Home / Archived For January 2021

Sunday, 31 January 2021

Elon Musk goes live on Clubhouse, but with the room full, fans stream audio on YouTube

As I write this Elon Musk has joined Clubhouse for his first-ever in-person session and the boundaries of the app have already been tested. Only 5,000 people are in the room, BUT… the session is being live-streamed from here or here.

I am dusting off my creaky live-blogging skillz to cover the session… and will update this post as we go (apologies for appalling typos in the interim).

Musk initially talked about going gong to Mars and said it was likely to be a “hard” for the early pioneers, but that it would be a matter of keeping the “candle of civilization alive in the dark”.

Asked if he believed in aliens, he said there wasn’t a single piece of conclusive evidence for the existence of aliens, although it’s “quite possible” there is such a thing as Alien tech, at least at a “7/11” level, and a joked that they evidence so far suggests they might be at the “500 Megapixel camera” or “at least iPhone 6 level”.

He said his kids were not quite into the idea of going to Mars.

Asked about memes online he quipped: “He who controls the memes controls the universe” and it’s about what influences the zeitgeist. Memes are a complex form of communication – unlike pictures, memes are “10,000 words not 1,000 words”. They are aspirationally funny. “I love memes, they can be very insightful”

Does he try to sound crazy on Twitter? “I started crazy on Twitter,” he joked.

I don’t follow them, but some “are sent by “meme dealers” who are friends.

He posted about Neurolink but said Tesla had one of the strongest AI teams in the world.

With AI, it’s about “how to we stay relevant” and at least “stay along for the ride” in the good scenario” and couple to AI.

“People are already a cyborg.” We already have a tertiary layer in the form of smartphones. The bit-rate of us typing into a phone is 100 bits. So it’s like trying to talk to a tree, for our smartphones. So with a direct neural interface, we increase it with a huge magnitude. And also spend longer with a higher magnitude.

You can decide if you want to be a robot of a person. But when you wake in the morning you wouldn’t have to be the same as you were yesterday. It’s analogous to a video game, not unlike the “Altered Carbon” Netflix series.

There are primitive versions s the Neurolink idea, with tiny wires into your brain.

He said they will be releasing new videos in a month or so, such as of a monkey playing videos with their mind.

The value of the early implant will be enormous and outright the risks.

Question: What should we educate a 5-year-old about in this world?

Musk talked about how video games engage children, but explaining “the why” was important. “We are programmed to forget the low “probability of things” if they aren’t relevant.

Such as, taking apart an engine and putting them together. We will need tools, so we understand the relevance. It’s better than having a “course of wrenches”

He was asked “why are there not more Elon Musks”? “If you need encouraging words, don’t do a startup”.

A friend sent him a slice of cake in 2013. So “I should have bought it 8 years ago” “At this point Bitcoin is a good thing. I am a supporter. I am late to the party, but I am a supporter.”

He said it was clear Bitcoin was getting broader acceptance by the finance world. “I don’t have a strong opinion on other currencies.”

Dogecoin is a made aa joke to make fun of cryptocurrencies, but “fate lives irony”.

“The most entertaining outcome is the most likely.” The most ironic outcome would be dogecoin becoming the currency of the future.

He made a joke about bitcoin and his account got locked.

TESLA: They want to make 20 million cars and trucks per year as a target.

Autonomous driving could reach a significant amount of time you would rely on it in a week, so autonomous cars would do a third of the hours in a weeks, so 60 hours instead of 12.

Making sense of objects with technologies like Lidar would effectively make cars “superhuman”.

Working remotely on zoom has been tricky for him, but remote working has not been perfect. “Fear is not the mind-killer, context switching the mind-killer” he said.

Would he start another company? It joked that he pretty much has his hands with Tesla, Space X, The Boring Company and others to date.

He talked about the huge advances in vaccine technology, such as the MRNA tech which made the Covid-19 vaccine possible. He seems very bullish about the vaccine.

“There is going to be an avalanche of vaccine” coming, “I guarantee you ‘it’ will be thrown away this year.” He said ‘CureVac’ vaccine will be approved soon.

He mentioned, “The Tesla machine can make a bazillion doses super fast.”

He made his poison clear on vaccines: “I am not an anti-vaxxer I am a pro-vaxxer.”

Joining Silicon Valley in the early days he had to ask himself ‘I watch the internet being built in front of me or do I get involved.’

Too shy to speak to anyone in the lobby of Netscape.

Then he tried to code. He wrote the first maps and directions on the internet. The Web site only worked during the night as he was using the server during the day.

Marc Andressen quipped that we would get a job the next time he hangs out in the lobby.

He’s been watching The Last King for is historical accuracy and Cobra Kai. The Expanse’s plot lines sometimes seem too fantastical to him.

He was recommended Devs and Mythic Quest and Ravens Baquet.

Tenet was “pretty good”. Did he understand it “If you think too hard about it, it’s not going to make complete sense, but it’s a good movie”

His knowledge of the Hitch Hikers guide to the Galaxy, remains intact

A person calling themselves “Vlad The Stock Impaler” was brought into the Clubhouse room to talk about the Game Stop phenomenon.

“Vlad” made a rambling attempt to explain what happened last week but was interrogated by Musk (things getting slightly surreal at this point).

English learning app ELSA lands $15 million Series B for international growth and its B2B platform

NEWS

Speaking is one of the hardest parts of learning a new language, especially if you don’t have someone to practice with regularly. ELSA is an app that helps by using speech recognition technology to correct pronunciation. Based in San Francisco and Ho Chi Minh City, ELSA announced today it has raised a $15 million Series B, led by VI (Vietnam Investments) Group and SIG. Other participants included returning investors Google’s AI-focused fund Gradient Ventures, SOSV and Monk’s Hill Ventures, along with Endeavor Catalyst and Globant Ventures.

The capital will be used to expand ELSA’s operations in Latin America and build a scalable B2B platform, allowing companies and educational organizations to offers the app’s coaching services to employees or students. Founded in 2015, ELSA, which stands for English Language Speech Assistant, now claims more than 13 million users. Its last round of funding was a $7 million Series A announced in 2019.

Gradient Ventures, Google’s AI fund, leads $7M investment in English learning app Elsa

In addition to Latin America, ELSA will also focus on expanding in Vietnam, India and Japan, where it saw high demand last year. The company recently formed a partnership with IDP and British Council, which owns the widely-used IELTS English language test and now recommends ELSA to for test preparation. ELSA is also working with language schools in Vietnam like IMAP and Speak Up, online learning platform YOLA and corporate clients including Kimberly Clark, Intel and ATAD.

ELSA co-founder and chief executive officer Vu Van told TechCrunch that many users want to improve their English speaking proficiency for job opportunities and to increase their earning potential. In Vietnam, India and Brazil, people with higher English speaking proficiency can earn about two to three times more than their colleagues, she said.

“This motivation drives a lot of demand for our English learner community in Vietnam, India and Brazil, especially during COVID-19 when we’ve seen enormous interest from the LatAm region as well,” Van added.

