of the app, which is the only feature that accesses individuals’ cameras doesn’t run on the cloud, which technically means that no one can tap into the app and access data, including visuals,” says James, adding: “Surprisingly, no employer has ever asked for ‘spy’ type data. They really just want to know if employees are using the solution that they are paying for.”
Even so, privacy conscious desk workers may still not like the idea of sitting in front of a naked camera lens all day.
After all, there is little in tech so blissfully out-of-sight-out-of-mind as a webcam with a sticker stuck firmly over it.
Posture check-ins
On this, James suggests Zen users have come up with their own way to feel comfortable with the tool as he says they tend to use the app to do short posture checks in — say of 30 minutes or an hour with the feature enabled, a couple of times a day — rather than keeping it on all the time.
The developers have smartly leaned into that — recommending users do just a short daily check in to stay posture aware.
“We noticed that the majority of our users don’t leave Zen on all day. Instead they do a short 30-60 minute posture session during their first work session in the morning and another one around Noon or 4 PM. This correlates to how most people meditate,” James tells TechCrunch. “They spend a short time actively being aware of their thoughts which strengthens their passive awareness throughout the day. This works for posture as well.
“Doing short small sessions daily ultimately increases your posture awareness and behavior change. Furthermore, in user interviews people often tell us that ‘Zen seems to be in the back of my head even when I’m not at my desktop. I find myself slouching at the dinner table, and I’m starting to naturally notice it and move back into an upright position.’ From this anecdotal and analytical data, we decided to recommend people to start using the app for just thirty minutes a day during what we call the ‘7-Day Posture Challenge’ and people are seeing amazing results both in increased posture awareness and decreased back and joint pain.”
“We’ve found that people aren’t as concerned about any privacy invasions when they realize that Zen doesn’t have to be on all day. You can turn it on and off as you wish,” he adds.
James also says users often combine use of the posture monitoring feature with use of other apps which require the webcam to be on, such as when they’re making a videoconferencing call.
“They can show posture awareness and confidence during their video calls and they have their camera on for Zoom and G Meets regardless so they aren’t as concerned about any privacy invasions,” he notes.
Zen integrates with the user’s general computer workflow — running in the background and mirroring the user’s posture via a stick-man icon displayed in the menu bar which lets users keep discreet tabs without being interrupted with alert messages. Blue and upright is good; bent and red is bad. (James says it never sends distracting/pop-up message alerts; but users can choose from a few options how they want to be alerted.)
How Zen alerts users to poor posture: A larger graphic can be pinned to the screen (with an optional alarm feature) or users can rely on watching a discreet stick-man in the menu bar can (Credit: Zen)
The posture correcting AI works off a user-defined baseline — meaning the user needs to demonstrate their upright posture on set up. The app then uses that to build a user-specific model made of vectors that record key posture points/indictors (joints, nose, ears etc) so the AI can detect posture changes in real-time (i.e. when the camera monitoring is enabled) and determine whether or not the person is slouching.
“These posture points are fed to a mathematical model that constantly compares your current posture position to the original baseline posture position that you set as your ‘upright’ position,” he explains. “In addition, the app applies geometrical formulas to vectors formed by your current posture position and your original baseline upright posture position to determine if you’re slouching.”
James has a personal reason to be keen on keeping good posture, having been a “very active” NCAA Division-One college football player at Yale University who then went on to working at Adobe in San Francisco — and “living the typical sedentary corporate lifestyle of sitting in front of a computer for over eight hours a day” — which eventually led to him developing serious low back pain and carpal tunnel.
“Adobe offered great ergonomic resources like a free ergonomic consultation and a stand-up desk and purchased different devices that claimed to help with posture but my pain just continued to increase,” he says, fleshing out the reasons that led to founding Zen.
There was a lucky strike too: His co-founder, Alex Secara — who was his housemate at the time and is now Zen’s CTO — had already developed a posture correction software for himself in college to help with a spine-related condition he has (kyphosis) which had also been exacerbated after long hours of coding during tech internships.
“We ultimately decided to join forces to build Zen alongside top ergonomists and physical therapists,” adds James.
Zen is disclosing $3.5M in pre-seed funding raised from investors including Y Combinator, Valor Equity Partners, Goodwater Capital, Samsung Next, Softbank and others which it says it will be using to invest in expanding its team for growth and product dev — with plans in the works for key workday integrations (Slack, G Cal, Microsoft Teams), and for versions of the software for different devices/platforms (mobile, tablet, etc.).
The startup also tells us says it’s exploring partnerships with larger companies and “further proving out the efficacy of our solutions through clinical studies”. (Current enterprise customers include Brex, Alation and Cedar.)
Zen also plans to switch the consumer product to a freemium version — saying it’s aiming for a model akin to the meditation app Calm with premium paid features.
Expanding into selling physical products (more ergonomic chairs, mice, keyboards etc) is also on its roadmap, per James, who says it’s also looking to explore whether it can make use of existing movement sensor hardware in devices like more high end headphones, wearables and mobiles to see if it could repurpose those signals for determining if a person is slouching or not.
If it can devise AI models to figure that out, it might end up being possible for users to get real-time, back-saving posture-mirroring tips without ever needing to switch the camera on. Bliss!
Calm acquires healthcare technology company Ripple Health Group
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 12:00:16 +0000
Industrial robotics has in recent years become one of the hottest tech sectors in China as the country encourages the use of advanced technology to enhance efficiency on the production floor.
VisionNav Robotics, which specializes in autonomous forklifts, stacking vehicles and other logistics robots, is the latest industrial robot maker from China to get funded. The Shenzhen-based automated guided vehicle (AGV) startup has snagged 500 million yuan (around $76 million) from a Series C extension round led by Meituan, China’s food delivery giant, and 5Y Capital, a prominent venture capital firm in the country. Its existing investors IDG, TikTok’s parent firm ByteDance, and Xiaomi founder Lei Jun’s Shunwei Capital also joined in the round.
Founded in 2016 by a group of PhDs from the University of Tokyo and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, VisionNav’s valuation was boosted to over $500 million in this round, up from $393 million just six months ago when it picked up 300 million yuan ($47 million) in a Series C financing, it told TechCrunch.
The new funding will allow VisionNav to invest in R&D and broaden its use cases, expanding from a focus on horizontal and vertical moving to other functions like stacking and loading.
The key piece in adding new categories is to train and improve the startup’s software algorithms, less so developing new hardware, said the firm’s vice president of global sales, Don Dong. “From controlling, dispatching, to sensing, we will have to improve our software capabilities as a whole.”
A major challenge for robots, said Dong, is to effectively perceive and navigate the world around them. The problem with a camera-powered autonomous driving solution, like that of Tesla, is it can be easily affected by bright light. Lidar, a sensing technology heralded for its more accurate distance detection, was still too expensive for mass adoption a few years ago, but it has seen its price slashed substantially by Chinese players like DJI-affiliated Livox and Robosense.
“Before, we were mostly providing indoor solutions. Now that we are expanding to unmanned truck loading, which is often semi-outdoors, it’s inevitable we will be operating in strong light. That’s why we are adapting a combination of vision and radar technologies to navigate our robots,” said Dong.
