Group Nine’s SPAC goes public

Group Nine Media revealed last month that it was forming a SPAC (short for special purpose acquisition corporation) in order to raise money for acquisitions.

The company has now moved forward with those plans, announcing last night that it had priced the SPAC’s IPO $10 at per unit, to raise a total of $200 million. It’s now trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GNACU; as of 2:53pm Eastern shares were up 6.55%. (Eventually, the Class A common stock will be listed as GNAC and warrants will be listed separately as GNACW.) The offering is expected to close on January 20.

The acquisition corporation, like Group Nine itself, is led by CEO Ben Lerer (pictured above). Imagination Capital Partner Richard D. Parsons and Reddit Chief Operating Officer Jen Wong are also on the board of directors.

Group Nine was formed in 2016 with backing from Discovery, merging Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and Seeker. It subsequently acquired PopSugar, with co-founder Brian Sugar becoming president of both Group Nine and now Group Nine Acquisition Corp.

SPACs, also known as blank check corporations, have become an increasingly popular way for companies to raise money from the public markets. In its initial filing, Group Nine said it would use the funding “for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination.”


Source: Tech Crunch

Apple is extending Apple TV+ trials again

If you’ve got an Apple TV+ trial that’s set to expire sometime between now and June, good news: you’re getting some free bonus time.

Apple TV+ first launched in November of 2019, alongside a one-year free trial for anyone buying a new iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV or Mac. As those initial trials approached their end, Apple voluntarily extended them out to February of 2021. Now they’re extending them once again.

As first reported by 9to5Mac, any trial that previously would’ve expired from February to June of 2021 will now expire in July instead. We have confirmed these plans with Apple.

Users should expect to get an email about the extension in the coming weeks. If you’re already paying for AppleTV+ or have it as part of an Apple One bundle, meanwhile, you’ll be getting a $4.99 per month credit until the end of June.

If you haven’t already, take this as an opportunity to blast through Ted Lasso, which is probably the most charming thing anyone has made for TV in a decade. Central Park is also great, though it has yet to hook me in quite the same way as Loren Bouchard’s other series (Bob’s Burgers, Home Movies).


Source: Tech Crunch

Desktop Metal buys fellow 3D printing company EnvisionTEC for $300M

Desktop Metal this morning announced its intention to purchase fellow 3D printing company EnvisionTEC. Founded in Germany in 2002, EnvisionTEC specializes in photopolymer additive manufacturing, putting its technology in more direct competition with the likes of 3D printing darling Carbon than Desktop Metal’s own existing portfolio.

The deal follows Desktop Metal’s push to go public last August as part of a growing trend of SPAC mergers. Prior to this, the company had raised no shortage of its own funds, with a rapid ascent into unicorn status on the wake of $430 million in investments. It’s spending $300 million to acquire EnvisionTEC through a combination of cash and stock.

There’s a lot of potential for Desktop Metal to grow here. EnvisionTEC has the underlying technology with the ability to print in more than 190 materials, and Desktop Metal has the resources to help scale that tech beyond what the German company has been able to build thus far.

It’s clear that dental is a pretty huge piece of this puzzle. It’s among the clearest and most immediate use cases for this sort of mass volume 3D printing — and, indeed, the company already sports around 1,000 customers in dental, including companies like Smile Direct Club. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the company effectively tripled its Envision One dental shipments over the previous year.

“It’s used for everything from restorations to same-day, full arch implants,” Desktop Metal CEO Ric Fulop tells TechCrunch. “Usually when you get a denture, you’ve got to wait three weeks for denture implants. This is the first time you’ve got a solution that can do it in the same day. And it’s affordable.”

Per a press release issued in the wake of the news, other existing customers include Ford and Hasbro. Fulop says the company will continue to operate as its own division after the acquisition, which is expected to close this quarter.

“We’ll be able to leverage their channel,” the executive says. “We look forward to expanding on that capability and using our channel to give them more tools to have a full solution that spans from metal to composites to biomaterials and now photopolymer printing.”


Source: Tech Crunch

WhatsApp delays enforcement of privacy terms by 3 months, following backlash

WhatsApp said on Friday that it won’t enforce the planned update to its data-sharing policy until May 15, weeks after news about the new terms created confusion among its users, exposed the Facebook-app to a potential lawsuit, triggered a nationwide investigation, and drove tens of millions of its loyal fans to explore alternative messaging apps.

