Month: June 2020

Headphone-maker Bose is calling it quits on their Bose AR platform play, noting that they’ll be winding down support for third-party developers on their platform next month.

In a statement to Protocol, which first reported the news, a Bose spokesperson admitted the program hadn’t panned out as planned, further noting that Bose would no longer be working on third-party developer apps and would halt support for them in mid-July.

“Bose AR didn’t become what we envisioned… It’s not the first time our technology couldn’t be commercialized the way we planned, but components of it will be used to help Bose owners in a different way. We’re good with that. Because our research is for them, not us.”

We’ve reached out to Bose for comment.

In 2018, Bose launched their AR program at SXSW, while also debuting a prototype pair of sunglasses with embedded microphones and bone conduction audio built into the frames. The company envisioned a persistent technology that could give audio notifications and feedback based on what a user was doing or where they were. They launched a $50 million fund at the time, dedicated to investing in startups that would build on its platform. The company invested in a number of startups, though it’s unclear how much of that $50 million fund they invested in the past couple of years

The company’s developer initiative hadn’t been taking on new developer partners since April, so perhaps the writing was on the wall for the program, nevertheless for developers interested in how digital tools can augment their senses, it hasn’t been a great couple of years for platform support. Bose was the most high profile of efforts to create a dedicated audio AR platform, but visual AR platforms have been folding left and right over the past two years with entrants like ODG, Meta and Daqri all closing up shop for asset sales. Magic Leap has been having its own challenging year, announcing major layoffs earlier this year and a pivot from consumer to enterprise.

Bose isn’t the first company to pitch a tent in the audio AR space, Doppler Labs was an early entrant in the space that later shut down, though they notably filed a lawsuit against Bose accusing them of stealing some of their AR audio tech. For Bose, their platform was always facing an uphill battle. They operated the hardware, but only the output device, leaving themselves in a position dependent on the whims and fancies of iOS and Android.

Source: Tech Crunch

Editor’s note: Andreessen Horowitz’s Crypto Startup School brought together 45 participants from around the U.S. and overseas in a seven-week course to learn how to build crypto companies. Andreessen Horowitz is partnering with TechCrunch to release the online version of the course over the next few weeks. 

Week five of a16z’s Crypto Startup School gets into the inner workings of crypto projects, with a focus on security and project development from the front lines.

In the first video, Jutta Steiner, the CEO and co-founder of Parity Technologies, discusses “The Evolution of Blockchain Security.”

Steiner, who joined the Ethereum team in 2014 as chief of security, says the advent of that open ecosystem of interdependent “smart contracts,” or self-executing design programs, opened a whole new attack surface that requires successful organizations to prioritize a security-minded culture.

Potential coding risks include memory safety, input validation, privilege escalation flaws, fundamental design flaws, side channel attacks and cryptographic vulnerabilities such as insecure key storage. Security is not just code, however — it’s also people, operational procedures, and life cycle management of applications.

There is no single answer to any of these vulnerabilities, Steiner says. Instead, mitigation relies on a range of measures that are not perfect but can be used to create an overall system that is very difficult to penetrate. The key is to understand that crypto development is not like agile software development — once deployed, code is difficult to recall, and security must always be at the forefront.

She closes by noting that crypto developers can learn from security approaches used in other industries, such as aerospace, medicine, and hardware.

In the second video, Nitya Subramanian, product manager at Celo, discusses “Protocols and Products,” focusing on how building products is different in blockchain versus more traditional centralized products. The key question for builders: What is the need I’m meeting, and who are the users?

For projects seeking control over the end-user experience, such as with cryptocurrency wallets, typically the goal is to build the full stack, so that every layer can be changed to meet new use cases and find product-market fit.

For products built for developers, such as decentralized lending protocols, the focus should be on identifying a range of objectives that will bring developers to your platform while giving them the flexibility to customize and innovate.

No matter the end user, the rigorous focus at all times should be on what will bring people to your product and avoiding a “build it and they will come” mentality.

As an example of the full stack approach, she closes with a case study of the digital payments system Celo, which includes a blockchain forked from Ethereum that includes a native asset, topped by a layer of native smart contracts encoding a stablecoin, with a wallet and a developer SDK at the top of the stack.

While each layer of the project has separate development roadmaps, having the application layer allows Celo to identify issues with user experience and informs the development of lower layers of the stack.

