Ideaforge

No, it’s not just you. Yes, Slack is having connectivity issues yet again. Though this time, they seem a bit less pronounced. I know we’re having some problems off and on, with different channels appearing offline. For the most part, however, communication is still up, so you probably won’t be able to convince your boss to take the rest of the day off. Sorry.

Slack acknowledged the problems on its status page, noting, “Folks are having troubles connecting to their workspaces. We’re looking into the cause and will have updates shortly.” The site experience similar issues earlier this month and back in June.

We’ll update shortly after those updates arrive shortly. Shortly.

Update: Things appear to be back to normal. Here’s the full rundown from Slack,

On June 27th (yesterday) between 6:33 a.m. and 9:49 a.m. PDT Slack experienced an outage where people could not connect to their workspaces. The network problems were caused by a bug included in an offline batch process of data, which resulted in unexpected network spikes and led all of our customers to become disconnected and unable to reconnect.

Once we identified the problem, we restricted new connections and provisioned extra capacity. At 9:24 a.m. PST, production was healthy enough to remove restrictions and by 9:44 a.m. PST, all customers had reconnected to Slack once again.

Source: Tech Crunch

In Facebook’s latest high profile departure, corporate communications lead Rachel Whetstone will leave for a top PR role at Netflix. Whetstone joined Facebook about a year ago after leaving a similar position running communications at Uber during some of the company’s most fraught days. Prior to Uber, Whetstone worked for Google as its SVP of communications and public policy.

Facebook confirmed Whetstone’s departure, which was first reported by Recode. “It’s been amazing to be able to learn from one of the best over this last year,” FB Comms VP Caryn Marooney said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “We are grateful for what Rachel has brought to our team and we know she will have continued success at Netflix”.

Whetstone won’t be leaving Facebook for another few months still as the company prepares for the transition. After her departure, Caryn Marooney will return to leading Facebook’s global communications team, a role she shared during Whetstone’s time with the company.

In a separate statement today, Netflix welcomed its new hire. “Rachel is a proven communications leader and a strong addition to the Netflix team,” said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in a statement. “Her deep knowledge and international expertise will be invaluable as we bring Netflix and its expanding lineup of original content to an increasingly global audience.”

At Netflix, Whetstone will replace former PR head Jonathan Friedland who created his own PR crisis at the company earlier this summer when he was fired for his use of a racial slur.

Source: Tech Crunch

Ipsy, the beauty box subscription service and e-commerce site founded in 2011 by YouTube creator Michelle Phan, is expanding its business beyond sample-sized products. The company today is debuting a more expensive “Glam Bag Plus” subscription, which will ship customers five full-sized products for $25 per month.

The move aims to capitalize on Ipsy’s established customer base who now trust Ipsy’s beauty products recommendations to the point they’re willing to pay upfront for full-sized products, instead of only samples with the option to later shop online for the products they liked.

It may also help attract a new customer who doesn’t find value in samples – which are sometimes one-use products, or packaged poorly compared with their full-size counterparts, making them difficult to travel with or throw in a purse.

So far, Ipsy’s curation has been succeeding – it touts over 3 million subscribers, compared with rival Birchbox’s over 2.5 million.

Ipsy, for what it’s worth, tends to offer better samples than Birchbox, now majority owned by hedge fund Viking Global Investors, after some financial struggles.

Birchbox shipments are often too reliant on less valuable items, like single-use makeup wipes, tiny eyeshadows without a reliable protective case, or totally hit-or-miss perfume samples, for example. Ipsy, meanwhile, sends out full-sized makeup brushes and other full-sized items along with samples on a regular basis. It also prioritizes makeup products over hair and skin care items in its curation.

Plus, it ships products in a reusable makeup travel bag (which, frankly, is great for when you need to unload some of your less-loved samples on friends).

With the new Glam Bag Plus, customers will have the option of paying a little more – $25 per month instead of $10 – for a selection of full-sized products, which would normally retail for $120.

The company says it will work with brands like Sunday Riley, Ciaté London, Purlisse, Morphe, Tarte Cosmetics, Buxom, and others.

As before, the exact mix of products shipped will be based on subscribers’ beauty profile. Today, Ipsy creates over 10,000 different makeup combinations in its monthly Glam Bag memberships, it says, because of this personalization.

The Plus service will also ship out a deluxe (read: larger) makeup bag on the first delivery, then every third delivery afterwards, as part of its subscription.