“We’re now moving back the date on which people will be asked to review and accept the terms. No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8. We’re also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp. We’ll then go to people gradually to review the policy at their own pace before new business options are available on May 15,” the firm said in a blog post.

The messaging app, which serves more than two billion users, said it was delaying the enforcement of the new terms, which it first unveiled last year, over confusion it has created worldwide. The delay of the planned privacy update is aimed at providing users with more time to review the terms, the company said.

“We’ve heard from so many people how much confusion there is around our recent update. There’s been a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help everyone understand our principles and the facts,” said the company, which earlier this week ran full-page ads on several newspapers in India, where it has amassed over 450 million monthly active users.

For years, WhatsApp has been attempting to curb the spread of misinformation on its app. Now, it’s attempting to debunk falsehoods about WhatsApp itself.

Through an in-app alert, WhatsApp had asked users earlier this month to agree to new terms of conditions that grants the app the consent to share with Facebook some personal data about them, such as their phone number and location. Users will have to agree to these terms by February 8 if they wish to continue using the app, the alert said.

The change has been mischaracterized by many as their personal communication being compromised, which WhatsApp also clarified this week was not the case. WhatsApp, which Facebook bought for $19 billion in 2014, has been sharing some limited information about its users with the social giant since 2016 — and for a period allowed users to opt-out of this.

“With these updates, none of that is changing. Instead, the update includes new options people will have to message a business on WhatsApp, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data. While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and it’s important people are aware of these services. This update does not expand our ability to share data with Facebook,” WhatsApp wrote today.

Following the backlash, tens of millions of confused and angered users have flocked to Signal and Telegram. In an interview with TechCrunch earlier this week, Signal co-founder and chairman executive, Brian Acton (who also co-founded WhatsApp), said “the smallest of events helped trigger the largest of outcomes. We’re also excited that we are having conversations about online privacy and digital safety and people are turning to Signal as the answer to those questions.”


Source: Tech Crunch

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson says wisdom lies with your developers

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson knows a thing or two about unleashing developers. His company has garnered a market cap of almost $60 billion by creating a set of tools to make it easy for programmers to insert a whole host of communications functionality into an application with a couple of lines of code. Given that background, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Lawson has written a book called “Ask Your Developer,” which hit the stores this week.

Lawson’s basic philosophy is that if you can build it, you should.

Lawson’s basic philosophy in the book is that if you can build it, you should. In every company, there is build versus buy calculus that goes into every software decision. Lawson believes deeply that there is incredible power in building yourself instead of purchasing something off the shelf. By using components like the ones from his company, and many others delivering specialized types functionality via API, you can build what your customers need instead of just buying what the vendors are giving you.

While Lawson recognizes this isn’t always possible, he says that by asking your developers, you can begin to learn when it makes sense to build and when it doesn’t. These discussions should stem from customer problems and companies should seek digital solutions with the input of the developer group.

Building great customer experiences

Lawson posits that you can build a better customer experience because you understand your customers so much more  acutely than a generic vendor ever could. “Basically, what you see happening across nearly every industry is that the companies that are able to listen to their customers and hear what the customers need and then build really great digital products and experiences — well, they tend to win the hearts, minds and wallets of their customers,” Lawson told me in an interview about the book this week.

Billboard for book Ask your Developer by Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio

Image Credits: Twilio (image has been cropped)

He says that this has caused a shift in how companies perceive IT departments. They have gone from cost centers that provision laptops and buy HR software to something more valuable, helping produce digital products that have a direct impact on the business’s bottom line.

He uses banking as an example in the book. It used to be you judged a bank by a set of criteria like how nice the lobby was, if the tellers were friendly and if they gave your kid a free lollipop. Today, that’s all changed and it’s all about the quality of the mobile app.

“Nowadays your bank is a mobile app and you like your bank if the software is fast, if it is bug free and if they regularly update it with new features and functionality that makes your life better [ … ]. And that same transformation has been happening in nearly every industry and so when you think about it, you can’t buy differentiation if every bank just bought the same mobile app from some vendor and just off the shelf deployed it,” he said.