VisionNav sees Pittsburg-based Seegrid and France-based Balyo as its international rivals but believed it has a “price advantage” for being in China, which houses its manufacturing and R&D activities. The startup is already dispatching robots to clients in Southeast Asia, East Asia, as well as the Netherlands, the UK, and Hungary. It’s in the process of setting up subsidiaries in Europe and the US.
The startup works with system integrators to sell its robots, meaning it doesn’t collect detailed customer information, making data compliance in foreign markets simpler. It’s expected to derive 50-60% of its revenues abroad in the next few years, compared with the current share of 30-40%. The US is one of its main target markets, said Dong, as the forklift industry there generates “greater gross revenues than that of China despite having a smaller number of forklift vehicles.”
Last year, VisionNav pulled in total sales revenues between 200 million ($31 million) and 250 million yuan ($39 million). It currently operates a team of around 400 people across China and it’s expected to reach 1,000 staff this year by hiring aggressively overseas.
China roundup: Keep down internet upstarts, cultivate hard tech
SoftBank leads $15M round for China’s industrial robot maker Youibot
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 08:00:38 +0000
It was last year that we covered the $11.2M fundraise for Sienna Network, the ‘privacy decentralized’ startup. The network is built on the Secret Network, which allows asset holders to switch to privacy-oriented tokens. Privacy-based financial blockchain projects are crucial if “DeFi” is to work properly, otherwise normal financial transactions – which are normally private in the traditional finance world – will struggle to take off.
Sienna is among several other blockchain startups trying to prevent “front-running”, where transactions on Ethereum can be preempted by someone else simply by them paying a higher transaction fee – just like trumping a trade on the stock market by paying a higher fee to a broker.
Sienna Network has now launched its private crypto lending platform, dubbed SiennaLend. The company claims that crypto users can use the platform to earn interest on their crypto and also borrow crypto from the platform – all privately. The platform will compete in this space with Uniswap and PancakeSwap, but claims to have more features than both.
SiennaLend is (obviously) built on top of the Secret Network, which affords – claims the company – greater security and safety compared to open and non-private blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana and others.
SiennaLend’s pitch to the market is that its lower gas prices will make it more attractive to small investors.
“Paying a transaction fee of $150 to make a loan of $200 makes little sense and this is another major benefit for SiennaLend. Gas fees are counted in cents rather than dollars as the scalability of the blockchains are much higher. We have spent 15 months in stealth, fine-tuning this absolute game-changer for crypto and its ascendance to the next level of mainstream finance,” Monty Munford, Chief Evangelist, Sienna Network, said in a statement.
Sienna Network says “Personal Identifiable Information (PII)” means users can “backtrack” and see their wallet possessions and trading history via their wallet address. It will also offer loans against collateral, as would happen with traditional lending, by allowing users to deposit into a pool and choose to earn interest or borrow based on that deposit. The idea is that traders can defend against the current market volatility more easily.
Lending protocols like this in DeFI are widely observed to be taking off, despite market volatility, because they offer more reassurances to crypto holders. Cryptocurrency-based loans have become a highly utilized aspect of DeFi.
By being built on Secret Network, Sienna Network/SiennaLand is also part of the Cosmos ecosystem, recently upgraded to be a part of IBC. Cosmos competes – after a fashion with Polkadot, also an ‘internet of blockchains’.
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 02:14:48 +0000
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold around 4.4 million shares of the company on Tuesday, according to regulatory filings published on Thursday.
Musk, via Aaron Beckman, his power of attorney, filed a total of five Form 4s with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to cover all 138 individual transactions.
The value of the sales in the filings disclosed is so far is around $4 billion, per TechCrunch calculations.
The executive said in a tweet on Thursday: “No further TSLA sales planned after today”.
The filings don’t reveal why Musk sold his shares, something he’s been wont to do. The money could possibly go towards his recent controversial plans to purchase social media platform Twitter, however, $4 billion seems to hardly make a dent in the $44 billion the acquisition will cost.
However, if Musk backs out of the deal, he’s on the hook for $1 billion, per the termination fee of the deal with Twitter, so at least that amount would be covered by these sales.
No further TSLA sales planned after today
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2022
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 01:13:22 +0000
Airbnb is going all in on the “live anywhere, work anywhere” philosophy that much of the business world has been forced to adopt, committing to full-time remote work for most employees and a handful of perks like 90 days of international work/travel. It’s a strong, simple policy that so few large companies have had the guts to match.
In an email to employees posted to the company blog (or was it a blog post emailed to employees?), and in a Twitter thread for those who can’t be bothered, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky outlined the new policy, summing it up in five points:
You can work from home or the office
You can move anywhere in the country you work in and your compensation won’t change
You have the flexibility to travel and work around the world
We’ll meet up regularly for gatherings
We’ll continue to work in a highly coordinated way
They’re pretty self-explanatory, obviously, but just to be clear let’s run them down.
Apart from “a small number of roles” for whom presence in an office or location is required (and who probably already know this), all employees can work from wherever they want.
If you want to move, as long as you stay within the country, your pay won’t change. Wherever you go in the U.S., for instance, you’ll get the same pay, and one hopes it’ll be enough whether you live in a small town in Colorado or midtown Manhattan. Sadly if you decide you want to move permanently to London or Seoul, this is “much more complex, so we won’t be able to support those this year.”
Though workers will need a permanent address, they’ll have dozens of companies and locations to work from for up to 90 days a year — so stay over in Lisbon for a bit and work from that villa for a week or two after your vacation. Why not? Well, possibly because remote work visas may not be available for those areas, but that’s all a work in progress. (They’re adding partners to a big list over here.)
Chesky says they’ll all “meet up regularly,” even though Airbnb probably has about 15,000 employees at this point. That’s even more than TechCrunch! They’ll have “limited off-sites” in 2022, which is probably smart, but next year you can “expect to gather in person every quarter for about a week at a time.” I really don’t understand how they can possibly get any work done over there.
The last point seems kind of superfluous and self-congratulatory, but it is probably good to officially note that the general shape of working at the company, or how people are managed and so on, won’t change due to this new policy.
Tech companies are looking at more flexible work models when offices reopen
Many companies have announced tentative policies with the understanding that they would be revisited in a few months. There’s a lot of talk about the “hybrid” or “flex” model where employees work from the office a few days, then from home the rest of the time. Depending on where and how you work, this could be the best or worst of both worlds. But it does suggest a certain lack of decisiveness in leadership. (Among the early adopters of full time remote work was Twitter, which may soon be under new leadership.)
And then there’s the safety and liability question. Activision Blizzard, already kind of fubar, mandated a return to the office, then lifted their vaccine mandate. As someone noted at the time, “do not die for this company,” or any company for that matter.
Perhaps Airbnb will be the guinea pig for this particular type of “fully remote workplace” and all the other companies will be watching and waiting for the company to stub its toe on some huge new tax burden or productivity issue. But the simplicity and flexibility of the policy, international legal restrictions notwithstanding, may outweigh any new troubles it creates.