The new service will better cater to skin and hair care companies, and especially to newer brands that may not offer a wide ranges of samples at this time, but still want to be able to reach Ipsy’s millennial subscriber base.

Initially, existing Glam Bag subscribers will be able to switch over to the Plus tier of service, which will ship its first bag in October.

However, the company is advising customers that it has limited quantities of Glam Bag Plus products, so if they choose to later downgrade back to the sample Glam Bag, they may end up on a waitlist if they decide later they want to re-join Plus.

Ipsy also says it’s not set up right now to handle customers who want both memberships, so those who do should create a second account as a workaround.

Ipsy’s co-founder Michelle Phan left the startup last fall to run online makeup site EM Cosmetics, but Ipsy itself remains profitable – and it has been for several years. The company’s real value is not the money to be made on the subscription business itself, but rather in helping beauty brands reach social media influencers and YouTube stars, whose makeup tutorials and recommendations help them to gain exposure.

While Ipsy, like many in the subscription business, won’t talk about its critical business metrics like churn or margins, the company believes the Plus subscription will do well because it’s something members have been requesting for some time. It also surveyed the user community and ran focus groups ahead of this product’s launch, it told Glossy.

The subscription will become available to more customers in the future, says Ipsy.

Source: Tech Crunch

T-Mobile has revealed an uptick in the number of demands for data it receives from the government.

The cellular giant quietly posted its 2017 transparency report on August 14, revealing a 12 percent increase in the number of overall data demands it responded to compared to the previous year.

The report said the company responded to 219,377 subpoenas, an 11 percent rise on 2017. These demands were issued by federal agencies and do not require any judicial oversight. The company also responded to 55,372 court orders, a 13 percent rise, and 27,203 warrants, a rise of 19 percent.

But the number of wiretap orders — which allow police to listen in to calls in real time — went down by half on the previous year.

A spokesperson for T-Mobile told TechCrunch that the figures reflect a “typical increase of legal demands across the board” and that the increases are “consistent with past years.”

Although the results reveal more requests for customer data, the transparency report did not say how many customers were affected.

T-Mobile has 77 million users as of its second-quarter earnings.

Several tech companies began publishing how many government requests for customer data they received since Google’s debut report in 2010. But it was only after the Edward Snowden disclosures in 2013 that revealed mass surveillance by the National Security Agency when tech companies and telcos began regularly publishing transparency reports, seen as an effort to counter the damaging claims that companies helped the government spy.

T-Mobile became the last major cell carrier to issue a transparency report two years later in 2015.

The company also said that it responded to 64,266 requests by law enforcement for customers’ historical cell site data. That data became the focal point of the U.S. vs. Carpenter case earlier this year, in which the Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement must obtain a warrant for historical cell and location data. That figure is expected to fall during the 2018 reporting year as the new bar to obtain a court-signed warrant is higher.

T-Mobile also said it received 46,395 requests to track customers’ real-time location, and 4,855 warrants and orders for tower dumps, which police can use to obtain information on all the nearby devices connected to a cell tower during a particular period of time.

But the number of national security requests received declined during 2017.

The number of national security letters used by federal agents to obtain call records in secret and the number of orders granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were each below 1,000 requests for the full year.

Tech companies and telcos are highly restricted in how they can report the number of classified orders demanding customer data in secret, and can only report in ranges of requests they received.

Since the Freedom Act was signed into law in 2015, the Justice Department began allowing companies to report in narrower ranges.

Source: Tech Crunch

Since early 2017, there’s been a new trend in the U.S. where a number of Asian funds have been actively involved in early-stage crypto investing. Many folks in traditional tech have not heard of them before, but these funds will only be growing more important as cryptocurrency and blockchain solidify their position in the American tech industry.

Funds with Asian money, primarily from China, have been in Silicon Valley for a long time. However, in the past, they were rarely heard or seen in the press, mostly because their assets under management (AUM) and investment check sizes were smaller in size and fewer in frequency than their American counterparts on average. These funds were often only found investing in later-stage rounds, since they weren’t able to compete against the top venture funds in the early rounds for highly-coveted startups, as many entrepreneurs weren’t familiar with them.

