Month: April 2021

After visits by unnamed masked intruders and the cancellation of its lease, Imaguru — the country’s key startup hub, event and co-working space in Minsk — has effectively been shut down by the Lukashenko regime, which has led a brutal crackdown on its own people in recent months. But the company behind the space says it will defy the authorities and continue its activities online.

Since 2013, Imaguru had become known as being the birthplace of a large number of startups from Belarus, including MSQRD, acquired by Facebook in 2017 — as well as a landing pad for international investors visiting the country. Startups that have emerged from the space have attracted over $100 million in investments in recent years.

The “Imaguru Startup HUB” leased the space from “Horizon Holding” in 2013, when it took over a dilapidated building from a state-owned company. But on April 16, 2021, Horizon told Imaguru it was unilaterally terminating its lease and the startup space has been given until April 30 to vacate.

Imaguru says there has been no reason given for the lease termination, despite Horizon calling Imaguru a “flagship” leasehold for its property business.

To outside observers, it looks like Horizon has come under pressure because of Imaguru’s active support of the pro-democracy protests inside the country.

In early March, unidentified men wearing masks broke into the office, “blocked the exit, put young event attendees against the wall, and brought them to the police station” said the company.

In a statement, Imaguru said it is “not silent about lawlessness, repressions and persecution against civilians who defend their rights to an honest and fair choice … Not silent about the regime shutting down the business, investment and startup environment … Not silent about the massive relocation of startups from Belarus, about the catastrophe of this for the country and the role of the HTP in this process.”

Named after the phrase “I’m a guru,” and transcribed literately by Belarusian entrepreneurs, Imaguru held countless conferences, events, startup pitches and courses. It also organised Venture Day Minsk (which will still be run online on April 29).

Since 2013 Imaguru says it has helped over 300 Belarusian startups, including Splitmetrics, MSQRD, PingFin, DEIP and TrackDuck; created 250+ jobs; educated over 12,000 people; held over 3,500 events; organised study tours to the U.S., U.K., Finland, Spain and, most recently, launched the TechMinsk accelerator program.

In recent months, the startup hub came out in solidarity with the protests inside the country following last year’s tainted elections, recorded videos of solidarity with PandaDoc, who’s employees have been jailed, and supported the general strike on October 26, 2020.

The Global Entrepreneurship Week Belarus, which was organized by the Imaguru team, was opened by the Belarusian leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Imaguru was founded by Belarusian businesswoman Tania Marinich (Twitter, Linkedin, Telegram) whose husband died in jail after standing at elections in opposition to the Lukashenko regime.

The below is a statement by Marinich on the closure of the Imaguru space:

A startup hub in Minsk was a totally new idea in Belarus in 2013, but Marinich has championed the ecosystem ever since.

After the protest last year, Marinich joined the core team of the opposition party’s Coordination Council, leading the business group.

If you’d like to help Imaguru you can subscribe to their news, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube.

You can buy Imaguru’s merchandise and order their services, which they will continue to provide online.

You can also attend Venture Day Minsk Online on April 29. You can register here. 

 

Source: Tech Crunch

Privacy isn’t dead, as many would have you believe. New regulations, stricter cross-border data transfer rules and increasing calls for data sovereignty have helped the privacy startup space grow thanks to an uptick in investor support.

This is how we got here, and where investors are spending.

The rise of privacy tech

With strict privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA already listing big-ticket penalties — and a growing number of countries following suit — businesses have little option but to comply. It’s not just bigger, established businesses offering privacy and compliance tech; brand-new startups are filling in the gaps in this emerging and growing space.

“For the last decade, privacy tech was trumpeted as one of the next ‘big things’ for investors, but never delivered. Startup business models were too academic, complex and did not appeal to VCs, or crucially, consumers were used to getting free web services,” Gilbert Hill, chief executive at Tapmydata, told Extra Crunch.

Today, privacy is big business. Crunchbase lists 207 privacy startups (as of April 2021) that have together raised more than $3.5 billion over hundreds of individual rounds of funding. The number of privacy companies rockets if you take into account enterprise privacy players. Crunchbase currently has 809 listed under the wider “privacy” category.