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 00:56:08 +0000
A popular criticism of NFTs is that they are just static JPEG files. Technically, they are not, of course. They are pieces of code on a blockchain, which means that they can be programmed to have various qualities. The NFTs that go on sale on marketplaces such as OpenSea are already programmed with instructions on the royalties to be provided to the owner, for instance.
But what if they could be programmed to do much more?
That’s a trend we have seen in recent quarters. Pearpop introduced dynamic NFTs earlier this year that gain value as a social media post goes viral. The NFTs on Axie Infinity change their properties as a user makes inroads in the game.
A new startup, called Revise, is attempting to productize this ability.
It offers developers the ability to make their own NFTs interact with data feeds of their choice, which could be a web3 platform such as Chainlink or a web2 outlet like Weather.com.
The goal, as the startup explains it, is to make the NFTs change their properties based on events. For instance, a soccer NFT could hypothetically interact with data from FIFA and change its property or media content based on the real-world performance on the field.
“What programmable NFT allows you to do is also leverage the user’s interaction or skill to make the properties rarer,” said Raunaq Vaisoha, co-founder and chief executive of Revise, in an interview with TechCrunch.
By programming NFTs based on users’ interactions, developers can incentivize them to participate more in their projects, said Vaisoha, who co-founded Revise with Anil Dukkipatty.
Revise is also adding a layer of governance for the storage through its data structure to help developers handle disputes in a trustable manner.
“Currently, an issue with dynamic NFTs is that your data has to be off-chain. Imagine you’re playing a game and you have to wait for the block time for your gaming character to update. Most people end up storing the NFT on an AWS S3 or a different web2 layer,” he said. “That’s what our data structure is built to solve.”
Revise is initially launching with the Polygon blockchain, but plans to expand to other blockchains in the future. Its SDK is live in private beta on NPM, and the startup has amassed some customers already, including Ludo Labs.
The startup said on Friday it has raised $3.5 million in its seed round. Alpha Wave Global and 8i co-led the round. Bharat Founders Fund and a number of entrepreneurs including Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal, DeFi Pulse founder Scott Lewis, AngelList India head Utsav Somani, The Graph’s Pranav Maheshwari, and Treebo founder Rahul Chaudhary also participated in the round.
“The entire NFT space has seen a massive narrative shift as people have discovered that NFTs can be more than just digital collectables or static assets. We see this shift happen in Gaming most prominently, but the abstract concept is broadly applicable to any real-world asset that can be tokenized. Further, as more complex utilities are built on NFTs, the aspect of traceability and transparency in governance will become front and centre,” said Tushar Behl of Alpha Wave Global, in a statement.
“We loved Revise and the founders for their deep product insight and a forward-looking vision of the space. What the team at Revise is building can become the most fundamental layer for NFT provenance and programming, much like Chainlink did for Defi!”
Publish Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2022 00:01:20 +0000
Glorang, a Seoul-based edtech startup that offers after-school classes and extracurricular activities via online for students between the ages of 3 and 18, said Friday it has raised a $10 million Series A funding co-led by Korea Investment Partners and Murex Partners, along with Japan’s Pksha Capital.
The new funding, which brings its total raised to $18 million, values Glorang at around $40 million, Glorang CEO and founder Taeil Hwang told TechCrunch.
The startup has aspirations to become Outschool of Asia. Hwang said that its business model is similar to Outschool, the San Francisco-based after-school marketplace for children. Glorang will use the Series A to expand its service to Japan and Malaysia by the fourth quarter of this year and Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam in the following years, Hwang said. It also plans to increase its headcount.
“The education market in the English-speaking and North American regions is undoubtedly large, but we [at Glorang] understand that each country’s local D2C education market in Asia can be just as substantial,” Hwang said.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced students in many parts of the globe to become online learners; the education technology industry has experienced a sudden surge and demand globally due to the pandemic. The Asia Pacific is one of the fastest-growing regions in the adoption of Edtech, increasing to $64.5 billion in 2027, from $17.6 billion in 2019.
Glorang was founded in 2017 by Hwang, who started off this company with an AI-powered platform helping students match with study abroad programs. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Glorang pivoted its main business, the online class platform, and launched Gguge in 2020, Hwang said. The company claims Gguge has more than 100,000 users in South Korea.
What sets Gguge apart from its peers is providing education services in local languages, Hwang said adding that it currently offers Korean but will add the Japanese language soon.
Gguge offers a selection of more than 5,000 online classes via Zoom. Instructors help students engage with active learning methods, ranging from reading newspapers through solving puzzles to incorporating Minecraft and Pokemon games into the classes.
“As a team that understands both the local culture and strategies in Asia, we are confident that our platform will have a strong standing in Asia’s ever-growing D2C education market,” Hwang said.
Students can take a one-day class or subscription-based semester classes via Gguge. The company has a team of 35 in Korea.
Outschool, newly profitable, raises a $45M Series B for virtual small group classes
Vietnam after-school learning startup Marathon raises $1.5M pre-seed round
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 22:40:24 +0000
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It’s Thursday, April 28, 2022, and Haje’s blood pressure is slowly returning to what passes for normal after raging about Social Security numbers for a few minutes. Look, it’s hard to get used to the quirks and foibles of a new country, OK? Nobody tell him about how healthcare works in this country, please; we’d never hear the end of it.
In other news, TechCrunch has a shiny new fintech newsletter launching on Sunday. Sign up today so you don’t miss it this weekend! The third ep of our crypto and blockchain podcast, “Chain Reaction,” is out today, so fill your ears with the dulcet tones of Lucas and Anita’s calming voices.
Friday tomorrow, woohoo! – Christine and Haje
The TechCrunch Top 3
Twitter admits it overcounted accounts: Hey guess what? Twitter announced its first-quarter earnings today. And it didn’t count right, revealing that it was reporting more users than it really had — by nearly 2 million — something Sarah points out is “a predicament that may have encouraged the company to more seriously consider its acceptance of Elon Musk’s proposal to take the company private in a $44 billion deal.” Meanwhile, Alex looked into what the acquisition could mean for Twitter’s advertising revenue.
Death and taxes are indeed certain: It’s not every day that we get to quote Ben Franklin in a story, but in this case, it’s tied to technology making it easier for us to do things like pay our taxes. To that point, mobile tax-filing app Taxfix brought in a $220 million round to become a unicorn. Taxes are not always easy, so it’s good to have someone who knows what to do. We like how CEO Martin Ott put it, “We’ve hacked the brain of a tax accountant into codes.”
There’s a Google of Russia: Its name is Yandex, and it’s selling its media division to, get this, a company called VKontakte, which is considered “the local Facebook equivalent.” Not sure it gets better than that. This is news Natasha was following for a month now, and she reports the sale was fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in many companies reassessing their media assets.
Startups and VC
One of our favorite things about putting the Daily Crunch together is that we get to cheer on our colleagues and read their fantastic work. Today, it’s a Kyle-o-rama. He wrote about how Synthesis AI raised $17 million to create synthetic data to improve computer vision and how payroll provider Symmetrical.ai raised $18.5 million to make employee payouts smoother. CommandBar landed $19 million to continue creating a search-and-browse plugin for web apps, and Deepset raised $14 million to help companies build natural-language processing apps. Kyle, your fingers must be exhausted — go treat yourself to a cup of coffee and a round of baseball or something.