This has changed in the last few years and recent investment stats are very telling of a different trend. In 2017,  Asian investors directed 40% of the record $154bn in global venture financing, versus their American counterparts at 44%, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. Specifically, deals led by U.S.-based venture capital and tech investment firms, such as Sequoia Capital or Andreessen Horowitz, made up of $67 billion in venture financing, just slightly more than the $61 billion led by Asian investors, including Tencent and SoftBank. Asia’s share is up from less than 5% just ten years ago.

Not only is there more money coming from Asia, but U.S. funds are also coming to realize the growing and massively underinvested tech opportunity in China and the rest of Asia. In a joint study issued by China’s Ministry of Science and Technology affiliate and a Beijing-based consultancy, the 2017 China Unicorn Enterprise Development Report showed that in the same year, China had 164 unicorns, worth a combined US$628.4 billion, while the most recent U.S. figures suggested 132 unicorns. Companies such as Meituan Dianping (the Yelp equivalent of China) and Didi (the Uber equivalent of China) are examples of large disruptive technology companies from China that have garnered massive valuations.

Subsequently, more U.S.-based funds are branching out geographically. In the past, some funds may have had an understanding of China’s large market opportunity and had a China-focused partner, team, or partnership relationships in Asia. But now, there is increasingly more focus on Asia from these funds than ever before, not only driven by the potential investment opportunities, but also by the untapped market opportunity for their portfolio companies.

Several funds have been ahead of the game. For example, Y Combinator recently made a big entrance into China with their announcement of a new China office headed by Qi Lu, the former COO of Baidu. Additionally, Connie Chan, who has been responsible for spearheading Andreessen Horowitz’s China network, was promoted to general partner earlier this year, the first to be promoted from within the company.

Cryptocurrency and blockchain accelerate West-East investment ties

Now, cryptocurrency and blockchain have accelerated this cross-border activity. The global, or rather, the censorship-resistance nature of cryptocurrency and blockchain have brought Asia – and specifically China – to the forefront of the focus. In the blockchain space, Chinese companies make up more than 80% share in mining compute power, while Asia in aggregate makes up a significant market share in cryptocurrency trading. The top Cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, OKex and Huobi, are also run by Chinese teams.

The cryptocurrency phenomenon began in Asia and the U.S. around the same time, but Asia got a head start due to a favorable set of regulations compared to the U.S. While certainly not laissez faire, blockchain technology has been hailed by regulators throughout countries such as China, Japan and Korea. Since the start of this year, blockchain has been highlighted as one of the most promising technologies by China’s President Xi Jingping, calling it “a breakthrough technology.” Japan has also placed a spotlight on the technology in an effort for the country to re-invigorate itself and its economy. And last but not least, Korean regulators have started debating the idea of using blockchain technology as part of the democratic process, with advocates calling for the introduction of blockchain-powered voting systems.

As a result, Chinese and Korean cryptocurrency and blockchain funds for the first time have an edge, with access to proprietary information and relationships, along with a massive market that cryptocurrency companies in the U.S. can no longer ignore.

Eric Ly, a former CTO and co-founder of LinkedIn, recently started a blockchain based company called Hub. And in our conversation, he has recognized the importance of Asia as a market: “it’s a region that is not to be dismissed, especially in the crypto world in terms of the interest and the activities that’s going on there.” With more funds coming from China and Asia, and many crypto projects coming out of Asia, there will be more cross-border activities on both the investment as well as business development front.

Given the global nature of cryptocurrencies and blockchain, it’s increasingly important for entrepreneurs to raise money from investors who are not just local to where their team is based but also globally useful to one’s success as a cryptocurrency and blockchain company. Not only can overseas investors bring a vastly different point of view to the table, but they can also provide access and market opportunities in the other half of the hemisphere that otherwise would have been difficult.

Strong examples of this fundraising pattern are emerging. Take Messari for instance, a company based out of New York with the mission to create an authoritative data resource for crypto assets. CEO Ryan Selkis has mentioned how he has made a conscious effort to raise from Asian and other global funds when he initially raised the company’s seed round.

Typically, regional investors will have better information and relationship with the local businesses and regulators, and that should prove to be useful as the company scales and grows overseas. Additionally, local investors will likely be more in touch with the policies and the regulators, which is crucial when it comes to treading through the gray areas in cryptocurrency and blockchain space. Having someone who recognizes and can predict regulatory inflection points would be hugely valuable for the company as they map out their global strategy.