Smartphone with English pronunciation app ELSA open on it

ELSA’s English pronunciation feedback

In Vietnam, where Van is from, English learners spend a lot of their disposable income on online or offline English training. “However, the majority of English learners still struggle to improve their speaking skill because other people don’t understand them or they’re afraid to speak it,” she said. ELSA was designed to give them an accessible resource to help improve their pronunciation and confidence when speaking English.

Other apps focused on English pronunciation include FluentU and Say It. Van said one of ELSA’s main advantages is its proprietary voice recognition AI tech.

“What’s unique about our AI is that we’ve collected the largest amount of accented English voice data from millions of users that we have used to train our AI model over the last few years, which gives us a higher accuracy in recognizing and understanding non-native English speakers around the world,” she said. “The other existing voice recognition technologies available, by comparison, might understand native speakers well but have a hard time understanding non-native accented English learner communities.”

Instead of providing feedback about individual words, ELSA’s app also corrects individual sounds and gives users detailed information on how to improve their pronunciation, including “very advanced prosodic speaking features like intonation, rhythm and fluency to help them speak English more naturally, something that our competitors don’t offer,” Van added.

YC-backed BlaBla raises $1.5M to teach English through short videos

Ben raises $2.5M seed to fix employee benefits for SMEs

NEWS

Ben, a London-based employee benefits and rewards platform, has raised $2.5 million in funding. The seed round is led by Cherry Ventures, and Seedcamp.

A number of angel investors with backgrounds in fintech and HR tech also participated. They include Paul Forster (founder of Indeed), Taavet Hinrikus (founder of TransferWise), Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas (previously an exec at GoCardless but now a partner at Index Ventures), Philip Reynolds (VP of Engineering at Workday), and Matt Robinson (founder of Nested).

Part fintech, part HR play, Ben has built an employee benefits platform to enable SMEs to offer much more personalised and flexible benefits to employees. The U.K. startup does this via a SaaS for managing benefits, including a benefits marketplace, combined with per-employee debit cards powered by Mastercard.

The idea is to give employees more individual choice around which benefits they choose, while making it easy to on-board additional providers. This can be via the marketplace or through whitelisting merchant or merchant categories via the employer issued Mastercards, such as food and drink or travel and mobility, or a specific co-working space etc.

“While most companies offer benefits in order to attract and engage team members, and ultimately drive productivity, most solutions don’t deliver the desired outcomes,” Ben co-founder and CEO Sebastian Fallert tells me. “To have impact, offerings need to work for the individual employees; after all, a ‘benefit’ that’s relevant for somebody working from home in their mid-40s could be next to useless for a new starter in their 20s”.

Fallert says that providing the required level of personalised benefits has been impossible for most small to medium-sized companies due to the “high cost and complexity” of creating and administering personalised programmes. This has seen only large enterprises able to offer flexible benefit programmes where employees get to pick from a range of options. Ben aims to remedy this.

Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas, angel investor and COO of GoCardless, is joining Index as partner

“The Ben software platform allows companies to load funds and set individual spend rules on how these can be used,” explains Fallert. “Employees are then able to choose from group benefits, such as private medical insurance, mental wellbeing services, or dental plans, while a real per-employee Mastercard opens the door to pretty much any product or service in a tax-efficient and compliant way”.

The result is a “win-win,” says the Ben CEO. “Employees get tailored benefits, and companies only pay for what’s used, take advantage of tax exemptions and preferred pricing, while streamlining the administration”.

The Ben platform is currently used by smaller and mid-market companies, especially those with a distributed team. “It’s these firms in particular that have to deal with the growing complexity of their programmes to keep up with a more diverse and increasingly remote/distributed workforce,” says Fallert.

Meanwhile, Ben has three revenue streams: a SaaS fee; interchange revenue every time its cards get used; and, of course, affiliate revenue from its marketplace.

Adds the Ben CEO: “One of our core hypotheses is that there are so many amazing services out there that simply can’t get through to companies as they’re often not relevant for all employees, such as debt consolidation or fertility treatment. With Ben, they get easy distribution on standard commercial terms while companies get to offer an additional benefit without any additional overhead”.

Why is GoCardless COO Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas pivoting to become a full-time VC?

New rule reins in China’s flourishing self-publishing space

NEWS

Despite China’s history of stringent media control, an industry of uninstitutionalized, individual publishers has managed to flourish on social media platforms like Tencent’s WeChat and ByteDance’s Toutiao. These self-publishers are called “We Media” in the Chinese internet lexicon, denoting the independent power of citizen journalists and content creators.

Meanwhile, self-publishers have always had to tread carefully on what they post or risk being targeted by censors who deem them illegal or inappropriate.

The topics they cover are myriad, ranging from fashion and food to politics and current affairs. WeChat, a major destination for self-publishers, hinted last July it had 20 million “public accounts”, platforms for individuals to broadcast content and in businesses’ case, reach customers. In 2020, 360 million users read articles published on WeChat public accounts, WeChat founder Allen Zhang disclosed recently.

Sina Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, has long attracted citizen journalists. In the early days of COVID-19, millions of Chinese users rushed to Weibo seeking facts from accounts like that of Fang Fang, an author who chronicled what she had witnessed in Wuhan.

Now, a new development in China’s internet regulation is about to further restrict China’s tens of millions of self-publishers.

Public accounts that “provide online news service to the public shall obtain the Internet News Information Permit and other relevant media accreditation,” according to a new regulation (translation here) published January 22 by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet watchdog.

In the following days, WeChat, Baidu, Sohu and other online information services began notifying publishers of the new rule. “If your account lacks relevant accreditation, you are advised not to edit, report, publish or comment on news about politics, the economy, military, foreign affairs or other major current events,” according to the notice sent by WeChat.

“The WeChat Public Account Platform always commits to providing a green, healthy online environment to users,” the message adds.

The requirement of news accreditation will likely be a death knell for independent social media publishers that have taken on journalistic roles, particularly those covering politics. “It’s not something you can obtain easily unless you’re an official news outlet or an organization with unmatched resources and background,” a WeChat account publisher told TechCrunch.

China’s control on news reaches into every corner of the internet, and regulations are always playing catchup with the pace at which new media, such as microblogs and live streaming, flourishes.

China’s authorities propose to keep minors out of live streaming

From 2017 to 2018, the cyberspace authority granted news permits to a total of 761 “internet news services,” which together operated 743 websites, 563 apps, 119 forums, 23 blogs, 3 microblogs, 2285 public accounts, one instant messenger, and 13 live streaming services. In other words, hard news is off limits for internet services of these categories that operate without a news license. It remains to see how platform operators like WeChat and Sina Weibo work to enforce the rules.

Heightening oversight on online information could have merit when it comes to battling misinformation. The new regulation also calls on operators to set up mechanisms like a creator blacklist to root out fake news. But the regulation overall could have an adverse impact on freedom of expression in China, the International Federation of Journalists warned.