The latest Privacy Tech Vendor Report 2021 names 356 companies exclusively dealing in enterprise privacy technology solutions, up from 304 companies a year earlier.

“Since 2017, the privacy landscape underwent a metamorphosis,” the report said. “The emergence of the California Consumer Privacy Act, Brazilian General Data Protection Law and other privacy laws around the world have forced organizations to adhere to a new array of compliance requirements, and in response, the demand for privacy tech grew exponentially.”

That also presents an opportunity for investors.

Increasing investments

Privacy tech was catching the attention of investors even before the recent wave of new privacy laws came into effect. The sector amassed nearly $10 billion in investment in 2019, according to Crunchbase, compared to just $1.7 billion in 2010. Investments remained active in 2020, despite the pandemic.

Case in point: In December, enterprise privacy and compliance firm OneTrust announced a $300 million Series C funding. The deal valued the 4-year-old privacy tech firm at $5.1 billion, making it one of the first modern privacy unicorns. Three months later, it extended its Series C funding, with SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Franklin Templeton pumping in another $210 million.

Source: Tech Crunch

Robotic process automation unicorn UiPath is set to go public this week, concentrating our focus on its value.

The well-known company was last valued on the private markets at $35 billion in February when it closed a $750 million round. Living up to that price as a public company, however, at least when it comes to its formal IPO price, is proving to be challenging.

In a sense, that’s not too surprising given that the red-hot IPO market cooled as Q1 2021 came to a close. UiPath raised its last private round when the markets were most interested in public offerings and is now going public in a slightly altered climate.

In numerical terms, UiPath raised its IPO range from $43 to $50 per share, to $52 to $54 per share. That’s a 21% jump in the value of the lower end of its range, and an 8% gain to the value of the upper end of its per-share IPO price interval.

UiPath is also selling more shares than before, which should make its total valuation slightly larger at the top end than a mere 8% gain. So let’s go through the math one more time. Afterward, we’ll stack its new simple, fully diluted IPO valuations against its final private price, ask ourselves if our musings on the company’s recent profitability bore out, and close by asking where the company might finally price, and if we expect it to do so above its new price range.

UiPath at $54

Source: Tech Crunch

It’s been a strange few years for Fitbit. After defining the fitness tracking space, the company was a bit late to the smartwatch trend, but was still able to ride that wave to a rebound. But while watches have received most of the press the now Google-owned company has garnered in recent years, bands still comprise a substantial part of its business.

Today Fitbit announced the arrival of the Luxe. It’s a weird product. There’s certainly a market for it, but it’s hard to say how much of a niche were talking about here. The company called its target demo, “a unique set of buyers whose needs weren’t being met.” Specifically, the product is a “fashioned-forward” tracker for people looking for something a bit nicer than a plastic band to wear out and about.

Frankly, it’s hard not to see some reflections of Misfit’s take on the category. Perhaps the Fossil-owned company was ahead of its time. At $149, the device is priced between the Charge and the Versa, but decidedly closer to the former. That is to say, it’s pricey in the grand scheme of fitness trackers, but more or less in line with other Fitbit products.

It is, indeed, a nice-looking tracker, as far of these things go, featuring a color touchscreen surrounded by a stainless steel case. That’s coupled with a broad range of accessories, ranging from leather to gold-colored stainless steel.

Here’s Fitbit co-founder and GM (under Google) James Park:

Over the past year, we’ve had to think differently about our health – from keeping an eye out for possible COVID-19 symptoms to managing the ongoing stress and anxiety of today’s world. Even though we are starting to see positive changes, it has never been more important to manage your holistic health. That’s why we’ve been resolute in introducing products to support you in staying mentally well and physically active. We’ve made major technological advancements with Luxe, creating a smaller, slimmer, beautifully designed tracker packed with advanced features – some that were previously only available with our smartwatches – making these tools accessible to even more people around the globe.