Source: Tech Crunch

Sidewalk congestion is a major pain point for cities, and fully-charged scooters for riders are no guarantee. Those are the two main selling points of micromobility docking startup Swiftmile and remote-controlled scooter repositioning startup Tortoise, respectively. Today, Swiftmile and Tortoise announced a partnership to solve those problems.

“These are incredibly complementary services,” Tortoise co-founder and President Dmitry Shevelenko told TechCrunch. “Swiftmile provides the ideal destination and origin for repositioning. So riders can have the experience that dockless enables, they can leave the scooter wherever their destination is and using Tortoise, can drive to nearest Swiftmile station to dock and charge.”

Swiftmile has already deployed hundreds of its charging stations in cities like Austin and Berlin. Later this month, Swiftmile will deploy a Spin-branded dock in San Francisco. Swiftmile charges scooter operators by the minute, but not to exceed a certain amount, depending on the market. Initially, the docking system will be open to all operators in order to show them how it works and how beneficial it can be. After a certain period of time, Swiftmile will only charge its customers’ scooters.

Tortoise, which launched in October, does not make its own scooters. Instead, Tortoise sells its software to customers, which need to install about $100 worth of equipment on each scooter in order to run Tortoise’s software. That includes two phone cameras, a piece of radar, a processor and a motor. If it’s a two-wheeled vehicle, Tortoise requires the addition of robotic training wheels. All of this is included in the reference design Tortoise provides to operators.

Given the volume of micromobility operators in the space today, Tortoise aims to make it easier for these companies to more strategically deploy their respective vehicles and reposition them when needed. Using autonomous technology in tandem with remote human intervention, Tortoise’s software enables operators to remotely relocate their scooters and bikes to places where riders need them, or, where operators need them to be recharged. On an empty sidewalk, Tortoise may employ autonomous technologies while it may rely on humans to remotely control the vehicle on a highly trafficked city block.

“Cities say they need 21st-century infrastructure,” Swiftmile CEO Colin Roche told TechCrunch. “This creates that where we have these hubs centered around Swiftmile and Tortoise can come and park and charge. It’s exactly what the cities want.”

The plan is to aggressively launch this partnership wherever Tortoise operates. Currently, however, Tortoise only operates in Peachtree Corners, Georgia in partnership with GoX. Shevelenko says he hopes to launch in partnership with Swiftmile in Peachtree Corners as soon as possible. Ideally, the first pilot will be this summer, he said.

“The technology is ready and the solutions work together,” he said. “We want cities to know this is available and the tech is ready and mature.”

After Peachtree Corners, Tortoise and Swiftmile have their eyes set on San Jose. Tortoise, however, is not yet disclosing its vehicle partner.

“But Swiftmile and Tortoise have the same set of customers, in general,” Shevelenko said. “The bulk of the Swiftmile business is selling directly to scooter operators and they’re our customer as well. We have this joint shared customer.”

 

Source: Tech Crunch

Looking for a way to get your early-stage startup the massive attention it deserves? Of course, you are. One of the best ways to get in front of thousands of influencers is by exhibiting in Startup Alley during Disrupt 2020. An even better way is to exhibit for free. Take the first step and apply to be a TC Top Pick.

Applying is easy, but earning the TC Top Pick designation — well, not so much. Discerning TechCrunch editors scour every application searching for creative, potential-laden startups that spark the imagination. Each startup that joins the ranks of the TC Top Picks wins a free Digital Startup Alley Package. That’s where the massive exposure comes into play. Everyone — investors, tech media, founders, devs, engineers, R&D folks and more — wants to meet and greet those who made the grade.

Ready to take your shot? Here’s what you need to know. You’re eligible to apply if your pre-Series A startup falls into one of the following categories:

Social Impact + Education, Space, Artificial Intelligence + Machine Learning, Biotech + Healthtech, Enterprise + SaaS, Fintech, Mobility, Retail + E-commerce, Robotics, Hardware + IOT, and Security + Privacy.

TechCrunch editors will choose up to three startups in each category. Note the phrase “up to three.” They won’t fill the bucket without ample cause. What do you get with a Digital Startup Package? Plenty. For starters, it lets three people from your company exhibit from anywhere — remember, virtual Disrupt 2020 is a global event with a global audience. That’s huge.