Source: Tech Crunch

In tech circles, it would be easy to assume that the world of high-impact charitable giving is a rich man’s game where deals are inked at exclusive black tie galas over fancy hors d’oeuvre. Both Mark Zuckerberg and Marc Benioff have donated to SF hospitals that now bear their names. Gordon Moore has given away $5B – including $600M to Caltech – which was the largest donation to a university at the time. And of course, Bill Gates has already donated $27B to every cause imaginable (and co-founded The Giving Pledge, a consortium of billionaires pledging to donate most of their net worth to charity by the end of their lifetime.)

For Bill, that means he has about $90B left to give.

For the average working American, this world of concierge giving is out of reach, both in check size, and the army of consultants, lawyers and PR strategists that come with it. It seems that in order to do good, you must first do well. Very well.

Bright Funds is looking to change that. Founded in 2012, this SF-based startup is looking to democratize concierge giving to every individual so they “can give with the same effectiveness as Bill and Melinda Gates.” They are doing to philanthropy what Vanguard and Wealthfront have done for asset management for retail investors.

In particular, they are looking to unlock dollars from the underutilized corporate benefit of matching funds for donations, which according to Bright Funds is offered by over 60% of medium to large enterprises, but only used by 13% of employees at these companies. The need for such a service is clear — these programs are cumbersome, transactional, and often offline. Make a donation, submit a receipt, and wait for it to churn through the bureaucratic machine of accounting and finance before matching funds show up weeks later.

Bright Funds is looking to make your company’s matching funds benefit as accessible and important to you as your free lunches or massages. Plus, Bright Funds charges companies per seat, along with a transaction fee to cover the cost of payment processing, sparing employees any expense.

It’s a model that is working. According to Bright Fund’s CEO Ty Walrod, Bright Funds customers see on average a 40% year-over-year increase in funds donated through the platform. More importantly, Bright Funds not only transforms an employee’s relationship to personal philanthropy, but also to the company they work for.

Grassroots Giving

This model of bottoms-up giving is a welcome change from the big foundation model which has recently been rocked by scandal. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation was the go-to foundation for The Who’s Who of Silicon Valley elite. It rode the latest tech boom to become the largest community foundation in eleven short years with generous stock donations from donors like Mark Zuckerberg ($1.8 billion), GoPro’s Nicholas Woodman ($500 million), and WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum ($566 million). Today, at $13.5 billion, it surpasses the 80+ year old Ford Foundation in endowment size.

However, earlier this year, their star fundraiser Mari Ellen Loijens (credited with raising $8.3B of the $13.5B) was accused of repeatedly bullying and sexually harassing coworkers, allegations that the Foundation had “known about for years” but failed to act upon. In 2017, a similar case occurred when USC’s star fundraiser David Carrera  stepped down on charges of sexual harassment after leading the university’s historic $6 billion fundraising campaign.

While large foundations and endowments do important work, their structure relies too much on whale hunting for big checks, giving an inordinate amount of power to the hands of a small group of talented fund raisers.

This stands in contrast to Bright Funds’ ethos — to lead a grassroots movement in empowering individual employees to make their dollar of giving count.

Rebuilding charitable giving for the platform age

Bright Funds is the latest iteration of a lineup of workplace giving platforms. MicroEdge and Cybergrants paved the way in the 80s and 90s by digitizing the giving experience, but was mainly on-premise, and lacked a focus on user experience. Benevity and YourCause arrived in 2007 to bring workplace giving to the cloud, but they were still not turnkey solutions that could be easily implemented.

Bright Funds started as a consumer platform, and has retained that heritage in its approach to product design, aiming to reduce friction for both employee and company adoption. This is why many of their first customers were midsized tech startups with limited resources and looking for a turnkey solution, including Eventbrite, Box, Github, and Contently . They are now finding their way upmarket into larger, more established enterprises like Cisco, VMWare, Campbell’s Soup Company, and Sunpower.

Bright Funds approach to product has brought a number of innovations to this space.

The first is the concept of a cause-focused “fund.” Similar to a mutual fund or ETF, these funds are portfolios of nonprofits curated by subject-matter experts tailored to a specific cause area (e.g. conservation, education, poverty, etc.). This solves one of the chief concerns of any donor — is my dollar being put to good use towards the causes I care about? Passionate about conservation? Invest with Jim Leape from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, who brings over three decades of conservation experience in choosing the six nonprofits in Bright Fund’s conservation portfolio. This same expertise is available across a number of cause areas.