Source: Tech Crunch

2020 was one of the warmest years in history and indicates mounting risks of climate change

It’s official. 2020 was one of the warmest years on record either edging out or coming in just behind 2016 for the warmest year in recorded history according to data from US government agencies.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration had the year just tied with 2016, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration put the figure just behind 2016’s totals.

No matter the ranking, the big picture for the climate isn’t pretty according to scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York and the Washington, DC-based NOAA.

“The last seven years have been the warmest seven years on record, typifying the ongoing and dramatic warming trend,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt, in a statement. “Whether one year is a record or not is not really that important – the important things are long-term trends. With these trends, and as the human impact on the climate increases, we have to expect that records will continue to be broken.”

That’s a dire message for the nation considering the cost of last year’s record-breaking 22 weather and climate disasters. At least 262 people died and scores more were injured by climate-related disasters, according to the NOAA.

And the combination of wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, tornados, tropical cyclones, and severe weather events like hail storms in Texas and the derecho that wrecked the Midwest cost the nation $95 billion.

Homes are engulfed in flames in Vacaville, California during the LNU Lightning Complex fire on August 19, 2020.

Homes are engulfed in flames in Vacaville, California during the LNU Lightning Complex fire on August 19, 2020. – As of the late hours of August 18,2020 the Hennessey fire has merged with at least 7 fires and is now called the LNU Lightning Complex fires. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)

Both organizations track temperature trends to get some sort of picture of the impact that human activities — specifically greenhouse gas emissions — have on the planet. The image that comes into focus is that human activity has already contributed to increasing Earth’s average temperature by more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the industrial age took hold in the late 19th century.

Most troubling to scientists is that this year’s near record-setting temperatures happened without a boost from the climatic weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which is a large-scale ocean-atmosphere climate interaction linked to a periodic warming.

“The previous record warm year, 2016, received a significant boost from a strong El Niño. The lack of a similar assist from El Niño this year is evidence that the background climate continues to warm due to greenhouse gases,” Schmidt said, in a statement.

The warming trends the word is experiencing are most pronounced in the Arctic, according to NASA. There, temperatures have warmed three times as a fast as the rest of the globe over the past 30 years, Schmidt said. The loss of Arctic sea ice — whose annual minimum area is declining by about 13 percent per decade — makes the region less reflective, which means more sunlight is being absorbed by oceans, causing temperatures to climb even more.

These accelerating effects of climate change could be perilous for the world at large, Katharine Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech University wrote in an email to The Washington Post.

“What keeps us climate scientists up in the dead of night is wondering what we don’t know about the self-reinforcing or vicious cycles in the Earth’s climate system,” Hayhoe wrote. “The further and faster we push it beyond anything experienced in the history of human civilization on this planet, the greater the risk of serious and even dangerous consequences. And this year, we’ve seen that in spades… It’s no longer a question of when the impacts of climate change will manifest themselves: They are already here and now. The only question remaining is how much worse it will get.”


Source: Tech Crunch

5 consumer hardware VCs share their 2021 investment strategies

Consumer hardware has always been a tough market to crack, but the COVID-19 crisis made it even harder.

TechCrunch surveyed five key investors who touch different aspects of the consumer electronics industry, based on our TechCrunch List of top VCs recommended by founders, along with other sources.

We asked these investors the same six questions, and each provided similar thoughts, but different approaches:

Despite the pandemic, each identified bright spots in the consumer electronic world. One thing is clear, investors are generally bullish on at-home fitness startups. Multiple respondents cited Peloton, Tonal and Mirror as recent highlights in consumer electronics.

Said Shasta Venture’s Rob Coneybeer, “With all due respect to my friends at Nest (where Shasta was a Series A investor), Tonal is the most exciting consumer connected hardware company I’ve ever been involved with.”

Besides asking about the trends and opportunities they’re pursuing in 2021, the investors we spoke to also identified other investors, founders and companies who are leaders in consumer hardware and shared how they’ve reshaped their investment strategies during the pandemic. Their responses have been edited for space and clarity.


Hans Tung, GGV Capital

Which consumer hardware sector shows the most promise for explosive growth?

For consumer hardware, offering end users a differentiated experience is extremely important. Social interactions, gamification and high-quality PGC (professionally generated content) such as with Peloton, Xiaomi and Tonal is a must to drive growth. It’s also easy to see how the acceleration of the digital economy created by COVID-19 will also drive growth for hardware.