We love Christine’s story of Lemon Perfect’s investor journey with the queen bee: Two years after Lemon Perfect was spotted in Beyoncé’s limo, the superstar is now a backer.
Also! We kicked off a series of pitch deck teardowns, and we are looking for startups that want to have their pitch decks reviewed. Get involved!
More news than you can shake a cap table at:
Shuffle off your mortal oil: BlocPower wants to evict fossil fuels one building at a time, replacing them with greener alternatives.
Wuthering Writes: Just when you thought you had learned to ignore marketing copy, Movable Ink comes along with customized marketing content and a $55 million sack of cash to build a content-generating AI.
If you want it done properly, you gotta do it your shelf: Oware is streamlining Pakistan’s supply chain, powered by a $3.3 million seed round.
Without a car in the world: Post-pandemic, used car platforms are booming, and Spotawheel just raised €100 million. It is active in Poland and Greece and about to launch in Romania.
More vrooms, less fumes: Dat Bike is the creator of Vietnam’s first domestic electric motorbike, and we are a little bit in love with the cafe-racer styling.
GV’s Frederique Dame on product-market fit: ‘You have one chance at a good experience’
Image Credits: John Lamb (opens in a new window) / Getty Images
In a fireside chat at TechCrunch Early Stage, Frederique Dame, an investing partner at GV who previously led product and engineering teams at Uber, Yahoo and Smugmug, shared her thoughts about product-market fit.
Dame addressed several issues, including the need to collect customer data as early as possible, strategies for iterating and testing without tapping engineering resources, and, notably, why founders should make themselves vulnerable when pitching investors:
“Trust me with what you don’t know or what’s not working” she said, “because once we invest, we’re going to have to work on this stuff anyway.”
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)
GV’s Frederique Dame on product-market fit: ‘You have one chance at a good experience’
Big Tech Inc.
Get your popcorn ready: We already talked about Google and Facebook in the Top 3, so let’s start off this section with a little bit of Amazon. The company launched its movie rental service in India, with over 40 original and co-produced shows and movies that will enable customers to get early access to both Indian and foreign movies.
Rounding up some earnings: Today’s earnings are brought to you by the letter “T,” which rhymes with “P,” and that spells Peacock, which added 4 million paid subscribers. Meta’s metaverse is not doing so hot, but Facebook gained users.
Ac(quisi)tion news: It looks like Microsoft will be adding another company to its family. Activision Blizzard shareholders voted to approve the sale. Meanwhile, Hackerone acquired PullRequest, a YC-backed company that will give the bug bounty company some code-review skills.
Judge sides with Elon Musk: He is probably going to win with the Twitter deal, but he can definitely put a checkmark in the “win” category here. A Delaware judge ruled in his favor following a lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholders that accused Musk of coercing Tesla’s board into buying SolarCity back in 2016.
Oh Snap!: Our reporters were busy covering Snap today in assorted stories we will bullet below. We would like to highlight that it created a new gadget that will have you forgetting what a selfie stick is. Pixy, Snap’s mini drone, is your camera when you don’t have anyone else to hold your phone. Also:
Snap offers Lens Cloud for developers
New in-app AR shopping tools for retailers
Snapchat adds new assistive devices for bitmoji avatars
Snap and Live Nation come together on AR experiences at concerts, festivals
Snapchat’s new ‘Director Mode’ will have you becoming a video creator in no time
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:58:58 +0000
Amid a record-breaking fiscal second quarter, Apple also delivered record-breaking services revenue up 17% year over year to reach $19.8 billion. The category — which includes businesses like the App Store, Apple TV+, Apple Music, cloud services and others — also grew to reach 825 million paid subscriptions on Apple’s platform.
This figure is up more than 165 million in the last 12 months alone, Apple said.
The company highlighted a few of its recent achievements in the services category, including Apple TV+ becoming the first streaming service to win an Academy Award for Best Picture, for its movie “Coda.” Apple also noted its Apple TV+ shows had earned over 240 awards and more than 960 nominations to date.
The streaming service recently added live sports content with the addition of Friday Night Baseball, which launched earlier this month, along with other new titles.
In addition to setting an all-time revenue record in the services category, Apple set all-time records for the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Care and cloud services, it said. Meanwhile, its video advertising and payment services set March quarter records.
During the last 12 months, Apple said it had generated $75 billion in services revenue.
“These impressive results reflect the impact of our continued investment in improving and expanding our services portfolio and the positive momentum that we’re seeing on many fronts,” noted Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO.
He attributed the growth to other factors as well, including Apple’s growing device install base, which also reached an all-time high across each geographic segment and major product category. Plus, Apple customers are increasingly engaging with the services Apple offers.
“We have more transacting accounts, more paying accounts, more accounts with subscriptions — the absolute amount of paid subscriptions on our platform is pretty impressive: 825 million. It’s an increase of 165 million in the last 12 months alone. So you can even tell that this is great growth,” said Maestri.
The company has also been adding new services over the last few years and plans to “add new services and new features,” he hinted.
While the majority of today’s Apple services are aimed at consumers, Apple said that it sees enterprise as a great opportunity going forward, following its recent launch of Apple Business Essentials, which was aimed more at the SMB market.
“But we know that enterprise, in general, as a market is a very interesting market for us, and we’re putting a lot of effort and focus on it. And we believe we have really good opportunities to grow,” said Maestri.
However, Apple did warn that while it expects services to continue to grow in double digits in the coming year, it does anticipate services growth to decelerate from its March quarter’s performance due to various factors including the supply chain constraints impacting Apple’s ability to ship enough products to meet customer demand, foreign exchange rates and the pausing of all sales in Russia, which took place in March.
The company said the growth rate for the June quarter is expected to be less than the 17% that it reported in In March, as a result.
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:32:24 +0000
Apple earnings today found the company busting all sorts of records for hardware sales. In a release, the firm notes that it hit March quarter revenue records for iPhone, Mac and the combined Wearables, Home and Accessories category, which includes all sorts of products like Apple Watch and Airpods.
iPhones sales jumped 5% year over year for the quarter, to $50.6 billion. That news comes as the company has bolstered its supply chain relationships while a number of fellow hardware makers have struggled to keep on top of component shortages. The figures stand in stark contrast to the ongoing struggles of other phone makers.
Macs, meanwhile, saw the biggest overall relative jump among hardware offerings, up 15% year over year to $10.4 billion. The category has been seeing strong quarters of late, courtesy of Apple silicon-fueled reinvigoration.
Refreshed stalwarts like the iMac and Mac Pro, coupled with new entries like the Mac Studio have fueled a renewed interest in the space. Add to that the overall bump in the PC market, as work setups continue to evolve during the pandemic. The Wearables, Home and Accessories category rose 12% to $8.8 billion. The one dim spot is, once again, iPad. Sales for the tablet dropped 2% from the same quarter last year.
All of that, coupled with 17% growth for Services add up to a truly stellar quarter for the company — an impressive feat amid widespread global uncertainty.
“This quarter’s record results are a testament to Apple’s relentless focus on innovation and our ability to create the best products and services in the world,” Tim Cook said in a release tied to the financials.