“The vaguely defined new rule comes at a time when ‘self-media’ has gained huge popularity in China and journalists have begun using such platforms to publish work which was axed by their organisations,” the IFJ said in a statement published on January 28.

Internet connectivity drops in Myanmar after the military detains Aung San Suu Kyi and other leading politicians

NEWS

Access to the internet in Myanmar dropped sharply after the military detained leaders of ruling party National League for Democracy, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and declared a state of emergency. The NLD won a wide majority of parliamentary seats in November’s general election, which the military alleges was the result of election fraud. In a statement on military-owned television, the army said a year-long state of emergency would be declared in Myanmar and power handed to military chief Min Aung Hlaing.

According to NetBlocks, a non-governmental organization that monitors digital rights, cybersecurity and internet governance around the world, internet disruptions began around 3AM Monday morning local time, with national connectivity falling to 75% of ordinary levels, and then reaching about 50% around 8AM. Data shows that the cuts affected several network operators, including the state-owned Myanma Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and Telenor. NetBlocks said “preliminary findings [indicate] a centrally ordered mechanism of disruption targeting cellular and some fixed-line services, progressing over time as operators comply.”

Update: Internet connectivity in #Myanmar has fallen to 50% of ordinary levels as of 8:00 a.m. local time amid an apparent military coup and the detention of civilian leaders; pattern of disruption indicates centrally issued telecoms blackout order

https://t.co/Jgc20OBk27 pic.twitter.com/71fHI3sRv3

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) February 1, 2021

The United States Embassy’s American Citizen Services said on Twitter that internet and phone connectivity are both limited throughout Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw.

Update: We are aware that internet and phone connectivity is limited throughout Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw.

— American Citizen Services – Burma (Myanmar) (@ACSRangoon) February 1, 2021

Aye Min Thant, a former correspondent for Reuters who is now the Tech for Peace program manager at Phandeeyar, a tech accelerator in Yangon, tweeted that she had been logged out of Signal and Telegram overnight, and can’t log in again because cell service is shut down, preventing her from getting verification codes.

The detainment of Suu Kyi and other National League for Democracy leaders comes days after Myanmar’s military attempted to downplay concerns about a coup by stating it would protect the country’s constitution, despite its allegations of vote fraud in November’s election.

Myanmar came under direct military rule after a 1962 coup replaced the civilian government. In 1990, free elections were held and the NLD won, but the military refused to give up power, placing Suu Kyi under house arrest. After 2011, a transition to democratic rule gradually began, but the military still controlled much of the government.

The NLD has also been accused of being complicit in the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims and disenfranchising opponents.

While Myanmar’s government does not practice direct censorship of internet content, Freedom House gave the country a score of only 36 out of 100 in 2019, citing manipulation of online content by both the military and NLD, and prosecution that forces individuals to self-censor. In June 2019, the government banned the internet in parts of Rakhine and Chin State, the sites of ongoing fighting between the Myanmar military and Arakan Army. Human rights observers including the Human Rights Watch have said that the internet ban prevents people in those areas from communicating with their families, getting information about COVID-19 or accessing aid.

Human Capital: Alpha Global forms to unite Alphabet workers worldwide

NEWS

You’ve just landed on the web version of my weekly newsletter, Human Capital. It’s where we look at the recent events of the week pertaining to diversity, equity, inclusion and labor in tech.

You can sign up here to get Human Capital delivered straight to your inbox every Friday at 1 p.m. PT.

Let’s jump in.

Alpha Global forms to unite Alphabet workers around the world

Alpha Global announced its formation earlier this week to unite Alphabet workers around the world, including those from the Alphabet Workers Union in the United States, The Verge reported. Alpha Global, which is affiliated with the UNI Global Union, aims to create a common worker strategy, support fellow workers and more.

“A just Alphabet has wide-ranging implications for our democracies and societies,” Alpha Global said in a statement. “That is why we are joining together to demand fundamental human rights for all workers in Alphabet operations, including the right to form or join a union and the right to bargain collectively.”

I should mention that you’ll be able to hear more about Alphabet Workers Union at Alpha Global at TC Sessions: Justice directly from Parul Koul, the executive chair of Alphabet Workers Union. You can snag your tickets here for just $5.

Apple Watch launches a Black unity collection

Image Credits: Apple

In celebration of Black History Month, Apple introduced the Black Unity Collection for Apple Watch.

Something feels off about the watch band, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it’s the commoditization of Black culture.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative launches the Justice Accelerator Fund

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has created a new criminal justice reform group, Recode reported this week.

With $350 million put toward the new Justice Accelerator Fund over the next five years, the organization will focus on criminal justice advocacy. JAF will be led by Ana Zamora, CZI’s current director of criminal justice.

NLRB gets a new acting general counsel

Biden named Peter Sung Ohr the new acting general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board. As Vice’s Lauren Kaori Gurley noted, Ohr’s appointment has the potential to be very good for gig workers and workers rights, in general.

Peter Sung Ohr, the new Acting General Counsel of the @NLRB, gave Instacart workers the "ok" on a union election in 2020 and wrote a decision that allowed @uchicagogsu grad students to unionize in 2017, a good sign for gig workers & grad student organizing going forward

— Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) January 26, 2021

ServiceNow launches racial equity fund

With $100 million set aside for the fund, the enterprise software company’s racial equity fund aims to “drive more sustainable wealth creation by funding homeownership, entrepreneurship, and neighborhood revitalization within Black communities in 10 regions across the United States,” according to a press release.

Here’s a nugget on how it’ll work:

The ServiceNow Racial Equity Fund will buy smaller community loans to increase the lending capacity for local banks. By increasing access to capital, the investment will facilitate homeownership and entrepreneurship in Black communities, leading to job creation and wider economic growth. The investment, which is the first of its kind for ServiceNow, will initially focus investments in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York, Orlando, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. – locations where ServiceNow has significant operations and community presence.

Institutional trust is the real meme

NEWS

Hello friends, this is Week in Review.

Last week, I dove into the AR maneuverings of Apple and Facebook and what that means for the future of the web. This week, I’m aiming to touch the meme stock phenomenon that dominated American news cycles this week and see if there’s anything worth learning from it, with an eye towards the future web.

If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox every Saturday morning from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny.

(Photo by Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

The big thing

This week was whatever you wanted it to be. A rising up of the proletariat. A case of weaponized disinformation. A rally for regulation… or perhaps deregulation of financial markets. Choose your own adventure with the starting point being one flavor of chaos leading into a slightly more populist blend of chaos.

At the end of it, a lot of long-time financiers are confused, a lot of internet users are using rent money to buy stock in Tootsie Roll, a lot of billionaires are finding how intoxicating adopting a “for-the-little-guy!” persona on Twitter can be, and here I am staring at the ceiling wondering if there’s any institution in the world trustworthy enough that the internet can’t turn it into a lie.

This week, my little diddy is about meme stocks, but more about the idea that once you peel away the need to question why you actually trust something, it can become easier to just blindly place that faith in more untrustworthy places. All the better if those places are adjacent to areas where others place trust.