You’ll demo like crazy — scheduling 1:1 video meetings with the previously mentioned masses — investors, media, potential customers, collaborators and the list goes on. Here’s more good news. You’ll have CrunchMatch, our AI-powered networking platform, to help make your networking easier and more efficient. The platform opens weeks ahead of Disrupt, giving you even more time to find and connect with people who can move your business forward.

Thanks to this next perk, the exposure you get as a TC Top Pick will stretch far beyond Disrupt. TechCrunch editors will create a video interview for each Top Pick startup and promote the videos across its social media platforms. It’s a long-term marketing tool you can use to pitch potential investors and clients.

Does your early-stage startup deserve massive attention? Take advantage of this massive opportunity to keep your startup on track and moving forward. Apply to be a TC Top Pick today.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt 2020? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Source: Tech Crunch

Chris Sacca is a billionaire today, and he credits his success to having an “unfair advantage” 10 years ago when he first launched his fund.

He thinks women and people of color have that same unfair advantage today, which is why he and his wife, Crystal Sacca,  have been investing in “dozens and dozens” of funds, including many led by new managers.

In fact, in an interview earlier today with Axios business editor Dan Primack as part of a virtual event hosted by CB Insights, Sacca suggested that others on the sideline jump in while “capital is still readily available” — and while other limited partners are focused on the issues of diversity that have been brought again to the fore over the last month.

It’s never going to be a walk in the park, Sacca noted. In fact, Sacca called his own experience with raising a first fund “heartbreaking” at times because of how personal the process is. Specifically, Sacca — who has a law degree from Georgetown University and spent four years at Google —  said that while he was lucky to know a lot of rich people, asking for their financial help was sometimes deeply painful. “One guy who told me he’d be my anchor LP told me on the day of the fund’s close that there had been a snafu in his paperwork and that he couldn’t participate,” Sacca said. Others who he’d known for years began to ignore him. Meanwhile, every “no” felt like a slight. “When someone says no to your company, you can brush that off; they don’t like or understand your product, whatever. When someone says no to you, that hurts.”

That Sacca eventually got his fund off the ground owes to “generous” friends who did get behind him, along with “an irrational belief in myself,” he said. But he also maintains that he had unfair advantages at the time, including the ability to write very small checks before other seed-stage firms mushroomed around him, and ties to founders he was meeting at networking events and at cocktail parties.

“Once I got married and had kids and stuff, I was out of that flow,” he said, explaining why he is now an investor in other VCs’ funds instead. But he also said that he is particularly keen on backing people of color and women because they have both networks and an understanding about particular products that many established VCs of the white, male variety do not.

He singled out Base Ventures, a Berkeley, Calif., venture firm led by former investment banker Erik Moore, saying it has already “paid back multiples on their fund.” He also noted that he missed an exit with Bevel, a grooming company focused on people of color, because “as a white guy who doesn’t shave, I didn’t get it.” (Bevel was acquired in late 2018 by Proctor &. Gamble.)

Said Sacca, when you “cut through barriers that have prevented women and other underrepresented groups from telling their stories, you find exceedingly talented, ambitious, driven people who, given the chance to succeed, are kicking ass.”

It’s why Sacca is “putting millions and millions of dollars where my mouth is,” he said.

Before their  conversation ended, Primack asked whether Sacca thinks the venture industry would be better off with more, newer fund managers, or whether more established funds should be working harder to bring up women and investors of color into their GP ranks.

Primack noted that there might be just “two or three” black women who are partners at mainstream funds, one of whom is Mercedes Bent, who was hired into Lightspeed Venture Partners last year and another being Ulili Onovakpuri, who has been with Kapor Capital for the better part of five years.

Sacca said he doesn’t think there can be “just one approach.” He believes that bigger firms can provide a lot of mentorship to rising VCs, as well as startup founders. At the same time, he added, the door for underrepresented investors is right now open thanks to industry’s recent awakening, “and I think people should be taking it.”

VCs have to have “some kind of unfair advantage,” and underrepresented groups in particular do, he reiterated.

Source: Tech Crunch

SpaceX is hiring experts in Offshore Operations in Brownsville, job ads revealed on Tuesday – and the purpose is to help the company develop and build floating spaceports that will provide launch sites for the company’s’ Super Heavy-class launch vehicles. SpaceX will use these larger rockets to get its forthcoming large payload rockets to the Moon, to Mars – and also for point-to-point travel right here on Earth, according to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Musk said on Twitter that this was the purpose behind the new job posting, which was originally spotted by Dan Paasch. SpaceX has previously shown concepts of its forthcoming Super Heavy rocket booster, paired with its Starship spacecraft, launching for hypersonic Earth travel – which would reduce the trip time for long-haul flights to merely a couple of hours. Those concepts have thus far consisted only of renders, however, and we didn’t know what the plan was in terms of how and from where those spacecraft would launch until today.