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:30:28 +0000
Bitcoin mining is often criticized as an imperfect process due to its energy expenditure, but major firms in the industry are trying to maximize efficiency and sustainability while seeking regulatory clarity.
In a dimly lit room at the FTX and SALT’s Crypto Bahamas event, some of the largest crypto miners in the world took the stage to discuss the future of the nascent but growing industry in the “Crypto Mining: Maximizing Efficiency and Sustainability” panel.
Crypto miners are looking to improve their market through efforts ranging from improving hashrate efficiency, which is the amount of power that a machine requires to produce a bitcoin, to data mining centers becoming more specialized and optimized for lower energy consumption, Marco Streng, CEO and co-founder of Genesis Digital Assets, said at the event.
Computers that mine bitcoin are 58 times more efficient than they were eight years ago, according to a report by the Bitcoin Mining Council. In addition to machines becoming more efficient, the engineering of the facilities and the sources of power have become much more efficient, which improves the productivity of an individual bitcoin mining computer, Mike Levitt, co-chairman, co-founder and CEO of Core Scientific, said.
Some miners are even using excess heat and converting it into close to 100% heat-generated energy, which would otherwise be wasted but instead is being channeled into energy, Streng said.
“It’s clear now that miners are converging toward renewable sources,” Streng said.
Out of all the energy that gets generated and used in the U.S., about 65% was wasted in 2021, according to a chart by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a research facility funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and UC Berkeley.
Miners can be a solution to the problem of unconsumed energy, Streng said.
Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8, agreed.
“By working together with a local power grid, we actually are a stabilizer,” Leverton said.
The amount of energy that it takes for Bitcoin to produce $1 billion worth of value is significantly less than the amount of energy it takes for something like an airline to produce $1 billion worth of value, Brian Brooks, CEO of Bitfury, said.
A key point that’s hurting the crypto mining industry right now is the lack of regulatory clarity, all the panelists said.
“Once we get [regulation], we think the pace of innovation should pick up because we’ll know the rules of the game,” Levitt said. “The efficiency of the hardware has improved tremendously, the efficiency of power provision and the free markets have directed us to be cognizant of how we bring power the right way. “
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:11:54 +0000
If you’re into cars, you may have heard of vinyl wrapping, which can change the appearance of a car. Engineers from MIT have taken a similarly thin material and created a skinny film that can turn pretty much any surface into a speaker. According to its inventors, it can create high-quality audio with minimal power consumption.
To achieve these properties, the researchers created a fabrication technique. They claim it can be scaled up to produce ultra-thin loudspeakers large enough to cover the inside of an automobile or to wallpaper a room, whispering a promise of immersive sound without an obvious source. The audio nerd in me is definitely feeling a cochlear hard-on coming on. (Yes, that’s a dick joke, but if your cochlear fuzzies were to stiffen you’d be deaf, so anatomically it makes absolutely no sense. The lengths I’m willing to go to for an infantile joke are legendary.)
The loudspeaker could be used in active noise cancellation, for example — combine the speaker tech with some electronics and microphones, and it could cancel out sound. The inventors also envision immersive sound experiences, and other low-energy use cases such as smart devices, etc.
This thin-film loudspeaker produces sound with minimal distortion while using a fraction of the energy required by a traditional loudspeaker. The hand-sized loudspeaker the team demonstrated, which weighs about as much as a dime, can generate high-quality sound no matter what surface the film is bonded to.
“It feels remarkable to take what looks like a slender sheet of paper, attach two clips to it, plug it into the headphone port of your computer and start hearing sounds emanating from it. It can be used anywhere. One just needs a smidgeon of electrical power to run it,” says Vladimir Bulović, the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, leader of the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory (ONE Lab), director of MIT.nano and senior author of the paper.
Bulović wrote the paper with lead author Jinchi Han, a ONE Lab postdoc, and co-senior author Jeffrey Lang, the Vitesse professor of Electrical Engineering. The research is published today in IEEE Transactions of Industrial Electronics.
Most thin-film loudspeakers are designed to be freestanding because the film must bend freely to produce sound. Mounting these loudspeakers onto a surface would impede the vibration and hamper their ability to generate sound. To overcome this problem, the MIT team rethought the design of a thin-film loudspeaker. Rather than having the entire material vibrate, their design relies on tiny domes on a thin layer of piezoelectric material that each vibrate individually. These domes, each only a few hair widths across, are surrounded by spacer layers on the top and bottom of the film that protect them from the mounting surface while still enabling them to vibrate freely. The same spacer layers protect the domes from abrasion and impact during day-to-day handling, enhancing the loudspeaker’s durability.
“We have the ability to precisely generate mechanical motion of air by activating a physical surface that is scalable. The options of how to use this technology are limitless,” Bulović says.
There’s no word on if or when the tech will see the light of day in consumer or commercial applications, but I’d wallpaper my living room in speakers in a heartbeat just to get rid of the wires and the speakers bolted to the wall.
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 21:02:50 +0000
The Russia-Ukraine war is far from the first time DJI has has come under fire for policy decisions. But the Shenzhen-based drone giant is trying its best to stay away from any implication that it might be taking sides in the on-going conflict. Following calls to halt sales in Russian, the firm issued a statement titled “DJI Reassesses Sales Compliance Efforts In Light Of Current Hostilities,” which announces a suspension of business in both countries, “pending [ … ] review.”
The full statement is as follows,
DJI is internally reassessing compliance requirements in various jurisdictions. Pending the current review, DJI will temporarily suspend all business activities in Russia and Ukraine. We are engaging with customers, partners and other stakeholders regarding the temporary suspension of business operations in the affected territories.
The company, which became a favorite target of the Trump administration, has been working to avoid accusations that it’s been favoring any one side in the conflict. Ukraine officials have, however, previously implied that the company might have intentionally sabotaged its products. For its part, DJI has insisted that its products are not sold for military purposes.
Earlier this month, the company issued a statement reiterating the message, noting in part, “Our distributors, resellers, and other business partners have committed to following it when they sell and use our products. They agree not to sell DJI products to customers who clearly plan to use them for military purposes, or help modify our products for military use, and they understand we will terminate our business relationship with them if they cannot adhere to this commitment.”
pic.twitter.com/ZoCXQIDOyt
— DJI (@DJIGlobal) March 16, 2022
In March, the company responded to a statement from Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, on Twitter, noting that it would set up geofencing upon request. The company was also quick to point out that a determined drone pilot could easily circumvent such restrictions. “Please be aware that geofencing is not foolproof,” the company wrote, “and if the user does not connect to the internet to update the geofence data, the new geofence will not take effect for the drone.”
Such a statement does highlight some bigger issues with current drone safety systems, military use or no.
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 20:38:00 +0000
Netflix laid off a contingent of its editorial staff just five months after launching its in-house publication Tudum. Netflix declined to share further details, but said that the Tudum is not being shut down. At least eight writers have tweeted that they were laid off, including an editorial manager.
“Our fan website Tudum is an important priority for the company,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Given the precariousness (and often low salaries) in traditional journalism jobs, Netflix managed to court a number of talented journalists from the top publications in online media, including many people of color, according to tweets by former employees.