The Dow Jones had its worst week since October because retail investors, organized in part on Reddit, turned America’s financial markets into the real front page of the internet. Boring, serious stocks like Facebook and Apple reported their earnings and the markets adjusted accordingly, but in addition to the serious bits of news, the Wall Street page was splashed with break neck gains from “meme stocks.” While junk stocks surging is nothing new, the idea that a stock can make outrageous gains based on nothing and then possibly hold that value based on a newly formed shared trust is newer and much more alarming.

The most infamous of these stocks was GameStop. (If you’re curious about GameStop’s week, there are at least 5 million stories across the web to grab your attention, here’s one. Side note: collectively we seem to have longer attention spans post-Trump.)

So, Americans already don’t have too much institutional faith. Looking through some long-standing Gallup research, compared to the turn of the century, faith in organized religion, the media, most wings of government, big business and banks has decreased quite a bit. The outliers in what Americans do seem to trust more than they did 20 or so years ago are small businesses and the military.

This is all to say that it’s probably not stellar that people don’t trust anything, and me thinking that the internet could probably disrupt every trusted institution except the military probably only shows my lack of creative thinking when it comes to how the web could democratize the Defense Department. As you might guess from that statement, I think democratizing access to certain institutions can be bad. I say that with about a thousand asterisks leading to footnotes that you’ll never find. I also don’t think the web is done disrupting institutional trust by a long shot, for better or worse.

Democratizing financial systems sounds a lot better from a populist lift, until you realize that the guys users are competing against are playing a different game with other people’s money. This saga will change plenty of lives but it won’t end particularly well for a most people exposed to “infinite upside” day trading.

Until this week, in my mind Robinhood was only reckless because it was exposing (or “democratizing access to” — their words) consumers to risk in a way that most of them probably weren’t equipped to handle. Now, I think that they’re reckless because they didn’t anticipate that OR how democratized access could lead to so many potential doomsday scenarios and bankrupt Robinhood. They quietly raised a $1 billion liquidity lifeline this week after they had to temporarily shut down meme stock trading, a move that essentially torched their brand and left them the web’s most hated institution. (Facebook had a quiet week)

This kind of all feeds back into this idea I’ve been feeding that scale can be very dangerous. Platforms seem to need a certain amount of head count to handle global audiences, and almost all of them are insufficiently staffed. Facebook announced this week in its earnings call that it has nearly 60,000 employees. This is a company that now has its own Supreme Court; that’s too big. If your institution is going to be massive and centralized, chances are you need a ton of people to moderate it. That’s something at odds with most existing internet platforms. Realistically, the internet would probably be happier with fewer of these sweeping institutions and more intimate bubbles that are loosely connected. That’s something that the network effects of the past couple decades have made harder but regulation around data portability could assist with.

Writing this newsletter, something I’m often reminded is that while it feels like everything is always changing, few things are wholly new. This great NYT profile from 2001 written by Michael Lewis is a great reminder of that, chronicling a 15-year-old who scammed the markets by using a web of dummy accounts and got hounded by the SEC but still walked away with $500k. Great read.

In the end, things will likely quiet down at Robinhood. There’s also the distinct chance that they don’t and that those meme traders just ignited a revolution that’s going to bankrupt the company and torch the globals markets, but you know things will probably go back to normal.

Until next week,
Lucas Matney

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law

(Photo by MANDEL NGAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Other things

SEC is pissed
I’ll try to keep these updates GameStop free, but one quick note from the peanut gallery. The SEC isn’t all that happy about the goings ons in the market this week and they’re mad, probably mostly at Robinhood. They got pretty terse with their statement. More

Facebook Oversight Board wants YOU
Zuckerberg’s Supreme Court wants public comment as it decides whether Facebook should give Trump his Instagram and Facebook accounts back. I’m sure any of Facebook’s executives would’ve stopped building the platform dead in its tracks in the years after its founding if they knew just how freaking complicated moderation was going to end up being for them, but you could probably have changed their mind back by showing them the market cap. More

Apple adtech-killing update drops in spring
After delaying its launch, Apple committed this week to the spring rollout of its “App Tracking Transparency” feature that has so much of the adtech world pissed. The update will force apps to essentially ask users whether they’d like to be tracked across apps. More

Robert Downey Jr. bets on startups
Celebrity investing has been popular forever, but it’s gotten way more common in the venture world in recent years. Reputation transfer teamed with the fact that money is so easy to come by for top founders, means that if you are choosing from some second-tier fund or The Chainsmokers, you might pick The Chainsmokers. On that note, actor Robert Downey Jr. raised a rolling fund to back climate tech startups, we’ve got all the deets. More

WeWork SPAC
Ah poor Adam Neumann, poor SoftBank. If only they’d kept their little “tech company” under wraps for another couple years and left that S-1 for a kinder market with less distaste for creative framing. It seems that WeWork is the next target to get SPAC’d and be brought onto public markets via acquisition. I’m sure everything will go fine. More

Tim Cook and Zuckerberg spar
Big tech is a gentlemen’s game, generally big tech CEOs play nice with each other in public and save their insults for the political party that just fell out of power. This week, Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg were a little less friendly. Zuckerberg called out Apple by name in their earnings investor call and floated some potential unfair advantages that Apple might have. Them’s fighting words. Cook was more circumspect as usual and delivered a speech that was at times hilariously direct in the most indirect way possible about how much he hates Facebook. More

Extra things

Tidbits from our paywalled Extra Crunch content:
The 5 biggest mistakes I made as a first-time startup founder
“I and the rest of the leadership team would work 12-hour days, seven days a week. And that trickled down into many other employees doing the same. I didn’t think twice about sending emails, texts or slacks at night and on weekends. As with many startups, monster hours were simply part of the deal.”

Fintechs could see $100 billion of liquidity in 2021
“For the fourth straight year, the publicly traded fintechs massively outperformed the incumbent financial services providers as well as every mainstream stock index. While the underlying performance of these companies was strong, the pandemic further bolstered results as consumers avoided appearing in-person for both shopping and banking. Instead, they sought — and found — digital alternatives.”

Rising African venture investment powers fintech, clean tech bets in 2020
“What is driving generally positive venture capital results for Africa in recent quarters? Giuliani told TechCrunch in a follow-up email that ‘investment in Africa is being driven on the one hand by a broadening base for early-stage ecosystem support organizations, including accelerators, seed funds, syndicates and angel investing,” and “consolidation,” which is aiding both “growth-stage deals and a burgeoning M&A market.'”

Original Content podcast: Netflix’s ‘White Tiger’ tells a bloody capitalist fable

NEWS

The new Netflix film “The White Tiger” tells the story of Balram, who is born to a poor family in the Indian village of Laxmangarh and escapes by using his intelligence and determination, ultimately becoming a successful entrepreneur in Bangalore.

The viewers knows this from the start, as Balram (played by Adarsh Gourav) narrates his life story in an email, apparently written to explain his success to China’s visiting head of state. That narration is one of the best things about the movie, providing plenty of black comedy while also allowing Balram to justify his choices in what — by his own admission — is an increasingly disturbing story.