Additionally, funds can also be created by companies or employees. This has proven to be an important rallying point for emergency relief during natural disasters, where employees at companies can collectively assemble a list of nonprofits to donate to. In 2017, Cisco employees donated $1.8 million (including company matching) through Bright Funds to Hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Irma as well as the central Mexico earthquakes, the current flooding in India and many more.

The second key feature of their product is the impact timeline, a central news feed to understand where your dollars are going across all your cause areas. This transforms giving from a black box transaction to an ongoing dialogue between you and your charities.

Lastly, Bright Funds wants to take away all the administrative burden that might come with giving and volunteering — everything from tracking your volunteer opportunities and hours, to one-click tax reporting across all your charitable donations. In short, no more shoeboxes of receipts to process through in April.

Doing good & doing well

Although Bright Funds is focused on transforming the individual giving experience, it’s paying customer at the end of the day is the enterprise.

And although it is philanthropic in nature, Bright Funds is not exempt from the procurement gauntlet that every enterprise software startup faces — what’s in it for the customer? What impact does workplace giving and volunteering have on culture and the bottom line?

To this end, there is evidence to show that corporate social responsibility has a an impact on recruiting the next generation of workers. A study by Horizon Media found that 81% of millennials expect their companies to be good corporate citizens. A separate 2015 study found that 62% of millennials said they’d take a pay cut to work for a company that’s socially responsible.

Box, one of Bright Fund’s early customers, has seen this impact on recruiting firsthand (disclosure: Box is one of my former employers). Like most tech companies competing for talent in the Valley, Box used to give out lucrative bonuses for candidate referrals. They recently switched to giving out $500 in Bright Funds gift credit. Instead of seeing employee referrals dip, Box saw referrals “skyrocket,” according to Box.org Executive Director Bryan Breckenridge. This program has now become “one of the most cherished cultural traditions at Box,” he said.

Additionally, like any corporate benefit, there should be metrics tied to employee retention. Benevity released a study of 2 million employees across 118 companies on their platform that showed a 57% reduction in turnover for employees engaged in corporate giving or volunteering efforts. VMware, one of Bright Fund’s customers, has seen an astonishing 82% of their 22,000 employees participate in their Citizen Philanthropy program of giving and volunteering, according to VMware Foundation Director Jessa Chin. Their full-time voluntary turnover rate (8%) is well below the software industry average of 13.2%.

Towards a Brighter Future

Bright Funds still has a lot of work to do. CEO Walrod says that one of his top priorities is to expand the platform beyond US charities, finding ways to evaluate and incorporate international nonprofits.

They have also not given up their dream of becoming a truly consumer platform, perhaps one day competing in the world of donor-advised funds, which today is largely dominated by big names like Fidelity and Schwab who house over $85B of assets. In the short term, Walrod wants to make every Bright Funds account similar to a 401K account. It goes wherever you work, and is a lasting record of the causes you care about, and the time and resources you’ve invested in them.

Whether the impetus is altruism around giving or something more utilitarian like retention, companies are increasingly realizing that their employees represent a charitable force that can be harnessed for the greater good. Bright Funds has more work to do like any startup, but it is empowering the next set of donors who can give with the same effectiveness as Gates, and one day, at the same scale as him as well.

Source: Tech Crunch

People don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables, that’s despite an embarrassment of options today that include fast grocery delivery and takeout services with a focus on health.

A study from the U.S-based Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released last November found that just one in ten adults in America “meet the federal fruit or vegetable recommendations” each day. The bar isn’t that high. The recommendation is just 1.5-2 cups of fruit and two to three cups of vegetables per day, but failing to meet it can put people at risk of chronic diseases, the CDC said.

The problem is universal the world over, but perhaps most acute in the U.S, where finding healthy food is easier than ever. Amazon’s same-day grocery deliveries, make-it-at-home services like Blue Apron and various healthy takeout services have helped some people, but no doubt there’s much more to be done for standards to be raised across the nation and beyond.

That’s where one early-stage startup, Kencko, is aiming to make a difference by making fruit and vegetable more accessible. Its thesis is that wholly organic diets are daunting to most, but packaging the good parts in new ways can make it easier for anyone to be more healthy.

The company’s first offering is a fruit drink that can be made in minutes using just a sachet, water and its mixer bottle.