Certainly physical and mental health have been top of mind over the past year, even as step counts have dramatically plummeted. The device sports the usual array of Fitbit sensors, tracking activity, sleep and stress. It also works with a number of different mindfulness/meditation apps, including the company’s recently announced partnership with Deepak Chopra.

The band is up for preorder starting today and starts shipping in the spring.

Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook is deepening its relationship with music company Spotify and will allow users to listen to music hosted on Spotify while browsing through its apps as part of a new initiative called “Project Boombox,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday.

Facebook is building an in-line audio player that will allow users to listen to songs or playlists being shared on the platforms without being externally linked to Spotify’s app or website. Zuckerberg highlighted the feature as another product designed to improve the experience of creators on its platforms, specifically the ability of musicians to share their work, “basically making audio a first-class type of media,” he said.

We understand from sources familiar with the Spotify integration that this player will support both music and podcasts. It has already been tested in non-U.S. markets, including Mexico and Thailand, and that it’s expected to arrive in about a week.

The news was revealed in a wide-ranging interview with reporter Casey Newton on the company’s future pursuits in the audio world as Facebook aims to keep pace with upstart efforts like Clubhouse and increased activity in the podcasting world. 

“We think that audio is going to be a first-class medium and that there are all these different products to be built across this whole spectrum,” said Zuckerberg. “Of course, it includes some areas that, that have been, you know, popular recently like like podcasting and and kind of live audio rooms like this, but I also think that there’s some interesting things that are that are under explored in the area overall.”

Spotify has already supported a fairly product relationship with the Facebook and Instagram platforms. In recent years the music and podcasts platform has been integrated more deeply into Instagram Stories where users can share content from the service, a feature that’s also been available in Facebook Stories.

Source: Tech Crunch

Facebook today officially announced a suite of new audio products — an indication that it’s taking the threat from Clubhouse and other audio platforms more seriously. The company is doing more than just building its own take on Clubhouse, however, it’s also announcing tools that allow podcast creators to share long-form audio, a new Spotify integration for music and a brand-new short-form experience called Soundbites.

The Clubhouse clone was probably the most-discussed of the new products ahead of today’s announcement, given the increased interest in the audio networking market.

Like Clubhouse, the Facebook experience will also involve live audio rooms, where users can engage in topical discussions.

“I think the areas where I’m most excited about it on Facebook are basically in the large number of communities and groups that exist. I think that you already have these communities that are organized around interests, and allowing people to come together and have rooms where they can talk is — I think it’d be a very useful thing,” said Zuckerberg, in a friendly interview with Platformer, timed alongside the official announcement. “When we launched video rooms earlier last year, groups and communities were one of the bigger areas where that took off. So, I think around audio, just given how much more accessible it is, that’ll be a pretty exciting area as well.”

The Live Audio Rooms will be available across both Facebook and Messenger, Facebook says in an official blog post.

The company will first test Live Audio Rooms in Groups, reaching Groups’ 1.8 billion monthly users. They’ll also be made available to public figures and experts. Early adopters of the feature will include American football quarterback Russell Wilson, Grammy-nominated electronic music artist TOKiMONSTA, artist and director Elle Moxley and five-time Olympic medalist and entrepreneur Nastia Liukin, Facebook says.

Live Audio Rooms will be available to everyone on Facebook this summer. Also this summer, Live Audio Rooms will be made available on Messenger, for an experience that allows friends to hang out, too.

In addition to products that rehash audio functionality available in tech products from other companies, Zuckerberg also revealed that the company was working on an audio-only version of its TikTok competitor Instagram Reels that allows users to quickly move through algorithmically sorted short audio clips, a project being called Soundbites. In its blog post, Facebook detailed that they will be testing Soundbites over the next few months with a small group of creators before making it widely available.

“The idea here is it’s short-form audio clips, whether it’s people sharing things that they find funny… or kind of pithy things that people want to share that cover a bunch of different genres and topics,” Zuckerberg said.