As we explain in the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, “The White Tiger” makes a convincing case for the ruthlessness needed to escape from poverty, while also painting a damning portrait of Balram’s employers, the American-educated Ashok (Rajkummar Rao) and Pinky (Priyanka Chopra Jonas), whose ostensible warmth and compassion only go so far.

If “The White Tiger” falls short at all, it’s in comparison to “Parasite,” a film that deals with similar themes in even more ambitious and virtuosic ways. But a movie can fail to reach the heights of “Parasite” while still being quite good.

In addition to our review, we also discuss The Mother Box, a $130 meal kit tied to the March release of Zack Snyder’s cut of “Justice League” on HBO Max.

You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

If you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:27 Snyder Cut discussion
9:16 “The White Tiger” review
29:20 “The White Tiger” spoiler discussion

Saturday, 30 January 2021

Stonks, flying burritos and my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss

NEWS

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here.

What a week. What a month. Are you doing all right? It’s okay if you are tired. We all are. That’s why we have weekends.

Let’s reflect on what happened this week: Individual traders outraged more professional investors by doing something hilarious, namely taking a trade that made some sense — betting that an atrophying physical retailer was going to continue obsolesce — and inverting it.

By going long on GameStop, investors flipped the script on the smart money. Then all heck snapped free, some stocks got blocked on trading services, Congress got mad, billionaires started to front on Twitter like they were the Common Man, some cryptos surged, including Dogecoin of all things, and as we headed into the weekend nothing was truly resolved. It was weird.

Let’s talk over the lessons we’ve learned. First, don’t short a stock so heavily that you are at risk of having the trade exposed and inverted to your detriment. Second, the fintech startups that TechCrunch has covered for years were more brittle than anticipated, either thanks to reserve requirements or simple platform risk. And third, things can always get dumber.

Evidence of that final lesson came during the week’s news cycle in which it became known that WeWork might pursue a public listing via a SPAC. So much for this year being more serious and normal than 2020.

But let’s stop recapping and get into our main topic today, namely a chat that I had with the person I actually work for, Guru Gowrappan, the CEO of Verizon Media Group (VMG). For those who don’t know, Verizon owns VMG, which in turn owns TechCrunch. VMG is a collection of assets, ranging from Yahoo to media brands to technology products. It does billions in yearly revenue, which should help frame how far above my seat — an excellent perch inside of TechCrunch, but not one that comes with org-chart stature — Guru sits.

Very far away.

But we follow each other on Twitter and after Verizon reported earnings this week, inclusive of some honestly pretty good numbers from VMG that I tweeted about, I got about half an hour of Guru’s time. This meant that I had my boss’s boss’s [etc] boss on the record with zero agenda. How could I say no?

For context, VMG generated $2.3 billion in Q4 revenue, up 11% from the year-ago quarter. Verizon described that as “the first quarter of year-over-year growth since the Yahoo! acquisition.” What drove the result? Per the Verizon earnings call, “strong advertising trends with demand-side platform revenue growing 41% compared to the prior year.”

If you are Guru or, frankly, your humble servant, the growth was welcome after VMG’s revenue had dipped to $1.4 billion in Q2 2020, off 24.5% from its year-ago result.

I had a few questions: Would the recent advertising momentum persist in 2021, something that could impact a host of businesses far beyond the VMG org; how important was it to Verizon that VMG had managed to post year-over-year growth; how he expects to balance commerce revenue and journalism; and what Guru thinks about new media products like the recent rebirth of newsletter tech, something that Substack and Twitter and even Facebook are tinkering with.

Here’s what I learned:

Regarding strong advertising performance in the final months of the year during COVID, Guru said that “the core fundamentals [of] the market dynamics have changed so that they’re more permanent,” adding that consumer behavior is now “more digital, more online” than before.
The VMG CEO declined to share Q1 2021 expectations in detail, but did note that VMG is aiming to “continue [its] momentum.”
Part of that momentum comes from subscription products, which Guru cited as a win: “If you look at one of the trends that happened due to COVID, consumers [are] moving to more trusted content and want to spend more time and money on consuming subscription-based products […] TechCrunch/Extra Crunch grew almost 196% year-on-year.”
My read of his answer to where we are today is that it’s not a bad time to be in the online media game, which isn’t something that has been true much in the past few years, looking around the remains of the journalism industry.
Regarding VMG’s home inside of Verizon — something that I’ve thought about after the Buzzfeed-HuffPost deal — I asked Guru if VMG’s recent financial performance made our company more attractive to Verizon, and if we have proven the bet that we were trying to make. This, by the way, is the sort of question that is pretty easy to write down, but slightly harder to ask when you are talking to someone who could terminate you at will. Anyway, Guru said “completely” in response. The VMG CEO summarized the Verizon CEO as saying that the media business is “core” to Verizon, and that our parent company “will continue to invest in the media business while we continue to deliver on our promise.” So sign up for Extra Crunch.
Guru said VMG won’t exchange revenue for credibility when it comes to promoting e-commerce across its platform: “At no point will we trade dollar value in a transaction for trust; there’s no way. […] The editorial team keeps me honest,” he said, adding that he stays out of changes that might upset journalistic balance. That was good to hear.
And finally, are there new media products that VMG may want to emulate, or buy? Guru was generally bullish on personalization, but declined to dish that VMG is about to buy Substack or anything like that.

Oh and I asked if VMG is going to sell, or otherwise divest, any other media properties in the wake of the HuffPost-BuzzFeed decision. Guru said that the Verizon CEO said that the broader company is “fully committed” to the media business, and that that won’t be “built upon divestment.” Instead, he said, it will be built “upon investing and growing,” adding that there are “no plans to sell any additional properties.” As I like my health insurance, that was nice to hear.

I understand that the above is not a standard sort of Exchange entry, but one thing that I will always try to do is take the conversations that come my way thanks to my job, and bring them to you.

Now, back to venture capital.

Market Notes

GameStop was your entire Twitter feed this week but there is other stuff you need to know. Alfred, a US-based fintech raised $100 million on Tuesday, to pick an example. The company fuses digital intelligence and humans to help users manage their financial lives. Neat.

And adding to our recent data-focused coverage of 2020 venture data — including a dive into the African VC market — investing group Work-Bench put together a look at how NYC’s enterprise tech scene performed in the second half of last year. This is the exact sort of data I would parse for you during a more regular week. But since we had this week, you have to do it yourself.

Sticking to data, Hallo, a startup that helps companies recruit more diverse candidates, dropped a sheaf of data in its “Black Founder Funding Q4 2020” report. Read it. If you don’t have time, I’ll give you the headline stat that both caught my eye and depressed my heart: “Hallo’s research found that out of the 1,537 companies analyzed [in Q4 2020], 40 were led by Black founders.”

And this week I got to yammer with Microsoft after it reported earnings. Saving most of that for a later date, two things were clear: The cloud world still has oodles of growth ahead of it, which is good news for a large chunk of the startup software market. And if you wanted more data on Teams’ growth to better understand why Salesforce bought Slack, wait another quarter.