Starship and Super Heavy are primarily being developed to help SpaceX and Musk realize their goal of delivering human to Mars, in order to colonize that and other interstellar destinations including the Moon to “make humans an interstellar species.” But while those goals may seem out of reach to most people, the company’s aims of using the same fully reusable spacecraft to greatly decrease the cost of point-to-point supersonic travel here on Earth are likely to be much more relevant.

Point-to-point space-based transportation is not a new concept, and others beyond SpaceX are working on developing ways to make this happen. The idea is that by traveling at the edge of, or beyond Earth’s atmosphere, you can greatly reduce the fuel cost and duration of flight – traveling the distance between New York and Paris, for instance, in under an hour. In fact, SpaceX claimed during a presentation in 2017 that point-to-point transportation with its Starship could reach any city on Earth from any other city in less than an hour.

SpaceX has been developing Starship in Texas, near Brownsville where this new job posting is seeking Offshore Operations Engineers. The company has been expanding its testing and development site in the area, and has also sought to increase the resources dedicated to its operations in the state.

Musk didn’t share much more about the plans, but did say in response to another tweet that claimed this amounted to “Referb[ushing] oil platforms with a hyperloop to transport from land” was “pretty much” part of the plan, so that could be involved in shuttling passengers back and forth to and from their departure and destination spaceports.

Source: Tech Crunch

Retailers like Target, Home Depot, Wayfair, IKEA, and others have embraced augmented reality to help shoppers make decisions about products they’re interested in by visualizing the items in their own homes. Today, Etsy is hopping on the AR bandwagon as well, with the launch of an updated iOS app that uses augmented reality features to help consumers shopping for wall art specifically.

The company says it’s seen an increase in customers shopping for home decor since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the last three months, for example, Etsy claims searches for wall decor or art have jumped 94% compared to the same time last year. Similarly, there’s been a 63% increase in searches for paintings and a 54% increase in searches for prints or illustrations.

As with many home decor items, it can be difficult to imagine how wall art will look in your space, next to your own furnishings, and whether it will agree with your room’s color scheme. Shoppers may also wonder if the item is the right size for their space or if they have even have a good spot to display the art.

Etsy’s AR feature aims to help answer those questions. In the iOS app, Etsy shoppers can now select any item categorized as Paintings, Photography or Prints then tap the new augmented reality icon in the top right corner of the item image to see it appear in your own space. The company says its Art and Collectibles category offers over 5 million items, but doesn’t clarify how many of those are considered wall art.

Etsy says it began the development of the AR feature in early 2019, well before the COVID crisis. Unlike a typical e-commerce site, Etsy’s AR implementation is more difficult because it doesn’t work from a catalog of standard sizes and imagery. Instead, Etsy’s independent sellers add their own titles, tags and photos, creating a massive amount of unstructured data.

To build the feature, Etsy engineers used the Vision framework in iOS to pull out the artwork to be placed in 3D, followed by Core Image to crop the image if needed. It also implemented an on-device machine learning image classification process to detect and classify whether a listing includes a frame and needs to be cropped. To place the artwork in the user’s environment, the AR feature leverages iOS’ SceneKit and ARKit.

Once the AR item is loaded, you can then move your iPhone or iPad around your space to find an empty space on the wall, then tap on the AR item to place your item in the desired spot. If the item is available in multiple sizes, you’ll also be able to test that, too, by zooming in on the item. The feature works best with rectangular and square artwork, notes Etsy.

Much of Etsy’s business now flows through mobile as more consumers grow comfortable with shopping from their smartphones. The company reported its total revenue in Q1 2020 was $228.1 million, up 34.7% year-over-year. Gross profit reached $145.6 million, up 24.8%. These figures don’t reflect the full impact of the pandemic, given the quarter ended March 31, 2020. In Q1, Etsy says 58% of its gross merchandise sales came from mobile devices.

The AR feature is still in beta on the Etsy app for iOS. An Android version is in the works, Etsy says.