For podcast creators, Zuckerberg said the company will build out tools for those who follow podcasts and creators through Facebook Pages, but don’t currently have a way to access podcast content via the social network. He noted that there are now 170 million Facebook users who are connected to a Page for a podcast, which is why it wants to ensure they have a way to access this audio content more easily.

For these users, they’ll be able to discover the audio and start playing it, even in the background. Or they could choose to launch a second app to continue to play it, Zuckerberg said. We understand that the experience will actually allow users to directly open Spotify, if they would prefer to listen to the music or audio there, instead.

The feature will also help users with new podcast discovery based on your interests, and users will be able to comment on podcasts and recommend them to friends.

Related to these audio efforts, Zuckerberg referenced Facebook’s partnership with Spotify, which is now being expanded with something it has internally referred to as “Project Boombox” — an integration that would allow people to share content from their favorite artists, playlists and other types of audio in their feed. That content would then appear in a little, in-line player for others to click and play.

We understand from sources familiar with the Spotify integration that this player will support both music and podcasts. It has already been tested in non-U.S. markets, including Mexico and Thailand. It’s expected to arrive in about a week.

“Facebook’s interest in audio is further validation of the category and reinforces what we’ve known all along — the power and potential for audio is limitless,” a spokesperson for Spotify told TechCrunch. “Our ambition has always been to make Spotify ubiquitous across platforms and devices — bringing music and podcasts to more people — and our new integration with Facebook is another step in these efforts. We look forward to a continued partnership with Facebook, fueling audio discovery around the world,” they added.

Zuckerberg also referenced the need to serve the growing creator economy with its new products.

With Live Audio Rooms, fans will be able to support creators through Stars, Facebook’s existing in-app tipping feature, or donate to causes. Facebook says it will later offer other monetization tools like access to Live Audio Rooms on subscriptions. There’s also an Audio Creator Fund being made available to kick off the launch of Soundbites.

The exec also spoke about Facebook’s plans for a newsletter product, all under the umbrella of serving the creator community with a suite of tools — something Twitter is now doing, too, with its plans for Super Follow.

“I think a product where a journalist or a creator can basically create a subscription for people who want to follow them, that spans both a newsletter and a podcast, is going to be a really powerful thing,” said Zuckerberg. “So that’s a big part of what we’re going to enable with some of the monetization tools around podcasts. That dovetails with the work that we’re planning to do…our work on our newsletters and giving tools for for independent journalists. I think enabling both of those things to come together on extremely favorable terms to journalists and creators, will be a pretty powerful thing,” he noted.

The product launches, which Vox scooped on Sunday, indicate how seriously Facebook considers the disruption to its dominance that could be attributed to the growing number of places where fans connect with creators. The threat for Facebook today is not just a new app like Clubhouse or Substack’s newsletters or even Patreon, but the fact that the creator economy, in general, isn’t being centralized and owned by Facebook itself.

Source: Tech Crunch

Geico, the second-largest auto insurer in the U.S., has fixed a security bug that let fraudsters steal customers’ driver’s license numbers from its website.

In a data breach notice filed with the California attorney general’s office, Geico said information gathered from other sources was used to “obtain unauthorized access to your driver’s license number through the online sales system on our website.”

The insurance giant did not say how many customers were affected by the breach but said the fraudsters accessed customer driver’s license numbers between January 21 and March 1. Companies are required to alert the state’s attorney general’s office when more than 500 state residents are affected by a security incident.

Geico said it had “reason to believe that this information could be used to fraudulently apply for unemployment benefits in your name.”

Many financially driven criminals target government agencies using stolen identities or data. But many U.S. states require a government ID — like a driver’s license — to file for unemployment benefits. To get a driver’s license number, fraudsters take public or previously breached data and exploit weaknesses in auto insurance websites to obtain a customer’s driver’s license number. That allows the fraudsters to obtain unemployment benefits in another person’s name.

Earlier this year, San Francisco-based insurance startup Metromile admitted a bug on its website was used to obtain driver’s license numbers for six months before the bug was fixed in January.