Various and Sundry

Closing out, in August of 2014 I came up with the idea for a burrito cannon food delivery service. You would push a button in an app, and it would deliver a burrito to your office sans the need for you to make choices. Then Postmates actually built a burrito cannon into its app, which was both hilarious and fun.

Fast forward to 2021, and Postmates is now part of Uber. And it is back with the return of the burrito cannon:

I did not anticipate that my lazy, stupid idea would help get an NFL star, over a half decade later, to sprint down a field as an industrial-scale potato cannon shot a Mexican delight in his direction. But it’s 2021 and this is where we are.

Evidence, I think, that all my startup ideas are brilliant,

Alex

Gillmor Gang: Back Then Now

NEWS

Still figuring out what this newsletter is, I’m torn between aggregation and writing. The inputs vary from blog posts, Twitter threads, and the occasional video. Podcasting seems oddly muzzled by the acceleration of streaming. Blog posts are a misnomer; professional blogs represent the bulk of news and media citations, not usually the single voices of RSS yore.

Linear media is bifurcated between quick takes like The Recount and user tweets of streaming cable news. Podcasting meets longer form streaming with live casting on Facebook Live, Twitter (formerly Periscope), YouTube, and nascent LinkedIn live. As I discovered during a Restreamed recording session of the Gang, the Facebook Live version includes realtime captioning.

On this version of the show, recorded four days before the Inauguration of the Biden presidency, a familiar mood radiates from the Zoomcast. Anxiety, tinged with doubt that we will escape the grip of the pandemic any time soon, or the blight of Trump-o-nomics at all. Now, as I post this, there’s a reasonable chance of a renewal of rationality and respect. Then, it was a jump ball at best.

When we record the show, I leave either CNN or MSNBC on the monitor behind me. Given that we configure Zoom in Gallery Mode for the most part, that ups the chance that one of us will notice if some breaking news (haha) appears. It’s mostly for the sense of being plugged in without being overwhelmed by the repetitive analysis that oh, yes we are in deep trouble. Controlled anxiety beats plain old anxiety most of the time. Nonetheless, I still get complaints from viewers to turn it off.

I like the delay of the realtime version to accommodate post production sweetening with music and lower third titles. The interval gives me a chance to come up with a theme for this post to accompany the mixed show, and it allows for some of the buzzy issues to recede in favor of more sticky foreshadowing of the next show. Around this time, we usually come up with a title for the show. You may not find this all that interesting, but it helps me endure my pathetic contributions to the show.

On this session, Frank Radice is heard quoting lines from Firesign Theatre records. In the early days, we used to sit around college dorms and what we thought passed for hippie crash pads, reciting these Firesign catch phrases. In slightly earlier times, we did this with Bill Cosby records, in later years Monty Python routines. Michael Markman had posted to the Gang Telegram feed a Wisconsin Public Radio conversation with the two surviving TFTers Phil Proctor and David Ossman.

Back then, the comedy group had released I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus, featuring a futuristic ride on a Firesign update of the Disneyland animatronic Presidents attraction. Now, Michael wondered whether Disney would add Trump to the ride when it reopens. It’s a good question. What, whether Disneyland will reopen?

So, newsletters. It seems possible the form is subsuming many of the pieces of blogging, podcasting, streaming, and social networking into a new construct. Where blogs once represented a ticket to parity with the mainstream of journalism, now journalists are acquiring parity with individual voices. Cable news not only feels like podcasting with its oversupply of talking head roundtables, but each anchor has a separate podcast to boot. Just as the record business ate the movies business with Saturday Night Fever, so too are the cable networks eating the broadcast networks as they are in turn eaten by the streamers.

And just as the former president was deplatformed by the social networks, live streamers are replatformed in this newslettered channel-in-your-pocket. Commentary, notification-based two-way feedback, realtime analytics, first party data relationships with creators and subscribers. More creation, less curation.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 16, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

Reddit co-founder on GameStop: ‘The collective public cannot unsee this’

NEWS

When Robinhood, a startup that promises to make finance accessible for all, temporarily limited trading on GameStop, AMC, and other memestocks, many retail investors were pissed that the fintech darling suddenly didn’t live up to its name. The specific reasons may have been short-term and technical, but the choice looked corrupt to the average person.

Here’s why: The presence of a massive hedge fund as a main Robinhood partner and supporter of the short-sellers is exactly what Robinhood users are rallying against. The obvious conflict shows that “democratizing finance” was always somewhat of an ironic tagline. Retail investors are already pouring into competitor apps like Public and Webull, and looking for more shorts to take on.

What can other startups learn? Here are some lessons:

First, the push for decentralized systems will become more aggressive, positioning startups in the cryptocurrency and overall DeFi space well. On Thursday, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian spoke to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a Twitch stream about the GameStop saga.

“No one’s gonna wake up in a week and be like let’s all go back to how it was. The collective public cannot unsee this, and so I think that there’s going to be more and more energy to find decentralized solutions. There is so much energy to rally behind something that isn’t capable of having the game rigged,” Ohanian said. As Bitcoin reaches record highs, the Robinhood meltdown only further adds momentum to the asset.

My second takeaway is that fintech startups in the retail trading space have never been more aware of the iron fist of regulatory pressure. While one company may have fallen on the sword this time, it doesn’t mean that other startups are safe and/or able to promise open doors and a free market forever. The big question for early-stage fintech startups is how to innovate amid a revolution.

That’s all I can make sense out of for now, and there’s more on the pod if you’re interested. What do you think the long-term ramifications of this wild Wall Street week are on startups? E-mail me at natasha.m@techcrunch.com or DM me on Twitter @nmasc_.

Climate tech sprouts

Early-stage financing for climate tech is lackluster, but category startups need aggressive capital in order to grow to the correct scale (and, you know, save the world from eternal doom). Our reporter Jonathan Shieber covered a number of stories this week that shed light on how many investors in the ecosystem are waking up to the importance of climate tech.

Here’s what to know: Robert Downey Jr., launched a new rolling venture fund, powered by AngelList, to back sustainability startups.

Etc: Why one venture capitalist thinks SPACs are the way to go for cleantech startups. Also, an early-stage accelerator launched its latest cohort of sustainable startups.

Photo: James A. Guilliam/Taxi/Getty Images

Long live anything other than ‘Zoom School’

It has been remarkable to witness the boom, and ensuing consolidation, of edtech in less than a year. In yet another busy week for the sector, uplifted by the pandemic’s blunt force of remote learning, we have financings, public market debuts and what more than a dozen of investors are looking for next.

Here’s what to know: 13 investors say that lifelong learning is taking edtech mainstream. Consumer edtech has always had an easier time selling, since parents spend more than a stodgy institution ever will. What’s new, though, is that there’s an opportunity to serve with learners beyond the school day. There’s much more in our investor survey, along with details on what opportunities are fading in the sector, and what is the biggest hurdle for an early-stage edtech startup.