While it’s good to know that Netflix is considering DEI when hiring — something that newsrooms severely lack — the quick layoffs put historically overlooked writers back in a position of vulnerability. Media businesses take time to grow, and in this case, it appears that people were let go before they really had a chance to develop a new publication from the ground up.
As competitor services like Disney+ and HBO Max grow, Netflix is struggling to keep up. The streaming service reported last week that in the first quarter of 2022, it lost 200,000 subscribers — its first subscriber loss in over a decade. These losses are expected to continue, as Netflix forecasts a global paid subscriber loss of 2 million for the second quarter.
Netflix has tried to squeeze more money out of customers by raising prices and testing features that would charge extra for account sharing. But on the heels of last week’s bad earnings, it seems that Netflix decided to scale back its new content marketing business.
Netflix told TechCrunch that these layoffs affected a combination of both contract workers and full-time employees, but declined to share if any other departments at Netflix were affected.
If you are a Netflix employee or former employee who wishes to speak about these layoffs or company culture, please email amanda@techcrunch.com or text 929 593 0227 via Signal, an encrypted messaging app.
Netflix shares down more than 20% after losing 200,000 subscribers in first quarter
Netflix tests a new feature that will raise prices for account sharing
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 20:30:58 +0000
Most home electric vehicle chargers are adept at taking power off the grid and delivering it to your car, but what if the vehicle could also automatically keep the lights on during blackouts and offset electricity costs by returning power to its source during high-demand times?
A growing number of companies, including automakers GM and Ford, are touting the benefits of bidirectional charging for consumers. But research suggests advantages reach further than the individual EV owner.
For instance, a 2018 Environmental Research Letters paper from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory said that in California, which has the largest electric vehicle deployment in the U.S., “substantial capital investment, as much as several billion dollars, can be avoided if EVs are used in lieu of stationary storage.”
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) charging — also called bidirectional charging — have long been the stuff of demonstration programs. Only recently has the technology emerged as a possible useful addendum to the more than 80% to 85% of EV charging that takes place at home.
And with a stream of EVs coming on the market, the race to introduce bidirectional charging is heating up.
Enter the aftermarket
Image Credits: Emporia
At least two aftermarket suppliers say they will have bidirectional home products on the U.S. market soon, one later this year and the other in 2023.
But because some automakers are developing proprietary bidirectional charging systems, the question becomes whether the supplier solutions will be able to plug into them — at least initially. It’s not a certainty at this point, but it does appear that the automakers want that to happen, and discussions about compatibility are underway.
Shawn McLaughlin, CEO of Colorado-based Emporia Energy, said in an interview it will have a 240-volt bidirectional home charger on sale in the U.S., priced at less than $1,500, in the second half of 2023.
Emporia is working with BREK Electronics, a pioneer in the development of silicon carbide (SiC) transistors, on the inverter for its bidirectional charger. The company currently sells a $399 48-amp home charger and a smart home energy management system, among other products.
McLaughlin said acquiring certification from global electric safety leader UL is the biggest hurdle to get the product on the market. As offered, it will integrate with the energy management system for such features as paused charging when air conditioning cycles on.
“We’re super excited,” McLaughlin said. “It’s still early, but this is a natural evolution of the technology — it’s been mostly pilot programs. Most of the major car manufacturers have announced that they will support bidirectional EV charging in some form or fashion, including Volkswagen, Ford, Chevrolet, Kia and Rivian. It is evolving as we speak, and the key will be in what fashion each manufacturer supports it.”
He said Tesla has been “quiet” about V2H and V2G, but he projects that the tech will eventually be integrated into the company’s charging.
McLaughlin said that Emporia is building its bidirectional technology around the ISO 15118-20 communications protocol, which “is in final review.” A website timetable shows it in the approval stage. McLaughlin said his charger will be able to receive and return 240 volts back to the home with 11.5 kilowatts of power.
Wallbox North America, an arm of a Dutch company, said that its forthcoming Quasar 2 bidirectional charger will be “fully compatible with EVs sold in North America.” The company said Quasar 2 will automatically take over in a power outage and power a home for more than three days. Wallbox recently launched its $699 240-volt 48-amp Pulsar Plus charger (capable of responding to Alexa and Google Home voice commands) on the U.S. market.
Image Credits: Wallbox
Early stages
One just needs to look at the number of products on the market to see that bidirectional charging industry is in its very early stages.
Wallbox has sold the $3,600 Quasar 1 in Europe, but spokeswoman Elyce Behrsin declined to give an actual sales number.
She said Quasar 1 is compatible with CHAdeMO bidirectional-enabled vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf and ENV-200, the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid and the Kia Soul. She said that the 11.5-kilowatt Quasar 2, which will use the dominant Combined Charging System (CCS) protocol, will be on the U.S. market “during Q4 this year.”
The list of EVs on the U.S. market is long and growing and Wallbox said it will be ready to sync up with them.
“We are working with North American utilities, auto manufacturers and other partners to test and validate Quasar and our bidirectional charging technology to ensure compatibility with regional electrical standards and with EV makes and models sold in North America,” the company said. “Indeed, part of the future success of Quasar and bidirectional charging depends on more EVs being bidirectional-capable.”
Other companies are working on bidirectional EV charging, including Rectifier Technologies, Delta and Nuuve.
Jeff Wandell, manager of EV communications at Nissan Motor Corporation, confirmed the company is working with aftermarket suppliers.
“At this time, there is not a Nissan-certified commercially available product on the market,” he said. “However, there are companies that are in the process of developing and certifying their equipment — such as Wallbox — and hope to be in the market soon. We actively work with a number of these companies to move this technology forward and make it available to Leaf owners.”
Chris Martin, a spokesman for American Honda, said that the company has no U.S. news to share about bidirectional charging, but it’s being explored for the future.
There are developments in Europe, particularly with automakers.
Automakers make a move
Image Credits: Ford Motor Company
Honda said in January that it is partnering with the V2X Suisse consortium in a plan that will place 50 Honda electric vehicles with Switzerland’s Mobility car-sharing fleet at 40 sites. Equipped with Honda Power Manager units, the cars will “deliver V2G energy recovery capability for Mobility, at various urban and suburban sites across Switzerland.” The Honda e-cars will be able to feed 20 kilowatts of power back into the grid when plugged into the bidirectional station.
Late last year, Volkswagen called bidirectional charging “a ground-breaking technology” that will be on all ID. models with 77-kilowatt-hour batteries in the future. The company said its plan includes special DC BiDi wall boxes and that over-the-air updates can be used to retrofit the system to already delivered vehicles.
And, according to a Rivian spokesperson, “All R1T and R1S vehicles have vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) capabilities. While bidirectional charging capabilities exist in Rivian vehicles, regulatory and other regional variables are a significant factor for potential future V2G applications.”
Other automakers are working on proprietary charging systems, though they may not be plug and play.
Startup EV maker Lucid said in 2020 that it was working with a charging company called QMerit for bidirectional V2G capability in the Air. And Ford will offer what it calls Intelligent Backup Power on the forthcoming F-150 Lightning electric truck. Ford will also partner with leading photovoltaic provider Sunrun on the use of energy storage and solar to power homes. The 80-amp Ford Charge Station Pro will be required.