Just add water

Unlike other ‘instant’ mixer options, Kencko uses freeze-drying to turn fruit and vegetable mixes into powder without compromising on health. That process — which is similar to how NASA develops food for astronauts — retains minerals, protein, vitamins and all the other good stuff typically lost in healthy drinks, the startup said. The fruit and vegetables used are organic and sourced from across the world — that’s broken down into more details on the Kencko website — while the mixes don’t contain sugar or other additives.

Kencko customers make their drink by mixing the sachet with water and shaking for one minute. Each sachet is 20g and, when combined with water, that gets you a 160g serving. That’s around two daily portions, and it  has a 180-day shelf live so it can keep. There are six different combinations, each one is a mixture of six fruit and vegetables.

Unlike others that pair with water, Kencko actually includes fruit pieces and seeds — I tested a batch. That’s pretty unique, although it is worth noting that some of the more berry fruit heavy combinations mix less efficiently than the plant-based ones, at least from my experience. As someone who lives in a city where fresh fruit and vegetables are easily found — thank you, Bangkok — I’m not the target customer. But I can readily recall living the busy 9-6 office life in London a decade ago, and back then I’d have been curious enough to at least take Kencko for a spin in my quest to be a little healthier.

Kencko is also affordable when compared to most health food options, which tend to be positioned as premium.

Packs are priced at $29.90 for ten sachets, $74.50 for 30 and $123.50 for 60. The startup offers a ‘Lifetime Founding Member’ package that gives 30 percent off those prices for an initial charge. That’s $32 for those wanting 10 servinggs, $79.90 for 30 and $129 for 60.

More than pressed juice

Kencko — which means health in Japanese — is the brainchild of Tomás Froes, a former tech worker who got into veganism after being diagnosed with acute gastritis.

Froes, who is from Portugal and once ran an artisanal hot dog brand in China, was told that his ailment was treatable but that it would require a cocktail of pills for the rest of his life. Seeking an alternative, he threw himself into the world of alternative health and, after settling on a 90 percent fruit and vegetable diet, found that his condition had cleared without medicine.

Keen to help others enjoy the benefits of his journey, he began talking to nutritionists and experts whilst trying to figure out possible business options. In an interview with TechCrunch, Froes said he settled on a new take on the existing ‘health drink’ space that he maintains is inadequate in a number of ways.

“The end goal is to help consumers reach the recommendation of five servings/portions of fruit a day,” he explained. “That would be impossible to do if we excluded the seeds and bits of fruits like cold-pressed juice companies do. They press the juice out of the fruits, leaving the most nutritional part from pulp and the seeds out.”

“We blast freeze fruit and vegetables at -40 degrees which allows us to maintain the same nutritional properties as fresh fruit for longer periods. We then use a slow heat process of 60 degrees to evaporate only take the water-based parts without damaging nutrition,” Froes added.

Added that, Froes said, Kencko helps cut down on the use of plastic by using the same mixer, return customers only require new sachets.

As proof of Kencko’s versatility, he brought his mixer and sachets along to the vegan cafe we met at earlier this year when I visited London, putting me to shame for buying the cold pressed option — which was no doubt more expensive, to boot.

Kencko is based in New York but with a processing facility in Lisbon, Portugal. It is heavily focused on the U.S. market where it offers delivery in 24-48 hours, but it also covers the UK and Canada. There are plans to increase support, particularly in Asia.

Building a health food brand

Kencko was formed in 2017 and, after landing undisclosed seed funding, it launched its product in March of this year. Already it has seen progress; the startup recently entered the TechStars accelerator program in London as one of a batch of ten companies.

“I’m excited to work with Tomas and the Kencko team,” Eamonn Carey, who leads TechStars in London, told TechCrunch. “I first read about them on ProductHunt and bought into their mission straight away. Once I tasted the product for the first time, I was sold — both as a subscriber and an investor.”

Froes told TechCrunch that drinks are just the first phase of what Kencko hopes to offer consumers. He explained that he wants to move into other types of food and consumables in the future to help give people more options to get their daily portion of fruit and vegetables.

Up next could be Apple-based snacks. Foes shared — quite literally — a new batch of snack that’s currently in development and is made from the fruit. He believes it could be marketed a healthier option than crisps and other nibbles people turn to between meals. Further down the pipeline, he said, will be other kinds of food that maintain the 100 percent organic approach.

Beyond food, Kencko wants to build a close bond with its customers. It is developing iOS and Apple Watch apps that help its users to track their fruit and vegetable consumption, and more generally make their diet and routine healthier.