Etc: A company aiming to be the Minecraft of science class just launched with seed financing from a flurry of investors. A company founded in 2011 spent eight years without monetizing, and now is profitable with hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers. Oh, and an unprofitable but growing edtech company is going public via SPAC.

SPAC it up

SPACs are like weeds: If you pull one out, another one pops right up! 300 of ‘em, to be exact.

Here’s what to know: This week, Chamath Palihapitiya announced two SPAC deals for Latch and Sunlight Financial. My colleague and podcast co-host Alex Wilhelm unpacked the numbers behind these decisions in an Extra Crunch post.

Etc: Coinbase is going public via direct listing. Squarespace filed privately to go public. WeWork might be going public through a reverse merger. And the Qualtrics CEO and founder sat down with TechCrunch to reflect on its debut: Qualtrics…had been told that it couldn’t bootstrap, that it couldn’t build in Utah, that SAP had overpaid, that SAP had messed up and so forth, Wilhelm writes.

Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and managing partner for Social+Capital Partnership, listens during a Bloomberg West Television interview in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2015. Palihapitiya discussed how to improve diversity in the venture capital industry. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Powered by TechCrunch

Across the week

Seen on TechCrunch

How Atlanta’s Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3B startup

SoftBank earmarks $100 million for Miami-based startups

Internet of Cars: A driver-side primer on IoT implementation

Okta SaaS report finds Office 365 wins the cloud — sort of

Three dimensional search engine Physna wants to be the Google of the physical world

Seen on Extra Crunch

Does a $27 or $29 billion valuation make sense for Databricks?

How 2 startups scaled to $50 million ARR and beyond

Talent and capital are shifting cybersecurity investors’ focus away from Silicon Valley

The 5 biggest mistakes I made as a first-time startup founder

@EquityPod

The news cycle might have been dominated by GameStop, but a lot happened this week in the world of startups and venture. So, your favorite trio put together an episode to go over what you likely missed.

In this week’s show, we got into the fantastic founding story of Calendly, which just scored a $3 billion valuation, as well as a rush of food-centric startups raising seed rounds. There’s also an edtech section, and notes on two new funds that you should probably be paying attention to.

Okay, exhale. Take care of yourselves this weekend, you deserve it always, but especially after a week like this.

Talk soon,

Natasha

This Week in Apps: GameStop madness hits trading apps, Apple privacy changes, Clubhouse becomes a unicorn

NEWS

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone.

And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus. In 2020, investors poured $73 billion in capital into mobile companies — a figure that’s up 27% year-over-year.

This week, we’re taking a look at the biggest news in the world of apps, including how the GameStop frenzy impacted trading apps, as well as how Apple’s privacy changes are taking shape in 2021, and more.

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Apple releases iOS 14.4 to iPhone and iPad users. The update patches three critical security vulnerabilities, adds Bluetooth audio monitoring to protect users from levels that could damage hearing, improves the ability for the camera to recognize smaller QR codes, adds a warning if the iPhone 12 has been repaired with non-Apple parts and fixes other bugs.
Apple reports record-breaking Q1 2021 with $111.4 billion in revenue. The company beat investor expectations on both earnings per share and revenues, with more than the expected $103.3 billion in revenues and $1.68 EPS versus the $1.41 EPS expected. Earnings were driven by new 5G iPhones and a 57% rise in China sales.

Investors don’t seem that impressed by Apple’s $111 billion quarter

Apple dominates tablet market with 19.2 million iPads shipped in Q4 2020.
Separately, from the IDFA news, Apple announced this week that Private Click Measurement (PCM) will roll out at the same time as the IDFA changes. PCM measures app-to-web conversions, while SKAdNetwork focuses only on app-to-app conversions. This gives advertisers a way to track the performance of apps that run inside ads that send users to websites.
A researcher discovered a new iOS security system in iOS 14, BlastDoor, which offers a new sandbox system for processing iMessages data.
The Washington Post checks in on Apple’s App Store privacy labels and finds many of them were wrong.

Platforms: Google

Google Play Store updates its policies on gamified loyalty programs following confusion in India. Real gambling apps are still not permitted in India, but developers now will have better clarity on rules.
Google Play Store opened to Android Auto apps in December, but only for closed testing. This week, it expanded to open testing, meaning there’s no limit to the number of users who can download the app — the next step toward launching to all users in production.

Gaming

Image Credits: Sensor Tower

U.S. consumer spend in mobile simulation games up 61.8% in 2020, reports Sensor Tower. Top titles included Roblox and Township by Playrix.

Entertainment & Streaming

Netflix can now stream studio-quality audio on Android 9 and newer devices, specifically Extended HE-AAC with MPEG-D DRC (xHE-AAC). This codec improves sound in noisy conditions and adapts to variable cellular connections.
Spotify tests audiobooks. The company released a small selection of nine exclusive audiobook recordings from books in the public domain. The narrators included big names like David Dobrik, Forest Whitaker, Hilary Swank and Cynthia Erivo, to determine if there’s consumer demand for this sort of content.
Spotify also tests a feature that inserts “slow down” songs in playlists when users approach school zones. The feature was being tried in Australia.
YouTube said its TikTok rival, YouTube Shorts, was seeing 3.5 billion views per day during tests in India.

Security & Privacy

Apple says iOS 14.4 fixes three security bugs that may have been exploited by hackers. Details were scarce but two of the bugs were found in WebKit. Apple wouldn’t say how many users may have been impacted.
TikTok fixed a vulnerability that would have allowed for the theft of private user information.
WhatsApp added a biometric authentication to its web and desktop apps to make authentication more secure for its over 2 billion users.

WhatsApp adds biometric authentication to its web and desktop versions

A location broker called X-Mode was discovered to still be tracking users via Apple and Android apps, despite app store bans. The broker sold data collected in apps — like unofficial transportation app New York Subway, Video MP3 Converter and Moco — to U.S. military contractors.

Communication

Image Credits: Telegram

Telegram adds a new feature that would allow users to import their WhatsApp chats and others, making a switch easier. The feature appears in version 7.4, and supports WhatsApp, Line and KakaoTalk import on iOS and Android.

Social & Photos

Image Credits: Instagram

Instagram launches a professional dashboard for creators and small business. The new in-app destination offers centralized access to tools for tracking performance, discovering insights and trends, growing your business and staying informed through access to educational resources.
Facebook expands its Facebook News portal to the U.K., its first international market.

Facebook News launches in the UK, the first international market for its curated news portal

TikTok owner ByteDance’s revenue more than doubled in 2020, according to The Information, to about $37 billion.
Snapchat launched a digital literacy program aimed at educating users about data privacy and security. The program teaches users how to turn on two-factor and introduced a new filter that connects users to privacy resources.
Twitter launches Birdwatch, a community-based approach to handling misinformation on its platform. The system allows users to identify misleading info in tweets and write notes that provide information and context, in a sort of Wikipedia-like model. Eventually, these notes will be made visible directly on tweets for all to read, after consensus from a broad and diverse group of editors is achieved.
QAnon moves to a free-speech focused TikTok clone called Clapper, which is a new home to some of the Parler crowd. ToS violations coming in 3, 2, 1…
TikTok was found to be hosting a number of vape sellers who were clearly marketing toward minors, promising no ID checks and discreet packaging to hide vape purchases from parents.