Source: Tech Crunch

While the pace of layoffs might be slowing down, an extended recession is forcing companies to get smarter about the way they grow. One way to stay lean and stealthy? Have a team that is constantly learning and equally flexible.

Degreed helps employers do exactly that by connecting employees to learning resources to master new skills. The edtech startup today announced it has raised $32 million in venture capital in a round led by Owl Ventures, bringing its total known raised to $182 million. The company was founded in 2012.

At its core, Degreed is an upskilling platform that trains existing employees to enhance their current skill set. It does so by matching employees to lessons around different topics, like remote work or coronavirus. Degreed makes money through a monthly fee for clients and is free for employees.

“It keeps people skilled and employable; nobody should become irrelevant in the future because they lack the right skills,” said CEO Chris McCarthy.

Following its buy of Adepto, Degreed is also building out a career mobility product. Users can look at work opportunities based on current skills and see what they need to work on to get a new role. The skill profile will also let individuals see relevant work and learning opportunities such as jobs, one-off projects or tasks.

Today’s financing is specifically earmarked for the company’s career mobility product, part of the reason it is a smaller sum than previous rounds, says McCarthy.

Like many edtech companies, Degreed said the past six months have included unprecedented engagement from customers; nearly one in seven Degreed accounts have been activated between April and May of this year alone.

The uptick might be a mix of more people looking to become invaluable and more people having fundamentally more time on their hands to work on habits. The high engagement also could be because of uncertainty, according to co-founder David Blake .

“People face uncertainty in their work, but if organizations invest in having better skill insights then they can upskill, reskill and redeploy their people,” he said. The goal is that people can keep their jobs and “futureproof themselves against whatever’s on the horizon.”

Certain skills have been more in demand than others. According to Degreed, communication has seen a 15.5% increase and design thinking has increased 12.8%. Other topics that have seen spikes in engagement include crisis management, resilience, mental health and change management. The bottom line here is that people are interested in working on flexible, human-first skills.

It brings up an interesting question: Can edtech teach non-quantifiable skills like vulnerability? CEO McCarthy says that soft and flexible skills will be “essential” in the future. Like any edtech company, Degreed needs to prove efficacy before it touts success.

Anti-harassment tech Ethena faces a similar hurdle. It is hard to prove whether software makes a difference when it comes to harassment, because so much happens behind the scenes or goes unreported.

Ethena is working on a study right now to see if their software leads to higher retention and less attrition. Another company, MasterClass, is just betting that it can prove value by getting exclusive content for its site from A-list celebrities.

Degreed is going the route of many course providers: certification.

Users can go through a process, called Degreed Skill Certification, where work is vetted, verified and analyzed by data scientists, a panel of experts and machine learning to provide a “ranking.” Users also have to provide references of two people who have first-hand knowledge of the skill and can vouch for accuracy, per the company.

To date, Degreed has connected more than 4 million people at over 250 organizations like NASA and Cisco.

Source: Tech Crunch

Echoing much of the existing data and research on the subject, SF-based Color released data today showing that based on its own testing program, most individuals who test positive for COVID-19 display either mild or no symptoms, including even running a fever. The results, taken from Color’s own testing of over 30,000 people to date across its California testing stations, shows that despite continuing efforts underway across the U.S. to reopen local and state economies, widespread testing is still key to any true recovery program.

Color notes that 1.3% of the people who it has tested have received positive results for COVID-19, and says that among those, 78% reported only mild symptoms or said they were asymptomatic — meaning they displayed no observable symptoms whatsoever. What’s more, only 12% had a fever  over 100 degrees, which is bad news for efforts to contain potential transmission of cases through measures like temperature checks at workplaces and shared use facilities.

Color’s data matches up with recently released information from the WHO that indicated as many as 80% of individuals who test positive display either mild or no symptoms. Color also shared more specific information about what symptoms those who did report said they had, with most saying they had a cough — though the most highly correlated reported symptom with an actual positive test result is loss of smell, making it a much better indicator of a positive test result than fever, for instance.

Other notable findings from Color’s testing, which includes testing San Francisco’s frontline essential workers in partnership with the city, include that most of those who test positive are young (68% are between 18 and 40) and that Latinx and Black communities showed much higher positive results on a per capita basis than either white or Asian populations. Color’s data in both these regards support results shared by other organizations and researchers, backing up concerns around who will be most negatively affected by any hasty and unconsidered reopening efforts.

Source: Tech Crunch