With the membership package and apps, it becomes clear that Kencko aspires to build a brand and not just sell a product online. That’s double the challenge (at least), and that makes the company one to watch.

Already it has found some success within tech circles such as TechStar’s Carey — people who aspire to eat and drink better but are pushed for time — but if Froes is to even begin to deliver on his mission then Kencko will need to go beyond the tech industry niche and attract mainstream consumers. For now though, the product is worth close inspection if you think your lifestyle is in need of a fruit boost.

Source: Tech Crunch

The slings and arrows aimed at tech’s titans these days are almost too numerous to count. Jeff Bezos: squandering money on space while exploiting warehouse employees. Mark Zuckerberg: complicit in everything from genocide to the death of democracy. Larry Page and Sergey Brin: in bed with China and the military. Elon Musk: where even to begin?

Tim Cook has mostly escaped the brickbats, but if Steve Jobs were still with us, it seems plausible he’d be the biggest target of all. And the list goes on from there, of course.

Let’s not kid ourselves: a lot of this criticism is warranted. Amazon should treat its warehouse workers better. Facebook should have seen the new form of information warfare coming from further away, recognized it when it was happening, and responded much faster and more decisively. Google shouldn’t have come as close as it did to implementing Project Maven. Tesla should … well … should basically be less of a mess.

More generally, the tech sector is vastly more important than it used to be, both as a segment of the economy and as an intimate part of people’s lives, and the tech industry’s responsibilities are, accordingly, vastly greater than they were. People should be more critical of us, and more watchful. We should more carefully consider the consequences of our actions and inactions.

And yet. It’s hard to shake the sense that a lot of the criticism aimed at tech titans is because they are so visible, not because they are actually responsible. Bezos and Musk get an amazing amount of flak for their efforts at private space exploration. This just seems bizarre. You may not agree that space exploration is an important, and possible critical, field of human endeavor, but surely you can agree that people might believe this in good faith, and that it’s not just — at the most extreme and laughable edge of those criticisms — the patriarchy in action.

Also, it’s hard to ignore the fact that, on a relative shoestring, SpaceX and Blue Origin have been making meaningful advances (such as self-landing reusable boosters, and the cost-per-kilogram-to-orbit of the Falcon Heavy) which NASA has failed to make directly with its $19 billion budget — which in turn, as Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield points out, is less than twice what America spends on Halloween every year.

And if people are upset about tech billionaires squandering money, why on earth aren’t they up in arms, in mobs with pitchforks and torches, enraged by the financial industry? The financial industry which consumes 30% of all US corporate profits, compared to 10% thirty years ago. Of course, in exchange for that extra fifth of all profits, it gives us … uh … well, nothing, really; it just takes.

Similarly, there are fewer hedge-fund billionaires than there used to be, thankfully, but there are still an astonishing number of these people who are, in essence, very smart parasites who contribute nothing. “8 percent of the 400 wealthiest people in America is a big number for a group that arguably doesn’t contribute any economic activity.” Indeed — and, from the same article:

Hedge fund managers are different from other rich people in this way: Theirs is extremely liquid wealth. Other billionaires’ holdings are often locked up in assets that cannot be sold as easily, such as real estate or company shares. Because hedge fund managers are essentially in a cash business, these managers are able to buy sports teams and other high-priced toys by writing a check.

There’s a reason why there have been no mobs on Wall Street since the Occupy movement dissipated, and it is, I think, sadly, learned helplessness and despair. People don’t protest the parasites of the financial industry, or the military-industrial complex, or the bizarre cost disease that infects the US economy, or other aspects of our economy which are far, far more damaging than even the worst aspects of the tech industry, because they no longer believe that anything can be done about them. It’s sad but understandable.

In a way, it speaks well of technology that it attracts such criticism. It means that we’re incompatible with learned helplessness and despair, because for all of our (many) flaws, ours is still essentially an industry of hope, and one which actually builds and contributes thing rather than siphoning value. As mentioned, a lot of the criticisms are merited, and we should absorb them, consider them, and act upon them.

But at the same time let’s not pretend that tech is in any way Public Enemy No. 1, or that we represent all that is wrong with the world, or that tech people are uniquely and specially terrible, or that we should be the primary focus of criticism re how the world works, just because we are particularly striking and visible. If you want to deal with the enemies of a better world in order of importance, then I’m afraid you’re going to need to start elsewhere.

Source: Tech Crunch