TikTok is being used by vape sellers marketing to teens

Health & Fitness

Apple expands its new Apple Fitness+ service with “Time to Walk,” a feature that offers inspiring audio stories from guests like country music icon Dolly Parton, NBA player Draymond Green, musician Shawn Mendes, Emmy Award winner Uzo Aduba and others. The launch indicates Apple understands how to make the service more broadly appealing to reach beyond those who are already deeply committed to their regular exercise routines.

Apple’s new Fitness+ feature brings celebrity-guided walks to your wrist

Health and Fitness app downloads grew 30% in 2020, reports App Annie, from $1.5 billion in consumer spend in 2019 to $2 billion in 2020, and from 2 billion downloads to 2.6 billion. On Android phones, time spent was up 25%.

Government & Policy

Italy’s data protection agency gave TikTok a deadline to respond its order to block all users whose age it can’t verify following the death of a 10-year-old girl who repeated a dangerous “challenge” on the social app.
Iran blocked the Signal messaging app after the WhatsApp exodus sent a flood of users to the open-source, encrypted communication service.
India said it will continue its ban on TikTok, UC Browser and 57 other Chinese apps that the country first banned last June, saying the responses the companies provided didn’t adequately address the cybersecurity concerns. TikTok owner ByteDance said it’s closing its India operations and laying off 1,800 employees.

India retains ban on TikTok, UC Browser and 57 other Chinese apps

Norway’s data protection agency notified U.S.-based dating app Grindr for violation of GDPR consent violations, which carry a fine of around $12.1 million USD.

Funding and M&A

Image Credits: Freepik / Kristina Astakhova (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Buzzy voice chat app Clubhouse raises $100 million, valuing the business at $1 billion. Despite being launched under a year ago and remaining an invite-only experience for the time being, the app has been carving out a new form of audio-based social networking. With now over 180 investors and a pandemic coming to an end — perhaps — with the vaccine rollout, Clubhouse will soon have to prove it has value in a reopened world where there’s more to do, including, once again, networking events and conferences. It will also eventually have to contend with what sort of app it becomes when it finally opens up to the public. So far, its private, insiders-only atmosphere has given it something of a protected status. Though conversations have turned toxic at times, only a few users ever heard them — and there’s no transcript. When the world piles in, however, Clubhouse could not only lose its exclusive appeal but also become host to conversations that do real harm.

Twitter is working to include the “ Newsletters” item in the menu in the web app, which shows the popup about @revue above pic.twitter.com/ATaXDGr0zc

— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) January 27, 2021

Twitter acquires newsletter platform Revue, a Substack rival, to get its users a way to monetize their Twitter fan base. Despite only announcing this week, the company is already integrating Newsletters on its web app.
Edtech app ClassDojo raises $30 million led by Product Hunt CEO Josh Buckley. The app has boomed during the pandemic as schools and teachers needed a new way to communicate with families at home.

ClassDojo’s second act comes with first profits

Scheduling startup Calendly raises $350 million for its cloud-based service that helps people set up and confirm meeting times with one another. The round values the business at $3 billion.
Virtual social network IMVU raises $35 million from China’s NetEase and others. The app lets users create virtual rooms and chat with strangers using custom avatars.
Short-form video app Clash acquires would-be TikTok rival Byte, created by a former Vine founder.
IAC’s Teltech, home to Robokiller, acquires encrypted messaging app Confide, in an unannounced deal. Terms were not revealed but included the app and IP, not the team.

Image Credits: Confide

Opal raises $4.3 million for its digital well-being assistant for iPhone that blocks you from distracting apps and websites.
Finance tracking and budgeting app Brigit raises $35 million Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from DCM, Nyca, Canaan, DN Capital, CRV, Core, Shasta, Hummingbird, Abstract, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Secocha, NBA star Kevin Durant, Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures and Flourish Ventures.
SoftBank-backed Travel platform Klook raises $200 million in a round led by Aspex Management. The startup, which helps users book activities in overseas destinations, had been impacted by the pandemic, so pivoted to “staycation” activities and service for local merchants.
Video software company Vimeo raises $300 million in equity from funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and Oberndorf Enterprises, LLC at a valuation in excess of $5 billion.
RuneScape publisher Jagex has been acquired by investment firm The Carlyle Group for at least $530 million. The British video game publisher creates both PC and mobile games, including a mobile version of RuneScape with 8 million installs in 2019.
Appointment booking app Booksy raises $70 million to acquire other salon appointment apps and expand internationally. The round was led by Cat Rock Capital with participation from Sprints Capital.

Booksy raises $70M war chest to acquire salon appointment apps, expand internationally

Fintech startup Albert raises $100 million in Series C funding led by General Atlantic. The funds will be used to expand its financial wellness service now used by over 5 million people to help save, budget and more.
Dating app S’More raises $2.1 million for its concept where users photos’ are initially blurred.
Stacker raises $1.7 million seed round for its platform that lets non-developers build apps using spreadsheets from Google Sheets or Airtable.
Kuaishou, ByteDance’s main rival in China, raises $5.4B in Hong Kong IPO, valuing the business at $61B

Downloads

Opal

Image Credits: Opal

Opal offers a digital well-being assistant for iPhone that allows you to block distracting websites and apps, set schedules around app usage, lock down apps for stricter and more focused quiet periods and more. The service works by way of a VPN system that limits your access to apps and sites. But unlike some VPNs on the market, Opal is committed to not collecting any personal data on its users or their private browsing data. Instead, its business model is based on paid subscriptions, not selling user data, it says. The freemium service lets you upgrade to its full feature set for $59.99/year.

Opal raises $4.3 million for its ‘digital well-being’ assistant for iPhone

Charlie

Image Credits: Charlie

Founded by a former mobile game industry vet, Charlie “gamifies” getting out of debt using techniques that worked in gaming, like progress bars, fun auto-save rules that can be triggered by almost any activity, celebrations with confetti and more. The app plans to expand into a fuller fintech product in time to help users refinance debt at a lower rate and bill pay directly from the app.

Charlie launches a mobile app that ‘gamifies’ getting out of debt

Sunday, 31 January 2021

The big thing

Other things

Extra things

Saturday, 30 January 2021

Market Notes

Various and Sundry

Climate tech sprouts

Long live anything other than ‘Zoom School’

SPAC it up

Powered by TechCrunch

Across the week

@EquityPod

Top Stories

The internet comes for the stock market, via trading apps

Google says it will add those Apple privacy labels…sometime!

Apple’s IDFA changes to begin this spring

Weekly News

Platforms: Apple

Platforms: Google

Gaming

Entertainment & Streaming

Security & Privacy

Communication

Social & Photos

Health & Fitness

Government & Policy

Funding and M&A

Downloads

Opal

Charlie

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