If you’ve received correspondence from your state government and haven’t filed for unemployment benefits, there’s a good chance your personal data may have been used fraudulently.

Geico spokesperson Christine Tasher did not return multiple requests for comment.

Source: Tech Crunch

TechCrunch has spilled much digital ink tracking the fate of VMware since it was brought to Dell’s orbit thanks to the latter company’s epic purchase of EMC in 2016 for $58 billion. That transaction saddled the well-known Texas tech company with heavy debts. Because the deal left VMware a public company, albeit one controlled by Dell, how it might be used to pay down some of its parent company’s arrears was a constant question.

Dell made its move earlier this week, agreeing to spin out VMware in exchange for a huge one-time dividend, a five-year commercial partnership agreement, lots of stock for existing Dell shareholders and Michael Dell retaining his role as chairman of its board.

So, where does the deal leave VMware in terms of independence, and in terms of Dell influence? Dell no longer will hold formal control over VMware as part of the deal, though its shareholders will retain a large stake in the virtualization giant. And with Michael Dell staying on VMware’s board, it will retain influence.

Here’s how VMware described it to shareholders in a presentation this week. The graphic shows that under the new agreement, VMware is no longer a subsidiary of Dell and will now be an independent company.

But with VMware tipped to become independent once again, it could become something of a takeover target. When Dell controlled VMware thanks to majority ownership, a hostile takeover felt out of the question. Now, VMware is a more possible target to the right company with the right offer — provided that the Dell spinout works as planned.

Buying VMware would be an expensive effort, however. It’s worth around $67 billion today. Presuming a large premium would be needed to take this particular technology chess piece off the competitive board, it could cost $100 billion or more to snag VMware from the public markets.

So VMware will soon be more free to pursue a transaction that might be favorable to its shareholders — which will still include every Dell shareholder, because they are receiving stock in VMware as part of its spinout — without worrying about its parent company simply saying no.

Source: Tech Crunch

Almost exactly a month ago, Peloton CEO John Foley wrote an open letter about the the company’s treadmill. “I’m reaching out to you today because I recently learned about a tragic accident involving a child and the Tread+, resulting in, unthinkably, a death,” it begins. “While we are aware of only a small handful of incidents involving the Tread+ where children have been hurt, each one is devastating to all of us at Peloton, and our hearts go out to the families involved.”

Today, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning, telling users to stop using the Tread+. Citing 39 incidents, included the aforementioned death, the CPSC writes, “The Commission has found that the public health and safety requires this notice to warn the public quickly of the hazard.”

Peloton followed up with its own strongly worded statement writing, “The company is troubled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) unilateral press release about the Peloton Tread+ because it is inaccurate and misleading. There is no reason to stop using the Tread+, as long as all warnings and safety instructions are followed.”

The commission’s warning includes multiple injuries involving small children and a pet. Specifically, the note calls for users with children at how to cease using the product, a more stern warning than the initial suggestions outlined by Foley back in in March, who at the time told users to keep children and pets away from the system and store the device out of reach after using. Peloton has since added that there have been 23 incidents involving children, 15 with objects and, as the CPSC noted, one with a pet. The company added that it had not revealed the specifics previously out of privacy concern.

“If consumers must continue to use the product, CPSC urges consumers to use the product only in a locked room, to prevent access to children and pets while the treadmill is in use,” the organization notes. “Keep all objects, including exercise balls and other equipment, away from the treadmill.”

For its part, the connected fitness maker adds,

Peloton invited CPSC to make a joint announcement about the danger of not following the warnings and safety instructions provided with the Tread+, and Foley asked to meet directly with CPSC. CPSC has unfairly characterized Peloton’s efforts to collaborate and to correct inaccuracies in CPSC’s press release as an attempt to delay. This could not be farther from the truth. The company already urged Members to follow all warnings and safety instructions. Peloton is disappointed that, despite its offers of collaboration, and despite the fact that the Tread+ complies with all applicable safety standards, CPSC was unwilling to engage in any meaningful discussions with Peloton before issuing its inaccurate and misleading press release.

Source: Tech Crunch