“For the Lightning, it’s not going to work with a regular Level II charger,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal analyst for e-mobility at Guidehouse Insights in Detroit. “It only outputs backup power over the DC pins. It’s designed to work specifically with a smart inverter system that includes a transfer switch to cut power from the grid and take it from the truck when power goes out, so that power isn’t flowing back to the grid. Right now, SunRun is the only company offering a compatible kit to enable this.”
Bidirectional charging challenges
Marc Tarpenning, a co-founder of Tesla with Martin Eberhard, emphasizes that powering a house from a car requires critical safety protocols — it’s not a simple matter.
Without protections in place, “the voltage you put into your house would flow to the power pole on your street and for a moment light up the high-voltage wires to 12,000 volts,” he said. “If a lineman happened to be working on those wires, like during a power outage, you would kill them pretty much instantly.” He added that “the house must totally disconnect from the grid before any power is applied internally. So, your EV could certainly power your house, but the power companies are very serious about generator setups, making sure that they have proper isolation ‘transfer’ switches in place.”
Another challenge, according to Tarpenning, involves the smart inverter system Abuelsamid referenced. “The inverter in your car will have to be able to deal with the ‘inrush’ when you power up a house,” Tarpenning said. “For a moment, the house will draw a huge amount of current as everything comes to life. This isn’t a problem if the inverter is designed to handle that, but that will be a design change for most EV inverters.”
Abuelsamid said that AC electricity can be taken off the Lightning through the ProPower onboard system with the optional 9.6-kilowatt output, “but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to work with the Quasar.” Hyundai models, limited to 1.9 kilowatts through an adapter that plugs into the J1772 connector, “might be capable of functioning with the Quasar with a suitable software update,” he said. “I’ve yet to see any details on how Lucid is implementing its bidirectional capability.”
Ryan O’Gorman, Ford’s lead strategist for energy services, said in an email, “At this time, the F-150 Lightning isn’t compatible with other options. As we understand it, the ISO 15118-20 is not released yet. And as with the ISO and SAE charging standards in market today, when that 15118-20 standard is released — including bidirectional power transfer — one could expect manufacturers (like Ford) who have implemented accepted standards in the past to support those future standards. So, for now, the Ford Charge Station Pro would need to be installed with the Home Integration System that is available for purchase from Sunrun in 2022.”
Abuelsamid’s colleague Scott Shepard, principal research analyst for energy at Guidehouse, said that Lucid’s bidirectional system is AC-based, with Lucid also providing the AC bidirectional charging unit. He added that Wallbox has “supported at least one V2G trial in Europe — Powerloop in the U.K., operated by Octopus Energy.” That trial, backed by the National Grid, involves more than 130 households in Great Britain.
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 20:29:25 +0000
“Investors are pouring money into Latin America’s logistics and shipping businesses,” our former colleague Jon Shieber wrote in 2019. But a pandemic later, amid unrest over gasoline prices across the globe, it’s time for a revisit.
Nowports (YC W19) is a good starting point for comparison. In February 2019, the Mexican startup was just graduating from Y Combinator, and in Shieber’s words, “sett[ing] itself up to be the Flexport of Latin America.” Fast-forward to today, and Nowports has raised $92.6 million in funding, including a $60 million Series B round led by Tiger.
Examples like this abound as investors have shown bullishness for freight forwarding all over the world. The pandemic played a role in boosting logistics startups, shining a light on how essential supply chains are. But venture capital keeps on flowing even as COVID-19 wanes, recent news shows.
Just this month, TechCrunch reported on three fundraising events in the freight-forwarding world. Seattle-based Convoy is valued at up to $3.8 billion following a $260 million Series E round. Nigeria’s OnePort landed a $5 million investment that will help it expand to three major African hubs by the end of the year. And in Latin America, DeltaX has its eyes set on the Andean region and $1 million in the bank.
Digitizing freight forwarding is a global challenge because the sector still lacks transparency and efficiency. Latin American startups have a steeper hill to climb, but this also drives them to innovate and help each other in interesting ways.
Much more than copycats
In Latin America, the problem isn’t just that freight forwarding is still very much analog — it is also suboptimized. In the region, “trucking demand outpaces capacity, yet 40% of the time trucks roll empty,” according to Mexican startup BeGo (YC W20).
According to Jonathan Lewy, whose fund Investo backed BeGo and Nowports, the two startups represent the sector’s main models: marketplaces and freight forwarders. Other examples would be Brazil’s CargoX on the marketplace side and Nuvocargo on the freight-forwarding side.
However, business models in Latin America are often blended, and Nuvocargo is a good example of this.
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 20:29:05 +0000
Transportation startup DeltaX is accelerating its plans to digitize the trucking industry in its native Bolivia and beyond thanks to a recent $1 million seed round.
DeltaX operates in the same space as Convoy, Loadsmart and Sennder – freight forwarding (plainly, helping companies move goods from point A to point B). But the startup focuses on a region of Latin America where trucking is still in dire need of a digital transformation, unlike other countries where this transition has already begun and accelerated amid the pandemic.
“We are working to solve a huge logistics problem in the Andean region,” DeltaX CEO Luis Fernando Ortiz said. “Over-the-road transportation in this economic zone is inefficient and expensive, which has enormous implications for the competitiveness of our countries and the well-being of our truck drivers.”
Why Latin America’s freight-forwarding opportunity is still attracting capital
Millions of tons of cargo are transported each year via the Pan-American Highway and its branches across Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay. The cargo includes commodities, such as minerals from the Lithium Triangle and beyond; grain, fruit and vegetables, as well as containerized imports. But the process is deficient, and it is drivers who pay the toll.
There are around 1 million truck drivers in the region, most of them independent, Ortiz said. In its current form, this fragmentation has many downsides, which DeltaX is hoping to address through technology.
There are several layers to DeltaX’s activities: It facilitates communication between parties, automates cargo tracking and reporting, and adds visibility to shipment documentation, with upcoming elements of fintech and machine learning.
“Everyone in our sector follows this model, but we are going to be the first ones to apply it to our region,” Ortiz said.
Adapting to Latin America
Digitization is undeniably a shared need around the world for logistics, a sector that until recently largely operated on phone calls, printouts and faxes. But while this has started to change in many countries, Bolivia still lagged behind.
Ortiz knew this problem firsthand: He used to work for the Chilean port of Arica, a major hub for the region. There, he co-founded a club for truck drivers, most of whom came from neighboring countries and needed more support. This is how he knows that they typically spend 25 days in a row on the road away from their families — and the harm that a lack of work predictability causes to their quality of life.
Thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, Ortiz went on to study in the U.S., obtaining a master’s degree in Business Administration from Babson and an M.A. of Public Administration from Harvard. Now that he has moved back to Bolivia, both are proving relevant to his new endeavor, where business acumen matters perhaps just as much as an understanding of regulation and of the social context of the drivers.
Understanding the needs of drivers has deeply shaped DeltaX’s technology. When it first launched in February 2020, it was a mobile application for truck drivers. Mobile still plays a key role in its strategy, as does WhatsApp, with bots providing answers to frequent questions on the go.