First, services improved by the speed and reliability of 5G such as live streaming, gaming, cloud computing, etc. will create opportunity for new mobile devices and global mass market consumers will continue to demand high-quality, low-cost hardware. For example, Arevo is experimenting with “hardware as a service” with a 3D printing facility in Vietnam.

For enterprise hardware, security, reliability and fast updates are key competitive advantages. Also as a result of 5G… manufacturing automation and industrial applications. Finally IoT for health and safety may find its sweet spot thanks to COVID-19 with new wearables that track sleep, fitness and overall wellness.

How did COVID-19 change consumer hardware and your investment strategy?

One opportunity for consumer hardware companies to consider as a result of COVID-19 is how they engage with their customers. They should think of themselves more like e-commerce companies, where user experience, ongoing engagement with the consumer and iteration based on market feedback rule the day. While Peloton had this approach well before COVID, it has built a $46 billion company thinking about their products in this way.

For example, some consumers felt the bike was too expensive so instead of responding with a low-end product, the company partnered with Affirm to make their hardware more affordable with pay-as-you-go plans. A Peloton bike is not a one-and-done purchase; there is constant interaction between users, and the company that drives more satisfaction in the hardware adds more value in the business.

Entering 2021, in what way is hardware still hard?

Hardware is still hard because it takes more to iterate fast. The outcome for competitors relative to speed-to-market can be dramatic. For example, every year I look at future generation of EVs with lots of innovations and cool features from existing OEMs but see very few of these making it to market compared to Tesla and other pure players that are cranking out vehicles. Their speed of execution is impressive.

Who are some leaders in consumer hardware — founders, companies, investors?

  • John Foley, founder and CEO of Peloton. John and the Peloton team have cracked the code on the integration of community experience and hardware.
  • Sonny Vu, founder of Misfit and founder/CEO of Arevo, maker of ultrastrong, lightweight continuous carbon fiber products on demand. Experienced founder and team with 3D printing manufacturing know-how at scale are now able to offer breakthrough consumer and industrial products at competitive prices.
  • Manu Jain, head of Xiaomi’s business in India where Xiaomi is the #1-selling smart phone. He built the Indian operation from the ground up; had zero dollar marketing budget for the first three years; and localized manufacturing for all Xiaomi phones sold in India.
  • Jim Xiao, founder and CEO of Mason, a rising star who is creating “mobile infrastructure as a service.”
  • Irving Fain, founder and CEO of Bowery Farming. Irving and his team are on a mission to reimagine modern farming.

Is there anything else you would like to share with TechCrunch readers?

Worry less about trends and build products that resonate with customers.

 

Dayna Grayson, Construct Capital


Source: Tech Crunch

iSpot expands its ad measurement platform by acquiring Ace Metrix

iSpot.tv announced today that it has acquired Ace Metrix, a deal that brings two TV and video ad measurement companies together.

iSpot founder and CEO Sean Muller said that the companies have complementary solutions. After all, he said, “In simple terms, there are only two reasons why brands buy advertising — one is to deliver business results and the other is to build brand recognition, likability and impact.”

The existing iSpot platform excels in the first area, Muller said, measuring the reach and conversation rates of ads that run on both TV and streaming. Ace Metrix, on the other hand, measures how an ad affects consumer sentiment — so by bringing the two companies together, it can offer “a complete solution in one platform.”

Muller added that measuring the brand impact of an ad has become even more important as marketers try to navigate a constantly changing news landscape (to put it mildly).

“Brands are being forced to have a say in politics and all sorts of things,” he said. “Understanding the way your messages are being perceived is crucially important … When you invest in a piece of creative, it becomes even more important to ensure that your message is on point and triggers the right emotions.”

Ace Metrix had raised $25 million in funding from investors including Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, WPP, Palomar Ventures and Leapfrog Ventures, according to Crunchbase.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but iSpot says Ace’s 45 employees will all be joining the company, bringing total headcount to 240, with Ace CEO Peter Daboll becoming iSpot’s chief strategy officer. Ace will also maintain its office in Los Angeles (iSpot is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington).

Muller also noted that Ace had annualized SaaS revenues “north of the double digit millions” and that it was cashflow positive. The combined company has annual contracts with more than 500 brands.