Better serving the 1,300 drivers affiliated with DeltaX is also why the startup is planning to add an embedded fintech element to its platform, as is now common among Latin American startups. It would take the form of a microcredit lending program for working capital – providing advances on upcoming revenue.
“Truck drivers are underbanked because their income isn’t stable; that’s why the fintech side is important to us,” Ortiz said.
DeltaX also hopes that algorithms will be able to improve its prediction abilities, and therefore the working conditions of drivers. Instead of having to pay intermediaries and not being sure they’ll secure work, Ortiz explained, “A driver can say: I’m staying home this weekend because I know I have a journey planned for Monday.”
Hiring the data scientists who can make this happen is one of the ways DeltaX plans to use the proceeds of its seed round. With a current team of 23, it also plans to add UX experts, software engineers and product managers to keep on improving its platform.
Neighbors helping neighbors
DeltaX’s seed round was backed by several funds from the U.S. and Latin America: Magma Partners, out of Chile, which led the round; Duro Ventures, from California; 99 Startups, from Mexico; and Cibersons, from Paraguay. Bolivian angel network SC Angeles, which Ortiz co-founded, also participated.
While these names carry quite a bit of weight, as does the fact that DeltaX participated in the Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs Accelerator, the profile of some of its individual backers is also worth noting. Indeed, several of them have high-level roles in Latin America’s transportation sector, including two startup founders: Nowports CEO Alfonso de los Rios and Nuvocargo CEO Deepak Chhugani.
Ortiz said that DeltaX is complementary to these startups because of its geographic focus and the subverticals it is concentrating on. A key aspect is its exclusive focus on over-the-ground transportation, which is tied to a sore point in Bolivia’s history: The country is landlocked, having lost access to the sea in 1884 after a war with Chile.
DeltaX’s fundraising event is an important milestone for Bolivia’s startup scene: It is one of the country’s largest venture capital rounds to date. This shows that the ecosystem is still nascent, but also confirms the progress it has been making over the last few years.
Recent exits include NetComidas’ acquisition by PedidosYa and Venezuelan super app company Yummy buying up Yaigo.
But Bolivia isn’t just fodder for expansion-oriented M&As: It also has startups with regional ambitions, such as TuGerente and Ultra. DeltaX is one of these; in the coming months, it plans to open offices in neighboring countries to expand its operations, starting with Peru.
In the longer term, DeltaX hopes to further expand to Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Paraguay, Ortiz told TechCrunch. Will there be more consolidation in Latin America’s transportation sector in the meantime? It will be interesting to watch.
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 19:44:32 +0000
Google is introducing new users controls to allow people to limit the number of ads they see about pregnancy, parenting, dating and weight loss. The company first announced ad controls for YouTube in the United States and enabled users to choose to see fewer gambling and alcohol ads. Since the initial launch, these controls have rolled out to users globally for ads on YouTube.
The company announced today that it’s expanding these controls with new ad categories for both YouTube and Gmail. The controls will also apply to third-party sites where Google serves ads. Google told TechCrunch in an email the controls currently don’t apply to Search ads, but the company is working to bring the feature to Search ads in the future.
Google says it’s rolling out the new controls following feedback from users asking for more ads-level control, particularly about sensitive topics that they may want to avoid.
“People want more control over their ads experience, including blocking ads or categories they prefer not to see,” Karin Hennessy, the group product manager for ads privacy at Google, said in a statement. “Providing transparency and control has always been a priority for us so we’re expanding our tools, enabling the choice to see fewer pregnancy and parenting, dating, and weight loss ads. We’ll continue to listen to user feedback and study which categories to expand this feature to in the future.”
Image Credits: Google
The user controls can be accessed in the Ad Settings section under the Google Account dashboard. From there, you can scroll down to the “Sensitive ad categories” section that will allow you to limit specific types of ads in the five available topics: alcohol, dating, gambling, pregnancy and parenting, and weight loss. You can then click on the “see fewer button,” after which Google will notify you that you should see fewer ads for this category when you are signed into your Google Account. It’s worth noting that this won’t change the total number of ads you see. In addition, Google notes that you may still see ads that refer to these categories when searching or viewing related content.
The new controls are a welcome addition that should help address instances when specific online advertising can be disturbing for some users. For example, it can be harmful for someone suffering from an eating disorder to see ads about weight loss and someone struggling to get pregnant likely doesn’t want to see ads related to parenting.
Google will let you turn off YouTube ads for alcohol and gambling
Publish Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 19:25:50 +0000
Techstars, a startup accelerator born in Boulder, Colorado, has always been comfortable carving out niches. Unlike perhaps its closest competitor, Y Combinator, Techstars has gone the divide and conquer route of early-stage startups support: Instead of one massive batch, it has dozens of dedicated programs all over the world, ranging from Tel Aviv to Lagos to Oak-Ridge Knoxville.
While the geographic expansion has been aggressive, Techstars today announced another way it’s changing how it invests in startups. Rising Stars is a new pre-seed, pre-accelerator fund led by Saba Karim, head of Techstars startup pipeline, and Neal Sáles-Griffin, managing director of Techstars Chicago. Sticking with the Techstars ethos of building accelerators for overlooked geographies, Rising Stars is focused explicitly on backing underrepresented founders of color in the United States.
Per SEC filings, the Rising Stars fund has already closed $5 million in financing from limited partners, although sources familiar with the matter say that the team has closed $8 million and is targeting a final fund size of $10 million. Backers of the fund include Twitter, Amazon and Sandhill Angels. Rising Stars will cut $100,000 checks, in exchange for around a 7% to 10% ownership bite, compared to Techstars’ standard accelerator deal, in which it offers up to $120,000 in exchange for 6% of a business. Rising Stars is a pricier check for founders, but an earlier one too.
It’s wild that the world of early-stage startup investing has gotten so broad, and full of money, that even accelerators — programs literally launched to help startups get off the ground — have want to fund entrepreneurs even earlier. In other words, the earliest are going earlier. I’d argue this change is because of the Tiger Global effect, otherwise known as the trend of late-stage investors writing earlier and smaller checks to get target ownership. As a result of more money heading into seed and Series A rounds, accelerators and traditional early-stage investors may find it easier to get returns if they go earlier and find startups before they are ready for a Tiger term sheet.
A focus on inclusion is a differentiator in and of itself — so it’s smart that Techstars is opting for its first pre-seed fund to be targeted toward those who need it most. “Friends and family funding is a critical early-capital source for many startup founders … while great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone, not everyone has a built-in network they can tap into to bring their company to life,” the company wrote in a landing page about Rising Stars.
But, let’s be real: Backing founders before they’re even ready to call themselves that may be a new-ish skillset for Techstars, which has historically backed companies that are a tad more developed. The founding team’s expertise can very reasonably scale backward and hopefully to redefine what investment criteria Techstars itself uses within the new program.
Techstars says that “selection for Rising Stars puts these founders on the best footing for future consideration to join one of our 50+ accelerator programs located throughout the U.S., and around the world.” Relatedly, Techstars teamed up with JP Morgan to create an $80 million fund to back founders who identify as Black, Hispanic and Latino, Indigenous American and/or Pacific Islander.
Why does a16z need its own Y Combinator?