“We’re integrating the companies together very quickly — it’s already underway,” he said. “We’re going to be one company, one vision and so the Ace products become part of the iSpot product suite. But we will maintain the Ace name for those products.”


Source: Tech Crunch

This new module keeps Philips Hue bulbs connected even when the wall switch gets flipped

Philips Hue bulbs are pretty great, but they have a mortal enemy: the humble light switch. If you’ve got a Hue bulb tied to a standard light switch, flipping that switch means the Hue bulb loses power completely… along with any fancy tricks like controlling the bulb through your phone or a voice assistant.

A few solutions for this exist, but mostly involve swapping out the switch in question for something with a bit more smarts. This morning Signify (the company previously known as Philips Lighting) announced an official solution that works with your existing switches, albeit with a caveat or two.

Called the “wall switch module”, it’s expected to ship later this year — Spring if you’re in Europe, or Summer if you’re in North America. Once wired up, it turns your existing light switch into something more like a Hue controller, allowing it to toggle between different light presets rather than simply cutting power.

At $40 each (or $70 for a 2-pack), it’s… not cheap. Add in the fact that it’s powered by a battery (presumably to remove the need for a neutral wire and simplify installation) with an estimated lifespan of ~5 years, this probably isn’t something you want to implement house-wide. But for a single light switch or two, it seems like a decent solution.

The company also announced a few new Hue accessories, in case you’re looking to expand your collection: 

  • A revised version of its portable dimmer switch, which will ship in February and cost $25. The seperate on/off buttons are becoming a single toggle, and a “Hue” button is being added to let you trigger a specific lighting scene.
  • A new light bar, the Philips Hue Amarant, which is meant to live outside and be mounted on the ground or an overhang. It’ll ship in March in North America, and cost $170 each (though you’ll also need an outdoor Hue power supply box, which will add $60-$70 bucks to the price if you don’t have one already.)


Source: Tech Crunch

Medium acquires social book reading app Glose

Medium is acquiring Paris-based startup Glose for an undisclosed amount. Glose has been building iOS, Android and web apps that let you buy, download and read books on your devices.

The company has turned reading into a multiplayer experience as you can build a bookshelf, share notes with your followers and start conversations in the margins. Sure, there are social platforms that let you talk about books, such as Goodreads. But Glose’s differentiating point is that the social features are intrinsically linked with the reading features — those aren’t two separate platforms. There are also some gamification features that help you stay motivated as you read difficult books — you get streak rewards for instance.

In many ways, Glose’s one-tap highlighting and commenting features are reminiscent of Medium’s features on this front. You can highlight text in any reading app on your phone or tablet but you can’t do much with it.

More recently, Glose has launched a separate service called Glose Education. As the name suggests, that version is tailored for universities and high schools. Teachers can hand out assignments and you can read a book as a group.

Over 1 million people have used Glose and 25 universities have signed up to Glose Education, including Stanford and Columbia University.

But Glose isn’t just a software play. The company has also put together a comprehensive book store. The company has partnered with 20,000 publishers so that you can buy ebooks directly from the app.

And if you are studying Virginia Wolf this semester, Glose also provides hundreds of thousands of public domain books for free. Glose also supports audio books.

This is by far the most interesting part as Medium now plans to expand beyond articles and blogs. While Glose is sticking around for now, Medium also plans to integrate ebooks and audio books to its service.

It’s a smart move as many prolific bloggers are also book writers. Right now, they write a blog post on Medium and link to a third-party site if you want to buy their books. Having the ability to host everything written by an author is a better experience for both content creators and readers.

“We’re impressed not only by Glose's reading products and technology, but also by their experience in partnering with book authors and publishers," Medium CEO Ev Williams said in a statement. “Books are a means of exploring an idea, a way to go deeper. The vast majority of the world’s ideas are stored in books and journals, yet are hardly searchable nor shareable. With Glose, we want to improve that experience within Medium’s large network of engaged readers and writers. We look forward to working with the Glose team on partnering with publishers to help authors reach more readers."

The Glose team will remain in Paris, which means that Medium is opening its first office outside of the U.S. Glose will continue to honor its partnerships with authors, publishers, schools and institutions.


Source: Tech Crunch